Children's moral judgments about environmental harm

Young children in northeastern USA see harms against the environment as morally worse than bad manners. And asked to explain this judgment, many of them referred to the moral standing of nature itself - displaying so-called "biocentric" reasoning. This precocity marks a change from similar research conducted in the 1990s, leading the authors of the new study, Karen Hussar and Jared Horvath, to speculate about "the possible effects of the increased focus on environmental initiatives during the last decade ... Although typically thought to emerge in later adolescence, a willingness to grant nature respect based on its own unique right-to-existence was present in our young participants."

Hussar and Horvath presented 61 children (aged 6 to 10 years) with 12 story cards: 3 portrayed a moral transgression against another person (e.g. stealing money from a classmate); 3 portrayed bad manners (e.g. eating salad with one's fingers); 3 portrayed a mundane personal choice (e.g. colouring a drawing with purple crayon); and 3 portrayed an environmentally harmful action (e.g. failing to recycle; damaging a tree). For each card, the children were asked to say if the act was OK, a little bad or very bad, and to explain their reasoning.

The children rated moral transgressions against other people as the worst of all, followed by harms against the environment, and then bad manners. Mundane personal choices were judged largely as "OK". There were no differences with age.

Asked to justify their judgments about environmental harm, 74 per cent of the explanations given referred to "biocentric" reasons (e.g. "A tree is a living thing and, it's like, breaking off your arm - someone else's arm or something"); 26 per cent invoked anthropocentric reasons (e.g. "Because without trees we wouldn't have oxygen"). The ratio of these categories of explanation didn't vary by age, but did vary by gender, with girls more likely to offer biocentric reasons. This fits with a wider, but still inconclusive, literature suggesting that women tend to base their moral judgments on issues of care, whereas men tend to base their moral judgments on issues of justice.

Hussar and Horvath said it was revealing that the children placed environmental harms midway between harms against other people and bad manners. "This environmental domain [of moral harm] implies a sophisticated comprehension by young children such that consideration is afforded to environmental life over social order, but, at the same time, consideration is afforded to human life over environmental life."

In contrast with the present findings, research conducted in the 90s found that young children tended to offer anthropocentric reasons for the immorality of environmental harm, only invoking biocentric reasons more frequently in late childhood or adolescence.

"To conclude, it is evident that the participants in the current study are constructing morally-based views about nature and humans' place within it from a very young age," the researchers said. "This moral stance was succinctly articulated by one of our participants: 'Even if there's no rules you should respect ... (and) be good to the environment.'."
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Hussar, K., and Horvath, J. (2011). Do children play fair with mother nature? Understanding children’s judgments of environmentally harmful actions. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 31 (4), 309-313 DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2011.05.001

Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.

For Christians, Dawkins and the Qur'an leave a bad taste in the mouth, literally

Many studies have shown that moral disgust is "embodied". Contemplation of taboo deeds really does leave people physically sickened. Now Ryan Ritter and Jesse Preston have extended this literature to show that religious beliefs that contradict one's own also leave a bad taste in the mouth, literally.

The genius in this study is the cover story. Eighty-two Christian student participants were told they were taking part in two separate investigations: one a marketing survey requiring that they taste two different drinks; the other a study of handwriting and personality. The participants first tasted a lemon-based drink and rated it. Then, ostensibly to allow their palates to refresh, they completed the handwriting task, which involved them copying out either a neutral text (an intro to a dictionary); a section from Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion (in which he describes the God of the Old Testament as "arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction"); or a section from the Qur'an (from Surah 47: 1-2). A personality questionnaire helped embellish the cover story. Finally, the students tested the second drink and rated it. A handful of participants guessed the true purpose of the study and were excluded from the analysis.

In reality the two drinks were identical and the key measure was how the participants responded to the drink after exposure to religious beliefs that contradicted their own. The findings were clear: the Christian participants reported finding the drink far more disgusting after they'd written out a passage from either Richard Dawkins or from the Qur'an. In contrast, their ratings of the drink were unchanged after writing out the neutral passage.

A second study was similar to the first, but this time some of the participants had a chance to clean their hands with an antiseptic wipe after writing out a passage from the Qur'an, from Dawkins, or from the Bible. Once again, exposure to Dawkins or the Qur'an (but not the Bible) heightened participants' disgust reaction to the drink, unless, that is, they had a chance to clean their hands.

Other ratings of the drink, such as bitterness or sourness, were unaffected so this was a specific effect on disgust. Also, general negative affect was unable to explain the results.

"The present research provides evidence that contact with rejected beliefs elicits disgust," the researchers said. "Whereas the majority of past work on moral purity has focused on disgust in response to morally questionable objects and actions, these data suggest that contact with outgroup religious beliefs may be an equally threatening source of impurity, and can literally leave a bad taste in the mouth."

Future research is needed to see if it's necessary for people to write or say rejected religious beliefs in order to experience disgust (perhaps by provoking the feeling that they've violated their own sanctity) or if instead mere contemplation of the material suffices. Ritter and Preston also plan to test the reactions of people from other religious groups and the effect of rejected non-religious beliefs - in all cases they predict morally rejected beliefs will elicit physical disgust.
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RS Ritter and JL Preston (2011). Gross gods and icky atheism: disgust responses to rejected religious beliefs. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47 DOI: 10.1016.j.jesp.2011.05.006

Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.

Closing our eyes affects our moral judgements

We experience emotion more intensely with our eyes closed

The simple act of closing our eyes has a significant effect on our moral judgement and behaviour. Eugene Caruso and Francesca Gino, who made the observation, think the effect has to do with mental simulation, whereby having our eyes closed causes us to simulate scenarios more vividly. In turn this triggers more intense emotion.

Throughout the study, Caruso and Gino concealed the true aim of the research from participants by telling them that part of the investigation was about judging the quality of head-phones. Participants were asked to listen to the rest of the study instructions through a pair of head-phones with a view to rating the sound quality. Crucially, half the participants were asked to listen to the different instructions and scenarios with their eyes closed - ostensibly to help their judgment of the sound quality - whilst the remainder listened with their eyes open.

Across the first three studies, the following effects were observed: participants with their eyes closed who heard a hypothetical scenario in which they deliberately over-estimated hours worked (so as to charge more) judged the act as more unethical than participants who heard the same scenario with their eyes open. Participants who heard the instructions for a simple financial game with their eyes closed subsequently shared money more fairly than participants who heard the instructions with their eyes open. And participants who listened to a hypothetical scenario with their eyes closed, in which nepotism and self-interest had biased a recruitment decision they'd made, judged that act as more unethical than did participants who heard the same scenario with their eyes open. Follow-up questions showed that the eyes-closed participants had visualised the scenario more vividly.

A fourth study was similar to the last except that some of the participants were given an explicit instruction to visualise the nepotism scenario as vividly as they could. This instruction led the eyes-open participants to judge the nepotistic act more harshly, similar to the eyes-closed participants. Overall, there was no evidence that the eyes-closed participants had simply paid more attention to the scenario than the eyes-open participants, but they did experience more negative, guilt-based emotion and it's this effect that probably underlies the study's central finding.

'Although scholars from different fields have provided important insights in understanding why people commonly cross ethical boundaries, little research has examined potential solutions that are easily implementable,' the researchers said. 'Here we identified a simple strategy: closing one's eyes, people are likely to simulate the decision they are facing more extensively and experience its emotional components more vividly. As a result ... people may be more sensitive to the ethical nature of their own and others' decisions, and perhaps behave more honestly as a result.'
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Caruso, E., and Gino, F. (2011). Blind ethics: Closing one’s eyes polarizes moral judgments and discourages dishonest behavior. Cognition, 118 (2), 280-285 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2010.11.008

Feeling clean makes us harsher moral judges

As the dirt and germs are wiped away, we're left feeling not just bodily but also morally cleansed - a kind of metaphorical virtuosity that leads us to judge others more harshly. That's according to Chen-Bo Zhong's team, who invited 58 undergrads to a lab filled with spotless new equipment. Half the students were asked to clean their hands with an antiseptic wipe so as not to soil the shiny surfaces. Afterwards all the students rated the morality of six societal issues including pornography and littering. Those who'd wiped their hands made far harsher judgments than those who didn't.

It was a similar story in a follow-up study with hundreds of participants recruited via a nation-wide database. Those primed to feel clean by reading a short passage that began 'My hair feels clean and light. My breath is fresh ...' made far harsher moral judgements about 16 social issues compared with those primed to feel dirty by a passage beginning, 'My hair feels oily and heavy. My breath stinks ...'

A third study was identical to the second, except that after reading either the dirty or clean passage of text the 136 undergrad participants also ranked themselves against their peers on several factors including intelligence, attractiveness and moral character. As before, those primed with the clean text made more harsh moral judgements on social issues. Crucially, this association was entirely mediated by their having an inflated sense of moral virtuosity compared with their peers (by contrast, reading the clean vs. dirty text made no difference to self rankings on the other factors).

'Acts of cleanliness have not only the potential to shift our moral pendulum to a more virtuous self, but also license harsher moral judgement of others,' Zhong and his team concluded.
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Zhong, C., Strejcek, B., & Sivanathan, N. (2010). A clean self can render harsh moral judgment. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46 (5), 859-862 DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2010.04.003

Link to earlier related post: Your conscience really can be wiped clean.

People lie more in email than when using pen and paper

Emails feel so transient, so disembodied, that we're more tempted to lie when sending them compared with writing with pen and paper. That's according to Charles Naquin and colleagues who tested the honesty of students and managers as they played financial games.

Forty-eight graduate business students were presented with an imaginary $89 kitty and had to choose how much they'd tell their partner was in the kitty, and how much of the kitty to share with their partner. Crucially, some participants shared this information by email, others by pen and paper. You guessed it - those who shared the info by email were more likely to lie about the kitty size (92 per cent of them did vs. 63 per cent of the pen and paper group), and they were also more unfair in how they shared the money. Participants in the email group also said they felt more justified in misrepresenting the amount of money to their partner.

A follow-up study ramped up the ecological validity. One hundred and seventy-seven full-time managers took part in a group financial game. Participants formed teams of three with each member pretending to be the manager of a science project negotiating for grant money. This game was played with real money, the players all knew each other, and any lies would be revealed afterwards. Once again, players who shared information by email were more likely to lie and cheat than were players who shared information by pen and paper.

Charles Naquin's team said their results chime with previous research showing, for example, that peer performance reviews are more negative when conducted online rather than on paper. 'Moving paper tasks online either within or across organisational boundaries should be undertaken with caution,' they said. For example: 'Taxes using the increasingly popular e-filing system could be even more fraught with deception than the traditional paper forms.'
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Naquin, C., Kurtzberg, T., & Belkin, L. (2010). The finer points of lying online: E-mail versus pen and paper. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95 (2), 387-394 DOI: 10.1037/a0018627

The remote rural community that thinks letting someone die is as bad as killing them

In recent years, cognitive scientist Marc Hauser has gathered evidence that suggests we're born with a moral instinct. This moral intuition has been likened to the universal grammar that Chomsky famously suggested underlies our linguistic abilities - certain principles are set in stone, whilst the precise parameters can be set by culture. Thousands of people from multiple countries and different religions and demographic backgrounds have given their verdict on fictional scenarios presented online and from this Hauser has identified some potential moral universals [try out the moral tests for yourself].

One of these near-universal principals is that most people think it is worse to deliberately cause someone harm in order to achieve a greater good, than it is to cause some harm as a side-effect in pursuit of the greater good. Think of deliberately pushing a man in the way of a run-away lorry to save a crowd, as opposed to shouting at the lorry driver, such that he swerves away from the crowd, but instead crashes into and kills a man on the pavement.

Another is that most people think actions that lead to harm are worse than omissions (i.e. not doing something) that lead to harm. Think of a doctor killing a patient with a lethal dose, as opposed to letting them die by not administering a life-saving drug.

Finally, most people think harm delivered via direct physical contact - for example, pushing them to their death - is worse than harm delivered at a distance - for example, via a trap.

Most people match this pattern of responding but so far most participants have been from urban, technologically advanced cultures. Now Marc Hauser and his colleague Linda Abarbanell have translated these kinds of moral scenarios and taken them to a rural Mayan community in the highlands of Chiapas in Mexico.

The rural Mayans showed the usual bias for seeing harm caused deliberately in pursuit of a greater good as more forbidden than harm caused as a side-effect in pursuit of that same greater good. But Abarbanell and Hauser's breakthrough finding is that the rural Mayans didn't believe that harm caused by direct contact was worse than indirect harm and they didn't think active harmful acts were morally worse than harmful acts of omission.

The researchers don't think these differences emerged because of translation problems. Choosing to focus on the omission/active harm type situation, the researchers tried out several different scenarios, including one designed for use with children, and always the results were the same. The rural Mayans saw agents as more causally responsible for active harm, they just didn't see them as more morally blameworthy. Moreover, when Abarbanell and Hauser tested a more urban Mayan population, they did show the usual tendency to see harmful acts of omission as less bad, thus suggesting that this difference in moral judgment is specific to the rural community.

They don't have a specific law that forbids 'looking the other way', so why should the rural Mayans differ on this key moral principle? The researchers said more research is needed, but they think it probably has to do with the 'highly intertwined social relations and their associated obligations' in the rural Mayan society. Future studies could look to see if the omission/active harm distinction is missing from other small-scale, close-knit societies.

'Ultimately,' Abarbanell and Hauser concluded, 'this research may suggest that some psychological distinctions are moral absolutes, true in all cultures, whereas others may be more plastic, relative to a culture's social dynamics, mating behaviour and belief systems.'
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Abarbanell, L., & Hauser, M. (2010). Mayan morality: An exploration of permissible harms. Cognition DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2009.12.007

Image credit: Wikipedia commons.

I'm not lying: Brain stimulation boosts people's deception skills

There's been so much excitement and hyperbole surrounding the promise of brain imaging as a lie detection technique, but what about the needs of the cads, thieves and vagabonds of this world? Has contemporary cognitive neuroscience nothing to offer them? It has now. In an exciting development for fibbers everywhere, Ahmed Karim and his team have shown that the application of transcranial direct current stimulation over the anterior prefrontal cortex - the front bit of the brain - improves people's lying skills.

Twenty-two participants role-played stealing money from an office before being interrogated by a researcher acting the role of police detective. The participants were given extra incentive to deceive the 'detective' with the promise that they could keep the money if they succeeded. Crucially, the participants answered some questions with a mild electric current applied over their prefrontal cortex via scalp electrodes. The effect of this 'cathodal' stimulation, which lasted about 13 minutes, was to inhibit brain activity in the affected area, thus creating a kind of temporary, 'virtual' lesion. By contrast, they answered other questions in a 'sham' condition, involving all the same kit but with the current switched off after just thirty seconds. The interrogator and participants couldn't tell whether they were in the stimulation or sham condition.

Past brain imaging research has shown that some forms of lying are associated with increased activity in the anterior prefrontal cortex, and one prediction was that inhibiting this region would impair people's lying skills. In fact, compared with the sham condition, the stimulation improved participants' lying ability: they lied more skillfully in terms of only lying when they needed to; lied more quickly; and remained calmer whilst lying, as reflected by their sweating less.

A second study used 'anodal' stimulation, which unlike 'cathodal' stimulation, excites rather than inhibits underlying brain cells. This had no effect on the participants' lying ability. A third study showed that 'cathodal' stimulation had no effect on the famous Stroop task, which requires participants to name the ink colour that a colour word (e.g. blue) is written in. In other words, the effect of the stimulation appears to be specific to deception, not to cognitively demanding tasks in general.

So why does knocking out prefrontal cortex activity improve people's deception skills? The researchers can't be sure, but stated crudely, one possibility is that the stimulation puts the conscience to sleep, freeing the mind to lie without the usual inconvenience of moral conflict. This would appear to tally with research suggesting that psychopaths have reduced grey matter in the anterior prefrontal cortex and also with a recent study showing that people with brain damage to this region make more utilitarian moral decisions.

'If neuroscience research can demonstrate that deceptive behaviour and moral cognition are not only associated with the activation of specific brain areas, but may even be modulated by noninvasive stimulation of these areas, what implications will such findings have on our concept of personal responsibility?' the researchers asked.
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Karim, A., Schneider, M., Lotze, M., Veit, R., Sauseng, P., Braun, C., & Birbaumer, N. (2009). The Truth about Lying: Inhibition of the Anterior Prefrontal Cortex Improves Deceptive Behavior. Cerebral Cortex, 20 (1), 205-213 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhp090