Date of Award

5-1-2023

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

Department of Psychology

Content Description

1 online resource (iv, 176 pages) : illustrations.

Dissertation/Thesis Chair

Anna Reiman

Committee Members

Cynthia Najdowski, Brendan O'Connor

Keywords

Moral Action, Moral Courage, Moral Judgment, Courage, Ethics

Subject Categories

Social Psychology

Abstract

Though specifics differ across cultures and even across individuals, research has shown surprising consensus as to what constitutes immoral behavior across societies (e.g., murder, theft). Even though much research has broadened our understanding of moral cognition, comparatively few studies have investigated moral action. There are real-world examples of people trying to intervene against immoral behavior, a behavior known as moral courage. This dissertation, comprised of a total of six studies across three manuscripts, seeks to add to the corpus of moral psychology by bridging the gap in knowledge regarding how connected moral cognition and action are. In the two studies of the first manuscript, participants read a variety of short moral vignettes and rated whether they would be more inclined to confront or avoid the moral violator. Participants generally indicated a slight preference for avoidance (or ambivalence between the two motivations) across most violation types. Additionally, a third supplemental study from this manuscript found that people tended to feel disgust in response to different types of moral violations, further corroborating a general (though not exclusively) avoidant response to immoral situations. The study in the second manuscript used the same stimulus set but asked participants what their concerns would be if they were to confront the moral violators in the scenarios. The most common concern among participants was not knowing what to do or say. Finally, the two studies in the third manuscript examined behavior in response to a staged theft, with Study 1 comparing participants’ responses to a hypothetical theft to an ostensibly real one and Study 2 examining the effects of having participants self-affirm their values on subsequent intervention behaviors. Study 1 revealed that people overestimate their levels of moral courage in response to a theft with hypothetical intervention rates being much higher than actual, observed intervention rates. Study 2 showed similarly low levels of intervention in response to the theft, with no effect of self-affirmation. Taken together, these six studies show that although people are quick to judge certain acts as morally wrong, they are not so quick to act. Data from these six studies, particularly qualitative data gathered from interviews in Studies 1-2 of the third manuscript, suggest that people have conflicting motivations in response to immoral acts and give various reasons as to why they do not (or would not) do anything to stop these acts, ranging from lack of perceived self-efficacy to simply not noticing something bad was happening. Thus, the link between moral judgment and moral action appears to be tenuous and easily interrupted.

Download

Share

COinS