The stringent moral circle: Self-other discrepancies in the perceived expansion of moral concern
Open Access
- Author:
- Hadjiandreou, Eliana
- Graduate Program:
- Psychology (PHD)
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- February 21, 2024
- Committee Members:
- Jes Matsick, Major Field Member
Rachel Smith, Outside Unit & Field Member
Kristin Buss, Program Head/Chair
Charlie Crimston, Special Member
Sean Laurent, Major Field Member
Christopher Cameron, Chair & Dissertation Advisor - Keywords:
- morality
prosocial behavior
perceptions
self-other differences
cynicism - Abstract:
- Across contexts, people consistently underestimate others’ prosociality. In this dissertation work, I attempt to theoretically link these findings to a broader underestimation: the moral landscapes of other people are imagined as more constricted compared to that of the self. In two pilot studies (Studies 1a & 1b) using the Moral Expansiveness Scale (MES; Crimston et al., 2016), we found that participants reported their moral circles to be more expansive compared to those they predicted for others. This was true for entities that are typically distant in the moral circle (that is: outgroup, stigmatized, animals of high sentience, animals of low sentience, plants, environment), but not entities that are typically placed proximal to the center (that is: family & friends, ingroup, revered). We aimed to assess whether this is because of lack of access to information about these distant categories from the perspective of general others. In order to do this, three studies (Studies 2, 3, and 4) asked participants to fill out the Moral Expansiveness Scale from three perspectives – self, close others, average others. We predicted that participants’ moral circles will be comparably inclusive to the moral circles they reported for their close others due to having informational access to their moral worlds, but that average others will be reported as being less inclusive than the self and close others due to greater reliance on stereotypes about distant categories, that reflect cynical bias. Because we expected that the comparable scores between self and close other are not only due to feeling more similar to close others and liking them more than average others, we expected to see the same results even when participants were encouraged to reflect on being dissimilar from their close others (Study 2), and when participants were encouraged to think of reasons they dislike their close others (Study 3). Finally, in Study 4, we expected that assigning participants to an anti-cynicism condition which exposes them to information highlighting human prosociality will eliminate this discrepancy, which we expected to persist in the pro-cynicism and control conditions. Results showed that the moral inclusivity discrepancy for distant entities persisted but was smaller in the case of close others, and that similarity and liking partially accounted for the overlap between self and close other scores. Study 4 showed unique reductions in the perceived moral expansiveness of average others for distant entities in the cynicism condition, although statistical results were mixed. Implications for the potential cynicism explanation and future directions are discussed.