A moral versus nonmoral context shifts who is seen as vulnerable to pain.

Evidence

To evaluate the relative agency of Michael and Jeffrey, we asked participants to indicate which of the two of them acted more intentionally. To assess the effect of these different kinds of agency on perceptions of patiency, we asked participants to indicate whether Michael or Jeffrey felt more pain after each tripped and scraped his hands on the sidewalk. — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 100

Categorization

• XREF: This is the experimental template the reader sought: recategorization as agent vs. patient via context (moral vs. nonmoral) rather than label, measuring patiency through a pain-ascription probe. Directly transferable to a religious-group-as-ideology paradigm. — connects to: Moral patiency rests on a target’s perceived capacity for pain and pleasure. — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting: Divergent…, 14; Casting someone as a moral agent reduces perceived sensitivity to pain — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting: Divergent…, 88; Judgments of pain sensitivity reveal a target’s perceived moral patient status (+3 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting: Divergent…, 100

Broader Connections

• Judgments of pain sensitivity reveal a target’s perceived moral patient status #expands (0.90)
• People rationally allocate pain and pleasure by target moral sensitivity. #expands (0.80) — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 137
• Perceived moral agency predicts expected behavioral tolerance of pain #corroborates (0.78) — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 75
• Moral disengagement reduces victims’ perceived suffering and thus the desire for justice #expands (0.75)