Forced comparison of moral targets reveals effects that solitary ratings mask
Evidence
These studies depended more often than not on the explicit comparison of judgment targets. That is, rather than soliciting judgments in two versions of a moral situation and comparing them in a betweensubjects design, we often used the technique pioneered in Piaget’s early moral judgment studies of asking participants to compare targets: Who is more to blame? Who feels more pain? Who is more to be praised? We used this comparison method because of its relative sensitivity to small effects, and we used it because pretesting had revealed that some of the phenomena that we observed with this technique were not as discernible using techniques that did not call for comparison. — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 158
Categorization
- QUESTION: This is exactly the design template I need: forcing comparison between two framings (agent vs patient, or ‘religious’ vs ‘ideological’) rather than within-subjects rating could expose an otherwise-hidden shift in perceived threat.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting: Divergent…, 158
- XREF: connects to: Recategorizing a target by morally relevant features alters perceived agency. — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting: Divergent…, 51; Moral typecasting predicts neutral agents are victimized, contradicting just-world logic — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting: Divergent…, 105; Moral typecasting theory divides targets into agents, patients, and neutral roles for experimental comparison — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting: Divergent…, 141 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Moral typecasting operates independently of whether actions are good or bad
#qualifies(0.72) — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 57