Group affiliation alone can override moral condemnation of cheating.

Evidence

In his work on the psychology of emotion and moral judgment, David DeSteno, a psychologist at Northeastern University, has studied the effect of such “team affiliation” on moral reasoning. In one experiment, subjects who had just met were randomly divided into teams by giving them colored wristbands. Then they were separated. The first group was told that they would be given the option of performing either a fun ten-minute task or a difficult forty-five-minute one. Each subject was then placed alone in a room and told that he or she should choose which to do—or decide by a coin flip—but that in either case the person who entered the room afterward would be left with the remaining task. What subjects didn’t know is that they were being videotaped. Upon exiting the room 90 percent said that they had been fair, even though most had chosen the easier task for themselves and never bothered to flip the coin. But what is absolutely fascinating is what happened next. When the other half of the subjects were asked to watch a videotape of the liars and cheaters, they condemned them—unless they were wearing the same color wristband. If we are willing to excuse immoral behavior based on something as trivial as a wristband, imagine how our reasoning might be affected if we were really emotionally committed. — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 102

Categorization

• CANDY: Excusing cheaters simply because of matching wristbands is a vivid, striking demo perfect for an elevator story about tribalism.
• SEED: Could anchor an essay on how trivial markers of in-group membership license moral flexibility.
• XREF: connects to: Deploying an in-group frame alone may shift moral priorities, even without moral content. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2140; Merely priming in-group membership may trigger morality principle shifts without moral content — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2140; People excuse immorality from in-group members arbitrarily defined — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 102 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Merely priming in-group membership may trigger morality principle shifts without moral content #corroborates (0.95) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2140
• Deploying an in-group frame alone may shift moral priorities, even without moral content. #corroborates (0.90) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2140
• People excuse immorality from in-group members arbitrarily defined #corroborates (0.85) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 102
• Group solidarity and in-group favoritism derive from mutualistic relationships, not independent moral rules. #complicates (0.75) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 705