Moral agency and patiency can be cleanly measured through resistance-to-pain and responsibility scenarios
Evidence
Participants read that David and Alex were sharing a train cabin on a long journey when the train is boarded by terrorists. The terrorists decide to torture everyone, and participants are asked to evaluate how much torture Alex could withstand and, separately, how much torture David could withstand. Participants indicated this by circling a response on a 4-point scale ranging from none at all to a lot of torture. This measure was reversed scored to serve as an index of patiency. To assess perceived agency, we told participants that the passengers on the train staged a revolt and overthrew the terrorists. Participants were asked to evaluate, on a 4-point scale, how responsible they thought each of Alex and David was for this revolt. The scale ranged from not at all to very responsible and served as our measure of agency. — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 126
Categorization
- DEFINE: Clearly operationalizes the two core constructs (agency as responsibility for revolt; patiency as ability to withstand torture), useful template for the reader’s own paradigm.
- XREF: connects to: Perceived moral agency predicts expected behavioral tolerance of pain — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting: Divergent…, 75
Related
- Perceived moral agency predicts expected behavioral tolerance of pain (similarity 0.84)
- Perceived agency and patiency shift based on whom a target is paired with (similarity 0.82)
- Moral patiency rests on a target’s perceived capacity for pain and pleasure. (similarity 0.80)
- Perceived moral agency and perceived patiency may trade off inversely even at extreme levels. (similarity 0.79)
- Perceived moral agency uniquely suppresses perceived victimhood, separable from general agency (similarity 0.79)