Perceived moral agency uniquely suppresses perceived victimhood, separable from general agency

Evidence

In this study, we also break with the previous studies and use a different measure of moral patiency. Although pain sensitivity is an important facet of moral patiency, at its most basic level, moral patiency is the capacity to be on the receiving end of a moral action—the ability to be a victim or beneficiary. Hence, to assess moral patiency, we asked participants to judge which of two targets is a more likely victim. If it is increased general agency which leads to decreased perceptions of patiency, we would expect the moral agent to be perceived as a more likely victim. On the other hand, the moral typecasting hypothesis predicts that the target with high general agency but low moral agency would be deemed the more likely victim. — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 105

Categorization

• QUESTION: The dissociating operation — high general agency / low moral agency vs. low general / high moral agency targets — is exactly the experimental template the reader needs to isolate whether ‘ideological’ vs ‘religious’ framing shifts perceived moral culpability independently.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting: Divergent…, 105
• XREF: connects to: Perceiving someone as a moral agent reduces perceived moral patiency. — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting: Divergent…, 1; Recategorizing someone as a victim shifts them toward moral-patient perceptions while suppressing perceived agency. — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting: Divergent…, 29; Factor-analytic orthogonality of mind dimensions does not rule out inverse moral perception — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting: Divergent…, 31 (+11 more)

Broader Connections

• Moral agency specifically, not general agency, reduces perceived moral patiency. #corroborates (0.97)
• Only moral agency, not instrumental competence, suppresses perceived patiency #corroborates (0.95) — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 99
• Perceived moral agency and perceived moral patiency vary inversely across targets #corroborates (0.88) — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 39
• General in-group identification does not predict moral disengagement toward victims #qualifies (0.78) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2113
• Perceived moral agency predicts expected behavioral tolerance of pain #qualifies (0.74) — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 75