Recategorizing a target by morally relevant features alters perceived agency.

Evidence

Participants read about the target performing four actions. Two involved doing something bad—killing a man, stealing a painting—and two of the actions involved doing something good— defusing a bomb, rescuing some hostages. To avoid ceiling effects with ratings of agency, we emphasized that the target did each action at the behest of another person. — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 51

Categorization

• XREF: This is the paradigm template: manipulating agency by whether actions were done at another’s behest, useful for testing whether recategorizing a group as ‘ideological’ shifts moral standing. — connects to: Study 1 manipulated agent category through contrasting crime and charity vignettes — Mansur Khamitov, Jeff D. Rotman, and Jared Piazza, Perceiving the Agency of Harmful…, 220; 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; Recategorizing a target’s status shifts perceived agency and victimhood in complementary directions — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting: Divergent…, 37 (+8 more)
• SEED: Methodological template for the reader’s planned religious-group recategorization study.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting: Divergent…, 51

Broader Connections

• Moral agency specifically, not general agency, reduces perceived moral patiency. #corroborates (0.86)
• Perceived moral agency uniquely suppresses perceived victimhood, separable from general agency #corroborates (0.85) — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 105
• Experimental vignettes decouple general agency from moral agency in perception of a target #expands (0.82) — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 111
• Forced comparison of moral targets reveals effects that solitary ratings mask #expands (0.74) — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 158
• Perceived moral agency and perceived moral patiency vary inversely across targets #qualifies (0.72) — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 39