Recategorizing someone as a victim shifts them toward moral-patient perceptions while suppressing perceived agency.
Evidence
A perceptual tendency toward moral typecasting could explain a range of phenomena. Research on help-giving, for example, reveals that people readily proffer help to a person who appears to be a victim of circumstances but not to an individual who is responsible for his or her own plight (Weiner, 1980). This bias might accrue from the typecasting of a victim as a moral patient—and the complementary typecasting of a responsible individual as an agent unworthy of assistance. In a similar vein, research on the sick role has shown that those who are sick or incapacitated are held less responsible for their actions (Arluke, Kennedy, & Kessler, 1979), perhaps because the sick person’s identity as a moral patient blocks the perception of his or her moral agency. — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 29
Categorization
- SEED: The pattern here — a single category shift (to ‘victim’/‘sick’) biasing both help and responsibility judgments — is exactly the movable experimental lever the reader wants to translate to religious groups recategorized as ‘ideological.’
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting: Divergent…, 29
- XREF: connects to: Recategorizing a target by morally relevant features alters perceived agency. — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting: Divergent…, 51; Recategorizing a target’s status shifts perceived agency and victimhood in complementary directions — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting: Divergent…, 37; Perceived moral agency uniquely suppresses perceived victimhood, separable from general agency — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting: Divergent…, 105 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Recategorizing a target’s status shifts perceived agency and victimhood in complementary directions
#corroborates(0.95) — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 37 - Recategorizing a target by morally relevant features alters perceived agency.
#expands(0.92) — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 51 - Perceiving someone as a moral agent may preclude perceiving them as a moral patient
#expands(0.86) — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 21 - Perceiving someone as a moral agent reduces perceived moral patiency.
#expands(0.85) — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 1 - Perceived moral agency uniquely suppresses perceived victimhood, separable from general agency
#expands(0.82) — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 105 - Redefining a situation on one’s own terms can convert victimhood into agency.
#complicates(0.78) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 696