How moral bioenhancement affects perceived praiseworthiness

Lucas, S., Douglas, T., & Faber, N. S. (2023).

Bioethics. https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.13237

Abstract

Psychological literature indicates that actions performed with the assistance of cognition-enhancing biomedical technologies are often deemed to be less praiseworthy than similar actions performed without such assistance. This study examines (i) whether this result extends to the bioenhancement of moral capacities, and (ii) if so, what explains the effect of moral bioenhancement on perceived praiseworthiness. The findings indicate that actions facilitated by morally bioenhanced individuals are considered less deserving of praise than similar actions facilitated by ‘traditional’ moral enhancement—for example, moral self-education. This diminished praise does not seem to be driven by an aversion to (moral) bioenhancement per se. Instead, it appears to be primarily attributable to a perceived lack of effort exerted by bioenhanced individuals in the course of their moral enhancement. Our findings advance the philosophical discourse on the foundations of praise in the context of moral bioenhancement by elucidating the empirical basis underlying some assumptions commonly employed to argue for or against the permissibility of moral bioenhancement.

It is an open source article.  Link above works.

My summary:

This research shows whether people are less likely to praise morally bioenhanced individuals for their actions. The authors found that people do perceive morally bioenhanced individuals as less deserving of praise than those who achieve moral enhancement through traditional means, such as moral self-education.

The authors argue that this diminished praise is not due to an aversion to moral bioenhancement per se, but rather to a perceived lack of effort on the part of the bioenhanced individual. In other words, people believe that bioenhanced individuals have not had to work as hard to achieve their moral excellence, and therefore deserve less praise for their accomplishments.

This finding has important implications for the development and use of moral bioenhancement technologies. If people are less likely to praise morally bioenhanced individuals, it could lead to a number of negative consequences, such as social stigma and discrimination. Additionally, it could discourage people from using moral bioenhancement technologies, even if they believe that these technologies could help them to become more moral people.

The moralization of effort

Celniker, J. B., et al. (2022).

Journal of Experimental Psychology:

General. Advance online publication.

https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001259

Abstract

People believe that effort is valuable, but what kind of value does it confer? We find that displays of effort signal moral character. Eight studies (N = 5,502) demonstrate the nature of these effects in the domains of paid employment, personal fitness, and charitable fundraising. The exertion of effort is deemed morally admirable (Studies 1–6) and is monetarily rewarded (Studies 2–6), even in situations where effort does not directly generate additional product, quality, or economic value. Convergent patterns of results emerged in South Korean and French cross-cultural replications (Studies 2b and 2c). We contend that the seeming irrationality of valuing effort for its own sake, such as in situations where one’s efforts do not directly increase economic output (Studies 3–6), reveals a “deeply rational” social heuristic for evaluating potential cooperation partners. Specifically, effort cues engender broad moral trait ascriptions, and this moralization of effort influences donation behaviors (Study 5) and cooperative partner choice decision-making (Studies 4 and 6). In situating our account of effort moralization into past research and theorizing, we also consider the implications of these effects for social welfare policy and the future of work.

General Discussion

Is effort deemed socially valuable, even in situations where one’s efforts have no direct economic utility? Eight studies using multiple methodologies and cross-cultural samples indicate that it is. We provided evidence of effort moralization—displays of effort increased the moral qualities ascribed to individuals (we did not, we should note, provide evidence of the specific process by which effort cues shift from having a nonmoral to moral status, a more limited definition of moralization; Rhee et al., 2019). Moreover, the moralization of effort guided participants’ allocations of monetary resources and selections of cooperation partners. These data support our argument that effort moralization is a “deeply rational” social heuristic for navigating cooperation markets (Barclay, 2013; Kenrick et al., 2009). Even in circumstances where effort was economically unnecessary, people believed such efforts reflected others’ inner virtues.

(cut)

This evolutionary perspective may provide a more parsimonious framework for integrating research on effort evaluations: the “effort heuristic” (Kruger et al., 2004) may be more functionally dynamic than previously recognized, with effort moralization constituting one of its social functions. Thus, rather than directly causing people to moralize effort, cultural beliefs like the PWE may be scaffolded on evolved psychological mechanisms such as shared intuitions about the value of effort. The PWE (and similar work ethics among other populations) may have emerged, then, because it benefited from a combination of being well fit to our psychology (in appealing to an underlying tendency for effort moralization) and culturally useful (in promoting cooperation and industriousness; Henrich, 2020; Henrich & Boyd, 2016).

A pdf of the research is here.

Note: Hardworking people are often seen as more moral than those perceived or believed as lazy. Yet people who work harder are not always more economically productive.  Capitalist fantasies play into these moral stereotypes.  Effort moralization plays right into misconceptions about poor people being lazy and rich people as hard workers.  Neither stereotype is accurate.

Outrage Fatigue? Cognitive Costs and Decisions to Blame

Bambrah, V., Cameron, D., & Inzlicht, M.

(2021, November 30).

https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/6y4ad

Abstract

Across nine studies (N=1,672), we assessed the link between cognitive costs and the choice to express outrage by blaming. We developed the Blame Selection Task, a binary free-choice paradigm that examines the propensity to blame transgressors (versus an alternative choice)—either before or after reading vignettes and viewing images of moral transgressions. We hypothesized that participants’ choice to blame wrongdoers would negatively relate to how cognitively inefficacious, effortful, and aversive blaming feels (compared to the alternative choice). With vignettes, participants approached blaming and reported that blaming felt more efficacious. With images, participants avoided blaming and reported that blaming felt more inefficacious, effortful, and aversive. Blame choice was greater for vignette-based transgressions than image-based transgressions. Blame choice was positively related to moral personality constructs, blame-related social-norms, and perceived efficacy of blaming, and inversely related to perceived effort and aversiveness of blaming. The BST is a valid behavioral index of blame propensity, and choosing to blame is linked to its cognitive costs.

Discussion

Moral norm violations cause people to experience moral outrage and to express it in various ways (Crockett, 2017), such as shaming/dehumanizing, punishing, or blaming. These forms of expressing outrage are less than moderately related to one another (r’s < .30; see Bastian et al., 2013 for more information), which suggests that a considerable amount of variance between shaming/dehumanizing, punishing, and blaming remains unexplained and that these are distinct enough demonstrations of outragein response to norm violations. Yet, despite its moralistic implications (see Crockett, 2017), there is still little empirical work not only on the phenomenon of outrage fatigue but also on the role of motivated cognition on expressing outrage via blame. Social costs alter blame judgments, even when people’s cognitive resources are depleted (Monroe & Malle, 2019). But how do the inherent cognitive costs of blaming relate to people’s decisions towards moral outrage and blame? Here, we examined how felt cognitive costs associate with the choice to express outrage through blame.

Good deeds and hard knocks: The effect of past suffering on praise for moral behavior

P. Robbins, F. Alvera, & P. Litton

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Volume 97, November 2021

Abstract

Are judgments of praise for moral behavior modulated by knowledge of an agent's past suffering at the hands of others, and if so, in what direction? Drawing on multiple lines of research in experimental social psychology, we identify three hypotheses about the psychology of praise — typecasting, handicapping, and non-historicism — each of which supports a different answer to the question above. Typecasting predicts that information about past suffering will augment perceived patiency and thereby diminish perceived agency, making altruistic actions seem less praiseworthy; handicapping predicts that this information will make altruistic actions seem more effortful, and hence more praiseworthy; and non-historicism predicts that judgments of praise will be insensitive to information about an agent's experiential history. We report the results of two studies suggesting that altruistic behavior tends to attract more praise when the experiential history of the agent involves coping with adversity in childhood rather than enjoying prosperity (Study 1, N = 348, p = .03, d = 0.45; Study 2, N = 400, p = .02, d = 0.39), as well as the results of a third study suggesting that altruistic behavior tends to be evaluated more favorably when the experiential history of the agent includes coping with adversity than in the absence of information about the agent's past experience (N = 226, p = .002). This pattern of results, we argue, is more consistent with handicapping than typecasting or non-historicism.

From the Discussion

One possibility is that a history of suffering is perceived as depleting the psychological resources required for acting morally, making it difficult for someone to shift attention from their own needs to the needs of others. This is suggested by the stereotype of people who have suffered hardships in early life, especially at the hands of caregivers, which includes a tendency to be socially anxious, insecure, and withdrawn — a stereotype which may have some basis in fact (Elliott, Cunningham, Linder, Colangelo, & Gross, 2005). A history of suffering, that is, might seem like an obstacle to developing the kind of social mindedness exemplified by acts of altruism and other forms of prosocial behavior, which are typically motivated by feelings of compassion or empathic concern. This is an open empirical question, worthy of investigation not just in connection with handicapping and typecasting (and historicist accounts of praise more generally) but in its own right.

The research is here.

This research may have implications for psychotherapy.

Planning Complexity Registers as a Cost in Metacontrol

Kool, W., Gershman, S. J., & Cushman, F. A. (in press). Planning complexity registers as a
cost in metacontrol. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

Abstract

Decision-making algorithms face a basic tradeoff between accuracy and effort (i.e., computational demands). It is widely agreed that humans have can choose between multiple decision-making processes that embody different solutions to this tradeoff: Some are computationally cheap but inaccurate, while others are computationally expensive but accurate. Recent progress in understanding this tradeoff has been catalyzed by formalizing it in terms of model-free (i.e., habitual) versus model-based (i.e., planning) approaches to reinforcement learning. Intuitively, if two tasks offer the same rewards for accuracy but one of them is much more demanding, we might expect people to rely on habit more in the difficult task: Devoting significant computation to achieve slight marginal accuracy gains wouldn’t be “worth it”. We test and verify this prediction in a sequential RL task. Because our paradigm is amenable to formal analysis, it contributes to the development of a computational model of how people balance the costs and benefits of different decision-making processes in a task-specific manner; in other words, how we decide when hard thinking is worth it.

The research is here.