Moral foundations partially explain the association of the Dark Triad traits with homophobia and transphobia

Kay, C. S., & Dimakis, S. M. (2022, June 24). 

https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/pukds

Abstract

People with antagonistic personality traits are reportedly more racist, sexist, and xenophobic than their non-antagonistic counterparts. In the present studies (N1 = 718; N2 = 267), we examined whether people with antagonistic personality traits are also more likely to hold homophobic and transphobic attitudes, and, if they are, whether this can be explained by their moral intuitions. We found that people high in Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy are more likely to endorse homophobic and transphobic views. The associations of Machiavellianism and psychopathy with homophobia and transphobia were primarily explained by low endorsement of individualizing moral foundations (i.e., care and fairness), while the association of narcissism with these beliefs was primarily explained by high endorsement of the binding moral foundations (i.e., loyalty, authority, and sanctity). These findings provide insight into the types of people who harbour homophobic and transphobic attitudes and how differences in moral dispositions contribute to their LGBTQ+ prejudice.

General discussion

We conducted two studies to test whether those with antagonistic personality traits (e.g., Machiavellianism, grandiose narcissism, and psychopathy) are more likely to express homonegative and transphobic views, and, if so, whether this is because of their moral intuitions.Study 1 used a convenience sample of 718undergraduate students drawn from a university Human Subjects Pool. It was exploratory, in the sense that we specified no formal hypotheses. That said, we suspected that those with antagonistic personality traits would be more likely to hold homonegative and transphobic attitudes and that they may do so because they dismiss individualizing morals concerns (e.g., do no harm; treat others fairly). At the same time, we suspected that those with antagonistic personality traits would also deemphasize the binding moral foundations (e.g., be loyal to your ingroup; respect authority; avoid contaminants, even those that are metaphysical),weakening any observed associations between the antagonistic personality traits and LGBTQ+ prejudice. The purpose of Study 2 was to examine whether the findings identified in Study 1 would generalize beyond a sample of undergraduate students.  Since we had no reason to suspect the results would differ between Study 1 and Study 2, our preregistered hypotheses for Study 2 were that we would observe the same pattern of results identified in Study 1.

There was clear evidence across both studies that those high in the three antagonistic personality traits were more likely to endorse statements that were reflective of traditional homonegativity, modern homonegativity, general genderism/transphobia, and gender-bashing. All of these associations were moderate-to-large in magnitude (Funder & Ozer, 2019), save for the association between narcissism and traditional homonegativity in Study 1. These results indicate that, on top of harbouring racist(Jones, 2013), xenophobic (Hodson et al., 2009), and sexist (Gluck et al., 2020) attitudes, those high in antagonistic personality traits also harbour homonegative and transphobic attitudes.

The research is here.

Psychopathy and Moral-Dilemma Judgment: An Analysis Using the Four-Factor Model of Psychopathy and the CNI Model of Moral Decision-Making

Luke, D. M., Neumann, C. S., & Gawronski, B.

(2021). Clinical Psychological Science. 

https://doi.org/10.1177/21677026211043862

Abstract

A major question in clinical and moral psychology concerns the nature of the commonly presumed association between psychopathy and moral judgment. In the current preregistered study (N = 443), we aimed to address this question by examining the relation between psychopathy and responses to moral dilemmas pitting consequences for the greater good against adherence to moral norms. To provide more nuanced insights, we measured four distinct facets of psychopathy and used the CNI model to quantify sensitivity to consequences (C), sensitivity to moral norms (N), and general preference for inaction over action (I) in responses to moral dilemmas. Psychopathy was associated with a weaker sensitivity to moral norms, which showed unique links to the interpersonal and affective facets of psychopathy. Psychopathy did not show reliable associations with either sensitivity to consequences or general preference for inaction over action. Implications of these findings for clinical and moral psychology are discussed.

From the Discussion

In support of our hypotheses, general psychopathy scores and a superordinate latent variable (representing the broad syndrome of psychopathy) showed significant negative relations with sensitivity to moral norms, which suggests that people with elevated psychopathic traits were less sensitive to moral norms in their responses to moral dilemmas in comparison with other people. Further analyses at the facet level suggested that sensitivity to moral norms was uniquely associated with the interpersonal-affective facets of psychopathy. Both of these findings persisted when controlling for gender. As predicted, the antisocial facet showed a negative zero-order correlation with sensitivity to moral norms, but this association fell to nonsignificance when controlling for other facets of psychopathy and gender. At the manifest variable level, neither general psychopathy scores nor the four facets showed reliable relations with either sensitivity to consequences or general preference for inaction over action.

(cut)

More broadly, the current findings have important implications for both clinical and moral psychology. For clinical psychology, our findings speak to ongoing questions about whether people with elevated levels of psychopathy exhibit disturbances in moral judgment. In a recent review of the literature on psychopathy and moral judgment, Larsen et al. (2020) claimed there was “no consistent, well-replicated evidence of observable deficits in . . . moral judgment” (p. 305). However, a notable limitation of this review is that its analysis of moral-dilemma research focused exclusively on studies that used the traditional approach. Consistent with past research using the CNI model (e.g., Gawronski et al., 2017; Körner et al., 2020; Luke & Gawronski, 2021a) and in contrast to Larsen et al.’s conclusion, the current findings indicate substantial deviations in moral-dilemma judgments among people with elevated psychopathic traits, particularly conformity to moral norms.

The research is here.

Psychopathy as moral blindness: a qualifying exploration of the blindness-analogy in psychopathy theory and research

Rasmus Rosenberg Larsen (2020) 

Philosophical Explorations, 23:3, 214-233

DOI: 10.1080/13869795.2020.1799662

Abstract

The term psychopathy refers to a personality disorder associated with callous personality traits and antisocial behaviors. Throughout its research history, psychopathy has frequently been described as a peculiar form of moral blindness, engendering a narrative about a patient stereotype incapable of taking a genuine moral perspective, similar to a blind person who is deprived of proper visual perceptions. However, recent empirical research has shown that clinically diagnosed psychopaths are morally more fit than initially thought, and the blindness-analogy now comes across as largely misleading. In this contribution, the moral-blindness analogy is explored in an attempt to qualify anew its relevance in psychopathy theory and research. It is demonstrated that there are indeed theoretically relevant parallels to be drawn between blindness and psychopathy, parallels that are especially illuminating when accounting for the potential symptomatology, dimensionality, and etiological nature of the disorder.

Concluding remarks

In summary, what has been proposed throughout this paper is a perspective in terms of how to interpret and improve psychopathy research, an approach which lends itself to theorize psychopathy as a peculiar form of moral blindness. Following leading research, it was posited that psychopathy must, first of all, be understood as an emotional disorder, that is, a disorder of substantial emotional attenuation. Building on Prinz’s constructivist sentimentalism, it was demonstrated how said emotional incapacity could manifest in moral psychological impairments, as an inability to perceive the degrees of moral rightness and wrongness. Prinz’s theory was then expanded by adding (or amending) that psychopaths are not necessarily impaired in terms of perceiving the categorical value of a given moral situation, i.e. judging whether something is either right or wrong. Indeed, psychopaths must perceive this basic information by the mere fact that they do have some levels of valanced emotional experience. Instead, what is predicted is that globally low emotion attenuation (i.e. psychopathy) leads to observable differences in terms of

judging the degree of rightness and wrongness of a situation.

The paper is here.

Are psychopaths moral‐psychologically impaired? Reassessing emotion‐theoretical explanations

Rasmus Rosenberg Larsen

Mind & Language. 2020; 1– 17. 

https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12317

Abstract

Psychopathy has been theorized as a disorder of emotion, which impairs moral judgments. However, these theories are increasingly being abandoned as empirical studies show that psychopaths seem to make proper moral judgments. In this contribution, these findings are reassessed, and it is argued that prevalent emotion‐theories of psychopathy appear to operate with the unjustified assumption that psychopaths have no emotions, which leads to the hypothesis that psychopaths are completely unable to make moral judgments. An alternative and novel explanation is proposed, theorizing psychopathy as a degree‐specific emotional deficiency, which causes degree‐specific differences in moral judgments.

From the Conclusion Section

Motivated by a suite of ostensibly undermining empirical studies, this paper sought to defend and qualify emotion-theories of psychopathy by explicating in detail the philosophical and psychological commitments these theories appear to be implicitly endorsing, namely, a (constructivist) sentimentalist framework. This explication demonstrated, above all, that psychopathy studies appear to operate with an inconsistent set of hypotheses when trying to capture the differences between diagnosed psychopaths and controls in terms of their moral judgments and values. This led to a consideration of alternative research designs particularly aimed at capturing the potential moral psychological differences that follows from having diminished emotional dispositions, namely, degree-specific differences related to the two-dimensional value spectrum, as opposed to differences related to answers on moral categorical issues.

MIT Creates World’s First Psychopath AI By Feeding It Reddit Violent Content

Navin Bondade
www.techgrabyte.com
Originally posted October 2019

The state of the psychopathic is wider and darker in human intelligence that we haven’t fully understood yet, but still, scientists have given a try and to implement Psychopathism in Artificial Intelligence.

Scientists at MIT have created the world’s First Psychopath AI called Norman. The purpose of Norman AI is to demonstrate that AI cannot be unfair and biased unless such data is fed into it.

MIT’s Scientists have created Norman by training it on violent and gruesome content like images of people dying in gruesome circumstances from an unnamed Reddit page before showing it a series of Rorschach inkblot tests.

The Scientists created a dataset from this unnamed Reddit page and trained Norman to perform image captioning. This data is dedicated to documents and observe the disturbing reality of death.

The info is here.

The ends justify the meanness: An investigation of psychopathic traits and utilitarian moral endorsement

JustinBalasha and Diana M.Falkenbach
Personality and Individual Differences
Volume 127, 1 June 2018, Pages 127-132

Abstract

Although psychopathy has traditionally been synonymous with immorality, little research exists on the ethical reasoning of psychopathic individuals. Recent examination of psychopathy and utilitarianism suggests that psychopaths' moral decision-making differs from nonpsychopaths (Koenigs et al., 2012). The current study examined the relationship between psychopathic traits (PPI-R, Lilienfeld & Widows, 2005; TriPM, Patrick, 2010) and utilitarian endorsement (moral dilemmas, Greene et al., 2001) in a college sample (n = 316). The relationships between utilitarian decisions and triarchic dimensions were explored and empathy and aggression were examined as mediating factors. Hypotheses were partially supported, with Disinhibition and Meanness traits relating to personal utilitarian decisions; aggression partially mediated the relationship between psychopathic traits and utilitarian endorsements. Implications and future directions are further discussed.

Highlights

• Authors examined the relationship between psychopathy and utilitarian decision-making.

• Empathy and aggression were explored as mediating factors.

• Disinhibition and Meanness were positively related to personal utilitarian decisions.

• Meanness, Coldheartedness, and PPI-R-II were associated with personal utilitarian decisions.

• Aggression partially mediated the relationship between psychopathy and utilitarian decisions.

The research can be found here.

The Fear Factor

Matthieu Ricard
Medium.com
Originally published January 5, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Research by Abigail Marsh and other neuroscientists reveals that psychopaths’ brains are marked by a dysfunction in the structure called the amygdala that is responsible for essential social and emotional function. In psychopaths, the amygdala is not only under-responsive to images of people experiencing fear, but is also up to 20% smaller than average.

Marsh also wondered about people who are at the other end of the spectrum, extreme altruists: people filled with compassion, people who volunteer, for example, to donate one of their kidneys to a stranger. The answer is remarkable: extreme altruists surpass everyone in detecting expressions of fear in others and, while they do experience fear themselves, that does not stop them from acting in ways that are considered very courageous.

Since her initial discovery, several studies have confirmed that the ability to label other peoples’ fear predicts altruism better than gender, mood or how compassionate people claim to be. In addition, Abigail Marsh found that, among extreme altruists, the amygdala is physically larger than the average by about 8%. The significance of this fact held up even after finding something rather unexpected: the altruists’s brains are in general larger than those of the average person.

The information is here.

The moral bioenhancement of psychopaths

Elvio Baccarini and Luca Malatesti
The Journal of Medical Ethics
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2016-103537

Abstract

We argue that the mandatory moral bioenhancement of psychopaths is justified as a prescription of social morality. Moral bioenhancement is legitimate when it is justified on the basis of the reasons of the recipients. Psychopaths expect and prefer that the agents with whom they interact do not have certain psychopathic traits. Particularly, they have reasons to require the moral bioenhancement of psychopaths with whom they must cooperate. By adopting a public reason and a Kantian argument, we conclude that we can justify to a psychopath being the recipient of mandatory moral bioenhancement because he has a reason to require the application of this prescription to other psychopaths.

The Wright Show: Against Empathy

Robert Wright interviews Paul Bloom on his book "Against Empathy."
The Wright Show
Originally published December 6, 2016

Why some people are more altruistic than others

Abigail Marsh
TED Talk
Originally posted June 2016

Why do some people do selfless things, helping other people even at risk to their own well-being? Psychology researcher Abigail Marsh studies the motivations of people who do extremely altruistic acts, like donating a kidney to a complete stranger. Are their brains just different?

‘Utilitarian’ judgments in sacrificial moral dilemmas do not reflect impartial concern for the greater good

By Guy Kahane, Jim A.C. Everett, Brian Earp, Miguel Farias, and Julian Savulescu
Cognition
Volume 134, January 2015, Pages 193–209

Abstract

A growing body of research has focused on so-called ‘utilitarian’ judgments in moral dilemmas in which participants have to choose whether to sacrifice one person in order to save the lives of a greater number. However, the relation between such ‘utilitarian’ judgments and genuine utilitarian impartial concern for the greater good remains unclear. Across four studies, we investigated the relationship between ‘utilitarian’ judgment in such sacrificial dilemmas and a range of traits, attitudes, judgments and behaviors that either reflect or reject an impartial concern for the greater good of all. In Study 1, we found that rates of ‘utilitarian’ judgment were associated with a broadly immoral outlook concerning clear ethical transgressions in a business context, as well as with sub-clinical psychopathy. In Study 2, we found that ‘utilitarian’ judgment was associated with greater endorsement of rational egoism, less donation of money to a charity, and less identification with the whole of humanity, a core feature of classical utilitarianism. In Studies 3 and 4, we found no association between ‘utilitarian’ judgments in sacrificial dilemmas and characteristic utilitarian judgments relating to assistance to distant people in need, self-sacrifice and impartiality, even when the utilitarian justification for these judgments was made explicit and unequivocal. This lack of association remained even when we controlled for the antisocial element in ‘utilitarian’ judgment. Taken together, these results suggest that there is very little relation between sacrificial judgments in the hypothetical dilemmas that dominate current research, and a genuine utilitarian approach to ethics.

Highlights

• Utilitarian’ judgments in moral dilemmas were associated with egocentric attitudes and less identification with humanity.
• They were also associated with lenient views about clear moral transgressions.
• ‘Utilitarian’ judgments were not associated with views expressing impartial altruist concern for others.
• This lack of association remained even when antisocial tendencies were controlled for.
• So-called ‘utilitarian’ judgments do not express impartial concern for the greater good.

The entire article is here.