Can you really do more than what duty requires?

Roger Crisp

The New Statesman

Originally posted 8 JUN 22

Here is an excerpt:

Since supererogation involves the paradox of accepting moral duties that do not require one to do what is morally best, why do we continue to find the idea so compelling?

One reason might be that we think that without supererogation the dictates of morality would be unacceptably demanding. If each of us has a genuine duty to benefit others as much as we can, then, given the vast number of individuals in serious need, most of the better-off would be required to make major sacrifices to live a virtuous life. Supererogation puts a limit on such requirements.

The idea that we can go beyond our duty in a praiseworthy way may be attractive, then, because we need to balance morality with self-interest. Here we ought to remember that each of us reasonably attaches a certain amount of importance to how our own lives go. So, each of us has reason to advance our own happiness independent of our duty to benefit others (which is why we describe some cases of helping others as a “sacrifice”). The need to strike a balance between our moral duties and our self-interest may explain why the notion of supererogation is so appealing.

But this doesn’t get us out of Sidgwick’s paradox: anyone who knows the morally best thing to do, but consciously decides not to do it, seems morally “lazy”.

Given the current state of the world, this means that morality is much more demanding than we typically think. Many of us should be doing a great deal more to alleviate the suffering of others, and doing this may cost us not only resources, but to some extent our own happiness or well-being.

In making donations to help strangers, we must ask when our reasons to keeping resources for ourselves are outweighed by reasons of beneficence. Under a more demanding view of morality, I should donate the money I could use to upgrade my TV to a charity that can save someone’s sight. Similarly, if the billionaire class could eradicate world poverty by donating 50 per cent of their wealth to development agencies, then they should do so immediately.

This may sound austere to our contemporary ears, but the Ancient Greeks and their philosophers thought morality could be rather demanding, and yet they never even considered the idea that duty was something you could go beyond. According to them, there are right things to do, and we should do them, making us virtuous and praiseworthy. And if we don’t, we are acting wrongly, we deserve blame, and we should feel guilty and ashamed.

It’s plausible to think that, once our health and wealth have reached certain thresholds, the things that really matter for our well-being – friendship, family, meaningful activities, and so on – are largely independent of our financial position. So, making much bigger sacrifices than we currently do may not be nearly as difficult or demanding as we tend to think.

The info is here.

Editor's note: For psychologists, supererogatory actions may include political advocacy for greater access to care, pro bono treatment for underserved populations, and volunteering on state and national association committees.

Parents think—incorrectly—that teaching their children that the world is a bad place is likely best for them

J. D. W. Clifton & Peter Meindl (2021)

The Journal of Positive Psychology

DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2021.2016907

Primal world beliefs (‘primals’) are beliefs about the world’s basic character, such as the world is dangerous. This article investigates probabilistic assumptions about the value of negative primals (e.g., seeing the world as dangerous keeps me safe). We first show such assumptions are common. For example, among 185 parents, 53% preferred dangerous world beliefs for their children. We then searched for evidence consistent with these intuitions in 3 national samples and 3 local samples of undergraduates, immigrants (African and Korean), and professionals (car salespeople, lawyers, and cops;), examining correlations between primals and eight life outcomes within 48 occupations (total N=4,535) . As predicted, regardless of occupation, more negative primals were almost never associated with better outcomes. Instead, they predicted less success, less job and life satisfaction, worse health, dramatically less flourishing, more negative emotion, more depression, and increased suicide attempts. We discuss why assumptions about the value of negative primals are nevertheless widespread and implications for future research.

From the General Discussion

When might very positive primals be damaging illusions (i.e., associated with negative outcomes)? Study 2 was a big-net search for these contexts. We examined eight outcomes, six samples, 4,535 unique subjects, and 48 occupations (n ≥ 30), including lawyers, doctors, police officers, professors, and so forth. This unearthed 1,860 significant correlations between primals and outcomes, and the overall pattern was clear. In 99.7% of these relationships, more negative primals were associated with worse outcomes, roughly categorized as slightly less job success, moderately less job satisfaction, much less life satisfaction, moderately worse health, much increased frequency of negative emotion and other depression symptoms, dramatically decreased psychological flourishing, and moderately increased likelihood of having attempted suicide. We also found no empirical justification for the popular moderation approach. In 297 of 297 significant differences in outcomes, those who saw the world as somewhat positive always experienced worse outcomes than those who saw the world as very positive. In sum, a robust correlational relationship exists between more negative primals and more negative outcomes, even when comparing positive beliefs to positive beliefs, even when comparing within occupation. The seemingly widespread meta-belief that associates negative primals with positive outcomes is unsupported.

The research is here.

A pdf to the research is here.