ch 14 Flashcards
Moral judgment:
judgments about what we consider to be universally right or wrong about human action and character and what is worthy of punishment or reward
Moral dumbfounding
gut feelings guide many of our moral judgments
Social intuitionist model of moral judgment:
our moral judgments are the product of fast, emotional intuitions, like the feeling that incest is wrong->influence how we reason about the issue in question
Moral judgments
involve quick emotional responses followed by more deliberative reasonin
trolley dilemma vs footbirdge dilemma
Personal moral dilemmas activated emotional processing regions of brain(footbirdge)
Nonmoral dilemmas and impersonal moral dilemmas activated working memory and deliberative reasoning(trolley)
Daniel Batson 3 motives
3 motives are in play, the first two being selfish(egotistic) and the third purely oriented toward unselfishly benefiting another person
3 motives
1)social reward
2)personal distress
3)empathic concern
empathic concern
:the feeling people experience when identifying with someone in need, accompanied by the intention to enhance the other person’s welfare
**This experience is fast and intuitive and produce selfless altruism
A study about the empathic concern against the selfish motive of reducing personal distress
Those with empathic concern volunteered to take more shocks even when they could leave the study
Those who felt mostly distressed and could escape the situations acted upon egoistic tendency and took fewer shocks
Janet expeiremnt
Results: participants in high empathy condition volunteered to spend more time with her even when no one would know of their action
compassion activates
Compassion activates frontal lobe, vagus nerve,largest bundle of nerves in nervous system),
A third kind of evidence of innate altruism comes from regions of our nervous system appear to enable us to act altruistically
Volunteerism
unpaid assistance: when people help out with no expectation of receiving any compensation
What cultivates empathic concern in people?
Empathic concern is passed down from parents
likelihood of volunteerism is predicted by
Self reports of feelings of empathic concern
One factor that influence whether people will stop to help others in need is the Presence of other people
Bystander intervention
assistance given by people who witness an emergency
Diffusion of responsibility
knowing that others have seen the situation, each bystander tends to assume the others will intervene-someone else will be better suited to help, thus each person feels less responsibility to help out
when do people help victim
People are most likely to help when the harm to the victim is clear and need is unambiguous
Bystanders help when victims scream 75-100% but help silent victims only 20-40%
People are most likely to help others who are similar to them(same race or ethnicity)
Black Americans showed empathy and more altruistic inclinations when viewing the suffering of black Americans as opposed to white people
Activation in a brain region in empathetic response only when the suffering of own group members
Helping in ambiguous situations
People are more likely to provide assistance when they are aware of the events that led to victim’s distress
Results: participants were more likely to help individuals in the vivid condition, where they saw everything unfold bc they understood the nature of the problem
Surrounding social context also influences whether bystanders will think help is needed
Pluralistic ignorance occurs when people are unsure of what happening and assume nothing is wrong bc no one else is responding
Participants were either alone or in a room with 2 confederates who had calm demenor or in a room with 2 other participants
smoke filled the room
When alone, participants reported danger but when other people were in the room they were less likely to report danger
combatting pluralistic ignorance
Bystanders are less likely to fall prey to pluralistic ignorance when they can clearly see one another’s initial expression of concern (before initial expressions are covered up by desire to seem less alarmed)
How to get rid of bystander effect:
1)make your need clear and 2)select a specific person
