1. Moral Responsibility for Discrimination Based on Implicit Attitudes:
The Role of Foresight Norms
Liz Redford, Kate A. Ratliff
University of Florida
Background
Experiment 1: Results
Experiment 2: Method
Discussion
Purpose: understand when and why people hold others morally responsible for behavioral manifestations of their implicit attitudes.
Awareness that a negative outcome may materialize from behavior generally contributes to more perceived moral responsibility (e.g., Lagnado & Channon, 2008)
Hypothesis: People will view a target who foresees the influence of his implicit negativity on his behavior, or is at least aware of having implicit negativity, will be perceived as more morally responsible for his behavior than a target who is completely unaware.
Empirical Question: Does obligatatory foresight mediate the effect of awareness on perceptions of moral responsibility?
Study 1.
Results indicate that, if a target knows that he has negative implicit attitudes toward African Americans, he is equally morally responsible for discriminatory behavior whether he does or does not know that such attitudes can affect his behavior. He is seen as being less morally responsible when he is unaware of his attitudes and that they could affect his behavior.
Study 2.
The results of Study 2 perfectly replicate the results of Study 1: the Fully-Unaware condition produced significantly lower perceptions of moral responsibility than both the Semi-Unaware and Fully-Aware conditions, which in turn did not differ from each other. In addition, Study 2 provided evidence that obligatory foresight mediated the effect of awareness on moral responsibility.
General Discussion.
The observed effects of awareness on moral responsibility are consistent with previous work showing that target awareness adds to perceived moral responsibility (Nadler & McDonnell, 2011; Lagnado & Channon, 2008), but also consistent with findings that people are perceived to be more morally responsible and blameworthy for both intentional and negligent acts than for accidental acts (Schultz & Wright, 1985). By distinguishing foresight from obligatory foresight, we show that not just actual foresight/awareness, but norms about mental states mediate between awareness and moral judgments.
The current research has implications for how we contribute to public understanding of implicit attitudes in our research and in popular press.
Participants
378 volunteers at the Project Implicit who completed all study materials and answered the manipulation check correctly.
Materials
Additional dependent measures:
The target’s foresight of the behavioral outcome of his implicit negativity
The target’s obligation to foresee the outcome
Perceptions of how much the target’s unconscious negativity reflected his true self
Extent to which participants believed the target thought his unconscious attitudes reflected his true self
The additional dependent measures included in counterbalanced order after the MRQ.
Figure 1. Effect of condition on Moral Responsibility Questionnaire scores
Note. F (2, 555) = 9.33, p < .001, ηp2 = .03
Note. Error bars represent standard errors.
Note. Results and pattern of significant between-group comparison replicate results of pilot test (N = 275), F (2, 267) = 4.64, p = .01, ηp2 = .03.
4.66
MRQ Scores
4.50
4.20
Experiment 2: Results
Figure 4. Effect of Condition on Perceived Foresight
Figure 2. Effect of Condition on Moral Responsibility Questionnaire scores
Figure 3. Effect of Condition on Obligation to Foresee
Experiment 1: Method
Participants
563 volunteers at the Project Implicit website ( Nosek, Greenwald & Banaji, 2007). Participants were included in analysis if they completed all study materials and answered the manipulation check correctly.
Materials
We constructed vignettes to manipulate awareness in three conditions:
Fully-Unaware: target is totally unaware of his unconscious negativity
Semi-Unaware: target is aware of his unconscious negativity, but not that it could impact on his behavior
Fully-Aware: target is aware of his unconscious negativity, and that it could impact his behavior
Example of part of vignette:
Although [John] is aware of his unconscious negativity, he is unaware that it could affect his behavior, so he is not always successful at preventing it from influencing his judgment. As a result, John sometimes unfairly denies African Americans jobs.
The dependent variable was scores on the Moral Responsibility Questionnaire (MRQ), which consisted of items such as “John is morally responsible for treating African Americans unfairly” (7-point scale).
3.82
3.77
3.63
MRQ Scores
Obligation to Foresee
Perceived Foresight
2.87
2.65
4.13
1.65
Note. F (3, 367) = 13.74, p < .001, ηp2 = .10
Note. Results exactly replicate those of Experiment 1.
Note. F (3, 374) = 65.89, p < .001, ηp2 = .35.
Note. F (3, 371) = 15.61, p < .001, ηp2 = .11
Figure 5. Effect of Condition on Perceptions of Target’s Unconscious Negativity as True Self.
Mediation Analysis
1000-sample bootstrapped coefficient of the indirect effect = (SE = .04; 95% CI indicates sig. indirect effect: , ).
Note.
F (2, 285)
= 2.72,
p < .07,
ηp2 = .xx.
Citations
Obligation to
Foresee
Cameron, C.D., Payne, B.K., & Knobe, J. (2010). Do theories of implicit race bias change moral judgments? Social Justice Research, 23,
Lagnado, D. A. & Channon, S. (2008). Judgments of Cause and Blame: The influence of Intentionality and Foreseeability. Cognition, 108,
Nosek, B. A., Greenwald, A. G., & Banaji, M. R. (2007). The Implicit Association Test at age 7: A methodological and conceptual review (pp. 265–292). In J. A. Bargh (Ed.), Automatic processes in social thinking and behavior. Psychology Press.
This research was supported by a grant to the second author from Project Implicit.
b = 0.335,
SE = 058,
p < .001
b = ,
SE = .075,
p < .001
Figure 6. Meta-Perceptions of Target’s Unconscious Negativity as True Self.
Note.
F (3, 374) = 16.89,
p < .001, ηp2 = .12.
Moral Responsibility
Awareness
Condition
2.18
1.90
Meta-Perceptions
Without mediator in model: b = , SE = .077, p = .001
With mediator in model: b = , SE = .077, p = .21
1.50