From impure to harmful: Asymmetric expectations about immoral agents

Chakroff, A, Russell, Pascale, Piazza, J and Young, L (2016) From impure to harmful: Asymmetric expectations about immoral agents Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 69. pp. 201-209.

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Abstract

How does information about agents' past violations influence people's expectations about their future actions? We examined this question, with a focus on the contrast between past harmful and past impure actions. Participants' judgments reflected two independent influences: action consistency and expectation asymmetry. An expectation asymmetry was observed across seven studies, including two pilot studies and two supplemental studies: impure agents were judged as more likely to be harmful than harmful agents were judged likely to be impure. This expectation asymmetry is not due to an expectation that impure agents will be globally deviant, i.e., likely to commit all kinds of violations (Study 1), nor is it due to differences in the perceived wrongness or weirdness of harmful versus impure acts (Study 2). Study 3 demonstrated that this asymmetry is not attributable to the perceived harmfulness of impure actions; only impure agents, and not harmful agents, were expected to be more harmful than they were previously. These findings highlight an important asymmetry in the way people make predictions about future wrongdoing: immoral agents are expected to behave consistently, and are also expected to be harmful, regardless of their prior violation.

Item Type:	Article
Subjects :	Psychology
Divisions :	Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences > School of Psychology
Authors :	Name Email ORCID Chakroff, A Russell, Pascale p.s.russell@surrey.ac.uk Piazza, J Young, L
Date :	15 August 2016
DOI :	10.1016/j.jesp.2016.08.001
Copyright Disclaimer :	© 2016. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Uncontrolled Keywords :	Morality Harm Purity Moral judgment Behavior expectation
Additional Information :	Full text not available from this repository.
Depositing User :	Symplectic Elements
Date Deposited :	08 Mar 2017 16:39
Last Modified :	16 Jan 2019 17:13
URI:	http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/id/eprint/813718

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