"Introduction to Psychology" Notes (13) —— Morality

Lecture 15 : Morality


3 facets of morality:

• moral feelings: emotions like shame, condemnation, pride, righteous anger, affection, caring, being upset if an injustice is to be done, empathy (to feel what others are feeling) etc.
  
• moral judgments: notions like something is good or bad, fair or unfair.
  
• moral action

How could moral feelings evolve?

• kin selection:Selfish genes lead to altruistic animals
• cooperation

3 hallmarks for moral judgments:

• Evaluation
• Obligation
• Sanctions

3 different frameworks of moral thought:

• an ethics of autonomy: rights, equality, freedom.
• an ethics of community: duty, status, hierarchy, and interdependence.
• an ethics of divinity: purity, sanctity, pollution and sin.

2 forces for evil:

• Deindividuation of self: There is a sense of reduced accountability and shifted attention away from the self that occurs in the context of groups. That is so-called diffusion of responsibility. The famous case is Milgram's conformity study.
• Denigration of others:
  
• Keep psychological distance or physical distanceDistance
  
• Use euphemism (‘cargo’, ‘extermination’) to think about you not as a person
• Use humor to denigrate and demote people
• Take away their names
  
• See them as disgusting can make others matter less

2 forces for good:

• Contact and interdependence:
• Perspective taking: