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Breaking Out of Moral Typecasting

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Abstract

In their recent paper, Kurt Gray and Daniel Wegner offer a model of moral cognition, the “Moral Typecasting” thesis, in which they claim that perceptions of moral agency are inversely related to perceptions of moral patiency. Once we see someone as a moral agent, they claim, we cannot see them as a moral patient (and vice versa). In this paper, I want both to challenge the conception of morality on which the typecasting thesis is fundamentally based and to raise some concerns with the data offered in favor of moral typecasting. I first argue that the dyadic definition of morality is far too narrow to fully capture either all of morality or all of moral psychology. Further, even setting aside the problems with the dyadic notion of morality, I argue that the experimental data Gray and Wegner appeal to fail to demonstrate the sort of mutual exclusivity of and causal interaction between moral perceptions that the moral typecasting thesis proposes. Rather, I suggest, the perceptual differences that do show up in the cited studies arguably arise not from a psychological tendency towards moral typecasting, but from confounding features of the characters in the stimuli.

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Notes

  1. (Gray and Wegner 2009, 2010), Gray et al. (2007), Gray et al. (2008).

  2. Cf. Kant (1998[1785]), Bentham (1970[1823]), Singer (1973), and Feinberg (1974).

  3. See Knobe and Prinz (2008) and Robbins and Jack (2006).

  4. Gray et al. (2007), 619.

  5. Gray and Wegner (2009), 506.

  6. Ibid, 505.

  7. Cf. Anscombe (1958), Aristotle (1998), Hursthouse (1999).

  8. Cf. McDowell (1979).

  9. Indeed, this is what Gray et al. (2012a, b) seem to explicitly endorse: “…we suggest that moral judgment is rooted in a cognitive template of two perceived minds—a moral dyad of an intentional agent and a suffering patient.” (101)

  10. Gray et al. (2012a), 103.

  11. See the special issue of Psychological Inquiry, 23(2), for an excellent discussion of the moral dyad thesis.

  12. Gray and Wegner (2009), 506 emphasis added.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Sinnot-Armstrong (2012) raises a similar worry about the moral dyad thesis as presented by Gray et al. (2012a). Gray et al. (2012a, b) explain the moral dyad as a “cognitive template”, which compels people “to understand all immoral acts as dyad and…to perceive an intentional agent and a suffering patient even when they may be objectively lacking.” (2012b, 207–8.) Importantly, this description does little to clarify the degree of mutual exclusivity moral typecasting imposes on agent- and patient-perception.

  15. Gray and Wegner (2009), 506.

  16. Ibid, 507.

  17. Ibid, 511, emphasis added.

  18. In this case, knocking over a tray of glasses.

  19. Hence the popular tendency to accuse someone of “acting like a baby” when fussing excessively over a mild injury. We commonly expect adults to ignore a certain amount of pain, to “soldier on” or “man up,” but we do not typically expect the same from (5-year-old!) children.

  20. A brief caveat: the fact that Gray and Wegner report data from several studies makes the present task somewhat difficult. I will not attempt to discuss all seven experiments in the current paper, but will proceed on the supposition that the experiments discussed are representative samples, in which case the criticisms offered against the specific experiments will generalize and apply with equal force to the rest of the studies.

  21. The experiments that Gray and Wegner label as '1a', '1b', '2', '3a', '4a', '6', and '7'.

  22. Study 2 also included Hitler, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Osama bin Laden, Britney Spears, Prince Harry, and a man with Down’s Syndrome.

  23. Ibid, 514.

  24. Ibid, 514.

  25. The remaining studies in the first category are susceptible to a more specific version of the present challenge. In those studies, participants were presented with particular individuals, such as the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., Hitler, Ted Bundy, Osama bin Laden, Britney Spears, Prince Harry, a radiology technician, a high school teacher, an orphan, a man with Down’s Syndrome, and a rape victim. Again, there appeared to be a negative correlation between judgments of moral agency and judgments of moral patiency. It is worth noting that the negative correlation between perceived moral agency and perceived moral patiency across these “normal” characters may be a function of statistical outliers.

    In study 2, for instance, they assessed perceived patiency by asking participants how much pain each individual would feel were they to accidentally cut their foot on a piece of glass, and how easy it would be to take advantage of this person. Gray and Wegner do not provide specific scores for each character, but looking at the chart, it appears that judgments of moral patiency for most of the characters cluster together, with the orphan (and, perhaps, Britney Spears) scoring much higher and Ted Bundy, Mother Theresa, and the Dalai Lama scoring much lower.

    But, again, this should not be surprising given (a) the assessments of perceived agency/patiency and (b) the different features possessed by the various targets. Given the previous discussion about common conceptions of children, it should not be surprising that they found the orphan to be rated extremely high on experienced pain. Likewise, given our conceptions of celebrities and royalty as living relatively plush and extravagant lifestyles, we ought not be surprised that they might be seen as unaccustomed to (and, thus, experience more acutely) personal injury. Nor should we be surprised to find that the Dalai Lama (a monk whose life’s work is to train the body and mind to overcome pain and suffering) and Ted Bundy (a psychopathic serial killer) were judged to experience relatively little pain. But we need not appeal to a moral typecasting thesis to explain such differences. We can explain such differences by our conceptions of celebrities, royalty, and orphans, and of monks and murderers, independently of their perceived moral agency.

  26. Gray and Wegner use the names ‘Michael’ and ‘Jeffrey’ in this study, which I have changed to ‘Matthew’ and ‘Jason’, respectively, to minimize confusion.

  27. Of course, just because Jason deserves more praise, it does not follow that he is, in fact, perceived to be more morally agentive. Even if we define a moral agent as an entity that can earn praise or blame, it does not follow that (degree or amount of) moral agency is the only factor that determines an entity’s praiseworthiness. It may well be that Jason was deemed more praiseworthy, not for being relatively more morally agentive but for acting first.

  28. Thanks to Adam Shriver for raising this point in his comments at the 2012 meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology.

  29. See Keltner and Ekman (2000) for a useful overview of the study of facial expressions.

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Arico, A.J. Breaking Out of Moral Typecasting. Rev.Phil.Psych. 3, 425–438 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-012-0108-1

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