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Social Psychology, Mood, and Helping: Mixed Results for Virtue Ethics

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Abstract

I first summarize the central issues in the debate about the empirical adequacy of virtue ethics, and then examine the role that social psychologists claim positive and negative mood have in influencing compassionate helping behavior. I argue that this psychological research is compatible with the claim that many people might instantiate certain character traits after all which allow them to help others in a wide variety of circumstances. Unfortunately for the virtue ethicist, however, it turns out that these helping traits fall well short of exhibiting certain central features of compassion.

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Notes

  1. See Doris (1998, 2002), Campbell (1999), and Harman (1999, 2000). The distinction between global versus local character traits will be examined in section one below.

  2. See, among others, DePaul (1999), Athanassoulis (2001), Sreenivasan (2002), Miller (2003), Kamtekar (2004), and Sabini and Silver (2005). For the experiments, see Milgram (1963), Zimbardo et al. (1973), and Darley and Batson (1973).

  3. See Doris (1998, p. 504) and Doris (2002, pp. 30–32).

  4. Doris also mentions a third globalist claim:

    1. (3)

      Evaluative integration: In a given character or personality the occurrence of a trait with a particular evaluative valence is probabilistically related to the occurrence of other traits with similar evaluative valences.

    Thus according to this claim, a person who is honest, for example, would also be expected to have and manifest other character traits relevant to honesty, such as understanding, wisdom, and courage (Ibid.).

    However, evaluative integration is controversial even among virtue ethicists, and it is the first two conditions of consistency and stability which are crucial for Doris’s critical discussion of the empirical adequacy of virtue ethics. Thus I leave this third condition to one side in what follows.

  5. More positively, situationism is characterized by Doris as a view which is committed to the follow three central claims:

    1. (a)

      “Behavioral variation across a population owes more to situational differences than disposition differences among persons…

    2. (b)

      Systematic observation problematizes the attribution of robust traits…

    3. (c)

      Personality is not often evaluatively integrated” (Doris 2002, pp. 24–25).

  6. The above has become a popular way of understanding Harman’s view, but to be fair at other times he only seems to be rejecting the existence of what he calls ‘broad-based’ dispositions, i.e., traits of character which meet Doris’ first criterion for being global. Fortunately for our purposes nothing hangs on which interpretation proves to be correct.

  7. The next three paragraphs are adapted from my 2003, appendix.

  8. Note that rather than dropped papers in Isen and Levin’s experiment, subjects in this study had the chance to pick up dropped packages.

  9. The purpose of this variant of the experiment was to test the alternative explanation that, “increased helpfulness could be seen as a reflection of their having been more likely to notice the person in need, rather than as a function of their mood state” (Levin and Isen 1975, p. 142).

  10. Schellenberg and Blevins (1973) also could not duplicate the results of a different helping experiment in Isen and Levin (1972).

    In their 1979 study, Batson et al. varied the dime case in such a way that, upon completing their calls, students at the University of Kansas were presented with the opportunity first to acquire information about the state of Kansas, and then soon afterwards help a female confederate who dropped a large folder of papers. The results were as follows for 40 test subjects:

     

    Acquired information

    Did not acquire

    Dime

    18

    2

    No dime

    12

    8

     

    Helped

    Did not help

    Dime

    13

    7

    No dime

    6

    14

    Naturally it would be important to see if the data can be duplicated, especially given the small sample size. But even if it can be, the results of this study are not nearly as dramatic as those obtained by Isen and Levin (1972). After all, 30% of subjects helped and 60% acquired information even without the mood elevation of finding the dime in the coin slot. For more, see Batson et al. (1979, pp. 176–179).

  11. To his credit, in a footnote (2002, p. 30, fn. 4) Doris does acknowledge the replication trouble for Isen and Levin’s experiments. Given the wealth of other similar experiments, though, it is not clear why he did not appeal directly to them instead.

  12. For overviews, see Carlson et al. (1988) and Schaller and Cialdini (1990).

  13. For additional work on the effect of fragrances on helping behavior, see Baron and Thomley (1994).

  14. As Doris (2002) rightly notes, “compassion the character trait is a stable and consistent disposition to perform beneficent actions; failures to behave compassionately when doing so is appropriate and not unduly costly are evidence against attributing the trait” (p. 29).

  15. For related discussion, see Isen (1987, p. 205), Schaller and Cialdini (1990, p. 266), Forgas (1995, p. 41), and Isen (1999, p. 522).

  16. See, e.g., Schaller and Cialdini (1990, p. 271).

  17. For representative examples from the literature, see Isen (1987), Carlson et al. (1988), and Schaller and Cialdini (1990).

  18. For a helpful overview, see Carlson et al. (1988).

  19. For related remarks, see Manucia et al. (1984), Carlson et al. (1988), Salovey et al. (1991), and Wegener and Petty (1994).

  20. Similarly, Isen notes that in certain cases it also might turn out that, “the motive to help another might outweigh one’s desire to maintain one’s own pleasant feelings if the other’s need were very great or somehow more ‘important’” (Isen 1987, p. 208). For helpful discussion of these issues, see Isen (1987).

  21. For related studies, see Forest et al. (1979) and Harada (1983). See also the discussion in Isen (1987, pp. 207–209), Carlson et al. (1988), Salovey et al. (1991), and Wegener and Petty (1994).

  22. For a similar observation, see Carlson et al. (1988, p. 215).

  23. For related discussion, see Manucia et al. (1984), Isen (1987), and Carlson et al. (1988).

  24. Note that there may be a way to reconcile Weyant’s results with the seemingly incompatible experimental results obtained by Isen and Simmonds in their dime-helping experiment. For one way of interpreting experiments such as Weyant’s is as involving the stimulation of the agent’s perceived moral obligations and the generation by those moral obligations of motivation to help. The motivation from this separate augmentation process in turn might have been strong enough to explain why subjects volunteered for the unpleasant options even though no motivation was coming from the mood maintenance system. On the other hand, in Isen and Simmonds (1978) there was no clear appeal being made to the subject’s sense of moral duty or obligation when he or she was asked to read a list of mood statements. The same is true of many other experiments offered in support of the mood maintenance hypothesis. For a similar proposal, see Carlson et al. (1988, p. 224).

  25. See Manucia et al. (1984). For a response on behalf of the mood maintenance hypothesis, see Wegener and Petty (1994). And for related studies and general discussion of the concomitance model, see Cialdini et al. (1982), Shaffer and Graziano (1983), Manucia et al. (1984), Carlson et al. (1988), Cunningham et al. (1990) Schaller and Cialdini (1990); Wegener and Petty (1994), and Isen (1999).

  26. For related discussion, see Isen (1987, p. 208).

  27. See Manucia et al. (1984, p. 357, fn. 1), Cialdini et al. (1987, p. 750), Cialdini and Fultz (1990, p. 211), and Schaller and Cialdini (1990, p. 266).

  28. For anger, see Cialdini et al. (1981). For guilt, see Carlsmith and Gross (1969) and Regan (1971).

  29. See, e.g., Schaller and Cialdini (1990, p. 271).

  30. For other results which indicate a relationship between negative affect and helping, see Cialdini and Kenrick (1976), Cialdini et al. (1982), Manucia et al. (1984), Cialdini et al. (1987), and Cialdini and Fultz (1990).

  31. See Weiss et al. (1973), Cialdini et al. (1973), Cialdini and Kenrick (1976), Weyant (1978), Benson (1978), Manucia et al. (1984), Cialdini et al. (1987), Batson et al. (1989), Schaller and Cialdini (1990), and Taylor (1991). For criticism of the mood management model, see Carlson and Miller (1987) and Miller and Carlson (1990). For two alternative models, see Carlson and Miller (1987, pp. 92–93), and Salovey et al. (1991, pp. 222–223).

  32. For related remarks, see Cialdini et al. (1973), Benson (1978), Cunningham et al. (1980), Manucia et al. (1984); Carlson and Miller (1987), and Salovey et al. (1991).

  33. One exception in the case of young children is when the helping behavior would be noticed by an adult. In that case, children in negative moods help more than controls, presumably for the sake of approval from the adult. See Kenrick et al. (1979).

  34. For further discussion, see Moore et al. (1973), Rosenhan et al. (1974), Cialdini et al. (1973), Cialdini and Kenrick (1976), and Manucia et al. (1984).

  35. See, e.g., Moore et al. (1973), Rosenhan et al. (1974), and Barden et al. (1981).

  36. For similar remarks, see Schaller and Cialdini (1990).

  37. I have been presented with this objection on several occasions, but it was stated perhaps most forcefully by James Taylor in written comments on an earlier version of this paper.

  38. One of the main alternative models to the mood management view has the same implication as well. The so-called objective self-awareness model also implies that helping occurs to alleviate negative affect. For more, see Carlson and Miller (1987, p. 93).

  39. See in particular Aristotle (1985) 1099b29–1099b32, 1103b16–1103b31, 1152a30–1152a34, 1179b25–1179b29, 1180a1–1180a5, 15–19 and Burnyeat (1980). These points are developed in greater detail in my 2003.

  40. Similarly, he notes that “situationism does not preclude the existence of a few saints, just as it does not preclude the existence of a few monsters” (Doris 2002, p. 60).

  41. Doris might respond that given the similarities between the situations most of us end up confronting, situational forces have habituated us into having roughly the same set of local traits associated with helping. Admittedly such a response would account for the results, but it also seems rather difficult to believe. For is it really plausible to think that many of us have, through a process of gradual habituation, acquired separate traits for picking up dropped papers, making change, donating blood, and volunteering for charity work? After all, it is not even clear that many people have been exposed to even a few, much less a significant number of repeated instances of these situation types so that they could have inculcated the relevant local character trait through habituation. Thus it seems that we would be left with a mystery as to how we have come to acquire such discrete and fine-grained helping traits in the first place.

  42. I develop the account of GHTs in much more detail in my 2009a, b.

  43. Here I implicitly assume the truth of the concomitance model of positive affect augmentation. If on the other hand the mood maintenance hypothesis is true, then we would have to also build the following condition into the antecedent—“…and the person takes the benefits associated with helping to outweigh the costs…”.

  44. As Doris agrees (2002, p. 49).

  45. For further development of the GHT model and discussion of how such traits would be distinct from traditional virtues, see my 2009a, b.

  46. For related discussion, see footnote 23.

  47. See, e.g., Toi and Batson (1982), Batson (1991, 2002).

  48. See especially Cialdini et al. (1987) and Cialdini et al. (1997).

  49. See especially Batson et al. (1989).

  50. For detailed discussion of work in social psychology on empathy and helping as well as the relationship of that work to the global helping trait model, see my 2009a.

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Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the University of Denver conference on virtue ethics and social psychology. I am grateful to Candace Upton for inviting me to participate in the conference, and to James Taylor for very helpful written comments. Thanks as well to Ralph Kennedy, Adrian Bardon, Avram Hiller, George Graham, Stavroula Glezakos, and Win-chiat Lee for helpful comments.

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    Christian Miller

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Miller, C. Social Psychology, Mood, and Helping: Mixed Results for Virtue Ethics. J Ethics 13, 145–173 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-009-9046-2

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