Collaborative Research: Culture, Psychological Distance and Modes of Moral Decision Making

解决资源和政治冲突的常见方法通常假设对手基于理性选择了解世界。有了这个假设，我们就可以从潜在盟友和对手的角度分析某一特定行动的成本和收益，从而预测他们的行为。在先前有关政治和资源冲突的心理学实验、人类学田野调查和政治学调查中，pi发现，当神圣或受保护的价值观(例如：“我的价值观是非卖品”；“做正确的事，不计后果”)，人们对不同行为的价值仅仅是其结果的价值总和的假设可能是错误的。因此，提供奖励以增加某些行动方案的吸引力和/或惩罚以降低其他行动方案的吸引力，从而试图在冲突中实现预期结果的做法可能适得其反。忽视或无视非结果主义价值框架的计划和行动可能加剧冲突，造成严重的财产损失和生命损失。在拟议的研究中，pi研究了不同的道德框架，以及不同类型和使用的神圣价值观，如何塑造个人和集体身份，影响文化和政治决策，并维持群体间的冲突。这些研究将扩大道德认知的理论和实证分析，包括受保护的或神圣的价值观（SVs）如何影响人们的生活，并在不同的文化背景下发挥作用。svv不同于世俗价值观，因为它们与先验信仰有关，相对不受工具性价值观权衡的影响，情感突出，以及对个人和集体身份的重要性。该项目将研究SVs如何在现实环境中运作，识别那些导致决策者忽视物质后果和时间或地点距离并产生矛盾结果的情况，以及那些导致结果遵循结果主义假设的情况。该方法整合了基础研究和应用研究，结合了实验室和现场实验、调查和访谈，在许多不同的文化背景下（北美、中东和印度），以提供“现实世界”的相关性。研究结果将有助于对道德推理和决策、文化认同的形成以及神圣价值的本质背后的心理和文化机制进行全面的理论框架和广泛的实证分析。

Common approaches to resource and political conflicts often assume adversaries understand the world on the basis of rational choices. Given this assumption, one can predict the behavior of potential allies and adversaries by analyzing the costs and benefits of a given action from their perspective. In prior research involving psychological experiments, anthropological fieldwork and political science surveys relating to political and resource conflicts, the PIs have found that that when sacred or protected values (e.g. "My values are not for sale"; "Do the right thing regardless of the consequences") are in play, the assumption that the values people place on different actions is simply the sum of the values of their consequences may be wrong. As a result, the practice of providing incentives to increase the attractiveness of certain courses of action and/or penalties to make other courses of action less attractive to try and achieve a desired outcome in a conflict may backfire. Planning and acting in ignorance of or disregard for non-consequentialist value frameworks may exacerbate conflict, with grievous loss of treasure and lives. In the proposed research, the PIs examine how different moral frames, with different types and uses of sacred values, shape personal and collective identity, influence cultural and political decision making, and sustain inter-group conflict. The studies will broaden theoretical and empirical analyses of moral cognition, including how protected or sacred values (SVs) affect people's lives and play out in diverse cultural contexts. SVs are distinct from secular values because of their association with transcendental beliefs, relative immunity to tradeoffs with instrumental values, emotional salience, and significance for personal and collective identity. The project will examine how SVs operate in real-world contexts, identifying those circumstances where they result in decision makers ignoring material consequences and distance in time or place and produce paradoxical results as well as those where they produce outcomes that track those that follow from the consequentialist assumption. The methodology integrates basic and applied research, combining laboratory and field experiments, surveys and interviews in a number of different cultural settings (North America, the Middle East, and India) in order to provide "real-world" relevance. The results will contribute to a comprehensive theoretical framework and wide-ranging empirical analysis of the psychological and cultural mechanisms underlying moral reasoning and decision making, the formation of cultural identity, and the nature of sacred values.