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

处理资源和政治冲突的常见方法往往假设对手在理性选择的基础上理解世界。根据这一假设，人们可以通过从潜在盟友和对手的角度分析给定行动的成本和收益来预测他们的行为。在先前涉及与政治和资源冲突有关的心理学实验、人类学田野调查和政治学调查的研究中，私人投资机构发现，当神圣或受保护的价值观(如：“我的价值观是非卖品”；“做正确的事，不管后果”)在起作用，人们对不同行为的价值观仅仅是其后果的价值观的总和的假设可能是错误的。因此，提供奖励措施以增加某些行动方针和(或)惩罚的吸引力，以降低其他行动方针在冲突中试图实现预期结果的吸引力，这种做法可能会适得其反。忽视或无视非结果主义价值框架的规划和行动可能会加剧冲突，造成财产和生命的严重损失。在这项拟议的研究中，私人投资机构研究了不同的道德框架，以及不同类型和神圣价值观的用途，如何塑造个人和集体认同，影响文化和政治决策，以及维持群体间冲突。这些研究将拓宽对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。SVS与世俗价值观不同，因为它们与先验信念、与工具价值的相对免疫力、情感突显以及对个人和集体认同的重要性有关。该项目将研究SVS如何在现实世界的背景下运行，确定它们导致决策者忽略时间或地点的物质后果和距离并产生自相矛盾的结果的情况，以及它们产生的结果跟踪结果主义假设的结果的情况。该方法将基础研究和应用研究结合起来，结合实验室和实地实验、调查和在许多不同文化环境(北美、中东和印度)进行的访谈，以提供“现实世界”的相关性。这些结果将有助于对道德推理和决策背后的心理和文化机制、文化认同的形成和神圣价值观的性质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.