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

合作研究：文化、心理距离与道德决策模式

• 批准号: 0962185
• 负责人: Douglas Medin
• 金额: $ 45.03万
• 依托单位: Northwestern University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-09-15 至 2014-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0962185&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Culture; Psychological; Distance

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.

对资源和政治冲突的共同方法通常会假设对手理解世界的理性选择。鉴于这个假设，可以通过从其角度分析给定行动的成本和收益来预测潜在盟友和对手的行为。在涉及心理实验的先前研究中，人类学实地研究和政治科学调查与政治和资源冲突有关的研究，PIS发现，当神圣或受保护的价值观（例如，“我的价值观不是出售我的价值观”时；“无论后果如何做正确的事物），人们在作用上，人们对不同的行动就会使人的价值观是错误的价值观。 结果，提供激励措施以提高某些行动和/或处罚的吸引力的实践使其他行动方案降低了尝试并在冲突中取得预期结果的吸引力可能会适得其反。 计划和行动无知或无视非后果的价值框架，可能会加剧冲突，并因财宝和生命而严重的丧失。在拟议的研究中，PIS研究了不同的道德框架如何具有神圣价值观的不同类型和使用，塑造个人和集体身份，影响文化和政治决策，并维持群体间冲突。这些研究将扩大道德认知的理论和经验分析，包括受保护或神圣价值观（SV）如何影响人们的生活并在多样化的文化背景下发挥作用。 SV与世俗价值观不同，因为它们与具有工具价值的权衡，情感显着性以及对个人和集体身份的意义的相对免疫力，对具有工具价值的权衡的相对免疫力。该项目将研究SVS在现实世界中的操作方式，以确定这些情况导致决策者忽略物质后果和时间或地点的距离，并产生矛盾的结果，以及产生结果从后果主义假设所追踪的结果的结果。该方法将基础研究和应用研究整合在一起，结合了实验室和现场实验，在许多不同的文化环境（北美，中东和印度）中进行调查和访谈，以提供“现实世界”的相关性。结果将有助于一个全面的理论框架，并对道德推理和决策制定，文化认同的形成以及神圣价值的性质的心理和文化机制进行广泛的经验分析。