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.

解决资源和政治冲突的常见方法通常假设对手在理性选择的基础上理解世界。在这种假设下，我们可以从潜在盟友和对手的角度分析某个行动的成本和收益，从而预测他们的行为。在之前涉及与政治和资源冲突相关的心理实验、人类学田野调查和政治学调查的研究中，PI发现，当神圣或受保护的价值观（例如：“我的价值观是销售”;“做正确的事情，不管后果”）正在发挥作用，认为人们对不同行为的价值观仅仅是其后果价值观的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针的吸引力和（或）惩罚以降低其他行动方针对试图在冲突中取得预期结果的吸引力的做法可能适得其反。 在规划和行动时忽视或无视非后果主义价值框架，可能会加剧冲突，造成严重的财富和生命损失。在拟议的研究中，PI研究了不同的道德框架，不同类型和使用的神圣价值观，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。这些研究将拓宽道德认知的理论和实证分析，包括受保护或神圣的价值观（SV）如何影响人们的生活，并在不同的文化背景下发挥作用。SV与世俗价值观不同，因为它们与先验信仰有关，相对免疫力与工具价值观的权衡，情感显着性以及对个人和集体身份的意义。该项目将研究SV如何在现实世界的背景下运作，确定这些情况下，他们导致决策者忽视的物质后果和距离的时间或地点，并产生矛盾的结果，以及那些他们产生的结果，跟踪那些从后果主义假设。该方法整合了基础和应用研究，结合实验室和实地实验，调查和访谈，在一些不同的文化背景（北美，中东和印度），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和广泛的实证分析的心理和文化机制的道德推理和决策，文化认同的形成，和神圣的价值观的性质。