Standing up for close others: The relationship effect on moral courage across harm/care and fairness contexts

Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology Subjects: Psychology >> Legality Psychology submitted time 2022-02-06

Michael Shengtao Wu Gabriel Nudelman Yongyuan Chen

Abstract：

"Moral courage, standing up for others and intervening when a norm is violated, is viewed as a virtue in modern societies. However, it remains unclear how moral courage varies in interpersonal relationships and across moral contexts. Two studies were designed to test the effect of relationship type (close or distant) between the bystander and the victim on moral courage across harm/care and fairness contexts. The results showed that participants reported greater levels of moral courage when the victim was their family member or friend (vs. a stranger), and this relationship effect was stronger in the harm/care (vs. fairness) context. In addition, anger, a moral emotion, served a mediation role in the relationship effect on moral courage in both moral contexts. Taken together, the current findings demonstrate a relationship effect on the intentions of moral courage, especially in the harm/care context, suggesting that the relationship (between bystander and victim) and the context (harm/care vs. fairness) should be considered in understanding interventions against a norm violation.

Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review

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Reproducibility and psychological mechanisms of Neuroscience bias

Subjects: Psychology >> Legality Psychology Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2019-11-05

殷继兴 胡传鹏

Abstract： Behavioral and neuroscientific methods have uniquely contributed to our understanding of human mind and behavior. The advance in neuroscience and its potential implications (e.g., in legal systems) have attracted attention from both academia and society. However, researchers found that, when providing statements supported by either neuroscientific or behavioral/psychophysiological results, even if these neuroscientific results were logically irrelevant to the statements, participants still considered statements with neuroscientific results as more trustworthy. This phenomenon was termed as neuroscience bias. By systematically reviewing empirical studies on neuroscience bias, we revealed that: (1) the reproducibility of neuroscience bias was debated, but the effect exists; (2) neuroscience bias could be attributed to people’s preference for the reductionism and psychological essentialism. Neuroscience bias is one of many biases people may have when interpreting scientific results; future studies should further explore the psychological mechanisms of these biases and thereby provide guidelines for correctly interpreting and using scientific results." " " " " " "

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