In a study where participants were asked to make a series of assessments in distinct circumstances, we show that altruistic agents may incur disadvantages in the name of values they do not believe in (i.e., saving money) as long as they believe in the overarching category (e.g., it is a ‘good deed’ to recover other people’s money). Whereas previous research mostly targeted ultimate benefits (i.e., whether or not altruistic agents incur real disadvantages), the axiological basis of altruistic acts (i.e., whether or not they have the same worth to self and to others) has remained unchallenged. Here, we explored “groundless altruism” by asking participants to rate their agreement with the statement ‘Money is worth risking my life for’ before and after presenting them with an altruistic scenario. There was a dramatic increase in the proportion of ‘yes’ responses from the first to the second rating. Moreover, as predicted by the cultural group selection theory, the status of the agent (low-rank police employee v s. secret agent) was largely irrelevant. These findings suggest that social constructs such as categorisation have the potential to significantlyinfluence human behaviour in various domains from moral psychology to work ethics to language learning.
نوع الوثيقة:
conferencePaper
اللغة:
English
العلاقة:
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/600405; The 26th Subjective Probability, Utility, and Decision Making Conference, Haifa, Israel (from 20-08-2017 to 24-08-2017)
