Project

Moral Judgments; Person Perception; Face Modeling; Moral Character

Lead
Moralpsychologische Forschung untersucht, wie Individuen moralische Urteile fällen. Ein wichtiger Befund dieser Forschung ist, dass Individuen in erster Linie die Absichten der handelnden Person und das Resultat ihrer Handlung berücksichtigen, wenn sie beurteilen, ob eine bestimmte Handlung moralisch gut oder schlecht ist.
Lay summary
Inhalt und Ziel des Forschungsprojekts Die moralpsychologische Forschung geht davon aus, dass in erster Linie Aspekte der Situation – etwa die Absichten der handelnden Person oder das Resultat ihrer Handlungen – bestimmen, ob eine Handlung als moralisch gut oder schlecht beurteilt wird. Im Gegensatz dazu geht die Forschung zur Personenwahrnehmung davon aus, dass Individuen in erster Linie den moralischen Charakter einer Person berücksichtigen bei der Beurteilung ihrer Handlungen. Ziel dieses Projektes ist es, eine Brücke zwischen diesen beiden Forschungsbereichen zu schlagen, indem es sowohl den Einfluss des moralischen Charakters von Handelnden als auch den Einfluss situativer Aspekte auf die Beurteilung von Handlungen untersucht. Wissenschaftlicher und gesellschaftlicher Kontext Dieses Projekt nutzt eine kürzlich entwickelte Methode zur Manipulation von Porträts, um den moralischen Charakter auf subtile Art und Weise in die Moralpsychologie einzuführen. Die erwarteten Resultate, dass Schlussfolgerungen von den Porträts auf den moralische Charakter beeinflussen, wie über Personen geurteilt wird, sind relevant für alle Lebensbereiche, in denen Entscheidungen mit weitreichenden Konsequenzen gefällt werden (z.B. im medizinischen Kontext oder im juristischen Kontext).

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Last update: 02.12.2016

Active participation

Communication	Title	Media	Place	Year

First encounters are known to strongly influence how individuals perceive others; the power of “first impressions” is even part of collective wisdom represented in proverbs (e.g., “You never get a second chance to make a first impression”) and fiction. One particular prominent source affecting first impressions is the human face. Individuals use facial information to instantly and automatically build first impressions about the personality of others (e.g., Bruce & Young, 1986; Ito & Urland, 2003; Willis & Todorov, 2006). These persistent personality inferences can be mapped in a 2D space defined by the two fundamental dimensions trustworthiness and dominance (Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008). Trustworthiness and dominance are unique dimensions in that they are informative about whether a person has good or bad intentions (i.e., trustworthiness) and whether he or she is able to act on these intentions (i.e., dominance). Interestingly, a person perception perspective suggests that individuals have a strong desire to infer other’s moral character from whatever cue might be informative, whereas in moral psychological research, moral character plays a negligible role. Building on normative philosophical theories of morality, Moral Psychology focuses on acts rather than actors in assessing the morality of an action (Pizarro & Tannenbaum, 2011; Tannenbaum, Uhlmann, & Diermeier, 2011; Uhlmann, Pizarro, & Diermeier, 2015). Accordingly, it suggests that the morality of a moral action is evaluated based on the assessment of the actors' intentions and goals in this given situation as well as the outcome of the action. Thereby, Moral Psychology disregards the fundamental social psychological finding that perceivers tend to overestimate stable actor characteristics and underestimate characteristics of a given situation in explaining actions (Heider, 1958; Ross, 1977) and the strong motivation of individuals to keep track on the moral character of others, for example by inferring it from their appearance (Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008). The proposed project aims to bridge this gap by investigating the impact of moral character (derived from facial appearance) on the evaluation of moral actions comprehensively. On a theoretical level, the proposed project will advance Moral Psychological research and close a gap between Moral and Social Psychology as asked for lately (Pizarro & Tannenbaum, 2011; Tannenbaum et al., 2011; Uhlmann et al., 2015). This is done by taking moral actions and moral character into account in addressing the psychological question of how moral decisions are made. On an applied level, the here expected findings that the moral character derived from such invalid cues as an actor’s or a victim’s appearance impacts moral judgments and actions, will be relevant for various areas in which highly consequential decisions about the likelihood of a person’s survival (e.g., medical context) or of the quality of a person’s life (e.g., legal context) are made. On a methodological level, the here proposed studies will demonstrate that using the Basel Face Model to manipulate perceived character unremarkably and systematically can be beneficial in various research fields in which the perception of one isolated aspect of personality and it’s consequences on judgments and actions is addressed.