Harming ourselves and defiling others: what determines a moral domain?

Recent work has distinguished "harm" from "purity" violations, but how does an act get classified as belonging to a domain in the first place? We demonstrate the impact of not only the kind of action (e.g., harmful versus impure) but also its target (e.g., oneself versus another)...

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Main Authors: Alek Chakroff, James Dungan, Liane Young
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2013-01-01
Series:PLoS ONE
Online Access:http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC3770666?pdf=render
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spelling doaj-249b8780da2a46d8a5a05155f68b9d6c2020-11-24T21:54:19ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032013-01-0189e7443410.1371/journal.pone.0074434Harming ourselves and defiling others: what determines a moral domain?Alek ChakroffJames DunganLiane YoungRecent work has distinguished "harm" from "purity" violations, but how does an act get classified as belonging to a domain in the first place? We demonstrate the impact of not only the kind of action (e.g., harmful versus impure) but also its target (e.g., oneself versus another). Across two experiments, common signatures of harm and purity tracked with other-directed and self-directed actions, respectively. First, participants judged self-directed acts as primarily impure and other-directed acts as primarily harmful. Second, conservatism predicted harsher judgments of self-directed but not other-directed acts. Third, while participants delivered harsher judgments of intentional versus accidental acts, this effect was smaller for self-directed than other-directed acts. Finally, participants judged self-directed acts more harshly when focusing on the actor's character versus the action itself; other-directed acts elicited the opposite pattern. These findings suggest that moral domains are defined not only by the kind of action but also by the target of the action.http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC3770666?pdf=render
collection DOAJ
language English
format Article
sources DOAJ
author Alek Chakroff
James Dungan
Liane Young
spellingShingle Alek Chakroff
James Dungan
Liane Young
Harming ourselves and defiling others: what determines a moral domain?
PLoS ONE
author_facet Alek Chakroff
James Dungan
Liane Young
author_sort Alek Chakroff
title Harming ourselves and defiling others: what determines a moral domain?
title_short Harming ourselves and defiling others: what determines a moral domain?
title_full Harming ourselves and defiling others: what determines a moral domain?
title_fullStr Harming ourselves and defiling others: what determines a moral domain?
title_full_unstemmed Harming ourselves and defiling others: what determines a moral domain?
title_sort harming ourselves and defiling others: what determines a moral domain?
publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS)
series PLoS ONE
issn 1932-6203
publishDate 2013-01-01
description Recent work has distinguished "harm" from "purity" violations, but how does an act get classified as belonging to a domain in the first place? We demonstrate the impact of not only the kind of action (e.g., harmful versus impure) but also its target (e.g., oneself versus another). Across two experiments, common signatures of harm and purity tracked with other-directed and self-directed actions, respectively. First, participants judged self-directed acts as primarily impure and other-directed acts as primarily harmful. Second, conservatism predicted harsher judgments of self-directed but not other-directed acts. Third, while participants delivered harsher judgments of intentional versus accidental acts, this effect was smaller for self-directed than other-directed acts. Finally, participants judged self-directed acts more harshly when focusing on the actor's character versus the action itself; other-directed acts elicited the opposite pattern. These findings suggest that moral domains are defined not only by the kind of action but also by the target of the action.
url http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC3770666?pdf=render
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