道德自我调整的悖论”
6月29日,美国西北大学网站报道,西北大学心理学教授S.萨奇德瓦(Sonya Szchdeva)和D.梅丁(Douglas Medin)联合发表在《心理学》杂志上的论文《犯罪的圣人和圣洁的罪人;道德自我调整的悖论》表明,个人道德清洗与对道德自我的理想水平恢复有关,它还首次表明富有激情的人,更有可能通过采取一种反常行为或放弃德行来调整自身的言行。这一研究结果是基于三个实验调查,以研究道德行为如何受内在自我调整的影响,共46人接受了西北大学笔迹测试中心的笔迹测试,并被要求捐赠10美元给参与者所选择的慈善机构,以进行行为观察。
Moral Self-Regulation
SciMed - Neuroscience
TS-SI NEWS SERVICE
SUNDAY, 28 JUNE 2009 03:00
Evanston, IL, USA.Whether they be high-flying politicians or ordininary citizens of good reputation, there can be a fall from grace. Sometimes moral actions lead to bad, making no sense at all.
A study observes that extremes of good and bad behavior can occur in the same person. Someone with ample moral self-worth in one aspect of their lives can slip into immorality or opposite behavior in other areas. Their abundant self-esteem can somehow push them to balance out all that goodness. Conversely, the study shows, people who engage in immoral behavior make amends and cleanse themselves with good works.
Other studies have shown the moral-cleansing effect, but this new model shows that the cleansing also has to do with restoring an ideal level of moral self-worth. In other words, when people operate above or below a certain level of moral self-worth, they instinctively push back in the opposite direction to reach an internally regulated set point of goodness.
"If people feel too moral," Sachdeva said, "they might not have sufficient incentive to engage in moral action because of the costliness of being good."
Think, for example, of that sugar- and fat-laden concoction that you wolf down after an especially vigorous run, said Douglas Medin, professor of psychology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences atNorthwestern University. "That pretty much eliminates the benefits of running an extra 20 minutes," he said.
Northwestern's Sonya Sachdeva, Rumen Iliev and Medin are co-authors of the new paper that appearsd inPsychological Science. "Sonya and Rumen may have even more intriguing results in the future," said Medin, the study's senior researcher, "because they are examining whether the results generalize to different cultures."
An abundance of research shows that people are motivated both by the warm glow that results from good behavior and recognition of costly, long-term consequences of immoral behavior on kin and society at large.
But the Northwestern study for the first time shows that perhaps people whose glow is much warmer than average are more likely to regulate behavior by acting in an opposite manner or passing up opportunities to behave morally.
"Imagine a line on a plane," Sachdeva said. "If you go above the line, you feel pressure to come back down. The only way you can come back down is either by refraining from good social behavior or by actively engaging in immoral behavior."