15:00 - 16:30
Tue—Casino_1.811—Poster2—55
Tue-Poster2
Room:
Room: Casino_1.811
Effects of Moral Orientation on Fusion with the Group and Member Valuation
Tue—Casino_1.811—Poster2—5505
Presented by: Rico Alokuzay
Rico Alokuzay *Laura BlümelYannick CezanneMartin SchultzeSabine Windmann
Cognitive Psychology II, Goethe University Frankfurt
People tend to align their moral judgments with the majority opinion of the group to which they feel they belong. According to studies by Bostyn and Roets (2017), this tendency is stronger for deontological than for utilitarian judgments. Across three experiments (total N=702), we were unable to replicate this asymmetric effect. However, consistent with a recent finding by the same group of authors using the trust game (Bostyn et al., 2023), we found that people value their ingroup more highly when the majority vote of this group is consistent with their own ("homegrown") moral orientation as assessed by the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale. This morally grounded ingroup favoritism was evidenced by higher perceived fusion of self with the group on a continuous pictorial fusion scale as well as more positive ratings of members of the ingroup on an adjective checklist. The effect was essentially the same for real-life dilemmas selected from Körner and Deutsch (2023) relative to the typically used hypothetical dilemmas, with no significant differences between dilemma types (N=439). Future research will need to investigate whether the tendency to favor a like-minded group is specific to moral decision making, or may be a manifestation of a more general self-confirmation bias.

Keywords: Utilitarianism, Deontological, moral judgment, moral orientation, person-situation interaction, inclusion of others in self (IOS), fusion with the group