Study 3: Gender Dualism and Evaluations of Morality/Agency

1. Gender dualism and dyadic morality: Preliminary experimental results for gendered mind perception. • 1 University of Michigan, Department of Social Psychology • 2 University of Michigan, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology • 3 Western Michigan University, Department of Comparative Religion Garrett Marks-Wilt 1 KandiceKarll2 Alex Fether3 Abstract The authors propose gender stereotypes and moral cognition are fundamentally linked through a process that draws on mind perception to justify what is akin to a “moral distribution of labor” in which men are type-casted moral agents and women are type-casted moral patients (Study 1). Minds are not perceived as sexless, but rather dissociable in that men (relative women) are perceived less capable of morally-essential forms of phenomenal experience and women (compared to men) are perceived less capable of morally-essential forms of intentional agency (study 1 & 3). Such associations have a negligible impact on perceptions of men’s moral rights/status (as a moral patient; studies 2 &3), but augments perceived moral and intentional agency (study 1 & 3) while exerting the opposite effects on perceptions of women’s intentional agency (studies 1 & 3) and status (as a moral patient; studies 2 & 3). Key Words: Gender Stereotyping, Moral Agency, Moral Patiency, Phenomenal Experience, Intentional Agency Introduction to the Problem Opposition between mind and body has been associated with differences between male and female (e.g., see De Beauvoir, 1953; Lloyd, 1983). This implies that observers may perceive the consciousness of women as more intimately tied to phenomenal, bodily experiences and that men (perhaps) are seen as more rational or agentic. What are the morality-related implications, we ask, of the correlations of substance- and gender-dualism? Many feminist philosophers have more or less appropriated substance-gender dualism as a reflection of patriarchy. Much of the theorization in this regard—despite contributing valuable insights—has conceptually and empirically obscured issues, e.g. , in encouraging the conflation of status as a moral patient with moral agency. This is empirically and conceptually problematic. It is true, as e.g., Tuana (1993) suggests, that moral agency tends to be associated with masculine traits; but people ascribe less—not more—moral status to moral agents (Gray & Wegner, 2009) and this is even true of heroes! Thus, as Gray et al. quip, “To escape blame, don't be a hero—be a victim” (2011). Based on these insights, we submit a model for understanding lay people’s moral representation of sex/gender differences that is symbolically represented in the following schematic: • Study 1: Gender Dualism & Dyadic Moral Roles/Minds • On our account, representations of men and women (morally speaking) are grounded in differential perceptions of male and female minds. Minds are perceived on the basis of independent mental capacities: Agency vs. Experience (Gray, Gray, Wegner, 2007). These dimensions of mind—and the moral roles they support—tend to be inversely related (see above). Meanwhile, the content of gender stereotypes are often “mixed”, in that social groups tend to be high on one stereotyping dimension (e.g., competence), but low on others (e.g., warmth; Fiske, Cuddy, Glick & Xu, 2002). In light of this empirical/conceptual framework, we ground our theory in a multidimensional model that stresses complementary content. • Method • Patricipants: Online study administered to 131 individuals recruited and paid via Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk web service (Paolacci, Chandler, & Ipeirotis, 2010). • Materials: Gender-Mind measure=fraternal twins Jeff and Jill • Described as: adults, “similar in many ways” • Respondents answered questions about who (Jeff vs. Jill) was more likely to feel • phenomenal experience (pain & pleasure) • intentional/moral agency: asked who was more likely to have acted intentionally and should garner more responsibility after short changing a server. • 7-point scale: -3 (Jeff) to 3 (Jill); midpoint=0 (cannot decide). • Gender-(Dyadic) Moral Role measure: Respondents answered 8 forced-choice questions assessing associations between sex (men vs. women) and the moral roles of agent (heroes vs. villains) and patient (victim vs. beneficiary) by expressing (dis)agreement with statements comparing men and women in terms of dyadic moral roles (cf. appendix) on a 4-point scale from -1.5 (agree strongly) to 1.5 (disagree strongly). [Male vs. Female associations random; responses recoded such that >0 signified female-role associations and responses <0 indicated male-role associations). • Results • Results (of a series of one-sample t-tests) confirmed all 4 of the hypotheses: men were associated with a greater degree of moral/intentional agency (t = -5.871, df = 131, p < .00001) and showed a greater association with the role moral agent (t = -6.608, df = 129, p < .00001); women were more closely associated with phenomenal experiences (t = 3.567, df = 133, p < .001) and showed a greater association with the role moral patient (t = 11.226, df = 129, p < .00001). • Study 3: Gender Dualism and Evaluations of Morality/Agency • Study 2 demonstrates moral dilemmas in which females are harmed are evaluated more negatively than moral dilemmas in which males are harmed. In study 3, we revisit the claim that these beliefs are the cause and consequence of the differential attribution of mind to men and women. Study 3 provides some evidence for this claim. • Method • Participants: n=131 from Mechanical Turk web service. • Materials: • A vignette about an engaged couple. • One partner uses a fictional drug that makes people “extremely ` susceptible to persuasion” to convince the other partner to have sex. • Stereotype-congruent condition=male drugs female; • Stereotype-incongruent condition=female drugs male. • DV(s): Two questions & three statements (order randomized). • Agent moral status: • 7-point scale from Very Immoral (1) to Very Moral (7). • Intentional Agency of Agent & Patient: • Intentionality requires foresight & knowledge (Malle & Knobe, 2007), so Agent-Intentionality was measured by (dis)agreement with the following 2 statements: • (1) [Agent] knew his/her actions would harm [patient] • (2) [Agent] thought his/her actions would harm [patient]. • Blame should be discounted to the extent that the patient possessed intentional agency (i.e. was not seen as a patient). As a measure of patient-agency, Ss were asked 3 and expressed (dis)agreement with 4: • (3)“How in control was [patient] over his/her actions?” • (4) [Patient] was in control of his/her actions. • (Dis)Agreement measured on scale from 1 (not at all) to 7 (completely). • 1 & 2 averages formed agent-agency index. • 3 & 4 averages formed patient-agency index. • Results • An independent samples t-test was conducted on all DVs with condition as a factor. Moral status of the male agent (x=1.56) was more immoral than the female agent (x=2.04); this effect approached significance (t = -1.557, df = 46, p < .09). The male agent was also attributed a degree of agency significantly higher than that of the female agent (t = .763, df = 46, p < .034); there was no significant difference in attributions of patient agency across conditions (t = -.074, df = 46, ns). While study 2 suggests moral judgments and evaluations are sensitive to the gender of the patient, we take this as some initial evidence that agent-gender is also a factor in peoples moral judgments and evaluations. • Correlations: Although patient-agency did not significantly differ between conditions, it did negatively correlate agent moral status (r=.383; p=.007). Likewise, agent-agency negatively correlated with moral status (r=-.377; p = .008). Patient- and agent-agency were not, however, correlated with one another (r=-.007; p = .964). • Together, the results from study 3 provide some suggestion that, morally speaking, perceptions of men and women differ, as do levels to which gender (1) is morally sanctioned (i.e., blamed or considered immoral) and (2) incites moral sympathy. Specifically, we believe that results from our three experiments suggest that –consistent with our original schematic—women are ascribed greater moral rights and elicit greater moral concern, and men are attributed a greater degree of moral responsibility. Study 2: The Footbrige Dilemma Reactions to the footbridge dilemma are sensitive to what psychologists have termed “moral tradeoffs”. For instance, people are more willing to sacrifice animals than people, and Nazis than non-Nazis (Petrinovich et al., 1993). Moral trade-offs are arguably resultant of stereotype content (Cikara, Farnsworth, Harris & Fiske, 2010); for instance, race is a factor (e.g., Uhlmann, Pizarro, Tannenbaum, and Ditto, 2009). This study explores the differential value of men and women in the moral domain. Using stimuli differing only in whether the patient was represented as ‘male’ or ‘female’, we hypothesize that the utilitarian action in the footbridge dilemma will be judged more favorably when a male patient is pushed to his death from the bridge than when the equivalent happens to a female. Method Participants: n=184 from Mechanical Turk web service. Materials: Modified footbridge dilemma; person used as a means to impeding the trolley was either a “man” (n=94) or “a woman” (n=90) who was “wearing a large, heavy backpack”. DV(s): All participants completed 2 items assessing endorsement of the utilitarian condition: (1) “Is it morally acceptable to push the man[woman] off of the footbridge in order to avoid the deaths of the family members, causing the death of the man instead?” [Yes/No]. (2) “To what extent is this action morally acceptable?” from 1 (completely unacceptable) to 9 (completely acceptable). Question 2 responses were subsequently recoded to a binary “All of Nothing” (AoN) variable with responses <5 recoded to 0 and responses >5 recoded to 1. Results Results showed that a greater amount of people endorsed the utilitarian response for Question 1 (t = 1.435, df = 182, p < .005) and the AoN variable (t = 1.108, df = 161, p < .028) in the male-patient condition. Study 1 provides evidence in favor of the broader hypothesis, and suggests that moral transgressions are considered more serious when perpetrated against women than against men.