Do you consider yourself a moral person? Most of us do. But what is it exactly that makes us moral beings?
A philosopher at Washington University in St. Louis thinks that circumstance and mood often have an extraordinary impact on how people behave, no matter what kind of character they may appear to have. Or, in other words, seemingly Sweet Sally may turn into Selfish Sally if in a foul mood.
John M. Doris, Ph.D., associate professor of philosophy in Arts & Sciences, is the organizer of a workshop on moral psychology April 8-9 at Washington University. Topics will include evolution’s impact on morality, motivation and sociopathy, the relationship between language capacity and moral capacity, and the psychology of happiness.
Doris defines moral psychology as “the factors that influence behavior in contexts we consider to be morally significant,” such as witnessing someone in need.
“Think about your friends,” he says. “If someone dropped a file of papers all over the street, would one of your friends stop to help?”
You might base your answer on your own perceived morality level of your friend.
But many factors, including whether your friend is happy having just found some money or in a sour mood having stepped in a wad of bubblegum, will affect his or her willingness to help, regardless of an innate or a perceived morality level.
“We tend to look to the properties of the person as we imagine them in order to gauge their moral compass,” Doris says. “It turns out, however, that something as seemingly insignificant as finding a quarter in a phone booth can have a big impact on whether a person will help or not.”
Trivial factors influence behavior
Doris, a member of Arts & Sciences’ Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program, is author of the 2002 book “Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior.” In it, he argues that behavior is extraordinarily sensitive to variation in circumstance.
He became interested in moral psychology in the mid-1990s after reading some ground-breaking studies by John M. Darley, Ph.D., the Warren Professor of Psychology at Princeton University.
Darley’s research indicated that absurdly trivial-seeming factors influence what people do morally. “For instance,” says Doris, “you may be more likely to get help in the paper-dropping scenario above if ambient noise is at normal levels than if there’s a lawnmower in the background.”
Darley also examined the Catherine (Kitty) Genovese case in which a woman was attacked and brutally murdered on the doorstep of her apartment building in Queens in the mid-1960s. There were more than three-dozen people in the area who witnessed the crime being committed, but no one intervened. One person called the police only after asking a friend what he should do.
“The result of the experimental work inspired by the Genovese case is that there are several psychological mechanisms at work in determining morality in a situation like this,” Doris says. “One common mechanism is called Diffusion of Responsibility where everyone thinks someone else will call the police and ultimately no one does.
“Another mechanism is the Interpretation Effect,” Doris continues. “If we are all watching something happen but we’re not sure what’s going on and you look at me and I appear unconcerned, you then conclude that there’s nothing to be worked up about.”
Another example of this mechanism would be that of a nervous flyer. “When it gets turbulent, he looks around at the people near him,” Doris says. “If he sees them acting unconcerned, he assumes there’s no problem, but if he sees them clutching the armrests, he thinks the worst. We interpret our world socially since we are intensely social organisms.”
‘It’s all variable’
If you want to bet on whether or not your friends will help someone in need, Doris argues, it’s necessary to know the “little proximate” impacts on their mood, such as finding money on the street or the number of other people around at the time.
“Some studies even suggest that if you need change for a dollar you are more likely to get it if you ask in front of a bakery or a coffee shop that smells good instead of asking in front of a smelly tire store, for example,” he says. “The hypothesis is that you get a slight mood bump from the aroma, which makes you more likely to help.”
Of course, other research shows that people in a good mood are less likely to help if it’s an unpleasant activity because it will ruin their mood. “It’s all variable,” Doris says. “The one constant I’ve found is that circumstance and mood can have a direct effect on morality in a given situation.”