Surveillance cues enhance moral condemnation

Pierrick Bourrat*, Nicolas Baumard, Ryan McKay

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

49 Citations (Scopus)
47 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Humans pay close attention to the reputational consequences of their actions. Recent experiments indicate that even very subtle cues that one is being observed can affect cooperative behaviors. Expressing our opinions about the morality of certain acts is a key means of advertising our cooperative dispositions. Here, we investigated how subtle cues of being watched would affect moral judgments. We predicted that participants exposed to such cues would affirm their endorsement of prevailing moral norms by expressing greater disapproval of moral transgressions. Participants read brief accounts of two moral violations and rated the moral acceptability of each violation. Violations were more strongly condemned in a condition where participants were exposed to surveillance cues (an image of eyes interposed between the description of the violation and the associated rating scale) than in a control condition (in which the interposed image was of flowers). We discuss the role that public declarations play in the interpersonal evaluation of cooperative dispositions.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)193-199
Number of pages7
JournalEvolutionary Psychology
Volume9
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2011
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.

Keywords

  • reputation monitoring
  • surveillance cues
  • cooperation
  • moral judgments
  • signaling theory
  • COOPERATION
  • PUNISHMENT
  • WORLD

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