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The Effects of Synchrony on Group Moral Hypocrisy.

ABSTRACT: Humans have evolved various social behaviors such as interpersonal motor synchrony (i.e., matching movements in time), play and sport or religious ritual that bolster group cohesion and facilitate cooperation. While important for small communities, the face-to-face nature of such technologies makes them infeasible in large-scale societies where risky cooperation between anonymous individuals must be enforced through moral judgment and, ultimately, altruistic punishment. However, the unbiased applicability of group norms is often jeopardized by moral hypocrisy, i.e., the application of moral norms in favor of closer subgroup members such as key socioeconomic partners and kin. We investigated whether social behaviors that facilitate close ties between people also promote moral hypocrisy that may hamper large-scale group functioning. We recruited 129 student subjects that either interacted with a confederate in the high synchrony or low synchrony conditions or performed movements alone. Subsequently, participants judged a moral transgression committed by the confederate toward another anonymous student. The results showed that highly synchronized participants judged the confederate's transgression less harshly than the participants in the other two conditions and that this effect was mediated by the perception of group unity with the confederate. We argue that for synchrony to amplify group identity in large-scale societies, it needs to be properly integrated with morally compelling group symbols that accentuate the group's overarching identity (such as in religious worship or military parade). Without such contextualization, synchrony may create bonded subgroups that amplify local preferences rather than impartial and wide application of moral norms.

SUBMITTER: Chvaja R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7773719 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The Effects of Synchrony on Group Moral Hypocrisy.

Chvaja Radim R Kundt Radek R Lang Martin M

Frontiers in psychology 20201217

Humans have evolved various social behaviors such as interpersonal motor synchrony (i.e., matching movements in time), play and sport or religious ritual that bolster group cohesion and facilitate cooperation. While important for small communities, the face-to-face nature of such technologies makes them infeasible in large-scale societies where risky cooperation between anonymous individuals must be enforced through moral judgment and, ultimately, altruistic punishment. However, the unbiased app ...[more]

PMID: 33391067

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Project description:Our research brings to light features of the social world that impact moral judgments and how they do so. The moral vignette data presented were collected in rural and urban Croatian communities that were involved to varying degrees in the Croatian Homeland War. We argue that rapid shifts in moral accommodations during periods of violent social strife can be explained by considering the role that coordination and social agents' ability to reconfigure their social network (i.e., relational mobility) play in moral reasoning. Social agents coordinate on (moral) norms, a general attitude which broadly facilitates cooperation, and makes possible the collective enforcement of compliance. During social strife interested parties recalibrate their determination of others' moral standing and recast their established moral circle, in accordance with their new or prevailing social investments. To that extent, social coordination-and its particular promoters, inhibitors, and determinants-effects significant changes in individuals' ranking of moral priorities. Results indicate that rural participants evaluate the harmful actions of third parties more harshly than urban participants. Coordination mediates that relationship between social environment and moral judgment. Coordination also matters more for the moral evaluation of the harmful actions of moral scenarios involving characters belonging to different social units than for scenarios involving characters belonging to the same group. Participants high in relational mobility-that ability to recompose one's social network-moralize similarly wrongdoings perpetrated by both in- and out-group members. Those low in relational mobility differentiate when an out-group member causes the harm. Additionally, perceptions of third-party guilt are also affected by specifics of the social environment. Overall, we find that social coordination and relational mobility affect moral reasoning more so than ethnic commitment.

Project description:Group walking is a collective social interaction task as pedestrians are required to determine their own pace of walking on the basis of surrounding others' states. The steady beat sound is known to be a controllable factor that contributes to relative success/failure of coordinated group walking since the beat improves pedestrian flow in congested situation. According to some reports, inter-personal interaction synchronizes inter-personal brain activity in the prefrontal region, which supports social cognitive processes required for successful inter-individual coordination, such as predicting each other's state; success/failure of a coordinated task is associated with increase/decrease in inter-subject neural synchrony (INS). Combining these previous findings, we hypothesized that INS during group walking in congested situations would also differ depending on the existence of the steady beat, corresponding to the modulated coordination-related cognitive processes. Subjects' frontopolar activities were measured using ultra-small near infrared spectroscopy, which can simultaneously measure the brain activities of multiple subjects without constraints on their motions. To exclude the possibility that increased INS may be spuriously induced by the shared stimuli (i.e., steady beat) or by the resultant behavioral synchronization, as control we used stepping on a same spot, which is similar in movement to walking but does not require the subjects to consider others' states, either with or without the steady beat. In a two by two repeated measures factorial experimental design, the subjects were instructed to walk or keep stepping on a same spot with or without a steady beat sound of 70 beats per minute. As previously reported, the walking flow during group walking with the beat significantly increased compared with that without the beat. Synchronization of stepping between the subjects was also significantly increased by the steady beat sound. For INS, we observed a significant interaction effect between walking/stepping and sound/no-sound, supporting our hypothesis. INS while walking with the beat was higher than that without the beat, whereas the beat induced no significant differences in INS during stepping. Furthermore, the effect of the beat on INS while walking was spatially extended beyond the adjacent pedestrians, reflecting the diffuse nature of the collective coordination in group walking. The increase of INS for walking suggested that the steady beat sound led to more harmonized inter-personal cognitive processes, which resulted in the more coordinated group motion.

Project description:BackgroundEthical decision‑making and behavior of nurses are major factors that can affect the quality of nursing care. Moral development of nurses to making better ethical decision-making is an essential element for managing the care process. The main aim of this study was to examine and comparison the effect of training in ethical decision-making through lectures and group discussions on nurses' moral reasoning, moral distress and moral sensitivity.MethodsIn this randomized clinical trial study with a pre- and post-test design, 66 nurses with moral reasoning scores lower than the average of the community were randomly assigned into three equal groups (n = 22) including two experimental groups and one control group. Ethical decision-making training to experimental groups was provided through the lectures and group discussions. While, the control group did not receive any training. Data were collected using sociodemographic questionnaire, the nursing dilemma test (NDT), the moral distress scale (MDS) and the moral sensitivity questionnaire (MSQ). Unadjusted and adjusted binary logistic regression analysis was reported using the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals.ResultsAdjusted regression analysis showed that the probability of increasing the nursing principle thinking (NPT) score through discussion training was significantly higher than lecture (OR: 13.078, 95% CI: 3.238-15.954, P = 0.008), as well as lecture (OR: 14.329, 95% CI: 16.171-2.005, P < 0.001) and discussion groups compared to the control group (OR: 18.01, 95% CI: 22.15-5.834, P < 0.001). The possibility of increasing moral sensitivity score through discussion training was significantly higher than lecture (OR: 10.874, 95%CI: 6.043-12.886, P = 0.005) and control group (OR: 13.077, 95%CI: 8.454-16.774, P = 0.002). Moreover, the moral distress score was significantly reduced only in the trained group compared to the control, and no significant difference was observed between the experimental groups; lecture group vs. control group (OR: 0.105, 95% CI: 0.015-0.717, P = 0.021) and discussion group vs. control group (OR: 0.089, 95% CI: 0.015-0.547, P = 0.009).ConclusionsThe results of this study indicate that ethical decision-making training is effective on empowerment of ethical reasoning. Whereas the group discussion was also effective on increasing the ethical sensitivity, it is recommended the training plan provided in this study to be held as workshop for all nurses in health and treatment centers and placed in curricular plan of nursing students.RegistrationThis randomized clinical trial was registered in Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials under code (IRCT2015122116163N5) in 02/07/2016.

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The Effects of Synchrony on Group Moral Hypocrisy.

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The Effects of Synchrony on Group Moral Hypocrisy.

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