A new paper by Daniel M. Bartels and David A. Pizarro looks closely at utilitarians and provides an assessment of their personalities. It isn’t particularly flattering.

Here’s the abstract:

Researchers have recently argued that utilitarianism is the appropriate framework by which to evaluate moral judgment, and that individuals who endorse non-utilitarian solutions to moral dilemmas (involving active vs. passive harm) are committing an error. We report a study in which participants responded to a battery of personality assessments and a set of dilemmas that pit utilitarian and non-utilitarian options against each other. Participants who indicated greater endorsement of utilitarian solutions had higher scores on measures of Psychopathy, machiavellianism, and life meaninglessness. These results question the widely-used methods by which lay moral judgments are evaluated, as these approaches lead to the counterintuitive conclusion that those individuals who are least prone to moral errors also possess a set of psychological characteristics that many would consider prototypically immoral.

Here are the highlights:

► Participants high in psychopathy gave more utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas. ► Participants with traits indicative of negative moral character were more utilitarian. ► Researchers should not equate utilitarian responses to dilemmas with optimal morality.

HT: Jake Wobig.

The study began on Sunday, August 17, 1971. But no one knew what, exactly, they were getting into.

Forty years later, the Stanford Prison Experiment remains among the most notable—and notorious—research projects ever carried out at the University. For six days, half the study’s participants endured cruel and dehumanizing abuse at the hands of their peers. At various times, they were taunted, stripped naked, deprived of sleep and forced to use plastic buckets as toilets. Some of them rebelled violently; others became hysterical or withdrew into despair. As the situation descended into chaos, the researchers stood by and watched—until one of their colleagues finally spoke out.

The public’s fascination with the SPE and its implications—the notion, as Zimbardo says, “that these ordinary college students could do such terrible things when caught in that situation” —brought Zimbardo international renown. It also provoked criticism from other researchers, who questioned the ethics of subjecting student volunteers to such extreme emotional trauma. The study had been approved by Stanford’s Human Subjects Research Committee, and Zimbardo says that “neither they nor we could have imagined” that the guards would treat the prisoners so inhumanely.

In 1973, an investigation by the American Psychological Association concluded that the prison study had satisfied the profession’s existing ethical standards. But in subsequent years, those guidelines were revised to prohibit human-subject simulations modeled on the SPE. “No behavioral research that puts people in that kind of setting can ever be done again in America,” Zimbardo says.

Click through to read recent reflections from Zimbardo and some of the other central figures in the SPE; as with just about everything written about the experiment, this is pretty fascinating stuff.

(via givemesomethingtoread)

Over at his blog devoted to studying heroism, my friend Matt Langdon has posted an ungated version of a new paper by Zeno Franco, Kathy Blau, and Phil Zimbardo from the Review of General Psychology.

Langdon, who worked with the authors on data collection for the paper (using an online survey), notes that the authors “attempt to define heroism, separate it from altruism, [and] analyze the public’s perceptions.” The paper is an interesting look at the lay of the land on the topic of heroism; I think it paves the way for a good deal of future work. Indeed, I’ve already cited it in the book project that I’m wrapping up this summer.

Phil Zimbardo is an interesting guy.

He’s undoubtedly best known for the Stanford prison experiment, which taught us a harsh lesson about our internal darkness, but his current research focuses on quite the opposite: teaching heroism.

Zimbardo and I have a mutual friend, Matt Langdon, who is also hard at work on the project of building heroes with his Hero Construction Company. Thanks to Langdon, I learned that Zimbardo is planning a book project on heroism. I’ll be interested to see what he writes, even though I’m hoping to have my own book out the door relatively soon. Indeed, my sense is that his project would likely provide grist for the book I have in mind to follow the one I’m wrapping up now. That one is likely to combine political theory with psychology, ZImbardo’s strong suit, and so I’m hopeful that he’ll have his book out within the next few years so that I can cite his findings.

In the meantime, this short piece by Jonah Lehrer (HT: Bizhan Faripour) might provide some insight into where Zimbardo is headed. It describes his Heroic Imagination Project, which focuses on putting “decades of experimental research to use in training the next generation of exemplary Americans.”

On the whole, I’m very sympathetic to Zimbardo’s plan:

After being “fortified against the dark side,” the student heroes are trained to be more empathetic. Most of these lessons revolve around perception, on becoming more attentive to the feelings of others. The students learn how to interpret micro-facial expressions—a fake smile looks different than a real smile—and practice listening to their classmates. Another important lesson revolves around the fundamental attribution error, a prevalent psychological bias in which people neglect the influence of context on behavior. “One of the main reasons we don’t help others is because we assume they deserve what happened to them, that they must have done something wrong,” Mr. Zimbardo says. “But most of the time it’s just the situation playing itself out. We teach people how not to blame the victim.”

The next phase of instruction has a grandiose title: “Internalizing the Heroic Imagination.” The students begin studying the behavior of other heroes, past and present. They look at Harry Potter and Abraham Lincoln, Achilles and Martin Luther King. (Mr. Zimbardo is trying to create a “Heropedia,” so that people can search a vast database to find heroes in their neighborhood or age group.) Because human behavior is profoundly shaped by those around us—we are all natural “peer modelers”—the project attempts to give students a more heroic set of peers. “Just look at the Milgram experiment,” Mr. Zimbardo says. “Everybody uses that as an example of how bad people are. But the actual data aren’t so depressing. If subjects watched someone else refuse to issue shocks, then they almost always refused, too. The hero created another hero.”

I say that I’m sympathetic because a lot of what he says here lines up with arguments that I want to make about heroic behavior, especially with regard to the importance of both the extension of empathy and of having heroism modeled for us. I think there are a few other important pieces of the puzzle too … but perhaps I’d best save those for the book project!

At bottom, though, I think that no one is born to do heroic things; instead, people are set up by education and experiences to act heroically when necessary. And so I’m grateful that educators like Langdon and Zimbardo are working with young people in ways that encourage them to take action on behalf of others. That, after all, is what really defines moral heroism.

And yet, having said all of that, perhaps I should end up with a question that I routinely ask my students and that might also give me some insight into the way in which all of my work on heroism is likely to be received:

Can heroism actually be taught? Or is this sort of thing ultimately outside the bounds of education, relying instead on something innate in some — but not all — of us?

People interested in evolutionary psychology have been wondering for quite some time what went on in Marc Hauser’s lab since there was clearly some sort of problem that has resulted in an investigation and a leave of absence for Hauser.

This article from The Chronicle provides some insight and things don’t look good.

Basically, it seems to be a sordid tale of monkeys, graduate students, and academic dishonesty.

To wit:

As word of the problem with the experiment spread, several other lab members revealed they had had similar run-ins with Mr. Hauser, the former research assistant says. This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. There was, several researchers in the lab believed, a pattern in which Mr. Hauser reported false data and then insisted that it be used.

They brought their evidence to the university’s ombudsman and, later, to the dean’s office. This set in motion an investigation that would lead to Mr. Hauser’s lab being raided by the university in the fall of 2007 to collect evidence. It wasn’t until this year, however, that the investigation was completed. It found problems with at least three papers. Because Mr. Hauser has received federal grant money, the report has most likely been turned over to the Office of Research Integrity at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.