Comments on: Distraction Overcomes Moral Hypocrisy

By: Alan Crowe

Alan Crowe — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:39:00 +0000

The neutral observers are not neutral. They are trying to manipulate the questioner into behaving “fairly”.

By: crf

crf — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:33:35 +0000

Perhaps at least some of the people being experimented on were not initially thinking it through whether they were being fair or unfair, rational or unrational, but rather had a thought upmost in their minds when deciding which task to do: “why didn’t the experimenter make the choice for me?” Irritation with the experimenter may make people feel defensive and selfish. Even if they thought it unfair that had to make the choice of what task to do, they can still evaluate whether their choice was fairest, (at least in retrospect) and sometimes tell the truth about that self-evaluation.

Also, do people, at the time they are making a choice, know that if they choose the easy task are acting unfairly towards later arrivals, or is this a judgement they can make only in retrospect? In the real world, people learn from their moral choices, and may consciously act differently when a similar situation presents itself.

By: Psy-Kosh

Psy-Kosh — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 19:18:49 +0000

Anyone looked at the actual study more closely? More to the point, anyone have any idea if one can use this effect on themselves to help debias?

ie, if I suspect I may be rationalizing something, and I’m having trouble directly driving right through my biases, would trying to distract myself be a useful technique for improving my judgement?

By: Vladimir Nesov

Vladimir Nesov — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:05:16 +0000

There is an advantage in appearing better than you are and even in believing that you are better than you are. In some cases, it translates as overconfidence, in others as subconscious hypocrisy. The trick is that “better” in appearance and belief refers not to what is good for you, but to what is good for those who observe your behavior. Thus, you deceive yourself into thinking that you are more helpful to others (or your “tribe”) than you really are. If you are generally helping people, you think that you are helping them more than you do, and if you secretly steal their resources, you think that you hurt them less than you do. Biases are divergences of reasoning from facts, but they are usually expressed in the behavior, which is not just about facts but also goals. Distortion of the reasoning process with another task makes boasting adaptation less able to influence people’s decisions.

I expect that if people who receive a harder task as a result of actions of our participants were presented as from “another tribe” or “enemies”, the bias would disappear. In fact, a slightly opposite bias may appear.

By: Shane Legg

Shane Legg — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:02:56 +0000

But did they remember to invert the results for mathematicians?

By: michael vassar

michael vassar — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:29:11 +0000

My thought is that traditional morality always assumes an action is forbidden in the hypothetical, but frequently engages in whatever serves personal interests, justifying it in situational terms.

By: Nanani

Nanani — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 06:07:05 +0000

What is the moral weight of taking the activity you prefer vs taking the easy one?
Personally, I think I’d vastly prefer a mental geometry exercise to a hunt through pictures, so would it be fair of me to claim my prefered activity for myself? Perhaps it is moral to sacrifice my prefered activity, but without knowing the other party’s preference this is likely to be useless self-flagellation.
What about the fairness of the “first come first served” rule of thumb? Is it immoral to punish latecomers?

There is probably a lot more entering the subject’s judgement, on various levels, than simply making themselves appear fair.

By: Douglas Knight

Douglas Knight — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 05:55:37 +0000

It seems to me that the natural follow-up question is: can you extract both system 1 & system 2 answers, or do you memoize which ever comes out first? System 1 probably relies on memoizing more than system 2, so going to 2 first probably won’t work, but if they asked the subjects again, after letting them flush the list, would they stick with the claim of unfairness?

By: Eliezer Yudkowsky

Eliezer Yudkowsky — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 02:09:39 +0000

BTW, this is easily the most fascinating bias I’ve heard about this whole month.

Er, make that, “over the last 30 days”.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:08:35 +0000

Jadagul and Michael Vassar raise a very interesting point. Our intuitions about fairness as a virtue are typically justified from a consequentialist perspective, but this seems to be a case where the “unfair”, self-interested action was not inherently unethical. However this is a very contrived argument, and disregarding intuitive moral rules is nevertheless problematic.

My hunch is that Eliezer is right and this result will hold up even if replicated in a less ambiguous situation.