Let's imagine the following scene: you were in a shop and wished you had more money this month because you wanted to buy many necessities for your new home, and while you were shopping, two cars collided with each other on the outside street, so market employees went out to check the safety of the drivers, while you were inside the shop alone And without any surveillance cameras, in addition to an exit to a street other than the one in which the accident occurred, would you take a piece of the store without paying for it or not?
Well, what if the previous question did not concern you? Instead we watched another man in the same situation, do you think he would take a piece without paying for it? These were the questions of a series of studies (1) conducted by a research team at New York University. The study found that
when people are asked about their personal behavior regarding a moral situation, they expect more positive behavior from themselves than what will happen on the ground, that is, people before they are exposed to the situation. The real ones expect that they will do well without cheating or deception, but when they are exposed to the situation, many of them behave differently, and may identify with what they are doing despite their moral transgressions, contrary to what they expect of themselves.
What is also remarkable about these studies is that when people evaluate other people than themselves, their guesses are often closer to what is actually happening. In this regard, the researchers say: It has been found that a person is able to predict the actions of others, more than his ability to predict his own actions. However, what is the explanation for this paradox?
The researchers found that when a person is asked about his personal behavior, he thinks of himself from the inside only, i.e. invoking his moral values and beliefs, but when he is asked about the behavior of others, he invokes the context and background of the individual, from his economic status, social condition and psychological condition, so he can invoke that the other A poor person is in dire need of acquiring these packages of food, but he does not do that when he imagines himself in his place
(we are talking here about the individual's perceptions of himself, not about actions), but rather asks himself: Is it right for me to do this or not? Will my values allow me to do that or not? It is as if he is not under the influence of psychological, economic, or social pressure or the emotions caused by the context of events at that moment.
It is worth mentioning that a
number of Muslim scholars Heed to such a paradox when man imagines himself and imagined others, and tries to expect his behavior and his actions, in his
book "spiritual medicine", says Abu Bakr al -
Razi: "
It 's
for the
love of
every man for himself to
be applauded for good ones above his right, and his despicability of the ugly from her without his right, and his despondency of the ugly and his approval of the good from others - as he was innocent (strip) of his love and hate - to the extent of his right, because his mind at that time is pure and is not tainted by passions
.
So, we think that we are more moral than others, more pure and/or more kind. In fact, one study indicates that even
those in prison believe that they are more moral, better, kinder, and kinder than those innocent civilians outside of prison
(2). One of the most important dangers of feeling moral superiority, or self-conceit and excessive admiration for one's moral level, is that our perception of ourselves that we are good and that we have a wide range of moral practices will be reversed at some point. In one scientific study (3), it was found that people's belief that they are They have done good and moral behavior in the past, which gives them a "moral licensing" to commit moral transgressions in the future.
Examples of this ethical “license” are what some of those who volunteer in charities have, for example, and what they do after making many volunteer efforts, as they happen to allow themselves to take some office and paper equipment from the association without anyone’s permission or knowledge. According to the researchers, what happens to these people is that they see - in one way or another - that their previous moral credit (their free charitable deeds) allow them to take some symbolic and few rewards from time to time (4), since these small transgressions are of no value to charitable and voluntary giving which they previously provided for free (5).
The ethical license has several applications, and they are applications that marketing experts are aware of in increasing their sales. For example, some airlines give passengers the option to add a percentage to the main amount of the price of the flight ticket under the name (compensation for carbon emissions) as a promotional way to confront climate change,
while it enhances the behavior of travelers, who keep on traveling more and more, because they feel as if they have a moral credit that excuses them from any moral embarrassment (as long as they pay a compensatory sum).
Even at the behavioral and daily level,
when people install energy-saving water heaters, they increase the duration of their showers, and those who order with their fast meals a sugar-free soft drink, for example, feel a moral balance, trying to reward themselves for it, by increasing the size of the meal Or its additions of cheese and the like
.
On the social and political level, studies have found that
those who publicly state that they are advocates of equality and equal representation of different races and genders feel more comfortable practicing discriminatory behaviours
, for example, one study found that people who say they are against discriminatory measures on the basis of sex males are more likely to choose jobs that are normally held by males. (6)
It can be said, then, that it has become common in the field of social psychology that people - in general - believe that they are better than others; This is because they rate themselves higher than others on the level of intelligence (I am more intelligent than most people), knowledge, reason, kindness, ambition, and even humility, as one may say to others with pride: “I am more humble than you.” Scientists have come to call people's tendency to rate themselves better than others "self-enhancement."
This same observation, i.e. from the point of view of the idea, preoccupied a number of scholars of acclamation and nurturing hearts in Islamic history. Imam Ibn Ata’ al-Sakandari mentioned in his wisdom a nice meaning about this paradox, which is a person’s feeling and his statement that he is more humble than others, and that this conviction in itself has You are a trap for falling into arrogance and vanity when he said: “Whoever proves humility to himself is truly arrogant, for humility is nothing but elevation, so when you prove humility to yourself, you are arrogant. without what he did."
How do we invest crises to market ourselves?
Among the social phenomena stimulated by social media platforms is a phenomenon that researchers in psychology describe as “moral bragging” (8), which is the exploitation of moral debates in order to market oneself and show off in front of people, and exaggerate the words of others that we are more sympathetic than others with an issue. The observation, according to researchers, Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmick, is that people are not interested in helping the victims around whom the moral debate is taking place. .
What "social bragging" studies have found is that those who engage in arguments more with people for the purpose of moral bragging often score higher on the narcissistic personality scale. There was no relationship between a person's political orientation and moral ostentation, but a relationship was found between moral ostentation and "ideological extremism." People from the far right and far left often engage in moral bragging activities more than others for the purposes of political polarization. It was also found that the morally arrogant - in most cases - are more hostile with others around them when they disagree with them, and therefore they always lose multiple friendships.
Psychology did not hesitate to study the concept of "moral hypocrisy"(9), and moral hypocrisy is the human endeavor to appear morally in front of people, and breach it between himself and himself.
Ethical hypocrisy is also measured as a paradox between an individual repeating his belief in a specific moral value while avoiding any moral burdens or costs arising from the moral value he advocates if possible. Others see it.
In one of the famous experiments (7) in psychology, participants were asked to distribute two tasks between themselves and another person (an unknown person). One of these tasks is desirable;
Because after it is completed, whoever performs it gets tickets to the lottery, and the second task is unpleasant;
Because whoever does it gets nothing.
The participants had three options:
To assign the task they like directly to themselves.
They assign the likable task directly to the other participant.
They use a fair random lottery (such as the flip of a coin) that decides the winner of the favorite task whose owner gets the lottery tickets.
Most of the participants chose to use the fair random lottery even though they had the option of assigning themselves the favorite task, however, in order to appear ethical and unselfish, they wanted to take the coin as a random lottery.
What will happen in the experiment is that the flip of the coin will be done in secret, that is, the participant will do it alone, and then assign the tasks to himself and the other unknown person according to the result of the lottery.
The study found that 90% of the participants, i.e. 9 out of 10, won the lottery to perform the desired task themselves, while the unknown person performed the unlikable task.
This result is statistically superior, as according to the principle of probability, the coin gives a 50% chance of winning the fair task for the participants, and this means that the people, although they wanted to appear ethical when using the lottery, in secret they cheated and deceived and did not adhere to the outcome of the lottery, They recorded for themselves the performance of the beloved task as if it were the result of the coin, even though it was not.
What are the consequences of classifying people instead of understanding them?
The feeling of moral superiority stems from an implicit conviction and a deep sense of completeness and immunity in the human being against moral slips, and this illusory feeling, as mentioned above, may itself be a justification for committing some moral transgressions in the future.
And the feeling of cognitive superiority can push us to take risks even on a financial level, thinking that we can correctly predict upcoming events or the behavior of others, as happens with those who suffer from cognitive lag.
As for the social level, the danger of feeling moral superiority is that it creates a distance between us and others in a destructive way; Because the feeling of superiority deprives us of the ability to negotiate with others or even give them a chance, or find any middle solutions, and all this leads to an uncooperative and narcissistic self. This arrogance also reduces the chances of our endurance of discussion, when we are certain of our positions as optimal and absolute, and this would reduce our endurance to discuss others; Because we believe that the issue is clear and does not need to waste all this time. This means that any discussion with others turns into a factory for their hatred; For we see them as nothing more than polemics, though we refuse to give them a middle point for discussion.
A sense of moral superiority leads us to bias toward intellectual shortcuts to dealing with others, and instead of understanding others, we become more categorizing them on ethical binary lines: they believe in my (good) values, they don't believe in my (bad).
Thus, the gap between us and others increases rather than decreases, which basically contradicts the moral principle that humility is a high moral trait, and that making friends with others, getting close to them, and helping them are among the noblest of behaviors.
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Sources:
Balcetis, E., and Dunning, D. (2011).
Considering the situation: Why people are better social psychologists than self-psychologists.
Sedikides C, Meek R, Alicke MD, Taylor S. Behind bars but above the bar: prisoners consider themselves more prosocial than non-prisoners.
Blanken I, van de Ven N, Zeelenberg M. A Meta-Analytic Review of Moral Licensing.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Jessica Cascio, E. Ashby Plant.
Prospective moral licensing: Does anticipating doing good later allow you to be bad now?
Conway P, Peetz J. When Does Feeling Moral Actually Make You a Better Person?
Conceptual Abstraction Moderates Whether Past Moral Deeds Motivate Consistency or Compensatory Behavior.
Moral licensing: a culture-moderated meta-analysis.
Philipp Simbrunner & Bodo B. Schlegelmilch (2017).
Self-enhancement in moral hypocrisy: Moral superiority and moral identity are about better appearances Dong M, van Prooijen JW, van Lange PAM (2019).
Tosi, J. (2020).
Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk.
Oxford University Press.
Batson, CD, & Thompson, ER (2001).
Why don't moral people act morally?
Motivational considerations.