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Description
Act-person dissociation posits judgments of the morality of an act can be separated from judgments of the morality of an actor. For example, abuse towards a cheating girlfriend produced greater immorality judgments of the act whereas abuse towards the girlfriend was more indicative of the actor’s low moral character. A third recipient type, the cheating girlfriend’s friend who was unaware of the infidelity, was included to assess the mechanisms at work in producing the observed dissociation. Two mechanisms were investigated. First, blameworthiness of the girlfriend may have shifted actor immorality judgments to be greater for abuse, who itself was not blameworthy. Secondly, infra-humanization literature provided evidence of secondary emotions being attributed to humanistic recipients. To that extent, judgments of the act of abuse towards a human might have been more immoral than judgments of the abuse towards the cat. One hundred, fifty-eight participants were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk were randomly assigned to a 3 (Recipient: Girlfriend vs. Girlfriend’s Friend vs. Cat) X 2 (Judgment: Act vs. Actor) mixed-model design. Participants read a scenario of an actor who finds out his girlfriend had an affair and aggresses against one of three recipient types: the girlfriend, the girlfriend’s friend, or the girlfriend’s cat. Participants rated perceived blame, infra-humanization, and immorality of both the recipient and actor. A 3 (Recipient) X 2 (Judgment) mixed-model ANOVA was conducted on immorality judgments. A significant Recipient X Judgment interaction was hypothesized. Planned comparisons probed the interactions to examine what mechanisms produced the dissociation. In addition, mediated moderation of the act-person dissociation effect on immorality judgments was evaluated for guilt and infra-humanization ratings made of the recipient and actor. We were unable to replicate the original dissociation. No significant effects were found via blameworthiness either. However, infra-humanization proved to be a significant mechanism. Abuse towards the cat was more indicative of the actor’s low moral character compared to abuse directed towards the girlfriend and friend. The act-person dissociation may be incomplete. Inclusions of different recipient types may provide further information to the theory’s viability.
