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Your Moral Compass Is Reversible

Posted by Soulskill on from the i-must-have-had-a-good-reason dept.

scibri writes "Your moral positions may be more flexible than you think. Researchers in Sweden have tricked people into reversing their opinions on moral issues, even to the point of constructing good arguments to support the opposite of their original positions (paper in PLOS ONE). They used a 'magic trick' to reverse a person's responses to such moral issues as 'Large-scale governmental surveillance of e-mail and Internet traffic ought to be forbidden as a means to combat international crime and terrorism,' by switching 'forbidden' to 'permitted' when the subject turned the page of the questionaire. When asked to read back the questions and answers, about half of the subjects did not detect the changes, and a full 53% of participants argued unequivocally for the opposite of their original attitude in at least one of the manipulated statements."

3 of 295 comments (clear)

  1. Re:reading comprehension? by craigminah · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Didn't Looney Tunes teach this exact thing 60 years ago:

    Daffy Duck to Elmer Fudd: "It's rabbit season!"
    Buggs Bunny to Elmer Fudd: "It's duck season!"
    Daffy Duck to Elmer Fudd: "It's rabbit season!"
    Buggs Bunny to Elmer Fudd: "It's rabbit season!"
    Daffy Duck to Elmer Fudd: "It's duck season, now blast the duck!"
    Elmer Fudd: [boom, duck bill on top of Daffy Duck's head]

  2. Re:reading comprehension? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think most peoples' moral compass....points in the direction that will be most beneficial to them at the given moment they are called upon to utilize it.

    You know, the longer I live, the more I find the opposite.

    I'm a pretty small sample, of course, and maybe I'm just lucky in how I've run into so many people who are not only decent, but willing to sacrifice for someone else.

    There is still something in us, independent of any religious belief or lack thereof, that makes us hurt when we see someone else hurt, and makes us want to give someone our coat, or a portion of our food. And this despite by the best efforts of our corporatized culture to desensitize us to the suffering of others and our place in our communities. See, selfishness is good for business in a consumer economy. Sharing is bad for business. If my neighbor asks me to borrow $50 until payday, it's bad for the credit card business, because I'm not going to ask my neighbor for $50 plus 23%.

    I guess this all means I'm hopeful.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  3. Re:reading comprehension? by Evtim · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is no cynicism. There are two types of people in the world - realists and deluded. The deluded are the happy ones. Because they really hate the other type's attitude as they don't want to see their delusions gone, the have invented many terms to substitute "realism" and smear the issue. Some of those terms are "pessimist" and "cynic". There you go....

    Don't believe me? There was a /. discussion over scientific investigation showing that "depressed" people have more accurate perception of reality. Moral: of you want to be happy, hold delusions.... that explains a lot about the human condition don't you think?