We have all had those deep, dark moments when we secretly wished misfortune upon an acquaintance, a neighbor, a co-worker. (“Wouldn’t it be great if So-and-So got hit by a bus?”) Fortunately for us, evil thought by itself is not a crime (i.e., in the absence of a some sort of action). But what if you wish harm on someone and actually place a bet that the harm will occur? Moreover, what if you place that bet and, lo and behold, So-and-So does get hit by a bus? You did not cause him to get hit by the bus, but you did benefit from the outcome. Does that change anything about your level of culpability?
Logically, it shouldn’t. As long as you have zero influence over the likelihood of a bus hitting So-and-So, what difference does it make if you happen to benefit from it? But recent research by Yoel Inbar of the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands and colleagues suggests that people generally do consider someone who benefits from desired misfortune to be morally culpable. Here is how they tested this idea.
In one study, Inbar and colleagues created a scenario that was analogous to the phenomenon in finance known as “short selling”. Short selling involves making a bet that a company will lose money. Thus, although you have no effect on whether that company gains or loses, you gain if it loses. Participants in the study were assigned to one of two conditions. In the “harm” condition, they read about a money manager who decided to invest in “catastrophe bonds." Catastrophe bonds were described as “worth little unless a severe earthquake strikes a certain third world country in the next two years.” Then participants were then told that, “sure enough, an earthquake strikes causing great devastation, and the bonds become very valuable.” Participants in the “no harm condition” read that the money manager invested in bonds that gained value only if a certain third world country was not struck by an earthquake in the next two years. They were then told that, sure enough, there was no earthquake. All participants were asked to rate how morally wrong the money manager’s actions were.
The researchers found that the money manager who benefitted from the earthquake was judged significantly more blameworthy than the money manager who benefitted from the absence of an earthquake. Remember, this is despite the fact that the money manager could not possibly “intend” or “cause” the earthquake to happen. He merely hoped it would happen because it would increase profits. Subsequent studies demonstrated that this effect could not be explained by people’s belief that somehow the manager magically caused the earthquake. Moreover, participants’ judgments of the blameworthiness of the act were statistically independent of how evil of a person they judged the money manager to be.
So it really seems that people have an aversion to someone who benefits from misfortune. What’s behind this effect? Although more research is needed, several possibilities come to mind. One is that, in people’s minds, evil desires typically precede evil acts. These associations between desire, act, and outcome are so strong that if the actor performs any sort of action, even an ineffectual action, he is seen to deserve blame. In other words, when people see "desire + act + outcome," that’s enough for them; the fact that the act had no effect on the outcome is an extra step that people don’t generally take into consideration.
Inbar and colleagues further suggest that the effect is also partially driven by the fact that, when people make moral judgments, they ask themselves “What kind of person would have such thoughts?” If the answer is “an evil person”, then the actor is judged more harshly. [I discussed research on this idea in a previous post on June 23, 2011.]
All this may help to explain why the general public is queasy about the practice of short selling. More generally, this research causes us to think about what exactly are the necessary and sufficient ingredients that make an action seem morally wrong? And what sorts of cues might temporarily cause people to place greater weight on some ingredients over others? In a future post, I’ll talk about some research my colleagues and I have done that begins to address these questions.
Reference:
Inbar, Y., Pizarro, D.A., & Cushman, F. (2012). Benefitting from misfortune: When harmless actions are judged to be morally blameworthy. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 52-62.