Moral Thinking vs. Thinking We’re Moral

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong. —Carl Jung

Moral thinking concerns what is right and wrong, good and bad. Feelings associated with moral thinking are approval, interest, enjoyment, righteousness, anger, disgust, and outrage.

Morality is one of those things we demand of others more than ourselves. We tend to judge our own behavior on the bases of utility, effort, or costs, but we judge other people’s behavior on moral grounds. Most people say they want to be moral and most sincerely judge that they are. Consistent moral behavior requires reflective thinking; the autopilot brain is unlikely to monitor the morality of our own behavior, and less likely to recall immoral behaviors. Tenbrunsel, Diekmann, Wade-Benzoni, & Bazerman describe an “ethical mirage” to explain why we’re not as moral as we think we are.

The overestimation of our own morality isn’t predominantly due to hypocrisy, although most try to manage the impressions of others into thinking we’re moral. The overestimation of our own morality emerges from the brain’s predilection to manage anxiety. Useful behaviors that require low effort and costs reduce anxiety. Because unpredictable behavior of others raises anxiety, we try to predict their behavior using moral standards. Test the hypothesis: Observe your impulse to make moral judgments about others when you’re nervous or worried, compared to when you’re calm and feeling well.

To lower anxiety, we need to feel in control of ourselves, though we’re prone to conflate self-control with controlling others. Moral judgments create an illusion of control — we think we can control anxiety by judging other people to be immoral. Imagine how few comments there would be on the Internet if we did not crave illusions of control.

The illusion of control explains the current obsession with personality disorders in blogs and magazines. Those with checklists tempt many to attribute personality disorders to lying spouses, cheating lovers, and despised political figures. They confuse immoral behavior with psychopathology, to the detriment of both moral and psychological understanding. The only thing we know for sure when people diagnose someone else with a personality disorder (in a non-clinical context) is that they don’t like that person.

Dimensions of Morality

Morality has several dimensions. The two that experts agree on are, in the words of Haidt, Joseph, and Graham:

1. Harm/care
2. Fairness/reciprocity

It’s right to care, wrong to harm. For example, anger that harms is bad, and anger that protects is good. Fairness/reciprocity is trickier. Again, managing anxiety and craving the illusion of control make us hypersensitive to other people’s unfairness while barely cognizant of our own.

We’re even more biased in our judgments of reciprocity. In an argument replete with accusations and counter-accusations, both parties are unaware of the social reciprocity of emotions. That is, everything the other says is judged out of context, without regard to the utterance or deed immediately before it. This is true, even in extreme cases of abuse and crime. Most abusers feel like victims, and criminals feel that punishments don’t fit their crimes. The brain is conscious of other people’s reactions but not so much what they’re reacting to, namely, us.

Another dimension of moral thinking that moderates judgments about harm/care and fairness/reciprocity is the differential power of the players. Compare:

• A two-year-old kicking his father to a father kicking a two-year-old.
• Four criminals beating up a fifth criminal to four policemen beating up a suspect.
• A U.S. senator caught cheating on taxes to your neighbor taking the same deductions.

We can argue that abuse of power is subsumed by harm/care and fairness/reciprocity, but the gut emotional reaction — the foundation of moral judgments — makes them distinct.

Getting What You Want — Becoming Moral

Moral behavior requires thoughtful assessment of the effects of behavior on others, which the autopilot brain doesn’t do. If we want to be moral, it behooves us to spend at least a few minutes a day reflecting on the morality of our behavior.

Moral Checklist

Today I will:

Care: I’ll protect, nurture, value, show compassion, kindness, support, or affection.

Avoid harm: I won’t dismiss, devalue, or inflict emotional or physical pain.

Be fair: I’ll consider the perceptions of fairness held by my partner, children, family, friends, coworkers.

Respect reciprocity: I’ll use the reactions of others as mirrors, to ensure that I’m putting out what I want to get back.

When we don’t deliberately think about the morality of our own behavior, we get the relationships, the politics, and the government we deserve.