| Popis: |
The established concept of ‘diffusion of responsibility’ teaches us that when several observers (to a crime) are present, the pressure to intervene does not focus on any one observer, but rather, the responsibility of intervention is shared among all observers (Darley & Latane, 1968). This phenomenon has been extended to the concept of ‘diffusion of punishment’; recent research has shown that third parties also assign less punishment to an individual when she acts as part of a group to commit harm, than to the same individual when she commits the same harm on her own. In this way, punishment for harm violations is spread across individual group members (Keshmirian et al, unpublished). However, harming others is only one type of moral violation. According to moral foundation theory, violations of norms of purity (e.g. sexual taboos, etc.) are distinct from harm, but no less central to human morality (Graham et al., 2011). Therefore, we are interested to study the effect of diffusion of punishment in purity domain. When judging a vignette describing a Purity violation, participants might assign less punishment to an individual committing a Purity violation when they act as part of a group (With Others Condition) compared to when the same individual commits the same harm violation alone (Alone Condition) or participants might assign similar punishment to an individual committing a purity violation when the act as part of a group (With Others Condition) compared to when the same individual commits the same purity violation alone (Alone Condition). |
