{"id":28292,"date":"2019-03-17T09:14:52","date_gmt":"2019-03-17T13:14:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/?p=28292"},"modified":"2019-02-16T18:18:49","modified_gmt":"2019-02-16T23:18:49","slug":"study-looks-at-perceptions-of-good-and-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/2019\/03\/study-looks-at-perceptions-of-good-and-evil\/","title":{"rendered":"Study looks at perceptions of good and evil"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From the Society for Personality and Social Psychology press release:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p id=\"first\" class=\"lead\"><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-20569\" src=\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Decisionmaking.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Decisionmaking.jpg 250w, https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Decisionmaking-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/>Good<\/strong> and <strong>evil<\/strong> may spring from the human mind, but new research reveals how they <strong>extend beyond humans to the artificial and supernatural<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<div id=\"text\">\n<p><strong>Good Ghosts on the Mountains, Evil Spirits in the Caves<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Gray shows how good and evil lead to immortality, and what that means for the afterlife. Pulling from their research &#8220;To Be Immortal, Do Good or Evil,&#8221; Gray will discuss why people believe evil spirits reside in places like caves and good spirits are visualized as being in places like mountains.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<strong>People especially see the minds of good and evil people as continuing to exist<\/strong> &#8212; that&#8217;s why there&#8217;s a heaven and hell but no place where great bowlers go,&#8221; says Gray.<\/p>\n<p>Gray will also discuss <strong>how people&#8217;s perceptions of good and evil in the afterlife influence their perceptions of paranormal events<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Moral Governments<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>How does good and evil play out for a government? Based on five studies, <strong>governments are rated as more moral than nonprofit organizations, corporations, or individuals after a moral transgression<\/strong>, according to research being presented by Rebeca Harpster (University of Texas of the Permian Basin).<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Governments have more &#8216;moral credentials&#8217; in people&#8217;s minds than organizations or corporations, and this comes from a perception of shared values,&#8221; says Harpster.<\/p>\n<p>In the studies, Americans rated the ethicality of behaviors, as well as rated positive motives and shared values across several scenarios. One scenario involved the funding a terrorist group. In a stable government situation, people were more willing to overlook a moral transgression by their government than they did for corporations or nonprofits.<\/p>\n<p>The effect may not hold if replicated with participants who do not feel that their government share their important core values, notes Harpster.<\/p>\n<p>She hopes to focus additional research on real world scenarios and possibly look at differences within unstable governments.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mindless Machines<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Recapping their recent study on machines making moral decisions, Bigman says <strong>people have an issue with machines decision making is the &#8220;perceived lack of mind&#8221; in a machine<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>From self-driving cars to automated delivery robots, the devices offer convenience and the potential increased safety. However, people don&#8217;t think it is OK for machines to make life and death decisions will affect humans, such as cases when an automated vehicle kills a person or is involved in an accident.<\/p>\n<p>Bigman notes these concerns may limit what jobs machines can take over or do in the future, and should be considered by those making polices and decisions.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<strong>People are ok with machines making a decision when the machine is better than people at it<\/strong>, so there&#8217;s room for growth,&#8221; says Bigman.<\/p>\n<p>Bigman&#8217;s future research may look at understanding why people hold the machines, rather than the programmers, responsible for harm caused by machines.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the Society for Personality and Social Psychology press release: Good and evil may spring from the human mind, but new research reveals how they extend beyond humans to the&#8230; <a class=\"read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/2019\/03\/study-looks-at-perceptions-of-good-and-evil\/\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[363,12],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28292"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28292"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28355,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28292\/revisions\/28355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}