John M. Darley, PhD - US grants

The self-fulfilling prophecy is one of the most important theoretical notions to have arisen in social psychology. The idea that one individual, entrapped in the expectations and stereotypes of others, can somehow be caused to fulfill those expectations, holds out the promise of understanding many important social phenomena, ranging from the ways in which negatively stereotyped children are left behind in the educational process, to the ways in which those who have sought treatment for mental illness are labelled by others and treated in a fashion that can sustain or increase their difficulties. Despite the clear social importance of the self-fulfilling prophecy, there has been little theory developed to predict the conditions under which the effect will take place, or to specify how the effect can be avoided. Darley and Hilton outline a general model of social interaction and perception which emphasizes the goal-directed nature of these endeavors. Based upon this model, these researchers derive specific predictions about both the occurrence and non-occurrence of self-fulfilling prophecy effects and will conduct a series of experiments which test these predictions. If these predictions are confirmed, then two purposes will have been fulfilled. First, there will be evidence for the validity of a view of social interaction and perception in which the strategies and goals of the participants are accorded central importance. Second, there will be a good deal of evidence about the workings of the self-fulfilling prophecy. More specifically, there will be some confirmation for a theory that specifies not just that self-fulfilling prophecies exist, but begins to delimit the conditions under which these prophecy effects occur. At the level of policy, this should mean that we can go beyond deploring the existence of self-fulfilling prophecies and "cautioning against" their occurrence, to make some specific recommendations about how their pernicious effects can be avoided or even reversed.

9508727 A conference on "Attribution Processes and Person Perception" will be held at Princeton University on March 23-25, 1995. The purpose of the conference is to bring together experts in the fields of person perception and attribution theory to discuss the emergence of new perspectives on problems that owe their origin or direction to the work of Edward E. Jones who, with his students and colleagues, helped to forge and develop these areas of inquiry, which have been central to the field of Social Psychology for the last thirty years. The conference goals will be achieved through a series of eight paper sessions. Each session will include presentation of a theory and empirical paper by a current, major figure in the field followed by two knowledgable discussants, who will react to the focal paper, as well as interactions with the audience. In addition, invited addresses by senior scientists will discuss the overall themes of social psychology and the influence that Ned Jones had on those themes before his untimely death in August, 1993.

Classic understandings outline four general motivations to punish: general deterrence of potential wrongdoers, specific deterrence of individual wrongdoers (usually via incapacitation), rehabilitation, and retribution. Recently, empirical psychologists have ascertained that people are mostly motivated by retribution when assigning punishments for criminal wrongdoing. Interestingly, the benefits of retribution are the least obvious of the four outlined motivations. Deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation, if successful, provide the punisher peace of mind by reducing future wrongdoing. Why should people be willing to expend the costs of punishment simply to exact retribution for past wrongs? What does it provide the avenger? This study tests the value that individuals and communities receive from exercising their retributive impulses against criminal wrongdoers. The researchers hypothesize that retribution cures the complex symbolic wounds that wrongdoers inflict on their victims and society. Specifically, being the victim of wrongdoing suggests to the victim that she, and the group of which she is a member, is lower in social status and worth than she had previously thought, because the offender felt entitled to harm her, and because her community did not expend the resources necessary to protect her. By expending resources to catch and punish the offender, the community is refuting that message, and implicitly arguing that in fact she is not deserving of the mistreatment she received. This study tests these propositions by exposing participants to various conditions in which they witness or experience intentional wrongdoing, and in which the wrongdoer is either punished or not. If our hypotheses are correct, then participants should view victims of unpunished crime as lower in worth and social status than they were before the victimization, and victims of punished crime as higher than they were before the punishment. This study illuminates two important social problems. The first concerns imprisonment, which is almost universally acknowledged as expensive, and damaging to inmates, their families, and, sometimes, entire communities. Yet when policy makers suggest alternative punishment regimes that would reduce these problems (like fines, community service, or in-home electronic monitoring), these proposals frequently fail, either by not being adopted of, if adopted, unevenly implemented. The researchers argue that this is so because they do not satisfy the retributive impulse. However, this is not inevitable. If a sanction could be designed that did deliver retribution (such as shaming penalties, or fines coupled with a shorter prison sentence), then society could benefit from the undisputed advantages of punishing their offenders retributively, without incarcerating them for long periods. The second concerns residents of inner city communities. Our thinking suggests there is a strong link between the very high rates of criminal victimization in these communities, and the sense of devaluation by and alienation from the larger society that these residents experience. If policies could be designed that address crime in a way that addresses these complex symbolic consequences of victimization, steps could be taken toward relieving some of the resentment, alienation and sense of helplessness felt by inner city residents.

Drs. Cohen, Darley, and Greene's research funded by NSF on neuroscientific moral psychology was inspired by a puzzling set of moral dilemmas posed by philosophers. Consider the following case: A runaway trolley is headed for five people who will be killed if it proceeds on its present course. The only way to save them is to flip a switch that will turn the trolley onto an alternate set of tracks where it will kill one person instead of five. Ought you to turn the trolley in order to save five people at the expense of one? Most people say yes. Now consider a similar dilemma: As before, a trolley threatens to kill five people. You are standing next to a large stranger on a footbridge spanning the tracks, in between the oncoming trolley and the five people. This time, the only way to save the five people is to push this stranger off the bridge and onto the tracks below. He will die if you do this, but his body will stop the trolley from reaching the others. Ought you to save the five others by pushing this stranger to his death? Most people say no. For over twenty years, moral philosophers have been puzzling over cases such as these, wondering what makes it acceptable to sacrifice lives in some cases but not others. In their research, Drs. Cohen, Darley, and Greene attack these problems from the point of view of social psychology and cognitive neuroscience: What goes on in people's brains that makes them say "yes" to the first case and "no" to the second case? Existing theories of moral psychology suggest strikingly different answers to this question. According to the rationalist tradition in moral psychology, moral judgments are caused by episodes of reasoning and reflection. More specifically, a rationalist would say that people arrive at different answers in these two cases by applying abstract moral principles that explain why these cases are importantly different. A more recent trend in moral psychology places increased emphasis on emotion. According to an emotivist model, differences in emotional response are to explain people's divergent answers in these two cases. Drs. Cohen, Darley, and Greene believe that rationalists and emotivists are both partly correct. Their NSF-supported research is aimed at understanding how emotional and "cognitive" processes interact to produce moral judgments. Their research uses both traditional methods such as questionnaires and measurements of reaction time in conjunction with cutting-edge neuroimaging techniques that allow them to see what is going on in people's brains while they make moral decisions.

This research has natural connections to matters of both private and public concern. First, understanding the psychological and biological bases of human morality is of fundamental humanistic importance. Like research concerning the origins of life on Earth or the large-scale structure of the universe, this research addresses questions that are of intrinsic interest to people around the world. Our capacity for moral judgment is central to our humanity, and yet it is not well understood by science at this time. This research is an important step toward remedying this ignorance. Second, moral judgment is of immense practical importance. Many of the great public debates of our time such as those concerning abortion, stem cell research, the limits of justifiable war, the appropriate response to terrorism, etc. exist because different people have different intuitions about these and other matters of right and wrong. To make progress on these issues it may be useful, if not essential, to understand the psychology and underlying biology that produces moral judgments, and different moral judgments in different people. One of the goals of this research is to study culturally-based differences in moral judgment, which has the additional benefit of ensuring the participation of groups who are underrepresented in American science. This research will also explore differences in moral judgment based on gender and individual temperament. At the same time, however, this research is aimed at understanding that which is universal in human moral judgment.