Self-Distance Mitigates the Effect of Close Relationships on Moral Reasoning.

Abstract

What factors determine how people decide whether a behavior is right or wrong, good or bad, moral or immoral? Over the past decade-and-a-half, moral psychologists have increasingly identified various psychosocial processes that help answer this question. However, virtually all of this research involves asking people to reason about the behavior of unrelated strangers. Although informative, this approach runs the risk of failing to account for the influence that interpersonal relationships have on judgment and decision-making. Over the course of four experiments, the current research extends relationship science into the moral domain by examining how relational distance (i.e., psychological closeness to the person one is reasoning about) and self-distance (i.e., psychological closeness to one’s self) influence moral reasoning. I hypothesized that as either type of distance increases, relationally partial (e.g., loyal) decisions would decrease and morally impartial (e.g., honest) decisions would increase. The findings from the four experiments supported this prediction. Specifically, I found that close relational construals negatively influenced honesty and that this effect was mitigated by the activation of abstract-ethical construals through self-distancing. This research integrates three generative streams of research: morality, close relationships and self-control, to demonstrate both the flexibility and regulation of intrarelational moral reasoning.