Just Thinking About Science Triggers Moral Behavior 347
ananyo writes "The association between science and morality is so ingrained that merely thinking about it can trigger more moral behavior, according to a study by researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara. The researchers hypothesized that there is a deep-seated perception of science as a moral pursuit — its emphasis on truth-seeking, impartiality and rationality privileges collective well-being above all else. The researchers conducted four separate studies to test this. In the first, participants read a vignette of a date-rape and were asked to rate the 'wrongness' of the offense before answering a questionnaire measuring their belief in science. Those reporting greater belief in science condemned the act more harshly. In the other three, participants primed with science-related words were more altruistic."
Re:Political correlation (Score:3, Interesting)
In my scientific mind, I believe that most of the "harm" done by rape is just people being pissy little coddlefish. We stand up a whole horrific narrative about rape, burn it into everyone's mind, and then wonder why it's so damaging when someone gets raped. People who don't buy into it see it as an experience to be survived or escaped, and have no abnormal psychological trauma. Many people develop more psychological trauma after being raped due to the whole "group support" thing, feeling like they're not feeling hurt enough because everyone's telling them their experience was so terrible--they begin to believe it more strongly, it becomes worse.
In other words: society's complete demonization of sexual crimes (not just violence, but child molestation) creates most of the pain and suffering from these crimes. Society should instead treat these as crimes, determine that they don't fit in with the so-called rights they feel people have (that is, those guarantees which people require in order to feel secure in society--impossible to guarantee, but supported by enforcement via physical force), and handle them as such. Stop telling victims that they are now damaged, and instead tell them to build a bridge and get the fuck over it and that the criminal perpetrator is the one who bears blame and is defective.
Second, people believe in a just world. This is required for normal human psychology--people believe in a just world because it's required for them to rationalize the world's problems away. Bad things don't happen to good people; bad things happen, but good people get a break and will come out better in the end. Otherwise life is despair. The truth is bad people only need to get away with it and their lives are a hell of a lot better than moral, upstanding folks'. In fact, if you want to make the world a better place to support you, you should be a cutthroat morally bankrupt robber baron until you're rich enough to effect positive change on the communities around you, which achieves both at once.
Science also tells us that women are not men; but people use "scientific" arguments to argue that they're the same. No social or physical differences, no intellectual differences, nothing. Women and men think exactly the same way and are just as capable at all tasks in exactly the same situations at all times. Scientifically this is bunk. Women are more socialist and emotional than men in general. Popular political opinion tends to be egocentric: people want what's good for them, or what sounds good to them; men going "I want/need XXXX for free that I can't afford and rich people should pay for" and women going "we should all share and get along, and nobody should have to go without food and doctors" will garner the same output but are obviously not the same thinking.
belief in science (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I hypothesize.. (Score:5, Interesting)
funny, I wish more republicans thought about science.
Democrats too, but they are only quasi-evil.
Conversely, one would think that thinking about religion and faith would trigger moral behavior, but, sadly, I haven't found that to (generally) be the case. [ I'm not trolling, just offering my (disappointing) observation. Perhaps I need to meet a different (but not necessarily better) class of people... ]
Personally, I think most politicians only think about money, power and getting re-elected (perhaps the first two are redundant) - for their own selfish desires.
Depends on the religion.
For at least one major religion, you don't need morality if you have forgiveness...