Summary of the present findings

The present dissertation investigated cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to deviance, and in particular moral violations. Moral violations, such as cheating, trigger social conflicts, and threaten the maintenance of cooperation. Psychological mechanisms facilitate cooperation and enduring positive relations: People react aversively to moral violations, even on behalf of others. Subsequently, cheaters and other perpetrators are avoided and punished. The current studies take into account that most cooperation happens within social groups. Psychological attachment to an ingroup (i.e., ingroup identification) increases the levels of cooperation within a group. Group-specific reactions to perpetrators or victims of moral violations can facilitate group life and ingroup cooperation. Consequently, the present work hypothesized that reactions to moral violations are stronger within groups than between groups.

Three lines of research investigated the antecedents of psychological mechanisms that promote cooperation: memory for uncooperative and deviant group members, anger at moral violations on behalf of victims, and the influence of victim and perpetrator group membership on anger and punishment. In Research Line I, it was assumed and found that memory for uncooperative individuals evolves in ingroup but not outgroup contexts. Moreover, particularly highly identified group members remember deviant ingroup members. Research Line II tested whether anger about moral violations is moral outrage, or empathic anger. The results show that anger about moral violations emerges in response to the perpetrators intentions, and thereby reacts to moral violations independently from harmful consequences for cared-for-others. Research Line III combined the notion that involvement with perpetrator or victim accounts for anger at moral violations. It was found that moral outrage emerges irrespectively of shared group memberships, whereas reactions to ingroup victims and ingroup perpetrators are malleable.

The research represents a novel step for connecting knowledge in cognitive, moral, and group psychology. It shows that reactions to moral violations often generalize across contexts, and nevertheless are influenced by group processes.

An enhanced cheater memory was found in interpersonal encounters (Bell & Buchner, 2012; Buchner et al., 2009). As group contexts are important for successful cooperation, Research Line I pursued their integration with memory for uncooperative individuals. The results show that social categorization elicits memory advantages for uncooperative group members. Uncooperative members (i.e., violating fairness, norms in social exchanges) of novel experimental groups were remembered better, when they belonged to the ingroup compared to an outgroup (Study 1 and 2). A meaningful ingroup context (indicated by identification with a natural group) elicited enhanced memory for ingroup deviants (i.e., trustworthy and cheating; Study 3). Ingroup favoring biases remained stable throughout the experiments. The results support the notion that general memory mechanisms influence reputational memory for deviant group members.

First, incongruity with expectations towards targets and target behavior improves reputational memory (Bell, Buchner, Kroneisen, et al., 2012; Bell et al., 2015). People expect positive behavior within their groups, even in minimal groups (Balliet et al., 2014; Perdue et al., 1990; Tajfel et al., 1971). Study 1 and 2 showed that uncooperative ingroup members, who violate positive expectations towards the ingroup, are remembered best. An overall positive ingroup image, was expressed in group evaluations and guessing biases. Moreover, an ingroup is characterized through a common set of norms, that elicit expectations of ingroup behavior (Terry & Hogg, 1996). Group member who violate group norms (positively and negatively) were remembered especially well in Study 3, by those who identified with the natural ingroup.

Second, memory for ingroup members or behavior on an individual level increases with meaningfulness of the groups (Brewer et al., 1995). The presented studies show that relevant group members, such as uncooperative or deviant ingroup members were remembered better than respective outgroup members. Thus, group members do not generally remember any ingroup information especially well, but they remember the behavior of particular ingroup members (reputational memory). Study 3 showed that differential concerns account for enhanced reputational memory: Highly identified group members had improved memory for ingroup deviants compared to outgroup deviants. Similarly, authoritarians remembered negative ingroup members best, as they are highly concerned about antinormative behavior and ingroup threats (Kessler & Cohrs, 2008). In conclusion, memory might not be tuned to moral violations within groups, but general processes elicit enhanced

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memory for ingroup deviants. Remembering ingroup deviants ultimately facilitates coordination and cooperation among group members.

Interactions mostly happen within social groups. Thus, biased reactions to moral violations may illustrate a concern for the wellbeing of cared-for-victims (i.e., empathic anger; Batson et al., 2007). Conversely, anger at moral violations is assumed to emerge independently of self-involvement (i.e., moral outrage; Haidt, 2003; Montada & Schneider, 1989). Research Line II disentangled moral outrage and empathic anger by orthogonally manipulating the perpetrator’s intentions (moral violation) and their consequences (suffering of the victim). It was found that intentions to harm a group member elicited more anger and punishment than the actual damage among active sport club members (Study 1). Anger and punishment emerged at perpetrator’s intentions in severe moral violations, such as killing of children (Study 2). However, empathy with the victims also increases in responds to bad intentions, indicating presumed harm (see Gutierrez & Giner-Sorolla, 2007). An emphasis on the consequences before mentioning intentions revealed that killing of children elicits most anger when it was intentional, but only little anger when the victims were accidentally harmed (Study 3). Anger and empathy with the victims clearly diverged for the different appraisal situations. In line with anger, participants’ punishment tendencies are also crucially influenced by the perpetrator’s intentions, and less by the consequences of his actions. Moreover, the perpetrators intentions elicited fear. Sadness and dissatisfaction in contrast increase with the actual harm inflicted to the victims.

The current findings show that the wrongfulness (i.e., the perpetrator’s intentions) and not the harmfulness (i.e., the victims’ suffering) of moral violations elicit anger. They differ from prior suggestions that implications for the self trigger anger about moral violations via involvement with the victims (Batson et al., 2009; Batson et al., 2007). Instead, the results suggest that people indeed experience moral outrage and willingness to punish because of an immoral deed (Darley & Pittman, 2003; Haidt, 2003). Similarly, moral judgment and blame were found to be sensitive to bad intentions irrespectively of their consequences (Cushman, 2008; Haidt et al., 1993). Most moral violations that elicit anger and subsequent punishments affect the wellbeing of victims (Rozin, Lowery, et al., 1999). Indeed, a distinction between intentionality and harmful consequences was only observed in Study 3. To sum it all up, the present findings indicate consequences for the victims, and involvement with them, alone do not fully account for anger at moral violations.

Involvement with the victims might contribute to anger and punishment, as people despise negative treatment of ingroup members. Additionally, punishing the “right” perpetrator (i.e., ingroup perpetrators) may protect group norms. Research Line III tested effects of fairness, victim, and perpetrator group membership in a complete factorial design (see also Bernhard, Fischbacher, et al., 2006). Unfair treatment, in contrast to fair treatment, explained most variance in anger and punishment in each of the five studies. In fact, moral violations elicited anger even in outgroup interactions, and despite a competitive intergroup relation (Study 4). Enhanced anger about unfair sharing on behalf of ingroup victims showed in two minimal group studies and was triggered by ingroup identification (Study 1b and Study 2). In a natural and cooperative intergroup context, participants reported more punishment of, but not more anger towards perpetrators that offended outgroup victims (Study 3). More anger at and punishment of torturing ingroup perpetrators than outgroup perpetrators emerged in a natural intergroup conflict (Study 4).

The findings confirm that moral violations elicit moral outrage and subsequent punishment even independently of implications for the ingroup, as suggested before (see Research Line II; Darley & Pittman, 2003; Haidt, 2003). Increasing altruistic punishment to increasing deviations from fairness emerged in minimal group contexts (Study 1a and 1b). This extends previous findings from studies on tribal members, who punished unfairness irrespectively from ingroup involvement (Bernhard, Fischbacher, et al., 2006). Moreover, they contradict the conclusions by Batson and colleagues (2009), who proposed that reactions to moral violations are elicited by shared group membership with the victims.

Most studies investigating reactions to moral violation and their dependence of victim group membership did not systematically vary the group membership of perpetrators (Batson et al., 2009; Gordijn et al., 2001). The current results confirm that people experience emotions on behalf of fellow group members irrespectively of perpetrator group membership. Furthermore, this was shown to be triggered by ingroup identification (Yzerbyt et al., 2003). People also applied more punishment to ingroup perpetrators than outgroup perpetrators as response to a severe moral violation (i.e., torture). These results are in line with the Black Sheep Effect that predicts such reactions, when perpetrators threaten the ingroup’s moral standing and value consensus (Abrams et al., 2000; Marques et al., 2001). In a cooperative intergroup scenario, group membership did not modify anger, thereby supporting the idea that cooperation between groups expands perceived group-boundaries to include both groups (S.

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L. Gaertner et al., 1990). The principal implication of Research Line III is that anger about and punishment of moral violations emerge despite of group boundaries. Group processes influence the reactions in two different ways: to protect ingroup victims and stabilize ingroup norms. The malleability of victim and perpetrator effects encourages further studies to examine their boundaries.