In their 2017 paper “Liars, Damned Liars, and Zealots: The Effect of Moral Mandates on Transgressive Advocacy Acceptance,” two psychologists at the University of Illinois, Allison B. Mueller and Linda J. Skitka, cite “transgressive advocacy” — which they define as “norm-violating means, i.e., lying, to achieve a preferred end” — as an critical aspect of contemporary political competition:So if you want to know why people accept Trump, there it is: because they believe that cheating to win is not just ok but admirable when the stakes are high.
People’s perceptions of others’ transgressive advocacy were uniquely shaped by their moral convictions. Although honesty was positively valued by all respondents, transgressive advocacy that served a shared moral end was more accepted, and advocacy in the service of a non-preferred end was more condemned, regardless of its truth.
Wednesday, February 12, 2020
Other Values Trump Honesty
Thomas Edsall:
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3 comments:
Otherwise known as: "Ends justify means."
Did that require a whole paper?
"If the end doesn't justify the means, what does?" (attributed to either Robert Moses or Saul Alinsky)
@karlG
The means themselves do.
I could cheat at a game to win, but I value the means of playing fairly more than I value the ends of winning. You could argue that the satisfaction I gain from playing fairly is an end in and of itself, but that's splitting hairs and beind pedantic.
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