When you make moral judgments, what is happening at the psychological level? According to one theory, you’re applying a template of two roles: an intentional wrongdoer and a sensitive and vulnerable victim. The more closely that template fits a situation, the more likely you are to deem the situation immoral. Research by today’s guest, Tania Reynolds, shows how these moral evaluations intersect with gender, and it reveals that people more easily stereotype men as powerful wrongdoers, and women as sensitive victims.

Tania is a social psychologist and postdoctoral fellow at the Kinsey Institute. She’s joining us from Bloomington, Indiana.

Timeline

1:26 Kurt Gray’s Moral Theory

7:00 Stereotypes: men as agents, women as patients

8:46 Victims are presumed female

12:01 A study with non-Americans

17:00 Implications for policies like affirmative action

27:30 Do men assume the status quo is normal?

31:22 The double-edged sword for men

Links

* Tania Reynolds’s Google Scholar page
* Kurt Gray, Liane Young, & Adam Waytz, 2012, Mind Perception is the Essence of Morality
* Michaella Fitzpatrick, & Natalie Delia Deckard, 2017, The Common Sense Cut and the Gendered Body Project: Constructing Existing Norms around Genital Cutting in U.S. Media
* David Benatar, The Second Sexism: Discrimination Against Men and Boys
* Warren Farrell, The Myth of Male Power

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