Monetary Gains Have a Conflict with One's Perceived Moral Justifications

Study findings recently revealed that people often hurt others since, in their mind, it is "morally right" or even mandatory to be violent.

Therefore, according to a UC San Diego News Center report, as a result, they are not responding rationally to material gains.

The study conducted by University of California San Diego Rady School of Management researchers has implications for the criminal justice system, suggesting that penalties or jail time to punish a bad behavior may not be an effective impediment as lawmakers have hoped.

According to Tage Rai, a psychologist and an assistant professor of management at the Rady School of Management, most offenders, "it is not worth the trouble" to impose harm purely from a place of distrustful greed.

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(Photo: Pexels/Liza Summer)
Study shows people are frequently hurting others because, in their mind, it is ‘morally right.’

Monetary Gains Conflicting with Moral Justifications

Rai, the author of the study published in the Psychological Science journal, added, for instance, as seen with the "January hearings," a lot of perpetrators of the attack on the Capitol believed the then recently held election had been stolen from them, and that they were "morally in the right" to penalize the congresspeople who had offended them.

A lot of these people will be materially penalized for their actions. It is unclear if they would prevent them from doing it again.

The study findings are based on multiple studies with almost 1,500 study participants. Subjects in an investigational group were paid a monetary bonus to punish others. Nonetheless, when they were paid for punishing, it, in fact, made them less likely to do so.

Rai explained that monetary gains might conflict with these people's perceived moral justifications. The psychologist added that people are punishing others for signaling their goodness, and being compensated might make it appear like they are driven by greed instead of justice.

Moral Righteousness

However, Rai continued, they also found that if a person's peers tell him he's still a good person even if he takes the money, he no longer has moral qualms about harming other people for profit.

The professor added that to stop criminal acts, there is a need for lawmakers to leverage social pressure, too. He also said when people are aware their peers are negatively judging them, they may find it more possible to question their claims of moral righteousness.

In much of their study, Rai seeks to understand violent behavior and how to avoid it. His past research and the book he co-wrote, Virtuous Violence, have shown that most violent criminals have their ideas about what is right and wrong in a given situation.

Knowing that violent wrongdoers frequently site their moral code as the reason they're hurting people. Rai wanted to test this notion further by compensating others in a laboratory experiment.

An Attempt to 'Disincentive' Criminals

Across four different studies in an online economic game, Rai discovered that providing a monetary bonus for punishing a third party cut the willingness of participants to do so almost in half.

The research findings have suggested people may be more reluctant to cause harm when they are standing to profit from it if they expect condemnation from their peers, explained Rai.

To conclude, a related Medical Xpress report said that, according to Rai, understanding what's drawing people is key to preventing it.

Lastly, he explained that if governments are attempting to disincentive criminals, they need to aim to change the moral narratives criminals use to justify their actions.

Related information about punishment is shown on John Bel Galumba's YouTube video below:

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