Does science inspire moral behavior? Experiments by UCSB Social Psychology Ph. D. Christine Ma-Kellams and Professor Jim Blascovich suggest that it does. The research article was published by PLoS ONE on March 6, 2013 (Ma-Kellams C, Blascovich J (2013) Does “Science” Make You Moral? The Effects of Priming Science on Moral Judgments and Behavior. PLoS ONE 8(3): e57989. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0057989).
“In a recent study, researchers from University of California at Santa Barbara hypothesized that science, as a notion, ‘contains in it the broader moral vision of a society in which rationality is used for the mutual benefit of all.’ As such, it ‘facilitates moral and prosocial judgments and behaviors.’ Based on this premise, the researchers predicted that simply thinking about science leads individuals to behave in a more moral way. To investigate this potential link between exposure to science and moral behavior, the researchers set up four experiments” (source).
Abstract
Background: Previous work has noted that science stands as an ideological force insofar as the answers it offers to a variety of fundamental questions and concerns; as such, those who pursue scientific inquiry have been shown to be concerned with the moral and social ramifications of their scientific endeavors. No studies to date have directly investigated the links between exposure to science and moral or prosocial behaviors.
Methodology/Principal Findings: Across four studies, both naturalistic measures of science exposure and experimental primes of science led to increased adherence to moral norms and more morally normative behaviors across domains. Study 1 (n = 36) tested the natural correlation between exposure to science and likelihood of enforcing moral norms. Studies 2 (n = 49), 3 (n = 52), and 4 (n = 43) manipulated thoughts about science and examined the causal impact of such thoughts on imagined and actual moral behavior. Across studies, thinking about science had a moralizing effect on a broad array of domains, including interpersonal violations (Studies 1, 2), prosocial intentions (Study 3), and economic exploitation (Study 4).
Conclusions/Significance: These studies demonstrated the morally normative effects of lay notions of science. Thinking about science leads individuals to endorse more stringent moral norms and exhibit more morally normative behavior. These studies are the first of their kind to systematically and empirically test the relationship between science and morality. The present findings speak to this question and elucidate the value-laden outcomes of the notion of science.
