Culture shapes how people resolve moral dilemmas about close relationships

What is it about?

What do you do when someone close to you commits a serious moral transgression? Our societies are built on rules about how to behave. Sometimes, these rules conflict with each other, which can lead us to moral dilemmas that are difficult to resolve. One understudied, but critical and common moral dilemma is when our drive to be lawful to society conflicts with our drive to be loyal to those we love. Research has shown that when faced with this dilemma, people from Western cultures consistently side with close others at the expense of society. Yet, we have little insight into how this would play out in Non-Western cultures where people live within different moral frameworks. By comparing data across cultures, we show that this propensity to protect close others is powerfully influenced by culture.

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Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

Why is it important?

We show how personal relationships and culture dynamically interact to shape how we think about important moral decisions. Often, we think that our sense of morality, what is "right" and "wrong", is the same in all cases. But we show that people actually think differently about "right" and "wrong" when it comes to reasoning about those closest to them, and beyond that, cultures can have very different ways of resolving the same moral dilemmas. This is important for painting a more comprehensive picture of morality and of how people balance the various values that are important to them when making critical moral decisions.