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Moral actor, selfish agent.

Jeremy A Frimer1, Nicola K Schaefer1, Harrison Oakes1

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This summary is machine-generated.

People have two selves: a moral

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Area of Science:

  • Psychology
  • Social Psychology
  • Behavioral Science

Background:

  • Humans often experience a conflict between the desire to act selfishly and the need to appear moral.
  • This tension suggests the existence of two distinct, yet often conflicting, self-motivations.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To provide direct evidence for the divergent motivations of the 'actor' (watched self) and the 'agent' (executing self).
  • To explore the universality and underlying reasons for the selfish agent and moral actor duality.

Main Methods:

  • Recruited participants to embody either the 'actor' self (rating goal importance) or the 'agent' self (describing goals verbally).
  • Compared self-reported motives of actors and agents.
  • Assessed motives against role-played prosocial and selfish exemplars and examined perceptions of realism versus idealism.

Main Results:

  • Actors reported moral goals (equal self/other benefit), while agents reported selfish goals (primarily self-benefit).
  • This actor-agent motive disparity was consistent across individualist and collectivist cultures.
  • Actors' motives aligned with prosocial exemplars, agents' with selfish exemplars; agents' motives were seen as more realistic, actors' as more idealistic.

Conclusions:

  • The 'selfish agent/moral actor' duality explains discrepancies between implicit and explicit measures.
  • The awareness of being observed (actor self) promotes more moral behavior, aligning with the 'better angels of human nature'.