The science that has morals
Understand how moral and altruistic attitudes are related to your "belief" in science
Do you believe in science and bet all your chips on it? If so, this could be a sign of your level of morality. Science has long been condemned and questioned about its methods, sometimes biased, and manipulations of results by private interests. Even so, she is still popularly known as the discoverer of the "truth". Discussions of ethics and morality in science have always been very common, but recently it was time to test the relationship between science and the tendency to take moral attitudes. A study conducted at the University of Santa Barbara, California, showed that people responded or took more attitudes within the moral normativity, and also with pro-social content, when they were allies of science.
Four experiments were carried out to test how science can promote moral and prosocial actions. In the first, participants observed a vignette of a rape that occurred after a date, in which the girl invites the man into her house, and he forces a non-consensual sexual relationship with her. Participants were asked to rate, on a scale, how much they thought that attitude was wrong, and then asked to rate how much they believed in science as well. The results showed that people who believed more in science and/or studied in the field of science were more likely to condemn the act of rape more harshly.
In the following experiments, there was a group that was manipulated to induce their thoughts into a position favorable to science, and a controlled group. They were exposed to a series of sentences with mixed words. In the first group there were keywords, such as logic, laboratory, hypotheses, scientists and theory, and in the control group there were random words. From this, they were tested in different situations: in the judgment of the same vignette mentioned above (experiment 2), with the intention of taking pro-social attitudes in the next month, such as volunteering and making donations (experiment 3), and in a supposed situation in that they were the boss and should split an amount of money between himself and the other participants plus an unknown participant (experiment 4). In all situations, the group submitted to words related to science always had more moral, altruistic and social benefit attitudes.
Despite the various limitations that the researchers themselves assume in their study, considering that several other factors are involved in decisions and moral behavior, they conclude that science can have effects in this regard. But just the fact that the majority of participants are undergraduate students already presents a very limited group and a lack of broader scope of the research. In any case, the study emphasizes that, regardless of the results of a scientific research, its study alone induces a normative and moral conduct. It makes sense, since science is also based on norms and a prevailing morality in this society.
In the Tech in favor section, you can see how some of these scientists have already contributed creative ideas about sustainability.
