Participants who ’d visited more countries cheated more

International travel may put your moral compass in a spin By Alex Fradera Since she got back from her year abroad, there’s been something different about Sam. Once an avid rule-follower, now she’s breaking them – and when you raise it she explains that these things, after all, are just a matter of perspective. Can exposure to other countries breed a flexible relationship to the rules, even moral relativism? According to new research in the Journal of Personality and Social Cognition, it can. Columbia University’s Jackson Lu led an international team to explore this question through a range of studies. They knew living abroad has been associated with positive outcomes such as reduced judgment of other groups and, in particular, cognitive flexibility, which supports creativity. But Lu’s team theorised a possible downside: that this flexibility could extend to the domain of morality. Perhaps experiencing many moral codes can prompt us to question our own. The researchers asked over 600 participants about their travel habits before providing them with a task where there was a golden opportunity to cheat. Participants took a trivia quiz where a “computer glitch” meant that they had to press the spacebar straight after seeing each question to avoid the answer also flashing on-screen. The researchers were secretly recording the bar presses, and the resultant index of cheating was higher for participants who had reported visiting more countries in their li...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Morality Source Type: blogs