The Color of Sin - Why the Good Guys Wear White

filthy light thief — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:34:06 -0800

When the Chrysler car company released its new model Dodge Coronet in 1967, the theme of its ad campaign was the "White Hat Special," with some ads featuring the "Dodge Girl" in her signature white Stetson, saying that "Only the good guys could put together a deal like this." These ads didn't need any elaboration. Madison Avenue knew the potential buyers had all been raised on film and TV Westerns, and knew the symbolism of white hats. Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, the Lone Ranger — cinematic heroes wore white hats, and bad guys wore black. It was all very simple. The colors white and black have carried layers of moral meaning since long before American infatuation with cowboys and automobiles, and some scientists believe that those associations may be automatic and universal and ancient (abstract). Blackness and whiteness may be wired into our neurons, and tightly tangled up with notions of sin and virtue and cleanliness and dirt, according to research by doctoral student Gary D. Sherman and professor Gerald L. Clore, from the University of Virginia Psychology Department (print view). Clore and Sherman tested the concept of grounding of metaphors with a method similar to the the original studies performed by J. Ridley Stroop. The result showing something of the Stroop effect, but instead of displaying a delay in stating the name of colors because of the color of the text, there was a lag in identifying positive and negative words when colored black or white. And the amount of delay changed when the participants were primed to think about immorality.

First, they administered the color identification test with moral and immoral words. Then they asked the participants to hand-copy a very short first-person story about a workplace incident. Half the stories had ethical endings and half had unethical endings. Then they issued the color identification test again. For those who had little trouble with the color identification initially, exposure to the unethical story made it harder to identify word color when it didn't match the moral/immoral dimension of the word. "This shows you can bring this out in people," said Sherman. "We were struck how easily it could be moved around." But even more interesting was that for those who struggled more with the identification in the first test, priming immorality made these participants better at naming the color. This was a bit puzzling. Clore believes that for those already thinking about immorality, becoming even more attuned to it helped bring it to consciousness, where it could be controlled. "If you make something obvious, people appear to be able to regulate it," he said. "What we find with emotion is that if you make something really salient, people are better at making proper discrimination. By making it salient, people got rid of it."

A third study was performed, in which they asked people to rate several consumer products, some of which were cleaning products. Those who ranked cleaning products most highly turned out to be the individuals who had the hardest time identifying the colors when they didn't match the moral dimension of the words. This last test is associated with the Macbeth effect (abstract), where physical cleanliness is psychologically linked to concerns for moral purity. More fun with the Stroop test: Neuroscience for Kids, and the Stroop test and Mount Everest.

a new politics of the common good

kliuless — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 07:11:35 -0800

Markets and Morals -- "without quite realising it, without ever deciding to do so, we drifted from having a market economy to being a market society" -- is the first of the 2009 Reith Lectures delivered by Michael Sandel. (previously) cf. Yglesias on free markets... which kinda reminded me of clay shirky's LSE lecture (mp3; 43 mb; approx 93 minutes) esp the bit in the Q&A around 56.50 wrt money, motivation and ed deci :P bonus!

Common base of morality?

Gyan — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 11:14:58 -0800

Do the Right Thing

The best of the worst of the week on television.

insomnia_lj — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 10:05:41 -0800

The best of the worst of the week on television. The Parents Television Council, a U.S.-based watchdog organization trying to stamp out indecency on the airwaves, is doing their part in the war against moral turpitude. How? By creating a website where they host videos of the most offensive scenes on television... inadvertently creating some of the most amusing content on the internet!

Brilliantcrank — Tue, 19 Jun 2001 08:32:44 -0800

On Americans and their Morals. A look at the demise of morality in America and our history as a country and a culture to always complain that our moral fabric is worse than it really is.

MetaFilter posts tagged with morals and morality

The Color of Sin - Why the Good Guys Wear White

a new politics of the common good

Common base of morality?

The best of the worst of the week on television.