Brock Bastian

University of Melbourne | MSD · Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences

Moral divisions are intensifying in many places around the globe, straining interpersonal relationships and destabilizing democracies. In light of these trends, there is an urgent need to understand the psychological factors that amplify polarization in society. This paper introduces the concept of Moral Attachment, defined as the degree to which i...

We aimed to investigate the role of moral value in influencing cooperative behavior in environmental conservation. Our research involved two studies examining whether attributing moral value to non-sentient resources (the environment) impacts participants’ resource preservation actions. Results revealed that associating an environmental consequence...

Humanity is facing rapid declines in both biodiversity and cultural diversity. As effective conservation policies often require strong public support, it is critical to understand whether individuals view diversity loss through a moral lens and whether they value diversity for its own sake, independent from instrumental or individual‐centric concer...

Throughout the 21st century, economic inequality is predicted to increase as we face new challenges, from changes in the technological landscape to the growing climate crisis. It is crucial we understand how these changes in inequality may affect how people think and behave. We propose that economic inequality threatens the social fabric of society...

Recent research reveals that people show differential levels of moral concern between the natural world and human outgroups. Yet, this evidence that some individuals morally value non-humans to a greater extent than humans stems from limited U.S. samples, warranting broader investigation. Here, we present evidence from a pre-registered secondary an...

Throughout the 21st century, economic inequality is predicted to increase as we face new challenges, from changes in the technological landscape to the growing climate crisis. It is crucial we understand how these changes in inequality may affect how people think and behave. We propose that economic inequality threatens the social fabric of society...

Identity fusion – a powerful form of group alignment – is a strong predictor of using violence to defend the ingroup. However, recent theorizing suggests, in the absence of outgroup threat, fusion may instead promote intergroup trust and cooperation. Across five studies we find evidence that fusion to a range of groups (e.g., country, football team...

Research examining the relationship between moral engagement and wellbeing has yielded inconsistent findings. To provide further insights, we distinguished between two types of moral engagement: moral identity and moral attentiveness. In Studies 1, 2, and 3, (N =149; 228; 145), we found a strong moral identity was associated with greater wellbeing,...

While pet ownership is normative in many occidental countries, whether humans’ proximal contacts with pets have implications for attitudes and behaviors toward other (non pet) animals, nature, and fellow humans, has received limited empirical attention. In a large representative sample, we investigate whether pet ownership and positive contact with...

Objective: This research examines differential responses to ethical vegetarian appeals as a fuction of individuals' personalities. Background: Ethical vegetarian appeals are persuasive messages promoting the adoption of a plant-based diet on moral grounds. Individuals may vary in their receptivity to such appeals, depending on their morally rele...

We aimed to investigate the role of moral value in influencing cooperative behaviour in environmental conservation. Traditional economic models often fail to encapsulate the non-monetary value attributed to resources, leading to gaps in our understanding of cooperation in resource dilemmas. Our research involved two studies examining if attributing...

Objective: To determine if psychological distress has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to identify predictors of distress. Method: Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) scores from nationally representative Australian samples before (n = 955) and during (n = 1173) the pandemic were compared. The pandemic sample also completed addit...

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all domains of human life, including the economic and social fabric of societies. One of the central strategies for managing public health throughout the pandemic has been through persuasive messaging and collective behaviour change. To help scholars better understand the social and moral psychology behind public...

Humans across the globe use supernatural beliefs to explain the world around them. This article explores whether cultural groups invoke the supernatural more to explain natural phenomena (for example, storms, disease outbreaks) or social phenomena (for example, murder, warfare). Quantitative analysis of ethnographic text across 114 geographically a...

The experience of awe has been shown to challenge how people think about themselves and the world around them, linking them to something greater than themselves. We investigated whether this emotional experience of awe may also challenge the boundaries of our moral consideration, leading to a generalized expansion in our moral worlds. Across five s...

A powerful avenue through which to promote the preservation of the natural and cultural environment is to afford cultural and environmental objects moral significance. In this research, we examine a range of factors that may give rise to moral concern regarding the protection of culturel and environmental objects as ends in themselves. In this way,...

People in economically advantaged nations tend to evaluate their life as more positive overall and report greater well-being than people in less advantaged nations. But how does positivity manifest in the daily life experiences of individuals around the world? The present study asked 15,244 college students from 62 nations, in 42 languages, to desc...

What are the things that we think matter morally, and how do societal factors influence this? To date, research has explored several individual-level and historical factors that influence the size of our ‘moral circles.' There has, however, been less attention focused on which societal factors play a role. We present the first multi-national explor...

People cooperate every day in ways that range from largescale contributions that mitigate climate change to simple actions such as leaving another individual with choice – known as social mindfulness. It is not yet clear whether and how these complex and more simple forms of cooperation relate. Prior work has found that countries with individuals w...

Persuasive appeals designed to reduce meat consumption often employ graphic images of the harms perpetuated by eating meat (e.g., cruel factory farming practices). However, because people are motivated to see themselves as moral, appeals that highlight omnivores’ moral failings might be resisted or even backfire. Furthermore, individuals differ in...

Introduction: Ethical vegetarian appeals are persuasive messages promoting the adoption of a plant-based diet on moral grounds. Individuals may vary in their receptivity to such appeals, depending on their morally-relevant traits (e.g., agreeableness), beliefs (e.g., speciesism), and motives (e.g., concerns about animal welfare). Methods: We explor...

While a great deal is known about the individual difference factors associated with conspiracy beliefs, much less is known about the country-level factors that shape people’s willingness to believe conspiracy theories. In the current article we discuss the possibility that willingness to believe conspiracy theories might be shaped by the perception...

Prior research has uncovered a beneficial role for social identities in promoting human well-being. Whether these benefits also arise from the tendency to identify with a highly superordinate category that includes other animals, has never been examined. Building on theories of social and superordinate identification and prior research on human-ani...

Prosocial behaviors benefit others, but what benefits do they hold for those who enact them? Prosociality can enhance the actor’s well-being, yet whether it is one’s sense of happiness or meaning that is impacted, and how this plays out in everyday life, has received limited attention. We address this gap in knowledge by examining how prosociality...

Defendants can deny they have agency, and thus responsibility, for a crime by using a defense of mental impairment. We argue that although this strategy may help defendants evade blame, it may carry longer-term social costs, as lay people’s perceptions of a person’s agency might determine some of the moral rights they grant them. Three randomized b...

At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied ma...

Identity fusion is traditionally conceptualized as innately parochial, with fused actors motivated to commit acts of violence on out-groups. However, fusion’s aggressive outcomes are largely conditional on threat perception, with its effect on benign intergroup relationships underexplored. The present article outlines the fusion-secure base hypothe...

What are the things that we think matter morally, and how do societal factors influence this? To date, research has explored several individual-level and historical factors that influence the size of our ‘moral circles’. There has, however, been less attention focused on which societal factors play a role. We present the first multi-national explor...

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all domains of human life, including the economic and social fabric of societies. One of the central strategies for managing public health throughout the pandemic has been through persuasive messaging and collective behavior change. To help scholars better understand the social and moral psychology behind public h...

The question of pet ownership contributing to human well-being has received mixed empirical evidence. This contrasts with the lay intuition that pet ownership contributes positively to wellness. In a large representative sample, we investigate the differences that may exist between pet vs. non-pet owners in terms of their well-being during the COVI...

Physical attractiveness is a heuristic that is often used as an indicator of desirable traits. In two studies (N = 1254), we tested whether facial attractiveness leads to a selective bias in attributing moral character—which is paramount in person perception—over non-moral traits. We argue that because people are motivated to assess socially import...

Happiness is a valuable experience, and societies want their citizens to be happy. Although this societal commitment seems laudable, overly emphasizing positivity (versus negativity) may create an unattainable emotion norm that ironically compromises individual well-being. In this multi-national study (40 countries; 7443 participants), we investiga...

Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and str...

In this study we investigated how social anxiety and expressed friendship relate to the perceived friendship network of adolescent girls. We define an expressed friendship as a friendship choice made by an individual, and a perceived friend as one whom the individual perceives as choosing them as a friend; expressed and perceived friends need not b...

Research on the Beauty-is-Good stereotype shows that unattractive people are perceived to have worse moral character than attractive individuals. Yet research has not explored what kinds of moral character judgments are particularly biased by attractiveness. In this work, we tested whether attractiveness particularly biases moral character judgment...

The study of meaning in life has largely centered on its relationship with personal well-being, while a focus on how meaning is related to enhancing the well-being of others has received less research attention. Although searching for meaning may imply lower personal well-being, we find that meaning-seekers are more motivated to perform costly pros...

The COVID-19 pandemic has extensively changed the state of psychological science from what research questions psychologists can ask to which methodologies psychologists can use to investigate them. In this article, we offer a perspective on how to optimize new research in the pandemic’s wake. Because this pandemic is inherently a social phenomenon—...

Supernatural beliefs are common in every human society, and people frequently invoke the supernatural to explain natural (e.g., storms, disease outbreaks) and social (e.g., murder, warfare) events. However, evolutionary and psychological theories of religion raise competing hypotheses about whether supernatural explanations should more commonly foc...

Researchers have tended to focus on mind perception as integral to judgments of moral standing, yet a smaller body of evidence suggests that beauty may also be an important factor (for some people and animals). Across six studies ( N = 1,662), we investigated whether beauty increases moral standing attributions to a wide range of targets, including...

Defendants can deny they have agency, and thus responsibility, for a crime by using a defense of mental impairment. We argue that although this strategy may help defendants evade blame, it may carry longer-term social costs, as lay people’s perceptions of a person’s agency might determine some of the moral rights they grant them. In this registered...

Conservationists have sought to identify avenues through which to gain public support for efforts to halt the accelerating decline in animal diversity. Previous research has identified perceived internal qualities of animals that lead people to view them as deserving of protection for their own sake; that is, increase their moral standing. In two s...

Many people agree that reducing the consumption of meat has good ends (e.g., for animal welfare, the environment, and human health). However, the question of which advocacy strategies are most effective in enabling wide-spread meat reduction remains open. We explored this by prescribing four different meat reduction diets to omnivorous participants...

Recent research has uncovered a downside to the pursuit of happiness; placing a high value on happiness can ironically lead to lower well-being. Not all approaches have this effect, however, and individuals who seek positivity within their day-to-day routines may experience higher well-being. The current research investigated whether the difference...

We propose an integrative framework in which the self‐image of perpetrators and victims in interpersonal conflictual relationships becomes tethered to each other. To the extent that both parties stop seeing themselves as fully human when interpersonal harm is inflicted, we theorize that this state motivates attempts at restoration. Specifically, we...

The current cultural standard in western societies expects people to be happy and not sad. While the pursuit of positive emotion is strongly encouraged in modern societal discourse, occasionally feeling negative is easily considered maladaptive or abnormal. It is in our human nature to comply with social expectations, and the extent to which we are...

Abstract What does it mean to be happy? The vast majority of cross-cultural studies on happiness have employed a Western-origin, or “WEIRD” measure of happiness that conceptualizes it as a self-centered (or “independent”), high-arousal emotion. However, research from East�ern cultures, particularly Japan, conceptualizes happiness as including an in...

Background: First-episode psychosis typically has its onset during adolescence. Prolonged deficits in social functioning are common in FEP and yet often variance in functioning remains unexplained. Developmental psychology frameworks may be useful for understanding these deficits. Eudaimonic well-being (EWB), or positive self-development, is a deve...

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is a devastating global health crisis. Without a vaccine or effective medication, the best hope for mitigating virus transmission is collective behavior change and support for public health interventions (e.g., physical distancing, physical hygiene, and endorsement of health policies). In a large-scale international co...

Objective The current exploratory study sought to examine dispositional optimism, or the general expectation for positive outcomes, around the world. Method Dispositional optimism and possible correlates were assessed across 61 countries (N = 15,185; mean age = 21.92; 77% female). Mean‐level differences in optimism were computed along with their r...

Little is known about the psychology of ugliness. We propose that ugliness judgments are linked to the behavioral immune system, alerting us to objects that may contain potentially harmful diseases. Exploring this possibility, in five studies ( N = 1,552), we found that ugly human faces (Studies 1a and 1b), ugly animals (Study 2), and—to a lesser d...

Moral vitalism refers to a tendency to view good and evil as actual forces that can influence people and events. The Moral Vitalism Scale had been designed to assess moral vitalism in a brief survey form. Previous studies established the reliability and validity of the scale in US-American and Australian samples. In this study, the cross-cultural c...

Researchers have identified several factors that may increase the moral value that people place on various entities (e.g., mind perception), yet the role of aesthetic judgment has never been investigated. We suggest that perceptions of beauty extend beyond mere preference, also signalling that beautiful targets possess a moral value that is worthy...

Neuroticism is one of the major traits describing human personality, and a predictor of mental and physical disorders with profound public health significance. Individual differences in emotional variability are thought to reflect the core of neuroticism. However, the empirical relation between emotional variability and neuroticism may be partially...

Objective: To compare estimated levels of psychological distress in the Australian population as measured by online versus face-to-face survey methodologies. Method: Kessler Psychological Distress Scale scores from a nationally representative online survey of 955 Australians were compared to results from the 2014–2015 and 2017–2018 National Healthy...

Can we experience positive (PA) and negative affect (NA) separately (i.e., affective independence), or do these emotional states represent the mutually exclusive ends of a single bipolar continuum (i.e., affective bipolarity)? Building on previous emotion theories, we propose that the relation between PA and NA is not invariable, but rather fluctua...

Moralization has major social and political implications. Although there is a depth of research on the nature and implications of moral attitudes and moral convictions, there has been less of a focus on the psychological processes by which actions, attitudes, or entities become moralized, or move from lesser to greater moral significance, and the r...

Pathogens represent a significant threat to human health leading to the emergence of strategies designed to help manage their negative impact. We examined how spiritual beliefs developed to explain and predict the devastating effects of pathogens and spread of infectious disease. Analysis of existing data in studies 1 and 2 suggests that moral vita...

Societal inequality has been found to harm the mental and physical health of its members and undermine overall social cohesion. Here, we tested the hypothesis that economic inequality is associated with a wish for a strong leader in a study involving 28 countries from five continents (Study 1, N = 6,112), a study involving an Australian community s...

What makes an experience meaningful? Diverse lines of research have provided contrasting evidence; that either positive or negative events are found particularly meaningful. In this paper, we propose that the extremity of an event, rather than its valence per se, may drive meaning, and test multiple mechanisms that might explain this effect. Across...

Our relations with other animals are ubiquitous in human life, yet the psychological structure of our connection with animals is just beginning to receive empirical attention. Drawing on theories of social identification and intergroup relations, we investigate the various ways that people identify with animals. Across 7 studies, we introduce the I...

Pain overlap theory has generated decades of controversy and still receives considerable research attention. A major advance has been the revelation that social and physical pain activate similar neural regions, providing suggestive evidence of a “piggybacked” alarm system that coevolved to detect social exclusion. Recent developments, however, hav...

The investment model of close relationships has focused on satisfaction and dependence (as it pertains to viable alternatives) as important indicators of relationship commitment and success. In this review, I apply a dehumanization perspective to understanding why abusive relationships can increase dependence in the context of low relationship sati...

Four studies examined whether pain offset reduces rumination in response to anger or sadness. Past research has demonstrated that, following the offset of pain, individuals show a distinct state of relief involving both reduction in negative affect and an increase in positive affect. This response may help to explain why people sometimes seek out p...

Why do societies commemorate war? The persistence of war commemorations suggests they serve a purpose in society. We examine one possibility: Commemorating past sacrifices may serve an “inspirational” function, by evoking pride and gratitude for soldiers’ actions and promoting a willingness to endure future sacrifices for the group. We contrast thi...

In the current era, building more innovative teams is key to organizational success, yet there is little consensus on how best to achieve this. Common wisdom suggests that positive reinforcement through shared positive rewards builds social support within teams, and in turn facilitates innovation. Research on basic group processes, cultural rituals...

Enhancing human cooperation in the use of limited and depletable resources is of central concern to environmental management and human welfare. Behavioral models of cooperation have, to date, focused on inter-party dynamics such as reciprocity, punishment, or reputation in distribution of resources generally indexed by points, money, or effort. We...

Thinspiration and fitspiration are classes of social media content characterised by idealised depictions of excessively thin and overtly fit/lean bodies, respectively. It is currently unknown whether and how exposure to thinspiration and fitspiration relates to symptom severity within high-risk clinical populations. Thus, in a clinical sample of in...

Moral expansiveness refers to the range of entities (human and non-human) deemed worthy of moral concern and treatment. Previous research has established that the Moral Expansiveness Scale (MES) is a powerful predictor of altruistic moral decision-making and captures a unique dimension of moral cognition. However, the length of the full MES may be...

MESx instructions. (DOCX)