Dale T. Miller’s research while affiliated with Stanford University and other places

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Publications (85)


A dynamic perspective on moral choice: Revisiting moral hypocrisy
  • Article

May 2021

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49 Reads

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8 Citations

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

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Dale T. Miller

We propose a dynamic model of moral decision making whereby people revise their morally relevant preferences as their options evolve. We employ this model to reinterpret prior findings on moral hypocrisy. In particular, we revisit the finding that, when tasked to assign themselves and another person to tasks that differ in pleasantness, participants who “flip a coin” to determine the task allocation assign themselves to the preferable task more than fifty percent of the time. This result was originally thought to reveal that people will take moral credit for flipping a coin while simultaneously harboring the intention of disregarding its outcome if it is negative. We suggest instead that people flip the coin not with the intention of disregarding the outcome, but with the hope of maximizing their self-interest without self-reproach (Studies 1 and 2); only when this outcome proves unachievable do they resort to rationalizing their self-interested assignment (Studies 3 and 4). These findings offer a novel perspective on the flexibility of moral decisions.


From whom do we learn group norms? Low-ranking group members are perceived as the best sources

November 2020

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114 Reads

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30 Citations

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Social norm perception is ubiquitous in small groups and teams, but how individuals approach this process is not well understood. When individuals wish to perceive descriptive social norms in a group or team, whose advice and behavior do they prefer to rely on? Four lab studies and one field survey demonstrate that when individuals seek information about a team’s social norms they prefer to receive advice from lower-ranking individuals (Studies 1–4) and give greater weight to the observed behavior of lower-ranking individuals (Study 5). Results from correlation (Study 3) and moderation (Study 4) approaches suggest this preference stems from the assumption that lower-ranking team members are more attentive to and aware of the descriptive social norms of their team. Alternative mechanisms (e.g., perceived similarity to lower-ranking team members, greater honesty of lower-ranking team members) were also examined, but no support for these was found.


From whom do we learn group norms? Low-ranking group members are perceived as the best sources

August 2020

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14 Reads

Social norm perception is ubiquitous in small groups and teams, but how individuals approach this process is not well understood. When individuals wish to perceive descriptive social norms in a group or team, whose ad- vice and behavior do they prefer to rely on? Four lab studies and one Teld survey demonstrate that when in- dividuals seek information about a team’s social norms they prefer to receive advice from lower-ranking indi- viduals (Studies 1–4) and give greater weight to the observed behavior of lower-ranking individuals (Study 5). Results from correlation (Study 3) and moderation (Study 4) approaches suggest this preference stems from the assumption that lower-ranking team members are more attentive to and aware of the descriptive social norms of their team. Alternative mechanisms (e.g., perceived similarity to lower-ranking team members, greater honesty of lower-ranking team members) were also examined, but no support for these was found.


Being “Good” or “Good Enough”: Prosocial Risk and the Structure of Moral Self-Regard
  • Article
  • Publisher preview available

November 2019

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412 Reads

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27 Citations

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

The motivation to feel moral powerfully guides people's prosocial behavior. We propose that people's efforts to preserve their moral self-regard conform to a moral threshold model. This model predicts that people are primarily concerned with whether their prosocial behavior legitimates the claim that they have acted morally, a claim that often diverges from whether their behavior is in the best interests of the recipient. Specifically, it predicts that for people to feel moral following a prosocial decision, that decision need not have promised the greatest benefit for the recipient but only one larger than at least one other available outcome. Moreover, this model predicts that once people produce a benefit that exceeds this threshold, their moral self-regard is relatively insensitive to the magnitude of benefit that they produce. In 6 studies, we test this moral threshold model by examining people's prosocial risk decisions. We find that, compared with risky egoistic decisions, people systematically avoid making risky prosocial decisions that carry the possibility of producing the worst possible outcome in a choice set-even when this means avoiding a decision that is objectively superior. We further find that this aversion to producing the worst possible prosocial outcome leads people's prosocial (vs. egoistic) risk decisions to be less sensitive to those decisions' maximum possible benefit. We highlight theoretical and practical implications of these findings, including the detrimental consequence that people's desire to protect their moral self-regard can have on the amount of good that they produce. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

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Social Norm Perception in Groups with Outliers

July 2017

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24 Reads

Social outliers draw a lot of attention from those inside and outside their group and yet little is known about their impact on perceptions of their group as a whole. The present studies examine how outliers influence observers’ summary perceptions of a group’s behavior and inferences about the group’s descriptive and prescriptive norms. Across four studies (N = 1739) we examine how observers perceive descriptive and prescriptive social norms in groups containing outliers of varying degrees. We find consistent evidence that observers overweight outlying behavior when judging the descriptive and prescriptive norms, but overweight outliers less as they become more extreme, especially in perceptions of the prescriptive norm. We find this pattern across norms pertaining to punctuality (Studies 1-2, 4) and clothing formality (Study 3) and for outliers who are both prescriptively and descriptively deviant (e.g. late arrivers), as well as for outliers who are only descriptive deviants (e.g. early arrivers). We further demonstrate that observers’ perceptions of the group shift in the direction of moderate outliers. This occurs because observers anchor on the outlier’s behavior and adjust their recollections of non-outlying individuals, making their inferences about the group’s average behavior more extreme.


Figure 1. Perceptions of the descriptive (A, C) and prescriptive (B, D) norm as a function of the extremity of the outlier in Study 1. In Panels A and B, early outliers in videos are represented as negative x values. In Panels C and D, early and late outliers of equal extremity have been combined. In all graphs, outlier extremity represents the number of minutes between the outlier's arrival time and the next closest arriving group member in the video stimuli. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. 
Figure 2. Accuracy of recall for each group member (excluding the outlier) as a function of the extremity of the outlier and the order of arrival. Zero on the y-axis reflects accurate recall; positive values reflect inaccuracy in the direction of the outlier, and negative values reflect inaccurate recall away from the outlier. Early and late outliers are collapsed based on outlier extremity. The lines graphed are lines of best fit based on a mixed-model multilevel model predicting accuracy from an interaction of outlier extremity and a dummy code for arrival order. 
Figure 3. Examples of the photo stimuli for the style of dress shown for the main seven group members in Study 3 (a and b), followed by the photo stimuli for the moderate outlier (c) and the photo stimuli for the extreme outlier (d). 
Figure 4. Participants' inferences of the descriptive and prescriptive norm in groups with no, moderate, or extreme outliers from Study 3. p .01. p .001 from Holm corrected t tests. Error bars are 95% confidence intervals. 
Figure 5. Participant inferences of the prescriptive norm as a function of outlier extremity. The dotted lines represent the average extremity if one averages both days: (34 min later 3 min later)/2 18.5; (14 min later 3 min later)/2 8.5. This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. 
Social Norm Perception in Groups With Outliers

July 2017

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1,014 Reads

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40 Citations

Journal of Experimental Psychology General

Social outliers draw a lot of attention from those inside and outside their group and yet little is known about their impact on perceptions of their group as a whole. The present studies examine how outliers influence observers’ summary perceptions of a group’s behavior and inferences about the group’s descriptive and prescriptive norms. Across 4 studies (N = 1,718) we examine how observers perceive descriptive and prescriptive social norms in groups containing outliers of varying degrees. We find consistent evidence that observers overweight outlying behavior when judging the descriptive and prescriptive norms, but overweight outliers less as they become more extreme, especially in perceptions of the prescriptive norm. We find this pattern across norms pertaining to punctuality (Studies 1–2 and 4) and clothing formality (Study 3) and for outliers who are both prescriptively and descriptively deviant (e.g., late arrivers), as well as for outliers who are only descriptive deviants (e.g., early arrivers). We further demonstrate that observers’ perceptions of the group shift in the direction of moderate outliers. This occurs because observers anchor on the outlier’s behavior and adjust their recollections of nonoutlying individuals, making their inferences about the group’s average behavior more extreme.


Behavioral Processes in Long-Lag Intervention Studies

May 2017

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67 Reads

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38 Citations

Perspectives on Psychological Science

We argue that psychologists who conduct experiments with long lags between the manipulation and the outcome measure should pay more attention to behavioral processes that intervene between the manipulation and the outcome measure. Neglect of such processes, we contend, stems from psychology’s long tradition of short-lag lab experiments where there is little scope for intervening behavioral processes. Studying process in the lab invariably involves studying psychological processes, but in long-lag field experiments it is important to study causally relevant behavioral processes as well as psychological ones. To illustrate the roles that behavioral processes can play in long-lag experiments we examine field experiments motivated by three policy-relevant goals: prejudice reduction, health promotion, and educational achievement. In each of the experiments discussed we identify various behavioral pathways through which the manipulated psychological state could have produced the observed outcome. We argue that if psychologists conducting long-lag interventions posited a theory of change that linked manipulated psychological states to outcomes via behavioral pathways, the result would be richer theory and more practically useful research. Movement in this direction would also permit more opportunities for productive collaborations between psychologists and other social scientists interested in similar social problems.


Fig. 1. Serial mediation analysis from Study 1. Values in figure are unstandardized regression coefficients controlling for power, humor, and creativity. Value in parentheses indicates remaining direct effect when controlling for self-ratings of moral characteristics and anticipated guilt. *p b 0.05, **p b 0.01, ***p b 0.001.
Table 1 Main effects of excuse condition on dependent variables in Study 1.
Fig. 3. Percentage of donation by excuse condition. Error bars are 95% confidence intervals.
Moral traps: When self-serving attributions backfire in prosocial behavior

May 2017

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638 Reads

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21 Citations

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Two assumptions guide the current research. First, people's desire to see themselves as moral disposes them to make attributions that enhance or protect their moral self-image: When approached with a prosocial request, people are inclined to attribute their own noncompliance to external factors, while attributing their own compliance to internal factors. Second, these attributions can backfire when put to a material test. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that people who attribute their refusal of a prosocial request to an external factor (e.g., having an appointment), but then have that excuse removed, are more likely to engage in prosocial behavior than those who were never given an excuse to begin with. Study 3 shows that people view it as more morally reprehensible to no longer honor the acceptance of a prosocial request if an accompanying external incentive is removed than to refuse a request unaccompanied by an external incentive. Study 4 extends this finding and suggests that people who attribute the decision to behave prosocially to an internal factor despite the presence of an external incentive are more likely to continue to behave prosocially once the external incentive is removed than are those for whom no external incentive was ever offered. This research contributes to an understanding of the dynamics underlying the perpetuation of moral self-regard and suggests interventions to increase prosocial behavior.


Selfishly benevolent or benevolently selfish: When self-interest undermines versus promotes prosocial behavior

November 2016

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197 Reads

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53 Citations

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Existing research shows that appeals to self-interest sometimes increase and sometimes decrease prosocial behavior. We propose that this inconsistency is in part due to the framings of these appeals. Different framings generate different salient reference points, leading to different assessments of the appeal. Study 1 demonstrates that buying an item with the proceeds going to charity evokes a different set of alternative behaviors than donating and receiving an item in return. Studies 2 and 3a-g establish that people are more willing to act, and give more when they do, when reading the former framing than the latter. Study 4 establishes ecological validity by replicating the effect in a field experiment assessing participants’ actual charitable contributions. Finally, Study 5 provides additional process evidence via moderation for the proposed mechanism. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of these findings and suggest avenues for future research.



Citations (77)


... People not only observe the behavior of others, but they also make spontaneous inferences about the motivations behind that behavior, and the actor's desired outcomes [17,18]. Research has consistently shown that people tend to over-attribute selfinterest as a motive for others' actions [19,20], a tendency which can be exacerbated by status differences. For example, compared to members of the high-status group, Halabi et al. (2016) found that low-status group members (specifically, Israeli Arabs) were more inclined to perceive assistance from high-status group members (Israeli Jews) as being nonbenevolent [12]. ...

Reference:

Dependency-Oriented Versus Autonomy-Oriented Help: Inferred Motivations and Intergroup Perceptions
The Disparity Between the Actual and Assumed Power of Self-Interest

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

... Research on explanations for gender disparities in STEM commonly considers the attitudes and behaviours of women more than those of men 105 . However, the choices by men are as important in contributing to gender disparities in representation as those by women. ...

Gender Gaps: Who Needs to Be Explained?

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

... Partitioned Giving Generates Positive Character Inferences of the Donor recognition (Berman et al., 2015), or a sense of obligation (Andreoni et al., 2017;Lin et al., 2016;Lin & Miller, 2021;Lin & Reich, 2018). We identify two specific positive character inferences people make about donors who partition their donations that suggest genuine motives for giving: The donors have frequent impulses to give and have a strong desire to be connected to the cause. ...

A dynamic perspective on moral choice: Revisiting moral hypocrisy
  • Citing Article
  • May 2021

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

... Research on the moral threshold effect suggests individuals will balance between the moral and functional utility. They do not necessarily aim to maximize their prosocial behavior but only need to achieve a level "moral enough" for them (Miller and Monin 2016). Pro-environmental and prosocial behaviors share characteristics of altruism, the need to balance altruistic and utilitarian utility, and the signaling of socially desirable identities (White, Habib, and Dahl 2020). ...

Moral Opportunities Versus Moral Tests
  • Citing Chapter
  • January 2016

... For example, in the mishap task, children may simply feel bad about what has actually occurred (e.g. a broken toy), without considering how things might have turned out differently. By contrast, regret is defined as a counterfactually mediated emotion, underpinned by a comparison between what is, and what could have been, if one had chosen differently (Kahneman & Miller, 1986). Uprichard and McCormack's (2019) view is that interpersonal regret should be reserved for circumstances that necessarily involve counterfactual thoughts about how acting differently would have been better for a person other than oneself. ...

Norm Theory: Comparing Reality to Its Alternatives
  • Citing Chapter
  • July 2002

... However, changing the prototypicality of leader allyship may be challenging in these contexts since the leader is just one person, and such norms are inherently social phenomenon (Dannals et al., 2020). ...

From whom do we learn group norms? Low-ranking group members are perceived as the best sources
  • Citing Article
  • November 2020

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

... We find that the availability of these options may reduce consumers' likelihood of choosing the most green option, suggesting the critical importance for a more comprehensive perspectives of incremental green options. Furthermore, building on the concept of the moral threshold effect (Zlatev et al. 2020), this study identifies a subjective "green threshold" as a key factor in consumers' decision-making. When a green option meets this threshold, the anticipated guilt of not selecting the most green choice diminishes. ...

Being “Good” or “Good Enough”: Prosocial Risk and the Structure of Moral Self-Regard

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

... Relatedly, the more that the parties who are trying to coordinate have a shared understanding of a situation, the more accurate their predictions will be, and thus the more likely coordination is to happen. For example, the aforementioned bystander effect seems to stem at least in part from people believing that other people act in ways similar to how they themselves are acting but for dissimilar reasons (Miller & Nelson, 2002), and is attenuated under conditions when it is clear that others have the same interpretation of a situation, as when there is an obvious (vs. ambiguous) emergency (Fischer et al. 2011). ...

Seeing Approach Motivation in the Avoidance Behavior of Others: Implications for an Understanding of Pluralistic Ignorance

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

... The reverse type of response, moral licensing, refers to the effect of past ethical deeds on current decisions to behave immorally. The moral licensing literature has shown that temporary boosts to one's moral self-identity licenses less self-controlled or unethical behavior (Monin & Miller, 2001;Sachdeva, Iliev, & Medin, 2009). After recalling an instance of moral behavior from the past, for example, one is more likely to cheat (Jordan, Mullen, & Murningham, 2011;Gao, Wheeler, & Shiv, 2009;Strahilevitz & Myers, 1998). ...

Moral Credentials and the Expression of Prejudice

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology