Award Date

12-15-2025

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

First Committee Member

Stephen Benning

Second Committee Member

Kimberly Barchard

Third Committee Member

Brenna Renn

Fourth Committee Member

David Forman

Number of Pages

134

Abstract

The present study experimentally manipulated the demographic characteristics of the subjects of moral dilemmas such that they were 20%, 40%, 60%, and 80% demographically similar to participants. Participants rated each of these individuals on a novel measure of perceived inherent value, the Perceived Inherent Value Scale (PIVS) and responded to a series of moral dilemmas using the Consequences, Norms, and preference for Inaction (CNI) model of moral decision making where the subjects of the moral dilemmas were the 20%, 40%, 60%, and 80% similar individuals. Participants rated individuals who were more demographically similar to themselves as having greater perceived inherent value than those less demographically similar and this effect was even stronger when using weighted demographic similarity scores accounting for participants’ own relative importance ratings of different demographic characteristics. Both demographic similarity and perceived inherent value of the subject of a moral dilemma were positively associated with sensitivity to moral norms. Participants’ level of psychopathic meanness negatively predicted perceived inherent value and sensitivity to moral norms within moral decision making. This study presents the initial development of the PIVS and suggests that some of the contention surrounding various social issues may be the result of a tendency to perceive unknown others who are demographically different from oneself as having less inherent value. These results also suggest that accounting for people’s subjective appraisal and ranking of different characteristics within calculations of demographic similarity is more powerful than simply assessing the proportion of shared characteristics. Further, individual differences in the trait of psychopathic meanness may be important to account for in assessing these associations and may provide an initial avenue through which to identify ways to reduce the tendency to perceive those different from oneself as having less inherent value. This study also suggests that demographic similarity, perceived inherent value, and psychopathic meanness all exert their effects on moral decision making through the more automatic, affective, non-conscious pathways related to deontological responding rather than the more deliberate, consciously controlled cognitive processes related to utilitarian responding, a finding with implications for education and intervention efforts.

Keywords

demographic similarity; inherent value; morality; perceived inherent value scale; PIVS; psychopathy

Disciplines

Clinical Psychology | Psychology | Social and Behavioral Sciences

File Format

PDF

File Size

1495 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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