Imagine you’re out shopping when you see a stranger pick up a smartphone, put it in his pocket, and walk out of the store without paying. Then, as you’re leaving the store, a police officer stops and asks if you know anything about the crime. What do you do? Do you tell the officer what you saw, or do you look the other way?
Now imagine yourself in the same scenario but with a twist: rather than a stranger stealing the smartphone, it’s your best friend. Now what do you do? Do you respond any differently?
The tension you feel when answering these hypotheticals highlight two fundamental tendencies that, at times, meet at loggerheads—justice (the inclination to punish people who break the rules or commit immoral acts) and loyalty (the obligation to favor and protect people we are close to).
What happens when these motives collide head-on, what influences our decision-making in these dilemmas, and how can we alter our behavior? Over the course of 10 experiments, my colleagues and I set out to explore these questions. First, we asked research participants different versions of the same hypothetical question I asked you above. We wrote different versions of each situation that the participants read and responded to. In some versions, the perpetrator was someone close to the participant, and in some versions the perpetrator was a stranger. In addition, some of the situations involved serious offenses such as blackmail or assault, and some of them involved less serious offenses such as illegally downloading music or harassment.
The findings were consistent: participants indicated that they would protect relationship partners more than strangers, and this discrepancy increased with the severity of the crime. Continue reading from The Society for Personality and Social Psychology
What Does “Partner in Crime” Mean? (WikiHow)
Bonnie Wasn’t Clyde’s Only Female Accomplice (History)
Accomplices, Accessories, Aiders, and Abettors (NOLO)
When Family Loyalty Becomes a Crime (LA Times)
Blind Loyalty? When Group Loyalty Makes Us See Evil or Engage In It (Harvard Business Review)
Loyalty (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
5 Red Flags You’re Being Manipulated By A Sociopath (Charisma on Command YouTube)
