Age and sex differences of the halo effect when assessing moral dilemmas
An analysis of empirical studies of the halo effect in solving various problems has shown the topicality of studying this phenomenon in ontogenesis. The paper compares the estimates of the admissibility of harm to attractive and unattractive people when solving moral dilemmas for women and men of three age groups (youth, age 18-22 years; adult, age 28-45 years and elder, age > 65 years, only women). We hypothesized that individual experience, accumulated with age, will help to mitigate the role of stereotypes in interpersonal perception, in particular, to reduce the halo effect of external attractiveness, i.e. with age, the differences between the assessments of the permissibility of harming attractive and unattractive characters when solving moral dilemmas will decrease. We also assumed that the role of appearance will be more significant when respondents decide on the fate of characters of the opposite sex. The study showed that the halo effect of external attractiveness is present when both young respondents and older people consider the stimulus dilemmas. The hypothesis about gender-related differences in the assessment of dilemmas was confirmed. The characters of all the dilemmas were males, and women's estimates of the admissibility of harm to them were significantly lower than men's. We demonstrated peculiar properties of the explanations given by our participants when solving dilemmas for attractive and unattractive “victims”. They mentioned that it was better to save five than one, or accused the victim himself more often if the victim was unattractive. When considering situations in which the victim was an attractive person, respondents more often tried to escape from solving the dilemma, offering options for saving all the participants. When women assess situations in which the victim can escape, the halo effect gets double expression - on the one hand, women are less willing to sacrifice an attractive young man than an unattractive, but on the other hand, they tend to attribute the best physical qualities to an attractive man and, and therefore the opportunity to be saved in the presence of such a chance.