Episode 35: Douchebags and Desert

Very Bad Wizards

Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro

Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 November 2013

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dave and Tamler talk about the influence of character judgments on attributions of blame. What is the function of the blame--to assign responsibility or to judge a person's character? Is it fair that we blame douchebags more than good people who commit exactly the same act, or is it yet another cognitive bias that should be avoided? Plus we delve into the Richie Incognito hazing story (maybe a little early since the story has developed) and Tamler tries to figure out how to teach the Gospels to students who know roughly 100 times as much about them than he does.

Links

"The Miami Dolphins and Everything that Will Never Make Sense." by Andrew Sharp. (grantland.com)
Interview with Richie Incognito (youtube.com)
Gospel of Matthew [wikipedia.org]
Synoptic Gospels [wikipedia.org]
Pizarro, D.A. & Tannenbaum, D. (2011). Bringing character back: How the motivation to evaluate character influences judgments of moral blame. In M. Mikulincer & Shaver, P. (Eds) The Social psychology of morality: Exploring the causes of good and evil. APA Press.
A recent chapter on character and moral psychology that David wrote (with Roy Baumeister) just to be able to talk about comics and porn : Superhero Comics as Moral Pornography. In R. Rosenberg (Ed.) Our Superheroes, Ourselves. Oxford University Press.
Tannenbaum, D., Uhlmann, E. L., & Diermeier, D. (2011). Moral signals, public outrage, and immaterial harms. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47(6), 1249-1254.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Very bad wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and a psychologist, Dave Pizarro,
0:06.5	having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics.
0:10.0	Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing
0:14.6	my dad some very inappropriate jokes.
0:17.6	I don't like their heads, I don't like their faces, I don't like their feet, I don't like
0:22.8	their conversations, I don't like their hairdos, I don't like their automobiles, I don't
0:29.7	like their dogs or the cats or their roses.
0:59.7	Welcome to very bad wizards, I'm Tamler Summers from the University of Houston.
1:28.8	Dave, do you think I blame you more because you have such a bad character?
1:36.5	I'm David Pizarro from Cornell University, you know, I really, deeply, truly believe
1:41.2	that I'm blameless, I don't think I've ever done anything wrong or hurtful.
1:46.3	Like Jesus.
1:47.3	Like Jesus.
1:48.3	I don't know, he heard Judas' feelings, but calling him out in front of all his friends.
1:52.6	I don't even know what Judas did, what did he do?
1:55.5	He betrayed, he betrayed from Jesus by selling him for silver to the Romans, just, you
2:03.0	know, the reason, the reason for centuries of anti-Semitism right there.
2:07.8	How much silver?
2:08.8	I think it was 20 pieces.
2:11.6	20 pieces?
2:12.6	I mean, you know, that's probably back then.
2:15.1	So there's a price on our Lord and Savior's what you're saying, like it says.
	...

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