The dyadic theory of morality: the keys to Kurt Gray’s model.

A summary of the Dyadic Theory of Morality and its understanding of the ethics of behavior.

Morality is a concept that has been studied for thousands of years, mainly through philosophy and more recently through psychology.

To this day, models are still being proposed that try to explain this complex model in the most efficient way. It is precisely the goal of dyadic theory of moralitywhich will be the focus of this article. We will try to shed light on this model in the following lines.

What is the dyadic theory of morality?

The dyadic theory of morality is a model that tries to explain the functioning of morality from a very particular perspective. Although several authors have been involved in its elaboration, it is generally attributed to the social psychologists Chelsea Schein and Kurt Gray.

Their approach is based on the existence of two fundamental elements for the perception of any transgression of morality, i.e., of a dyad. This is the reason why this model has received the name of dyadic theory of morality. The minds of human beings would use a kind of scheme to measure morality, based on these two elements.

What are these two key elements? That of the moral agent and that of the moral patient. The moral agent would be the one who performs the action whose morality is in question..... It is the person, collective, organization or any other entity that perpetrates the immoral action, and also does so intentionally, according to our perception.

But according to the dyadic theory of morality, a moral patient is always necessarily present before a moral agent.. In other words, if someone commits an immoral act, someone is being a victim of that action and is therefore suffering its effects. That would be the moral patient, the person or group that is suffering the aggression of the other component of the dyad.

Morality quadrant

On this basis, we could establish a quadrant, placing each of these dimensions on its own axis, and thus be able to classify individuals or groups according to whether they are only predisposed to act as agents, i.e. they have a high capacity for action, or whether they tend to be patient, since their characteristics make them conducive to suffering.

There are two other options, the one in which such an entity scores high on both variables, so that it could act but also suffer, according to the dyadic theory of morality, and the fourth option, which would consist of a low predisposition to be either of the two options, i.e., neither act nor suffer.

The first case, that of having an absolute capacity to act but no capacity to suffer, is reserved only for very powerful entities, such as a large corporation. If it can only suffer consequences but not generate them, we would be talking about a being like a child or a helpless animal.

The average human being, on the other hand, is at the third level, that of being able to both act and suffer. Finally, the fourth option provided by the dyadic theory of morality would be that of not having either of the two capacities, and for this we would have to refer only to inert beings.

These categories are interesting, because there is a correlation between them and other elements, such as rights and obligations, both legal and moral, which is the subject that concerns us. Along these lines, it is observed that if a person or entity has a greater capacity to act than to suffer, it would have more obligations than rights.

On the contrary, that subject or group that is more of a patient than a moral agent will have more rights than responsibilities. In other words, those in the first category are assigned moral responsibility, while those in the second category are presupposed to have moral rights.

What happens when the dyad is incomplete?

We saw at the beginning that the dyadic theory of morality implies the existence in all cases, according to the mental scheme that we handle, of two fundamental elements to consider any moral transgression: that of the one who exercises it and that of the one who suffers it. But what happens when only one of the two is present?

In that case, we tend to fall into the presumption of the other element. That is to say, human beings seem to have a certain predisposition to assign the role of the element not present to someone who fits our schemes, in order to complete the model of the dyadic theory of morality. As we will see below, this mechanism works in two directions.

First, we may be faced with a situation in which we observe a moral agent, i.e., someone or something that is performing a certain action that we could qualify as immoral, according to our values or ideals. Even if there is no one present who is acting as a moral patient, we will inevitably tend to assign this category and thus complete the dyad..

In this way, we will take for granted that, if someone is transgressing morality in some way, it is evident that someone is being a victim of this fact and therefore suffering its consequences, even though objectively it does not have to be so. It is an automatic matter, it happens without our being able to avoid it.

But we have already seen that this is not the only way in which this mechanism can work. The other way occurs when we encounter someone who is undergoing some kind of suffering. In that case, the dyadic theory of morality also makes us tend to complete the dyad, but in the other direction.

That is, what an observer would automatically do would be to assume that, since there is a moral patient, there must be a moral agent who is the cause of that person's or collective's suffering.. Even for events as foreign to morality as natural disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.), since they cause suffering in many people, there will be those who attribute the authorship to entities such as God or nature itself.

Cataloguing at the moral level

Another issue highlighted by the dyadic theory of morality is what the authors call moral pigeonholing. This phenomenon refers to the tendency we human beings have to categorize another person or group as either a moral agent or a moral patient.

The point is that, by categorizing a subject, for example, as a moral agent, what is being done at the same time, and automatically, is to deny him the condition of moral patient.The observers move in extremes.

Therefore, when we consider that a person is a transgressor of a moral norm, he or she will be pigeonholed in that condition and it will be very difficult for us to consider at some point that he or she may be a moral patient, that is, that he or she may be a victim of a different moral actor.

The mechanism is bidirectional, so that exactly the same thing happens with those collectives or individuals who have been moral patients..... In that case, they will have the status of victims, and we will not consider that they can be actors of transgressions of the norm, since we will see them only as patients and never as agents.

If we go deeper into this question, we can realize the consequences of this approach of the dyadic theory of morality. On many occasions, we run the risk of stigmatizing individuals, groups or organizations for a specific fact, which will make them potential moral transgressors with every action they take.

On the other hand, the opposite phenomenon can also occur, and that is that an entity that at a given moment has suffered morally because of others, may retain that category and in some way attenuate or exempt any possible moral agency that in the future it commits towards others..

This appreciation is of great relevance and can help us to be more aware of moral judgments that we constantly make towards individuals and groups, considering them as actors or victims, depending on the categorization we have made about them in the beginning.

But the reality may be very different and we may not be realizing that, in general, moral actors are not always actors, nor are moral patients always patients. On the contrary, it is normal that every person is sometimes an agent and sometimes a patient, without necessarily having the same status at all times..

As we can see, the dyadic theory of morality serves, among other things, to make us aware of this important phenomenon, and we can take it into account in order to adopt a more objective stance on morality.

Bibliographical references:

• Gray, K., Young, L., Waytz, A. (2012). Mind perception is the essence of morality. Psychological Inquiry. Taylor & Francis.
• Malo, P. (2019). The essence of morality: The Dyadic Theory of Morality. Evolution and Neuroscience.
• Schein, C., Goranson, A., Gray, K. (2015). The uncensored truth about morality. The Psychologist. The British Psychological Society.
• Schein, C., Gray, K. (2018). The theory of dyadic morality: Reinventing moral judgment by redefining harm. Personality and Social Psychology Review.