Personal Misconduct Elicits Harsher Professional Consequences for Artists (vs. Scientists): A Moral-Decoupling Process
研究发现，艺术家（相对于科学家）的个人不当行为会招致更严厉的职业惩罚，原因在于人们更难将艺术与道德解耦。
Recent years have brought increased accountability for personal misconduct, yet often, unequal consequences have resulted from similar offenses. Findings from a unique archival data set ( N = 619; all university faculty) and three preregistered experiments ( N = 2,594) show that the perceived artistic-versus-scientific nature of the offender’s professional contributions influences the professional punishment received. In Study 1, analysis of four decades of university sexual-misconduct cases reveals that faculty in artistic (vs. scientific) fields have on average received more severe professional consequences. Study 2 demonstrates this experimentally, offering mediational evidence that greater difficulty morally decoupling art (vs. science) contributes to the phenomenon. Study 3 provides further evidence for this mechanism through experimental moderation. Finally, Study 4 shows that merely framing an individual’s work as artistic versus scientific results in replication of these effects. Several potential alternative mechanisms to moral decoupling are tested but not supported. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.