Menschen mit starkem Engagement für die Gleichstellung der Geschlechter vertrauen eher strengen Studien, die eine Voreingenommenheit gegenüber Frauen belegen. Dieselbe moralische Überzeugung kann jedoch zu voreingenommenen Überlegungen führen und dazu führen, dass Menschen auf Diskriminierung schließen, selbst wenn die Beweise etwas anderes sagen.

I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

Moral commitment to gender equality increases (mis)perceptions of gender bias in hiring

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.3071

From the linked article:

How do our moral beliefs shape the way we interpret evidence of societal issues like gender discrimination? A recent study in the European Journal of Social Psychology found that individuals with strong commitments to gender equality are more likely to trust rigorous studies showing bias against women. However, the study also points to a darker side: the same moral conviction can lead to biased reasoning, causing people to infer discrimination even when the evidence says otherwise.

The researchers found a clear relationship between participants’ moral commitment to gender equality and their evaluations of scientific evidence. Participants who expressed stronger moral convictions about gender equality were more likely to positively evaluate studies that provided rigorous evidence of gender discrimination against women in STEM hiring processes. These individuals rated the studies as more accurate, reliable, and of higher quality compared to participants with weaker moral commitments.

The results showed that participants with higher moral commitment to gender equality were indeed more likely to accept the study’s faulty conclusion. Despite the data contradicting the idea of discrimination against women, these participants were more inclined to endorse the study’s findings, showing that their moral beliefs could lead them to overlook evidence that did not support their views.

Additionally, participants in these experiments were more likely to accept the flawed gender discrimination conclusion than the fallacious conclusions in the control conditions. This indicates that moral commitment to a highly charged issue like gender equality can lead people to reason in biased ways, accepting conclusions that align with their beliefs, even when those conclusions are unsupported by the data.