For the longest time I was confused why when reading political opinion articles written by American blacks they would constantly and at great length and with great emotionality keep bringing up slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, redlining, personal accounts of racism, and more recently personal accounts of racist micro aggressions. My somewhat autistic brain would be impatiently reacting, “Yes, yes, I know about racism, so, get to the point.” I wanted them to skip to the details of policy they were arguing for so I could consider its merits (merits which include concerns over race and racism). I was however missing that the main point of the opinion article was the “racism is bad” preamble and the actual policies were much less important than making people feel guilty so they would support the broader concern of black (special) interests in general. The point was to create a moral-debt within white people so they would feel obligated to give in to black demands based more on that indebtedness rather than based on careful judgments over the specifics of the policy recommendations. “You owe me for past injustices, you should feel guilty, and now you have to repay that debt by doing what I want you to do, even if you don’t like it, and even if it may be bad for you.”
This coercion (if effective) seems to run counter to the NPC-think model where people rarely change their beliefs based on argumentation. To address that weakness: we can add the concept of NPC-reciprocity. It is not unusual for people to do favors for other people they like, sometimes with the unstated and unconscious expectation that this person will return the favor in the future. So, generating moral-debt is not so much about changing a person’s beliefs but rather about coercing them to into an obligation for reciprocal repayment.
Advice: Watch out for and callout when someone is trying to guilt you into moral-debt. Be sure to acknowledge that you might indeed have a moral debt to them and then widen the frame. “Yes, you deserve to be heard, and yes, you may be partly correct that I am indebted to you, so yes, let’s discuss that, and then afterwards let’s broaden the discussion to also include my concerns and discuss the specifics of what we might do.” With their (most likely unconscious) tactic of attempting to guilt you now on-the -table rather than hidden you have a much better chance to react to and limit their coercion.
Summary
- Moral-debt: make another person feel morally obligated (guilty) so they perform actions to repay that debt.
- NPC-reciprocity: exchange favors, do a favor as a deposit for a future payback, collect a favor to repay a debt.
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