{"id":227306,"date":"2025-12-17T01:44:27","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T07:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/neutrality-isnt-a-safe-strategy-on-controversial-issues-research-shows"},"modified":"2025-12-17T01:44:27","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T07:44:27","slug":"neutrality-isnt-a-safe-strategy-on-controversial-issues-research-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/neutrality-isnt-a-safe-strategy-on-controversial-issues-research-shows","title":{"rendered":"Neutrality isn\u2019t a safe strategy on controversial issues, research shows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/neutrality-isnt-a-safe-strategy-on-controversial-issues-research-shows.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers Rachel Ruttan and Katherine DeCelles of the University of Toronto\u2019s Rotman School of Management are anything but neutral on neutrality. The next time you\u2019re tempted to play it safe on a hot-button topic, their evidence-based advice is to consider saying what you really think.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s because their recent research, based on more than a dozen experiments with thousands of participants, reveals that people take a dim view of others\u2019 professed neutrality on controversial issues, rating them just as morally suspect as those expressing an opposing viewpoint, if not worse.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNeutrality gives you no advantage over opposition,\u201d says Prof. Ruttan, an associate professor of organizational behavior and human resource management with an interest in moral judgment and prosocial behavior. \u201cYou\u2019re not pleasing anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers Rachel Ruttan and Katherine DeCelles of the University of Toronto\u2019s Rotman School of Management are anything but neutral on neutrality. The next time you\u2019re tempted to play it safe on a hot-button topic, their evidence-based advice is to consider saying what you really think. That\u2019s because their recent research, based on more than a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}