Moral realism and moral judgments

For moral realists moral judgments will be a kind of factual judgment that involves the basically reliable apprehension of an objective moral reality. I argue that factual judgments display at least some degree of conceptual sensitivity to error, while moral judgments do not. Therefore moral judgments are not a kind of factual judgment.     

The role of emotions for moral judgments depends on the type of emotion and moral scenario

Emotions seem to play a critical role in moral judgment. However, the way in which emotions exert their influence on moral judgments is still poorly understood. This study proposes a novel theoretical approach suggesting that emotions influence moral judgments based on their motivational dimension. We tested the effects of two types of induced emotions with equal valence but with different motivational implications (anger and disgust), and four types of moral scenarios (disgust-related, impersonal, personal, and beliefs) on moral judgments. We hypothesized and found that approach motivation associated with anger would make moral judgments more permissible, while disgust, associated with withdrawal motivation, would make them less permissible. Moreover, these effects varied as a function of the type of scenario: the induced emotions only affected moral judgments concerning impersonal and personal scenarios, while we observed no effects for the other scenarios. These findings suggest that emotions can play an important role in moral judgment, but that their specific effects depend upon the type of emotion induced. Furthermore, induced emotion effects were more prevalent for moral decisions in personal and impersonal scenarios, possibly because these require the performance of an action rather than making an abstract judgment. We conclude that the effects of induced emotions on moral judgments can be predicted by taking their motivational dimension into account. This finding has important implications for moral psychology, as it points toward a previously overlooked mechanism linking emotions to moral judgments.     

Moral perfectionism and moral values,virtues, and judgments: A preliminary investigation

Moral perfectionism has a long tradition in philosophical inquiry, but so far has been ignored in psychological research. This article presents a first psychological investigation of moral perfectionism exploring its relationships with moral values, virtues, and judgments. In three studies, 539 university students responded to items of the Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (Frost et al., 1990) adapted to measure personal moral standards (PMS) and concern over moral mistakes (CMM) and completed measures of moral values, virtues, and forgiveness, gratitude, and wrong behavior judgments. When partial correlations were computed controlling for the overlap between PMS and CMM, PMS showed positive correlations with moral values, virtues, reciprocal helping, forgiveness, and condemnation of wrong behaviors. In contrast, CMM showed a positive correlation only with indebtedness and a negative correlation with self-reliance. The present findings, while preliminary, suggest that moral perfectionism is a personality characteristic that may help explain individual differences in moral values, virtues, and judgments.     

Asymmetry in judgments of moral blame and praise: the role of perceived metadesires

Abstract - An important consideration in judging the blameworthiness (or praiseworthiness) of an action is whether the agent had sufficient control over it. In three experiments, we investigated judgments of moral blame and praise elicited when individuals were presented with vignettes describing actions that were performed either carefully and deliberately or impulsively and uncontrollably. Experiment 1 uncovered an asymmetry between judgments of positive versus negative actions—negative impulsive actions elicited a discounting of moral blame, but positive impulsive actions did not elicit a discounting of moral praise. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that this asymmetry arises because individuals judge agents on the basis of their metadesires (the degree to which the agents embrace or reject the impulses leading to their actions). Individuals assume that an agent would embrace an uncontrollable positive impulse, and reject an uncontrollable negative impulse.     

Gender-related differences in moral judgments

The moral sense is among the most complex aspects of the human mind. Despite substantial evidence confirming gender-related neurobiological and behavioral differences, and psychological research suggesting gender specificities in moral development, whether these differences arise from cultural effects or are innate remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the role of gender, education (general education and health education) and religious belief (Catholic and non-Catholic) on moral choices by testing 50 men and 50 women with a moral judgment task. Whereas we found no differences between the two genders in utilitarian responses to non-moral dilemmas and to impersonal moral dilemmas, men gave significantly more utilitarian answers to personal moral (PM) dilemmas (i.e., those courses of action whose endorsement involves highly emotional decisions). Cultural factors such as education and religion had no effect on performance in the moral judgment task. These findings suggest that the cognitive–emotional processes involved in evaluating PM dilemmas differ in men and in women, possibly reflecting differences in the underlying neural mechanisms. Gender-related determinants of moral behavior may partly explain gender differences in real-life involving power management, economic decision-making, leadership and possibly also aggressive and criminal behaviors.     

The role of similarity and dissimilarity focus in sequential judgments of physical attractiveness

The present results indicate that procedurally priming comparison focus can change the contrast effect in judgments of physical attractiveness (Kenrick & Gutierres, 1980). Participants were primed to search for similarities vs. differences between target and standard of comparison in a task using material irrelevant to the subsequent physical attractiveness judgment. Focusing participants on similarities testing produced the assimilation effect: evaluation of target and comparison standard as being similar. Focusing participants on dissimilarity testing produced the contrast effect: evaluating the target as different from the standard of comparison.     

The role of stimulus factors in making categorical and coordinate spatial judgments

We report three experiments which investigate the lateralization of categorical and coordinate processing. In all experiments, participants judged the position of a dot relative to a line. We manipulated display luminance (controlling for contrast), polarity (black-on-white versus white-on-black displays), and exposure duration (100, 150, and 200 ms). The results showed a left visual field-right hemisphere advantage for coordinate judgments, but only under highly prescribed conditions. We argue that stimulus and procedural factors are critical in determining the hemisphere by task interaction.     

The role of moral commitments in moral judgment

Traditional approaches to moral psychology assumed that moral judgments resulted from the application of explicit commitments, such as those embodied in consequentialist or deontological philosophies. In contrast, recent work suggests that moral judgments often result from unconscious or emotional processes, with explicit commitments generated post hoc. This paper explores the intermediate position that moral commitments mediate moral judgments, but not through their explicit and consistent application in the course of judgment. An experiment with 336 participants finds that individuals vary in the extent to which their moral commitments are consequentialist or deontological, and that this variation is systematically but imperfectly related to the moral judgments elicited by trolley car problems. Consequentialist participants find action in trolley car scenarios more permissible than do deontologists, and only consequentialists moderate their judgments when scenarios that typically elicit different intuitions are presented side by side. The findings emphasize the need for a theory of moral reasoning that can accommodate both the associations and dissociations between moral commitments and moral judgments.     

Moral judgments and the role of social harm: Differences in automatic versus controlled processing

The social intuitionist model has served as an important corrective to the earlier dominance of rational deliberation in moral psychology. Yet the relationship between intuition and deliberation in moral judgments remains largely unexplored. Three studies were conducted to explore the role of automatic and controlled processes in moral judgments. Results suggest that controlled processing is attuned to instances of social harm. Immoral acts (i.e., cases of serious academic dishonesty) that involved diffuse harm in the form of flouting societal rules did not result in increased moral censure under deliberation. In contrast, similar dishonest acts that involved direct social harm to others resulted in harsher, more punitive moral judgments under deliberation, providing evidence of augmentation of automatic responses under controlled processing. The results suggest that the intuitionist sensitivity to direct physical harm has parallels in the controlled processing system, which seems sensitive to non-physical instances of social harm, such as over-benefiting the self at the expense of deserving others.     

The influence of war on moral judgments about harm

How does war influence moral judgments about harm? While the general rule is “thou shalt not kill,” war appears to provide an exception to the moral prohibition on intentional harm. In three studies (n = 263, n = 557, n = 793), we quantify the difference in moral judgments across peace and war contexts, and explore two possible explanations for the difference. The findings demonstrate that third-party observers judge a trade-off of one life for five as more morally acceptable in war than in peace, especially if the one person is from an outgroup of the person making the trade-off. In addition, the robust difference in moral judgments across “switch” and “footbridge” trolley problems is attenuated in war compared to in peace. The present studies have implications for moral psychology researchers who use war-based scenarios to study broader cognitive or affective processes. If the war context changes judgments of moral scenarios by triggering group-based reasoning or altering the perceived structure of the moral event, using such scenarios to make decontextualized claims about moral judgment may not be warranted.     

The contact principle and utilitarian moral judgments in young children

In three experiments involving 207 preschoolers and 28 adults, we investigated the extent to which young children base moral judgments of actions aimed to protect others on utilitarian principles. When asked to judge the rightness of intervening to hurt one person in order to save five others, the large majority of children aged 3 to 5 years advocated intervention in contrast to another situation with the reverse cost/benefit ratio. This course of action was seen as acceptable by most children only when it did not require the agent to have physical contact with the victim and the victim’s harm was intended to produce the greatest good for the greatest number. Overall, the children’s responses were remarkably similar to those reported in adult studies. These findings document the extent to which some constraints on moral judgment are present in early human development.     

Biases in children's and adults' moral judgments

Two experiments examined biases in children's (5/6- and 7/8-year-olds) and adults' moral judgments. Participants at all ages judged that it was worse to produce harm when harm occurred (a) through action rather than inaction (omission bias), (b) when physical contact with the victim was involved (physical contact principle), and (c) when the harm was produced as a direct means to an end rather than as an unintended but foreseeable side effect of the action (intention principle). The youngest participants, however, did not incorporate benefit when making judgments about situations in which harm to one individual resulted in benefit to five individuals. Older participants showed some preference for benefit resulting from action (commission) as opposed to inaction (omission). The findings are discussed in the context of the theory that moral judgments result, in part, from the operation of an inherent, intuitive moral faculty compared with the theory that moral judgments require development of necessary cognitive abilities.     

On the role of attention and emotion in morality: attentional control modulates unrelated disgust in moral judgments

The emotion of disgust can influence people's moral judgments, even if this emotion objectively is unrelated to the moral judgment in question. The present work demonstrates that attentional control regulates this effect. In three studies, disgust was induced. In an unrelated part of the studies, participants then judged a moral transgression. Disgust resulted in more severe moral judgments when attentional control (either measured by means of individual predisposition or manipulated with experimental control) was weak as opposed to strong (Studies 1-3). Findings further showed that attentional control mediated the positive relation between the intensity of participants' disgust responses and the severity of their moral judgments (Study 2). Moreover, attentional control has its effects through the regulation of affective processing (Study 3). Taken together, the findings suggest that unrelated influences of disgust on moral judgments are contingent on the attention system.     

The role of expectancy in comparative judgments

Researchers interested in the processing of relational information have sought a satisfactory explanation for the congruity effect in linear orders. It is relatively easy to select either the greater of two objects that are high on a dimension or the lesser of two objects that are low on a dimension, but it is relatively difficult to determine the greater of two objects that are low in magnitude or the lesser of two objects that are high in magnitude. One explanation of the congruity effect is the expectancy hypothesis that claims that the choice of the comparative primes objects of particular magnitudes. We present two experiments that demonstrate that a congruity effect of equivalent magnitude is obtained when the comparative is presented after the stimulus pair. Moreover, this equivalence cannot be attributed to the salience of the dimensions we employed, because this equivalence held for stimuli that were classified as salient and for those classified as nonsalient. These findings are interpreted in the context of some current explanations of the congruity effect.     

Sanctions and moral judgments: The moderating effect of sanction severity and trust in authorities

In order to induce people to follow rules, sanctions are often introduced. In this paper we argue for the importance of studying the positive influence of sanctioning systems on people's moral convictions regarding the rule advocated by the sanction and of studying factors that moderate this influence. In three experiments we tested the influence of sanction severity and showed that severe sanctions evoke stronger moral judgments with regard to rule‐breaking behavior and stronger social disapproval towards rule‐breakers than mild sanctions. This was particularly the case when trust in authorities is high rather than low. Implications of these findings are discussed. Also, a framework is proposed to understand the possible circumstances that determine whether sanctions either increase or decrease moral norms. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Moral spillovers: The effect of moral violations on deviant behavior

Two experiments investigated whether outcomes that violate people’s moral standards increase their deviant behavior (the moral spillover effect). In Study 1, participants with and without a moral mandate (i.e., a strong attitude rooted in moral conviction) read about a legal trial in which the outcome supported, opposed or was unrelated to their moral mandate. Relative to when outcomes supported moral mandates, when outcomes opposed moral mandates people judged the outcome to be less fair, were more angry, were less willing to accept the outcome, and were more likely to take a borrowed pen. In Study 2, participants who recalled another person’s moral violation were more likely to cheat on an experimental task relative to angry or neutral condition participants. Taken together, results provide evidence for moral spillover: outcomes that violate moral standards increase deviant behavior.