Mind Perception Is the Essence of Morality

Abstract

Mind perception entails ascribing mental capacities to other entities, whereas moral judgment entails labeling entities as good or bad or actions as right or wrong. We suggest that mind perception is the essence of moral judgment. In particular, we suggest that moral judgment is rooted in a cognitive template of two perceived minds—a moral dyad of an intentional agent and a suffering moral patient. Diverse lines of research support dyadic morality. First, perceptions of mind are linked to moral judgments: dimensions of mind perception (agency and experience) map onto moral types (agents and patients), and deficits of mind perception correspond to difficulties with moral judgment. Second, not only are moral judgments sensitive to perceived agency and experience, but all moral transgressions are fundamentally understood as agency plus experienced suffering—that is, interpersonal harm—even ostensibly harmless acts such as purity violations. Third, dyadic morality uniquely accounts for the phenomena of dyadic completion (seeing agents in response to patients, and vice versa), and moral typecasting (characterizing others as either moral agents or moral patients). Discussion also explores how mind perception can unify morality across explanatory levels, how a dyadic template of morality may be developmentally acquired, and future directions.

Facing humanness: Facial width-to-height ratio predicts ascriptions of humanity.

“…In their influential model, Gray and colleagues (2007) demonstrated that people perceive others' minds as being comprised of two distinct and conceptually orthogonal dimensions: agency (i.e., the capacity for higher order cognitions, such as planning, communicating, and remembering) and experience (i.e., the capacity for experiencing sensations and drive-states such as pleasure, pain, and hunger). Individuals high in agency can act with intention and thus are seen as moral agents, capable of enacting right and wrong, whereas individuals high in experience are seen as moral patients, capable of being acted upon (Gray, Knobe, Sheskin, Bloom, & Barrett, 2011;Gray, Young, & Waytz, 2012). Because high fWHR targets are often seen as impulsively aggressive (Geniole et al, 2015), we hypothesized that they would be ascribed minds that are low in agency.…”

Climate change helplessness and the (de)moralization of individual energy behavior.

“…Climate change carries terrible potential for destruction and is therefore an issue ripe for moralization through judgments of harm caused by energy waste (for a discussion of other barriers to moralization of climate change, see Markowitz & Shariff, 2012). Harm to others (e.g., pain, injury, death, property loss) is central to most theories of morality and an important source of moral judgment (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009;Gray, Young, & Waytz, 2012;Kohlberg, 1969;Nucci, 1981;Piaget 1932Piaget /1965Shweder, 1990;Turiel, Killen, & Helwig, 1987). For example, acts thought to help or harm others (e.g., reckless driving) are more likely to be seen as moral (Gray & Schein, 2012; and evoke stronger moral judgment (Young & Saxe, 2011;Uhlmann & Zhu, 2014).…”

At the Heart of Morality Lies Neuro-Visceral Integration: Lower Cardiac Vagal Tone Predicts Utilitarian Moral Judgment

“…To not harm others is widely considered the most basic element of human morality (Cushman et al, 2006;Haidt, 2007;Gray et al, 2012). There is substantial evidence highlighting the role that aversion to harm plays in moral judgments (Blair, 1995;Cushman et al, 2012;Crockett, 2013;Schein and Ward, 2014).…”