Moral Judgment

Abstract

The past decade has seen a renewed interest in moral psychology. A unique feature of the present endeavor is its unprecedented interdisciplinarity. For the first time, cognitive, social, and developmental psychologists, neuroscientists, experimental philosophers, evolutionary biologists, and anthropologists collaborate to study the same or overlapping phenomena. This review focuses on moral judgments and is written from the perspective of cognitive psychologists interested in theories of the cognitive and affective processes underlying judgments in moral domains. The review will first present and discuss a variety of different theoretical and empirical approaches, including both behavioral and neuroscientific studies. We will then show how these theories can be applied to a selected number of specific research topics that have attracted particular interest in recent years, including the distinction between moral and conventional rules, moral dilemmas, the role of intention, and sacred/protected values. One overarching question we will address throughout the chapter is whether moral cognitions are distinct and special, or whether they can be subsumed under more domain-general mechanisms.

Moral Judgment: Truth, Order and Consequence

“…This position also implies that moral judgments are made in ways that are unlike other types of judgments (e.g., causal). Alternative to this, the domain-general position posits that processes involved in making moral judgments are no different to judgments of other types (Gigerenzer, 2010;Waldmann et al, 2012), and so factors that influence judgments in general (e.g., order of information, belief updating) will also effect moral judgments in the same way. The causal judgment domain is a useful comparison because many have claimed that there is a close correspondence between moral and causal judgments (Knobe & Fraser, 2008;Waldmann et al, 2012).…”

“…Alternative to this, the domain-general position posits that processes involved in making moral judgments are no different to judgments of other types (Gigerenzer, 2010;Waldmann et al, 2012), and so factors that influence judgments in general (e.g., order of information, belief updating) will also effect moral judgments in the same way. The causal judgment domain is a useful comparison because many have claimed that there is a close correspondence between moral and causal judgments (Knobe & Fraser, 2008;Waldmann et al, 2012). Primacy effects, can have a profound impact on causal judgments, (e.g., presenting information first that implies a generative relationship between cause and event [the joint presence, or joint absence of cause and effect) increase causal judgments as compared to cases when information presented first] suggests a preventative relationship [presence of cause or effect, in the absence of the other]) (Dennis & Ahn, 2001).…”

“…This may help explain why consequences of actions on moral judgments has been of explored in such detail by many researchers (e.g., Borg et al, 2006;Waldmann et al, 2012) as compared to say, the order of information on judgments. Essentially consequentialism and DDE posit that consequences and intentions should be the basis on which moral judgments are made.…”

“…Essentially consequentialism and DDE posit that consequences and intentions should be the basis on which moral judgments are made. Whether this should be used as a benchmark for appropriately evaluating the rationality of moral judgments is still up for debate (Parfitt, 2011;Waldmann et al, 2012). Nevertheless, what is clear is that people attend to details concerning the consequences of actions (or inaction in some cases) on the victim when making moral judgments.…”

Moral Judgment and Decision Making

“…A large amount of research into moral tradeoffs has investigated reactions to the trolley problem as a means to examine the contributions of emotion, reason, automaticity, and cognitive control in moral judgment (Foot, 1967;Thomson, 1985; see also Waldmann, Nagel, & Wiegmann, 2012). In the "bystander" version, a runaway trolley is on a path that will kill five workers on the track ahead, and study participants must decide whether to flip a switch that would divert the trolley onto a side track where it would kill only one person.…”