The role of analytic thinking in moral judgements and values

Abstract

While individual differences in the willingness and ability to engage analytic processing have long informed research in reasoning and decision making, the implications of such differences have not yet had a strong influence in other domains of psychological research. We claim that analytic thinking is not limited to problems that have a normative basis and, as an extension of this, predict that individual differences in analytic thinking will be influential in determining beliefs and values. Along with assessments of cognitive ability and style, religious beliefs, and moral values, participants judged the wrongness of acts considered disgusting and conventionally immoral, but that do not violate care-or fairness-based moral principles. Differences in willingness to engage analytic thinking predicted reduced judgements of wrongness, independent of demographics, political ideology, religiosity, and moral values. Further, we show that those who were higher in cognitive ability were less likely to indicate that purity, patriotism, and respect for traditions and authority are important to their moral thinking. These findings are consistent with a "Reflectionist" view that assumes a role for analytic thought in determining substantive, deeply-held human beliefs and values.

Analytic Thinking, Religion, and Prejudice: An Experimental Test of the Dual-Process Model of Mind

“…Paxton, Unger, and Greene (2012) showed that priming analytic thinking increases utilitarian moral judgments. In a similar vein, a more recent study suggested that analytic thinking can be a factor in determining disgust-based moral judgments (Pennycook, Cheyne, Barr, Koehler, & Fugelsang, 2014). That is, individual differences in analytic thinking predict variation in judgments of wrongness about conventionally immoral acts: People who have a tendency to think more analytically are less likely to find disgusting acts immoral.…”

What makes us think? A three-stage dual-process model of analytic engagement

“…Stanovich (e.g., 2004;2009b) has argued that thinking disposition is an underappreciated determinant of psychological outcomes. Recent research has supported the idea that cognitive style plays a consequential role in psychological domains that are of some general import (Pennycook, Fugelsang, & Koehler, 2015b): e.g., creativity (Barr, Pennycook, Stolz, & Fugelsang, 2014), moral judgments and values (Paxton, Unger, & Greene, 2012;Pennycook, Cheyne, Barr, Koehler, & Fugelsang, 2014b;Rozyman, Landy, & Goodwin, 2014), religious belief (Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012;Pennycook et al, 2014a;Pennycook, Cheyne, Koehler, & Fugelsang, 2013;Pennycook, Ross, Koehler, & Fugelsang, 2016;Shenhav, Rand, & Greene, 2012), bullshit receptivity (Pennycook, Cheyne, Barr, Koehler, & Fugelsang, 2015), and even Smartphone technology use (Barr, Pennycook, Stolz, & Fugelsang, 2015 …”

Analytic atheism: A cross-culturally weak and fickle phenomenon?

“…There are may ways to "believe in God", some of which may be impervious to any sort of reflection. Cognitive reflection differentially predicts different facets of religiosity (Bahçekapili & Yilmaz, 2017), as well as religious affiliation (Pennycook et al, 2012) and other related constructs (Pennycook, Cheyne, Barr, Koehler & Fugelsang, 2014b;Saribay & Yilmaz, 2017;Yilmaz & Saribay, 2016). And other measures of reflection, as well as CRT items, predict specific religious beliefs such as endorsement of "divine command theory " Piazza & Landy, 2013;Baron et al, 2015), a view that explicitly discourages reflection on the ground that the word of God is beyond human understanding.…”