When injustice is at stake, moral judgements are not parochial

Piazza, Jared; Sousa, Paulo

doi:10.1098/rspb.2015.2037

Cited by 18 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 7 publications

(15 reference statements)

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“…By contrast, some have defended a deflationary view of harm, claiming that perceptions of harm cannot be sufficient for judgments of wrongdoing because people often find harmful acts acceptable (Fiske & Rai, 2014; Piazza & Sousa, 2016; Piazza, Sousa, & Holbrook, 2013; Sousa, Holbrook, & Piazza, 2009; Sousa & Piazza, 2014). When malevolent criminals are jailed, when a country attacks another country in self-defense, when professional boxers pummel each other in an arena, and when scientists subject animals to painful medical tests to test a vaccine, individuals are made to suffer.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, this conflation of harm and wrongdoing can be observed in Schein and Gray’s Study 1, which scored prototypically unjust acts, such as murder, stealing, and adultery, as forms of “harm.” It remains unclear whether their results show that the relevant notion of harm, related to the causation of pain/suffering, is playing the key role in participants’ judgments. Second, although deflationary theorists have made detailed theoretical arguments for their position (e.g., Sousa & Piazza, 2014), the evidence they have provided is mostly based on the reanalysis of other researchers’ data (see, e.g., Piazza & Sousa, 2016). Moreover, they have not directly probed the role of injustice, which includes the perception of selfishness, in judgments of wrongdoing, nor have they systematically assessed its role across a diversity of transgressions beyond harmful transgressions.…”

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Which Appraisals Are Foundational to Moral Judgment? Harm, Injustice, and Beyond

Piazza

Sousa

Rottman

et al. 2018

Social Psychological and Personality Science

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Harm-centric accounts of judgments of moral wrongdoing argue that moral judgments are fundamentally based on appraisals of harm. However, past research has failed to operationally discriminate harm appraisals from appraisals related to injustice. Four studies carefully discriminated harm qua pain/suffering from injustice, alongside appraisals related to impurity, authority, and disloyalty. Appraisals of injustice outperformed appraisals of harm as independent predictors of the judged wrongness of recalled offenses (Study 1). Studies 2a, 2b, and 3 extended these findings using a diverse range of wrongful acts and two different cultural samples—the United States and Greece. In addition to the strong relevance of injustice appraisals, these latter studies uncovered substantial contributions of impurity and authority appraisals. The results inform debates on moral pluralism and the foundations of moral cognition.

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confidence: 99%

Which Appraisals Are Foundational to Moral Judgment? Harm, Injustice, and Beyond

Piazza

Sousa

Rottman

et al. 2018

Social Psychological and Personality Science

Self Cite

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“…Royzman, Goodwin, and Leeman () and Royzman, Leeman, and Baron () argue that moral norms are distinguished from other norms by content that regulates actions thought to be intrinsically harmful to others. Gray, Young, and Waytz (, 116) argue that “immoral acts are norm violations that match a dyadic template: Acts are wrong when they involve the intentional causation of suffering.” Piazza and Sousa () argue that the mixed evidence on the moral–conventional distinction can be accommodated if moral transgressions are those that the folk judge to involve justice or rights transgressions. Harm, they argue, is insufficient for producing the hallmark features associated with moral norms: authority–independence and generality.…”

Section: A Distinction Between the Moral And Nonmoralmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They say this is predicted by evolution, and support their thesis with evidence from seven cultures. However, Piazza and Sousa () dispute their interpretation of that evidence (See also Fessler et al, ).…”

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Kinds of norms

O'Neill

2017

Philosophy Compass

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This article provides an overview of recent, empirically supported categorization schemes that have been proposed to distinguish different kinds of norms. Amongst these are the moral-conventional distinction and divisions within moral norms such as those proposed by moral foundations theory. I identify several dimensions along which norms have been and could usefully be categorized. I discuss some of the most prominent norm categorization proposals and the aims of these existing categorization schemes. I propose that we take a pluralistic approach toward categorizing norms: Depending on our goals, it may be useful to focus on different features of norms, and as a result, it will be useful to categorize norms in multiple ways.

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“…As truly non-involved bystanders, they still appear to detect such a putative norm violation, but this is not accompanied by overt disapproval (e.g., no arousal, and no waa-barks; Rudolf von Rohr et al, 2015). It is worth pointing out that in humans too, morality tends to be parochial in that we feel stronger about norm violations within the group (Fessler et al, 2015, but see Piazza andSousa, 2016), and that punishment of norm violations is often not altruisitic (Guala, 2012).…”

Section: Social Norms I: Universal Biologically Anchored Contentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolutionary Origins of Morality: Insights From Non-human Primates

2018

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The aim of this contribution is to explore the origins of moral behavior and its underlying moral preferences and intuitions from an evolutionary perspective. Such a perspective encompasses both the ultimate, adaptive function of morality in our own species, as well as the phylogenetic distribution of morality and its key elements across primates. First, with regard to the ultimate function, we argue that human moral preferences are best construed as adaptations to the affordances of the fundamentally interdependent hunter-gatherer lifestyle of our hominin ancestors. Second, with regard to the phylogenetic origin, we show that even though full-blown human morality is unique to humans, several of its key elements are not. Furthermore, a review of evidence from non-human primates regarding prosocial concern, conformity, and the potential presence of universal, biologically anchored and arbitrary cultural norms shows that these elements of morality are not distributed evenly across primate species. This suggests that they have evolved along separate evolutionary trajectories. In particular, the element of prosocial concern most likely evolved in the context of shared infant care, which can be found in humans and some New World monkeys. Strikingly, many if not all of the elements of morality found in non-human primates are only evident in individualistic or dyadic contexts, but not as third-party reactions by truly uninvolved bystanders. We discuss several potential explanations for the unique presence of a systematic third-party perspective in humans, but focus particularly on mentalizing ability and language. Whereas both play an important role in present day, full-blown human morality, it appears unlikely that they played a causal role for the original emergence of morality. Rather, we suggest that the most plausible scenario to date is that human morality emerged because our hominin ancestors, equipped on the one hand with large and powerful brains inherited from their ape-like ancestor, and on the other hand with strong prosocial concern as a result of cooperative breeding, could evolve into an ever more interdependent social niche.

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When injustice is at stake, moral judgements are not parochial

Cited by 18 publications

References 7 publications

Which Appraisals Are Foundational to Moral Judgment? Harm, Injustice, and Beyond

Which Appraisals Are Foundational to Moral Judgment? Harm, Injustice, and Beyond

Kinds of norms

Evolutionary Origins of Morality: Insights From Non-human Primates

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