Understanding Differences in Moral Judgments: The Role of Informational Assumptions

1991 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 840 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilia Wainryb
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Informational Assumptions

Is Empathy Required for Making Moral Judgments?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Deigh
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Psychopathic Personality ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Psychological Profile ◽  
Main Thesis ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Additional Support

This essay is a study of the nature of moral judgment. Its main thesis is that moral judgment is a type of judgment defined by its content and not its psychological profile. The essay arrives at this thesis through a critical examination of Hume’s sentimentalism and the role of empathy in its account of moral judgment. The main objection to Hume’s account is its exclusion of people whom one can describe as making moral judgments though they have no motivation to act on them. Consideration of such people, particularly those with a psychopathic personality, argues for a distinction between different types of moral judgment in keeping with the essay’s main thesis. Additional support for the main thesis is then drawn from Piaget’s theory of moral judgment in children.

scholarly journals Small-scale societies exhibit fundamental variation in the role of intentions in moral judgment

2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (17) ◽  
pp. 4688-4693 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Clark Barrett ◽  
Alexander Bolyanatz ◽  
Alyssa N. Crittenden ◽  
Daniel M. T. Fessler ◽  
Simon Fitzpatrick ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Narrow Range ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Moral Assessment ◽  
Mitigating Circumstances

Intent and mitigating circumstances play a central role in moral and legal assessments in large-scale industrialized societies. Although these features of moral assessment are widely assumed to be universal, to date, they have only been studied in a narrow range of societies. We show that there is substantial cross-cultural variation among eight traditional small-scale societies (ranging from hunter-gatherer to pastoralist to horticulturalist) and two Western societies (one urban, one rural) in the extent to which intent and mitigating circumstances influence moral judgments. Although participants in all societies took such factors into account to some degree, they did so to very different extents, varying in both the types of considerations taken into account and the types of violations to which such considerations were applied. The particular patterns of assessment characteristic of large-scale industrialized societies may thus reflect relatively recently culturally evolved norms rather than inherent features of human moral judgment.

The logical component of thinking as a predictor of decision-making about the presence of corruption risk in a situation

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (6) ◽  
pp. 25-34
Author(s):  
I. N. Pogozhina ◽  
◽  
M. V. Sergeeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Emotional Intelligence ◽  
Correlation Analysis ◽  
University Students ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Diagnostic Tools ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Decision Making System

The links between elements of the decision-making system on the presence of corruption risk (CR) in a situation with the logical component of thinking as a predictor are considered. The hypothesis of the role of logical reasoning component as a predictor of (1) perceptions of corruption, (2) indicators of emotional intelligence and (3) moral judgement was tested on a sample of Moscow university students (N=134; M=35±11 years old). The following diagnostic tools were used: (1) the author's test for recognising CR situations, (2) the method for assessing the content of ideas about corruption (Pogozhina, Pshenichnyuk, Sergeyeva), (3) D. Lucin’s EmIn questionnaire, (4) Molchanov's Justice-Care technique. Correlation analysis and structural modeling were used to process the data. The logical component of thinking was a significant positive predictor of the level of development of perceptions of corruption and understanding one’s own emotions and those of others. Also, the logical component significantly negatively predicted moral judgments based on instrumental individualism, reflexive empathic orientation and unconscious but internalized moral values. The findings suggest that the logical component will play a leading role in the CR decision-making system and should be specifically shaped.

scholarly journals Disgust sensitivity and moral judgments of purity: The role of transgression weirdness

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fieke Maria Antoinet Wagemans ◽  
Mark John Brandt ◽  
Marcel Zeelenberg
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Disgust Sensitivity ◽  
Total N ◽  
Moral Domains ◽  
Moral Transgressions ◽  
The Relationship

Disgust sensitivity is more strongly related to moral judgments in the purity domain than to moral judgments in other moral domains. While this finding highlights the distinctiveness of moral domains, anti-modularity accounts suggest that the relationship is caused by the relative weirdness of purity transgressions and come to the conclusion that moral domains do not represent distinct mechanisms. In two studies (total N = 2,307), we test whether transgression weirdness accounts for disgust sensitivity’s stronger association with moral judgments of the purity as compared to other moral domains, but find little evidence for this claim. The relationship between disgust sensitivity and moral judgments of purity even remains when taking into account both (perceived) weirdness and (perceived) harmfulness of moral transgressions. These studies show that transgression weirdness and harmfulness cannot explain the disgust sensitivity–purity link, contradicting predictions following from popular anti-modularity accounts.

scholarly journals Priming intuition disfavors instrumental harm but not impartial beneficence

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerio Capraro ◽  
Jim Albert Charlton Everett ◽  
Brian D. Earp
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Dimensional Model ◽  
Total N ◽  
Two Dimensional Model ◽  
Do So

Understanding the cognitive underpinnings of moral judgment is one of most pressing problems in psychological science. Some highly-cited studies suggest that reliance on intuition decreases utilitarian (expected welfare maximizing) judgments in sacrificial moral dilemmas in which one has to decide whether to instrumentally harm (IH) one person to save a greater number of people. However, recent work suggests that such dilemmas are limited in that they fail to capture the positive, defining core of utilitarianism: commitment to impartial beneficence (IB). Accordingly, a new two-dimensional model of utilitarian judgment has been proposed that distinguishes IH and IB components. The role of intuition on this new model has not been studied. Does relying on intuition disfavor utilitarian choices only along the dimension of instrumental harm or does it also do so along the dimension of impartial beneficence? To answer this question, we conducted three studies (total N = 970, two preregistered) using conceptual priming of intuition versus deliberation on moral judgments. Our evidence converges on an interaction effect, with intuition decreasing utilitarian judgments in IH—as suggested by previous work—but failing to do so in IB. These findings bolster the recently proposed two-dimensional model of utilitarian moral judgment, and point to new avenues for future research.

scholarly journals I think, therefore I forgive: The role of reasoning in forgiving accidental harms

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Indrajeet Patil ◽  
Bastien Trémolière
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Cognitive Style ◽  
Time Pressure ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Cognitive Resources ◽  
Reasoning Ability ◽  
Total N ◽  
Moral Condemnation

People experience a strong conflict while condemning someone who brought about an accidental harm, her innocent intention exonerating her, but the harmful outcome incriminating her. In the present research (total N = 4879), we explore how reasoning ability and cognitive style relate to how people choose to resolve this conflict and judge the accidental harms. A first set of studies (1a-c) showed that individual differences in cognitive style predicted severity of judgments in fictitious accidental harms scenarios, with more able (or willing) reasoners being less harsh in their judgments. A second set of studies (2a-c) relied on experimental manipulations of cognitive load (Dot matrix, Time pressure, Mortality Salience manipulations), aiming to tax available cognitive resources to participants while evaluating third-party harmful behaviors. These manipulations, however, failed to modulate people’s moral judgments for accidental harms. We discuss the importance of individual differences in reasoning ability in the assessment of accidental harms, and we also propose potential explanations for the failure of our experimental manipulations to affect severity of moral condemnation.

Nietzsche’s Anti-Realism about Value

2019 ◽  
pp. 17-48
Author(s):  
Brian Leiter
Keyword(s):  
Moral Values ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Explanatory Role ◽  
Moral Philosophers ◽  
Moral Facts

Nietzsche defends the metaphysical thesis that there are no objective (i.e. mind-independent) facts about values, including moral values. His primary arguments for his moral anti-realism are “best explanation” arguments: the best explanation of our moral judgments, indeed of the two-millennium long disagreements among moral philosophers, make no reference to objective moral facts. The details of an “inference to the best explanation” are laid out, and illustrated with Nietzsche’s own texts. Contemporary attempts to defend the explanatory role of moral facts are critiqued, and the radical implications of the argument from disagreement among philosophers considered and defended.

Moral Judgments, Moral Virtues, and Moral Norms

Human Affairs ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Miroslav Popper
Keyword(s):  
Social Trust ◽  
Moral Emotions ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Moral Virtues ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ethical Systems ◽  
Ways Of Life

Moral Judgments, Moral Virtues, and Moral NormsThe paper consists of two basic parts. In the first, contemporary approaches to moral judgments and their relations with moral virtues and moral norms are analyzed. The focus is on comparing the role of the emotions and reason, and conscious and unconscious processes in forming and/or justifying moral judgments. The second part examines views on the current broader socio-political situation in Western countries and points to the growing feelings of insecurity among people mainly due to the fact that traditional ways of life have been losing solid ground, settled (social) norms and ethical systems are weakening and at the same time the social trust in various state institutions and bureaucratic structures involved in power is decreasing. In conclusion the author argues for the potential of the ethic of autonomy that would lead to still greater cooperation in globalized ethic, primarily thanks to our moral emotions and moral judgments.

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