Series Editor Brian H. Ross Beckman Institute and Department of Psychology University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Urbana, Illinois
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CONTRIBUTORS
Scott Atran Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France, and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 and John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, NY 10019 Jonathan Baron Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6241 Daniel M. Bartels Center for Decision Research, University of Chicago GSB, Chicago, IL 60637 Christopher W. Bauman Department of Management and Organization, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195 Kenworthey Bilz Northwestern University School of Law, Chicago, IL 60611 Wanda Casillas Department of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14850 Terry Connolly Department of Management and Organization, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721 Peter H. Ditto Psychology and Social Behavior, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697-7085 Scott Ewing Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI 02906 Philip M. Fernbach Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912 Jeremy Ginges Department of Psychology, New School for Social Research, New York, NY 10011
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David Hardman School of Psychology, London Metropolitan University, London, England Rumen Iliev Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208 Craig Joseph Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208 Daniel K. Lapsley Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 Douglas L. Medin Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208 John Mikhail Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, DC 20001 Janice Nadler Northwestern University School of Law, Chicago, IL 60611 Darcia Narvaez Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 David A. Pizarro Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853 Valerie F. Reyna Department of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14850 Ilana Ritov Hebrew University of Jerusalem, School of Education, Mt. Scopus Jerusalem 91905 Israel Sonya Sachdeva Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208 Linda J. Skitka Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 606077137 Steven A. Sloman Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912 Satoru Suzuki Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208 David Tannenbaum Psychology and Social Behavior, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697-7085
PREFACE
This represents the 50th volume of a series that began in 1967. The current editor, Brian Ross, thought (correctly) that this fact entitles the series to a little nostalgia. He therefore invited one of the old editors, Douglas Medin, to organize a special volume of the series. Medin was delighted to do so for three reasons: (1) to celebrate the occasion, (2) because three stellar coeditors agreed to work with him, and (3) because it represented an opportunity to give at least equal time to the motivational side of The Psychology of Learning and Motivation. Although historically the series has published quite a few outstanding chapters on motivation, overall the learning side of learning and motivation has been much better represented. In part, this imbalance reflects the history of cognitive versus social psychology where the former has tended to neglect the dynamic, motivational aspect of cognition but the latter consistently has embraced it. The current volume is edited by two cognitive and two social psychologists and our goal is to bridge and balance the learning and motivation components. This volume presents a variety of perspectives from within and outside moral psychology. Recently there has been an explosion of research in moral psychology, but it is one of the subfields most in-need of bridgebuilding, both within and across areas. Interests in moral phenomena have spawned several separate lines of research that appear to address similar concerns from a variety of perspectives. The contributions to this volume examine key theoretical and empirical issues these perspectives share that connect these issues with the broader base of theory and research in social and cognitive psychology. The first two chapters discuss the role of mental representation in moral judgment and reasoning. Sloman, Fernbach, and Ewing argue that causal models are the canonical representational medium underlying moral reasoning, and Mikhail offers an account that makes use of linguistic structures and implicates legal concepts. Bilz and Nadler follow with a discussion of the ways in which laws, which are typically construed in terms of affecting behavior, exert an influence on moral attitudes, cognition, and emotions. Baron and Ritov follow with a discussion of how people’s moral cognition is often driven by law-like rules that forbid actions and suggest that value-driven judgment is relatively less concerned by the consequences of those actions than some normative standards would prescribe. Iliev et al. argue that moral cognition makes use of both rules and consequences, and xi
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review a number of laboratory studies that suggest that values influence what captures our attention, and that attention is a powerful determinant of judgment and preference. Ginges follows with a discussion of how these value-related processes influence cognition and behavior outside the laboratory, in high-stakes, real-world conflicts. Two subsequent chapters discuss further building blocks of moral cognition. Lapsley and Narvaez discuss the development of moral character in children, and Reyna and Casillas offer a memory-based account of moral reasoning, backed up by developmental evidence. Their theoretical framework is also very relevant to the phenomena discussed in the Sloman et al., Baron and Ritov, and Iliev et al. chapters. The final three chapters are centrally focused on the interplay of hot and cold cognition. They examine the relationship between recent empirical findings in moral psychology and accounts that rely on concepts and distinctions borrowed from normative ethics and decision theory. Connolly and Hardman focus on bridge-building between contemporary discussions in the judgment and decision making and moral judgment literatures, offering several useful methodological and theoretical critiques. Ditto, Pizarro, and Tannenbaum argue that some forms of moral judgment that appear objective and absolute on the surface are, at bottom, more about motivated reasoning in service of some desired conclusion. Finally, Bauman and Skitka argue that moral relevance is in the eye of the perceiver and emphasize an empirical approach to identifying whether people perceive a given judgment as moral or non-moral. They describe a number of behavioral implications of people’s reported perception that a judgment or choice is a moral one, and in doing so, they suggest that the way in which researchers carve out the moral domain a priori might be dubious. It has been a pleasure to work together on this volume. Thanks for making this possible, Brian. Dan Bartels, Chris Bauman, Linda Skitka, and Doug Medin
C H A P T E R
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Causal Models: The Representational Infrastructure for Moral Judgment Steven A. Sloman, Philip M. Fernbach, and Scott Ewing Contents 2 4 7 9 9 10 11 12 13 16 18 19 20 22 23
1. 2. 3. 4.
Introduction Causal Models Architectural Considerations Roles for Causal Models 4.1. Appraisal 4.2. Deliberation 5. Moral Principles That Draw on Causal Structure 5.1. Intention 5.2. Omission/Commission 5.3. Causal Proximity 5.4. Locus of Intervention 5.5. Fairness 5.6. Putting It All Together 6. Conclusions References
Abstract This chapter has three objectives. First, we formulate a coarse model of the process of moral judgment to locate the role of causal analysis. We propose that causal analysis occurs in the very earliest stages of interpreting an event and that early moral appraisals depend on it as do emotional responses and deliberative reasoning. Second, we argue that causal models offer the best representation for formulating psychological principles of moral appraisal. Causal models directly represent causes, consequences, and the structural relations among them. In other words, they represent mechanisms. Finally, we speculate that moral appraisals reflect the similarity between an idealized causal model of moral behavior and a causal model of the event being judged.
Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Volume 50 ISSN 0079-7421, DOI: 10.1016/S0079-7421(08)00401-5
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1. Introduction Common sense dictates that moral judgment cannot get off the ground until causes are identified and consequences evaluated. Moral condemnation requires first identifying a transgressor as the cause of pain, suffering, or other contemptible consequences. In this chapter, we will not only embrace this commonsense doctrine, but we will argue that causal structure is so central to moral judgment that representations of causal structure, causal models, serve as the representational medium for appraising and reasoning about the morality of events. Our approach stands in contrast to the classical view that people derive their moral conclusions through a process that resembles proof (Kohlberg, 1986; Piaget, 1932), the more recent view that moral conclusions are expressed by a grammar analogous to those found in language (Hauser, 2006; Mikhail, 2000), and the claim that moral judgment is largely unaffected by cognitive operations (Haidt, 2001). We will argue that causal models provide a representation that allows for a direct expression of moral principles. In the course of making the argument, we hope to go some way toward specifying the role of causal analysis in moral judgment. We distinguish two aspects of moral assessment: a moral appraisal that occurs early in cognitive processing of an event and a moral judgment that reflects a slower more deliberative process, and may also draw on the initial appraisal. Our discussion focuses on the role of causal models in moral appraisal. Challenges to the commonsense wisdom that moral attribution requires causal attribution have come in the form of hypothetical counterexamples and empirical demonstrations. Here, we simply list those challenges and identify rebuttals to them rather than reviewing the detailed arguments. Deigh (2008) suggests that there are some situations where people are held morally responsible for an act that they did not cause. For example, when a group of teenagers beats a pizza deliveryman to death, even those who were present but did not participate in the planning and execution of the act may be held criminally responsible. Driver (2008) points out, however, that even the passive participants might have stopped or mitigated the severity of the event. They have at least some causal responsibility by virtue of not preventing the acts. As such, this example does not challenge Driver’s claim that moral responsibility entails causal responsibility. Driver also deals (successfully in our view) with a number of other cases that have been offered as counterexamples to this fundamental thesis. A greater challenge is offered by Knobe (2003) who shows that people are willing to assign someone blame for a negative foreseeable side effect of an action but not to give credit for a positive foreseeable side effect of an identical action. For example, an executive who harms the environment as a foreseen, but unintended side effect of a program instituted to increase
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profits is blamed for the harm, but an executive in a parallel situation who helps the environment as a side effect is not given credit. Knobe argues that this implies that moral appraisals affect attributions of intent. As intentions are causes of intentional action, this implies that moral appraisals can determine causal attributions, suggesting that common sense has it backward some of the time: Rather than causal analysis affecting moral judgment, moral judgment can affect causal analysis. In an ongoing debate, Machery (2008) points out that Knobe’s study includes a confound. Specifically, when a side effect is negative, there is more reason not to act than when the side effect is positive. A negative side effect is itself a reason not to act. Given the decision maker’s selfish motive to act, there is necessarily more conflict when balancing reasons for and against acting when the outcome is negative than when it is positive because the selfish motive to act must be balanced against the side effect only in the negative case. Hence, attributions of blame for a negative side effect may be greater than attributions of credit for a positive side effect not because of a prior moral appraisal but rather because the decision maker acted in the face of greater conflict in the case of blame. Another empirical challenge is presented by Cushman et al. (2008). They show that people are more likely to construe a morally bad act as actively doing than as passively allowing. A doctor who unplugs the lifesupport system of a homeless man because the doctor thinks the homeless man is a worthless burden has killed the man. But a doctor who unplugs the life-support system because he believes it could be used more effectively on someone with more promise of survival has enabled the homeless man’s death. This indicates that moral appraisal affects how events are evaluated using causal language. Notice though that this evaluation does not necessarily reflect the initial causal construal of the situation; it could well reflect a considered judgment long after initial interpretation of the event and deliberation has occurred. In sum, we subscribe to Driver’s (2008) thesis that an attribution of moral responsibility to an agent for an event presupposes that the agent is causally responsible for the event. But we note that this does not imply that a complete and final causal interpretation and judgment must occur prior to any moral considerations. In the remainder of the chapter, we provide an introduction to the causal models framework and then offer a view of the cognitive architecture of moral judgment, a modal model, the closest we can come to a consensus in the literature. This will allow us to locate the role of causal analysis in moral judgment. We will see that two roles emerge, one in an early moral appraisal and one in deliberative reasoning. Next, we discuss how the canonical principles of moral appraisal depend on causal models and speculate that the principles derive from a comparison between the causal model of an event being judged and an ideal causal model. We end by comparing our view to some others such as the moral grammar idea (Hauser, 2006; Mikhail, 2000).
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2. Causal Models What form does the causal knowledge required by moral judgment take? Here is what must be represented:
Actors and their causal roles (e.g., perpetrator, bystander, or victim — better, terms that express those causal roles without any moral connotation); Physical capacities and their causal roles (e.g., an agent’s size or skills with a weapon may have enabled or prevented an outcome); Mental states and their causal roles (e.g., intentions, beliefs, and desires are the causes of intentional action; cf. Malle (2007)); Objects (e.g., weapons, money, etc.) and their causal roles (e.g., are they enablers, disablers, potential disablers, are they on the causal path leading to a consequence or possible consequence?); Actions and how they relate actors and objects to one another (e.g., shooting a gun at someone is a mechanism that relates a shooter and a gun as causes to an effect consisting of the end state of the person shot).
Notice that identifying causes and consequences is not nearly enough to make informed decisions and predictions. The structural relations among the causal elements are critical because they link individuals to consequences, specify the requirements for an action to be effective (e.g., that its enablers are present and functioning), and indicate the joint outcome of multiple actions. They also indicate the outcome of counterfactual considerations. That is, inferences about ‘‘what might have been’’ or ‘‘what would happen if ’’ can be inferred from knowledge about how events cause other events. Once those causal relations are known, we can use them to determine (for instance) what the effects would be of any assumed set of causes. The inferences that we are able to make are detailed and specific and therefore require a detailed and specific representation of causal structure. We call such a mental representation a causal model. The causal analyses that people engage in for the sake of moral judgment of a specific situation are likely to involve identifying and making inferences from simple qualitative relations among the elements of an event. The causal model of a specific event must derive, at least in part, from more abstract, general knowledge. For instance, a model of a specific car accident is constructed using more abstract knowledge about skidding, the effects of contact, brake failure, etc. In this sense, a causal model of a specific event derives from models that describe events of more general types. A more formal representation of causal structure starts by representing the constituents of the event as random variables that can take different values. A representation of a car accident might include a random variable
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for skidding that takes the value 1 in the case that skidding is present and 0 otherwise. Structural relations in the event can be represented by specifying how the values of the constituents of the event change in response to changes in the other constituents. For instance, if the accident representation includes a random variable denoting the presence or absence of ice, this variable should affect the probability of skidding. One type of model specifies a joint probability distribution over all of the values of all of the constituents of the event. This distribution can be represented economically by a graph with nodes that represent the constituents and links between nodes representing structural relations. The joint distribution can then be expressed by specifying the distributions of the exogenous or root nodes, nodes whose distribution is not determined by any other nodes in the graph, and a set of equations relating the distributions of linked nodes. If the form of the graph obeys certain constraints (e.g., the links are all directional and it has no cycles) it is referred to as a Bayes net (Pearl, 1988). A Bayes net represents relations of probability, not necessarily causality. Woodward (2003) argues that what distinguishes a causal relation from a merely probabilistic one is that it supports intervention. Roughly speaking, A causes B if a sufficiently strong intervention on A by an external agent would affect the value of B. A causal Bayes net (Pearl, 2000; Spirtes et al., 1993) is a Bayes net in which the links represent causal mechanisms and operations are defined that support the logic of intervention. Pearl (2000) defines an intervention as an action that is external to the graph that sets a variable in the graph to a particular value. An intervention that sets a variable X to a value x is written as do(X ¼ x). The effect of an intervention is to remove the incoming links to the intervened-on variable, rendering it independent of its normal causes. One way to represent an intervention is as a new node in an augmented graph. The intervention do(X ¼ x) is encoded by drawing a link between the new intervention node and the target of intervention X and erasing all other incoming links to X. Figure 1A shows a very simple causal Bayes net representing a traffic accident. Figure 1B shows the same network after an intervention which cuts the brake lines. The intervention do(brake failure ¼ 1) sets the variable ‘‘brake failure’’ to 1. This is encoded by drawing a link between the intervention and its target and by erasing the link from the normal cause of brake failure, worn out brake pads. One outcome of severing the link between brake failure and its normal cause is that the variables are no longer informative of one another. Under normal circumstances, the failure of the breaks would increase the probability that the car has worn out brake pads. After the intervention no such diagnostic inference is possible. Predictive inferences are still possible because the outgoing links remain intact. After the brake lines are cut, the probability of an accident is high.
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A Worn out brake pads (1 = yes, 0 = no)
Brake failure (1 = yes, 0 = no)
Accident (1 = yes, 0 = no)
Ice present (1 = yes, 0 = no)
Skid (1 = yes, 0 = no)
B Cutting break lines
Worn out brake pads (1 = yes, 0 = no)
Brake failure = 1
Accident (1 = yes, 0 = no)
Ice present (1 = yes, 0 = no)
Skid (1 = yes, 0 = no)
Figure 1 (A) A Causal Bayes net representing a traffic accident. (B) the same network after an intervention which cut the brake lines.
The do operation is a device for representing actual physical interventions as well as counterfactual interventions. A causal model can be used to answer counterfactual questions about what would be the case if some condition X had value x simply by using the operator to set the value of X, do(X ¼ x). Our use of the term ‘‘causal model’’ is inspired by causal Bayes nets in that both use sets of links to represent mechanisms, have graph structures that correspond to causal structure, and subscribe to the logic of intervention. However, we do not intend to suggest that judgments are always coherent in the sense of being internally consistent as prescribed by probability theory. Moreover, for reasons spelled out below, we will sometimes draw links between values of variables and interpret them not merely as mechanisms describing potential relations between causes and an effect, but
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as an active mechanism that supported the transfer of a conserved quantity along its path. Sloman (2005) makes the case that causal models describe a basic form of mental representation. Clearly many cognitive functions presuppose assignment of causal structure to the world. Fernbach, Linson-Gentry, and Sloman (2007) and Humphreys and Buehner (2007) show that causal knowledge mediates perception. Causal structure plays a role in language (e.g., Abelson and Kanouse, 1966; Brown and Fish, 1983), category formation (Rehder and Hastie, 2001), and attributions of function (Chaigneau et al., 2004). Causal structure is also central to reasoning and decision making (Sloman and Hagmayer, 2006). Our working hypothesis is that causal models serve as the primary representational medium for moral judgment.
3. Architectural Considerations Both behavioral and brain imaging data indicate that moral judgments have at least two bases, a deliberative one and a more intuitive one (e.g., Cushman et al., 2006; Greene, 2008; Pizarro and Bloom, 2003). Although there is a debate about the precise nature of the underlying systems (Greene, 2007; Moll and Oliveira, 2007; Moore et al., 2008), wide consensus obtains that two systems support moral judgment in the same way they support reasoning and decision making (Evans, 2003; Kahneman and Frederick, 2002; Sloman, 1996; Stanovich and West, 2000). In the case of moral judgment, the intuitive basis consists of an almost immediate sense of right or wrong when presented with a situation that merits moral appraisal. Figure 2 illustrates our interpretation of the modal model of the processing of moral judgments at the time of writing. Haidt (2001) offers an intuitionist theory of moral judgment according to which judgments are not the product of deliberative reasoning; rather, Deliberative reasoning Sensations from eventto-be-judged
Moral judgment
Causal appraisal Moral appraisal/ Emotional reaction
Other judgments
Time
Figure 2 The modal model of the order of mental operations resulting in moral judgment.
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reasoning comes after judgment in the form of justification rather than motivation. The modal model accommodates this idea by treating moral appraisal as an input into the deliberative process. Our deliberations take into account the causal structure of the situation along with our immediate moral appraisals and emotional reactions to try to make sense of them. If they can, they are in essence justifications and the final moral judgment will be consistent with them. But if they cannot, or if the initial appraisal is trumped by a conflicting moral rule, then we will change our minds and produce a moral judgment whose motivation really does lie in a deliberative process. Thus, in contrast to suggestions by Nichols and Mallon (2006) and Bartels (2008), we consider strict moral rules (e.g., ‘‘Do not have any other gods before me’’) to be enforced by deliberative reasoning. This explains why emotional reactions (like sexual attraction) can conflict with moral rules. We refer to the initial determination of causal responsibility as ‘‘causal appraisal’’ and the initial determination of moral responsibility as ‘‘moral appraisal’’ but these are not to be confused with final, observable judgments. Hauser (2006) follows Mikhail (2000) and Rawls (1971) in arguing that moral appraisals are made by moral grammars, analogous to the kind of linguistic grammars proposed by Chomsky (1957). For supporters of the linguistic analogy, moral appraisals are unconsciously formed by principles that are not accessible to introspection. We agree that moral appraisals emerge early in the flow of processing. Consider: A biker gang has moved into a rural community and is intimidating the local residents. One day a father and his son are walking down the street and they cross paths with a couple of the bikers. One of the bikers steps in front of the son and, while staring into the father’s eyes, punches the son in the face and says to the father, ‘‘What are you going to do about it?’’
We surmise that the reader has at least two initial reactions to this story. One is cognitive, absolute contempt for the biker’s action. Let us call this immediate appraisal ‘‘moral disapproval.’’ The second is emotional, namely anger and perhaps loathing of the biker and his ilk. What causes what? Does the anger cause the disapproval, the disapproval the anger, or are they both caused by a third state? Surely emotions influence moral judgment (Greene et al., 2001), but in this case the anger could not be responsible for the disapproval because there would be no anger if the act were not disapproved of. The anger presupposes something to be angry about which in this case is that the act is morally out of bounds. It may be that anger can arise in the absence of moral appraisal. For instance, serious sudden pain can cause anger (e.g., accidentally closing a car door on your finger). But in the story just told, the reader is merely an observer and thus has no such pathway to anger; the only available source is the heinousness of the action. So either the
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disapproval is the cause of the anger or, as Prinz (2006) argues, the disapproval is a moral sentiment that exists in virtue of the anger. The disapproval may be constituted in part by the anger. Either way, a moral appraisal has occurred and it has occurred no later than a very swift emotional reaction. So moral appraisals can occur at the very earliest stages of processing. Indeed, appraisal theories of emotion also stipulate that an emotional response presupposes an appraisal (Clore and Canterbar, 2004; but see Berkowitz and Harmon-Jones, 2004). The reason to distinguish moral judgment from moral appraisal is that final judgments do not always coincide with initial appraisals or with emotional reactions. In the original trolley problem (Foot, 1978), the initial distaste for killing a single person is overcome after considering the other option of allowing five to die.
4. Roles for Causal Models 4.1. Appraisal Causal models play several roles in moral judgment. At the early moral appraisal stage, they structure the understanding of events by assigning causal roles to actors, their capacities and mental states, objects, and actions. This involves such inferences as determining the intention of actors (did he want to hurt the victim or was the outcome accidental?) and attributing causal responsibility for the outcome. Causal models do not offer a process model of moral judgment; rather they describe a form of representation that different judgment processes rely on. They can be used to make different inferences depending on the judge’s task. Cushman (2008) shows that people use different criteria for moral inference depending on the question they are asked. Judgments of wrongness and permissibility depend on analysis of mental states whereas judgments of blame and punishment are more sensitive to an analysis of causal responsibility. Cushman attributes these different criteria to the operation of different judgment systems. Our analysis, in contrast, allows that the different criteria reflect the same cognitive operations on the same representation of the event. They merely reflect different directions of causal inference. If asked for a judgment of wrongness or permissibility, people make a diagnostic inference from an outcome upstream to a cause of the outcome, the intention of the action that produced it, a mental state. But when asked to evaluate blame or punishment, the inference tends to go in the opposite direction, from the person’s intention to the outcome of their actions. Whichever direction is focused on, a causal model relating intention to action and outcome is necessary.
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Moral judgments sometimes require prediction of an outcome or a counterfactual assessment after an outcome occurs of the probability of that or some other outcome given the presence or absence of the action. Prediction is necessary if the outcome has not yet occurred. The moral worth of a government’s environmental policy depends on an assessment of the probability that it will lead to serious environmental harm in the future. Counterfactual likelihoods are relevant when an event has already occurred. A moral assessment of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 depends in part on a judgment of the probability that there would have been terrorist strikes on American soil in the immediately subsequent period if the invasion had not occurred. Naı¨ve individuals have little to go on to make these kinds of probability judgments other than their causal models of global warming or terrorist trends, respectively. They can of course appeal to expert judgment, but experts themselves rely heavily on their own causal models to determine the likelihoods of various consequences (Klein, 1999).
4.2. Deliberation Prediction and counterfactual inference are sometimes deliberative affairs that involve time and reflection. But they nevertheless tend to involve causal structure. Debates about the value of an invasion often involve differences of opinion about the likelihood of various outcomes. Sometimes statistics based on historical precedent enter into consideration, but even then the relevance of the statistics depends on causal beliefs. For instance, whether or not the prevalence of terrorist activity can be generalized from one country to another depends entirely on how the environment in one country differs from the other in terms of its degree of logistical and political support for and responsiveness to terrorist activity. These are the kinds of considerations that are represented in a causal model. Note that utility analysis depends on prediction and counterfactual judgment. So, if such judgments make use of causal models, it follows that utility analysis does too. In other words, causal models are critical to apply utilitarian principles to derive solutions to moral problems. This point has been made by a number of philosophers (Meek and Glymour, 1994) including some who have proposed causal utility theories (Nozick, 1993; Joyce, 1999; Skyrms, 1982) though there have been dissenting voices (Levi, 2000). And people turn out to reason causally about choices very naturally and effectively (Sloman and Hagmayer, 2006). The probability of the possible consequences of an action refers to the probability of possible effects of a cause. What about deliberative moral judgments based on deontological principles rather than utilitarian analysis? Do people require causal models to draw conclusions based on universal principles like ‘‘one should never push people off bridges to their death’’ or ‘‘killing an innocent human being is
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never permitted’’? Notice that such principles themselves require an appropriate underlying causal structure. This is most easily seen by the fact that they are expressed using causal verbs. ‘‘Pushing’’ and ‘‘killing’’ both imply an agent, a recipient, and a change of state. So applying such principles requires instantiating the agent (cause) and change of state of the recipient (effect). Even the golden rule is a causal principle that involves the sina qua non of causality, intervention. Doing unto others is an act of intervention that directly affects someone else. Deliberating about abstract moral principles is largely an exercise in abstract causal reasoning. Once primitive values are specified (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, etc.), deciding how to formulate a code of ethics is largely a matter of choosing causal laws that have primitive values as consequences (e.g., thou shalt not kill, no detention without due process, etc.). These causal laws are not causal models themselves but rather principles for generating causal models that will ensure justice for different classes of situations (e.g., a court system to try criminals, a medical system to maximize health, etc.). In this sense, Hauser’s (2006) moral grammar can be conceived of as a set of causal laws.
5. Moral Principles That Draw on Causal Structure A guiding puzzle in moral psychology is to determine the aspects of an event that modulate moral judgments about it. Our central claim is that every moral principle that has been seriously considered as a descriptor of the process of moral appraisal depends on a causal model representation of event structure. Cushman et al. (2006) suggest three principles. The intention principle states that bad outcomes that are brought about intentionally are morally worse than unintended outcomes. The action principle, usually referred to as omission/commission, states that, ceteris paribus, actions are more blameworthy than inactions. The contact principle states that an action that brings about harm by physical contact is morally worse than an analogous action that does not involve contact. We see the contact principle as a special case of causal proximity (Alicke, 2000). Actions that are connected to bad outcomes through fewer intermediate causes are more blameworthy. To this list we add locus of intervention. Work by Waldman and Dieterich (2007) suggests that an intervention on a victim is more reprehensible than intervention on the agent of harm. Throwing a person on a bomb is worse than throwing a bomb on a person. We also assess the principle of fairness, which is fundamental to many moral judgments (Rawls, 1971). Fairness is usually construed acausally, as an evaluation of the way in which goods ought to be distributed. But fairness is also influenced by causal structure.
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5.1. Intention A critical factor in attributions of moral responsibility is the intention of the actor. In Western law, attributions of intention are generally required to convict for certain crimes like murder. The importance of an actor’s intention for attributing blame is manifest in many philosophical principles including the principle of double effect which concerns the ethics of bad side effects of good actions. It is generally accepted that acts with the same consequences should be judged differently depending on their guiding intentions (Foot, 1978). For example, killing civilians intentionally in wartime is not the same as killing civilians, even knowingly, as a side effect of destroying a valuable military target. Young et al. (2007) offer a demonstration. Grace and her friend are taking a tour of a chemical plant. Grace goes to the coffee machine to pour some coffee, and her friend asks for sugar in hers. The white powder by the coffee is not sugar but a toxic substance left behind by a scientist. In the intentional condition, the substance is in a container marked ‘‘toxic,’’ and Grace thinks that it is toxic. In contrast, in the nonintentional condition the substance is in a container mislabeled ‘‘sugar,’’ and Grace thinks that it is sugar. In both conditions, participants are told that Grace puts the substance in her friend’s coffee. Her friend drinks the coffee and dies. Participants are asked to rate the moral status of Grace’s action. The result is an enormous effect of intention. In the intentional condition, participants judge Grace’s action as forbidden. In the nonintentional condition they judge it as permissible. The effect of intention pertains even when the outcome is foreseen. Mikhail (2000) gave participants a scenario that was similar to the standard trolley problem but was varied such that the actor’s intention was to kill the single individual, not to save the five. Participants were told that the bystander who had the choice to throw the switch hated the man on the alternate track, wanted to see him dead, and that his decision to divert the train was explicitly intended to kill the man. Throwing the switch was viewed as far worse than in the standard dilemma where the outcome, the death of the single individual, is a foreseen but unintended side effect of saving the five. In one sense, an intention is a root cause in a causal model. It represents the will of an agent. If one attributes free will to the agent, then the intention is not determined by anything else. Of course, intentions are influenced by other variables. In Malle’s (2001) model of intentional action, intentions are influenced by an agent’s beliefs and desires. One relevant belief is that the action will produce the intended outcome and a relevant desire is that the outcome will come about. A judge might ask what an agent’s beliefs and desires are or even why the agent has such beliefs and desires. If answers are forthcoming, then the causal model is peeled back one more layer by assigning causes to intentions or even two more by assigning
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causes to beliefs and desires. But the causal models necessary for everyday moral judgment do not usually require historical elaboration. People rely on the minimal structure necessary by not thinking beyond, or too far beyond, an actor’s intention. In many vignettes in the literature, the intention of the actor is stated outright or strongly implied. In that case, intention can simply be represented as a node in the causal model of the event. Often, however, intention is an unobservable variable that must be inferred prior to making a moral appraisal. Consider a case where a young man pushes an old woman. A moral evaluation of the action is contingent on the young man’s intention. It may not be necessary that he intends the outcome, we may be satisfied that he is to blame if he was merely negligent, but the valence of his intention will nevertheless affect our appraisal. If his intention is to push the woman out of the way of a car, it suggests a different judgment than if his intention is to injure her. One feature of causal models is that they support diagnostic reasoning to hidden causes from the status of effects of those causes. Our moral infrastructure hypothesis suggests that people represent the causal structure among relevant variables of an event prior to making a moral appraisal. This includes information that prima facie may seem irrelevant to assessing the morality of the outcome but is made relevant by its evidential power to diagnose intention. For instance, if the young man had yelled ‘‘watch out’’ to the old woman prior to pushing her, it would support a diagnostic inference to a good intention. Thus causal models not only supply a way to represent intention as a cause of an action to be judged, but also a computational engine for inferring intention on the basis of causal structure.
5.2. Omission/Commission Acts of commission that lead to bad consequences are usually judged more blameworthy than acts of omission with the same consequences. Spranca et al. (1991) asked people to judge a number of such cases. In one vignette, a tennis pro is eating dinner with an opponent the night before a match. In one condition, the commission case, the tennis pro recommends a dish that he knows will make his opponent ill in order to gain an advantage in the match. In the omission case, the tennis pro fails to warn his opponent against the dish that will make him ill. In both cases the outcome is the same. The opponent orders the dish, becomes ill, and the tennis pro wins the match. People judged the tennis pro to be more blameworthy in the commission case. It turns out that a parallel law to commission/omission distinction in moral judgment applies to attributions of causality. Counterfactual relations are often insufficient for attributions of actual cause. The fact that an event B would not have occurred if event A had not even in the absence of other
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causes of B is not generally sufficient for people to assert that A causes B (Mandel, 2003; Walsh and Sloman, 2005; Wolff, 2007). People sometimes require that a mechanism exist from A to B, what philosophers call causal power. For instance, if Suzy opens a gate that allows a boulder to pass through and knock a man off a cliff to his death, then people tend to assert that Suzy was the cause of the man’s death. But if Suzy merely sat in a parked car beside the open gate and failed to close it, then she is not the cause even if she could foresee the outcome (Clare Walsh, personal communication). Omission involves an outcome due to failure to act, which is similar in the sense that no active mechanism links the omitted action to the causal path that leads to the outcome. Commission involves precisely such a mechanism. In that sense, the commission/omission distinction can be reduced to the principles of operation of naı¨ve causal reasoning. The absence of an active mechanism from the action to the outcome in the case of omission means that there must be some other sufficient cause of the outcome that is independent of the agent. In other words, acts of omission involve a failure to intervene on a causal system that is heading toward a bad outcome; the system’s preexisting causes are sufficient for the outcome. Consider the tennis pro’s act of omission. The opponent’s desire to order the dish that would make him ill is sufficient to bring about the outcome, irrespective of the tennis pro’s desire that he get sick. No such independent sufficient cause is required in cases of commission because the action itself is such a cause. Recommending the dish to the opponent is part of the mechanism leading to the opponent’s sickness in the commission condition. In sum, acts of commission and omission differ in two structural ways (presence versus absence of a mechanism and of an alternative sufficient cause). Graphs in standard Bayes nets do not represent mechanisms per se, they represent relations of probabilistic dependence. But the notion of mechanism requires more than probabilistic or even counterfactual dependence. One interpretation is that a mechanism involves a conserved quantity (like energy or symbolic value) that travels from cause to effect (Dowe, 2000). Philosophers often talk about this notion of mechanism that entails more than probabilistic dependence in terms of causal power. In our causal models of specific events, we will represent the passing of a conserved quantity as an active mechanism. Using links to represent only active mechanisms, we can then illustrate the difference between commission and omission using causal models as we do in Fig. 3. What the graphs make apparent is that, when the cause is an action, the presence or absence of an active mechanism identifies whether or not the agent intervened. An idle intervention is equivalent to no intervention and occurs only in the absence of an active mechanism and an active mechanism in turn requires that the agent be intervented actively.
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Outcome = bad
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Outcome = bad
Normal causes Omission Agent’s intervention = idle
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Figure 3
Causal models of abstract cases of commission and omission.
Causal models dictate how causes combine to bring about outcomes. In the case of omission, there exists a sufficient cause that would bring about the outcome in the absence of the action. In the case of commission, there is no such sufficient cause. Commission and omission are distinguished by the active mechanisms that produce the outcomes. Why should this structural difference have a moral implication? The relevant moral principle, expressed in terms of causal models, is that an agent is more morally responsible for an outcome if a mechanism links them directly to the outcome. In other words, an agent is more morally responsible if their action can be construed as an intervention that led to the outcome. One implication is that an agent is not more morally responsible merely for increasing the probability of the outcome but has to be linked to it by a mechanism. One effect of the difference in causal structure is that commission and omission suggest different counterfactual possibilities. Causal models support counterfactual reasoning (Pearl, 2000). By hypothetically setting the variables in the model to particular values and observing the values of other variables, one can infer counterfactual possibilities. Like causal attribution (Lewis, 1973; but see Mandel, 2003), moral reasoning can be guided by counterfactual considerations. In the example above, a judge might wonder what would have happened had the tennis pro not been present at all. The sufficiency of the alternative cause in the omission case suggests that the opponent would have gotten sick anyway. Conversely, the lack of an alternative cause in the commission case suggests that the tennis pro really is to blame.
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Spranca et al. (1991) report that participants justified their responses to omission/commission vignettes by appealing to a variety of factors including alternative causes, sufficiency, and counterfactual considerations. Our analysis suggests that all of these factors can be understood as properties of an underlying causal model.
5.3. Causal Proximity The principle of causal proximity is that people who meet other necessary requirements are morally responsible for an outcome to the extent that their actions are direct causes of the outcome. They are reprieved of moral responsibility to the extent that the effect of their actions is indirect. Alicke (2000) posits a model of blame assignment that explicitly includes causal proximity as a factor. Many other theories have included principles that can be construed as variants of causal proximity, such as directness (Cushman et al., 2006), whether an act is personal or impersonal in its relation to a victim (Greene et al, 2001), and whether battery is committed, that is, the victim has been touched without his or her consent by another person (Mikhail, 2000). The most extreme case of causal proximity is when a perpetrator has physical contact with a victim. This is one possible reason for the divergence in responses to the ‘‘trolley’’ and ‘‘footbridge’’ dilemmas. On this interpretation, the reason that pushing a fat man off the bridge seems so reprehensible is that it requires direct contact with the victim unlike pulling a lever to send a trolley onto a different track. To test this idea Cushman, Young, and Hauser introduce a scenario in which, instead of pushing the fat man off the bridge, one must pull a lever that opens a trap door that drops him onto the tracks. People were more willing to pull the lever than to push the fat man directly. The impact of causal proximity has also been shown in cases that do not include direct physical contact. One example is derived from a pair of vignettes reported in Hauser et al. (2008). In the proximal case, Wes is walking through a crowded park on a cold winter evening. He is nearly home when he sees a homeless man. The man has no winter clothing, and soon he will freeze and die. Wes is wearing a warm coat that he could give to the man, saving his life. If Wes keeps his coat, the homeless man will freeze and die. If Wes gives the homeless man his coat, the homeless man will survive.
In the less proximal case, Neil is walking through a crowded park on a cold winter evening. He is nearly home when he sees a collection station for donations to the homeless. A sign explains that most homeless people have no winter clothing, and that dozens will freeze and die every night in the winter. Neil is wearing a warm coat that he could put in the collection station, saving the life of one
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homeless person. If Neil keeps his coat, a homeless person will freeze and die. If Neil puts his coat in the collection station, a homeless person will survive.
Most people think it is more morally permissible for Neil to keep his coat than for Wes. This may because they believe Wes’s action is more certain than Neil’s to save a homeless person or because of the number or type of alternative possible actions that the scenarios conjure up. We propose that all of these possibilities are a consequence of the greater causal distance between Neil’s potential action and saving a homeless person than Wes’s. In a causal model representation, causal proximity depends on the number of mediating causes between the action to be judged and the outcome. For example, pulling a lever is more distant than pushing a man because there is a mechanism, or series of mechanisms between the action on the lever and the outcome of the fat man falling. In the direct case there is no such mechanism. As in the case of omission/commission, the effect of causal proximity may be to dilute the causal responsibility of the actor. The presence of a causal chain between actor and outcome has at least two implications for assigning causal responsibility. First, in attributing cause, there are salient alternatives to the action being judged, namely the intermediate causes separating the actor from the outcome. If a captain commands a private to shoot a civilian, then the private becomes a cause of the death. Further, there might be supporting additional causes for the private’s action. He might like killing and planned to shoot the civilian before receiving the order. In either case, causal attribution of the effect to the captain might be attenuated. More generally, as causal distance increases the number of intervening causes increases, and the greater the possibility for attenuating responsibility to the root cause. Second, in a causal chain with probabilistic links, the probability of the ultimate effect decreases with the length of the chain. This means that the more intermediate causes, the less likely the action will lead to the outcome. For instance, in the example above the private might fail to follow the captain’s order. Thus, the ability of the actor to predict the outcome with certainty decreases with causal distance. This could dilute causal attribution by increasing the possibility that the outcome came about due to chance. It could also weaken judgments of intention. According to the folk theory of intentional action (Malle, 2001; Malle and Knobe, 1997), intention attribution is a function of belief that the outcome will happen. The greater the causal distance, the less belief the actor has that the outcome will come about. As discussed above, intention strongly influences moral appraisal. If one effect of causal distance is to weaken judgments of intentionality then it would follow that it should also weaken appraisals of moral responsibility.
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5.4. Locus of Intervention As discussed above, acts that bring about outcomes in a moral situation can be seen as interventions on that situation. Waldmann and Dieterich (2007) argue that moral judgments are influenced by the locus on which the actor intervenes in the underlying causal model. Interventions that influence the path of the agent of harm are more permissible than interventions on the potential victim. This is one possible explanation for the divergence in judgments between the ‘‘trolley’’ and ‘‘footbridge’’ dilemmas. In the classic trolley problem, the actor redirects the path of the agent of harm, the trolley. In the ‘‘footbridge’’ problem, the intervention is on the victim, the fat man who subsequently dies. Waldmann and Dieterich (2007) compared a number of scenarios where an intervention either influenced the path of the agent or the victim. Interventions on agents were always judged more permissible. The effects cannot all be explained by causal proximity. Here is one example: Agent intervention: A torpedo threatens a boat with six soldiers. Destroying the torpedo by remote control would sink a nearby submarine with three soldiers. Victim intervention: A torpedo threatens a boat with six soldiers. Three soldiers could be ordered to move their boat in a way that would divert the torpedo from the original target to their boat. The scenarios vary with respect to locus of intervention but do not obviously vary in terms of causal proximity. Still, participants judged the agent intervention to be more permissible. Kant (1785/1998) argued that human beings should never be used as a means to achieve a goal. This suggests the possibility that people’s intuitions about these scenarios come not from a causal analysis of the locus of intervention but rather from a strict deontological principle, a prohibition against using human beings as a means under any circumstances. Waldmann and Dieterich (2007) show that people are sometimes willing to use the victim as a means to save others as long as the intervention is on the agent of harm. Participants were given a variant of the trolley problem where in order to stop a train from killing five people the train can be diverted onto a sidetrack where one person is standing. The key manipulation was whether the sidetrack loops back to the main track. In the means condition, the effect of the person on the sidetrack is to stop the train. If the person were not there, the train would continue on its course back to the main track and still kill the five, even if originally diverted. Thus the intervention is on the agent of harm, the train, but the person on the sidetrack is used as a means to stop the train from looping back to the main track. Participants rated diverting the train as permissible. Locus of intervention and the means principle are closely related. Victim interventions tend to violate the
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principle. Agent interventions usually do not. Evidently, though, people’s moral intuitions are not captured by a strict deontological principle but rather are a function of their causal model. According to Waldmann and Dieterich (2007), the reason that the locus of intervention is morally relevant is psychological; it shifts attention to the target of the intervention. In the case of the agent intervention, it is natural to consider the two possible causal paths of the agent of harm (e.g., the train continuing on its path or being diverted). In that case, the utilitarian comparison between five dead and one dead comes into focus. Conversely, the victim intervention leads to a focus on the possibilities associated with the victim, the comparison between the victim living versus dying. This backgrounds the utilitarian considerations and makes the intervention harder to justify. This is reminiscent of the difference between commission and omission: The moral principle derives from the counterfactual possibilities that come to mind when considering the effect of the action or inaction. The counterfactual possibilities are brought to mind by the knowledge of the causal structure.
5.5. Fairness Rawls (1971) proposes that the central principle of justice in a society, the principle from which all others derive, is fairness. Fairness is most naturally thought about in terms of how goods are distributed. All else being equal, available goods should be distributed equally and all deviations from equality need justification. In actual distributions of goods in the world, deviations are commonplace and justifications have a causal rationale. An idealized illustration of how this works comes from experiments on the ultimatum game, a simple game involving two players. The first player, ‘‘the proposer,’’ is given a fixed amount of money to split any way he chooses. The second player, ‘‘the responder,’’ decides whether to accept or reject the split. If he accepts, the money is distributed according to the proposal. If he rejects, neither player receives anything. Rational agent models predict that the proposer will make the smallest possible offer and that the responder will accept it. In fact, proposers tend to offer much more than is predicted by these models, and responders often reject even fairly large offers (Oosterbeek et al., 2004). The ultimatum game is thus a good test bed for assessing goods distributions that people deem fair. Research on the ultimatum game has shown substantial cross-cultural differences in how people play the game. We suggest that at least some of this difference can be explained by the players’ causal beliefs about how the proposal is generated. For example, Gypsies in the Vallecas neighborhood in Madrid, Spain often accept an offer of zero, and when asked to justify their behavior they say that the proposer probably needed the money (BranasGarza et al., 2006). The evaluation of whether the proposal is fair is
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contingent on an analysis of the causes of the proposal. This can also be seen in Blount (1995) who found greater willingness to accept small offers when players believed that they were generated by a chance device than by other players. Another way that causal considerations enter into decision in the ultimatum game is that proposers and responders consider the effects of their decisions. For example, an important determinant of behavior is fear that one’s reputation will be damaged by appearing to be unfair (Gil-White, 2003). Our causal infrastructure hypothesis makes sense of these effects by assuming that people represent the causal structure. This allows them to make diagnostic inferences about the causes of the proposal and to make predictions about the consequences of their decisions. Causal structure supports a moral appraisal about the fairness of the proposal. It also supports decision making, which is based on moral considerations and other considerations like effects on reputation. Rawls (1971) assumes that the overriding determinant of fairness is egalitarianism. And we are not suggesting that causal models provide any justification for egalitarianism or indeed for any basic values. Nevertheless, causal models do make a contribution to our sense of fairness by providing a framework for expressing the reasons for deviations from egalitarianism.
5.6. Putting It All Together We have reviewed how causal models contribute to five principles of moral appraisal. Much of the contribution depends on the specific content of our causal beliefs. In particular, the role of causal models in determining fairness is content specific. However, the other four principles may derive from a more basic cognitive process. We offer a speculation that much of moral appraisal reflects the extent to which the causal model of the event being judged deviates from an idealized causal model (cf. Shaver, 1985). The idealized causal model is exceedingly simple. It states that the most extreme good or bad action consists of an intention for a respectively good or bad outcome with the consequence that the intended outcome occurs (see Figure 4). Normally, of course, an action mediates the causal relation between intention and outcome. But in the ideal case, where it is possible for mere intentions to cause outcomes, this would not be necessary. Our idea is that the moral appraisal of an event is positive or negative in proportion to the degree of similarity of the causal model of the event to the good or bad ideal, respectively. Ideals are not necessarily fixed entities. How good or bad an outcome is may depend on which comparison outcomes come to mind most easily. More generally, ideals may be generated on the spot in response to specific events the same way that surprise is determined by how a contrasting comparison event is constructed at the moment of perception (Kahneman and Miller, 1986). This latter possibility
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Figure 4 Idealized causal model for evaluating morality of an event.
is consistent with the idea that the repugnance of certain acts depends on what other acts are under consideration (cf. Unger, 1995). This form of the ideal causal model suggests three dimensions of similarity that modulate appraisals of moral responsibility: 1. Is there an intention to bring about the outcome? 2. Is the intention the cause of the outcome? 3. How good or bad is the outcome? Our proposal is that moral appraisal varies directly with these three factors and that basic principles of moral appraisal are reflections of this dependence. We consider each of the four principles in turn. The principle that the actor must intend the action follows immediately from the first dimension. The fact that some actions that are not intended are nevertheless culpable, like acts of negligence, reflects the fact that the causal model of a situation could be similar to the ideal even in the absence of an intention. If an actor did something to make a foreseeable bad outcome very likely through negligence, then the model of the event is similar to the ideal even in the absence of a bad intention. The difference between omission and commission rests primarily on the second dimension. In the case of omission, the outcome would have occurred anyway so the intention does not have as much causal force as it does in the case of commission. Perhaps more important, attributions of cause are stronger when there is a mechanism that connects a cause to an outcome as in the case of commission. Causal proximity also reflects differences on the second dimension because the presence of other causes dilutes causal responsibility. The more the outcome depends on other mediating causes, the less power the target cause has to produce the outcome. Causal proximity may also influence attributions of intention. Locus of intervention depends in part on the same considerations as causal proximity. But it also affects the third dimension because it changes how we view the outcome. An outcome is more acceptable when it is compared to even less desirable alternatives. In the case of the agent intervention, the natural comparison is between the alternative actions of the agent of harm, for example, the death of one and the death of five in the trolley problem. Victim interventions lead to a comparison between actual and counterfactual consequences to the victim. This highlights how bad the outcome is for the victim.
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6. Conclusions We have tried to accomplish three objectives in this chapter. First, we have formulated a coarse model of the process of moral judgment that allowed us to locate the role of causal analysis. We have proposed that causal analysis occurs in the very earliest stages of interpreting an event and that early moral appraisals depend on it. In turn, at least some emotional responses depend on moral appraisals. Deliberative reasoning also relies on causal structure. Second, we have argued that the causal model formalism is appropriate for formulating psychological principles of moral appraisal. This could be construed as an argument that causal models serve as the underlying representation on which the ‘‘moral grammar’’ (Hauser, 2006; Mikhail, 2000; Rawls, 1971) operates. The primary utility we see for causal models is that they directly represent causes, consequences, and — most importantly — the structural relations among them. In other words, they represent mechanisms. Mikhail (2000) offers a contrasting formalism that draws on linguistic structure to represent events and formulates moral principles as operations on a graphical tree representing a sentence’s semantics. Although the specificity of his proposal is admirable, language does not seem the right place to find the structure relevant to moral appraisal. Moral appraisal concerns events and only indirectly depends on how we talk about them. The structure of an utterance obviously has some correspondence to the event it refers to, but it also manifests additional purely linguistic constraints. These constraints reflect specifics about the particular language used to express the utterance. They also emerge from the fact that language is composed of a linear stream of symbols and that its primary function is communication. These additional linguistic constraints are uninformative about the variables that matter for moral judgment, variables about the event itself like agents’ intentions, alternative causes, and the valence of an outcome. Mikhail clearly believes that these nonlinguistic variables are somehow represented; our complaint is that his representation incorporates extra baggage brought along by sentence structure. Causal models in contrast represent events directly via the mechanisms that relate causes to effects, and thus offer a representation much more streamlined to capture facts relevant to moral judgment and only those facts. Our proposal is that causal models serve as a representation for operations that govern moral appraisals. We emphasize our focus on early operations of appraisal. Moral judgments involve more than such quick and dirty appraisals. For instance, they take into account emotional responses and noncausal moral principles like equity. They also depend on basic values about good and bad outcomes (e.g., charity is good, causing
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pain is bad). Such considerations are largely independent of causal knowledge. But even some emotional responses like indignation depend on moral appraisals and thus causal structure. Equity assessments frequently include considerations that require causal analyses like determinations of effort or merit. Causal structure is not the only thing, but no judge would get far without it. Finally, we have offered a speculation that moral appraisals reflect the similarity between an idealized causal model of moral behavior and a causal model of the event being judged. Admittedly, the evidence for this specific hypothesis about the cognitive operations involved in moral judgment is weak. Support would come from studies demonstrating a gradient of judgment that varies monotonically with the dimensions of similarity that we proposed above. We offer the hypothesis as a relatively concrete alternative to the more standard view that moral judgment involves a reasoning process that derives conclusions in the spirit of logical proof (Kohlberg, 1986; Mikhail, 2000; Piaget, 1932). The evidence for this latter view is no stronger. If our proposals are correct, then moral agents have a causal model of their environment whenever they are in a position to make moral appraisals. Of course, having a causal model is not sufficient to make one a moral agent. Emotional responses help and moral principles, largely defined in terms of causal structure, are necessary. Moreover, one must have the desire to be moral. Our guess is that all humans who are functional have causal models. Not everyone satisfies the other conditions for moral agency.
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Kahneman, D. and Miller, D. (1986). Norm Theory: Comparing Reality to Its Alternatives. Psychological Review, 93, 136–153. Kant, I. (1785). Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Mary Gregor, Trans.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Klein, G. (1999). Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Knobe, J. (2003). Intentional Action and Side Effects in Ordinary Language. Analysis, 63, 190–193. Kohlberg, L. (1986). The Philosophy of Moral Development. Harper and Row, San Francisco. Levi, I. (2000). Review Article. James Joyce: The Foundations of Causal Decision Theory. The Journal of Philosophy, 97(7), 387–402. Lewis, D. (1973). Counterfactuals. Blackwell, Oxford. Machery, E. (2008). The Folk Concept of Intentional Action: Philosophical and Experimental Issues. Mind and Language, 23, 165–189. Malle, B. F. (2001). Folk Explanations of Intentional Action, in edited by Malle, B. F., Moses, L. J., and Baldwin, D. A. (Eds.), Intentions and Intentionality: Foundations of Social Cognition, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Malle, B.F. (2007). Attributions as Behavior Explanations: Toward a New Theory, in edited by Chadee, D. and Hunter, J. (Eds.). Current Themes and Perspectives in Social Psychology. (pp. 3–26). SOCS, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad. Malle, B. F. and Knobe, J. (1997). The Folk Concept of Intentionality. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2, 101–121. Mandel, D. R. (2003). Judgment Dissociation Theory: An Analysis of Differences in Causal, Counterfactual, and Covariational Reasoning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137, 419–434. Meek, C. and Glymour, C. (1994). Conditioning and Intervening. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 45, 1001–1021. Mikhail, J. (2000). Rawls’ Linguistic Analogy: A Study of the ‘Generative Grammar’ Model of Moral Theory Described by John Rawls in ‘A Theory of Justice.’ Cornell University PhD dissertation. Moll, J. and Oliveira, S. (2007). Response to Greene: Moral Sentiments and Reason: Friends or Foes? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 323. Moore, A., Clark, B. and Kane, M. (2008). Who Shalt Not Kill? Individual Differences in Working Memory Capacity, Executive Control, and Moral Judgment. Psychological Science, 19, 549–557. Nichols, S. and Mallon, R. (2006). Moral Dilemmas and Moral Rules. Cognition, 100, 530–542. Nozick, R. (1993). The Nature of Rationality. Princeton University Press, Princeton. Oosterbeek, H., Sloof, R. and Van de Kuilen, G. (2004). Cultural Differences in Ultimatum Game Experiments: Evidence from a Meta-Analysis. Journal of Experimental Economics, 7 (2), 171–188. Pearl, J. (1988). Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems: Networks of Plausible Inference. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco. Pearl, J. (2000). Causality. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Piaget, J. (1932). The Moral Judgment of the Child. Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., London. Pizarro, D. and Bloom, P. (2003). The Intelligence of Moral Intuitions: Comment on Haidt (2001). Psychological Review, 110, 193–196. Prinz, J. (2006). The Emotional Basis of Moral Judgment. Philosophical Explorations, 9, 29–43. Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Rehder, B. and Hastie, R. (2001). Causal Knowledge and Categories: The Effects of Causal Beliefs on Categorization, Induction and Similarity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130(3), 323–360.
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Shaver, K. G. (1985). The Attribution of Blame: Causality, Responsibility, and Blameworthiness. Springer-Verlag, New York. Skyrms, B. (1982). Causal Decision Theory. Journal of Philosophy, 79(11), 695–711. Sloman, S. (2005). Causal Models: How People Think About the World and Its Alternatives. Oxford University Press, New York. Sloman, S. A. (1996). The Empirical Case for Two Systems of Reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 3–22. Sloman, S. A. and Hagmayer, Y. (2006). The Causal Psycho-Logic of Choice. Trends in Cognitive Science, 10, 407–412. Spirtes, P., Glymour, C. and Scheines, R. (1993). Causation, Prediction, and Search. Springer, New York. Spranca, M., Minsk, E. and Baron, J. (1991). Omission and Commission in Judgment and Choice. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 27, 76–105. Stanovich, K. E. and West, R. F. (2000). Individual Differences in Reasoning: Implications for the Rationality Debate. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23, 645–726. Unger, P. (1995). Contextual Analysis in Ethics. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 55, 1–26. Waldmann, M. and Dieterich, J. (2007). Throwing a Bomb on a Person versus Throwing a Person on a Bomb: Intervention Myopia in Moral Intuitions. Psychological Science, 18, 247–253. Walsh, C. R. and Sloman, S. A. (2005). In The Meaning of Cause and Prevent: The Role of Causal Mechanism. Proceedings of the 27th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ. Wolff, P. (2007). Representing Causation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136, 82–111. Woodward, J. (2003). Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Young, L., Cushman, F., Hauser, M. and Saxe, R. (2007). The Neural Basis of the Interaction between Theory of Mind and Moral Judgment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104, 8235–8240.
C H A P T E R
T W O
Moral Grammar and Intuitive Jurisprudence: A Formal Model of Unconscious Moral and Legal Knowledge John Mikhail Contents 29 31 31 37 40 45 45 49 51 52 53 55 56 63 67 71 81 92 93 93
1. The Moral Grammar Hypothesis 2. The Problem of Descriptive Adequacy 2.1. Twelve Considered Judgments 2.2. The Poverty of the Perceptual Stimulus 2.3. Simplifying the Problem 3. Intuitive Legal Appraisal 3.1. Acts and Circumstances 3.2. K-Generation and I-Generation 4. Deontic Rules 4.1. The Principle of Natural Liberty 4.2. The Prohibition of Battery and Homicide 4.3. The Self-Preservation Principle 4.4. The Moral Calculus of Risk 4.5. The Rescue Principle 4.6. The Principle of Double Effect 5. A Periodic Table of Moral Elements 6. Conversion Rules 7. Conclusion Acknowledgments References
Abstract Could a computer be programmed to make moral judgments about cases of intentional harm and unreasonable risk that match those judgments people already make intuitively? If the human moral sense is an unconscious computational mechanism of some sort, as many cognitive scientists have suggested, then the answer should be yes. So too if the search for reflective equilibrium is a sound enterprise, since achieving this state of affairs requires demarcating a Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Volume 50 ISSN 0079-7421, DOI: 10.1016/S0079-7421(08)00402-7
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2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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set of considered judgments, stating them as explanandum sentences, and formulating a set of algorithms from which they can be derived. The same is true for theories that emphasize the role of emotions or heuristics in moral cognition, since they ultimately depend on intuitive appraisals of the stimulus that accomplish essentially the same tasks. Drawing on deontic logic, action theory, moral philosophy, and the common law of crime and tort, particularly Terry’s five-variable calculus of risk, I outline a formal model of moral grammar and intuitive jurisprudence along the foregoing lines, which defines the abstract properties of the relevant mapping and demonstrates their descriptive adequacy with respect to a range of common moral intuitions, which experimental studies have suggested may be universal or nearly so. Framing effects, protected values, and implications for the neuroscience of moral intuition are also discussed.
A critic who wished to say something against that work [Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals] really did better than he intended when he said that there was no new principle of morality in it but only a new formula. Who would want to introduce a new principle of morality and, as it were, be its inventor, as if the world had hitherto been ignorant of what duty is or had been thoroughly wrong about it? Those who know what a formula means to a mathematician, in determining what is to be done in solving a problem without letting him go astray, will not regard a formula which will do this for all duties as something insignificant and unnecessary.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason [I]n our science, everything depends upon the possession of the leading principles, and it is this possession which constitutes the greatness of the Roman jurists. The notions and axioms of their science do not appear to have been arbitrarily produced; these are actual beings, whose existence and genealogy have become known to them by long and intimate acquaintance. For this reason their whole mode of proceeding has a certainty which is found no where else, except in mathematics; and it may be said, without exaggeration, that they calculate with their notions.
F.C. Von Savigny, Of the Vocation of Our Time for Legislation and Jurisprudence How does it happen that the prevailing public opinion about what is right and what is moral is in so many respects correct? If such a philosopher as Kant failed in the attempt to find the source of our knowledge of right and wrong, is it conceivable that ordinary people succeeded in drawing from this source?. . . But this difficulty. . . is easily resolved. We only have to reflect that much of what is present in our store of knowledge contributes toward the attainment of new knowledge without our being clearly conscious of the process. . ... Thus it has often been observed that for thousands of years men have drawn right conclusions without bringing the procedure and the principles which form the condition of the formal validity of the
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inference into clear consciousness by means of reflection. . .. In spite of their false conception of the true fundamental principles, these still continue to operate in their reasoning. But why do I go so far for examples? Let the experiment be made with the first ‘‘plain man’’ who has just drawn a right conclusion, and demand of him that he give you the premises of his conclusion. This he will usually be unable to do and may perhaps make entirely false statements about it.
Franz Brentano, The Origin of The Knowledge of Right and Wrong The demand is not to be denied: every jump must be barred from our deductions. That this is so hard to satisfy must be set down to the tediousness of proceeding step by step.
Gottlob Frege, The Foundations of Arithmetic
1. The Moral Grammar Hypothesis The moral grammar hypothesis holds that ordinary individuals are intuitive lawyers, who possess tacit or unconscious knowledge of a rich variety of legal rules, concepts, and principles, along with a natural readiness to compute mental representations of human acts and omissions in legally cognizable terms (Mikhail, 2000, 2005, 2007, 2008a; see also Dwyer, 1999, 2006; Harman, 2000, 2008; Hauser, 2006; Mahlmann, 1999, 2007; Roedder and Harman, 2008; see generally Miller, 2008; Pinker, 2008; Saxe, 2005). The central aim of this chapter is to provide a preliminary formal description of some of the key mental operations implied by this hypothesis. In a comprehensive study, each of these operations would need to be described in a format suitable for explicit derivations, and many details, complications, and objections would need to be addressed. In what follows, I will be content merely to sketch some of the main ideas in quasi-formal terms, leaving further refinements, extensions, and clarifications for another occasion. My primary objective is to demonstrate that a computational theory of moral cognition, which explains an interesting and illuminating range of common moral intuitions, can indeed be formulated. Because some readers might find the efforts at formalization in this chapter to be tedious or unnecessary, it seems useful to address this issue at the outset. Cognitive science was transformed by subjecting linguistic and visual phenomena to precise, formal analysis. The theory of moral grammar holds out the prospect of doing the same for aspects of ordinary human moral cognition, perhaps thereby lending support to the Enlightenment assumption that at least some aspects of intuitive moral judgment are ‘‘capable of demonstration’’ (Locke, 1991/1689, p. 549; cf. Hume, 1978/1740; Kant, 1993/1788;
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Leibniz, 1981/1705). The alleged computational properties of moral cognition, however, must be shown and not merely asserted. As Rawls (1971, p. 46) observes, the first step in this inquiry is to identify a class of considered judgments and a set of rules or principles from which they can be derived. As I have argued elsewhere, recent sustained efforts to explain human moral judgment in this framework suggest that untutored adults and even young children are intuitive lawyers, who are capable of drawing intelligent distinctions between superficially similar cases, although their basis for doing so is often obscure (Mikhail, 2007, 2008a; see also Alter et al., 2007; Cushman et al., 2006; Haidt, 2001; Robinson et al., 2008; Solum, 2006; Wellman and Miller, 2008; Young and Saxe, 2008; cf. Anscombe, 1958; Bradley, 1876; Cardozo, 1921; Durkheim, 1893; Freud, 1930; Gilligan, 1978; Gluckman, 1955, 1965; Holmes, 1870; Jung, 1919; Kohlberg, 1981, 1984; Piaget, 1932; Pound, 1908). If this is correct, then future research in moral psychology should begin from this premise, moving beyond pedagogically useful examples such as the trolley problem and other cases of necessity to the core concepts of universal fields like torts, contracts, criminal law, property, agency, equity, procedure, and unjust enrichment, which investigate the rules and representations implicit in common moral intuitions with unparalleled care and sophistication. Chomsky (1957) emphasized that rigorous formulation in linguistics is not merely a pointless technical exercise but rather an important diagnostic and heuristic tool, because only by pushing a precise but inadequate formulation to an unacceptable conclusion can we gain a better understanding of the relevant data and of the inadequacy of our existing attempts to explain them. Likewise, Marr (1982, p. 26) warned against making inferences about cognitive systems from neurophysiological findings without ‘‘a clear idea about what information needs to be represented and what processes need to be implemented’’ (cf. Mill, 1987/1843, pp. 36–38). Cognitive scientists who take these ideas seriously and who seek to understand human moral cognition must devote more effort to developing computational theories of moral competence, in addition to studying related problems, such as its underlying mechanisms, neurological signatures, cultural adaptations, or evolutionary origins. As I attempt to show in this chapter, the formalization of common legal notions can play an important part in this process. Because the enterprise this chapter engages, the search for considered judgments in reflective equilibrium (Rawls, 1971), is controversial in some quarters, a further clarification may be helpful before we proceed. Moral judgment is a flexible, context-dependent process, which cannot be accurately described by simple consequentialist or deontological principles, and which is clearly subject to framing effects and other familiar manipulations (Doris, 2002; Kahneman and Tversky, 1984; Kelman et al., 1996; Schnall et al., 2008; Sunstein, 2005; Unger, 1996; Valdesolo and DeSteno, 2006; Wheatley and Haidt, 2005). For example, as the literature on protected
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values has shown, how trade-offs among scarce resources are described can often influence how they are evaluated (Baron and Spranca, 1997; Bartels, 2008; Bartels and Medin, 2007; Fiske and Tetlock, 1997; Tetlock, 2003). Facts like these are sometimes taken to imply that moral intuitions are so malleable that the project of reflective equilibrium is quixotic. From our perspective, however, these phenomena simply reinforce the need to draw a competence–performance distinction in the moral domain and thus to take a position, fallible and revisable to be sure, on which moral judgments reflect the ideal operations of a core human competence and which are the result of various psychological limitations, performance errors, or other exogenous factors (Nozick, 1968; Rawls, 1971; cf. Chomsky, 1965; Macnamara, 1986; Marr, 1982). Hence the importance of jury instructions, rules of evidence, and other familiar methods of directing attention to precisely formulated questions and preventing irrelevant or prejudicial information from having a distorting effect on one’s judgments. Unlike some researchers (e.g., Baron and Ritov, this volume), who define any deviation from utilitarianism as a cognitive ‘‘bias’’ — and who thus appear committed to holding that even the most basic rules of criminal and civil law reflect pervasive cognitive errors, insofar as they do not merely track outcomes, but also rely heavily on concepts like proximate causes, goals, means, side effects, and mental states generally — the approach taken here assumes that at least some of these rules are a natural benchmark with which to describe human moral cognition, at least to a good first approximation. Whether these legal norms are built into the very fabric of the human mind is one of cognitive science’s deepest and most persistent questions. Our immediate concern, however, is not ontogenesis but descriptive adequacy, because without a clear understanding of the learning target in this domain, one cannot formulate, let alone endorse, one or another learning theory. Despite their obvious limitations, trolley problems are a useful heuristic for this purpose, and their artificiality is a virtue, not a vice, in this regard. These hypothetical cases must be supplemented with more realistic probes drawn from other branches of law, policy, and everyday life, however, if moral competence is to be adequately understood.
2. The Problem of Descriptive Adequacy 2.1. Twelve Considered Judgments The provisional aim of moral theory is to solve the problem of descriptive adequacy (Rawls, 1971, 1975; cf. Chomsky, 1957, 1965). To simplify this problem, it is useful to begin by focusing our attention on the 12 problems in Table 1, which, building upon previous work (Foot, 1967; Harman, 1977; Thomson, 1985), I designed in order to investigate the mental
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Table 1
Twelve Trolley Problems.a
1. Bystander: Hank is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Hank sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five men walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the five men. It is moving so fast that they will not be able to get off the track in time. Hank is standing next to a switch, which he can throw, that will turn the train onto a side track, thereby preventing it from killing the men. There is a man standing on the side track with his back turned. Hank can throw the switch, killing him; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the five die. Is it morally permissible for Hank to throw the switch? 2. Footbridge: Ian is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Ian sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five men walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the five men. It is moving so fast that they will not be able to get off the track in time. Ian is standing next to a heavy object, which he can throw onto the track in the path of the train, thereby preventing it from killing the men. The heavy object is a man, standing next to Ian with his back turned. Ian can throw the man, killing him; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the five die. Is it morally permissible for Ian to throw the man? 3. Expensive Equipment: Karl is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Karl sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five million dollars of new railroad equipment lying across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the equipment. It is moving so fast that the equipment will be destroyed. Karl is standing next to a switch, which he can throw, that will turn the train onto a side track, thereby preventing it from destroying the equipment. There is a man standing on the side track with his back turned. Karl can throw the switch, killing him; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the equipment be destroyed. Is it morally permissible for Karl to throw the switch? 4. Implied Consent: Luke is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Luke sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw a man walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward
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the man. It is moving so fast that he will not be able to get off the track in time. Luke is standing next to the man, whom he can throw off the track out of the path of the train, thereby preventing it from killing the man. The man is frail and standing with his back turned. Luke can throw the man, injuring him; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the man die. Is it morally permissible for Luke to throw the man? 5. Intentional Homicide: Mark is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Mark sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five men walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed, and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the five men. It is moving so fast that they will not be able to get off the track in time. Mark is standing next to a switch, which he can throw, that will turn the train onto a side track, thereby preventing it from killing the men. There is a man on the side track. Mark can throw the switch, killing him; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the men die. Mark then recognizes that the man on the side track is someone who he hates with a passion. ‘‘I don’t give a damn about saving those five men,’’ Mark thinks to himself, ‘‘but this is my chance to kill that bastard.’’ Is it morally permissible for Mark to throw the switch? 6. Loop Track: Ned is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Ned sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five men walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the five men. It is moving so fast that they will not be able to get off the track in time. Ned is standing next to a switch, which he can throw, that will temporarily turn the train onto a side track. There is a heavy object on the side track. If the train hits the object, the object will slow the train down, giving the men time to escape. The heavy object is a man, standing on the side track with his back turned. Ned can throw the switch, preventing the train from killing the men, but killing the man. Or he can refrain from doing this, letting the five die. Is it morally permissible for Ned to throw the switch? 7. Man-In-Front: Oscar is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Oscar sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five men walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the five men. It is moving so fast that they will not be able to get off the
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track in time. Oscar is standing next to a switch, which he can throw, that will temporarily turn the train onto a side track. There is a heavy object on the side track. If the train hits the object, the object will slow the train down, giving the men time to escape. There is a man standing on the side track in front of the heavy object with his back turned. Oscar can throw the switch, preventing the train from killing the men, but killing the man; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the five die. Is it morally permissible for Oscar to throw the switch? 8. Costless Rescue: Paul is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Paul sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five men walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the five men. It is moving so fast that they will not be able to get off the track in time. Paul is standing next to a switch, which he can throw, that will turn the train onto a side track, thereby preventing it from killing the men. Paul can throw the switch, saving the five men; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the five die. Is it morally obligatory for Paul to throw the switch? 9. Better Alternative: Richard is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Richard sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five men walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed, and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the five men. It is moving so fast that they will not be able to get off the track in time. Richard is standing next to a switch, which he can throw, that will turn the train onto a side track, thereby preventing it from killing the men. There is a man on the side track with his back turned. Richard can throw the switch, killing him; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the men die. By pulling an emergency cord, Richard can also redirect the train to a third track, where no one is at risk. If Richard pulls the cord, no one will be killed. If Richard throws the switch, one person will be killed. If Richard does nothing, five people will be killed. Is it morally permissible for Richard to throw the switch? 10. Disproportional Death: Steve is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Steve sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw a man walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the man. It is moving so fast that he will not be able to get off the track in time. Steve is standing next to a switch,
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which he can throw, that will turn the train onto a side track, thereby preventing it from killing the man. There are five men standing on the side track with their backs turned. Steve can throw the switch, killing the five men; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the one man die. Is it morally permissible for Steve to throw the switch? 11. Drop Man: Victor is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Victor sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five men walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the five men. It is moving so fast that they will not be able to get off the track in time. Victor is standing next to a switch, which he can throw, that will drop a heavy object into the path of the train, thereby preventing it from killing the men. The heavy object is a man, who is standing on a footbridge overlooking the tracks. Victor can throw the switch, killing him; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the five die. Is it morally permissible for Victor to throw the switch? 12. Collapse Bridge: Walter is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Walter sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five men walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the five men. It is moving so fast that they will not be able to get off the track in time. Walter is standing next to a switch, which he can throw, that will collapse a footbridge overlooking the tracks into the path of the train, thereby preventing it from killing the men. There is a man standing on a footbridge. Walter can throw the switch, killing him; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the five die. Is it morally permissible for Walter to throw the switch? a
Italics in Table 1 identify salient differences between the following minimal pairs: Bystander-Footbridge, Bystander-Expensive Equipment, Footbridge-Implied Consent, Bystander-Intentional Homicide, Loop Track-Man-In-Front, Bystander-Costless Rescue, Bystander-Better Alternative, Bystander-Disproportional Death, Drop Man-Collapse Bridge. Experimental subjects were not shown these markings.
computations underlying the ordinary exercise of moral judgment (Mikhail, 2000, 2002). In a series of experiments that began in the mid-1990s, my colleagues and I began testing these cases, and others like them based on the same basic template, on hundreds of individuals, both adults and children. The participants included several groups of American adults, several groups of
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American children, one group of recent Chinese immigrants to the United States, and two groups of master’s students at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Collectively, the participants hailed from a diverse set of countries, including Belgium, Canada, China, Columbia, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, India, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and South Africa. Our central aim was to pursue the idea of a universal moral grammar and to begin to investigate a variety of empirical questions that arise within this framework. Our basic prediction was that the moral intuitions elicited by the first two problems (Bystander and Footbridge) would be widely shared, irrespective of demographic variables such as race, sex, age, religion, national origin, or level of formal education (see generally Mikhail, 2000, 2007; Mikhail et al., 1998). We also predicted that most individuals would be unaware of the operative principles generating their moral intuitions, and thus would be largely incapable of correctly describing their own thought processes (Mikhail et al., 1998). These predictions were confirmed, and our initial findings have now been replicated and extended with over 200,000 individuals from over 120 countries (see, e.g., Hauser et al., 2007; Miller, 2008; Pinker, 2008; Saxe, 2005). The result is perhaps the first qualitatively new data set in the history of the discipline, which has transformed the science of moral psychology and opened up many new and promising avenues of investigation (see, e.g., Bartels, 2008; Bucciarelli et al., 2008; Cushman, 2008; Cushman et al., 2006; Dupoux and Jacob, 2007; Greene et al., submitted; Koenigs et al., 2007; Lombrozo, 2008; Machery, 2007; Moore et al., 2008; Nichols and Mallon, 2006; Sinnott-Armstrong et al., 2008; Waldmann and Dieterich, 2007; Young et al., 2007).1 The modal responses to these 12 cases are listed in Table 2. While the variance in these intuitions is an important topic, which I discuss elsewhere (Mikhail, 2002, 2007; cf. Section 3.1), in this chapter I focus on the modal responses themselves and make the simplifying assumption that these judgments are considered judgments in Rawls’ sense, that is, ‘‘judgments in which our moral capacities are most likely to be displayed without distortion’’ (1971, p. 47). Hence, I take them to be categorical data that a descriptively adequate moral grammar must explain.
1
When our trolley problem studies began in Liz Spelke’s MIT lab in the mid-1990s, Petrinovich and colleagues (Petrinovich and O’Neill, 1996; Petrinovich et al., 1993) had already begun using trolley problems as probes, which another lab member (Laurie Santos) brought to our attention only several years after the fact. From our perspective, the Petrinovich experiments were poorly conceived, however, because they asked participants to supply behavioral predictions (‘‘What would you do?’’) rather than clearly identified moral judgments (‘‘Is X morally permissible?’’). In the context of jury trials, the former instruction has long been held to be reversible error (see, e.g., Eldredge, 1941; Epstein, 2004), while the latter more closely approximates the key theoretical issue of reasonableness or justifiability under the circumstances.
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Table 2 Twelve Considered Judgments. Problem
Act
Deontic status
Bystander Footbridge Expensive Equipment Implied Consent Intentional Homicide Loop Track Man-In-Front Costless Rescue Better Alternative Disproportional Death Drop Man Collapse Bridge
Hank’s throwing the switch Ian’s throwing the man Karl’s throwing the switch Luke’s throwing the man Mark’s throwing the switch Ned’s throwing the switch Oscar’s throwing the switch Paul’s throwing the switch Richard’s throwing the switch Steve’s throwing the switch Victor’s throwing the switch Walter’s throwing the switch
Permissible Forbidden Forbidden Permissible Forbidden Forbidden Permissible Obligatory Forbidden Forbidden Forbidden Permissible
2.2. The Poverty of the Perceptual Stimulus For convenience, let us label each of these cases a complex action-description. Let us say that their two main constituents are a primary act-token description and a circumstance description. The primary act-token description consists of a primary act-type description and a primary agent-description. The circumstance description also includes secondary act-type descriptions. Hence, our scheme for classifying the input may be rendered by Figure 1A, and the results of applying it to an example like the Bystander problem can be given by Figure 1B. Clearly, it is unproblematic to classify the remaining cases in Table 1 in these terms. With this terminology, we may now make a simple but crucial observation about the data in Table 2. Although each of these rapid, intuitive, and highly automatic moral judgments is occasioned by an identifiable stimulus, how the brain goes about interpreting these complex action descriptions and assigning a deontic status to each of them is not something revealed in any obvious way by the surface structure of the stimulus itself. Instead, an intervening step must be postulated: an intuitive appraisal of some sort that is imposed on the stimulus prior to any deontic response to it. Hence, a simple perceptual model, such as the one implicit in Haidt’s (2001) influential model of moral judgment, appears inadequate for explaining these intuitions, a point that can be illustrated by calling attention to the unanalyzed link between eliciting situation and intuitive response in Haidt’s model (Figure 2A; cf. Mikhail, 2007, 2008b). Likewise, an ad hoc appraisal theory, such as the personal/impersonal distinction that underlies Greene’s (Greene, 2005; Greene and Haidt, 2002; Greene et al., 2001) initial explanation of
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A
Complex action description
Primary act-token description
Circumstance description Secondary act-type descriptions
Primary agent-description
Primary act-type description
B Primary act-token description Circumstance description
Hank to throw the switch
Primary agent description Primary act-type description Secondary act-type descriptions
Hank
Figure 1
Hank is taking his daily walk over the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Hank sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five men walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the five men. It is moving so fast that they will not be able to get off the track in time. Hank is standing next to a switch, which he can throw, that will turn the train onto a side track, thereby preventing it from killing the men. There is a man standing on the side track with his back turned. Hank can throw the switch, killing him; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the five die
throw the switch 1. will turn the train onto a side track 2. preventing it from killing the men 3. killing him 4. refrain from doing this 5. letting the five die
Classifying the Stimulus: (A) Scheme and (B) Application.
the trolley problems, also fails to explain the data (Figure 2B; cf. Mikhail, 2002, 2007, 2008b; see also Greene, 2008a,b for recognition of this problem). Instead, an adequate model must be more complex and must look more like Figure 3. Figure 3 implies that moral judgments do not depend merely on the superficial properties of an action-description, but also on how that action is mentally represented, a critical preliminary step in the evaluative process that jurists have frequently examined (e.g., Cardozo, 1921; Hutcheson, 1929; Oliphant, 1928; Radin, 1925; see also Grey, 1983; Kelman, 1981), but, surprisingly, many psychologists have unduly neglected. The point can be illustrated by Table 3, which supplies an exhaustive list of the primary and secondary act-type descriptions that are directly derivable from the stimuli in Table 1. As Table 3 reveals, it is not just difficult, but impossible, to explain the data in Table 2 by relying on these primary and secondary acttype descriptions alone. Strictly speaking, the impossibility covers only the
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Moral Grammar and Intuitive Jurisprudence
A
?
Eliciting situation
6 5 A’s intuition
1
A’s judgment
2
A’s reasoning
4
B’s reasoning
B’s judgment
3
B’s intuition
B Problem
Personal / Impersonal Deontic status
Bystander
Impersonal
Permissible
Footbridge
Personal
Forbidden
Expensive Equipment Impersonal
Forbidden
Implied Consent
Personal
Permissible
Intentional Homicide
Impersonal
Forbidden
Loop Track
Impersonal
Forbidden
Man-In-Front
Impersonal
Permissible
Costless Rescue
Impersonal
Obligatory
Better Alternative
Impersonal
Forbidden
Disproportional Death Impersonal
Forbidden
Drop Man
Impersonal
Forbidden
Collapse Bridge
Impersonal
Permissible
“A moral violation is personal if it is (i) likely to cause serious bodily harm, (ii) to a particular person, (iii) in such a way that the harm does not result from the deflection of an existing threat onto a different party. A moral violation is impersonal if it fails to meet these criteria.” (Greene & Haidt 2002: 519)
Figure 2 Two Inadequate Appraisal Theories: (A) Unanalyzed Link in Haidt’s (2001) Model of Moral Judgment and (B) Inadequacy of Greene’s (Greene and Haidt, 2002; Greene et al., 2001) Personal–Impersonal Distinction.
Bystander, Intentional Homicide, Loop Track, and Man-In-Front problems, since these are the only cases whose primary and secondary acttype descriptions are completely equivalent. It is therefore logically possible to formulate ad hoc hypotheses that could handle the remaining eight cases. For example, each case could be explained by an elaborate conditional whose antecedent simply restates the primary and secondary act-types contained in the stimulus. Presumably, with enough effort, even such an unimaginative theory as this could be falsified, but, in any case, the point I am making should be apparent. Clearly, the brain must be generating action representations of its own that go beyond the information given. That is, much like a given patch of retinal stimulation or the acoustic stream in
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Permissible Input
?
?
? Impermissible
Stimulus
Conversion rules
Figure 3
Structural description
Deontic rules
Intuitive response
Expanded Perceptual Model for Moral Judgment.
speech perception, the stimulus here evidently consists merely of clues for the formation of an unconscious percept that the perceiver first constructs using her own internal resources and then projects back onto the stimulus, creating an illusion of qualities that the latter does not in fact possess (cf. Descartes, 1985/1647, p. 303; Hume, 1983/1751, p. 88; see also Chomsky, 2000; Fodor, 1985; Helmholtz, 1962/1867; Marr, 1982; Rey, 2006). Hence an adequate scientific explanation of the data in Table 2 must specify at least three elements: (i) the deontic rules operative in the exercise of moral judgment, (ii) the structural descriptions over which those computational operations are defined, and (iii) the conversion rules by which the stimulus is transformed into an appropriate structural description (Figure 3).
2.3. Simplifying the Problem Let us break this problem into parts and attempt to treat each part systematically. Because we seek to explicate 12 distinct judgments, we must construct 12 separate derivations. To make this task more manageable, we rely on the following idealizations and simplifying assumptions. First, we assume certain basic principles of deontic logic (Figure 4). We also assume that the sole deontic primitive in our model is the concept forbidden, leaving the concepts permissible and obligatory, and the various logical expressions in Figure 4, to be defined by implication.2 2
To generate the expressions in Figure 4, we need just two logical connectives, because out of ‘‘’’ (not) and any one of ‘‘.’’ (and ), ‘‘v’’ (or), ‘‘’’ (if–then), or ‘‘’’ (if and only if ), the others may be mechanically defined. For example, given two propositions, P and Q, and the connectives ‘‘’’ and ‘‘v,’’ we may define ‘‘(P . Q)’’ as an abbreviation for ‘‘(((P) v ((Q)))’’; ‘‘(P Q)’’ as an abbreviation for ‘‘((P) v Q)’’; and ‘‘(P Q)’’ as an abbreviation for ‘‘(P Q) . (Q P).’’
The Poverty of the Perceptual Stimulus.
Problem
Primary act-type description
Bystander
throw the switch
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Footbridge
throw the man
1. throw onto the track into the path of the train 2. preventing it from killing the men 3. killing him 4. refrain from doing this 5. letting the five die
Forbidden
Expensive Equipment
throw the switch
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
will turn the train onto a side track preventing it from killing the man killing them refrain from doing this letting the man die
Forbidden
Implied Consent
throw the man
1. throw off the track out of the path of the train 2. preventing it from killing the man 3. injuring him
Secondary act-type descriptions
will turn the train onto a side track preventing it from killing the men killing him refrain from doing this letting the five die
Deontic status
Permissible
Moral Grammar and Intuitive Jurisprudence
Table 3
Permissible
41
(Continued)
Table 3
(Continued) Primary act-type description
42
Problem
Secondary act-type descriptions
Deontic status
4. refrain from doing this 5. letting the man die throw the switch
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
will turn the train onto a side track preventing it from killing the man killing him refrain from doing this letting the man die
Forbidden
Loop Track
throw the switch
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
will turn the train onto a side track preventing it from killing the men killing him refrain from doing this letting the five die
Forbidden
Man-In-Front
throw the switch
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
will turn the train onto a side track preventing it from killing the men killing him refrain from doing this letting the five die
Permissible
Costless Rescue
throw the switch
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
will turn the train onto a side track preventing it from killing the men saving the five men refrain from doing this letting the five die
Obligatory John Mikhail
Intentional Homicide
throw the switch
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
will turn the train onto a side track preventing it from killing the men killing him refrain from doing this letting the man die pulling an emergency cord redirect the train to a third track
Forbidden
Disproportional Death
throw the switch
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
will turn the train onto a side track preventing it from killing the man killing the five men refrain from doing this letting the one man die
Forbidden
Drop Man
throw the switch
1. will drop a heavy object into the path of the train 2. preventing it from killing the men 3. killing him 4. refrain from doing this 5. letting the five die
Forbidden
Collapse Bridge
throw the switch
1. will collapse a footbridge overlooking the tracks into the path of the train 2. preventing it from killing the men 3. killing him 4. refrain from doing this 5. letting the five die
Permissible
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Better Alternative
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A not-permissible A forbidden Not-A obligatory
not-both
Not-A not-permissible Not-A forbidden A obligatory
If-then
Either-or (exclusive)
If-then
Not-A permissible Not-A not-forbidden A not-obligatory
Either-or (inclusive)
A permissible A not-forbidden Not-A not-obligatory
Key: Equipollence relations (i.e. logical equivalences) are expressed in the four corners. “A” stands for act; “not-A” stands for omission.
Figure 4 Principles of Deontic Logic: Square of Opposition and Equipollence.
Second, we assume that the form of our derivations is given by the following schema: (1) A has deontic status D A has features F1. . .Fn A has features F1. . .Fn A has deontic status D In other words, we attempt to state necessary and sufficient conditions for assigning a deontic status to a given act or omission. As noted below (Section 4.1), this renders our model a logically closed system and, given our choice of primitive, it is equivalent to assuming that the correct closure rule is a Residual Permission Principle. Third, we replace the letter ‘‘A’’ in (1) with the following formula: (2) [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C The syntax of this formula calls for comment. Drawing upon Goldman (1970) and Ginet (1990), we take the central element of what we call the normal form of a complex act-token representation to be a gerundive nominal, whose grammatical subject is possessive (cf. Bentham’s preference for nominalization in Ogden, 1932). Following Katz (1972), we use the symbol ‘‘at t’’ to denote some unspecified position on an assumed time dimension, and we use superscripts on occurrences of ‘‘t’’ to refer to specific positions on this dimension. We assume that superscripts can be either variables or constants. We take ‘‘t’’ with the superscript constant ‘‘0,’’ i.e., ‘‘t(0),’’ to function as an indexical element in a complex act-token representation, serving to orient the temporal relationships holding between it and other such representations.
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Superscript variables (‘‘n,’’ ‘‘m,’’ etc.) denote members of the set of natural numbers. They appear in superscripts with prefixes ‘‘þ’’ and ‘‘,’’ indicating the number of positive or negative units from the origin point (‘‘t(0)’’) of the time dimension. For example, ‘‘t(þn)’’ means ‘‘n units to the right of the origin,’’ whereas ‘‘t(n)’’ signifies ‘‘n units to the left of the origin.’’ Thus, ‘‘t(n),’’ ‘‘t(0),’’ and ‘‘t(þm)’’ in the following series of representations imply that Hank’s seeing what happened occurs before his throwing the switch, which occurs before his killing the man: (3) (a) [Hank’s seeing what happened at t(n)] (b) [Hank’s throwing the switch at t(0)] (c) [Hank’s killing the man at t(þm)] There is an important convention this notation incorporates, which is to date an action by its time of completion. Strictly speaking, an act that begins at t(0) and ends at t(þn) is performed neither at t(0) nor t(þn), but in that period of time bounded by them. We simplify this situation by following the traditional legal rule of dating an action by when it is completed (see, e.g., Salmond, 1966/1902, p. 360). Doing so enables us to avoid many problems, such as locating ‘‘the time of a killing,’’ which have been identified in the literature (Thomson, 1970; cf. Fodor, 1970; Fried, 1978; Jackendoff, 1987; Pinker, 2007). Finally, since acts always occur in particular circumstances, we need a notation for designating those circumstances. Hence, we enclose these representations in square brackets, followed by the superscript ‘‘C’’ to denote the circumstances in which act-tokens are performed.3
3. Intuitive Legal Appraisal 3.1. Acts and Circumstances It is at this point that turning more directly to legal theory and the philosophy of action is useful for our topic. Together with aspects of Goldman’s (1970) theory of level-generation, the substantive law of crime and tort provides us with the necessary conceptual tools for explaining the data in Table 2, as well as an indefinitely large class of structurally similar judgments.
3
Our notation for designating act-token representations can be elaborated in simple ways, as needed. For example, we can exhibit more complex temporal relations by relying on conventions for adding and subtracting in algebra. Thus, ‘‘t(þn þ (m))’ signifies ‘‘n m units to the right of the origin,’’ while ‘‘t(n þ (m) þ (o))’’ signifies ‘‘n þ m þ o units to the left of the origin.’’ Likewise, our generic reference to circumstances, ‘‘C,’’ can be replaced with one or more sets of circumstances, ‘‘{C1, C2, C3,. . .,Cn}’’ (see generally Mikhail, 2000).
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From a common legal point of view, an act is simply a voluntary bodily movement that occurs in a particular set of circumstances (see, e.g., Holmes, 1881; Terry, 1884; cf. ALI, 1965; Goldman, 1970). Those circumstances, in turn, may be regarded as a body of information that obtains at the time that the act or its omission occurs. In De inventione, Cicero supplies a classic list of seven probative questions that can be asked about the circumstances of any particular action: Quis? Quid? Ubi? Quibus auxiliis? Cur? Quomodo? Quando? Who? What? Where? By what aids? Why? How? When? Cicero’s list, which is presumably illustrative rather than exhaustive, has been the subject of philosophical analysis for centuries (see, e.g., Aquinas, 1952/1274, p. 653). For our purposes, its significance rests in the fact that the answers elicited by questions like these can transform one description of an action into another, and that the resulting set of descriptions can be arranged into hierarchical tree structures, successive nodes of which bear a generation relation to one another that is asymmetric, irreflexive, and transitive (Goldman, 1970; see also Anscombe, 1957; Davidson, 1963; Donagan, 1977; Ryle, 1968; cf. Geertz, 1973 on ‘‘thick description’’). When properly constructed, these expository diagrams not only enable us to predict moral intuitions with surprising accuracy, but also to see at a glance a variety of structural relationships, including those we might have overlooked or ignored. For example, act trees can be used not only to identify the basic differences between the Footbridge and Bystander problems, but also to explain the variance one finds in highly refined manipulations of these cases, such as the Loop Track, Man-In-Front, Drop Man, and Collapse Bridge problems. As Figure 5A indicates, the intuitive data in these six cases form a remarkably consistent pattern, with permissibility judgments increasing linearly across the six conditions. Moreover, as Figure 5b illustrates, these results can be tentatively explained as a function of the properties of each problem’s structural description. Other things equal, acts are more likely to be judged permissible as counts of battery committed as a means decrease from three (Footbridge) to two (Drop Man) to one (Loop Track), and as these violations become side effects and additional structural features come into play. In Man-In-Front, the agent’s goal presumably is to save the men by causing the train to hit the object but not the man, yet the actual result (not shown) is likely to involve hitting the man before the object; hence, from an ex post perspective, the agent will commit a battery prior to and as a means of achieving his good end. Likewise, in Collapse Bridge, one or more counts of battery must necessarily occur before the good end is achieved. By contrast, in Bystander, battery and homicide are side effects that occur only after the good end has been secured by turning the train onto the side track (Mikhail, 2007).
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A
90
Percentage
80 70 60 50 40
Permiss.
30 20 10 0 Ian
B
Victor
Preventing train from killing (+n+o) men at t
Ned
Oscar Walter
End Preventing train from killing men (+n+o+p) at t
Committing homicide at (+n+p) t
Committing (+n) battery at t
Side effects
Causing train to (+n) hit man at t
Committing homicide at (+n+o+q) t
Committing (+n+o) battery at t
Committing (0) battery at t
Side effects
Causing train to (+n+o) hit man at t
Means Throwing (0) man at t
Committing (+n) battery at t
Committing (-m) battery at t
Ian
Hank
End Preventing train from killing men (+n+o+p) at t
Means
Committing homicide at (+n+o+q) t
Committing (+n+o) battery at t
Side effects
Causing train to (+n+o) hit man at t
Victor
Means
Turning (+n) train at t
Moving (+n) man at t
Touching (-m) man at t
End
Ned
Throwing (0) switch at t
Throwing (0) switch at t
Committing homicide at (+n+o+p) t Committing (+n+o) battery at t Committing homicide at (+n+o+s) t Committing (+n+o) battery at t
Preventing train from killing men (+n+o+p+q) at t
End Committing (+n) battery at t
Causing train to hit object (+n+o+p) at t
Causing train to (+n+o) hit man at t
Turning (+n) train at t
Side effects
Moving man (+n) at t Means
Side effects
Throwing (0) switch at t
Oscar
Committing homicide at (+n+o+p) t
Causing train to (+n+o) hit man at t
Walter
Preventing train from killing men (+n+q) at t Collapsing (+n) bridge at t
End
Committing (+n+o) battery at t
Preventing train from killing men (+n) at t
Causing train to (+n+o) hit man at t
Means
Turning (+n) train at t
Side effects
Throwing (0) switch at t
Hank
End
Means
Throwing (0) switch at t
C C12
C1
C9
C9
C5 C2 C3
C8 [S’s V-ing at t(α)] C10 C4 C 6
C11 C7
C12
C9
C5
C2 C8 C3 [S’s V-ing at t(α)] + C1 C10 C4 C 6
C11 C7
C12
C5 C2 C3
C8 [S’s U-ing at t(α)] C10 C4 C 6
C11 C7
Figure 5 Circumstances Alter Cases: (A) Variance in Six Trolley Problem Experiments, (B) Six Structural Descriptions, and (C) ‘‘Mental Chemistry’’ as an Illustration of Moral Computation. (Data in (a) from Mikhail, 2002, 2007, in press).
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Diagramming action plans is an important tool for solving the problem of descriptive adequacy, and it was a major part of the effort that began with the earliest work on moral grammar to identify the precise structural properties of the mental representations that are elicited by thought experiments such as the trolley problems (Mikhail et al., 1998; cf. Bentham, 1948/ 1789, p. 79; Locke, 1991/1689, pp. 550–552). In what follows, I seek to build on this foundation by explaining how iterated applications of a general computational principle, which combines an act-token representation with its circumstances to yield another act-token representation, can be utilized together with a variety of legal rules, concepts, and principles to explain how the brain computes the complex structural descriptions of a given action and its alternatives. All of these structural descriptions can be exhibited by act trees, but, as I suggest below (Section 5), other graphic devices, such as a table of recurring elements, can also be fruitfully utilized in this endeavor. Formally, this general principle can be rendered in various ways, including the following: (4) (a) (b) (c) (d)
[S’s V-ing at t(a)]C ! [S’s U-ing at t(b)] [S’s V-ing at t(a)] þ C ! [S’s U-ing at t(b)] [S’s V-ing at t(a)þ C] ! [S’s U-ing at t(b)] [S’s V-ing at t(a)]{C1, C2, C3. . .Cn} ! [S’s V-ing at t(a) þ C1]{C2, C3. . .Cn}
(e) [S’s V-ing at t(a) þ C1]{C2, C3. . .Cn} ! [S’s U-ing at t(b)]{C2, C3. . .Cn} (4a) states that a complex act-token representation can yield another act-token representation. In this formula, ‘‘!’’ functions as a rewrite rule that permits the object on the left side of the arrow to be replaced by the object on the right side. (4b) uses the ‘‘þ’’ symbol to express a similar proposition, indicating that a circumstance can be added to an act-token representation to yield another act-token representation. (4c) is similar, but more precise, because it signifies that a circumstance becomes material, so to speak, by combining with an act-token representation within its corresponding brackets. Finally, (4d) and (4e) reveal how, in two distinct steps, the process might unfold in a generic case. First, a particular circumstance, C1, is selected from the set of circumstances surrounding an acttoken representation, S’s V-ing at t(a), and conjoined with the latter (4d). Next, the combination of these two elements yields a new act-token representation, S’s U-ing at t(b) (4e). The set of circumstances surrounding this transformation remains intact throughout, except that C1 is no longer an element of this set. As Bentham (1948/1879, p. 77) observes, the basic mental processes we seek to describe can be illustrated by drawing on the etymology of the word circumstance — ‘‘circum stantia, things standing round: objects standing around another object’’ — and thus conceiving of ‘‘the field of circumstances,
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belonging to any act’’ to be ‘‘a circle, of which the circumference is no where, but of which the act in question is the centre.’’ Moreover, as Mill (1987/1843, pp. 39–40) observes, the relevant phenomena can be conceived as a kind of ‘‘mental chemistry,’’ in which simple ideas combine to generate more complex ones in a process loosely analogous to chemical combination (Figure 5C; cf. Kant, 1993/1788, pp. 169–171; D’Arcy, 1963, pp. 57–61). The particular diagrams used to exhibit these transformations are inessential, of course, and one should avoid getting carried away with metaphors that risk obscuring rather than illuminating the relevant mental operations. What matters is simply to recognize that any adequate scientific theory of moral intuition must seek to explain how the brain converts complex action-descriptions and other sensory inputs into complex acttoken representations as a necessary precondition of moral judgment. The general computational principle we have identified is a plausible component of one such proposal, but, even so, it obviously cannot do the job on its own. As I argue below, however, this principle, together with other elements of moral grammar, can be used to explain the 12 cases in Table 1, along with a potentially infinite number and variety of other cases.
3.2. K-Generation and I-Generation Modifying Goldman’s (1970) analysis to suit our topic, let us begin by defining two generation relations that might hold between pairs of act-token representations: Definition of K-Generation Given two act-token representations, [S’s V-ing at t(a)] and [S’s U-ing at t(b)], and a set of known circumstances, C, [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b)] if and only if: (a) V 6¼ U (that is: [S’s V-ing] and [S’s U-ing] are syntactically distinct) (b) b- a 0 (that is: [S’s U-ing at t(b)] is either time-identical or subsequent to [S’s V-ing at t(a)]) (c) ([S’s V-ing at t(a) þ C] ! [S’s U-ing at t(b)] (that is: the conjunction of [S’s V-ing at t(a)] and C yields [S’s U-ing at t(b)]) Definition of I-Generation Given two act-token representations, [S’s V-ing at t(a)] and [S’s U-ing at t(b)], and a set of known circumstances, C, [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C I-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b)] if and only if:
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(a) [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b)] (b) ([S’s U-ing at t(b)]¼[GOAL] v [S’s U-ing at t(b)] I-generates [GOAL]) (that is: [S’s U-ing at t(b)] is the goal, or I-generates the goal, of an action plan) Comment: These provisional definitions of K-generation and I-generation are meant to provide a sufficient basis for our limited objectives of accounting for the fact that individuals ordinarily distinguish at least two types of effects that are caused by a moral agent: (i) effects that are knowingly caused (K-generation), and (ii) effects that are intentionally or purposely caused (I-generation). For simplicity, we assume here that the latter are a proper subset of the former; hence, we do not attempt to account for cases in which an agent intends to accomplish ends that she believes are unlikely to occur. Instead, we simply assume that all of the effects that are intentionally or purposefully caused by an agent are also knowingly caused by her. In Anglo-American jurisprudence, ‘‘intent’’ is often defined or used broadly to include knowledge. For example, the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Second) of Torts uses ‘‘intent,’’ ‘‘intentional,’’ and related terms ‘‘to denote that the actor desires to cause consequences of his act, or that he believes that the consequences are substantially certain to result from it’’ (ALI, 1965, p. 15; cf. Lefave and Scott, 1972, pp. 196–197). Likewise, Sidgwick holds that ‘‘[f ]or purposes of exact moral or juristic discussion, it is best to include under the term of ‘intention’ all the consequences of an act that are foreseen as certain or probable’’ (1981/1907, p. 202). Ordinary language often exhibits a different and more precise understanding of intention, however, and distinguishes intended and foreseen effects in a variety of contexts (Bratman, 1987; Finnis, 1995; Kenny, 1995), including the trolley problems, if our hypothesis is correct. By defining K-generation and I-generation in the foregoing manner, then, we depart from certain conventional accounts of intention and attempt instead to explicate the familiar distinction between ends and means, on the one hand, and known or foreseen side effects, on the other. Bentham (1948/1789, p. 84) succinctly captures the distinction between I-generation and K-generation when he explains that a consequence may be ‘‘directly or lineally’’ intentional, when ‘‘the prospect of producing it constituted one of the links in the chain of causes by which the person was determined to do the act,’’ or merely ‘‘obliquely or collaterally’’ intentional, when ‘‘the consequence was in contemplation, and appeared likely to ensue in case of the act’s being performed, yet the prospect of producing such a consequence did not constitute a link in the aforesaid chain.’’ The definition of I-generation tracks Bentham’s notion of direct intention; it can also be regarded as a rule for generating the adverb ‘‘purposely’’ (or ‘‘intentionally’’ in one of its ambiguous meanings) and conjoining it to an act-token representation that otherwise lacks this mental
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state. The definition of K-generation corresponds with Bentham’s notion of collateral intention; it can also be regarded as a rule for generating the adverb ‘‘knowingly’’ and conjoining it to an act-token representation that otherwise lacks this mental state. The recursive aspect of the definition of I-generation (i.e., provision (b)) is meant to provide a computational interpretation of the principle Kant takes to be analytic: A rational agent who wills the end necessarily wills the known means (Kant, 1964/1785, pp. 84–85). The key insight here is that once the end, goal, or final effect of a causal chain has been identified, each of the previous links of that chain can be sequentially transformed from a representation of a mere cause of its subsequent effects to a representation of a means of its subsequent ends. In this manner, we can explain how the brain imputes intentional structure to what previously was only a projection of causes and effects. The end, goal, or final effect of an action is presupposed in this process. Later, we explain how one can compute the end, goal, or final effect of a complex act-token representation on the basis of information about its good and bad effects (see Section 6.4). For present purposes, we do not define a separate notion of C-generation (i.e., causal generation; see Goldman, 1970) or distinguish it from K-generation. Nor do we incorporate an explicit causal requirement in our definition of K-generation. Doing so would complicate our model, and it seems unnecessary given our immediate aims. Instead, we simply assume that each agent in Table 1 both causes and knows the stipulated effects of his actions. The reference to known circumstances in the definition of K-generation is thus taken to mean that these circumstances, including relevant causal conditionals, are known to the agents themselves (as well as to the participants in our experiments, in a secondary sense of the term). In a fully adequate moral grammar, these assumptions would need to be scrutinized, and a separate notion of C-generation would presumably need to be analyzed, defined, and incorporated into our definition of K-generation to account for the fact that individuals ordinarily distinguish both the effects that are objectively caused by an agent and those that she knowingly caused. We leave this task for another occasion, with the expectation that by drawing on a sophisticated body of work on causation (e.g., Alicke, 1992; Hart and Honore, 1959; Mackie, 1974; Pearl, 2000; Wright, 1985), a computational theory of C-generation can be integrated into the foregoing framework.
4. Deontic Rules The two notions we have defined, K-generation and I-generation, provide a principled basis for distinguishing what an agent knowingly does from what she purposely does, at least in a provisional way suitable for our
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limited aims. We need more conceptual tools, however, to explain the data in Table 2. An adequate moral grammar must include several more concepts and principles.
4.1. The Principle of Natural Liberty One of these principles is a so-called closure rule (Raz, 1970; Stone, 1968; see also Rawls, 1971), which renders our idealized model closed or complete. From a logical point of view, there are two main possibilities: (i) a Residual Prohibition Principle, which assumes that all permissible acts and omissions are defined and states that ‘‘whatever is not legally permitted is prohibited,’’ and (ii) a Residual Permission Principle, which assumes that all forbidden acts and omissions are defined and states that ‘‘whatever is not legally prohibited is permitted.’’4 The first alternative, which appears in Aristotle’s discussion of law,5 is essentially authoritarian, since it leaves little or no room for individual choice. The second alternative, which underwrites the legal maxims nullum crimen sine lege (‘‘no crime without law’’) and nullu peona sine lege (‘‘no penalty without law’’) and characterizes modern liberalism, is essentially libertarian, since it implies unrestricted freedom within the domain of acts that are neither obligatory nor forbidden. The Residual Permission Principle may also be called a Principle of Natural Liberty, and it is this essentially libertarian principle, rather than the essentially authoritarian Residual Prohibition Principle — or, alternatively, the apparently unrestrained notion of natural liberty that one finds in legal writers like Hobbes, Blackstone, and Bentham — on which the system we describe here rests. In particular, we follow a long line of writers on natural jurisprudence (e. g., Burlamaqui, 2006/1748, p. 284; Kant, 1991/1797, pp. 63–64; Wilson, 1967/1790, pp. 587–588; cf. Mill, 1978/1859, pp. 9–10) in adopting a more restricted, yet still expansive, precept of natural liberty as our preferred closure rule, which can be rendered as follows: ‘‘If an act has features F1. . .Fn, then it is forbidden; otherwise, it is permissible.’’ More formally, the principle can be restated as the following conjunction of conditionals, which is simply a theorem of our model that can be derived from the schema in (1) together with the equipollence relations in Figure 4: Principle of Natural Liberty [[S’s V-ing at t(a)]C has features F1. . .Fn] [[S’s V-ing at t(a)]C is forbidden]. [[S’s V-ing at t(a)]C has features F1. . .Fn] [[S’s V-ing at t(a)]C is permissible] 4
5
A Residual Obligation Principle is not a genuine third alternative, because it is logically equivalent to the Residual Prohibition Principle (cf. Figure 4). See Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 1138a, 6–8 (observing that ‘‘the law does not expressly permit suicide, and what it does not expressly permit it forbids’’).
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4.2. The Prohibition of Battery and Homicide Any normative system purporting to achieve descriptive adequacy must presumably include a set of basic legal prohibitions. For our purposes, two familiar prohibitions are relevant: battery and homicide. In a moral grammar that is capable of serving as premises of a derivation, each of these trespasses would need to be clearly and comprehensively defined. Here, I will merely state provisional definitions that are suitable for our limited purposes. First homicide: The American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code defines homicide in part as an act which consists in ‘‘purposely, knowingly, recklessly, or negligently causing the death of another human being’’ (ALI, 1962, Section 210.1). Modifying this definition to suit our purposes by detaching its adverbial component, let us assume that the act-type commits homicide can be defined6 simply as causing the death of a person. Formally, this can be stated as follows: Definition of Homicide: [S commits homicide at t(a)]C ¼Df [S’s V-ing [EFFECT (Person, Death)] at t(a)]C There is an implicit causation element in this definition that requires further analysis, but we set aside this issue here. By combining this definition with the notions of I-generation and K-generation, we can now distinguish the following two types of homicide. Representation of Purposeful Homicide [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C I-generates [S’s committing homicide at t(b)] Representation of Knowing Homicide [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s committing homicide at t(b)] In our model, the first expression formalizes the complex act-type purposely committing homicide. The second formalizes the complex act-type knowingly committing homicide. As we shall see, the second formula appears operative in ten of our 12 cases. By contrast, the only case that appears to involve the first formula is the Intentional Homicide problem. Next battery: Prosser (1941, p. 43) defines battery in part as ‘‘unpermitted, unprivileged contact with [a] person.’’ The Restatement (Second) of Torts (ALI, 1965, p. 25) offers a more elaborate definition, which reads in part: ‘‘An actor is subject to liability for battery if (a) he acts intending to cause a harmful or offensive contact with the person of the other or a third person, or an imminent apprehension of such contact, and (b) a harmful contact with the person of the other directly or indirectly results.’’ Modifying these accounts to suit our objectives, let us assume that the act-type 6
On the standard form of definition used here, see generally Hempel (1955).
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commits battery can be defined simply as causing harmful contact with a person without her consent.7 Formally, this definition can be stated as follows: Definition of Battery [S commits battery at t(a)]C ¼Df [S’s V-ing [EFFECT (Person, Contact-H, Consent)] at t(a)]C The concept of contact as it is used in this definition needs to be explained. In the common law of torts, protection against unwanted physical contact encompasses all forms of direct touching and ‘‘extends to any part of the body, or to anything which is attached to it and practically identified with it’’ (Prosser, 1971, p. 34). Moreover, it includes any ‘‘touching of the person, either by the defendant or any substance put in motion by him’’ (Hilliard, 1859, p. 191). Hence, the ordinary concept of contact is inadequate in some circumstances and must be replaced with a more expansive concept. Although we need not draw the precise contours of this broader concept here, it is important to recognize that a salient contact occurs not only when a person is (i) touched or (ii) moved by an agent, but also when she is (iii) touched by an object that is being touched by an agent, (iv) touched by an object that was previously moved by an agent, without the intervention of a more proximate cause, or (v) moved by an object that was previously moved by an agent, without the intervention of a more proximate cause. None of these effects necessarily trigger a representation of battery, but each is sufficient to generate a representation of the contact necessary for battery, at least within the confines of our model. For example, the contact requirement can be met by shoving or grabbing another person, but also by kicking the umbrella she is holding, snatching a plate from her hand, throwing a rock at her, spitting on her, or pulling a chair out from under her as she sits down, thereby causing her to fall (see, e.g., Epstein, 2004). In our 12 cases, the requirement is satisfied by throwing a person (as in the Footbridge and Implied Consent problems), moving a person and thereby causing him to come into contact with a train (as in the Drop Man and Collapse Bridge problems), or redirecting a train so that it comes into contact with a person (as in the Bystander, Expensive Equipment, Intentional Homicide, Loop Track, Man-InFront, Better Alternative, and Disproportional Death problems). Depending on how the implicit causation element of battery is interpreted, the requirement might also be satisfied in the Costless Rescue problem. I ignore this issue here, along with the broader question of whether battery can occur by omission, which some commentators have denied, even
7
I focus here on harmful battery rather than offensive battery, since only the former is relevant for our purposes. On the latter, see generally the Restatement (Second) of Torts, Sections 18–20.
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when the resulting harm or offense is intentional (see, e.g., the Restatement (First) of Torts, Sections 2, 13, 18, 281, and 284, and Topic 1, Scope Note). Our definition of battery also requires that the contact be harmful. Hence this concept must also be analyzed, and sufficient conditions for generating it must be provided. Once again, for our purposes it is sufficient to adopt with only minor changes the concept of harm utilized by the Restatement (Second) of Torts, which provides a useful framework in this regard. First, we use the word ‘‘harm’’ and its cognates, without further qualification, to denote any kind of detriment to a person resulting from any cause (ALI, 1965, p. 12). That is, we interpret harm broadly to include any ‘‘detriment or loss to a person which occurs by virtue of, or as a result of, some alteration or change in his person, or in physical things’’ (ALI, 1965, p. 13). Second, we use the narrower notion of bodily harm to refer to any physical impairment of a person’s body, including physical pain, illness, or alteration of the body’s normal structure or function to any extent. Third, we understand the harmful contact element of battery to require bodily harm, in the sense defined. Finally, we stipulate that a harmful contact occurs whenever contact with a person results in bodily harm, whether or not it does so directly, immediately, or purposely. In other words, we assume that the harmful effect of an I-generated contact need not be I-generated itself for the I-generated contact to be considered harmful (cf. Bentham, 1948/1789, p. 83). Although these analyses could be improved, they are sufficient for our limited aims. By combining our definition of battery with the notions of I-generation and K-generation, we can now formally distinguish the following two types of battery: Representation of Purposeful Battery [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C I-generates [S’s committing battery at t(b)] Representation of Knowing Battery [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s committing battery at t(b)] In our model, the first expression formalizes the complex act-type purposely committing battery. The second formalizes the complex act-type knowingly committing battery. The second formula appears operative in ten of our 12 cases. By contrast, the first formula appears operative in only four cases, all of which are judged to be impermissible: Footbridge, Intentional Homicide, Loop Track, and Drop Man.
4.3. The Self-Preservation Principle The concept of consent in our definition of battery, which usually operates instead as an affirmative defense (see, e.g., RST, Sections 49–62), also calls for comment. Crucial as this concept is, I do not attempt to analyze it here,
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beyond stating one sufficient condition for its application. What is important for our purposes is to have a principled basis for distinguishing Luke’s throwing the man in the Implied Consent problem from Ian’s performing the same action in the Footbridge problem (along with numerous other cases of simple battery, in which harmful contact occurs without any possible justification). Intuitively, the relevant difference is that the man would consent to being thrown in the Implied Consent problem, since his own life is being saved. To generate this representation, we may assume that the moral grammar includes the following principle: Self-Preservation Principle [EFFECT (Person, Contact-H)] [EFFECT (Person, Death)] ! [EFFECT (Person, Contact-H, Consent)] Roughly, the Self-Preservation Principle affords a presumption that, if a harmful contact with a person necessitates killing her, then she would not consent to it. This presumption may, of course, be rebutted in certain contexts, such as triage, euthanasia, or physician-assisted suicide, but I set aside these potential complications here.
4.4. The Moral Calculus of Risk If our hypothesis is correct, then the ‘‘background information’’ (Lashley, 1951) that must be attributed to the participants in our experiments to explain their considered judgments must include not only principles of deontic logic (Section 2.3), a general computational principle capable of transforming one act-token representation into another (Section 3.1), a set of rules for distinguishing K-generation and I-generation (Section 3.2), a closure rule (Section 4.1), and a set of presumptively prohibited acts (Section 4.2). Among other things, it also must include a moral calculus of some sort for specifying, ranking, and comparing the probabilities of an action’s good and bad effects. In our simple model, we account for the first of these three necessary operations by postulating three primary bad effects: (i) death of a person, (ii) bodily harm to a person, and (iii) destruction of a valuable thing. Formally, these three postulates can be rendered as follows: Postulate #1: [EFFECT [(Person, Death)] ! [BAD EFFECT] Postulate #2: [EFFECT [(Person, Harm-B)] ! [BAD EFFECT] Postulate #3: [EFFECT [(Thing-V, Destroy)] ! [BAD EFFECT] The first postulate states that an effect that consists of the death of a person is a bad effect, and may be rewritten as such. In this formula, ‘‘!’’ is
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a rewrite rule that converts the object on the left side of the arrow to the object on the right side. The second and third postulates apply the same rule to bodily harm to a person and the destruction of a valuable thing, respectively. We also make the simplifying assumption that the only good effects in our model are those that consist of the negation of a bad effect. That is, we postulate that each bad effect has a corresponding good effect: namely, the prevention of that bad effect. In addition, we postulate a second, derivativetype of bad effect that consists of the prevention of a good effect. Formally, these two postulates can be rendered as follows: Postulate #4: [EFFECT [neg [BAD EFFECT]]] ! [GOOD EFFECT] Postulate #5: [EFFECT [neg [GOOD EFFECT]]] ! [BAD EFFECT] Postulate #4 states that an effect that consists of the negation of a bad effect is a good effect, and may be rewritten as such. Postulate #5 states that an effect that consists of the negation of a good effect is a bad effect, and may be rewritten as such. In Section 6, I provide an alternative formal interpretation of these principles and explain how they can be applied directly to the underlying semantic structures of certain causative constructions in the stimulus, thereby showing how these structures can be transformed into richer representations that encode both good and bad effects. The second operation we must explain is how to generate a moral ranking of an action’s good and bad effects. In our model, we postulate a simple ordinal ranking of bad effects, according to which (i) the death of a person is morally worse than bodily harm to a person, and (ii) bodily harm to a person is morally worse than the destruction of a valuable thing. Formally, these two postulates can be rendered as follows: Postulate #6: [EFFECT [(Person, Death)] <m [EFFECT [(Person, Harm-B)] Postulate #7: [EFFECT [(Person, Harm-B)] <m [EFFECT [(Thing-V, Destroy)] In these formulas, ‘‘<m’’ symbolizes what we call the morally worse-than relation. Postulate #6 states that an effect that consists of the death of a person is morally worse than an effect that consists of bodily harm to a person. Postulate #7 states that an effect that consists of bodily harm to a person is morally worse than an effect that consists of destruction of a valuable thing. In our model, the morally worse-than relation is assumed to be asymmetric, irreflexive, and transitive. If ‘‘A,’’ ‘‘B,’’ and ‘‘C’’ are three effects, then the following can be validly inferred: if A is morally worse than B, then
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B is not morally worse than A (asymmetry); A is not morally worse than A (irreflexivity); if A is morally worse than B, and B is morally worse than C, then A is morally worse than C (transitivity). We also assume that each bad effect is morally worse than its corresponding good effect. Hence, we assume that (i) the death of a person is morally worse than its prevention, (ii) bodily harm to a person is morally worse than its prevention, and (iii) destruction of a valuable thing is morally worse than its prevention. Formally, these three postulates can be rendered as follows: Postulate #8: [EFFECT [(Person, Death)] <m [EFFECT [neg (Person, Death)]] Postulate #9: [EFFECT [(Person, Harm-B)] <m [EFFECT [neg (Person, Harm-B)]] Postulate #10: [EFFECT [(Thing-V, Destroy)] <m [EFFECT [neg (Thing-V, Destroy)]] Finally, we postulate that the life of one person has the same moral worth as that of another. We also assume that these values can be aggregated to arrive at an ordinal (although not necessarily cardinal) ranking of multiple effects, each of which consists of the death of one or more persons. Letting ‘‘x’’ and ‘‘y’’ stand for positive integers, and letting ‘‘>’’ and ‘‘’’ stand for the is-greater-than and is-less-than-or-equal-to relations (which, unlike the morally worse-than relation, are mathematical concepts, not normative ones), these assumptions imply two further postulates: Postulate #11: 8(x, y) [[x > y] [(x Persons, Death)] <m [(y Persons, Death)]] Postulate #12: 8(x, y) [[x y] [(x Persons, Death)] <m [(y Persons, Death)]] Similar formulas could presumably be constructed for the two other bad effects in our model: bodily harm to a person and the destruction of a valuable thing. However, certain complications would have to be addressed in each case. For example, even if one assumes that the physical security of one person has the same moral worth as that of another, it does not follow that bodily harm to five persons is morally worse than bodily harm to one person; to reach this conclusion, both the type and the extent of the harm must be held constant. For different types of harm, at least, a separate ranking is necessary, and problems of incommensurability can arise (Fiske and Tetlock, 1997; Hallborg, 1997; Tetlock, 2003). Likewise, it is conceivable, but not obvious, that valuable things can be monetized or otherwise ranked to permit judgments of their comparative moral worth. Nor is it clear that the destruction of a more expensive object is always morally worse than that of a less expensive
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one. A comprehensive moral grammar would need to confront issues like these, but since this is not necessary for our purposes, we can set them aside. The third operation we must explain is how to compute and compare the probabilities of an action’s good and bad effects. In our model, we draw upon the common law of torts to sketch a provisional account of how this operation is performed. On this account, the reasonableness and hence justifiability of a given risk of unintentional harm can be calculated as a function of five variables: (i) the magnitude of the risk, RM; (ii) the value of the principal object, VP, which may be thought of as the life, safety, or property interests of the individual in question; (iii) the utility of the risk, RU; (iv) the necessity of the risk, RN; and (v) the value of the collateral object, VC, which is the actor’s own purpose in imposing the given risk (Terry, 1915; cf. Restatement (Second) of Torts, Sections 291–293). In particular, justifiability depends on whether RM multiplied by VP is greater than (i.e., morally worse than) the combined product of RU, VC, and RN: Moral Calculus of Risk (RM) (VP) > (RU) (VC) (RN) The Moral Calculus of Risk is similar to the famous Hand Formula for calculating negligence liability, according to which negligence depends on whether the probability that a given accident will occur, P, multiplied by the injury or loss resulting from the accident, L, is greater than the cost or burden of preventing the accident, B; that is, on whether PL > B (see, e.g., Epstein, 2004). Whereas the Hand Formula is comprised of three variables, however, the Moral Calculus of Risk relies upon five. Three of these variables are probabilities, while two of them are evaluative components that measure the comparative moral worth of the principal and collateral objects. We have already explained how the two evaluative variables can be specified and compared by means of a simple ordinal ranking of the various good and bad effects in our model. It will be useful, however, to say a further word about the three probability variables. The magnitude of the risk is the probability that the principal object will be harmed in some manner; in our case, this is simply the probability that an agent will K-generate one of our three bad effects: death of a person, bodily harm to a person, or destruction of a valuable thing. The utility of the risk is the probability that the collateral object — the agent’s purpose — will be achieved; in our model, this usually refers to the probability of K-generating a good effect (e.g., preventing the train from killing the men). The sole exception is the Intentional Homicide problem, where the agent’s purpose is to achieve a bad effect. The necessity of the risk is the probability that the agent’s purpose would not be achieved without risk to the principal object; in our model, this variable typically measures the likelihood that a good effect (e.g., preventing the train from killing the men) could not be achieved without K-generating a bad side effect. The sole exception is the Better
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Alternative problem, where risking the bad side effect is unnecessary due to the availability of a safer alternative: turning the train onto the empty third track. The complement to the necessity of the risk is the gratuitousness of the risk: the probability that the agent’s purpose would be achieved without the risk to the principal object, or, in other words, that the risk to the principal object is useless or unnecessary. A completely gratuitous risk is one in which the necessity of the risk is 0 and the gratuitousness of the risk is 1; conversely, a completely necessary risk is one in which the gratuitousness of the risk is 0 and the necessity of the risk is 1. More generally, the gratuitousness of the risk, RG, can be given by the formula, 1 RN. Likewise, the necessity of the risk can be given by the formula, 1 RG. By substituting (1 RG) for RN in the Moral Calculus of Risk and by performing some simple algebra, a marginal version of the same formula can be stated as follows: Marginal Calculus of Risk (RM)(VP) > (VC)(RU) (VC)(RU)(RG) What the Marginal Calculus of Risk makes transparent, which both the Hand Formula and, to a lesser extent, the Moral Calculus of Risk tend to obscure, is that a narrow calculation of the expected benefit of the agent’s conduct, the value of the collateral object multiplied by the probability of success, is not the correct measure against which to compare the expected cost to the potential victim. Rather, what matters is the expected benefit of the necessary risk, that is, the difference between the expected benefit of the agent’s conduct with the risk and the expected benefit of the agent’s conduct without the risk. What matters, in other words, is how much the unavoidable risk of harm to the potential victim increased the likelihood that the actor’s goal would be achieved. (The actor does not get credit, as it were, for the avoidable risk.) To make this calculation, one must first discount the expected benefit of the agent’s conduct by its gratuitous risk, and then subtract the resulting value from the expected benefit. For ease of reference, in what follows I will refer to the value of the agent’s expected benefit when it is discounted by its gratuitous risk, which can be given by either ‘‘(RU)(VC)(RN)’’ or ‘‘(VC)(RU) (VC)(RU)(RG),’’ as the agent’s discounted expected benefit. I will refer to the agent’s expected benefit without the risk, which is given by ‘‘(VC)(RU),’’ as the agent’s simple expected benefit. With this terminology, we can now clarify an important aspect of the simple model of moral grammar outlined in this chapter and prior publications (e.g., Mikhail, 2007), which is that it generally assumes that the magnitude, utility, and necessity of the risk are to be given a value of 1, rather than some other, more realistic value. That is, our model assumes that when ordinary individuals evaluate the trolley problems, they accept the
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stipulation that certain actions ‘‘will’’ have certain effects without discounting those effects by their intuitive probability. Clearly this assumption is unrealistic. There is good reason to think that people might be discounting the stipulated outcomes by their relative likelihood. For example, they might assign a relatively low utility of the risk to throwing the man in the Footbridge problem, but a relatively high utility of the risk to throwing the switch in the Bystander problem. If this is correct, then the perceived wrongfulness of the former could be the result of two independent yet interacting factors, using battery as a means and doing something whose expected cost exceeds its discounted expected benefit, neither of which is operative in the Bystander problem. Indeed, it seems entirely possible to explain the Footbridge problem data on cost-benefit grounds alone. Holding all other factors constant, one need only postulate that people intuitively recognize that the utility of the risk of throwing the man is less than 0.2, or, put differently, that there is a less than 1 in 5 chance that this action will manage to prevent the train from killing the men. In that case, expected costs would exceed discounted expected benefits, and the conduct would be unjustifiable on that basis alone. By contrast, the intuitive mechanics of the Bystander problem are different: there is no apparent basis for doubting that the utility of the risk of turning the train to the side track is 1 (or nearly so). Nor is there any reason to doubt that the necessity of the risk is also 1 (or nearly so), as long as the stipulation that this situation is unavoidably harmful, with no latent possibility of preventing harm to all parties involved, is deemed to be credible. Hence, the discounted expected benefit in this case is equivalent to simple expected benefit, which itself equals the value of the five lives that are saved. The same logic can be applied to other familiar thought experiments. In the Transplant problem, for instance, in which five patients are dying of organ failure, but a doctor can save all five if she removes the organs from a sixth patient and gives them to the other five (Foot, 1967), the utility of the risk might not be 1, but something much less than 1. Transplant surgery, after all, is a complicated business. Things can go wrong. It is also expensive. So, unlike the Trolley or Bystander problems with which it is usually compared, the discounted expected benefit of this arduous and expensive set of operations might be considerably less than it first appears. It is conceivable, although perhaps unlikely, that individuals perceive the expected costs of these operations to exceed their discounted expected benefits, and make their judgments accordingly. Could all of the familiar trolley problem data be explained in terms of a sophisticated cost-benefit analysis, and are the complex structural descriptions we have proposed therefore unnecessary? Several factors weigh against this possibility. First, simple linguistic experiments, such as the ‘‘by’’ and ‘‘in order to’’ tests, support the hypothesis that people spontaneously compute structural descriptions of these problems that incorporate properties like ends, means, side effects, and prima facie wrongs, such as battery (Mikhail, 2005, 2007).
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Moreover, this hypothesis is corroborated by the finding that even young children distinguish genuine moral violations, such as battery, from violations of social conventions (Smetana, 1983; Turiel, 1983; cf. Nichols, 2002) and that even infants are predisposed to interpret the acts of moral agents in terms of their goals and intentions (Gergely and Csibra, 2003; Hamlin et al., 2007; Johnson, 2000; Meltzoff, 1995; Woodward et al., 2001). It is also reinforced by a variety of recent studies at the interface of moral cognition and theory of mind (e.g., Knobe, 2005; Sinnott-Armstrong et al., 2008; Wellman and Miller, 2008; Young and Saxe, 2008). So there appears to be substantial independent evidence supporting this aspect of the moral grammar hypothesis. Second, although we have identified a potentially important confound in the Footbridge and Bystander problems, one should not assume that it operates in all of the cases in Table 1. For example, while one might be tempted to attribute the data in Figure 5A to different utilities of the risk — it is easier to stop an onrushing train with a heavy object, such as a brick wall (Man-InFront), than with a man (Loop Track), after all, just as one is more likely to do so with a bridge (Collapse Bridge) than with a man (Drop Man) — not all of the variance in these six cases can be explained in this manner. Whatever its value, the utility of the risk of moving a man in the path of a train, for instance, is presumably equivalent in the Footbridge and Drop Man problems. Hence the variance in these cases must be due to some other factor, which repeated applications of the battery prohibition can explain (see Figure 5B). Third, the structural descriptions we have proposed for the Transplant, Footbridge, Loop Track, and Drop Man problems share a single, crucial property: in each case, an agent’s good end cannot be achieved without committing battery as a means to this objective (Mikhail, 2007). It seems both implausible and unparsimonious to deny that this property enters into the relevant computations, particularly since it presumably operates in countless instances of ordinary battery, that is, run-of-the-mill cases which do not involve any possible justification of necessity. Finally, while it seems reasonable to assume that individuals perceive the utility of the risk in the Transplant problem to be considerably less than 1, it also seems plausible to infer that the utility of this risk is perceived to be considerably greater than that of the structurally similar Footbridge problem. Successful transplants, after all, are much more probable than using a man to stop or slow down an onrushing train. Yet roughly the same proportion of individuals (around 90%) judges these actions to be impermissible (Mikhail, 2007). While this does not necessarily imply that these actions are held to be morally equivalent — the Footbridge problem, for example, could be held to involve reckless behavior in a way that the Transplant problem does not — it does suggest that the Moral Calculus of Risk may play a subordinate operative role in these problems, whereas a more dominant role is played by the prohibition of purposeful battery.
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The precise role of the Moral Calculus of Risk in intuitive moral judgments and its relation to other moral principles is obviously an important topic, which requires careful and thorough investigation that goes beyond the scope of this chapter. We will return to it briefly in Sections 4.5, 4.6, and 5. Here I will simply make the following clarifications, as a way of summarizing the foregoing remarks and anticipating that discussion. In our model, we generally make the simplifying assumption that the magnitude, utility, and necessity of the risk in the 12 cases in Table 1 are to be given a value of 1, rather than another more realistic value. The lone exception is the Better Alternative problem, for which the perceived necessity of the risk of throwing the switch is assumed to be 0, and thus the discounted expected benefit is also held to be 0. In the other eleven cases, we assume that the necessity of the risk is 1; hence, in these cases, the discounted expected benefit is assumed to be equivalent to the simple expected benefit.
4.5. The Rescue Principle The Rescue Principle is a familiar precept of common morality — but not the common law — which has been defended by many writers, including Bentham (1948/1789), Scanlon (1998), Singer (1972), Unger (1996), and Weinrib (1980). Briefly, it holds that failing to prevent a preventable death or other grave misfortune is prohibited, where this can be achieved without risking one’s own life or safety, or without violating other more fundamental precepts. It may be presumed to contain a ceteris paribus clause, the precise details of which need not detain us here. The central element of the Rescue Principle in its core application is simple and intuitive: ‘‘Failing to rescue a person in grave danger is forbidden.’’ In this section, we briefly describe how this principle can be explicated merely by concatenating elements we have already defined. First, we need a formula to represent an omission or ‘‘negative act’’ (Bentham, 1948/1789, p. 72). To do this, we place the negation symbol in front of a complex act-token representation, thus taking the normal form of a complex omission-token representation to be given in (5): (5) [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C As before, we assume that any expression obtainable by substituting permissibly for the individual variables in the normal form of a complex omission-token representation is also a complex omission-token representation. For example, ‘‘[Hank’s throwing the switch at t(a)]C’’ symbolizes an omission, which can be paraphrased as ‘‘Hank’s neglecting to throw the switch at time t in circumstances C,’’ ‘‘Hank’s not throwing the switch at time t in circumstances C,’’ ‘‘It is not the case that Hank throws the switch at time t in circumstances C,’’ and so forth.
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Second, to interpret this formula, we adopt the standard convention of using brackets to restrict the scope of the negation symbol. Thus, ‘‘[[Hank’s throwing the switch at t(a)]C has features F1. . .Fn]’’ is a statement that refers to an omission and affirms that it has certain features. By contrast, ‘‘[[Hank’s throwing the switch at t(a)]C has features F1. . .Fn]’’ does not refer to an omission; rather, it is the negation of a statement that affirms that a complex-act-token representation has certain features. It can be paraphrased as ‘‘It is not the case that Hank’s throwing the switch at time t in circumstances C has features F1. . .Fn’’ or ‘‘Hank’s throwing the switch at time t in circumstances C does not have features F1. . .Fn.’’ By relying on this formula, together with the other concepts we have already explicated, we can now individuate 12 different purposely harmful acts and omissions and 12 different knowingly harmful acts and omissions, each of which can be formally described using the resources of our model. These twenty-four expressions are listed in Table 4, where they are divided into four groups: (i) purposely harmful acts, (ii) purposely harmful omissions, (iii) knowingly harmful acts, and (iv) knowingly harmful omissions. With the aid of these expressions, one can consider various formulations of the Rescue Principle and ascertain which, if any, are descriptively adequate. We will not pursue this inquiry here, beyond making the following general observations. First, while a simple rescue principle that forbids any knowingly harmful omission is capable of explaining the intuition that Paul has a duty to throw the switch in the Costless Rescue problem, it clearly conflicts with all those cases in Table 1 in which harmful omissions are held to be permissible. Likewise, a simple rescue principle that forbids any act of (i) letting die, (ii) failing to prevent bodily harm to a person, or (iii) failing to prevent the destruction of a valuable object can also be shown to be inadequate. The first conflicts with the Footbridge problem (among others), while the second and third can easily be falsified by designing two new problems in which killing five persons is set against preventing bodily harm to one person and destroying a valuable object, respectively. Among other things, this implies that an adequate rescue principle must be a comparative rather than a noncomparative principle, which compares an act or omission with its alternatives (Lyons, 1965; Mikhail, 2002). It further suggests, although it does not entail, that an adequate rescue principle must occupy a subordinate position in a ‘‘lexically ordered’’ scheme of principles, in which at least some negative duties to avoid harm are ranked higher than at least some positive duties to prevent harm (Rawls, 1971, pp. 40–45; cf. Foot, 1967; Russell, 1977).8 In particular, on the basis of the Footbridge, Intentional Homicide, Loop Track, and Drop Man problems, one may infer 8
A lexical order is not entailed because there are other ways to solve the priority problem (Rawls, 1971).
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Table 4 Purposely and Knowingly Harmful Acts and Omissions.
Purposely Harmful Acts [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C I-generates [S’s committing homicide at t(b)] [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C I-generates [S’s committing battery at t(b)] [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C I-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [BAD EFFECT]] [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C I-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [EFFECT (Person, Death)]] [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C I-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [EFFECT (Person, Harm-B)]] [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C I-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [EFFECT (Thing-V, Destroy)]] Purposely Harmful Omissions [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C I-generates [S’s committing homicide at t(b)] [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C I-generates [S’s committing battery at t(b)] [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C I-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [BAD EFFECT]] [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C I-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [EFFECT (Person, Death)]] [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C I-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [EFFECT (Person, Harm-B)]] [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C I-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [EFFECT (Thing-V, Destroy)]] Knowingly Harmful Acts [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s committing homicide at t(b)] [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s committing battery at t(b)] [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [BAD EFFECT]] [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [EFFECT (Person, Death)]] [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [EFFECT (Person, Harm-B)]] [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [EFFECT (Thing-V, Destroy)]] Knowingly Harmful Omissions [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s committing homicide at t(b)] [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s committing battery at t(b)] [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [BAD EFFECT]] [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [EFFECT (Person, Death)]] [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [EFFECT (Person, Harm-B)]] [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [EFFECT (Thing-V, Destroy)]]
that purposeful homicide and, at a minimum, purposeful battery that results in knowing homicide, are each lexically prior to the Rescue Principle — at least in circumstances other than a potential catastrophe or ‘‘supreme emergency’’ (Rawls, 1999; Walzer, 1977; cf. Nichols and Mallon, 2006). Determining the precise nature of a descriptively adequate rescue principle is beyond the scope of this chapter. Instead, we merely state the following relatively simple yet demanding version of the principle as it relates the death of a person, which appears to be consistent with the data in Table 2, along with some further natural extensions:
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The Rescue Principle (provisional version, applied to least harmful alternative) [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [EFFECT [neg [neg [(Person, Death)]]]]] ([[S’s V-ing at t(a)]C is forbidden] (a) [[S’s V-ing at t(a)]C I-generates [S’s committing homicide at t(b)]]; (b) [[S’s V-ing at t(a)]C I-generates [S’s committing battery at t(b)]]; (c) [[S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [BAD EFFECT]] <m [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [EFFECT [neg [BAD EFFECT]]]]]) Several aspects of this provisional formula merit attention. First, the principle is formulated as a comparative rather than a noncomparative principle; specifically, it compares one type of knowingly harmful omission with its least harmful alternative, the precisely relevant act-token being omitted under the circumstances, and it forbids the former just in case the latter does not possess certain features. Second, the principle holds that an omission that K-generates the double negation of the death of a person is forbidden just in case its least harmful alternative neither: (a) I-generates homicide, (b) I-generates battery, nor (c) K-generates bad effects that are morally worse than the negation (i.e., prevention) of the bad effects that it K-generates. This sounds exceedingly complex, but in plain English it simply means that the only justifications for knowingly letting a person die in our simple model are that doing so constitutes purposeful homicide, purposeful battery, or knowing homicide whose (discounted) expected benefits do not exceed its expected costs. More simply, preventing death is obligatory in our model unless doing so requires purposeful homicide, purposeful battery, or unjustified costs. The principle thus explains the Costless Rescue problem, yet it is also consistent with the other eleven problems in Table 1. Third, the principle is limited to the knowingly harmful omission of letting die. While one could expand the principle to include purposely harmful omissions, such as the deliberate letting die that Rachels (1975) depicts in the second of his famous Bathtub examples, in which a man purposely refrains from saving his drowning cousin in order to receive a large inheritance, this is unnecessary for our purposes: in light of our theory of how intentional structure is computed (Section 6.4), we may safely assume that none of the omissions in Table 1 are represented as purposely harmful (with the possible exception of the Intentional Homicide problem, where the actor’s bad intent conflicts with a default rule of good intentions that we assume operates in this context; see Section 6.4). Fourth, the principle implies that pursuing the greater good in the Bystander, Implied Consent, Man-In-Front, and Drop Man problems is not only permissible, but obligatory, a strong assumption that is consistent with, but goes beyond, the data in Table 2. A weaker explanation might seek to
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accommodate a principle of pacifism, according to which knowing homicide is never obligatory, at least in the type of circumstances at issue here (cf. Thomson, 1985, p. 280). Fifth, the principle incorporates the assumptions we made in Section 4.4 about the magnitude, utility, and necessity of the risk. Condition (c) merely specifies the Moral Calculus of the Risk under those assumptions, as does restricting the scope of the principle to the least harmful alternative. We return to the significance of this restriction in Section 4.6. Sixth, the fact that condition (b) is given as purposeful battery, rather than purposeful battery that results in knowing homicide, reflects the stronger of two possible explanations from a deontological perspective of what constitutes an independent and adequate ground for precluding a duty to rescue that is consistent with the data in Table 2. A weaker assumption would appeal to purposeful battery that results in knowing homicide as the operative analysis of the Footbridge, Loop Track, and Drop Man problems. Finally, the presence of conditions (a) and (b) in the principle reflects the presumed lexical priority in common morality of at least some negative duties to avoid harm over some positive duties to prevent harm, and the possibility of justifying breaches of the latter, but not the former, by the Moral Calculus of Risk. Put differently, the Rescue Principle as it is formulated here is both consistent with and closely related to the Principle of Double Effect (PDE), a topic to which we now turn.
4.6. The Principle of Double Effect The PDE is a complex principle of justification, which is narrower in scope than the traditional necessity defense because it places limits on what might otherwise be justified on grounds of necessity. Historically, the principle traces to Aquinas’ attempt to reconcile the prohibition of intentional killing with the right to kill in self-defense. Denying any contradiction, Aquinas (1988/1274, p. 70) observed: ‘‘One act may have two effects only one of which is intended and the other outside of our intention.’’ On Aquinas’ view, the right to kill in self-defense is thus apparently limited to cases in which death is a side effect of defending oneself against attack. It does not apply when the attacker’s death is directly intended. Our question here is not whether the PDE is a sound principle of normative ethics, but whether it is descriptively adequate, or at least captures the implicit logic of common moral intuitions to a useful first approximation (Harman, 1977; Nagel, 1986). In other words, our practical concern is whether the PDE can be strategically utilized to identify elements of moral grammar and other building blocks of intuitive jurisprudence. Likewise, because our main objective is to construct a computational theory of moral cognition along the lines of Marr’s (1982) first level, we are not
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concerned here with how the PDE or whatever mental operations it implies are actually implemented in our psychology, nor with whether those operations are modular in Fodor’s (1983) sense, or otherwise informationally encapuslated (for some interesting discussion of these topics, see, e.g., Dupoux and Jacob, 2007; Greene, 2008b; Hauser et al., 2008a,b; Mallon, 2008; Nichols, 2005; Patterson, 2008; Prinz, 2008a,b; Sripada, 2008a,b; Stich, 2006). We merely assume that they are implemented in some manner or other, and that our analysis will help guide the search for underlying mechanisms, much as the theory of linguistic and visual perception has improved our grasp of the cognitive architecture and underlying mechanisms in these domains. Many different versions of the PDE exist in the literature (see, e.g., Woodward, 2001; cf. Mikhail, 2000, pp. 160–161). According to the version we will develop here, the principle holds that an otherwise prohibited action, such as battery or homicide, which has both good and bad effects may be permissible if the prohibited act itself is not directly intended, the good but not the bad effects are directly intended, the good effects outweigh the bad effects, and no morally preferable alternative is available. In this section, we briefly describe how this principle can be rendered in a format suitable for premises of a derivation. Moreover, as we did with the Rescue Principle, we explain how this can be accomplished merely by concatenating elements we have already defined. In this manner, we show how what appears on the surface to be a rather complex moral principle can be broken down into its relatively simple psychological constituents. At least six key terms in the PDE must be explained: (i) otherwise prohibited action, (ii) directly intended, (iii) good effects, (iv) bad effects, (v) outweigh, and (vi) morally preferable alternative. In our model, we interpret these concepts as follows. First, we use the notions of I-generation, homicide, and battery to explicate the meanings of ‘‘otherwise prohibited action’’ and ‘‘directly intended.’’ While there are four prima facie wrongs in our simple model — purposeful homicide, purposeful battery, knowing homicide, and knowing battery — only the first two are directly intended under the meaning we assign them here, which equates ‘‘directly intended’’ with ‘‘I-generated.’’ As a result, these two actions cannot be justified by PDE, as we interpret it here. By contrast, knowing homicide and knowing battery can in principle be justified by the PDE. Unless they are justified in this manner, however, knowing homicide and knowing battery are forbidden.9 There is no circularity, therefore, in referring to them as ‘‘otherwise prohibited actions’’ that can be justified under certain limited circumstances.
9
Because our model is concerned only with explicating the data in Table 2, we need not consider other possible justifications or excuses, such as self-defense, duress, mental illness, etc.
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Formally, these four prima facie prohibitions can be stated as follows: Prohibition of Purposeful Homicide [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C I-generates [S’s committing homicide at t(b)] [[S’s V-ing at t(a)]C is prohibited] Prohibition of Purposeful Battery [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C I-generates [S’s committing battery at t(b)] [[S’s V-ing at t(a)]C is prohibited] Prohibition of Knowing Homicide [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s committing homicide at t(b)] [[S’s V-ing at t(a)]C is prohibited] Prohibition of Knowing Battery [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s committing battery at t(b)] [[S’s V-ing at t(a)]C is prohibited] In these formulas, we use the predicate prohibited, rather than the predicate forbidden, to differentiate the function of these prima facie prohibitions in our model from those all-things-considered deontic rules that assign a status of forbidden to complex act-tokens, if they have certain features. Second, the PDE requires that the good effects but not the bad effects must be directly intended. Because we equate the meaning of ‘‘directly intended’’ with ‘‘I-generated,’’ and because we have already specified the only good and bad effects in our model, it is simple enough to combine these representations in a manner that explicates the meaning of this condition. Formally, these two requirements can be rendered as follows: Good Effects Directly Intended [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C I-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [GOOD EFFECT]] Bad Effects Not Directly Intended [[S’s V-ing at t(a)]C I-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [BAD EFFECT]]] Third, the PDE requires that the good effects outweigh the bad effects. Because we have already stipulated that the only good effects in our model consist of the negation of a bad effect, and because we have already relied on the morally worse-than relation to provide an ordinal ranking of bad effects, this condition can also be straightforwardly explained, at least insofar as we limit our attention to the 12 cases in Table 1. The key observation is that the good effects of an action can be said to outweigh its bad effects just in case the bad effects that the action prevents are morally worse than the bad effects that the action causes. Here, it should be recalled that the only good effects in our simple model consist in the negation (or prevention) of certain specified bad effects (Section 4.4). Consequently, this condition can be formalized as follows:
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Good Effects Outweigh Bad Effects (Full Version) [[S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [BAD EFFECT]] <m [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [EFFECT [neg [BAD EFFECT]]]]] Good Effects Outweigh Bad Effects (Abbreviated Version) [BAD EFFECTP] <m [BAD EFFECTC] The first formula, which we already encountered in the Rescue Principle, holds that the bad effects K-generated by a complex act-token representation are morally worse than the negation of those bad effects that are also K-generated by that act-token representation. The second formula abbreviates and incorporates a new notation for stating the same proposition, using ‘‘BAD EFFECTP’’ to refer to the bad effects an actor knowingly prevents and ‘‘BAD EFFECTC’’ to refer to the bad effects that she knowingly causes. Because the second formula shifts our focus from the (good) effect that consists of the negation of a bad effect to the bad effect that an actor knowingly prevents, the two sides of the relation are exchanged (cf. Sections 4.4 and 4.5). Finally, the PDE demands that no morally preferable alternative be available. This is an important condition of the PDE that is often overlooked or ignored, causing the principle to seem unduly lax because it appears to justify knowingly harmful acts as long as their good effects outweigh their bad effects, without further qualification. Among other things, to understand this condition we need to know the meaning of ‘‘morally preferable’’ and ‘‘alternative.’’ In our model, we explicate this condition as follows. First, we take the alternative to a given action to refer in the first place to omission rather than inaction; that is, to the failure to perform a specific act-token, rather than the failure to do anything at all (cf. Section 4.5). Second, we interpret the no-morally preferable-alternative condition to require comparing a given action to its least harmful omission. In all but one of our examples, there is only one possible alternative to the given action, hence the least harmful omission is identical with failing to perform that action. In the Better Alternative problem, by contrast, there are two possible alternatives, only one of which is the least harmful. Third, to decide which of several possible omissions is least harmful, we fall back on two comparative measures we have already explicated: (i) the morally worse-than relation, and (ii) the Moral Calculus of Risk. Finally, to decide whether the least harmful omission is morally preferable to the given action, we rely not only on (i) and (ii), but also (iii) the presumed lexical priority of the prohibition of purposeful homicide to the prohibition of knowing homicide, and the presumed lexical priority of the prohibition of purposeful battery (or, alternatively, the prohibition of purposeful battery that results in knowing homicide) to the Rescue Principle (cf. Section 4.5). By drawing on (i)–(iii), the computations for deciding whether a morally preferable alternative exists can be made without introducing any new evaluative concepts into our model, which thus can be kept as parsimonious as possible.
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Formally, the comparison-to-the-least-harmful-omission component of the no-morally-preferable-alternative condition can be rendered for our purposes as follows: No Less Harmful Alternative (Full Version) [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [BAD EFFECT LHA]] <m [S’s V-ing at t(a)]C K-generates [S’s U-ing at t(b) [BAD EFFECT]] No Less Harmful Alternative (Abbreviated Version) [BAD EFFECT LHA] <m [BAD EFFECTC] The first formula holds that the bad effect K-generated by the least harmful alternative to a complex act-token representation is morally worse than the bad effect K-generated by that act-token representation. In this formula, ‘‘BAD EFFECTLHA’’ refers to the bad effect of the least harmful alternative (which must be calculated separately, of course, a task whose complexity grows with the increase of available alternatives and may become computationally intractable or inefficient beyond a certain point, one plausible source of so-called ‘‘omission bias’’; cf. Baron and Ritov, this volume). The second formula abbreviates the same proposition, again using ‘‘BAD EFFECTC’’ to refer to the bad effects that are caused. The PDE has been the subject of intense scrutiny in the literature in recent years. Nonetheless, this discussion has often obscured both its virtues and limitations, and the foregoing analysis indicates one reason why. Many writers have assumed that the ‘‘natural application’’ (Quinn, 1993, p. 179) of the PDE is to state conditions under which actions are prohibited. This way of putting the matter seems potentially misleading. The PDE is not a direct test of whether an action is right or wrong; rather, its status is that of a second-order priority rule (Rawls, 1971) or ordering principle (Donagan, 1977) whose proper application is to state the only conditions under which otherwise prohibited actions are (or may be) permissible. Put differently, the principle’s natural application is to serve as a principle of justification, which states necessary and sufficient conditions for a presumptively wrong action to be justified. As such, it constitutes a precise explication of yet another commonsense principle: ‘‘A knowingly harmful action which would otherwise be wrong may be justifiable, if but only if no better option exists.’’
5. A Periodic Table of Moral Elements All of the foregoing definitions could presumably be improved, but they are satisfactory to our purposes. By utilizing these concepts, we can now construct a ‘‘periodic’’ table of moral elements, which identifies the key recurring properties of the structural descriptions elicited by the 12 cases in Table 1, and which can be used to explain their deontic status (Table 5).
Table 5 A Periodic Table of Moral Elements (Version 1).
Structural features I-generates (end or means)
Problem
K-generates (side effect)
Remaining conditions of PDE
E/M ¼ Good Bad Bad Homicide Battery Effect Homicide Battery Effect Effect
Bystander Act (throw switch) Omission (throw switch) Footbridge Act (throw man) Omission (throw man) Expensive Equipment Act (throw switch) Omission (throw switch) Implied Consent Act (throw man) Omission (throw man)
X
BAD EFFECTSP <m Bad EffectsC
Bad EffectsLHA <m Bad EffectsC
Deontic status
X X
X X
X X
X X
X
X
Permissible ?
X X
X X
X X
X X
X
X
Forbidden Obligatory
X
X
X X
X X
X
X
X X
X X
X
X
X
X
Forbidden Obligatory
Permissible ?
Intentional Homicide Act (throw switch) X Omission (throw switch) Loop Track Act (throw switch) Omission (throw switch) Man-In-Front Act (throw switch) Omission (throw switch) Costless Rescue Act (throw switch) Omission (throw switch) Better Alternative Act (throw switch) Omission: Alternative #1 (throw switch, pull cord) Omission: Alternative #2 (throw switch, do nothing) Disproportional Death Act (throw switch) Omission (throw switch)
X
X
X
X X
X X
X X
X X
X X
X X
X X
X X
X X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Forbidden Obligatory
X X
X
X
Forbidden Obligatory
X X
X
X
Permissible ?
X
X
X
Obligatory Forbidden
X X
X X
X
X
X
X
X
X X
X X
X X
X X
Forbidden Obligatory Forbidden
X
X
Forbidden Obligatory
(Continued)
Table 5 (Continued)
Structural features I-generates (end or means)
Problem
Drop Man Act (throw switch) Omission (throw switch) Collapse Bridge Act (throw switch) Omission (throw switch)
K-generates (side effect)
Remaining conditions of PDE
E/M ¼ Good Bad Bad Homicide Battery Effect Homicide Battery Effect Effect
X
BAD EFFECTSP <m Bad EffectsC
Bad EffectsLHA <m Bad EffectsC
Deontic status
X X
X X
X X
X X
X
X
Forbidden Obligatory
X X
X X
X X
X X
X
X
Permissible ?
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Like any graphic device for displaying certain properties or relations, the layout of Table 5 is meant to provide a systematic arrangement of its essential information. Beginning at the top and working down, the table is divided into three main columns: Problem, Structural Features, and Deontic Status, respectively. Broadly speaking, this layout matches that of Tables 2 and 3, as well as the other schemas and models we have previously used to develop the moral grammar hypothesis. The table’s main value from this vantage point is the ability to predict the deontic status of a given act or omission based entirely upon its structural features and those of its available alternatives. All of these features are included in the Structural Features column. From another perspective, the table can simply be viewed as an alternative method for exhibiting part of the structural description of a given action, for which act trees are also a useful method.10 The Structural Features column is itself divided into three groups. The first group includes three of the six purposely harmful features that can be I-generated in our model: homicide, battery, or a bad effect. The last of these, it will be recalled, is a broad category that can include either death of a person, bodily harm to a person, or destruction of a valuable thing (Section 4.4). For convenience, I have listed only the Bad Effect category itself in Table 5, even though this results in some redundancy. A different table might list all six features, or perhaps only the three bad effects themselves (cf. Table 6). Because the notion of I-generation is meant to incorporate and replace what are commonly referred to as ends or means, these notions are included parenthetically in the heading of this first group of properties. The second group of properties includes three of the six knowingly harmful features that can be K-generated in our model: homicide, battery, or a bad effect. Because K-generation is meant to incorporate and serve as a replacement for side effects, this notion is included parenthetically in the heading of this group of properties. Finally, the third group includes the three remaining conditions of the PDE not already encompassed by the first group: (i) good effects are directly intended, (ii) good effects outweigh bad effects, and (iii) no less harmful alternative. Table 5 uses ‘‘E/M ¼ Good Effect’’ to label the first condition (where ‘‘E/M’’ is itself an abbreviation of ‘‘End or Means’’), ‘‘BAD EFFECTSP <m BAD EFFECTSC’’ to label the second condition, and ‘‘BAD EFFECTSLHA <m BAD EFFECTSC’’ to label the third condition. Each problem in Table 5 has two or more rows, one each for an act and its alternatives. Since eleven of our cases afford only one alternative, the set of alternatives is generally listed as omission. The sole exception is the Better Alternative problem, whose alternatives are given as ‘‘Omission: Alternative
10
Note, however, that Table 5 conveys both more and less information than the act trees in Figure 5A. The computations required by the PDE are exhibited, for example, but temporal information is not.
A Periodic Table of Moral Elements (Version 2).
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Table 6
Structural features
Problem
Homicide
Battery
Other bad effect
Justification
X X
X X
X X
X
X
Permissible ?
X X
X X
X
X
Forbidden Obligatory
X
X
X
X
Permissible ?
X
X
Forbidden Obligatory
Deontic Purpose Knowledge Purpose Knowledge Purpose Knowledge Good Useful Necessary status
X X
X
X
X X
X
X X
X
X
X X
X X
X X
Forbidden Obligatory
John Mikhail
Bystander Act (throw switch) Omission (throw switch) Footbridge Act (throw man) Omission (throw man) Expensive Equipment Act (throw switch) Omission (throw switch) Implied Consent Act (throw man) Omission (throw man) Intentional Homicide Act (throw switch) X Omission (throw switch)
X X
X X
X X
X
X
Forbidden Obligatory
X X
X X
X X
X
X
Permissible ?
X
X
X
X
X
Obligatory Forbidden
X
X
X X
X X
X
X
X
X
X
Moral Grammar and Intuitive Jurisprudence
Loop Track Act (throw switch) Omission (throw switch) Man-In-Front Act (throw switch) Omission (throw switch) Costless Rescue Act (throw switch) Omission (throw switch) Better Alternative Act (throw switch) Omission: Alternative #1 (throw switch, pull cord) Omission: Alternative #2 (throw switch, do nothing)
Forbidden Obligatory
Forbidden
(Continued) 77
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Table 6
(Continued) Structural features
Problem
Homicide
Battery
Other bad effect
Justification
X X
X X
X X
X X
Deontic Purpose Knowledge Purpose Knowledge Purpose Knowledge Good Useful Necessary status
Disproportional Death Act (throw switch) Omission (throw switch) Drop Man Act (throw switch) Omission (throw switch) Collapse Bridge Act (throw switch) Omission (throw switch)
X X
X X
X
X X
X
Forbidden Obligatory
X
X
X X
X
X
Forbidden Obligatory
X X
X
X
Permissible ?
John Mikhail
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#1’’ and ‘‘Omission: Alternative #2,’’ and listed in descending order from least to most harmful, in order to facilitate the required comparison with an act’s least harmful alternative. While the prevalence of single-alternative acts in Table 5 might suggest otherwise, it is important to emphasize that trolley problems are exceptional in this regard. In most real-life situations, there are many alternatives to a given action (i.e., many possible omissions), and in these situations identifying the least harmful alternative will take on much greater importance than it does here, a point of considerable significance for civil litigation (see, e.g., Grady, 1989). The last column lists the deontic status of each act and omission. The judgments gleaned directly from experiments are given in normal typeface, while those that were not, but which can be logically derived from them, are italicized. Because the principles of deontic logic imply that both the doing and the forbearing of a given action can be permissible without contradiction, but the same is not true of the other two deontic operators (see, e.g., Mikhail, 2008b), one cannot simply infer the deontic status of omissions in the Bystander, Implied Consent, Man-In-Front, and Collapse Bridge problems. They are thus marked as open questions, which could of course be investigated empirically. Turning to the table’s individual cells, the presence or absence of an ‘‘X’’ in each cell indicates the presence or absence of a given feature. As indicated, the only case in which the first (I-generates homicide), third (I-generates bad effect), or seventh (E/M ¼ Good Effect) features are atypical is the Intentional Homicide problem. No other problem involves death or another bad effect as a means or an end. By contrast, the second feature (I-generates battery) is implicated in four cases, all of which are forbidden: namely, the Footbridge, Intentional Homicide, Loop Track, and Drop Man problems. Next, eleven structural descriptions include one or more knowingly harmful acts (K-generates homicide, battery, or bad effect). The only exception is the Costless Rescue problem. Likewise, eleven structural descriptions include one or more knowingly harmful omissions. The only exception is the Better Alternative problem.11 Finally, the three residual conditions of the PDE are satisfied in eight cases. In four of these cases — the Bystander, Implied Consent, Man-In-Front, and Collapse Bridge problems — these conditions can be invoked to explain why otherwise prohibited actions are held to be justified. Table 5 is not the only way to exhibit structural features in a tabular format. Another instructive example is Table 6. On this layout, which closely resembles but in some ways improves upon the basic conceptual scheme of both the first and second Restatements of Torts and the Model
11
Here one should recall that each I-generated homicide, battery, or bad effect is also K-generated (Section 3.2). Hence these cells are checked in both the first and second groups in the Intentional Homicide problem.
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Penal Code, structural features are divided into four groups: Homicide, Battery, Bad Effect, and Justification. The first three groups are each divided into two subgroups: Purpose and Knowledge. These labels replace their technical counterparts in Table 5, as do the three subgroups of the Justification category: Good, Useful, and Necessary. Table 6 has several advantages over Table 5. As indicated, one advantage is that how structural features are now labeled largely comports with a common type of legal analysis. Moreover, the exceptions tend to be virtues rather than vices. For example, Table 6 implies that one can commit battery by omission. This stipulation is potentially at odds with the first and second Restatements of Torts, which includes a voluntary act requirement for battery (cf. Section 4.2). Still, this layout enables us to exhibit certain priority rules that might otherwise go unnoticed, as I explain below. Likewise, Table 6 avoids relying on the intuitive but often misleading terms, ‘‘killing’’ and ‘‘letting die,’’ while nonetheless identifying two ways each of these acts can occur in our model, resulting in four different possibilities in all: purposely killing, knowingly killing, purposely letting die, and knowingly letting die. The table thus reinforces Thomson’s (1985, pp. 283–284) apt observation ‘‘that ‘kill’ and ‘let die’ are too blunt to be useful tools’’ for solving the trolley problems, and that one therefore ought to look within these acts ‘‘for the ways in which the agents would be carrying them out.’’ A further advantage of Table 6 is that its justifications closely track the Moral Calculus of Risk (Section 4.4). As such, they largely reflect the common sense analysis of unintentional harm that underlies the common law of negligence. Ordinarily, when a reasonable person seeks to justify a knowingly or foreseeably harmful or risky act, she asks the following questions: Is it good? (That is, is the act directed toward a good or worthwhile end?) Is it useful? (That is, does the act promote utility, insofar as the harm avoided outweighs the harm done?) Is it necessary? (That is, is there a less harmful alternative?) These questions not only capture the core residual features of the PDE; they also are basically utilitarian, much like the traditional necessity defense. This is to be expected, since the residual features of the PDE and the necessity defense are largely identical within the confines of our model. It is important to recognize, however, that neither the PDE nor the traditional necessity defense is utilitarian in the conventional sense; rather, each is a species of ‘‘negative utilitarianism’’ (Popper, 1945; Smart, 1958), which justifies the lesser of two evils, but not knowingly harming another individual simply because doing so maximizes aggregate welfare. Perhaps the biggest advantage of Table 6 is that it aligns structural features in a regular order that reflects the apparent lexical priority of some prohibitions over others in common morality. In particular, prohibited acts prioritized over prohibited omissions, and purposeful harms are prioritized over knowing harms. In addition, homicides as a group are prioritized over batteries as a group, which in turn are prioritized over bad effects as a group. Further, unlike Table 5, the Bad Effect category in
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Table 6 is limited to the destruction of a valuable thing in order to avoid unnecessary overlap with those bad effects that are already implicit in the homicide (death of a person) and battery (bodily harm to a person) categories, respectively. The result is that each individual cell in Table 6 represents a prohibition that is presumably lexically prior (subsequent) to the cells to the right (left) of it. Likewise, with respect to act and omission, each cell represents a prohibition that is lexically prior (subsequent) to the one immediately below (above) it. Finally, this layout naturally suggests a series of novel experiments that can be used to test, refine, and, if necessary, revise these assumptions, while rounding out our analysis of the behavior of structural features by considering them in all logically possible permutations. In particular, a new set of probes can be designed that systematically manipulate as far as possible each of the eighteen variables (9 columns 2 rows) into which the Structural Features column is divided (see, e.g., Table 7). Together with sophisticated techniques for measuring neurological activity, reaction-time, implicit bias, and other familiar psychological phenomena, these probes can be used to improve our understanding of moral competence beyond that which has been previously contemplated.12 I will not pursue these lines of inquiry further here; instead, I simply identify them as objects of future research that grow directly out of the foregoing analysis.
6. Conversion Rules As we have seen, for the PDE or another extensionally equivalent principle to be operative in moral cognition, the brain must have the resources to compute representations of an agent’s ends, means, side effects, and available alternatives. It also must incorporate a calculus of some sort capable of identifying, ranking, and computing the probabilities of an act’s good and bad effects. In Rawls’ Linguistic Analogy, I sought to provide a basis for generating these representations by formalizing five commonsense moral postulates: (i) the death of a person is bad, (ii) preventing a bad effect is good, (iii) failing to prevent a bad effect is bad, (iv) good is to be done and pursued, and evil avoided, and (v) from a moral point of view, the life of one person is worth the same as that of another (Mikhail, 2000, pp. 163–169). However, I did not provide complete account of the relevant conversion rules. Such an 12
For example, some readers might wonder why all of our stimulus materials have thus far used only Anglophone male names. One objective of doing so is precisely to study the potential prejudicial effect of other names—and their associated sexual, racial, religious, or other identities—on intuitive moral judgment. Regrettably, it is not unreasonable to assume that ‘‘Helen,’’ Isabel,’’ ‘‘Karen,’’ or ‘‘Lydia’’ will yield different data than ‘‘Hank,’’ ‘‘Ian,’’ ‘‘Karl,’’ or ‘‘Luke’’ (or that both might yield different data than, e.g., ‘‘Fawzy,’’ ‘‘Hussein,’’ ‘‘Mourid,’’ or ‘‘Naguib’’). To understand this phenomena and thus integrate the theory of moral grammar with research on implicit bias (see, e.g., Banaji et al., 2007; Kang, 2005), one must first establish a descriptive baseline from which comparisons can be made.
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Table 7 Manipulating Structural Features: Fourteen New Trolley Problems.a
1a. Bystander: Purposely Homicidal Omission (not throwing the switch, for purpose of letting die). Adam is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Adam sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five men walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the five men. It is moving so fast that they will not be able to get off the track in time. Adam is standing next to a switch, which he can throw, that will turn the train onto a side track, thereby preventing it from killing the men. There is a man standing on the side track with his back turned. Adam can throw the switch, killing him; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the five die. Adam then recognizes that the men walking across the tracks are individuals whom he hates with a passion and wants to see dead. ‘‘I don’t give a damn [am indifferent/care deeply] about that guy on the side track,’’ Adam thinks to himself, ‘‘but this is my chance to sit by and watch those bastards get killed.’’ Is it morally permissible [obligatory] for Adam to throw the switch? 1b. Bystander: Purposely Homicidal Act and Omission (throwing the switch for the purpose of killing; not throwing the switch, for the purpose of letting die). Bob is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Bob sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five men walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the five men. It is moving so fast that they will not be able to get off the track in time. Bob is standing next to a switch, which he can throw, that will turn the train onto a side track, thereby preventing it from killing the men. There is a man standing on the side track with his back turned. Bob can throw the switch, killing him; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the five die. Bob then recognizes that the men walking across the tracks and the man on the side track are individuals whom he hates with a passion and wants to see dead. ‘‘Wow, this is my lucky day,’’ Bob thinks to himself, ‘‘this is my chance either to kill that jerk on the side track or to sit by and watch those bastards get killed.’’ Is it morally permissible [obligatory] for Bob to throw the switch? 2a. Footbridge: Purposely Homicidal Act (throwing the man for the purpose of killing). Charles is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Charles sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five men walking across the tracks and slammed on the
Moral Grammar and Intuitive Jurisprudence
brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the five men. It is moving so fast that they will not be able to get off the track in time. Charles is standing next to a heavy object, which he can throw onto the track in the path of the train, thereby preventing it from killing the men. The heavy object is a man, standing next to Charles with his back turned. Charles can throw the man, killing him; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the five die. Charles then recognizes that the man standing next to him is someone whom he hates with a passion and wants to see dead. ‘‘I don’t give a damn [am indifferent/care deeply] about saving those five men,’’ Charles thinks to himself, ‘‘but this is my chance to kill that bastard.’’ Is it morally permissible for Charles to throw the man? 2b. Footbridge: Purposely Homicidal Omission (not throwing the man, for the purpose of letting die). Donald is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Donald sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five men walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the five men. It is moving so fast that they will not be able to get off the track in time. Donald is standing next to a heavy object, which he can throw onto the track in the path of the train, thereby preventing it from killing the men. The heavy object is a man, standing next to Donald with his back turned. Donald can throw the man, killing him; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the five die. Donald then recognizes that the men walking across the tracks are individuals whom he hates with a passion and wants to see dead. ‘‘I don’t give a damn [am indifferent/care deeply] about this guy next to me,’’ Donald thinks to himself, ‘‘but this is my chance to sit by and watch those bastards get killed.’’ Is it morally permissible [obligatory] for Donald to throw the man? 2c. Footbridge: Purposely Homicidal Act and Omission (throwing the man for the purpose of killing; not throwing the man, for the purpose of letting die). Edward is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Edward sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five men walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the five men. It is moving so fast that they will not be able to get off the track in time. Edward is standing next to a heavy object, which he can throw onto the track in the path of the train, thereby preventing it from killing the men.
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The heavy object is a man, standing next to Edward with his back turned. Edward can throw the man, killing him; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the five die. Edward then realizes that the men walking across the tracks and the man standing next to him are individuals whom he hates with a passion and wants to see dead. ‘‘Wow, this is my lucky day,’’ Edward thinks to himself, ‘‘this is my chance either to kill this jerk standing next to me or to sit by and watch those bastards get killed.’’ Is it morally permissible [obligatory] for Edward to throw the man? 3a. Expensive Rescue (destroying an expensive thing as a side effect of saving life). Fred is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Fred sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw a man walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the man. It is moving so fast that he will not be able to get off the track in time. Fred is standing next to a switch, which he can throw, that will turn the train onto a side track, thereby preventing it from killing the man. There is five million dollars of new railroad equipment lying across the side track. Fred can throw the switch, destroying the equipment; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the man die. Is it morally permissible [obligatory] for Fred to throw the switch? 3b. Inexpensive Rescue (destroying an inexpensive thing as a side effect of saving life). George is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. George sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw a man walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the man. It is moving so fast that he will not be able to get off the track in time. George is standing next to a switch, which he can throw, that will turn the train onto a side track, thereby preventing it from killing the man. There is an old wagon worth about five hundred dollars lying across the side track. George can throw the switch, destroying the wagon; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the man die. Is it morally permissible [obligatory] for George to throw the switch? 4a. Substituted Consent (harmful contact as a means of saving life; prevent suicide). Jack is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Jack sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw a man walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the man. It is moving so fast that he will not be able to get off the track in time. Jack is standing next to the man, whom he can throw
Moral Grammar and Intuitive Jurisprudence
off the track out of the path of the train, thereby preventing it from killing the man. The man is frail and standing with his back turned. Jack believes he is trying to commit suicide by walking in front of the train. Jack can throw the man, injuring him; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the man die. Is it morally permissible [obligatory] for Jack to throw the man? 4b. Hypothetical Consent (harmful contact as a means of saving life; remove obstruction). Quinn is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Quinn sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five men walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the men. It is moving so fast that they will not be able to get off the track in time. Quinn is standing next to a switch, which he can throw, that will turn the train onto a side track, thereby preventing it from killing the men. There is a man standing in front of the switch with his back turned. To reach the switch in time, Quinn will need to grab and throw the man out of the way, thereby injuring him. Quinn can throw the man, injuring him, and then throw the switch, saving the men; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the five die. Is it morally permissible [obligatory] for Quinn to throw the man? 8a. Suicidal Rescue (knowingly killing oneself as a side effect of saving life). Thomas is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Thomas sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five men walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the five men. It is moving so fast that they will not be able to get off the track in time. Thomas is standing next to the will tracks and can throw himself in front of the train, thereby preventing it from killing the men. Doing so will put his own life at risk, however, and will almost surely kill him. Thomas can throw himself in front of the train, killing himself, but saving the five men; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the five die. Is it permissible [obligatory] for Thomas to throw himself in front of the train? 10a. Efficient Risk (destroying a valuable thing as a side effect of saving a more valuable thing). Upton is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Upton sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five million dollars of new railroad equipment lying across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes
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failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the equipment. It is moving so fast that the equipment will be destroyed. Upton is standing next to a switch, which he can throw, that will turn the train onto a side track, thereby preventing it from destroying the equipment. There is an old wagon worth about one hundred dollars lying across the side track. Upton can throw the switch, destroying the wagon; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the equipment be destroyed. Is it morally permissible [obligatory] for Upton to throw the switch? 10b. Inefficient Risk (destroying a valuable thing as a side effect of saving a less valuable thing). Xavier is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Xavier sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw an old wagon worth about five hundred dollars lying across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the wagon. It is moving so fast that the wagon will be destroyed. Xavier is standing next to a switch, which he can throw, that will turn the train onto a side track, thereby preventing it from destroying the wagon. There is five million dollars of new railroad equipment lying across the side track. Xavier can throw the switch, destroying the equipment; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the wagon be destroyed. Is it morally permissible for Xavier to throw the switch? 11a. Drop Equipment (destroying a valuable thing as a means of saving life). Yale is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Yale sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five men walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the five men. It is moving so fast that they will not be able to get off the track in time. Yale is standing next to a switch, which he can throw, that will drop a heavy object into the path of the train, thereby preventing it from killing the men. The heavy object is five million dollars of new railroad equipment, which is standing on a footbridge overlooking the tracks. Yale can throw the switch, destroying the equipment; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the five die. Is it morally permissible [obligatory] for Yale to throw the switch? 12a. Collapse Bridge: Destroy Equipment (destroying a valuable thing as a side effect of saving life). Zach is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train
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that is approaching is out of control. Zach sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five men walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the five men. It is moving so fast that they will not be able to get off the track in time. Zach is standing next to a switch, which he can throw, that will collapse a footbridge overlooking the tracks into the path of the train, thereby preventing it from killing the men. There is five million dollars of new railroad equipment standing on the footbridge. Zach can throw the switch, destroying the bridge and equipment; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the five die. Is it morally permissible [obligatory] for Zach to throw the switch? a
Italics in Table 7 identify salient differences between the given problem and its correspondingly numbered problem in Table 1.
account is needed, however, because a key theoretical question implied by the moral grammar hypothesis is how the brain manages to compute a full structural description that incorporates properties like ends, means, side effects, and prima facie wrongs, such as battery, even when the stimulus contains no direct evidence for these properties. As Figure 6A implies, this problem may be divided into at least five parts. To compute an accurate structural description of a given act and its alternatives, the systems that support moral cognition must generate complex representations that encode pertinent information about their temporal, causal, moral, intentional, and deontic properties. An interesting question is whether these computations must be performed in any particular order. Offhand, it might seem that the order is irrelevant; however, this impression appears to be mistaken. In fact, it seems that these computations must be performed in the order depicted in Figure 6A, at least in our 12 primary cases, because to recognize the deontic structure of these actions, one must already grasp their intentional structure; to recognize their intentional structure, one must already grasp their moral structure; to recognize their moral structure, one must already grasp (at least part of ) their causal structure; and finally, to recognize their (full) causal structure, one must already grasp their temporal structure. These assumptions reflect some classical philosophical ideas about the relevant mental operations. But how exactly does each individual manage to extract the relevant cues from an impoverished stimulus (Figure 6B) and convert what is given into a full structural description? The process appears to include the following main steps. First, the brain must identify the relevant action-descriptions in the stimulus and order them serially according to their relative temporal properties (Figure 6C). Second, it must identify their causal structure by
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B
A Conversion rules Input
Stimulus
?
Stimulus
Temporal structure
?
?
?
?
Causal structure
Moral structure
Intentional structure
Deontic structure
Hank is taking his daily walk over the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Hank sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five men walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the five men. It is moving so fast that they will not be able to get off the track in time. Hank is standing next to a switch, which he can throw, that will turn the train onto a side track, thereby preventing it from killing the men. There is a man standing on the side track with his back turned. Hank can throw the switch, killing him; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the five die. Is it morally permissible for Hank to throw the switch?
C Temporal structure t(−m)
t(0)
Hank’s noticing the train is out of control
Hank’s throwing the switch
t(+n+o)
t(+n)
t(+n+o+p)
Hank’s turning Hank’s preventing the the train train from killing the men
Hank’s killing the man
D Causal structure Semantic structure of “Hank turned the train”
Semantic structure of “Hank threw the switch” S
S
Agent Cause
Agent Effect
Effect
Cause
Patient
Event
Patient
Event
(thing)
(move)
(thing)
(move)
Semantic structure of “Hank killed the man”
semantic structure of “Hank prevented semantic structure of “Hank let the men die” the train from killing the men” S1
S1
S Agent Cause
Effect
Patient
Event
(person)
(death)
Agent Effect S2 Cause Neg Effect Agent S3 Cause Neg Effect Agent Cause Patient Event
Agent Effect Cause S2 Neg Effect Agent Cause Patient Event (person) (death)
(person) (death)
Causal chain generated by not throwing switch in Bystander Agent
Cause effect Cause effect Cause effect Cause effect Cause effect
Negation Patient Event Patient Event
Switch Throw Train
Agent
Negation Patient Event
(thing) (move) (thing) (move) Hank
First causal chain generated by throwing switch in Bystander
Men
Kill
Cause effect
Cause effect Cause effect
Patient Event Patient Event
Negation Patient Event
(person) (death)
(thing) (move) (thing) (move)
(person)(death)
Turn
Cause effect
Hank
Switch Throw Train
Men
Turn
Kill
E Moral structure Second causal chain generated by throwing switch in Bystander Agent
Cause effect
Cause effect
Cause effect
Moral transformation of “Hank killed the man”
Cause effect
S
S
Patient
Event Patient Event Patient Event Patient Event
Agent Cause
Agent Effect
Patient (thing) (move) Hank
Switch Throw
Cause
Bad effect
Event
Patient
Event
(death)
(person)
(death)
(thing) (move)(thing)(contact)(person) (death) Train
Turn [train]
[hit]
Figure 6
Man
Kill
(person)
Computing Structural Descriptions.
decomposing the relevant causative constructions into their underlying semantic properties (Figure 6D). In addition, presumably by relying on temporal information, it must compute the full causal structure of the
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Moral transformation of “Hank prevented the train from killing the men”
S1
Agent Effect Agent Bad effect S2 Cause S2 Cause Neg Neg Good effect Agent Good effect Agent Cause S3 Cause S3 Neg Neg Agent Bad effect Agent Bad effect Cause Cause Patient Event Patient Event
Agent Good effect Agent Effect S2 Cause S2 Cause Neg Neg Agent Bad effect Bad effect Agent Cause Cause Patient Event Patient Event (person) (death)
(person) (death)
Moral transformation of “Hank let the men die” S1
S1
S1
(person) (death)
(person) (death)
F Intentional structure Computing intentional structure of act with good and bad effects [bad effect]
[good effect]
[bad effect]
[good effect]
[preventing train [killing man] from killing men]
[preventing train from killing men]
Means
Side effect [act-token]
Computing intentional structure in trolley problems [killing man]
End
[act-token]
[throwing switch]
[throwing switch]
G Deontic structure Partial derivation of representation of battery in footbridge 1. [Ian’s throwing the man at t(0)]C 2. [Ian’s throwing the man at t(0)] 3. [Ian throws the man at t(0)] 4. [Ian throws the man at t(0)] ⊃ [Ian touches the man at t(0)] 5. [Ian touches the man at t(0)] 6. [The man has not expressly consented to be touched at t(0)] 7. [Ian throws the man at t(0)] ⊃ [Ian kills the man at t(+n)] 8. [[Ian throws the man at t(0)] ⊃ [Ian kills the man at t(+n)]] ⊃ [the man would not consent to being touched at t(0), if asked] 9. [the man would not consent to be touched at t(0), if asked] 10. [Ian touches the man without his express or implied consent at t(0)] 11. [Ian touches the man without his express or implied consent at t(0)] ⊃ [Ian commits battery at t(0)] 12. [Ian commits battery at t(0)] 13. [Ian’s committing battery at t(0)]
Figure 6
Given 2; Linguistic transformation Analytic 3, 4; Modus ponens Given Given Self-preservation principle 7,8; Modus ponens 5,6,9 Definition of battery 10,11; Modus ponens Linguistic transformation
(Continued)
relevant acts and omissions by combining these percepts into ordered sequences of causes and effects (‘‘causal chains’’), supplying missing information where necessary (cf. Kant, 1965/1787). Figure 6D illustrates the three chains at issue in the Bystander Problem, linking (i) Hank’s not throwing throw the switch to the effect of letting the men die, (ii) Hank’s throwing the switch to the effect of preventing the train from killing the men, and (iii) Hank’s throwing the switch to the effect of killing the man. In (iii), causing the train to hit the man is placed in brackets because this percept is not derived directly from the stimulus, but must be inferred from how objects interact with one another, presumably in accord with certain core knowledge of contact mechanics (Carey and Spelke, 1994; Spelke et al., 1992). In other words, the brackets identify one location in the causal chain where the brain supplies the missing information that killing the man requires causing the train to come into contact with him. Third, the brain must compute the moral structure of the relevant acts and omissions by applying the following rewrite rules to the causal structures in Figure 6D: (i) an effect that consists of the death of a person is bad, (ii) an effect that consists of the negation of a bad effect is good, and (iii) an effect that consists of the negation of a good effect is bad. As a result, these
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causal structures are transformed into richer representations that encode good and bad effects (Figure 6E). Moreover, since the second and third operations can be attributed to simple logical reasoning, and the first can be attributed, at least indirectly, to an instinct for self-preservation — the same likely source as that of the Prohibition of Homicide (Section 4.2) and the Self-Preservation Principle (Section 4.3) — we can explain this entire process merely by appealing to a common sociobiological instinct (cf. Darwin, 1981/1871, pp. 85–87; Hobbes, 1968/1651, p. 189; Leibniz, 1981/1705, p. 92; Proudhon, 1994/1840, pp. 170–174; Pufendorf, 2003/ 1673, p. 53). Fourth, one must apply a presumption of good intentions, or what might be called a presumption of innocence, to the structures generated up to this point, thereby converting them into new structures that represent the intentional properties of the given action. That is, taking an act-token representation with both good and bad effects as a proximal input, the brain must (in the absence of countervailing evidence) generate its intentional structure by identifying the good effect as the end or goal and the bad effect as the side effect (cf. Section 3.2). This operation also can be represented graphically (Figure 6F ). Note that some procedure of this general type must be postulated to explain how the brain computes ends, means, and side effects, since — crucially — there is no goal or mental state information in the stimulus itself. In Figure 6F, the presumption of good intentions acts as a default rule which says, in effect, that unless contrary evidence is given or implied, one should assume that S is a person of good will, who pursues good and avoids evil — another principle commonly held to be an innate instinct (see, e.g., Hume, 1978/1740, p. 438; cf. Aquinas, 1988/1274, p. 49; St. Germain, 1874/1518, p. 39). By relying on this principle, one can perhaps explain how the brain regularly computes representations of mens rea, even though goals and mental states are never directly observable. Fifth, because the foregoing steps are necessary but not sufficient to explain the data in Table 2, the brain must supply some additional structure to the foregoing representations. What additional structure is necessary? One key insight of the moral grammar hypothesis is that adequate structural descriptions must also incorporate prima facie legal wrongs, such as battery or homicide. For example, in the Footbridge Problem, the brain must derive a representation of battery by inferring that (i) the agent must touch and move the man in order to throw him onto the track in the path of the train, and (ii) the man would not consent to being touched or moved in this manner, because of his desire for self-preservation (and because no contrary evidence is given). Utilizing standard notation in deductive logic (e.g., Leblanc and Wisdom, 1993), this line of reasoning argument can be also formalized (Figure 6G).
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Committing homicide at t(+n+o+p)
Committing homicide at t(+n+o+p) Committing battery at t(+n+o) Causing train to hit man at t(+n+o)
Preventing train from killing men at t(+n) Turning train at t(+n)
Side effects
End
Preventing train from killing men at t(+n)
Side effects
Means
Throwing switch at t(0)
Intentional homicide (mark)
End Committing homicide at t(+n+o+s)
Committing battery at t(+n+o)
Committing battery at t(+n+o)
Causing train to hit man at t(+n+o) Means
Causing train to hit man at t(+n+o)
Turning train at t(+n) Throwing switch at t(0)
Loop track (Ned)
Causing train to hit man at t(+n+o) Means
Bystander (hank)
Committing homicide at t(+n+o+q)
Committing battery at t(+n+o)
Turning train at t(+n)
Side effects
Throwing switch at t(0)
Preventing train from killing men at t(+n+o+p)
End
Side effects
Preventing train from killing men at t(+n+o+p+q)
End
Causing train to hit object at t(+n+o+p) Turning train at t(+n)
Means
Throwing switch at t(0)
Man-in front (oscar)
Figure 7 Moral Geometry: Structural Descriptions of Four Equivalent Act-Type Descriptions.
Sixth, because merely recognizing that the 12 cases in Table 1 implicate the legal categories of battery and homicide does not yet enable us to explain the data in Table 2, these violations must also be situated in the correct location of their associated structural descriptions, thereby identifying whether they are a means, end, or side effect. Figure 7 illustrates the outcome of this process for the four cases that we encountered in Section 2.2 whose act-type descriptions are completely equivalent. Finally, once accurate structural descriptions of a given act-token representation and its alternatives (or at least the least harmful alternative of this potentially infinite set) are generated, the correct deontic rules must be applied to these descriptions to yield a considered judgment. Moreover, as we have observed (Section 4.4), the magnitude, utility, and necessity of the risk, and the comparative moral worth of the principal and collateral objects, must also be calculated and incorporated into these evaluations. This chapter has avoided many of the complexities that arise in this context, but they must be squarely confronted by any theory which purports to be descriptively adequate.
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7. Conclusion The model outlined in this chapter remains incomplete in many aspects, some of which have been highlighted along the way. For example, compensating for an apparent overemphasis on the role of emotions and heuristics in recent literature, I have avoided discussing these and other important topics in order to analyze a set of basic computations in ordinary moral cognition, whose subtlety, complexity, and explanatory power are often underestimated. The foregoing model is merely one component of an adequate moral psychology, however, and it must be integrated with general theories of affect, emotion, memory, motivation, prejudice, probabilistic reasoning, situationism, and a range of other cognitive systems and processes, particularly causal cognition and theory of mind, all of which have been fruitfully investigated in recent years. Moreover, the chapter does not supply any formal proofs, of course, and many gaps remain in the derivations I have sketched. Still, it seems clear from what has been achieved here that a complete theory of the steps converting proximal stimulus to intuitive response by means of an unconscious structural description could be given along the foregoing lines. In principle, a computer program could be devised that could execute these rapid, intuitive, and highly automatic operations from start to finish. The model outlined here thus goes some way toward achieving the first of Marr’s (1982) three levels at which any information-processing task may be understood, the level of computational theory, because the abstract properties of the relevant mapping have been defined and its adequacy for the task at hand has been demonstrated. The model thus appears to be a significant advance in our understanding of intuitive moral judgment. At the same time, we have discovered how certain fundamental legal conceptions can be utilized in this endeavor to explain an interesting range of moral intuitions, which prior experimental studies have indicated may be universal, or nearly so. By postulating latent knowledge of these and other basic legal norms, we can accurately predict human moral intuitions in a huge number and variety of actual cases. How this knowledge is acquired and put to use in different cultural, social, and institutional contexts thus emerge as pressing questions for law, philosophy, the social sciences, and the cognitive and brain sciences, broadly construed. As difficult to accept as it may seem, there are grounds for thinking that much of this knowledge may be innate or rooted in universal human instincts, as many cognitive scientists, philosophers, and jurists have often assumed. The argument is not conclusive, however, and more cross-disciplinary research is needed to clarify the relevant conceptual and evidentiary issues.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to Dan Bartels, Noam Chomsky, Michael Dockery, Steve Goldberg, Tom Grey, Lisa Heinzerling, Ray Jackendoff, Emma Jordan, Mark Kelman, Greg Klass, Don Langevoort, Amanda Leiter, David Luban, Matthias Mahlmann, Doug Medin, Mitt Regan, Whitman Richards, Henry Richardson, Rebecca Saxe, Josh Tenenbaum, Robin West, and Allen Wood for helpful feedback, suggestions, and encouragement. This research was supported in part under AFOSR MURI award FA9550-05-1-0321.
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1. Introduction 2. How Does Law Shape Morally Laden Cognitions? 2.1. Informational Influence: Law as a Persuasive Source for Morality 2.2. Law as a Representation of Group Attitudes 3. How Does Law Shape Morally Laden Behaviors? 3.1. The Rational Choice Model: Deterrence 3.2. Beyond Rational Choice: Salience and Coordination 3.3. Beyond Rational Choice: Social Meaning 3.4. Behavioral Backlashes against Law 4. The Effect of Law on Moral Expression 4.1. Law and Symbolic Politics 4.2. Law and Group Identity 5. Conclusion Acknowledgments References
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Abstract In a democratic society, law is an important means to express, manipulate, and enforce moral codes. Demonstrating empirically that law can achieve moral goals is difficult. Nevertheless, public interest groups spend considerable energy and resources to change the law with the goal of changing not only morally laden behaviors, but also morally laden cognitions and emotions. Additionally, even when there is little reason to believe that a change in law will lead to changes in behavior or attitudes, groups see the law as a form of moral capital that they wish to own, to make a statement about society. Examples include gay sodomy laws, abortion laws, and prohibition. In this chapter, we explore the possible mechanisms by which law can influence attitudes and behavior. To this end, we consider informational and group influence of law on attitudes, as well as the effects of salience, coordination, and social meaning on behavior, and the behavioral backlash that can result from a mismatch between law and community attitudes. Finally, we describe two lines of psychological research — symbolic politics and group identity—that can help explain how people use the law, or the legal system, to effect expressive goals. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Volume 50 ISSN 0079-7421, DOI: 10.1016/S0079-7421(08)00403-9
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1. Introduction To the chagrin of some (Holmes, 1897), law trades in morals. At a minimum, the law prescribes and proscribes morally laden behaviors, but it also unabashedly attempts to shape moral attitudes and beliefs. When the law forbids murder, we know that this is because the law has decided that murder is evil, and wishes all citizens to agree with that assessment. When the law demands ‘‘good Samaritanism’’ in certain circumstances, we understand it to reflect a judgment that failing to aid those in distress is not just (perhaps) wasteful or inefficient, but is morally wrong. The ambition of antidiscrimination laws is not just to change the behaviors of employers, landlords, and school administrators, but to change both cognitions about and emotions toward stereotyped groups (Allport, 1954). Sometimes, the law engages in moral regulation even where it cannot plausibly be aiming to change behaviors, attitudes, or emotions; the law simply expresses moral commitments shared (often very controversially) by the polity at large. For example, citizens who fight to preserve or abolish sodomy laws are unlikely to believe that such laws actually change the number of people who engage in gay sex or believe that it is immoral; instead, they understand that antisodomy laws ‘‘say something’’ about the kind of community they live in. Laws can also be described as motivated by less moral-sounding commitments (such as to maximize efficiency, allocate costs and benefits, avoid moral hazards and the like — for the classic treatise, see Posner, 1998), but this fact does not undercut — and perhaps simply rephrases — the point that laws, at least in a democracy, are very important ways for societies to express, manipulate, and enforce moral codes. People certainly behave as though laws can achieve moral goals; this is why they are willing to invest time, money, and energy trying to change them. But showing empirically that their investments are worthwhile is surprisingly tricky. Usually, this is because of the classic chicken-and-egg difficultly of showing causation. Do people discriminate less against women and racial minorities because Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 penalizes that behavior? Or were activists successful in getting Title VII passed because society had already begun to substantially change its attitudes, and employers had independently become more willing to hire employees from protected classes? Do people pick up after their dogs — and believe they ought to pick up after their dogs — because city ordinances require them to (Sunstein, 1996), or did ‘‘poop scooping’’ city ordinances get passed in recent years because community norms had already shifted about what it means to be a responsible pet owner in the city? Of course, we do not wish to suggest a false dichotomy here — it is possible, even likely, that the forces operating between law and morality are bidirectional. Still, it is worth thinking about whether, and when, the causation will run as an initial matter in one direction versus the other.
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Skeptics believe that usually, the law simply reflects the moral commitments and political compromises that society has already hashed out independent of the law (Friedman, 2005; Rosenberg, 1991), and the law is for the most part impotent to change moral behaviors and attitudes generally. To illustrate their point they frequently point to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP’s) campaign to promote racial integration. Early last century, the NAACP made a conscious decision to use the law — more specifically, the courts — to abolish the practice of segregation (Williams, 1998). Once legally mandated segregation in public facilities (schools, common carriers, and the like) was banned, the assumption was that voluntary, private integration in unregulated spaces would follow. But as Gerald Rosenberg (1991) famously argued in The Hollow Hope, though segregation has been officially abolished, integration has never been achieved. Half a century after Brown v. Board of Education (1954), public schools and city neighborhoods are, if anything, more segregated by race than ever (Bell, 2004; Kozol, 1991). Some are now convinced that legal intervention was not only a waste of resources, but perhaps has even backfired, breeding resentment by whites and disaffection by blacks (Bell, 2004; Steele, 1991). Yet the skeptics have not won over the activists. People continue to believe the law is a tool that can achieve moral goals, as shown by their persistent efforts to change the law with the ambition not only of changing specific, narrow behaviors, or even of changing broader behaviors linked to the ones being regulated, but of changing attitudes and beliefs. If people and groups are willing to expend their limited resources to change laws, and if people are rational, then it is natural to think that they are spending wisely. Democratically passed laws, after all, have been around for a long time. If they did not ‘‘work,’’ then presumably attentive citizens and lobbying groups would shift strategies and resources away from the law and towards other means of achieving their goals. But other than this raw, ‘‘people are doing it therefore it must be rational’’ argument, what is the empirical evidence that laws do, in fact, change morality? The first step to answering this question is to clarify what we mean by ‘‘morality.’’ Simply put, a law changes ‘‘morality’’ when it (a) changes a person’s behavior or attitudes, by (b) changing how the person believes they and others ‘‘ought’’ to behave or think. The classic example is the control of crime. When we criminally punish a particular behavior, we expect less of it. For example, consider ‘‘insider trading’’ on the stock market, which different countries forbid to greater or lesser degrees, and some do not forbid at all (Beny, 2007). If banning insider trading reduced exactly the kinds of insider trading encompassed by the statute and no more, we could not confidently say that the law had effectively changed people’s perceptions of the morality of insider trading. But what if a ban on some forms of insider trading reduced not only the forbidden forms, but also unregulated
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forms? The federal laws in the United States, for instance, do not forbid insider trading by individuals who just happen to overhear secret information—what if insider trading by these lucky bystanders also decreased? What if the law reduced insider trading even where the trader was certain she would not get caught? What if after the law was passed, people suddenly believed that insider trading causes concrete harms? Or suddenly thought that insider trading is simply unfair or evil, whether or not it causes any harm? If a ban on insider trading did any of these things, we would argue that the law had successfully changed the perceived morality of the behavior. We admit that this definition is broad, and includes what might not, upon closer inspection, look like moral beliefs. For example, perhaps a law banning a narrow behavior has spillover effects to unregulated behavior because individuals are nervous about getting caught up in a dragnet, or because they do not know that only the narrow behavior is banned. Or maybe the passage of a law makes a citizen aware of a harm that he simply had not considered (or had not considered important) before. In these cases, we could say that the citizen did not change his moral beliefs; he just changed his cost-benefit analyses and improved his understanding. These points are important to keep in mind, but we believe they go to the mechanics of how the law changes perceptions of morality, rather than challenging that they do. Writing outside the field of psychology, for example, Kuran (1998), Lessig (1995), and Kahan (1997, 2003) have persuasively argued that the law can achieve moral change exactly through such an initially amoral process. People’s moral sensibilities are shaped in large part not only by what they see others doing, but by why they think others are doing it (Kahan, 2003). When people see fellow citizens hiring blacks (Kuran,1998), wearing motorcycle helmets (Lessig, 1995), or refraining from loitering on the streets at night (Kahan, 1997), they will assume others are behaving as they do not because the law requires it, but because it is simply the sort of thing good, right-thinking citizens do. This phenomenon, of course, is familiar to social psychologists as a combined process of pluralistic ignorance (Prentice and Miller, 1993), the actor-observer effect (Gilbert and Malone, 1995), and social influence (Asch, 1955; Cialdini et al., 1991): the cognitive processes of actors are opaque but their behavior is apparent, and so people assume that the obvious explanation (people behave the way they do because that is the kind of people they are) governs, and they shape their own behavior and beliefs accordingly. It is useful to distinguish between the law’s ability to shape behavior through simple reward and punishment (the skeptical view), and its ability to use indirect, subtle, and sophisticated techniques to shape not only behaviors, but also normative commitments. This is because the dominant view, both in the legal world and in the public as a whole, is the simpler, skeptical one (Miller, 1999; Miller and Ratner, 1996, 1998; Wuthnow, 1991).
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The skeptics do not believe laws have no bite—they just believe the law cannot, or at any rate should not, sink its teeth into the hearts and minds of the public in the way Kuran, Lessig, and Kahan describe. Consider, for instance, criminal punishment. Though tricky to execute and not without controversy in the details, research shows that increasing penalties—by criminalizing particular behaviors, or by increasing the certainty or severity of punishment—results in reductions in those behaviors (Grogger, 1991; Levitt, 2004). On the surface, laypeople endorse this consequentialist approach, saying that the purpose of punishment is to reduce socially dysfunctional behavior, and so punishment should be distributed in a way that has the biggest deterrence ‘‘bang’’ for the punishment ‘‘buck.’’ So, for instance, people state that they support (or oppose) the death penalty because and to the extent that it reduces murder; they state that they support (or oppose) longer prison sentences because and to the extent that it prevents lawbreakers from committing additional crimes. However, considerable evidence now shows that despite this ‘‘deterrence’’ lingo, when they actually are asked to impose punishments, people do so in a way that responds instead to moral intuitions such as retribution or other ethical principles (Carlsmith et al., 2002; Darley, 2001; Darley et al., 2000; Ellsworth and Gross, 1994; Finkel, 1995; Vidmar, 2001; Warr et al., 1983). Instead of the simple, cost-benefit model of criminal law that they outwardly describe, people implicitly or at least quietly hold a far more nuanced, and morally driven model. This same phenomenon occurs in other areas of the law, too, though it is not as well studied outside of criminal punishment. The competing perspectives are partly, though not perfectly, described by the ‘‘public choice’’ versus the ‘‘public interest’’ views of the law. The public choice model is the analogue to the consequentialist view of criminal punishment, and to the legal skepticism we outlined above. Public choice theory (Farber and Frickey, 1991), developed in the fields of economics and political science, describes the battle over law as a fight among private interests over scarce resources. To the public choice theorist, the territory of the law is owned by those who are in the business of capturing ‘‘rents’’ for themselves. That is, interested groups use the law to grab as much social wealth for themselves or their fellow group members as they can. Thus, drug companies seek (or oppose) regulations in order to maximize profits; unions fight for minimum wage laws and mandatory limits on work hours as a way to control competition from groups (such as immigrants) who might otherwise undercut union members by accepting less favorable working conditions at nonunion shops; prison guard lobbies seek tougher criminal penalties to protect and expand their own jobs. In the public choice world, interest groups do not fight over regulations because they disagree about the moral norms the regulated behaviors embody, but because the regulations result in concrete, measurable harms or benefits to their interests.
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The public interest model, in contrast, is the domain of the morally driven legal tactician. In the public interest world, law makers and interest groups are motivated not (only) by self-interest, but by what they think is good, right, or just. True enough, they do not always accomplish their goals, even when, like the NAACP, they manage to change the law on the books exactly according to plan. Nevertheless, morally driven tacticians seek to change the law because they might change not only morally laden behaviors, but also moral cognitions and emotions. Moreover, they sometimes seek to change the law even when they know there is virtually no chance they could change behaviors or attitudes at all—instead, they might see the law as a form of moral capital that they simply wish to own, in order to make a statement about the type of society they live in. Examples of this are legion. We have already mentioned those who are for and against gay sodomy laws. Prolife groups seek to change abortion laws to protect innocents, yes, but also to express a commitment to their view of life as beginning at conception, and arguably, to defend traditional families and gender roles (Luker, 1984). Prohibition activists (largely rural and protestant) sought to eliminate drinking, but also to express contempt for the values and lifestyles embodied by urban elites and Catholic immigrants (Gusfield, 1986). From outside the U.S., there is the example of sexual harassment laws in Israel. In Israel, the law forbids sexual harassment not just by employers of employees, but by any citizen of any other citizen, anywhere (Rimalt, 2008). The unlikelihood that such a law could be effectively enforced does not diminish its import—clearly, those who pushed for (and those who opposed) its passage understood that the stakes were not about behavior directly, but about the moral status of women as autonomous beings, and what their proper ‘‘place’’ in Israeli society is. One purpose of this chapter is to argue that the skeptical, consequentialist view of the law is wrong, and that in fact law does have the capacity to shape perceptions of morality, often in subtle and complicated ways. But we also aim to tease out when it can do so, and how. The first thing to acknowledge, though, is that it cannot always do so at all. In this chapter, we are talking largely about the law cutting against people’s established sense of morality. When it is instead merely codifying the public consensus on morality, then obviously there is no debate to be had. And perceptions of morality are broadly shared; moreover, the bulk of laws broadly reflect them. For instance, people mostly agree about the rank ordering of the moral seriousness of various criminal offenses. (Darley et al., 2000, 2003; Finkel and Smith, 1993; Harlow et al., 1995; Robinson and Darley, 1995; Rossi et al., 1997; Sanderson et al., 2000). There is also broad agreement about the severity of various civil violations (though this consensus collapses if we ask people to generate monetary fines or length of prison sentences on an unbounded scale) (Sunstein et al., 1998).
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But what about those times when there is dissensus within the population about what morality requires? Worse, what about those times when most of the population believes x, and the law would like them to believe y? Examples of broad dissensus are not hard to generate; we have already discussed three (abortion, gay marriage, and the death penalty.) But neither is it hard to generate examples of broad consensus on a position that the state would like to change: drunk driving was not always considered to be immoral (Grasmick et al., 1993); school busing was opposed by 83 per cent of whites when it was first implemented (Kelley, 1974); smoking only recently acquired the kind of public condemnation that leads—and has lead—to widespread regulation (Rozin, 1999). If it has enough legitimacy in other areas, and the proposed shift in morality does not strike the population as patently outrageous, the legal regime might be able to easily ‘‘cash out’’ some of that legitimacy to get the public on board for its idiosyncratic views (Darley et al., 2003; Hollander, 1958; Gibson, 2007; Tyler, 2006). But if the legal system does not have adequate legitimacy in a particular jurisdiction (Bilz, 2007), or the issue in question is, for the people involved, what Linda Skitka calls a ‘‘morally mandated’’ one (meaning, as we discuss in more detail later, a very strong, emotionally fraught issue that is experienced not as opinion but as fact—for many people, examples of this would be abortion or capital punishment (Skitka, 2002; Skitka et al., 2005; Mullen and Skitka, 2006)), then the law maybe relatively helpless to effect a shift in the perceived morality of the regulated behavior. This chapter takes aim at the area in between these two extremes. When activists attempt to use to law to change morals, they seek to do one or more of three interrelated, but conceptually distinct things: change cognitions, change behaviors, or simply stick a flag in the dirt—that is, stake a claim that the law endorses their view of morality, irrespective of any hope they will win over the other side, or even the uncommitted. We take each in turn.
2. How Does Law Shape Morally Laden Cognitions? The extent to which moral beliefs are shaped by law is a question that has received scant empirical attention. Early theories of moral development posited that young children begin by believing in the absolute and intrinsic truth of rules, and then later develop a more sophisticated view in which rules are to be respected because everyone has mutually consented to them (Piaget, 1932/1997). Building on Piaget, Kohlberg (1981) proposed a theory of moral development that identified a sequence of six stages, divided into three levels: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional.
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At the preconventional level, moral judgment is motivated largely by avoidance of punishment. At the conventional level, individuals develop an understanding that rules are necessary to maintain social order, and are motivated by what they think people expect of them. In the second stage of this conventional level of moral reasoning, the individual moves beyond understanding the rules as merely what is expected by her own local community, and toward a more general social system, involving a conventional concern with law and rules more generally. Thus, at this stage individuals perceive an obligation to uphold the law to avoid the social disorder that would follow in the wake of others disobeying (Kohlberg, 1981; Tapp and Kohlberg, 1971). The postconventional level of moral development is marked by moving beyond the uniform application of laws and rules, and is rooted instead in recognition of more universal ethical principles from which laws derive. It is noteworthy that the influence of law on morality was seen as characteristic of a less well-developed level of moral reasoning, with perhaps the implication that law directly influences morality mainly among children and morally underdeveloped adults. More recent developmental studies have uncovered a more complex picture, showing that even very young children are able to distinguish between social conventions (e.g., do not undress in public) and moral rules (e.g., do not hit) (Turiel, 1983). Indeed, even elementary school children readily make distinctions between unjust and just laws, and recognize the acceptability of violating unjust laws (Helwig and Jasiobedzka, 2001). Thus, the influence of law on moral development is likely to involve more than a simple reflexive attitudinal shift in response to rules. Our focus in this section is to identify potential mechanisms by which law might influence morally laden attitudes and beliefs.
2.1. Informational Influence: Law as a Persuasive Source for Morality The moral norms each of us comes to accept are shaped and sustained by a variety of sources: family, schooling, peers, workplaces, and media, among others. Because of the diverse nature of society, the law is perhaps a particularly powerful source for shaping and sustaining moral norms, because unlike the sources just listed, law is a common denominator for all citizens. In this sense, the law might be an especially persuasive source for the development and reinforcement of moral norms (Robinson and Darley, 2007). Especially under conditions of uncertainty, people look for information in their environment that provides credible cues for making judgments. Dating as far back as Sherif’s (1935) seminal study on the autokinetic effect, research shows that people resolve ambiguity by seeking information about
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social consensus, leading not only to conformity but also to genuine acceptance of the group’s information. The informational influence of law is likely to be a heuristic process, sometimes labeled ‘‘System 1’’ to denote a process that is fast, intuitive, and effortless (in contrast to ‘‘System 2’’, which is slower, effortful, and more deliberate (Kahneman and Frederick, 2002; Kahneman, 2003)). Moral judgments are often governed by System 1—that is, they are heuristic— although after the fact, people are sometimes able to justify those judgments in a deductive, calculative fashion (Haidt, 2001; Sunstein, 2005; Hauser, 2006). When we process information heuristically, we rely on characteristics of the message source to make a quick judgment about the persuasiveness of the information. The likelihood that we will come to accept heuristically processed information as true depends, among other things, on the expertise of the information source, as well as our perception of whether other people perceive the information as credible (Chaiken, 1987; Cialdini, 1987; Cooper et al., 1996; Cooper and Neuhaus, 2000). The law’s persuasive power over moral judgment depends on its being seen as legitimate, authoritative, expert, and trustworthy—the very kind of source characteristics that increase the persuasive power of any heuristically processed information (Petty and Wegener, 1998). The more the law is perceived as possessing these characteristics, the more individuals will be persuaded that the law’s prohibitions and dictates describe desirable moral norms. On this view, the law persuades not because people consciously reason about the moral plausibility of particular legal rules, since most people do not possess the time or motivation to contemplate in detail the moral status of, say, insider trading, or obscenity, or conspiracy. Rather, to the extent that law successfully influences or reinforces moral judgment, it does so in a way more comparable to why kids who like Michael Jordan buy Nike shoes, or why people buy the brand of toothpaste recommended by 4 out of 5 dentists surveyed (Feldman and MacCoun, 2005). Unfortunately, the empirical evidence supporting the claim that law is a persuasive informational source that directly influences attitudes is thin. In perhaps the simplest model of the influence of law on behavior, an individual learns of the content of law, and as a direct result, molds her moral beliefs in accordance with it. In an early study, Walker and Argyle (1964), surveyed people a few months after the British government abolished the crime of attempted suicide. They found no relationship between attitudes about the moral propriety of attempted suicide and the perceived legality of attempted suicide—that is, knowledge that the legislature has decriminalized attempted suicide did not appear to make it seem more morally permissible. In a follow-up study, they found similar results (Walker and Argyle, 1964). After describing a person performing a behavior (e.g., littering, carelessly injuring another person by throwing a brick, and being drunk in public), participants were informed that the act in question
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was a criminal offense (or was not). The legal status of each item apparently had no effect on moral attitudes toward the behavior. A later study, however, did suggest an informational influence of law on attitudes. Berkowitz and Walker (1967) also asked about various unseemly behaviors (e.g., public drunkenness, borrowing money for betting, and failing to stop a suicide). Participants provided ratings of the moral propriety of each behavior at two different times. In between the first and second rating, participants in one condition were informed of the legal status of each behavior (‘‘now legal’’ or ‘‘now illegal’’). In another condition they were informed of peer opinions about each behavior (over 80 per cent of their peers strongly agreed/disagreed that the behavior is immoral). In a third condition, participants were simply asked to reconsider their initial judgment. Contrary to the earlier studies, moral attitudes at Time 2 changed in accordance with the law, and even more strongly in accordance with peer opinion. Because peer opinion had a stronger effect than mere legality, maybe people perceived that the legal rules at least partially reflected the opinions of respected peers, which in turn influenced participants’ moral beliefs. (Because this study was conducted well before modern mediational analysis had been developed, we can only make educated guesses about this.) That is, the law might be perceived as reflecting dominant perceptions, so that a change in the law signals a change in popular opinion about what is immoral or moral (a topic to which we return in Section 2.2). Going by these two studies, the early evidence regarding whether moral attitudes follow legal pronouncements is mixed, but suggestive. While valuable, these studies do raise a number of methodological questions. First, though Walker and Argyle (1964) found no relationship between the law and attitudes, the sample sizes were small and the experimental technique was fairly low-impact. Consequently, it is probably a mistake to read a great deal into the null results they found. Second, the direct questioning of student subjects by experimenters raises concerns about social desirability concerns and demand characteristics. Participants who expressed greater moral disapproval at Time 2 than Time 1 did so only after being told by the experimenter that the behavior in question is ‘‘now illegal.’’ Thus, they might have been expressing the level of disapproval they thought others in general, or the experimenter in particular, would want them to express. A related limitation on these early studies is that they elicited ratings based on carefully thought out judgments that were arrived at after the opportunity to engage in conscious, effortful reasoning. The responses might not accurately reflect important effects of more emotionally generated intuitions (Lerner, 2003). Outside of the laboratory, the idea that law can influence attitudes was a primary motivation for the legal desegregation of schools and housing in the mid-twentieth century. The contact hypothesis posits that intergroup prejudice can be reduced when members of different groups work interactively toward a cooperative goal, sanctioned by an authority, under conditions of
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equal status (Allport, 1954). Thus, desegregation efforts focused on bringing blacks and whites together as a step toward reducing racism; indeed, at many critical points the law mandated integration. The hope was that by exposing people to members of the outgroup, they would receive new and accurate information about those members, and then make more accurate inferences about the group as a whole, thereby reducing stereotyping and prejudice (Allport, 1954). Evidence in favor of the contact hypothesis includes the fact that the percentage of whites supporting integration of schools increased from 32 per cent in 1942 to 96 per cent in 1995 (Schneider, 2004). Of course, the causal story is undoubtedly complex, and it is not clear how much of the change in attitudes toward integration was caused by law, as opposed to a larger shift in attitudes either caused or reflected by the civil rights movement—this is the reason direct experimental data would be so helpful. Still, there is some general experimental evidence that contact reduces prejudice under some circumstances, such as when individuals from different groups have an opportunity to discover commonalities and thus perceive increased similarity (Brewer and Miller, 1984). Short-term effects of school desegregation on attitudes initially were not promising, with studies in the 1970s showing that the attitudes of both white and black students were actually more prejudiced following integration (Schneider, 2004). However, the political atmosphere surrounding segregation has simmered down considerably since the 1970s, and more recent evidence has been more hopeful, showing, for example, that whites who have more contact with blacks as children are less prejudiced as adults. Also, contact seems to reduce prejudice between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland (Hewstone et al., 2006). A recent meta-analysis of over 500 studies showed that intergroup contact typically does reduce intergroup prejudice (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2006). In sum, evidence strongly, even if imperfectly, suggests that policy makers can use the law as a tool to shape the moral cognitions of its citizens, by altering their informational environment.
2.2. Law as a Representation of Group Attitudes People do not process information in a vacuum; rather, they process information in the social world, always mindful at some level of the wider context of group membership. In this sense, moral norms are not products of individuals, but rather are more appropriately regarded as social products, formed and maintained by the perceived expectations of the various groups to which an individual belongs (Terry and Hogg, 2001). Each of us belongs to many different social groups and categories. Our attitudes and judgments are influenced by the groups and categories with which we identify (Spears et al., 2001).
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Most people can identify with the citizenry of their nation, state, or locality. Because people have a strong desire to affiliate and belong (Baumeister and Leary, 1995), it is plausible that they seek to conform their attitudes to those of their fellow citizens. If people believe that legal codes generally map onto the community’s moral norms—and in democratic political systems, this is generally so—then law might inform moral beliefs because people are motivated to seek the approval and esteem of others (McAdams, 1997). But this only works if the law is seen as generally in tune with community sentiments. To the extent that it is perceived as out-of-tune, it loses moral credibility and becomes less relevant as a ‘‘guide to good conduct’’ (Robinson and Darley, 2007). When the law generally comports with community sentiments, newly introduced regulation can serve as a powerful signal for the specific attitudes of other group members. But it can also serve to subvert false consensus. Moreover, as long as attitudes do not depart too far from community norms, new laws can even generate a new consensus–because people like to agree with the majority, a new law that presumably reflects that majority will have persuasive force for that reason alone. For example, consider the passage of a law prohibiting sexual harassment in the workplace. Such a law might be assumed to accurately reflect the attitude of fellow citizens, because it was passed by a democratically elected legislature. Because of the motivation to belong and affiliate, individuals might directly adopt the attitude suggested by the new legislation—that sexual harassment in the workplace is morally wrong. Note that this kind of attitude alignment can take place even in a context where an individual previously and privately suspected that some, or even many, fellow group members held attitudes in opposition to the new law; indeed, such an attitude alignment could occur even in an environment where many individuals in fact did previously oppose such a law, so long as all now align with the newly-revealed majority view reflected by the law. However, the law can also serve to adjust attitudes in a more indirect way. For example, suppose that prior to the new anti-sexual harassment legislation, several individuals in a particular workplace regularly shared sexually themed jokes and materials out in the open. Some workers responded genuinely favorably; others only seemed to do so, out of courtesy or embarrassment. All workers might misperceive the favorable reaction (or at least silence) of others as widespread approval of the sexually charged behavior, and through a process of pluralistic ignorance (Prentice and Miller 1993), such behavior would become entrenched (Geisinger, 2005). What happens in this workplace after the sexual harassment law is passed? Workers who, before the law, openly displayed sexually themed materials, will now prudently keep them hidden; thus, these workers’ behaviors directly change. But the absence of such open displays will also make it appear to everyone that such materials in fact should, as a normative matter, remain private. For the majority of the workers—most of whom, by presumption, were not displaying sexually charged materials, but not objecting to them, either—what is most salient is
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that such items are not being displayed, not that the law forbids it (Kuran, 1998). As a result, over time, the majority of workers may begin to see a work environment free of such sexually harassing materials as normative, not because the law says so, but because their coworkers behave so. Again with time, these workers might begin to change their attitudes from condoning, to neutral, and perhaps even to condemning. In fact, given the change in their coworkers attitudes (and maybe their consequently increased willingness to object to those displays that may pop-up from time to time), even those workers who would have previously preferred to engage in sexually harassing displays might change their attitudes about the propriety of such behavior. Here, the real work of the law is not just in reshaping the behavior of the handful of workers engaging in sexually charged displays, though it does do that. Importantly, the law also works (if it works—we concede the obvious that it will not always succeed, and discuss such outcomes at greater length below) by shaping beliefs about the propriety of such displays. Rather than (just) working directly to change behaviors and attitudes, the law is able to work via more subtle social psychological processes, to shape perceptions of morality—even for those citizens who would not take the state of the law alone as authoritative guidance for their moral beliefs.
3. How Does Law Shape Morally Laden Behaviors? 3.1. The Rational Choice Model: Deterrence It is uncontroversial that law sometimes influences morally relevant behavior. Consequentialist theories of punishment rely on the assumption that if the expected cost of a behavior (comprised of the severity and probability of punishment) exceeds its expected benefit, then people will refrain from that behavior. For example, increasing the number of police officers demonstrably deters crime (Becker, 1968; Levitt, 2004). Indeed, people tend to assume that other people’s (especially criminals’) behavior is deterred by law, even while they assume that their own behavior stems from their own internal sense of right and wrong (Sanderson and Darley, 2002). In the real world, however, deterrence theories are far from perfectly predictive. Some studies show that the effect of deterrence on behavior is weak, especially compared to other factors such as the legitimacy of legal authorities (Tyler 1990, 2006), or even the social meaning of the punishment (Gneezy and Rustichini, 2000; Kahan, 1996). In one cleverly designed study, the imposition of sanctions actually increased the frequency of the prohibited behavior—exactly the opposite of what deterrence theories would predict. Gneezy and Rustichini (2000) conducted an experiment at a series of a day care centers, in which parents sometimes arrived late
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to pick up their children. In half of the day care centers, the researchers sent a letter to parents, informing them that they would now have to pay a small monetary fine for picking their children up late. (The other half served as a control.) After imposing the fine, there was a steady increase in late pickups, but no change in the control condition. Why? Perhaps the fine changed parents’ perception of the social relationship between themselves and the center’s employees. Prior to the announcement of the fine policy, parents might have perceived a social obligation to arrive on time; after the implementation of the policy, the fine might have been perceived as a price for services rendered. One important explanation for the failure of deterrence is that sometimes people are not aware of the law, and so by definition cannot be motivated by an explicit cost-benefit trade-off (Darley et al., 2001; MacCoun et al., 2008). Indeed, most people do not have independent knowledge of most criminal law rules, but instead assume that the law maps onto their preexisting moral beliefs (Darley et al., 2001). Arguably, much of the time and for most purposes, people are ignorant of the law, in part because law is so voluminous and complex. For example, the U.S. Tax Code is estimated to include more than 50,000 pages (The Economist, September 23, 2004). Law cannot directly influence individual behavior if the individuals in question are not aware of its content. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that when people are aware of the law (and sometimes, indirectly, even when they are not), deterrence is one effective way for the law to control behavior. But are there others?
3.2. Beyond Rational Choice: Salience and Coordination In this section we focus on mechanisms by which the law can encourage behavior which, as a societal matter, ought to be encouraged, and conversely discourage behavior that ought to be discouraged. Such mechanisms do not have to involve any opinion on the part of the individual actor about the moral status of the behavior, or even on a fear of punishment. One simple mechanism by which law can influence behavior is to make that behavior salient or convenient. Thus, traffic regulations remind people to drive on the right side of the road (in the U.S.). Whether as a matter of habit, respect for the traffic laws, social imitation, or fear of crashing (Andenaes, 1952), people drive on the right, stop at stop signs, and the like. By signaling a particular behavior, law can also help people coordinate to avoid a mutually disastrous outcome (McAdams and Nadler, 2005; McAdams and Nadler, 2008). For example, the rule mandating driving on the right makes actually doing so not only salient and convenient, it also provides an extremely reliable signal for what others are likely to do, thereby allowing each individual driver to drive on the same side as everyone else.
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In the above example, the question of which side of the road to drive on is not particularly laden with moral implications, in part because people should not have a strong preference, all else being equal, between driving on the left or the right. (A failure to drive on the legally specified side, though, can take on a moral dimension once the rule has been set.) Remarkably, law can work as a coordination device not only when people’s preferences coincide or when they were previously indifferent, but even when preferences strongly clash (McAdams and Nadler, 2008). Recognition of the need for coordination is pervasive in legal disputes: when parties mutually regard some outcome as the worst result, the dispute might be resolved despite genuine conflict about what is the best result. Two people who contest ownership of a piece of property may each regard violence as the worst outcome, worse even than giving in to the other’s claim. A smoker and a nonsmoker may each regard a profane shouting match as the worst outcome of their conflict over smoking. Two groups of union members may disagree over whether to strike, but jointly regard the worst outcome as internal disunity that weakens their power against management. Male and female coworkers who disagree about the acceptability of sexual banter and touching in the workplace may each rank the worst outcome as the conflict that results if both fail to defer to the other’s demand. Simply by making a statement about which behaviors are preferred and which are not, law can increase the frequency of desirable behavior or decrease the frequency of undesirable behavior, through simple salience or by providing a reliable indicator of what others are likely to do (McAdams and Nadler, 2008). The criminal law makes statements through outright prohibitions, but note that law’s signals need not take this form. Law can also shape behavior through time, place, and manner restrictions (Sunstein, 1996). Consider, for example, how convenient it was for Americans to smoke cigarettes in the 1950s, when it was permitted and common to do so in offices, homes, stores, cars, buses, and airplanes. Contrast this to our current environment where smoking is closely regulated and restricted. As a result, there are only a few places and times where one can reliably find people smoking, at least in the U.S. (e.g., outside the doors of urban office buildings during business hours). Along with other factors that we discuss below, these regulations have undoubtedly contributed to a reduction in smoking, partly because it is currently substantially less convenient to smoke.
3.3. Beyond Rational Choice: Social Meaning In addition to straightforward considerations of salience, coordination, and convenience, the legal regulation of behaviors like smoking can also influence their social meaning (Lessig, 1995; McAdams, 1995; Sunstein, 1996). Consider, for instance, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and how it changed the social meaning of refraining from engaging in discrimination (Lessig, 1995;
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McAdams, 1995). This wide-ranging law prohibited, among other things, race discrimination in hiring and in public accommodations. As a general theoretical matter, and in a strict economic sense, employers and business owners are better off without discrimination. Without discrimination, employers have access to a larger labor pool, leading to lower wages and a more qualified work force; so long as whites do not shift their preferences away from businesses that do not discriminate, employers are unambiguously better off (Lessig, 1995). The problem, however, was that business leaders would not voluntarily integrate because of what it meant to willingly serve or hire blacks: such behavior signaled that the business was either especially greedy or had a special (and stigmatized) affection for blacks. But by prohibiting race discrimination, the social meaning of hiring black employees and serving black customers changed, or at least became ambiguous: businesses that refrained from discrimination could plausibly be perceived as doing so only because of the law. Changing the social meaning of serving and employing blacks thus reduced the social costs of doing so. In the first order, law changed morally laden behavior, by reducing the frequency of discriminatory acts. But in the second order, the nondiscriminatory behavior itself, rather than the law, became salient, and over time, customers and business owners began to see such behavior as normative, and to change their own attitudes about discrimination—even though they might not have consciously conformed their attitudes to the dictates of law. There are numerous other examples of legal regulation changing social meaning. We have already discussed the possibility that sexual harassment laws had this function. Seatbelt laws are another. In the absence of regulation, it might be insulting to the driver for a passenger to put on a seatbelt; in the presence of regulation, the act is no longer an insult, but a simple desire to follow the law (Lessig, 1995). Then, the wearing of seatbelts gradually moves from the domain of the amoral to the domain of the moral, as people’s attitudes slowly reflect the behavior that wearing seatbelts is the right thing to do. Consider, though, that sometimes introducing legal regulation will be politically possible only because of a prior change in social meaning. Until 1964, when the U.S. Surgeon General reported health risks associated with smoking, these health risks were generally unknown, or at least uncertain. With the 1964 report, authoritative sources—the Surgeon General, relying on medical science—certified the harmfulness of smoking, thereby creating the necessary cultural support for successful regulation (Lessig, 1995). Toward the end of the twentieth century, a variety of harms were identified as caused by smoking, on top of the health risks to the individual smoker. These included the health risks of second-hand smoke, especially with regard to children, as well as pollution and fire risk (Rozin, 1999). These conditions helped bring smoking squarely into the domain of the moral, where before, smoking was merely a question of individual taste or preference (Rozin, 1999). The moralization of smoking laid the groundwork for
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cultural acceptance of ever-tighter legal regulations, with some jurisdictions banning smoking in bars, in vehicles with children, and in parks. Like surfers waiting for good waves, lawmakers supporting such far-reaching smoking regulations needed to ‘‘wait for signs of a rising wave of cultural support’’ (Kagan and Skolnick, 1993). Prior to the emergence of the right kind of cultural conditions, attempts to implement the relatively strict smoking regulations in place today would very likely have been met with widespread resistance and flouting. The social meaning process may therefore depend on a number of processes working together, including: (a) moral entrepreneurs who strategically shape public sentiment; (b) new information that brings the relevant behavior into the domain of the moral for the first time; and (c) law in general being perceived as legitimate and worthy of respect, so that the desire to engage in the relevant behavior is overwhelmed by the motivation to obey the law. In Section 3.4, we consider backlashes that can result when these factors do not align.
3.4. Behavioral Backlashes against Law The prospect of widespread resistance to legal mandates raises the question of correspondence between law and moral intuitions, which we briefly discussed in Section 1. People are more likely to obey the law when they view the law generally as a legitimate moral authority (Tyler, 1990). In his study of everyday legal violations, Tom Tyler found that a key influence on legal compliance is whether people have an internalized sense of obligation to follow the law (Tyler, 1990). Conversely, it follows that if the law is not viewed as a legitimate moral authority, then compliance maybe lower. There is some evidence that exposure to widespread social and political corruption leads to diminished respect for law, and to lower levels of legal compliance. One study examined the rate of parking violations for United Nations diplomats living in New York City, who until 2002 were immune from penalties for unpaid parking tickets (Fisman and Miguel, 2007). Diplomats from nations with high levels of government corruption were the most likely to accumulate multiple unpaid parking tickets, suggesting that these diplomats had generalized their disrespect for their own legal system, allowing it to influence their behavior even when they lived in a country with relatively low levels of corruption. Widespread corruption is not the only cause of behavioral backlashes against law. Citizens of the U. S. are fortunate to live in a political system with a strong adherence to the rule of law, and where corruption is relatively uncommon. Yet even here, particular failures of legal justice could lead to decreased compliance as a general matter, even with respect to laws unrelated to the original particular failure. Some experimental
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evidence supports this ‘‘flouting’’ hypothesis (Nadler, 2005). In one experiment, people expressed strong moral intuitions in favor of punishing an accomplice who passively watched while his friend committed a violent crime. Learning that the accomplice did receive punishment led to a higher likelihood of participants following the law as mock jurors in a subsequent, unrelated trial; conversely, learning the accomplice did not receive punishment led to widespread flouting of the judge’s instructions in the subsequent trial (Nadler, 2005). Of course, not every legally mandated criminal sentence, decision, or rule will map perfectly onto people’s sense of justice. Fortunately, most people do not have strong moral attitudes about most legal rules and outcomes. Still, the legal system is often called upon to deal with problems that represent hot-button topics for some individuals. When people have a strong attitude that they see as rooted in moral conviction, they have a ‘‘moral mandate’’ (Skitka, 2002). For example, people who have not only a strong attitude about abortion (as shown by its extremity, importance, and certainty; Petty and Krosnick, 1995), but who also see their position on abortion as tied to their core moral values, would have a moral mandate on that issue. When outcomes threaten people’s moral mandates, they respond with anger and devalue the fairness of both the outcome and the procedures used to achieve it (Mullen and Skitka, 2006). Indeed, there is evidence that violations of moral mandates can lead to moral spillovers, leading people to engage in deviant behavior (Mullen and Nadler, 2008). In one study, participants who were strongly pro-choice learned about a legal outcome that either opposed or supported their moral conviction about abortion. Those whose moral conviction was betrayed by the law were more likely to steal a borrowed pen than those whose moral conviction was supported (Mullen and Nadler, 2008). Perhaps the most widely discussed real world anecdote of a fundamental mismatch between law and moral intuitions is the prohibition of alcohol in the early twentieth century. In this case, the law criminalized behavior that many, if not most, thought was morally acceptable, or outside the domain of morality altogether. Because many people continued to drink alcohol during this time, unlawful mechanisms and institutions arose to meet continued demand. Bootlegging and smuggling operations became stronger and increasingly organized, leading them to expand their activities beyond the production and distribution of alcohol (Robinson and Darley, 2007). The magnitude of the mismatch between law and moral intuition hampered the law’s attempt to redefine one activity (alcohol consumption) as immoral. But even worse, the attempt nurtured new unlawful activity and corruption in the form of organized crime. The lesson from the Prohibition era appears to be that the law can backfire if it extends its reach too far into activities that are perceived as morally acceptable. This is especially problematic for the criminal
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law, which is the most powerful medicine a legal system can employ. (Note that the successful examples we have discussed above—sexual harassment, seatbelts, and employment discrimination—are all civil regulations, not criminal ones.) Some legal scholars have argued that the traditional distinction between crime and tort (noncriminal wrongs) has been increasingly blurred, which will ultimately weaken the ability of criminal law to function efficiently as an instrument for controlling behavior by defining what is immoral (Coffee, 1991). The basic concern is that increasingly, there is an excessive reliance on the criminal law to control behavior that is not widely perceived as inherently morally culpable, leading to diminishing moral credibility for the law as a general matter (Coffee, 1992; Robinson and Darley, 2007). The difference between the ability of civil versus criminal law to change perceptions of morality—if indeed there is such a difference—is a ripe area for research (cf. Kahan, 2000).
4. The Effect of Law on Moral Expression This is perhaps the most interesting category, and the most puzzling for those convinced the law is valuable only to the extent it can effect instrumental goals. Evidence abounds that people (advocates, policy makers and voters) use the law in ways unconnected to their own material interests, and even in ways that are certain to have no tangible effect on the world—no direct redistribution of resources, no protection of treasured property, no increase or decrease in desirable or abhorrent behaviors, perhaps not even changes in common beliefs. We have already offered several examples, but consider again the gay sodomy cases. As all litigated cases do, these cost enormous sums, calculated in both time and money, to litigate. As such, one would expect a great deal to ride on the outcome. And it does—just not anything that can be measured in changes to behavior, or possibly even to attitudes. In the past 40 years, very few people have been arrested, and fewer still prosecuted, for gay sodomy in the U.S. It strains credibility to argue that homosexuals have objected to such laws out of an appreciable fear of being arrested for private, consensual sex with another same-sex adult.1 Nevertheless, these laws—before being declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2003 (Lawrence v. Texas)—were important, even though never
1
Indeed, in the United States in the past 35 years or so, the only arrests for consensual homosexual sodomy in a secluded location between adults that we could find were the plaintiff and his partner in the Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) case, and the defendants in the Lawrence v. Texas (2003) case. Bowers and his partner were arrested but not prosecuted in Georgia in 1984. Lawrence and his partner were arrested and fined about $200 each in Texas in 1998. Other cases where state sodomy laws had been invoked involved either nonconsensual or public sex, or sex with a minor (Eskridge, 1997).
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enforced. Their import, however, was symbolic and indirect, and the Court itself understood this: When homosexual conduct is made criminal by the law of the State, . . . [it] demeans the lives of homosexual persons. The stigma this criminal statute imposes, moreover, is not trivial[;] it remains a criminal offense with all that imports for the dignity of the persons charged. (Lawrence v. Texas, 2003, p. 575).
Other examples of this phenomenon abound. ‘‘Partial-birth’’ abortion techniques are used in fewer than two-tenths of one per cent of all pregnancy terminations (Finer and Henshaw, 2003), and yet have been the subject of multiple legislative bans and court challenges. The Supreme Court recently decided the latest in a long line of capital punishment cases challenging not the death penalty itself, but the manner in which execution is inflicted (Baze v. Rees, 2008). This case, like its predecessors, received massive media coverage and public attention, despite the fact that whatever the Supreme Court decided, the number of convicts executed would remain the same— only the particular drug protocol for executing them might differ. The specter of flag-burning gripped the nation in the late 1980s, and was also the subject of a Supreme Court opinion (Texas v. Johnson, 1989), yet the number of actual cases of flags burned in protest on domestic soil has been vanishingly small (indeed, was probably higher than if laws banning the practice had never been passed at all). In any event, it is very hard to see any measurable collateral effects of either allowing or banning the burning of flags. The list goes on. Clearly, the legal system is very familiar with hot debates over issues more important for their symbolism than for their concrete, immediate consequences. Psychologists are familiar with the phenomenon, too. Below, we describe two lines of psychological research that have explored how people use the law, or the legal system, to effect expressive goals: symbolic politics, and group identity. We are engaging in a small leap here by declaring that ‘‘expressive’’ goals are about ‘‘morality.’’ What we mean is that people think that certain laws ‘‘ought’’ or ‘‘ought not’’ exist simply because they express the right (or wrong) values, commitments, or affiliations. We believe it makes sense to call this expressive sensibility a moral one.
4.1. Law and Symbolic Politics The classic—and outside of psychology, still dominant—view of political commitments is instrumentalist: people support particular candidates, referenda and policies to the extent that they are concretely, materially advantaged by them (Campbell et al., 1960; Dahl, 1961; Downs, 1957; The Federalist Papers #10, 1788/2003; Hobbes, 1651/1991). Challenging this view starts with pointing out one glaringly large fly in the ointment of
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self-interested political participation: voting itself. Why do citizens in the U.S. ever expend the time and effort to go to a polling place to cast their vote (Engelen, 2006)? They face no penalties for failing to do so, and casting a ballot costs them time and effort. Yet political elections are never won by a single vote; even if by chance one was, a citizen could not predict this before expending the resources to go to the polling place. Over the years, various scholars have attempted to resolve this puzzle within the instrumentalist framework (e.g., Carling, 1998; Dowding, 2005; Fiorina, 1976). David O. Sears and his colleagues, though, have extended the problem of voting still further, to political attitudes more generally. For example, Sears found that whites’ support for school busing was not predicted by whether or not they had children susceptible to being bused. Instead, it was predicted by measures of racial intolerance and political conservatism (Sears et al., 1979). He also found that support for the Vietnam War was well-predicted by ‘‘symbolic’’ attitudes (such as political affiliation, but also ‘‘feeling thermometers’’ towards the ‘‘military’’ and ‘‘antiwar’’ protesters generally), but was only weakly predicted by ‘‘self-interest,’’ defined as having an immediate family member serving in Vietnam (Lau et al., 1978). Sears followed these studies with several others, all showing that symbolic commitments predicted political attitudes much better than self-interest in the areas of, for example, support for the government’s energy policies during the 1974 energy crisis (Sears et al., 1978); presidential voting (Sears et al., 1980); desire for government-sponsored health insurance (Sears et al., 1980); and support for bilingual education (Huddy and Sears, 1990). Other researchers have taken up the torch and shown the same pattern. For example, fear of infection does not explain attitudes towards AIDS sufferers (Herek and Capitanio, 1998), being unemployed does not induce people to support economic safety nets (Schlozman and Verba, 1979), having a child enrolled in public school does not increase a citizen’s support for government expenditures on education ( Jennings, 1979), and neither real nor perceived crime rates, nor fear of crime, predict support for gun control (Adams, 1996; Kleck, 1996). Not everyone agrees that symbolic commitments dominate self-interest in explaining political attitudes. The main complaint is that studies of symbolic commitments have been too stingy in their definition of ‘‘self-interest’’ (refusing to include much beyond very direct, tangible, and often financial effects of a policy) and too generous in their operationalization of symbolic commitments (including measures that are confounded with self-interested outcomes) (Crano, 1997; Lehman and Crano, 2002). Nevertheless, at least in psychology, the notion that people’s political commitments are governed more by expressive than self-interested concerns is now the prevailing one (Kinder, 1998). In other words, people often desire that the law should be a particular way not because of what it does for them, but because of what it says to and about them.
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4.2. Law and Group Identity Among the stronger predictors of political attitudes are group affiliations: for instance, whites are more likely to oppose busing than blacks (Kelley, 1974); middle class Protestants were more likely to support Prohibition than either lower-class immigrant Catholics or the urban upper-class (Gusfield, 1986); male, rural Protestants are more likely to oppose gun control than female, urban Catholics (Kahan and Braman, 2003). Research on group identity helps explain why: abundant work shows that people form groups on the thinnest bases (Rabbie and Horwitz, 1969; Tajfel and Turner, 1986; Tajfel et al., 1971), and immediately begin giving fellow group members preferential treatment—not only at the expense of their own self-interest (Brewer and Kramer, 1986; Kramer and Brewer, 1984), but sometimes even at the expense of group welfare as a whole (Tajfel et al., 1971). The need for affiliation with and acceptance by important others is clearly one of the most central and satisfying human motivations (Baumeister, 1998; Baumeister and Leary, 1995; Tajfel and Turner, 1986), and it is a need that is not motivated solely, or perhaps even importantly, by self-interested concerns (Batson, 1994; Baumeister and Leary, 1995; Lind and Tyler, 1988). People see and use the law as expressions of their group identities in two ways. The first is proactive: they support or oppose particular regulations as a way to express solidarity with their groups. Sometimes these expressions of solidarity are obvious, as with the gay sodomy example cited above; sometimes they are only thinly veiled, as with flag burning (an issue which pits urban elites against the rural and working class) (Taylor, 2006). Sometimes they take the particular tools of the social scientist to parse clearly: Gusfield (1986) spent a career demonstrating that the Prohibition movement was at heart motivated by animosity and cultural conflict between rural Protestants and immigrant Catholics; Luker (1984) convincingly argued that the movement to regulate abortion was animated by similar conflict between ‘‘career women’’ (that is, women who sought social status and satisfaction outside the home) and women who sought social status and satisfaction in the traditional role of wife and mother. People see legal regulation of behaviors as a way to define the bounds of good citizenship and to condemn those who do not share their worldview. Law is a form of cultural capital that can be captured by opposed groups, not just (or sometimes even at all) to cause material changes in behavior, but to stick a flag in the dirt to mark public territory as their own, culturally and morally speaking (Kahan, 1999). The second use of the law for group identity is related to the first, but is more passive. Instead of actively trying to shape identity norms or capture social capital for their fellow group members, people also simply assess laws, and their interactions with legal actors, as a way to gauge their own social standing. One dimension of social standing for which people seek evidence
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is ‘‘between groups’’—that is, how well regarded is my group relative to other groups (Tajfel and Turner, 1986; Turner et al., 1987)? The state of the laws themselves can shed considerable light on this question. Laws have the imprimatur—in democracies, at least—of public support. (Whether they do in nondemocracies is, of course, a function of how much obvious public support there is for the governing regime.) A homosexual living in Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage is legally permitted, should feel more valued as a citizen and member of the community than a homosexual living in, for instance, California, Oregon, Arkansas, or Michigan (to name just four), where voters have passed referenda explicitly barring such marriages. A woman with career ambitions who has access to legal abortion should feel validated in her choice to delay (or forgo) motherhood; a gender-traditionalist, stay-at-home mother whose state makes access to abortion difficult (or impossible) should feel validated in her community’s choice to endorse the propriety, even superiority, of conventional gender roles with regard to family. Another dimension along which people seek to assess their social standing is ‘‘within groups’’—that is, how well regarded am I as a member of my own social group? People perceive that how they are treated individually within a legal regime conveys some information about how well regarded they are by their group (Lind and Tyler, 1988; Tyler, 1990; Tyler and Lind, 2000). This is because individuals feel entitled to respectful treatment by fellow group members to a degree they do not expect it from outgroup members (Tyler, 1994). The more authoritative and prototypical the in-group member, the more information they glean from how the in-group member treats them, because more prototypical members have the most reliable information about individuals’ standing in the group (Sunshine and Tyler, 2003). So, for instance, if I am treated politely and fairly by a police officer (Sunshine and Tyler, 2003) or favorably by a judge (Bilz, 2006), I take that good treatment to mean that I am a respected and valuable group member. In fact, my treatment by authoritative legal actors can also shed light on how my group is regarded within the collective as a whole: if, for instance, the legal authority figure is an outgroup member, I will presume that good treatment by her means that my group is well-regarded by the outgroup, and that poor treatment means the opposite (Bilz, 2006). In short, people regard the law as a way to assess how well they, their groups, or their values and commitments stand in the community. This function of the law is purely expressive: it performs this task whether or not the law is concretely effective; that is, whether or not it changes a single behavior, attitude, or emotion of the citizens ostensibly being regulated.
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5. Conclusion The idea that the law can be used to shape morality is taken almost as a shibboleth, being repeatedly and reflexively offered as a reason to advocate for legal change, and alternatively, to bemoan the moral meddling of a Big Brother-like state. But given the ubiquity of the assumed power of the law to shape morally laden cognitions, emotions, and behaviors, there is surprisingly little direct evidence for it. In this chapter, we have described the existing evidence, and where there is no direct evidence we have assembled more general psychological evidence to make a strong case that the law in fact can effect moral goals. Certainly, the law can shape moral behaviors by simply shifting the costs and benefits of the activity being regulated. However, it is more interesting, and more helpful to a governing regime, when law changes people’s moral response to regulated activities, making citizens more or less likely to engage in the behavior without the need for direct enforcement. Surely, it would be an expensive and oppressive government that had to rely on the fear of punishment or anticipation of reward before its citizens would comply with the law. Luckily, in addition to—probably even more than—relying on a straightforward cost-benefit analysis, people are powerfully inclined to refrain from behavior they find morally repugnant, and indulge in behaviors they regard as morally neutral (or even beneficial). Policy makers use this fact to design efficient, workable systems of law, and, in turn, moral entrepreneurs frequently use the law to effect their own ends. Still, the fact that everyone acts as if the law shapes morals should not satisfy social scientists, particularly psychologists, who well know that people are not always accurate in their understanding of how the social world works. So the very last—but most important—ambition of this chapter is to spur more direct research examining how the law affects morality, and to suggest fruitful places where curious students of the psychology of law could start looking.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to Tom Gaeta and Jessica Server for excellent research assistance. Thanks to Chris Bauman and Mary R. Rose for helpful comments and suggestions. We gratefully acknowledge the American Bar Foundation and the Searle Center on Law, Regulation, and Economic Growth at Northwestern University for research support.
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Protected Values and Omission Bias as Deontological Judgments Jonathan Baron and Ilana Ritov Contents 1. Introduction 1.1. Biases as Deviations from Utilitarianianism 1.2. Overview 2. Protected Values 3. Relation of PVs to Other Types of Judgment 3.1. Moralistic Values 3.2. Moral Realism 3.3. Authority Independence (vs. Social Norms or Conventions) 4. Omission Bias 5. Relation of Omission Bias to Other Biases 5.1. Default Bias and Status-Quo Bias 5.2. Indirectness and the Double Effect 5.3. Agent Relativity 5.4. Naturalism 5.5. Physical Proximity and Contact 6. Study 1: Relation of PVs to Omission Bias 6.1. Method 6.2. Results 6.3. Discussion 7. Study 2: Relation to Emotion 7.1. Method 7.2. Results 7.3. Follow-Up 8. Study 3: The Nature of Omission Bias 8.1. Method 8.2. Results 9. Conclusion Acknowledgments References
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Abstract We review the major findings concerning omission bias and protected values (PVs). PVs are values that are absolute, hence protected from trade-offs with other values. We argue that PVs against omissions are relatively rare, since a prohibited omission would be an injunction to act, which could create infinite obligations, and we provide support for this argument. We also replicate and extend earlier findings of a correlation between PVs and omission bias, the bias to favor harms of omission over equal or greater harms from action. We discuss the nature of omission bias and its relation to other biases. We also find that, although emotional responses are correlated with biases, we can manipulate apparent emotional responses without affecting PVs or omission bias. We thus argue that emotions are not the only cause of biases.
1. Introduction The study of heuristics and biases in judgments and decisions, begin by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, has been extended to judgments and decisions that count as moral, if only because they concern choices that affect others aside from the decision maker. The main focus of this chapter is the bias that favors harms of omission over equal or lesser harms from action, and its relation to values that are taken to be absolute, that is, protected from trade-offs with other values. The bias favoring harmful omissions — omission bias — by itself is found in both moral and nonmoral judgments and decisions. Indeed, an early study (Ritov and Baron, 1990) found essentially no difference between cases that involved decisions for others and those that involved decisions for the self. But protected values (PVs) seem more uniquely moral, although they need not be so.
1.1. Biases as Deviations from Utilitarianianism In what sense are these biases? Our concern is decisions about what to do, and judgments of such decisions, such as ‘‘which option is a better choice.’’ The field of ‘‘moral judgment’’ includes much more than such decisions. We regard judgments about permissibility, praise, blame, character, virtues, and other judgments as derived, not fundamental. Given this focus, it is natural to think about moral judgment as a type of decision making. A common approach to the study of decision making is to compare people’s judgments and choices to normative models. A normative model provides a standard for evaluation of judgments. For example, the psychological study of errors in logical syllogisms has used formal logic as a normative model for over 100 years. Judgments of logical
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syllogisms depart from this normative model, and much research has tried to explain these departures. In decision making, a natural normative model is utility theory, which holds that the best options are those that maximize the utility of their consequences, or the expectation of that utility taking probabilities into account. ‘‘Utility’’ is simply the amount of goodness or ‘‘good’’ (Broome, 1991). The concept assumes that goodness can be compared across different types of outcomes, or even outcomes that affect different people (see Baron, 1993; Hare, 1981, for a defense of some of these assumptions). Note that utility is an interval scale, like time, not a ratio scale like most physical measures; it has no natural zero point. All we need to make decisions are differences, because we always compare one option to some other option. When this model is applied to decisions that affect many people, it amounts to utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is taken to be a theory of moral decision making because it applies to decisions that affect other people aside from the decision maker. It thus conflicts with other moral theories, which are loosely grouped under the heading of ‘‘deontology.’’1 Deontological theories concern properties of options other than their consequences, such as whether they involve action or omission and whether they bring about consequences directly or indirectly. One other property that is relevant in some deontological theories is intention or motivation. We regard intention as irrelevant to the question of what to do, because that question is asked by a decision maker who presumably wants to form an intention to choose a particular option and is asking for advice from the theory. Yet, in experiments about judgments of options, we must be careful not to let subjects’ judgments be contaminated by their judgments of intention, so this is something that require careful experimental control. (Such control is very difficult in between-subject designs. The easiest way to control intention is to give a background story that explains the intention before asking about different ways of implementing it, as done by Spranca et al., 1991.) Utilitarianism is controversial because of these conflicts. Deontological theories have a long history and are sometimes more consistent with moral intuitions than utilitarian theories. We want to suggest here that at least some of these intuitions are the result of cognitive biases that have been found elsewhere in the study of judgment and decision making. Indeed, one of the biases of interest — the bias toward harms of omission over smaller harms of taking action — is found in judgments and decision that affect the
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We ignore, for simplicity, theories that are nonutilitarian but still consequentialist in the sense they evaluate decisions in terms of goodness of consequences but not in terms of total good or expected good. And we ignore the fact that some types of moral theory are neither consequentialist nor deontological, e.g., because they are concerned with virtues rather than with particular decisions. Deontological theories are the ones that are directly opposed to utilitarianism.
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self only, as well as those that affect others. It is even possible that reliance on intuitions in the development of philosophical normative theories is subject to these biases, which then become systematized into the theories (as suggested by Greene, 2007; Greene and Baron, 2001). The study of biases away from utilitarian judgment might be useful even if utilitarianism is an incorrect moral theory. Let us assume the ‘‘simpleeffects hypothesis’’: decisions made by trying to follow principle P usually yield outcomes more consistent with P than are the outcomes of decisions made in other ways. In particular, decisions that try to produce the best consequences usually do just that. Conversely, and most importantly, decisions made on the basis of deontological principles usually lead to results that are not as good as the best that could be achieved. If ‘‘usually’’ means ‘‘almost always,’’ then the study of biases away from utilitarian decisions can help us understand how consequences — things that matter to us — might be improved by making decisions differently. If such improvement results in violating some true (deontological) principle of morality, and if we follow that principle, then at least we will know the cost of following it. Note that utilitarianism could be incorrect in a more interesting way than simply being inconsistent with some moral truth. It could turn out that trying to make utilitarian decisions is self-defeating (Parfit, 1984). We might maximize utility by deciding never to commit adultery or to kill innocent civilians in a terrorist attack, rather than by reflecting on the costs and benefits of such options. But it could also be that we would never do these things even if we did weigh the costs and benefits, so long as our reflection took into account the probability of error in our own judgments (Baron, 2008). The utilitarian model would have to include the consequences of such errors. This argument strengthens the appeal of the simpleeffects hypothesis by showing that possible exceptions to it may not be exceptions at all. Utilitarianism is often criticized because of the ‘‘excessive calculation’’ required to consider all the probabilistic outcomes and their effects on different people. Yet, in practice, in the real world, ‘‘trying to maximize utility’’ can amount simply to asking oneself which option would maximize utility. If two options are so close in the practical decision maker’s mind that calculation seems to be required, then choosing the wrong one would probably result in little utility loss. A much bigger loss could result from following a deontological principle that favors an option that is obviously inferior to the option that seems to maximize utility.
1.2. Overview In this chapter, we shall focus on a few biases (away from utilitarianism) that are inconsistent with utilitarianism because they are driven by deontological intuitions or principles. We have no definitive list of such biases, in part
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because they are defined negatively, as simply principles that refer to properties of options other than their expected utility. The ones we describe are those we have studied. We shall try to give a psychological account of the nature of these biases. This account will be incomplete, but we think we have made some progress in the last 20 years (since the research described by Ritov and Baron, 1990). We shall first discuss what we called ‘‘protected values’’ because they are protected from trade-offs with other values (Baron and Spranca, 1997). We define PVs according to this property of absoluteness, but we find that they tend to have other properties, and we speculate about why this is so. One property is that they tend to involve prohibitions of actions rather than ‘‘prohibitions of omissions’’ (i.e., injunctions to act). This property implies that PVs ought to be associated with a stronger bias toward harmful omissions as opposed to less harmful acts, the bias we call omission bias. We then move to the discussion of omission bias itself, which is, in turn related to other biases such as the status-quo bias and the bias toward indirect harm rather than direct harm. We conclude with some speculations about the origin and nature of deontological principles in general.
2. Protected Values People claim to value some goods so strongly that they are unwilling to destroy any of these goods, no matter how great the benefits. Baron and Spranca (1997) called such attitudes ‘‘protected values’’ because they were protected from trade-offs with other values. Many of these values involve morally questioned behaviors, such as cloning people for reproduction or destroying the natural environment. Other researchers have used the term ‘‘sacred values’’ for a similar phenomenon (Fiske and Tetlock, 1997; Tetlock et al., 1996). It appears that such rules are often overgeneralizations. When people are asked to try to think of counterexamples, cases in which the benefits would be great enough to justify taking the prohibited action, they can usually do so, and they change their mind about, whether the rule is absolute (Baron and Leshner, 2000). Rules of this sort, if they were taken seriously, would cause great difficulty for evaluation of public policies through measurement of utility, because they would amount to infinite utilities and would thus allow one person to determine a decision for everyone — unless someone else had a conflicting rule, in which case the choice could not be determined. People who had more than one such rule — and many people say they have several — could find themselves in a similar dilemma. We thus consider PVs to be a form of bias, even though the argument against lexical preferences is not theoretically strong.
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3. Relation of PVs to Other Types of Judgment PVs are closely related to other types of values, which express themselves in other ways.
3.1. Moralistic Values Moralistic goals or values are those that people want others to follow, regardless of whether the others endorse the same values and regardless of whether the consequences are, on the whole, worse as a result. Baron (2003) found that people endorsed moralistic goals for banning actions like the following:
Testing a fetus for IQ genes and aborting it if its expected IQ is below average; Cloning someone with desired traits so that these may be passed on, such as an athletic champion or brilliant scientist; Modifying the genes of an embryo so that, when it is born, it will have a higher IQ; and Giving a drug (with no side effects) to enhance school performance of normal children. In many cases (22 per cent of examples like these), subjects (recruited on the World Wide Web) would ban these actions even if the consequences of allowing the actions were better on the whole than the consequences of banning them, if the subjects could imagine that the consequences might be better, and if ‘‘almost everyone in a nation thought that the behavior should be allowed.’’ In sum, they were willing to impose their moral (istic) principles on others, whatever the consequences, and whatever the others wanted. Moralistic values, taken seriously, are protected from trade-offs with values involving consequences, so they are likely to be thought of as PVs.
3.2. Moral Realism People differ in whether they think that moral judgments can be objectively true, in the way that ‘‘2 þ 2 ¼ 4’’ is true, or in the way in which scientific knowledge can be true. The alternative is that moral judgments are subjective, more like tastes, and that they legitimately differ from person to person. Goodwin and Darley (2008) found that many adults believe that moral principles are objective or real in this sense. Piaget (1965) previously argued that moral realism was found in an early stage of moral development. When
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moral judgments are seen as subjective, they are less likely to be seen as absolute, other things being equal.
3.3. Authority Independence (vs. Social Norms or Conventions) Turiel (1983) and others following in his tradition (e.g., Nucci, 2001) found that even children can distinguish moral rules and conventional rules. Turiel and his collaborators asked the children whether it would be okay to call one’s teacher by her first name if everyone thought it was okay, or to bow instead of shaking hands, or whether it would be okay for a bully to push another kid off the top of a slide if everyone thought it was okay. Even most second graders said it would be okay to change the conventions but not the moral rules. It would still be wrong to push someone off of a slide, even if everyone thought it was not wrong. Bicchieri (2006) argues, in essence, for a distinction between two types of judgment that for Turiel and Nucci would both fall under the heading of convention. She would distinguish conventions and social norms. True conventions are rules that can be followed without cost, and typically with some benefit, provided that enough others are following them. Examples of conventions are using the alphabet for ordering, driving on the right (or left) side of the road. It is to your advantage to drive on the right if everyone else is driving on the right. Social norms require cost. They are like conventions in that they are contingent on the behavior of others. A person who embraces a social norm is willing to pay some personal cost to abide by it, provided that enough others are doing the same. Examples are norms of fashion or dress (some of which require considerable effort), norms of politeness, and codes of ethics (written or unwritten), such as those that forbid sexual relationships between students and teachers. A person who embraces a norm against such relationships will not regard the issue as fully moral (that is, applicable regardless of what people think and do) but will abide by the rule if it is expected and if others live up to the expectation. Moral rules also involve some cost, but people who endorse these rules think they should be followed regardless of what others think.
4. Omission Bias Some vaccines cause (in essence) the disease they prevent, but the chance of getting the disease is lower with the vaccine than without it. Note that, in this case and others like it, if we vaccinate, then we are hurting some people — those who will get sick from the vaccine — in order to help
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others, those who would get sick without it. We just do not know who will be hurt and who will be helped. If our moral intuition says that it is wrong to hurt some and help others, we might consider this from the perspective of the individual. For each affected person, the decision is between a risk of illness from the vaccine and a higher risk of illness without it. Expected utility would dictate that each person would want the vaccine. A refusal to provide the vaccine — on the grounds of not wanting to hurt some in order to help others — would reduce everyone’s expected utility. We can thus argue that intuition favoring harmful omission over less harmful acts is nonnormative even without defending all of utilitarianism (Baron, 1993, Chap. 7). The simple argument is the Golden Rule. If you were a child, which would you prefer: a 10/10,000 chance of death from a disease or a 5/10,000 chance of death from a vaccine? Would it matter to you whether the chance resulted from an act or omission? More generally, each of us has reason to endorse a principle that others should make decisions so as to minimize our chance of death (other things being equal). Spranca et al. (1991) found a bias toward omissions in situations that were more obviously moral than those discussed so far. In one scenario, John, the best tennis player at a club, wound up playing the final of the club’s tournament against Ivan Lendl (then ranked first in the world). John knew that Ivan was allergic to cayenne pepper and that the salad dressing in the club restaurant contained it. When John went to dinner with Ivan the night before the final, he planned to recommend the house dressing to Ivan, hoping that Ivan would get a bit sick and lose the match. In one ending to the story, John recommended the dressing. In the other, Ivan ordered the dressing himself just before John was about to recommend it, and John, of course, said nothing. When asked whether John’s behavior is worse in one ending or the other, about a third of the subjects said that it was worse when he acted. These subjects tended to say that John did not cause Ivan’s illness by saying nothing. (In reply, it might be said that the relevant sense of ‘‘cause’’ here concerns whether John had control over what Ivan ate, which he did.) In sum, ‘‘omission bias’’ is the tendency to judge acts that are harmful (relative to the alternative option) as worse than omissions that are equally harmful (relative to the alternative) or even more harmful (as in the vaccination case) (Baron and Ritov, 1994). In any given case, some people display this bias and others do not. Such a conclusion has strong implications. Most of us have the goal of not hurting people. If we combine this goal with the argument that the distinction between omission and commission is normatively irrelevant, then we must conclude that we ought to desire to help people as well. The reasons for not hurting people and the reasons for helping them are the same. We care about the achievement of their goals. Omission bias is related to issues of public controversy, such as whether active euthanasia should be allowed. Most countries (and most states of the
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United States) now allow passive euthanasia, the withholding of even standard medical treatment for those who are judged to be no worse off dead than alive, but active euthanasia is almost everywhere banned even for those who wish to die. Opponents of active euthanasia can, of course, find other arguments against it than the fact that it is ‘‘active.’’ But it is possible that these arguments would not be seen as so compelling if the distinction between acts and omissions were not made. Omission bias could also justify a lack of concern with the problems of others (Singer, 1993). For example, much of the world’s population lives in dire poverty today and into the foreseeable future. People — even people who take an interest in social issues — often think that they are not responsible for this poverty and need do nothing about it. It can be argued, however, that with a little effort we can think of all sorts of things we can do that will help the situation immensely at very low cost to ourselves, such as supporting beneficial policies. Failure to do these things can be seen as a harm, but many people do not see it that way.
5. Relation of Omission Bias to Other Biases Several other results in the literature overlap with omission bias, in the sense that they are confounded with it, in experiments and in the real world.
5.1. Default Bias and Status-Quo Bias The status-quo bias is a bias toward the status-quo or keeping one’s endowment (Kahneman et al., 1990; Samuelson and Zeckhauser, 1988). It has been found repeatedly in many situations. In most studies of this bias, keeping the status quo requires no action, and changing the status quo requires action. Ritov and Baron (1992) found that the status-quo bias — the attachment to the status-quo that is common to all of these findings — was largely a consequence of a bias toward the default option. Specifically, when subjects were told that keeping the status-quo required action and that giving it up required inaction, subjects then favored giving up the status-quo. When both options required action, no preference for the status-quo was found, but when both options yielded new outcomes (neither one matching the status-quo), a preference for omissions was still found. Schweitzer (1994) and Baron and Ritov (1994) found both omission bias without a status-quo option. Thus, the status-quo bias as usually measured seems to consists of two different effects, a bias toward the default and (in some cases) a bias toward the status-quo. The terms ‘‘omission bias’’ and ‘‘default bias’’ have been used interchangeably for various results. However, as originally defined by Ritov and Baron (1990), the omission bias is a bias toward harms of omission over equal
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or greater harms that result from action. The term ‘‘default bias’’ is used more generally for a bias toward the default (which is, of course, often the same as ‘‘doing nothing,’’ hence an omission).
5.2. Indirectness and the Double Effect The indirectness bias is illustrated in the doctrine of the double effect. For example, when a mother’s life is threatened by a pregnancy, some Catholic hospitals will permit a hysterectomy to save the mother, but they will not permit an abortion. The fetus dies in either case, but, in the case of the hysterectomy (which of course leaves the mother unable to bear another child), the killing is seen as an indirect by-product (Bennett, 1981; Kuhse, 1987). In the abortion, however, the death of the fetus is the means to save the mother, so the fetus is being harmed directly. The indirectness bias is shown in the following scenario (Royzman and Baron, 2002): A new viral disease is spreading rapidly in a region of Africa. Left alone, it will kill 100,000 people out of 1,000,000 in the region. X, a public health official, has two ways to prevent this. Both will stop the spread of the virus and prevent all these deaths: A. Give all 1,000,000 a shot that makes them immune to the first disease. The shot will also cause, as a side effect, a second disease that will kill 100 people. B. Give all 1,000,000 a shot that gives them another disease, which is incompatible with the first disease. The second disease will kill 100 people. Most subjects thought that option A was better, because the deaths are a side effect rather than part of the mechanism of the main effect. Later, we suggest that indirectness bias is related to omission bias in that both are affected by perceived causality.
5.3. Agent Relativity Agent relativity illustrated in the following scenario used by Baron and Miller (1999). X is one of ten people who could save someone’s life by donating bone marrow (a painful but relatively risk-free procedure) to Y. Is X’s obligation to donate greater when X is Y’s cousin then when X and Y are unrelated? Many people think so. Utilitarians even think so, if they think that family cohesion is a good thing that should be promoted for other reasons. Now consider Z, who is unrelated to X or Y. X, the potential donor, asks Z’s advice about whether to donate, and Z knows that X will probably follow the advice offered. Does Z have a greater obligation to advise donation when X and Y are cousins than when X and Y are unrelated?
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A utilitarian who answered yes to the first question would have to answer yes to this one. After all, it is promoting family loyalty that is at issue, and it does not matter whose family it is (without knowing more details, of course). An agent relative response, however, would say that only Y needs to worry about family obligations. The obligation is relative to the agent. It differs from person to person. Miller and Baron found no evidence for agent relativity in any of their subjects (who were Indian as well as American). However, many philosophers argue that some obligations are agent relative in this way (see McNaughton and Rawling, 1991, for a review). Omission bias is agent relative when the omission is the result of someone else’s action. In the classic case of shooting one prisoner to save ten from the horrible dictator, the choice of not shooting is implicitly agent relative, because shooting will happen anyway. This is not a pure test of agent relativity, though, because the two options also differ in doing something versus doing nothing.
5.4. Naturalism Naturalism is the bias toward nature. It is also related to omission bias, because ‘‘nature’’ often defines the default situation, the result of inaction, as in the case of the vaccination, where the disease can be assumed to be natural. (Of course, the result of omission is not always natural, as in the case of the dictator just described.) Rozin et al. (2004) found that people prefer natural food even if it is chemically identical to ‘‘artificial’’ food.
5.5. Physical Proximity and Contact People consider harm to be worse when it involves physical contact with the victim. For example, people regard it as worse to ‘‘push a man off of a footbridge and in front of a train in order to cause the man to fall and be hit by the train, thereby slowing it and saving five people ahead on the tracks’’ than to ‘‘pull a lever that redirects a trolley onto a side track in order to save five people ahead on the main track if, as a side-effect, pulling the lever drops a man off a footbridge and in front of the train on the side tracks, where he will be hit’’ (Cushman et al., 2006). Actions sometimes involve such contact, more than omissions.
6. Study 1: Relation of PVs to Omission Bias Baron and Spranca (1997) proposed that PVs were not concerned so much with consequences as with the means of bringing about those consequences. In particular, they proposed that people would hold such values
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for acts but generally not for omissions (except in cases in which the decision maker is ‘‘responsible’’ for prevention of harm). It is possible for someone to hold many PVs for acts — do not clone, do not cut rainforests, and so on — and adhere to all these rules. Yet, a PV for an omission would require taking any action to prevent some bad outcome. It would be difficult to hold more than a few of these omission PVs consistently, as one’s whole life could be consumed with any one of them. Ritov and Baron (1999; also Baron and Leshner, 2000) found that, indeed, PVs tended to correlate with omission bias when these trade-off with harms of action. People who have PVs against the destruction of animal species tend to be particularly reluctant to take actions that will destroy some species in order to save more species. Ritov and Baron asked people, for example, how many species they were willing to destroy in order to save 20 species of fish that would become extinct if nothing were done. We found that those who had PVs against the destruction of species had lower thresholds, where the threshold is the maximum number that they were willing to destroy. Arguably, an even better measure is the unwillingness to destroy any species in order to save more. If a PV is absolute, then this is its implication. We found that these zero threshold responses were also correlated with PVs. We might think that true PVs are always associated with zero responses. Alternatively, Baron and Leshner (2000) found that PVs were often not so absolute as they seemed to people at first, and people were willing to weaken them if the harm caused by action was very small relative to the harm that action prevented. The PVs that Ritov and Baron (1999) examined were mostly those that involved acts. Only one or two (e.g., ‘‘letting people die from starvation’’) were expressed in terms that were not actions. These nonaction items also correlated with omission bias. The present experiment tests the basic claim in another way, by asking PV questions that are explicitly about acts or omissions. The main hypothesis is that PVs for acts are more likely to be found than those for omissions. We suggest that this is for the reason proposed by Baron and Spranca, namely, the difficulty of living with more than one PV for omissions. In addition, the experiment deals with a finding of Bartels and Medin (2007). They used a different way of measuring omission bias and found that it was negatively correlated with PVs, not positively correlated as found by Ritov and Baron. The measure, used by Connolly and Reb (2003)2 is described in Section 6.1. The present experiment, like that of Bartels and Medin, used both of these measures of omission bias. It differed in two main 2
Connolly and Reb failed to find omission bias for vaccination decisions, using this measure. Baron and Ritov (2004) examine possible reasons for this failure and provide data replicating in a new way the omission bias for vaccination. This issue is not relevant here.
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ways. First, it was done on the World Wide Web, so the subjects were older and more varied than those used by Bartels and Medin. Second, the measure of PVs focused on morality rather than acceptability, following the idea that PVs are primarily moral judgments. Like previous studies, the design is all within-subject; the two measures of omission bias were counterbalanced, with the PV measure between them.
6.1. Method Subjects were part of a panel who completed questionnaires on the Web for pay, recruited from a variety of sources beginning in 1995. From other studies in which we asked for demographic data, we found that the panel is roughly typical of the United States in age, income, and education (although less varied in income, given that the rich do not need the money and the poor do not have computers). Some panel members are not from the United States. The majority are women. This study was completed by 170 subjects, 21 per cent males, with ages from 18 to 67 (median 43). Each subject was paid $4. (Six other subjects omitted because their mean response times were outliers on the fast side. Results were similar if they were included.) The study began with a short introduction: ‘‘Each page describes some outcome that is morally controversial. We are interested in what you think of government policies that would affect the frequency this outcome. Most of these question involve choices between two bad outcomes. Please take seriously the possibility that such choices arise. . .’’ The study used two methods. In the Ritov/Baron (RB) method, a typical item was If the government does nothing, 20 fish species will become extinct due to naturally changing water levels. Building a dam would save 20 species of fish above the dam but cause 6 species to become extinct downstream. Should the government build the dam? yes no What is the largest number of species lost as a result of building the barrier at which the government should build the dam? 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 In the Connolly/Reb (CR) method, the last two questions were replaced with nine questions of the form, ‘‘Should the government build the dam if the number of species extinctions caused by the dam were 2? yes no.’’ The numbers went from 2 to 18, in steps of two, in this case. (For 91 subjects, there were ten questions, beginning with 0 instead of 2, to be more parallel to the RB version). The web questionnaire refused to accept responses with a yes answer to a higher number than one with a no answer. In both conditions the numbers were chosen for the case. The initial level of the harms from action was always 30 per cent of the harms of
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omission. The cases were as follows, with per cent PV-omit in parentheses after each
10,000 people will die from a new form of flu. A vaccine that causes a weaker form of flu will prevent these flu deaths by creating immunity, but the vaccine itself will cause 3000 flu deaths (17 per cent). 100,000 ancient redwood trees will be destroyed by natural fire. Intentionally setting smaller fires will prevent the loss of 100,000 ancient redwoods but cause 30,000 ancient redwoods to be destroyed (3 per cent). 20 fish species will become extinct due to naturally changing water levels. Building a dam would save 20 species of fish above the dam but cause 6 species to become extinct downstream (7 per cent). 1000 emergency patients in government hospitals will suffer debilitating strokes. Giving a new drug to all emergency patients would prevent 1000 debilitating strokes but would itself cause 300 debilitating strokes (20 per cent). 100 natural miscarriages will occur in women with multiple pregnancies in government hospitals. Selective abortion of some fetuses will prevent 100 miscarriages, but the abortions themselves amount to 30 intentionally caused miscarriages (29 per cent). 500 airplane passengers will die from an accidental guided missile attack on a large jet. Directing a second jet into the path of the missile, to take the hit, would save the 500 passengers but cause 150 passenger deaths (26 per cent). 5000 workers at a manufacturing plant will lose their jobs. Providing a tax break to this plant would save 5000 jobs, but would cause the loss of 1500 other jobs in a competitor’s plant give the tax break (16 per cent). 200 people will die in car crashes in one stretch of highway. Building a by-pass to move traffic elsewhere would save 200 deaths in crashes, but cause the death of 60 others in the new area (13 per cent). Ten bird species will become extinct from natural causes, Building a barrier would prevent the extinction of ten bird species but cause the loss of three species lost as a result of building the barrier (8 per cent).
The order of items was randomized for each subject. The same random order was used for both conditions. The order of the CR and RB sets was also randomized. In between these two conditions, the subjects answered PV questions about acts and omissions. The PV-act (a PV against causing through action) and PV-omit (against failing to prevent) questions were on the same page in alternating order (but the cases were in the same random order as in the other conditions.) The two items, one for failing to prevent (PV-omit) and one for causing (PV-act) were of the following form:
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FAILING TO PREVENT [CAUSING] THE EXTINCTION OF FISH SPECIES FROM NATURALLY CHANGING WATER LEVELS What do you think of this outcome? It is not a moral issue. It is morally acceptable or even a good thing to do. It is a moral issue, but I cannot say in general whether it is wrong or not. It is morally wrong but should be allowed in most cases. It is morally wrong and should not be allowed except in exceptional cases where it leads to a great benefit or prevents a great harm. It is morally wrong and should not be allowed even if it leads to a great benefit, or prevented a great harm, no matter how great the benefit or harm. Only the last option was counted as a PV.
6.2. Results As hypothesized, PV-act (last option) was much more frequent than PVomit: 15 per cent vs. 8 per cent, respectively (t169 ¼ 6.89, p ¼ 0.0000, across subjects; t8 ¼ 3.29, p ¼ 0.0110, across the 9 cases). This differences was not significantly affected by sex, age, whether or not the zero item was presented in CR, and likewise for all other effects reported here. Table 1 shows the per cent of PV-act for each item used. The difference was, however, affected by the order in which the PV-act and PV-omit questions were asked, in the direction of a carryover effect from the first response to the second (mean difference of differences 5.5 per cent, t169 ¼ 2.34, p ¼ 0.0206). When we looked only at the first response, the means for these responses were 18 per cent and 7 per cent for PV-act and PV-omit respectively (t169 ¼ 6.19, p ¼ 0.0000). The mean omission bias threshold measures were .33 for CR and .34 for RB (where 0 is the minimum threshold and 1 is the maximum). The proportion of zero thresholds (unwillingness to accept any effect of action) were likewise .33 and .34 for CR and RB, respectively. Although these levels are consistent with other studies, the present study was not designed to test rigorously for omission bias (as done better by Baron and Ritov, 2004). In the main analysis, we used mixed models as described by Baayen et al. (2008). The dependent variables were the PV measures: PV-act and PVomit (1 for PV, 0 for no PV). To predict these, using a logistic model, we included fixed effects for the subject means of RB threshold, the items means of RB threshold, the sum of the deviation of each response from its subject mean and the deviation of each response from its item mean (labeled RB and CR in Table 1 the order of the PV questions on the page, and the
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Table 1 Coefficients for Prediction of PV-Act and PV-Omit from Logistic Mixed-Effect Model, Study 1.
Threshold Predictors PV-act PV-omit Predictors PV-act PV-omit
RB 0.20*** 0.06* CR 0.27*** 0.08*
RB.sm 0.21* 0.17 CR.sm 0.26** 0.30*
RB.vm 1.03*** 0.56*** CR.vm 1.01*** 0.52***
RB first 0.90* 0.92þ RB first 0.67þ 0.53
Act first 0.53** 0.26 Act first 0.53** 0.23
RB 1.23*** 0.68*** CR 1.40*** 0.40*
RB.sm 1.88** 0.78 CR.sm 1.38* 1.28þ
RB.vm 4.61*** 2.23** CR.vm 4.62*** 2.42**
RB first 0.66þ 0.82 RB first 0.82* 0.76
Act first 0.30 0.10 Act first 0.47* 0.21
Zeros Predictors PV-act PV-omit Predictors PV-act PV-omit
*** 0.001 ** 0.01 * 0.05 þ 0.1. PV values are 1 with PVs, 0 without. RB and CV values are thresholds on a scale of 1–11, with 1 meaning the lowest possible threshold. ‘‘RB first’’ refers to the order of RB and CR within the session. ‘‘Act first’’ refers to the order of the PV-act and PV-omit questions within a page. ‘‘.sm’’ Refers to subject means; ‘‘.vm’’ refers to case means.
order of the CR and RB conditions for the subject.3 Subject and case were random effects. Table 1 shows the estimated effects for eight different models. Thresholds are the predictors in the top half, and zero responses are the predictors in the bottom half. The first two rows in each half use RB, and the second half, CR. Dependent variables are PV-act and PV-omit in each pair of rows. It is apparent that both CR and RB threshold measures predicted PVs, with similar coefficients. Most of the ‘‘action’’ was in the variance due to cases (RB.vm and CR.rm). Figure 1 shows the relationship between mean thresholds and PV proportions for PV-act and RB threshold, as an example. Still, the idiosyncratic effects of individual subject responses on individual cases, not accounted for by the subject means or the case means (CR and RB) 3
We also tested models that included the interaction between these order effects and CR and RB. One of tests was significant (for both threshold and zero responses), that between the effect of the CR condition and order of the CR/RB conditions for PV-omit: the correlation between low threshold and PVs was higher when RB came first. Because we can make no sense of this particular result, we present the results with no interactions. Qualitatively, all the results are the same with the interaction included.
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0.30
Abort Missile
0.25
PV−act
0.20
Strokes Flu Jobs
0.15
Crashes 0.10 Birds Fish 0.05 Redwoods 0.20
Figure 1
0.25
0.30 0.35 Threshold
0.40
0.45
RB Threshold and PV-Act by Item, Study 1.
also played a role. The individual differences among subjects (CR.sm and RB.sm) played a smaller role. The results for zero responses are similar to those for thresholds. It is interesting, and not expected, that low thresholds are associated with PVs for omission as well as for acts. This result may be partly an artifact of the apparent spillover from the PV-act question to the PV-omit question, as indicated by the order effect for the order of these two items. There was also an order effect for which type of omission bias question (CR or RB) came first in the session.
6.3. Discussion The main finding is that PV-act is more frequent than PV-omit. That is, people are more likely to think in terms of absolute prohibitions of action than ‘‘prohibitions of omission,’’ which amount to absolute injunctions to act whenever the opportunity arises. This result can be understood as a result of the difficulty of defining absolutes with respect to consequences alone, because such a rule would cover omissions as well as acts. We must assume that people tend to realize that they cannot be strongly obliged to take very many actions regardless of the costs. Opportunities to act in ways that save endangered species, etc., are almost always present. The results also replicate those of Ritov and Baron (1999) in finding correlations between PVs and omission bias, and they conflict with Bartels and Medin’s finding that the correlation between PVs and omission bias
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reversed for the CR measure of omission bias for the threshold measure. (For the zero responses, the results are identical overall for CR and RB — five zero responses associated with PVs and one not — and, from the data presented in the paper, the overall association between zero responses and PVs, combining all the data, is significant and in the predicted direction.) We see two possible reasons for the discrepancy, although we cannot explain, and did not replicate, the reversal of the effect for the CR threshold measure. First, our largest effects were the result of variation among cases within subjects. Bartels and Medin relied entirely on differences among subjects. It is possible that the use of several cases calls attention to differences among them. This would be consistent with the results of Kahneman and Ritov (1994; also Ritov and Kahneman, 1997), who found that joint presentation of items causes people to think differently about relative importance. Second, their sample of items and subjects was quite different from ours. They used college students, and we used a possibly more varied group.4 Possibly as a result of this, their overall mean results were different. In general, they found much less omission bias: higher thresholds (roughly twice as high as ours) and far fewer zero responses (6 per cent, compared to 33 per cent). They also found more PVs, at least twice as many as we found.5 It may be that the zero responses in particular are doing much of the work in explaining the results for thresholds, especially the subject differences in thresholds, and there were just too few of them in the Bartels/ Medin study. Indeed, when we included both zero responses and thresholds in the same regressions of PV-act, we found no significant subject effect of thresholds for either the RB or CR measure (although most other effects remained significant).
7. Study 2: Relation to Emotion The present experiment again shows a correlation between omission bias and PVs, using mostly different hypothetical decisions. Importantly, though, it adds questions about emotion, so that we can examine the correlation between emotion, PVs, and omission bias. We also included a manipulation intended to affect emotion without affecting the consequences of the decision. Specifically, we varied the cause of the bad 4
5
Many of our subjects had never attended college, and they were mostly older. We tested for age effects and found no effects close to statistical significance in any of the studies reported here. These differences held up for the single item that was similar in both studies, which we called ‘‘fish’’ and they called ‘‘river diversion.’’ For this item, our subjects had 6 per cent PVs (as opposed to 35 per cent), mean thresholds of .40, .12, .39, and .09 for PV/RB, no-PV/RB, PV/CR, and no-PV/CR, respectively (vs. .60, .34, .47, and.66), and zero responses of 26 per cent for RB and 27 per cent for CR (vs. 4 per cent and 1 per cent).
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outcomes in each scenario. One cause was relatively benign, usually natural, and the other was more malign, usually nefarious human actions.
7.1. Method The 79 subjects ranged in age from 20 to 79 (median 42); 33 per cent were male. (Three others were omitted because they did the study substantially more quickly than everyone else.) The introduction began: Moral judgments Each page describes some outcome that is morally controversial. We are interested in how you would make decisions that would affect the frequency this outcome, if the decision were up to you. Most of these question involve choices between two bad outcomes. Please take seriously the possibility that such choices arise. There are 22 pages, each with five questions. An example of a page is If nothing is done, 1000 emergency patients in government hospitals will suffer debilitating strokes FROM NATURAL CAUSES. Giving a new drug to all emergency patients would prevent 1000 debilitating strokes but would itself cause some debilitating strokes. Now suppose that you have the following options: A: do nothing; 1000 debilitating strokes will occur. B: give the new drug to all patients, causing at least 200 debilitating strokes, in order to prevent 1000 debilitating strokes. Try to imagine that these are your only options, and you must decide. How upset or disturbed do you feel? Not at all A little moderately very much Extremely upset or disturbed. How angry do you feel? Not at all A little moderately very much Extremely upset or disturbed. How sad do you feel? Not at all A little moderately very much
Extremely upset or disturbed.
Choose the first acceptable response: I would give the new drug to all patients even if it led to 999 debilitating strokes. I would give the new drug to all patients even if it led to 800 debilitating strokes. I would give the new drug to all patients even if it led to 600 debilitating strokes. I would give the new drug to all patients even if it led to 400 debilitating strokes. I would give the new drug to all patients even if it led to 200 debilitating strokes. I would not choose option B if it led to any debilitating strokes at all.
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Which of the following best expresses your view about causing debilitating strokes with a drug? This should be done if the benefits of doing it are greater than the harm. This should not be done unless the benefits of allowing it are much greater than the harm. This should never be done, no matter how great the benefits of doing it in some case. Please write any comments on this page here (up to 255 characters): The last question concerns PVs, with the third option representing a PV. The next-to-last question concerns omission bias. The bias was the position in the list of the item chosen, with the first counted as 0. The response was rescaled so that its maximum was 1. The emotion measure was the sum of the responses to the three preceding items, rescaled between 0 and 1. The full set of items was, with the situation and the two options for each item:
10,000 people will die from a new form of flu, WHICH AROSE THROUGH A NATURAL MUTATION [WHICH STARTED WHEN A CARELESS SCIENTIST ALLOWED A VIRUS TO ESCAPE FROM THE LAB]. A vaccine that causes a weaker form of flu will prevent these flu deaths by creating immunity, but the vaccine itself will cause [some] flu deaths. 100,000 ancient redwood trees will be destroyed BY NATURAL FIRE CAUSED BY LIGHTNING [BY FIRES STARTED BY A CAMPER WHO VIOLATED THE RULES OF A NATIONAL PARK]. Intentionally setting smaller fires will prevent the loss of 100,000 ancient redwoods but cause [some] ancient redwoods to be destroyed. 20 fish species in a river will become extinct DUE TO A NATURAL DECLINE IN THE WATER LEVEL [DUE TO A DECLINE IN THE WATER LEVEL, WHICH STARTED WHEN AN EXPLOSION IN A BOMB FACTORY CHANGED THE RIVER’s COURSE]. Building a dam would save 20 species of fish above the dam but cause [some] species to become extinct downstream. 1000 emergency patients in government hospitals will suffer debilitating strokes FROM NATURAL CAUSES [AS A RESULT OF AN UNTESTED FOOD ADDITIVE]. Giving a new drug to all emergency patients would prevent 1000 debilitating strokes but would itself cause [some] debilitating strokes. 100 miscarriages will occur in women with NATURAL multiple pregnancies in government hospitals [with multiple pregnancies
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INDUCED BY FERTILITY DRUGS WITH THIS EXCESSIVE RISK WITHHELD FROM DOCTORS BY THE COMPANIES]. Selective abortion of some fetuses will prevent 100 miscarriages, but the abortions themselves amount to [some] intentionally caused miscarriages. 500 airplane passengers will die from an ACCIDENTAL missile attack on a large jet, CAUSED BY A COMPUTER MALFUNCTION [BY TERRORISTS]. Directing a second jet into the path of the missile, to take the hit, would save the 500 passengers but cause [some] passenger deaths. 5000 workers at a manufacturing plant will be laid off SO THAT THE COMPANY CAN AVOID BANKRUPTCY FROM PENSIONS FOR RETIRED WORKERS [SO THAT THE COMPANY CAN INCREASE ITS PROFITS]. Providing a tax break to this plant would save 5000 jobs but would cause the loss of [some] other jobs in a competitor’s plant. 1000 refugees in a camp in Africa will die from a famine CAUSED BY DROUGHT [CAUSED BY ARMED THUGS WHO BURNED CROPS AND FORCED PEOPLE OUT OF THEIR VILLAGES]. An airplane with food, the only one available, is on its way to a second camp with people affected by the same famine. Sending the airplane to the first camp would save 1000 people but would cause the death of [some] people in the second camp. 1000 people will die of cancer X next year because the INGREDIENTS FOR THE ONLY CURE ARE EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE [A DRUG COMPANY IS TRYING TO MAKE AS MUCH PROFIT AS POSSIBLE from the only cure, and it is too expensive]. A special program provides drugs for cancer Y, which is similar to X, and the funding for this program could be switched to X. Switching the funds from Y to X would save 1000 people with X but would cause the death of [some] people with Y. 100 coal miners will die because of a mine collapse DUE TO AN EARTHQUAKE (IN A REGION THAT HAS NEVER HAD ONE IN RECORDED HISTORY) [DUE TO THE MINING COMPANY’s VIOLATION OF SAFETY RULES]. Cutting a tunnel to rescue the miners would save 100 miners but would cause the death of [some] other miners whose normal exit was blocked by the same collapse; the tunnel construction would block their backup exit. Ten bird species will become extinct FROM NATURAL CAUSES [BECAUSE OF ILLEGAL LOGGING WITHOUT REPLACING CUT TREES]. Building a barrier would prevent the extinction of ten bird species but cause the loss of others.
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The items were presented twice, in a random order chosen for each subject. One presentation (randomly chosen) used the first, more benign, cause, and the other used the malign cause.
7.2. Results The measures of interest are the emotion questions (summed and rescaled from 0 to 1, the PV question, with PVs indicated by the last choice (‘‘should never be done, no matter how great the benefits. . .’’), the omission bias question (rescaled from 0 to 1, with higher numbers indicating more bias), and ‘‘zero,’’ whether or not the subject would tolerate any harm caused by action (1 when the subject chose the last option in the omission bias question, indicating intolerance of any harm). We also examine the effect of the cause manipulation. The mean scores for these questions were emotion, .64; PV, .17; omission bias, .69; zero, .22. As we have found repeatedly in unpublished studies, emotion correlated with PVs and with omission bias. We tested this here using the mixedmodel analysis described in the last study. The dependent variables were (in different analyses) PVs, omission bias, and zero responses. The predictors were subject means for emotion, case means for emotion (collapsing across the malevolent and benign causes), and the idiosyncratic emotion measure (the sum of the deviations of the emotion judgment from these two means). Cases (collapsed across the causes) and subjects were random effects. For all three dependent variables, the idiosyncratic effect of emotion was large and highly significant (.14 for PV, .12 for omission bias, .17 for zeros; all t values greater than 4; the 99.9 per cent highest posterior density interval did not include 0), but the subject and case effects were not significant. The variables are all on the same 0–1 scale, so that these are roughly equivalent to slopes of regression lines. Although not significant in the mixed-model analysis that included other effects, the correlation between emotions and PVs across the 11 cases was significant by itself (r ¼ .53, p ¼ .0486, one tailed) and is shown in Figure 2, where the words are centered on the means for each of the 11 cases. In sum, emotion is correlated with omission bias and PVs. However, these correlations do not show a causal effect of emotional responses on PVs or omission bias. They could reflect influences of third variables, such as the perceived seriousness of the outcome in each case. To test this possibility, we examined the effect of the manipulation of cause. To do this, we treated the 22 cases as 11 matched pairs, each pair differing in cause, and analyzed the 11 differences. As a manipulation check, the differences were clear and significant for emotion itself, with a mean difference of .11 (t10 ¼ 8.07, p ¼ 0.0000, across the 11 pair; (t78 ¼ 8.00, p ¼ 0.0000, across subjects). But the cause manipulation had absolutely no effect
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0.4 Misc. 0.3
PVs
Missile Layoff
Mine
0.2 Drug Strokes 0.1
Famine
Fish Trees Birds
Flu
0.0 0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
Emotion
Figure 2 Emotion and PVs by Item (Each Scale Ranging from 0 to 1), Study 2. Arrows Represent the Effect of the Cause Manipulation.
on PV (mean effect .01 on the 0–1 scale), omission bias (.01), or zero (.01). The arrows in Figure 2 show the effect of the cause manipulation. It is apparent that the emotional judgment increased for every case, but the PVs did not increase overall. These results were confirmed with a (theoretically more sensitive) mixed-model analysis, using the differences between the malign and benign causes in each variable as the dependent variable, with random effects for subjects and cases, and the intercept as the statistic of interest (i.e., whether the difference is statistically zero). Emotion was strongly affected by the manipulation of cause (t ¼ 6.1), but PVs, omission bias, and zero responses were not affected by the manipulation. (The effect of the manipulation was opposite to the hypothesis and not close to significant for all three variables.) In sum, it appears that omission bias and PVs are not necessarily influenced by emotion — despite the correlations of omission bias and PVs with emotion — but rather by other factors that affect emotion. We can manipulate the apparent emotional response without affecting PVs or omission bias.
7.3. Follow-Up We carried out a second study to check the results, using different measures of omission bias and PVs. The PV measure referred specifically to morality. The 86 subjects ranged in age from 22 to 64 (median 43); 38 per cent were male. The cases were the same as in the last experiment, some slightly modified to make the cause manipulation more consistent for the ten pairs of cases. An example of the questions was
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If nothing is done, 5000 workers at a manufacturing plant will be laid off SO THAT THE COMPANY CAN INCREASE ITS PROFITS BY INCREASING THE WORK LOAD ON THE REMAINING EMPLOYEES. Not at all A little moderately very upset Extremely upset. Try to imagine reading about this in the news. How upset do you feel? How angry do you feel? [Not at all. . . Extremely angry] Providing a tax break to this plant would save 5000 jobs but would cause the loss of 2000 other jobs in a competitor’s plant. Should the government give the tax break? [yes no] What is the largest number of lost jobs in the competitor’s plant at which the government should give the tax break? (Pick the closest.) 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500 5000 What do you think of the morality of intentionally causing job losses in manufacturing? It is not by itself a moral issue. It is usually immoral. It is immoral and impermissible, except in exceptional cases where it leads to a great benefit or prevents a great harm. It is always immoral and impermissible even if it leads to a great benefit or prevents a great harm, no matter how great the benefit or harm. The main results were replicated. Using mixed-model analysis, the cause manipulation affected emotion strongly (mean effect 0.98 on a scale of 8, t ¼ 4.7) but had no effect on PVs, omission bias, or zero responses (all ts less than 1.0). Omission bias and PVs were correlated (e.g., r ¼ .58 across the 20 cases, p ¼ .0076, confirmed in a mixed-model analysis with subjects and cases as random effects). And emotion strongly predicted PVs, omission bias, and zero responses (all t values > 5, with emotion as the only fixed effect and with subjects and cases as random effects). Once again we find that we can manipulate the emotional response without affecting other judgments. These judgments must then sometimes be independent of emotional responses.
8. Study 3: The Nature of Omission Bias What is it about acts and omissions that lead to their different effect on judgment? Spranca et al. (1991, Experiments 6) asked subjects whether each of several factors was morally relevant in a direction so as to make an act worse than omission (or the opposite). Factors that subjects saw as relevant were Cause: For omissions, the outcome has another cause. Movement: Acts involve physical movement and omissions do not.
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Presence: The outcome would have occurred in the absence of the actor. Knowledge: The actor would have done the same thing if she did not know about the possibility of making a decision. Factors that subjects did not see as relevant (but had sometimes been proposed in the literature) were Detectability: Acts are more detectable. Repeatability: Harmful omissions result from special opportunities that are unlikely to be repeated. Number of ways: There are few ways to perform an act, many ways to perform an omission (since doing most other acts is consistent with not doing a given act). Some evidence supported an explanation in terms of ‘‘responsibility,’’ but this was confounded with the possibility of an alternative cause. For example, when someone deceives someone else by saying nothing, then the victim of the deception must have acquired a false belief in some other way and may thus be responsible in some sense. Other evidence supports a role for causality in a different sense. Ritov and Baron (1990) compared a vaccine-failure condition, in which a vaccine failed to prevent a disease, which caused some number of deaths, to an act condition, in which the vaccine caused the same number of deaths from side effects while completely preventing the disease. Clearly these two cases were identical in all of the factors just listed (except cause), but the vaccinefailure case was strongly preferred to the case in which the vaccine caused harm. Baron and Ritov relied completely on this sort of comparison. Royzman and Baron (2002) found substantial omission bias when the effect of the action was direct, but much less omission bias when the effect of the action was indirect. Directness was defined in terms of causality. For example, a drug that killed infected victims of a disease (who would otherwise live) in order to prevent the spread of the disease was worse than a drug that would immunize everyone against the disease but kill the same number as a side effect. (Interestingly, the vaccine scenarios used by Ritov and Baron, 1990, were thus less direct than would be possible.) We carried out an additional experiment to examine two of the possible factors that might characterize acts and omissions. In particular, we looked at cause and detectability, using a different method from that used by Spranca et al. (1991). We also looked at the relation between omission bias and emotion.
8.1. Method The 86 subjects ranged in age from 24 to 81 (median 44) and were 29 per cent males. The cases are shown below. Each item had two options, the first an action (or more direct action for the last three cases) and the second an
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omission (or a less direct action, for the last three cases). The last three items were modified from Royzman and Baron (2002). Note that the first 7 of the 14 items involved a conflict between consequences and the act/omission distinction, and the second 7 did not, yielding the same outcome from act and omission (or from direct and indirect action, in the last three). Flu25: 25 per cent of the U.S. population is expected to get a flu that is sometimes fatal. A government official must decide what to do. A vaccine will prevent the flu, but the vaccine itself causes side effects that are just as bad as the flu (with the same chance of death), in 5 per cent of those who are vaccinated. A. The official recommends the vaccine and makes sure there is enough of it. 5 per cent of those vaccinated get the side effects, and 25 per cent of those not vaccinated. B. The official does not recommend the vaccine. 25 per cent get the flu. Flu10: 10 per cent of the U.S. population is expected to get a flu that is sometimes fatal. A government official must decide what to do. A vaccine will prevent the flu, but the vaccine itself causes side effects that are just as bad as the flu (with the same chance of death), in 5 per cent of those who are vaccinated. A. The official recommends the vaccine and makes sure there is enough of it. 5 per cent of those vaccinated get the side effects, and 10 per cent of those not vaccinated. B. The official does not recommend the vaccine. 10 per cent get the flu. Fail: 10 per cent of the U.S. population is expected to get a flu that is sometimes fatal. A government official must decide what to do. A vaccine will prevent the flu, but the vaccine itself causes side effects that are just as bad as the flu (with the same chance of death), in 5 per cent of those who are vaccinated. A second vaccine has no side effects but it fails half the time. The result is that 5 per cent of those who are vaccinated will get the flu. A. The official recommends the first vaccine and makes sure there is enough of it. 5 per cent of those vaccinated get the side effects, and 10 per cent of those not vaccinated get the flu. B. The official recommends the second vaccine and makes sure there is enough of it. 5 per cent of those vaccinated get the flu, and 10 per cent of those not vaccinated get the flu. Trolley: A trolley car in the repair yard is rolling down a hill toward five workers who do not see it or hear it. It will kill them if nothing is done. The director of the yard can switch the trolley to another track with one worker, who would be killed, but the five would be saved. A. The director switches the trolley to the other track, and one worker is killed. B. The director does nothing, and five workers are killed.
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Push: A trolley car in the repair yard is rolling down a hill toward five workers who do not see it or hear it. It will kill them if nothing is done. The director of the yard can push another worker into the path of the trolley. This worker would be killed, but the five would be saved. A. The director pushes the worker in front of the trolley. The trolley stops, and this worker is killed. B. The director does nothing, and five workers are killed. Gun: A terrorist is holding ten Israeli soldiers and will shoot nine of them, picked by lot, unless an Israeli government official shoots the single other soldier himself at close range. A. The official shoots the one soldier and nine soldiers are set free. B. The official does not shoot. The terrorist shoots the nine and the one is set free. Button: A terrorist is holding ten Israeli soldiers and will shoot nine of them, picked by lot, unless an Israeli government official executes the single other soldier himself by pushing a button in the next room, causing a gun to fire. A. The official executes the one soldier and nine soldiers are set free. B. The official does not execute the soldier. The terrorist shoots the nine and the one is set free. Brick: Joe is angry at a neighbor. A. When the neighbor’s car starts rolling down a hill, Joe sees that a brick in front of it will stop it from rolling. Joe pushes the brick away, and the car suffers expensive damage. B. When the neighbor’s car starts rolling down a hill, Joe sees that it is possible to stop the car by pushing a brick in front of it. Joe does nothing, and the car suffers expensive damage. Cash: Jane returns a $50 item in a department store. A. The cashier puts $150 in cash on the counter. Jane picks up all the money after seeing that it is $150. B. Jane sees the cashier credit her account for $150. Jane says nothing and receives the extra $100. Lie: Bill’s knows that a coworker and friend has embezzled $1000 from their company. Bill plans to tell the investigators that his friend was out of town at the time, which was not true. A. Bill tells the investigators that the friend was away. Bill’s friend is not punished. B. The investigators misread some memos and think that the friend was out of town, and they tell this to Bill. Bill says nothing to correct them. His friend is not punished. Check: Susan gets an appeal to send money to help victims of an earthquake in a poor country. Susan plans to send a $100 check. She has exactly $100 in her checking account, but she has several thousand dollars in a savings account, and she can transfer money to her checking account in two days.
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A. Susan writes the check, then decides to go out to an expensive restaurant that takes checks only. Susan tears up the check to help the victims. B. Susan decides to go out to an expensive restaurant that takes checks only. Susan does not write the check to help the victims. Mall: Jill has been stalked by a crazy man, who shows up with a gun in a crowded mall where Jill is shopping and points the gun at her. A. Jill moves 3 ft. to the left, so that she is behind another person. The crazy man shoots but hits the other person. Jill is unharmed. B. Jill moves 3 ft. to the left, thinking that the crazy man would not change the position of the gun before he shot. Jill knows there is another person behind her. The crazy man does not change the position of the gun, so he hits the person who was standing behind Jill. Jill is unharmed. Plane: A missile has just been mistakenly fired at a large commercial airliner from a military base. If nothing is done, 200 passengers will die. A military air traffic controller can change the course of airplanes. A. The controller alters the course of a smaller commercial airliner with 20 passengers so that it is placed in the path of the missile. The large airliner is safe, but the missile destroys the smaller airliner. The controller knew this would happen. B. The controller alters the course of the commercial airliner. The airliner is safe, but the missile destroys a smaller commercial airliner with 20 passengers flying right behind the large airliner. The controller knew this would happen. Species: Scientists planted a forest in order to preserve endangered species of trees and other plants. Most of the species in the forest are extinct everywhere else. The forest is now threatened by an infestation of insects. One of the scientists must decide what to do. If nothing is done, ten species will become extinct. A. The scientist sprays the forest with a chemical that will destroy the three plant species in which the insects make their nests, thus killing the insects and saving the other plants. B. The scientist sprays the forest with a chemical that will destroy the insects. The same chemical will kill three of the plant species as a side effect. The items were presented in a random order chosen for each subject. After each pair of items, the subjects answered the following questions. Is option A morally wrong? [yes, no, equal or hard to say] Is option B morally wrong? [yes, no, equal or hard to say] Which option is better or less wrong? [A, B, hard to say] Rate the strength of your negative emotion when you think about option A. [Four point scale from ‘‘none’’ to ‘‘the maximum.’’] Rate the strength of your negative emotion when you think about option B. Does choosing option A cause harm? [yes, no, equal or hard to say]
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Does choosing option B cause harm? [yes, no, equal or hard to say] In which option is it easier for an outsider to determine the decision maker’s intent? [A, B, hard to say]
8.2. Results Table 2 shows the mean differences for each of the 14 cases. Except for ‘‘push,’’ subjects tended to judge the utilitarian response for the conflict items to be less wrong, and, except for ‘‘cash’’ and ‘‘species,’’ they tended to show omission bias for the no-conflict items. (The species item was generally not judged to be wrong for both options.) The correlation between the mean wrongness score for the conflict items and no-conflict items was 0.38 (t84 ¼ 3.73, p ¼ .0003); this is to our knowledge the first demonstration of this kind of correlation. (It is worthy of note that the last three no-conflict items were not properly about acts vs. omissions, since both options were acts.) Judgments of causality correlated as hypothesized with judgments of whether omissions were better than acts, but judgments of detectability did not. (If anything, their correlations were negative.) In particular, the omission–better judgment correlated with the causality difference across the 14 cases (r ¼ .73, p ¼ .0034), as shown in Figure 3, and the subject means Table 2 Mean Response to Omission Bias Item, Mean Differences — Act Minus Omission (or Direct Minus Indirect) — for Wrongness, Emotion, and Cause Judgments, and Responses that Acts Are more Detectable, for the 14 Cases in Study 3.
Flu25 Flul0 Fail Trolley Push Gun Button Brick Cash Lie Check Mall Plane Species
Omission
Wrong
Emotion
Cause
Detection
0.27 0.13 0.12 0.40 0.00 0.24 0.33 0.47 0.09 0.42 0.13 0.19 0.13 0.03
0.20 0.09 0.02 0.21 0.11 0.01 0.02 0.23 0.01 0.12 0.05 0.10 0.03 0.01
0.04 0.03 0.01 0.12 0.07 0.09 0.09 0.13 0.01 0.08 0.02 0.02 0.03 0.00
0.04 0.01 0.05 0.01 0.08 0.01 0.02 0.16 0.03 0.04 0.00 0.02 0.02 0.02
0.02 0.12 0.07 0.38 0.29 0.36 0.31 0.24 0.12 0.13 0.06 0.06 0.02 0.06
All values are rescaled so that the possible range is from 1 (omission greater) to 1 (action greater).
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correlated across subjects (r ¼ .48, p ¼ .0000) showing individual differences as well as differences across cases. Similar results were found for the correlations between the wrongness difference and the causality difference (r ¼ .81, p ¼ .0005, and r ¼ .46, p ¼ .0000, respectively). The corresponding correlations for wrongness and detection were .10 and .03, respectively, and neither came close to significance.6 Some of the individual items were included as mini-experiments to test various hypotheses. The difference between flu10 and flu25 concerns the effect of the magnitude of benefit, when items are presented on different pages. The wrongness difference was significant one-tailed (t85 ¼ 0.63, p ¼ 0.0280) but neither the causality nor emotion difference (nor the detection difference) came close to significance. The wrongness difference apparently reflects the influence utilitarian reasoning, but this influence must have occurred in subjects who were conflicted. If they had been unconflicted
Brick Lie
0.4
Omission better
0.2
Mall CheckPlane Fail Cash
0.0
Flu10 −0.2
−0.4
Flu25 Button Trolley −0.1
Figure 3
6
Push
Species
Gun
0.0
0.1 0.2 Causality difference
0.3
Causality Judgment and ‘‘Omission Better’’ by Item, Study 3.
A mixed-model analysis with subjects and items as random effects (Baayen et al., 2008) yielded a significant effect of detectability opposite to the hypothesis (p < .01, using several methods of testing the hypothesis). A possible explanation of this result is that it came from those cases in which action is favored; if action is the better option, then it may be good, not bad, for it to be detectable. This explanation is supported by the following analysis. We measured the correlation between omission–better judgment and detectability, across subjects, for each of the 14 cases. This correlation was itself correlated with the mean of the omission–better judgments, across the 14 cases (r ¼ .66, p ¼ .0102). But the highest of these across-subject correlations, for Brick, was still only .03, so we still have no evidence for the hypothesized effect of detectability when omissions are considered better. The results do suggest, though, the utilitarian actions are considered better if they are public: ‘‘Tu Gutes und sprich daru¨ber!’’
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utilitarians, they would have strongly favored the lesser harm and would have shown no differences. This result thus supports Greene’s (2007) view that responses to moral dilemmas involve conflict. Note, though, that emotion may not suffice as a source of conflict, since the negative emotion was generally for inaction. Attention to numbers could also account for the fact that many subjects endorsed the action in the gun item, which is based on a classic dilemma that, with smaller numbers than 9, usually elicits more endorsement of omissions (e.g., Baron, 1992). The contrast between the trolley and push items, and that between the gun and button items, were tests of the effects of proximity or contact (e.g., Cushman et al., 2006). The difference between trolley and push in omission–better judgments was significant (t85 ¼ 3.97, p ¼ 0.0002), but that between gun and button was not (t85 ¼ 1.02, p ¼ 0.3100). For trolley/push, the difference in causality was also significant (t85 ¼ 2.19, p ¼ 0.0313), as was the difference in emotion (t85 ¼ 5.29, p ¼ 0.0000), but not the difference in detectability (t85 ¼ 0.89). Thus, contact (and proximity) may operate because they affect perceived causality. In sum, our results provide additional support for a role of causality. It seems likely that omission bias is not one simple phenomenon, however, and other factors such as movement, knowledge, and presence remain to be explored in scenarios designed for this purpose.
9. Conclusion We have focused here on two related biases, PVs and omission bias. These biases are related to many others, and, indeed, overlap with them in many experiments. For example, omission bias is typically confounded with status-quo bias. We argued that PVs for omission are difficult to maintain, so people have relatively few of them. On the other hand, we suspect that PVs are not all that serious. Many may be constructed on the spur of the moment, unreflectively, in order to answer a question in an experiment. Thus, we do find some PVs for omissions. People do not always think about the problem of proliferating obligations. We also suspect, though, that some PVs are the result of prior thought. Although this prior thought may be unreflective, its results may be more resistant to challenges of the sort used by Baron and Leshner (2000). Such challenges might work better with PVs for omissions, a topic for future research. When people have PVs for action, and when they are asked whether they will undertake some action that causes the negative outcome in question, they will logically, we argue, be very reluctant to undertake such action. Thus, measures of omission bias, will show a relatively strong
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bias. In principle, if people really held to the principle of the PV, they would be unwilling to act at all, and their threshold for action would be zero. People are not always so consistent. We have thus found, repeatedly, correlations between PVs and omission bias, and we have discussed possible reasons why our results conflict with the study of Bartels and Medin (2007), which failed to replicate our basic result in one condition. Note that PVs are not the only cause of omission bias, so we can expect some omission bias even in their absence. We have discussed other possible causes of omission bias. A major source of the bias is a judgment that it is wrong to cause harm. If the harm has some other cause, then the responsibility for it is diffused between the decision maker and the other cause, so omissions that cause harm are less bad. We have reported additional evidence for a role of causality. Omission bias seems likely to have several different determinants. We have argued that PVs can exacerbate it, and perceived causality is relevant too. But its confounding with other types of bias leads to other explanations. For example, the default usually is better than alternatives to it, so it is a reasonable heuristic, other things being equal, to prefer the default. Likewise for the status-quo, and for what is natural. In experiments it is not the case that other things are equal, so the biases found seem real, yet they make sense in terms of generally useful heuristics. The problem is that people often apply these heuristics blindly without thinking about why they are generally useful and whether those reasons apply in the case at hand. It is possible that some biases like these have very serious effects (Baron, 1998). Other determinants of omission bias could be analogous to thinking about causality. For example, people may reason that they are not responsible for something if it would have happened anyway if they knew nothing about it or if they were in no position to stop it. In judgments of moral responsibility for the purpose of blame and punishment, such an argument might be reasonable. It is less reasonable for someone who is a decision maker, in the situation, who knows what the options are. In such cases, it may amount to a kind of self-deception. We have also examined the role of emotion. It has been proposed (e.g., Greene et al., 2004; Haidt, 2001) that emotion is a cause of nonutilitarian biases, and there is some evidence for this claim. Yet it is also possible that nonutilitarian judgments can cause the emotion, rather than the reverse. A moral rule may be elicited before any emotion is experienced (Bucciarelli et al., 2008). We doubt that emotion is required for biases, since biases similar to those we discuss are found in relatively ‘‘cold’’ domains, such as logic and probability. In two experiments, we find that reported emotion can be manipulated without any effect on PVs and omission bias. The same studies find the usual correlation between reported emotion and magnitude of bias. These findings together suggest that a causal role for emotion is not universal. One
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might question whether the emotion reported in scenario studies is ‘‘real,’’ or, alternatively, whether subjects are simply telling us what they think they would feel if the situation were real. Some evidence for real emotion is provided by studies of brain activity during thinking about scenarios (Greene et al., 2004; Greene, 2007). Conclusions about the nature of omission bias are relevant to prescriptive questions, practical questions about how to reduce biases that might cause harm, or how to work around them. If emotion is a major causal determinant, then prescriptive remedies might involve trying to get people to ‘‘cool off’’ before making relevant judgments (as suggested in a different context by Camerer et al., 2003). We have suggested that the role of emotion might be overemphasized, although we note that emotional states may still affect biases at least because they change the way a situation is perceived or the tendency to take action. To the extent to which PVs affect omission bias, as they seem to do, then it might be worthwhile to encourage reflection on apparent absolute values, as done experimentally by Baron and Leshner (2000). Recently, Bartels (2008) has provided additional evidence for the liability of PVs. The role of causality is of interest because the kind of causality that seems relevant is direct, physical, causality, in which the agent’s behavior starts a chain of events that lead to an outcome through known principles, possibly with other enabling conditions. An alternative view of causality is embodied in tort law, often called ‘‘but for’’ causality. By this view, you ‘‘cause’’ something if it would not have happened but for some choice you made, regardless of whether that choice is an act or omission. If people were to think of this kind of causality as relevant to more decisions, then omission bias might be reduced, and, with it, its harmful effects.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors would like to thank Dan Bartels and Doug Medin for discussion about the design of one experiment and for their comments on two drafts. This research was supported by a grant from the U.S.–Israel Binational Science Foundation to the authors.
REFERENCES Baayen, R.H., Davidson, D.J. and Bates, D.M. (2008). Mixed-Effect Modeling with Crossed Random Effects for Subjects and Items. Journal of Memory and Language, in press. Baron, J. (1992). The Effect of Normative Beliefs on Anticipated Emotions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 320–330. Baron, J. (1993). Morality and Rational Choice. Kluwer, Dordrecht. Baron, J. (1998). Judgment Misguided: Intuition and Error in Public Decision Making. Oxford University Press, New York. Baron, J. (2008). Thinking and Deciding. (4th edn.) Cambridge University Press, New York.
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Baron, J. and Leshner, S. (2000). How Serious are Expressions of Protected Values. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 6, 183–194. Baron, J. and Miller, J.G. 1999 Limiting the Scope of Moral Obligations to Help: A CrossCultural Investigation. Manuscript. Baron, J. and Ritov, I. (1994). Reference Points and Omission Bias. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 59, 475–498. Baron, J. and Ritov, I. (2004). Omission Bias, Individual Differences, and Normality. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 94, 74–85. Baron, J. and Spranca, M. (1997). Protected Values. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 70, 1–16. Bartels, D. M. (2008). Principled Moral Sentiment and the Flexibility of Moral Judgment and Decision Making. Cognition, 108, 381–417. Bartels, D. M. and Medin, D. L. (2007). Are Morally-Motivated Decision Makers Insensitive to the Consequences of Their Choices? Psychological Science, 18, 24–28. Baron, J. (2003). Value Analysis of Political Behavior - Self-interested - Moralistic Altruistic - Moral. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 151, 1135–1167. Bennett, J. (1981). Morality and Consequences. in edited byMcMurrin, S.M. (ed.), The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Vol. 2, (pp. 45–116). University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City. Bicchieri, C. (2006). The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms. Cambridge University Press, New York. Broome, J. (1991). Weighing Goods: Equality, Uncertainty and Time. Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Bucciarelli, M., Khemlani, S. and Johnson-Laird, P. N. (2008). The Psychology of Moral Reasoning. Judgment and Decision Making, 3, 121–139. Camerer, C. F., Issacharoff, S., Loewenstein, G., O’Donoghue, T. and Rabin, M. (2003). Regulation for Conservatives: Behavioral Economics and the Case for ‘‘Asymmetric Paternalism. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 151, 1211–1254. Connolly, T. and Reb, J. (2003). Omission Bias in Vaccination Decisions: Where’s the ‘‘Omission’’? Where’s the ‘‘Bias’’? Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 91, 186–202. Cushman, F., Young, L. and Hauser, M. (2006). The Role of Conscious Reasoning and Intuition in Moral Judgments: Three Principles of Harm. Psychological Science, 12, 1082–1089. Fiske, A. P. and Tetlock, P. E. (1997). Taboo Trade-Offs: Reactions to Transactions that Transgress the Spheres of Justice. Political Psychology, 18, 255–297. Goodwin, G. P. and Darley, J. M. (2008). The Psychology of Meta-Ethics: Exploring Objectivism. Cognition, 106, 1339–1366. Greene, J. D., Nystrom, L. E., Engell, A. D., Darley, J. M. and Cohen, J. D. (2004). The Neural Bases of Cognitive Conflict and Control in Moral Judgment. Neuron, 2, 389–400. Greene, J. D. (2007). The Secret Joke of Kant’s Soul,. Moral Psychology, Vol. 3, The Neuroscience of Morality: Emotion, Disease, and Development in W. Sinnott-Armstrong, (ed.), Moral Psychology, Vol. 3, The Neuroscience of Morality: Emotion, Disease, and Development (pp. 35–117). MIT Press, Cambridge, MAwith comments and reply. Greene, J. D. and Baron, J. (2001). Intuitions about Declining Marginal Utility. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 14, 243–255. Haidt, J. (2001). The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment. Psychological Review, 108, 814–834. Hare, R. M. (1981). Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method and Point. Oxford University Press (Clarendon Press), Oxford. Kahneman, D., Knetsch, J. L. and Thaler, R. H. (1990). Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem. Journal of Political Economy, 98, 1325–1348. Kahneman, D. and Ritov, I. (1994). Determinants of Stated Willingness to Pay for Public Goods: A Study of the Headline Method. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 9, 5–38.
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Kuhse, H. (1987). The Sanctity of Life Doctrine in Medicine: A Critique. Oxford University Press, Oxford. McNaughton, D. and Rawling, P. (1991). Agent Relativity and the Doing-Happening Distinction. Philosophical Studies, 63, 167–185. Nucci, L. (2001). Education in the Moral Domain. Cambridge University Press, New York. Parfit, D. (1984). Reasons and Persons. Oxford University Press (Clarendon Press), Oxford. Piaget, J. (1965). The Moral Judgment of the Child. Free Press, New York. Ritov, I. and Baron, J. (1990). Reluctance to Vaccinate: Omission Bias and Ambiguity. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 3, 263–277. Ritov, I. and Baron, J. (1992). Status-Quo and Omission Bias. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 5, 49–61. Ritov, I. and Baron, J. (1999). Protected Values and Omission Bias. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 79, 79–94. Ritov, I. and Kahneman, D. (1997). How People Value the Environment. Environment, Ethics and Behavior in edited by Bazerman, M. H., Messick, D. M., Tenbrunsel, A. E. and Wade-Benzoni, K. A. (eds.), Environment, Ethics and Behavior pp. 33–51 New Lexington Press, San Francisco. Rozin, P., Spranca, M., Krieger, Z., Neuhaus, R., Surillo, D., Swerdlin, A. and Wood, K. (2004). Natural Preference: Instrumental and Ideational/Moral Motivations, and the Contrast Between Foods and Medicines. Appetite, 43, 147–154. Royzman, E. B. and Baron, J. (2002). The Preference for Indirect Harm. Social Justice Research, 15, 165–184. Samuelson, W. and Zeckhauser, R. (1988). Status-Quo Bias in Decision Making. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 1, 7–59. Schweitzer, M. (1994). Disentangling Status Quo and Omission Effects: Experimental Evidence. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 58, 457–476. Spranca, M., Minsk, E. and Baron, J. (1991). Omission and Commission in Judgment and Choice. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 27, 76–105. Singer, P. (1993). Practical Ethics. 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Tetlock, P. E., Lerner, J. and Peterson, R. (1996). Revising the Value Pluralism Model: Incorporating Social Content and Context Postulates, The Psychology of Values: The Ontario Symposium in edited by Seligman, C., Olson, J. and Zanna, M. (eds.), Vol. 8. Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ. Turiel, E. (1983). The Development of Social Knowledge: Morality and Convention. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
C H A P T E R
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Attending to Moral Values Rumen Iliev, Sonya Sachdeva, Daniel M. Bartels, Craig Joseph, Satoru Suzuki, and Douglas L. Medin Contents 1. Introduction 2. Moral Values in the Laboratory 2.1. Contingent Valuation 2.2. Trade-Offs 2.3. Omission Bias and Quantity Insensitivity 2.4. Tragic vs. Taboo Trade-Offs and the Flexibility of Moral Decision Making 2.5. Presentation Order: Judgment in the Context of Previously Viewed Options 2.6. ‘‘Pseudosacred’’ Values? 2.7. Summary 3. A Cognitive Perspective on Sacred Values 3.1. Protected Values and Attention 3.2. Stroop Effects 3.3. Further Cognitive Consequences: Anchoring Effects 3.4. Summary 4. Attentional Influences and the Acceptability of Trade-Offs 4.1. Framing the Question 4.2. Framing the Response Alternatives 4.3. Judgment in the Context of One versus Two Options 4.4. The Attraction Effect: Choosing in the Context of Three Options 4.5. Summary 5. General Discussion References
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Abstract There has been an upsurge of interest in moral decision making, which appears to have some distinctive properties. For example, some moral decisions are so strongly influenced by ideas about how sacred entities are to be treated, that they seem to be relatively insensitive to the costs and benefits entailed (e.g., ‘‘do not allow companies to pollute the earth for a fee, even if pollution credits reduce pollution’’). One interpretation of such decisions is that sacred values Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Volume 50 ISSN 0079-7421, DOI: 10.1016/S0079-7421(08)00405-2
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motivate rigid decision processes that ignore outcomes. This, however, seems paradoxical in that those who are most offended by acts of pollution, for example, likely care more about pollution than others do. Our analysis of the literature on moral decision making (including our own studies) suggests a framework based on a ‘‘flexible view,’’ where both actions and outcomes are important, and where attentional processes are intimately involved in how the decision maker conceptualizes the problem, how actions and outcomes are weighted, and how protected values are translated into judgments. We argue that understanding the cognitive processes underlying morally motivated decision making offers one method for solving the puzzle of why such deeply entrenched commitments (the rigid view) vary widely in their expression across contexts (the flexible view).
1. Introduction The distinction between two levels of existence for human beings — the sacred versus the profane — has long been a major theme in sociology and anthropology, but has only recently begun to receive attention in the area of decision making. The profane or secular subsumes most of ordinary life, where people have relative freedom to choose or decide what to do. The other level, sometimes overlapping with the first one, but qualitatively distinct, is characterized in terms of special meanings, norms, restrictions, and obligations described as sacred or divine (Durkheim, 1912/1954; Eliade, 1959). A long tradition in decision making, influenced largely by an economic perspective, has focused on the domain of secular existence, where people are considered to be autonomous agents, maximizing some benefit function without being affected by rules or mandates external to the market. As a consequence, phenomena such as ideologies, religious beliefs, virtues, moral values, and ethical positions have received relatively little attention in the field. Recently, however, there has been a major upsurge in interest in moral judgment and morally motivated decision making (e.g., Greene and Haidt, 2002; Hauser, 2006; Nichols, 2004; Prinz, 2007). In one important line of research, Baron, Tetlock, and their associates have examined how protected or sacred values affect decision making (e.g., Baron and Green, 1996; Fiske and Tetlock, 1997; McGraw and Tetlock, 2005; Ritov and Baron, 1999; Tetlock, 2003; Tetlock et al., 2000; Baron and Ritov, 2004; present volume). Tetlock et al. (2000) define sacred values as ‘‘any value that a moral community implicitly or explicitly treats as possessing infinite and transcendental significance that precludes comparisons, trade-offs, or indeed any other mingling with bounded or secular values.’’ When participants were presented with proposed trade-offs of
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sacred values for money, Tetlock et al. (2000) observed strong cognitive, affective (e.g., moral outrage) and behavioral (moral cleansing) responses. Similarly, Baron and Spranca (1997) define protected values as ‘‘. . . those that resist trade-offs with other values, particularly with economic values’’. They suggest that protected values are deontological rules and prescriptions concerning actions and inactions (e.g., ‘‘do not cause harm’’), rather than consequentialist principles that focus on an assessment of probable costs and benefits. As Baron and Ritov (this volume) note, protected values are frequently linked to deontological rules that focus people’s attention on acts at the expense of attending to the consequences of those acts, sometimes resulting in ‘‘omission bias.’’ The existence of protected values is of particular concern for utilitybased theories, which broadly rely on the method of proposing trade-offs between goods to assess their relative desirability. These theories assume that decision makers add up the costs and benefits and choose the option that provides the best overall value. However, moral prohibitions against trading of sacred values for secular values implies that these domains cannot be mixed and that no matter how much one increases the utility of the competing alternative, a person holding a protected value will never agree to the exchange (e.g., ‘‘you can’t put a price on a human life’’). In other words, it appears that a person with a sacred or protected value acts as if it has infinite utility. Infinite utilities pose a conceptual challenge and it is not even clear that the idea is coherent. As Baron and Spranca (1997, see also Baron and Ritov, this volume) have pointed out, for example, if people have absolute values with infinite utility, they should spend all of their time, efforts, and resources to maximize this value and neglect all else. This does not seem plausible. If a parent assigns infinite value to their child and devotes all their resources to protecting their child from harm, they nonetheless will need to pay some attention to their own health and welfare if only to be able to continue in that role. For example, they presumably would not break into a drug store that is closed and risk being jailed in order to obtain a thermometer to check to see if their child is running a fever. If people have more than one sacred or protected value, they immediately face contradictions. In some situations they will be frozen in the position of Buridan’s Donkey, where they will be unable to choose between two equally and infinitely good or equally and infinitely bad options. Such theoretical concerns make the domain of sacred or protected values an intriguing and challenging area for decision researchers. Our focus in studying sacred values is on understanding the cognitive processes associated with decision making involving sacred or protected values. We do not doubt that sacred values may reflect interpersonal goals and that, in some contexts, they may be more effective than cost/benefit strategies (Frank, 1988). It seems equally clear that there are real world
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circumstances where sacred values involve much more than posturing, as in the case of suicide bombers, the self-immolation of monks or for soldiers who throw themselves on top of grenades to save their buddies (Atran et al., 2007). Although part of our research involves studying these contexts (Ginges et al., 2007), the studies we review and present here undermine the simple assignment of sacred values to deontological rules and secular values to consequentialism. Instead, our data suggest that people with protected values care both about whether actions are good or bad in themselves (e.g., harmful actions are often judged impermissible) and about the consequences associated with those actions. This dual focus leads to a striking malleability in judgment and decision making and to both hyposensitivity and hypersensitivity to consequences. The key factors appear to be those that are associated with attentional processes. It has long been recognized that human information processing resources are limited and that even the most basic decisions cannot take into account all the information that is potentially relevant (Simon, 1957). The same holds for perceptual processes; any realistic visual scene contains many objects, but the number of objects that one can simultaneously select, analyze, and keep track of, is generally limited to only a few (Franconeri et al., 2007). There has been a great deal of research on attentional processes that determine which objects and/or features are selected for further conscious scrutiny. The overall results suggest that what sensory information reaches perceptual awareness is influenced by both bottom-up and top-down processes (e.g., see Egeth and Yantis, 1997, for a review, and Ling and Carrasco, 2006, for recent empirical results). Visual stimuli that are physically strong (e.g., a bright red flower blossoming out of pale leaves) and/or representationally strong (e.g., one’s own name) tend to capture attention relatively automatically — bottom-up capture of attention. What sorts of stimuli capture attention may also be influenced by experience, learning, and the current cognitive goal (e.g., an odd-looking object might capture attention when one is looking for an oddball; a red circle might capture attention when one is looking for a red object). In addition to bottom-up attention capture, one can voluntarily select information pertaining to behaviorally relevant objects that do not attract attention (e.g., looking for a gray pen dropped in a garden of bright-colored flowers) — top-down control of attention. Bottom-up capture directs attention to stimuli that are strong and/or with special meaning; top-down control allows one to flexibly attend to a stimulus of choice. In our review we will be concerned with both aspects of attention. That is, we examine both how strong moral values affect what attracts attention as well as factors related to how information is selected voluntarily. In some cases we use measures of attention that derive from the attention literature (e.g., the Stroop effect) but in other cases the information being selected is more
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abstract and conceptual than has been the focus in the field of attention. Even in the latter case, however, we think that attention nonetheless provides a useful framework. We argue that in morally relevant tasks attention acts as a selection mechanism to filter some of the information presented, enhancing some parts of it and suppressing others. Overview The rest of this chapter is organized as follows. First, we provide a more detailed background of previous work motivating our present line of research. Then, we review a series of recent studies on cognitive processes associated with sacred or protected values, and after that extend this processing approach to other studies demonstrating context sensitivity as a function of attention allocation. Finally, we try to reconcile the rigidity of sacred or protected values with their apparent flexibility, arguing that cognitive processing is an important factor which should be taken into account.
2. Moral Values in the Laboratory 2.1. Contingent Valuation Researchers initially encountered protected values when they attempted to use contingent valuation as a method for determining the value of various goods (e.g., a nature preserve) for which there were no preexisting markets (see Ritov and Kahneman, 1997 for a review). Policy makers, trying to find the best solutions of different trade-off problems, would give questionnaires to the public and ask them to trade-off one good for another, or to trade-off a good for money. A typical question would ask a person the amount of tax cut that they would be willing to accept as compensation for the destruction of a nearby nature preserve or how much they would be willing to pay to protect a lake in Ontario, for example. These estimates could then be used for policy decisions involving these goods (e.g., how much Exxon should have to pay to compensate for destroying a beach and wildlife from an oil spill). The results, however, were too incoherent to be used for policy purposes. People appeared to be willing to pay no more to ‘‘save all the lakes in Ontario’’ than to save ‘‘one lake in Ontario’’ (Ritov and Kahneman, 1997) and they said that ‘‘no amount’’ of money would be enough to compensate for the loss of certain environmental goods (see also McGraw and Tetlock, 2005). For the latter scenarios, involving willingness to accept compensation, people interpreted the money as a bribe and rejected it on moral grounds. These kinds of responses made many contingent valuation studies useless for the purposes of comparisons to other goods, determining compensation, or for policy setting.
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2.2. Trade-Offs When asked about protected values in the lab, people also appear to reject some types of trade-offs. A typical measure used by Baron and colleagues is to ask participants for their opinion about a particular trade-off involving harm (e.g., cutting acres of old-growth forest) and to give them three options: A. I do not oppose this. B. This is acceptable if it leads to some sort of benefits that are great enough. C. This is not acceptable, no matter how great the benefits. Subjects who choose option C are considered to hold a protected value on the issue. For a broad range of scenarios, ranging from dolphins dying in nets used for tuna fishing to euthanasia, a fair number of participants choose option C. For example, in our own studies with Northwestern University undergraduates, approximately 1/3 of students say that abortions are not acceptable, no matter how great the benefits. Laboratory studies have also found other distinctive properties associated with protected values (see Baron and Ritov, this volume, for a review). First, they are intrinsically linked to morality, and are perceived as objective, absolute prohibitions, regardless of what a particular person thinks. Second, challenging-protected values may be associated with the experience of anger and denial of the need for trade-offs (Baron and Spranca, 1997). Tetlock’s research has shown that the mere contemplation of forbidden trade-offs undermines the sacredness of the value and may result in a sense of moral contamination. Participants who were asked to consider such tradeoffs later engaged in moral cleansing to compensate for the contemplation (Tetlock et al., 2000). For example, participants who were asked to evaluate forbidden trade-offs (such as human life for money, for example) later showed an increased willingness to sign up for organ donation programs. The moral status of sacred values can produce aversive reactions toward others who challenged their sacredness in the course of making a decision. Tetlock et al. (2000) presented their participants with scenarios in which a hospital administrator was trying to choose between saving the life of little Johnny or saving $1million for the hospital. The participants not only disliked more the administrator who chose the money over the child’s life, but they were also sensitive to the amount of time this decision process took. When the decision favoring the money was slow and difficult the administrator was liked even less, suggesting that the longer a person contemplates a trade-off that challenges a sacred value, the more morally corrupt he or she is perceived to be.
2.3. Omission Bias and Quantity Insensitivity For a decision theorist, one of the most interesting properties associated with protected values is known as quantity insensitivity. Participants who endorse a protected value for an issue tend to focus on the permissibility of
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acts and tend to give less weight to the act’s consequences. This means they may judge two similar acts being equally impermissible regardless of the difference in the total harm done. For example, an ardent environmentalist might say that clear cutting of 1 acre of old growth forest is no less wrong than clear cutting 5 acres of old growth forest. Nonconsequentialist decision principles like these, which seem consistent with a kind of lay deontology, are difficult to explain in terms of traditional decision theory, which presumes (broadly) that people’s choices are a reflection of desired outcomes. The apparent insensitivity to consequences associated with protected values may also be characterized as a relative ‘‘hypersensitivity’’ to the permissibility of actions, per se, that sometimes results in what Baron and colleagues refer to as ‘‘omission bias’’ (Spranca et al., 1991, Baron and Ritov, this volume). Because harmful actions are perceived as violating moral prohibitions by people with protected values, they may prefer not to engage in these actions, even when they mitigate a larger risk. For example, when faced with a situation where the only way to save 20 species of fish downstream is to open a dam that will cause the extinction of 2 species of fish in a river, a fair number of participants with protected values say they would not open the dam (even though not doing so results in a loss of 20 species). This preference for (more) harmful omission over (less) harmful action represents ‘‘omission bias.’’ Even when people with protected values are willing to act, they show less willingness to make trade-offs than do people for whom the value is not sacred or protected. That is, people with protected values show a relative hypersensitivity to actions that is more commonly referred to as ‘‘quantity insensitivity.’’ In summary, there is ample evidence from laboratory studies that sacred or protected values can be absolute and resistant to any trade-offs. This evidence has come from a range of converging measures. Nonetheless, as we suggested earlier there is also evidence that these values may, at the same time, be at least somewhat flexible and context-dependent. In Sections 2.4 and 2.5 we will review some of this evidence.
2.4. Tragic vs. Taboo Trade-Offs and the Flexibility of Moral Decision Making Phillip Tetlock has proposed a sacred value protection model, where a trade-off between two sacred values in conflict (tragic trade-off) is more permissible than a trade-off between sacred and secular values (taboo tradeoff). In the example with the little boy who needed an expensive surgical operation, the hospital administrator was judged more positively if he traded the life of one boy for the life of another boy, compared to the situation where he traded the boy’s life for money. Participants in the tragic trade-offs condition were also more positive if the administrator made a slow rather than quick decision, no matter which boy he chose.
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If taboo trade-offs are morally outrageous while tragic trade-offs are relatively acceptable, then a straightforward strategy for enhancing a taboo trade-off is either to frame it as a regular trade-off, or to present it as a tragic trade-off. For example, McGraw and Tetlock (2005) showed that participants who were firmly opposed to markets for body organs would change their position if the apparent taboo trade-off was elaborated in different ways. First, the experimenter added the information that the transactions would be allowed only to save lives that otherwise would be lost, putting the entire trade-off in the domain of sacredness. Second, participants were told that the poor would receive financial aid when they needed a transplant, and that they would be prevented from selling their organs because of financial pressures, alleviating moral concerns about fairness and framing the trade-off in secular, monetary terms. After receiving this additional information, 40% of the participants who had held sacred values against body organ markets changed their minds.
2.5. Presentation Order: Judgment in the Context of Previously Viewed Options Further evidence of the flexibility of protected values comes from an experiment looking at order effects on judgments of permissibility. Nine scenarios involving moral dilemmas adapted from Bartels (2008) were selected, based on the mean endorsement scores they received in Bartels’ original research. They included three types of dilemmas. The first was a standard one, where the question is whether an agent should conduct a harmful act in order to bring about some greater good (e.g., the warden of a prisoner of war (POW) camp tells a hostage that he can save himself and a number of other hostages from execution if he appeases the warden by killing one of them). The second was a vivid version, where the action was described in detail (e.g., ‘‘You are handed a knife, and your fellow hostages scream in terror, pleading for their lives’’ (emphasis added)), and the third was a large consequences version, where the good that the action brings about is much larger than in the standard version. Two separate groups of participants rated their approval of each of the actions: one read the vivid scenarios first, then the standard, followed by the large consequences scenarios and the other was given the scenarios in the opposite order. If these sorts of trade-off scenarios trigger content dependent deontological rules, then order of presentation should not matter. If, as Hauser (2006) suggests, participants feel bound to be consistent in their strategies, the order should matter and the strategies used in the first few scenarios should carry over into later scenarios (e.g., the participants who see the large consequence scenarios first should be more consequentialist on the standard scenarios than those given the vivid scenarios first). The final possibility is that initial scenarios set up contrast effects (e.g., ‘‘I acted to save 20 people
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but this only involves 5,’’ or ‘‘this one isn’t as gruesome as the first few.’’). In this case the first few scenarios should affect later judgments but in the opposite direction from adopting a consistent strategy across scenarios. Order of presentation affected responses to all three types of scenarios and took the form of contrast effects. Exposure to vivid choice scenarios, which were designed to direct attention to highly morally salient (and affectively charged) features of the situation, appears to have had the effect of making participants more willing to perform the action posed by the scenario, whether the scenario was described neutrally or with information about large consequences. Conversely, exposure to scenarios including information about large consequences reduced endorsement of action in the standard scenarios, and even more so in the vivid scenarios. These findings further illustrate the malleability and context dependence of moral reasoning found in the experiments of other researchers. Results like this are in sharp contrast with the presumable absoluteness and stability of these values and might even question their existence.
2.6. ‘‘Pseudosacred’’ Values? One logical response to claims of infinite utility or an unwillingness to mix the sacred and the secular is to challenge them. There is a body of research suggesting that sacred values may only be ‘‘pseudosacred’’ (e.g., Thompson and Gonzalez, 1997), that they may represent only a form of ‘‘posturing’’ (Baron and Spranca, 1997) and that people with sacred values will, in fact, make trade-offs when they are indirect (e.g., Irwin and Scattone, 1997; Tetlock, 2000) or when pushed (Baron and Leshner, 2000). For example, Baron and Leshner asked participants to think about possible counterexamples to the absoluteness of their protected values. This reduced people’s endorsement of protected values (Baron and Leshner, 2000). Furthermore, people with protected values were sensitive to the probability of harm associated with actions that violate these protected values. When the probability that an action would cause harm was sufficiently small, participants with a protected value against this harm behaved similarly to participants who did not have the protected value. Altogether, these results raise the possibility that sacred values are akin to a self-presentation strategy aimed at posturing or claiming the high moral ground but having little depth beyond those goals. In contrast, we think these results are part of the puzzle of how sacred values can be both rigid and flexible, and that they should not be used to argue that these values do not exist at all.
2.7. Summary There is strong empirical evidence for the principal features of sacred or protected values, suggesting that they focus the moral agent on the permissibility of actions and away from the consequences associated with those actions.
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There is perhaps equally strong evidence that these values are malleable and context specific. The challenge is to reconcile these distinct patterns of findings. We have attempted to do so by employing a range of procedures aimed at elucidating cognitive processes associated with moral values.
3. A Cognitive Perspective on Sacred Values The apparent contradiction between the absoluteness of sacred or protected values and their sensitivity to contextual factors raises a range of important questions. We have approached these questions from a cognitive perspective, focusing on the processing of morally relevant information. First, we have been interested in how a decision maker recognizes a situation as relevant to a sacred value. We have already seen that there are straightforward ways to do this, some bordering on circularity — participants say they would not allow some action regardless of the benefits and then are given the opportunity to demonstrate this in a scenario involving trade-offs. To be sure, researchers have employed converging, noncircular measures (see Bauman and Skitka, this volume; Baron and Ritov, this volume) but we sought another form of converging evidence that did not involve explicit questions about values. Given that a morally motivated decision maker must recognize the moral relevance of a situation before choosing any particular strategy, we examined whether morally relevant information has a cognitive advantage over neutral information even in the initial stages of processing. That is, does moral information affect bottom up attentional processes? To address this question we looked at attentional correlates of morally relevant content, and its broader interplay with more distant cognitive tasks. Our second research direction is concerned with allocation of attention and cognitive resources to different aspects of morally relevant information. Once a situation is recognized as morally relevant, the next step is to isolate its important components. Even a short scenario containing relatively few facts relies on much broader preexisting knowledge, and accessing the most relevant information may not be an easy task. When participants who care about a particular moral issue or domain encounter a situation in which they have to decide on an action that may produce harm, they might consider this particular action as the most relevant information and base their decision solely on it. That is, people may rely on decision principles that are consistent with a kind of lay deontology. However, when other aspects of the situations are made salient, the same person may come to a different decision. In a series of experiments, we show that participants who hold strong moral values are quite sensitive to cues that prompt one or another aspect of the situation, and can be swayed either to ignore or to focus on the actions versus the consequences of actions.
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3.1. Protected Values and Attention Morally relevant information likely captures attention. When a person encounters a word that has high personal relevance, such as their own name, this information is more easily and more rapidly processed than less relevant information (Mack and Rock, 1998). When a moral concept is of high personal relevance it may also have processing priority. A person who is strongly committed to a prolife cause might find the word abortion more salient than a person who holds a neutral position when it is encountered in text. Similarly, a prochoice activist from an on-campus student organization might be drawn to the same word, albeit for very different reasons.
3.2. Stroop Effects A classic task for studying attentional selection has been the Stroop effect (MacLeod, 1992; Stroop, 1935), where participants have to name the font color by which a word is displayed. The standard finding is that the speed of naming the font color of a word is influenced by its semantic properties. The most frequent demonstration of this effect is when the words are themselves color terms that do not match the color of the font. But semantic effects extend well beyond this case. Following previous research on the emotional version of Stroop task (Gotlib and McCann, 1984; Williams et al., 1996) and taboo words Stroop (MacKay et al., 2004), we expected that the meaning associated with moral values will capture attention and as a result will interfere with color naming. We presented participants with a list of abortion-related words, such as pregnancy, trimester, fetus, and neutral words, such as river, boat, and grant (Iliev and Medin, 2006). In addition, we measured the personal importance of the abortion question on a scale ranging from not important at all to extremely important and the particular position on the issue ranging from strongly prolife to strongly prochoice. A comparison between the reaction times for neutral versus the abortion-related words showed that, overall, participants were slower to name the color of the abortion-related words. However, using a median split to separate the participants into low versus high importance, the lowimportance participants did not show any difference between the two types of words. The high importance group, however, took significantly longer to name the color of abortion-related words compared to neutral words. Whether one was strongly prolife or strongly prochoice did not affect the magnitude of the Stroop effect. After the Stroop experiment, the participants were given a surprise memory task, where they were asked to recall any words that they might have seen. There was no difference between the high and low-importance groups in the number of neutral words recalled. However, compared to the
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low-importance group the high importance participants recalled significantly more abortion-related words. These findings suggest that the low-level capturing of attention is further accompanied by higher level processing related to memory and awareness. The results from the Stroop task provide evidence that morally relevant information is more difficult to inhibit compared to neutral information. Further, this study suggests that the perceived importance of the concept, rather than the specific attitude on the issue, influences attention selection. Note that emotional or taboo-word Stroop effects cannot explain this pattern, since abortion-related words are not likely to trigger the same emotional valuation across strongly prolife and strongly prochoice participants. Relevance rather than similarity in meaning is the key.
3.3. Further Cognitive Consequences: Anchoring Effects If morally relevant information is processed differently, then this should be reflected in other cognitive tasks as well. Although moral values have been linked to cognitive phenomena such as quantity insensitivity and omission bias, their role has not been explored in more peripheral judgment tasks which do not explicitly ask about moral judgments (for choice tasks, see Irwin and Scattone, 1997; McGraw and Tetlock, 2005). We chose to examine the influence of moral values on anchoring effects. A classical example comes from Tversky and Kahneman (1974). Participants were given an arbitrary number (10 or 65) determined by spinning a wheel of fortune, and then were asked to compare this number to the percentage of African nations in the UN. After the participants answered whether this percentage was higher or lower than the arbitrary number, they were asked the further question of exactly what that percentage was. Participants in the high-anchor condition gave an average estimate of 45%, compared to 25% for the low-anchor condition. This effect is surprising because the anchor is presumably useless for estimating the correct answer and should have no influence on it. Most explanations of the anchoring effect refer to attentional processes, characterizing the effect in terms of selective accessibility, activation, and use of information in memory. For example, one explanation makes use of an activation model similar to semantic priming (Strack and Mussweiler, 1997). In this model, the comparison process between the anchor and the target makes the similarities between the two more accessible, influencing the absolute judgment by retrieving a biased sample of information. Wilson et al. (1996) found a basic anchoring effect that was positively correlated with the amount of attention paid to the anchor, despite the fact that the anchor and the target were semantically different. For example, participants were presented with an ID number and were later asked to check whether the ID number was written in blue or red ink (attend-to-color
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condition), or whether it was lower or higher than 1920 (attend-to-number condition). The participants then had to estimate the number of physicians listed in the phone book. Anchoring effects were observed in both conditions, but the effect was larger in the attend-to-color condition (but see Brewer and Chapman, 2002 for a critique). Because of its established links to attention, we used the simple version of this type of anchoring task to examine the indirect link between moral values and decision making. Consider the following scenario (Iliev and Medin, 2006): ‘‘In recent research, published in the Netherlands, it was estimated that the percentage of women who have had an abortion in Europe almost doubled in the last X years. What is your best guess for this percentage in USA nowadays?’’ Instead of X, participants saw a number between 5 and 100. This number is not informative with respect to the answer to the question, but if sufficient attention is paid to it, people may be influenced by this anchor. Our expectation is that the attention of a person who cares about abortions will be captured more easily by the concept of abortion presented in the scenario, which will result in distraction from the anchor. If, on the other hand, the abortion concept is not that salient, more attention will be dedicated to the anchor itself. Thus, participants who care more about the abortion issue should show smaller anchoring effects than participants for whom the issue is less relevant. That was what we found. We used the same importance and polarity scales from the Stroop task to see whether and how moral relevance affected anchoring. The low-importance group exhibited reliable anchoring effects, but the high-importance group did not. Only attitude importance predicted (the absence of) anchoring — one’s specific attitude (whether one was prolife or prochoice) was not predictive. In another experiment we used the protected value measure, where instead of high- and low-importance groups we compared subjects who found abortions impermissible under any circumstances to those who did not have such extreme values. We ran the same anchoring task, and correlated the answer and the anchor for each of the two groups. The group without protected values on abortions showed the typical anchoring effect and the group with protected values showed virtually no anchoring. These results, combined with the previous anchoring study, suggest that including morally relevant information in a scenario overshadows the salience of the irrelevant anchor, eliminating the basic anchoring effect.
3.4. Summary The experiments described above suggest that morally relevant information is more likely to attract attention and influence performance on peripherally related decision making tasks. If moral values influence attention and the
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distribution of cognitive processing resources, then by manipulating attentional cues, one might be able to influence some of the properties associated with these values. The studies reported next address this question.
4. Attentional Influences and the Acceptability of Trade-Offs Any real world trade-off has many aspects, and attending to some of them and not others may lead to different perception of the trade-off. In series of experiments, we manipulated the salience of different aspects of trade-offs, showing that when a decision is framed one way, strong moral values may lead to a greater focus on acts (consistent with deontology), and when framed differently, values may lead to a more consequentialist focus. Compared to dispassionate decision makers, those who view a resource as sacred may care more about the consequences realized by the resource and more about how the resource is treated (e.g., actions that actively harm the forest are wrong, simply stated). So we might expect the judgments of morally motivated decision makers to show larger effects of manipulations that direct attention to the permissibility of harmful actions (and away from consequences) and those that direct attention to consequences (and away from the sometimes harmful antecedent actions).
4.1. Framing the Question Recall that one of the major properties associated with protected values is quantity insensitivity. Stemming from the deontological nature of protected values, the nature of the act appears to be more important than the particular consequences. For example, Baron and Spranca (1997) suggested that ‘‘Quantity of consequences is irrelevant for protected values. Destroying one species through a single act is as bad as destroying a hundred through a single act (p. 5).’’ They argued that abortion opponents might oppose government spending on family planning programs that carry out abortions in developing countries, even if this spending ultimately reduces the number of abortions performed. Baron and Spranca (1997) measured quantity (in)sensitivity with the following questions where X is some prohibited action (e.g., abortions): Is it equally wrong for X to happen as 2X to happen? Is it worse for 2X to happen than for X to happen?
If participants are consistently insensitive to quantity, they should answer ‘‘yes’’ to the first question and ‘‘no’’ to the second. However, as decades’ worth of data on framing effects show, logically equivalent rewordings of
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questions are not necessarily interpreted in the same way. One explanation for why this occurs is that the interpretation of a situation is dependent on what frame of reference is constructed by the wording of a question. Thus, 75% saved versus 25% lost directs people’s attention to different reference points (McKenzie and Nelson, 2003). The property of quantity insensitivity may be influenced by where the question directs their attention. For example, the reference point activated when people are asked if ‘‘is it less wrong for X to happen than for 2X to happen’’ may direct attention toward the distinction between an act occurring and it not occurring. This would make the number of acts occurring more or less irrelevant because the reference point is the absence of a harmful act. This form of the question may direct attention to the permissibility of the act (and away from consequences), thus eliciting responses that appear nonconsequentialist. However, the logically equivalent statement but reworded as ‘‘it is worse for 2X to happen than for X to happen’’ may direct attention toward the quantitative difference between 2X and X implying that some amount of X will inevitably occur. When comparing outcomes, less harm seems better than more harm. We expected this question to direct attention to consequences (away from the act) and elicit responses from people with protected values that are sensitive to quantity, and thus more consistent with consequentialism. In a series of experiments we showed there was a large difference in how quantity sensitive participants were depending on how the question was framed (Sachdeva and Medin, 2008). The ‘‘less’’ question (i.e., is it less wrong for X to happen than for 2X to happen) elicited quantity insensitivity. Participants without protected values were sensitive to quantity in only 48% of the cases. Consistent with predictions, this quantity insensitivity was especially pronounced for people with protected values (only 38 per cent of whom were sensitive to quantity). Overall, the ‘‘more’’ question elicited quantity-sensitive responses (in 80 per cent of cases). Additionally, people with protected values were significantly more quantity sensitive (84 per cent of the cases) than participants without protected values (74 per cent). These results can be taken to indicate that participants with protected values can act in accordance with both consequentialist and deontological principles. Our data suggest that whether people’s responses appear deontological or consequentialist is highly dependent on where attention is directed. By manipulating the frame of reference provided, we are able to vary one of the most basic properties of protected values.
4.2. Framing the Response Alternatives A series of studies conducted by ourselves and others has found that when attention is directed toward harmful actions, participants with sacred values appear less consequentialist (less quantity sensitive, more act sensitive)
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than their more dispassionate peers. For example, Bartels and Medin (2007) examined trade-offs like the opening of a dam scenario described earlier in two ways. In one condition adapted from Ritov and Baron (1999), participants were first asked ‘‘would you open the dam? Y/N’’ (recall that doing so killed 2 species upstream to save 20 downstream). Then they were asked for an upper threshold value for harm — the largest number of fish killed by the action at which they would open the dam. It is perhaps unsurprising that participants who have protected values (those who indicate on another measure that killing fish species is wrong no matter the consequences) provide lower thresholds, or appear ‘‘quantity insensitive’’ relative to participants without protected values. This is a standard result, replicated many times (see Baron and Ritov, this volume). A second group of participants was presented with a normatively equivalent elicitation procedure which omitted the initial yes/no question and instead was asked about a range of trade-off values (a procedure derived from Connolly and Reb, 2003). These participants were asked five trade-off questions per scenario, for example: ‘‘Would you open the dam if it caused the death of 2 (6, 10, 14, 18) species of fish?’’ The prediction was that by holding the action constant and varying the consequences within participants, attention would be directed away from the permissibility of harmful action and toward outcomes. In this condition, participants with protected values were more willing to make trade-offs than participants without protected values. To our knowledge, this was the first demonstration of a link between endorsing a constraint (a protected value) and being more willing to make trade-offs to achieve the best consequences. Baron and Ritov (this volume) conducted an internet experiment and failed to replicate our results. We are uncertain as to why, and more research is needed to elucidate other moderators of these effects. For now, we take our evidence, along with the more versus less results, to suggest that both means (acts) and ends (consequences) matter, and matter a lot, for people with protected values.
4.3. Judgment in the Context of One versus Two Options We have just seen how framing a question or the presentation of answer alternatives can be a prompt as to what is relevant in a given situation. Another way to make some aspects more salient is to juxtapose situations, where the relative similarities and differences may serve to highlight some parts more than others. In further work (Bartels, 2008), we showed that participants with protected values appeared especially sensitive to actions when policy decisions like those above (where a harmful action mitigates a larger risk) were evaluated in isolation. However, when participants were invited to compare omissions (with worse consequences) and harmful actions (with better
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consequences), they focused on ends, strongly preferring the net-benefitmaximizing actions. In the first of these studies, participants read about government administrators’ decisions to either (i) knowingly do harm to mitigate a greater risk (e.g., ‘‘Rich wants to save the children from the disease. He first calculates that administering the vaccine will kill 480 children. Knowing that doing so will kill many children, he chooses to vaccinate the children.’’) or (ii) to merely allow the harm to happen (e.g., ‘‘Julie does not want to kill any of the children with the vaccine. So, the vaccine is not administered. The 600 children die.’’). In this study, participants read about a decision and made two judgments, one about whether the administrator’s decision broke a moral rule, and a judgment of (dis)approval for the decision. When each decision was evaluated in isolation, participants with protected values were less likely to approve of harmful actions. The correlation between judgments of rule violation and disapproval was higher among the items for which participants indicated protected values than those for which they did not. These findings suggest that morally motivated decision makers evaluate morally relevant decisions by attending to the relationship between an act and a moral rule. In the second study, both solutions to the problem (the cost-benefitdriven action and the prohibition-driven omission) were presented to participants on a single page, inviting direct comparison between the decisions. This context was intended to highlight the differences in outcomes (i.e., that 120 more children are saved with vaccination), and under this procedure, people with and without protected values strongly preferred the net-benefit-maximizing action. The results of both Bartels and Medin (2007) and Bartels (2008) demonstrate that adding or subtracting options can shift attention from acts to consequences (see also Unger, 1996), and that what is attended to is a powerful determinant of what is valued and preferred.
4.4. The Attraction Effect: Choosing in the Context of Three Options The above results suggest that participants try to make sense from the information available by searching for available reference points, and when these reference points are readily available, they provide the basis for making a decision. In the next studies we further explored context effects in the form of choice alternatives. To do this we used a popular paradigm in decision making research that elicits what is referred to as the attraction effect (Huber et al., 1982). Attraction effects are preference shifts induced by an irrelevant alternative. Consider, for example, a choice between two cars A and B, where A has better gas mileage, while B has better performance. Normatively
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speaking, adding a third car C, which is slightly worse than B on both mileage and performance, should not change preferences, since no sound decision maker will choose option C, which is dominated by car B. If someone prefers car A over B when there are only two options in the choice set, they should keep their preferences when C is added. Nonetheless, a typical empirical finding is that adding the irrelevant option boosts the preferences for the dominating option, in our example, car B. If instead of adding C, we add a car D that is slightly worse than car A in both facets, choices of car A go up relative to the two-choice situation. All explanations of attraction effects (e.g., those based on theories from Pardicci, 1965; Roe et al., 2001; Tversky and Simonson, 1993; Weddell, 1991) assume that there must be some type of trade-off between the competing dimensions, otherwise the effect would not arise. Going back to the car example, if the gas prices go high enough that the only relevant dimension is gas mileage, adding a third alternative will not be able to shift the strong one-dimensional preferences. In the same way, if a decision maker holds protected values on one of the dimensions but not the other, then one might expect that they will maximize only on this dimension and no context effects will be observed. On the other hand, if both dimensions involve moral goods, then the situation may entail a tragic rather than a taboo trade-off. In this case, if the particular context makes one alternative or dimension more salient than the other, we may observe attraction effects. To test this hypothesis we designed scenarios where participants were told that they are in a position of a decision maker who has to allocate money to different charities, varying from environmental programs to building new shelters for the homeless (Iliev and Medin, 2007). For each round they had to choose only one of three programs, and each of the programs combined two different charities (see Figure 1). Following the paradigm that elicits attraction effects, one of the programs was better for one charity, but worse for another, the second program was the opposite, and the third was slightly worse on both dimensions than one of the other two. Separately, we measured whether the participants had protected values for each of the charities in question. If a participant has no protected values for either of the dimensions, or has them for both, then attraction effects should be possible. If they have a protected value for one dimension but not the other, then that dimension should dominate choice and no context effect should be observed. We found robust attraction effects, and it made no difference whether one, two or none of the dimensions were protected against trade-offs. In agreement with our previous studies, these results suggest that morally motivated decision makers take into account much of the information they are presented with, and if the information makes one or another part of the trade-off more salient, this is reflected in subsequent decisions.
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Mamal species saved from extinction
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Figure 1 A Hypothetical Committee Member had to Choose to Sponsor Only One of the Three Plans Presented. Both Plans A and B are Better on One Dimension, But Worse on the Other, While Plan C is Slightly Worse Than B on Both Dimensions.
4.5. Summary Moral values and information related to them attract attention, yielding large Stroop effects on the one hand and less influence of an irrelevant anchor on the other. In addition, our laboratory studies have repeatedly shown that subtle manipulations can direct attention toward the action dimension, where we observe relative insensitivity to quantity or direct attention toward outcomes where we observe greater sensitivity to quantity. Altogether our underlying message is that values affect attention and attention affects how values are translated into judgments. Although we found attentional correlates of moral values, we did not straightforwardly manipulate attention. By varying the reference points to which a situation is compared we emphasized one or another factor to be considered, but we did not directly manipulate cognitive processing. In future work manipulations such as time pressure and memory load might substitute for the more passive types of manipulations that we used here (see Greene et al., 2008). A blunt summary of our results is that sacred or protected values are far from rigid; instead, they are ‘‘all over the place’’ with respect to judgment and decision making. A core challenge is to understand how these values can be at once fundamental to personal identity and (sometimes) lead to dramatic actions and sacrifices but at the same time be so flexible that modest experimental manipulations lead to qualitative changes in judgments. Many of our studies have focused on attention to actions versus outcomes
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(deontology versus consequentialism) and it remains to be shown how actions and outcomes associated with sacred values are or are not integrated in people’s everyday lives. If nothing else, our studies show that one cannot rely on the results of a single task to make claims about the character of sacred values.
5. General Discussion Our studies show that sacred or protected values involve more than the application of deontological rules and more than the neglect of consequences. Indeed sometimes we find that sacred values are associated with hypersensitivity to consequences. Related work by Carmen Tanner and her associates suggests that deontological and consequentialist orientations are not logical opposites but rather are orthogonal or even weakly correlated (Hanselmann and Tanner, 2008; Tanner et al., 2008). In many respects, these results should not be surprising. The same person who would feel offended by an offer to purchase his daughter or his dog and refuses to think of them as secular goods, cares a great deal about what happens to both daughter and dog. Deontological rules may be in the service of achieving value-related goals. The bulk of our studies rely on data from undergraduates. One might question the depth of their protected values or at least whether our results on attention would hold for people whose dedication to some cause spans decades or saturates their lives. We know relatively little about how strong moral values evolve over time and experience. Still, we will make some speculations about the generality of our results. Questions about generality are necessarily empirical questions. (One nice example of real world relevance is Baron’s studies using scenarios concerning decisions to vaccinate children and connecting them with policy decisions (see also Connolly and Reb, 2003). First, we suspect that the Stroop results demonstrating attention capture by words related to protected values would be equally robust or even more robust for those people who have stronger commitment to their protected values. Second, framing effects also may be robust. For example, we have found that the more versus less framing affects sensitivity to quantity in a sample of Palestinians who endorse jihadist actions (‘‘Does God love the martyr less who kills one of the infidels than the martyr who kills ten? versus ‘‘Does God love the martyr more who kills ten of the infidels than the martyr who kills one?’’). Other interviews with members of Hamas suggest that an act of suicide martyrdom is not readily set aside for other moral imperatives such as taking care of a sick parent but, at the same time, is readily given up if a roadside bomb will accomplish the same goal (Atran, 2004). The chapter by
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Ginges (this volume) also shows clear context (framing) effects among Middle East populations whose lives are organized by sacred values. Nonetheless, cautions about generalizability should remain salient. The fact that we observe framing effects in the context of individual interviews with a sample of Palestinian refugees does not imply that a framing manipulation will also carry the day in social contexts and everyday lives where people are exposed to competing frames and frameworks for understanding events. Druckman and Nelson (2003), for example, showed that framing effects in more realistic contexts are highly susceptible to exposure to additional information during within-group discussions. It may be that activists have so much information at their disposal that simply bringing up the topic activates a large ensemble of actions, attitudes, and associations that might tend to swamp or reframe any effects of new information and its framing. An undergraduate college student saying that destruction of old growth forest is unacceptable no matter how great the benefits might make the same claim as a Greenpeace activist, but their real world behavior is likely to be very different. Although both have strong opinions on the issue, for one of them the link between moral values and moral action would be much stronger than for the other. When presented with similar situations, they might find different factors to be most relevant, or may respond differently to external attentional manipulations. In short, despite the surface similarity in attitudes they may think and behave in dramatically different ways. We close with some speculations on the malleability and rigidity of sacred or protected values that take the form of two analogies. One is that sacred values may be seen as requiring a catalyst in order to be translated into decision behavior. The Northwestern undergraduate environmentalist may differ from the Greenpeace activist solely in terms of the latter having been exposed to a catalyst. Catalytic events may range from things like media coverage, the presence of some triggering event such as some Supreme Court decision, belonging to a soccer team whose members share the same attitudes and life circumstances (e.g., Atran and Sageman, 2006), or chronic, saturated experiences such as citizens of Gaza facing seemingly endless delays at checkpoints (Atran, 2004). The second similar analogy is that values related to personal identity may be like biological needs. We do not organize our lives around food, water, or air, nor do we assign them infinite utility, at least in ordinary circumstances. But we cannot live without them. We cannot imagine giving up our right to air for even 30 minutes, no matter what reward we are offered. And we can readily imagine circumstances, such as being trapped under water, where the quest for air would become a central concern. To give up air, water, and food is to give up life. To give up sacred values may have similar consequences for personal identity. Northwestern undergraduates say they would not sell their
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wedding ring, even for a price well in excess of its market value (Medin et al., 1999). They say it is about meaning, not money. No doubt these undergraduates could be challenged on this (e.g., ‘‘What if you needed the money to pay for a kidney transplant for your spouse?’’) and we imagine they would yield, but it is hard to see this as undermining this sacred symbol. In ordinary life our sacred values are not irrelevant but they are rarely challenged or unambiguously directly relevant. In point of fact, few of us are in a position to open a dam to save fish species at the cost of other species and almost never is the situation so unambiguous (e.g., ‘‘What other possible consequences of opening the dam should we be worrying about?’’). Presidents and paramedics may represent exceptions but presidents have advisors and paramedics have protocols. For either analogy the key theoretical or conceptual questions center around how different settings are seen as relevant to moral values, how the social context interacts with these values and how settings and social contexts map between moral values and actions. Asking individuals about unlikely hypothetical scenarios is only one step on a long journey to understanding.
REFERENCES Atran, S. (2004). Tuning out Hell’s Harpist, Paper Presented to the Permanent Monitoring Panel on Terrorism. World Federation of Scientists, Geneva. Atran, S. and Sageman, M. (2006). Connecting the Dots. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 62(4), 68. Atran, S., Axelrod, R. and Davis, R. (2007). Sacred Barriers to Conflict Resolution. Science, 317(5841), 1039–1040. Baron, J. and Greene, J. D. (1996). Determinants of Insensitivity to Quantity in Valuation of Public Goods. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 2, 107–125. Baron, J. and Leshner, S. (2000). How Serious Are Expressions of Protected Values? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 6, 183–194. Baron, J. and Ritov, I. (2004). Omission Bias, Individual Differences, and Normality. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 94, 74–85. Baron, J. and Spranca, M. (1997). Protected Values. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 70, 1–16. Bartels, D. M. (2008). Principled Moral Sentiment and the Flexibility of Moral Judgment and Decision Making. Cognition, 108(2), 381–417. Bartels, D. M. and Medin, D. L. (2007). Are Morally-motivated Decision Makers Insensitive to the Consequences of Their Choices? Psychological Science, 18(1), 24–28. Brewer, N. T. and Chapman, G. B. (2002). The Fragile Basic Anchoring Effect. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 15, 65–77. Connolly, T. and Reb, J. (2003). Omission Bias in Vaccination Decisions: Where’s the ‘‘Omission’’? Where’s the ‘‘Bias’’? Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 91, 186–202. Druckman, J. N. and Nelson, K. R. (2003). Framing and Deliberation: How Citizens’ Conversations Limit Elite Influence. American Journal of Political Science, 47, 729–745.
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Noninstrumental Reasoning over Sacred Values: An Indonesian Case Study Jeremy Ginges and Scott Atran Contents 1. Introduction 1.1. What are Sacred Values? 1.2. Redefining Sacred Values to Predict Rigidity and Flexibility 2. Testing the ‘‘Backfire Effect’’ in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict 3. Sequential Offers in Negotiations over Sacred Values 3.1. Using a Within-Subjects Design for a Transparent Test of the Backfire Effect 4. Retesting the Backfire Effect in a Study of Indonesian Madrassah Students 4.1. The Participants: Demographic Characteristics 4.2. The Participants: Moral Worldview 4.3. The Deals 4.4. Results 5. General Discussion References
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Abstract We present evidence of noninstrumental reasoning over sacred values from field experiments in real world conflicts. We argue that claims to sacred or protected values are not claims to infinite utility, as people can and do order their preferences for different values they hold sacred. Instead, sacred values are defined by a taboo against measuring moral commitments along an instrumental metric. This definition allows us to predict contexts in which people will be relatively rigid or flexible in their judgments and decisions over sacred values. To demonstrate noninstrumental reasoning over sacred values, we review previous studies with Israelis and Palestinians demonstrating the ‘‘backfire effect,’’ where offering added material incentives to encourage compromise over sacred values leads to greater opposition to compromise. We then present data from a new study of Indonesian madrassah students replicating the backfire effect using a within-subjects design where the instrumental advantages of the added material benefits were transparent. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Volume 50 ISSN 0079-7421, DOI: 10.1016/S0079-7421(08)00406-4
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1. Introduction The rational actor model dominates strategic thinking in all levels of government policy (Gaddis, 1995) and military planning (Allison, 1999) as well in risk assessment and modeling by foreign aid and international development projects run by institutions such as the World Bank and many NGOs (Atran et al., 2007). The prevailing view is that the choices of actors in political disputes are instrumentally rational, driven by a strict cost-benefit calculus (Varshney, 2003). However, in many intergroup conflicts, people collectively construe resources, issues, or rights under dispute to be what has variously been called ‘‘protected’’ or ‘‘sacred’’ values. In this chapter we will discuss how this transformation leads to noninstrumental behavior, and some of the consequences for real world political conflicts.
1.1. What are Sacred Values? We begin with a discussion of what it means for a value to be ‘‘sacred.’’ Typically, sacred values have been defined as values to which people declare infinite commitment (Baron and Spranca, 1997; Tetlock, 2003). For example, Phillip Tetlock describes a sacred value . . . as any value toward which a moral community proclaims, at least in rhetoric, an unbounded or infinite commitment (Tetlock, 2002).
Tetlock’s operational definition of sacred values is almost identical to Jonathan Baron’s definition of ‘‘protected values’’. Baron and Spranca (1997) argue that protected values are indicated when people ‘‘refuse to answer . . .. sensibly’’ when they are asked how much money they would accept to compromise a value: Some people say that human lives — or human rights, or natural resources — are infinitely more important than other economic goods. These people hold what we call protected values (Baron and Spranca, 1997).
It is understandable that scholars have questioned the veracity of claims to sacred or protected values, given that these claims are seen as declarations of infinite commitment. It seems impossible for someone to have a value with true infinite utility, as that value would dominate one’s life completely, taking up all of a person’s time and resources. Baron and Leshner (2000) argue that protected values may be thought of as poorly constructed concepts, a product of ‘‘unreflectiveness’’ in those who hold them ‘‘that leads to incorrect or overgeneralized concepts.’’ Under this interpretation, people may declare a value sacred or protected without thinking through this commitment with sufficient rigor. Indeed in a series of studies with university students and internet samples, Baron and Leshner (2000) show that when people are
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asked to think about counterexamples, or are asked to think about what would happen if one protected value might conflict with another, they demonstrate significant flexibility where compromise, previously unimaginable, was found. In one experiment university students were asked whether prohibitions against 13 different actions (such as cutting down all the trees in an old-growth rain forest, electing a politician making racist comments, or sterilizing retarded women) were ‘‘protected’’ and then asked them to think of counterexamples where the action might not be a protected value. This request resulted in substantial flexibility for 10 % of protected values where, upon reflection, counterexamples were found. While unreflectiveness may explain these results, we believe the flexibility reported may be an artifact of the experimental context rather than a reflection of everyday behavior in the domain of sacred or protected values. It would not be unreasonable to suggest that many of the participants in the study may have been exploring different types of ideological commitments without a great deal of reflection. In these cases, challenges may lead to flexibility. However in many real world contexts, unreflectiveness may be a product of commitment rather than a cause of commitment. Taboos against reflecting on sacred values may reflect the collective devotion of a network of people to moral commitments. Tetlock and colleagues have also demonstrated the limits of apparently absolute commitments to values. For example, Tetlock et al. (2000), in studies using North American college students as participants, have demonstrated that outrage against violators of sacred values is mitigated in dilemmas where people are forced to trade off one sacred value against another (for example choosing between two human lives), as long as the decision maker demonstrates an awareness of the significance of the moral dilemma. This type of finding has led to the argument that . . .sacred values are merely pseudo-sacred and ordinary citizens are prepared — when elites present good arguments or tempting inducements — to abandon the illusion that certain values are infinitely important (Tetlock, 2003 — italics are ours).
Tetlock (2003) portrays sacred values as being deeply felt but essentially rhetorical devices that establish and maintain community identity; both from the perspective of the individual seeking to maintain his or her place in their community and from the perspective of community members judging other individuals. Thus he explains flexibility of commitment to ostensibly sacred values: because sacred values are essentially rhetorical devices, they are easily compromised by simple rhetorical techniques so as to cope with ‘‘the real world of scarce resources’’ (Tetlock, 2003). While both Tetlock and Baron are able to explain flexibility over sacred values, their approach does a poorer job of explaining the type of radical resistance to compromising sacred values we witness in many real world
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conflicts. People will frequently give up their lives, and sacrifice the lives of kin to defend moral commitments — to land, religion, or nation. Because one’s life is the ultimate ‘‘reality constraint,’’ the notion that flexibility over sacred values is simply done when the instrumental motivations are great enough seems difficult to believe. This observation is buttressed by results from interviews, surveys, and experiments we have conducted. For example, we interviewed 12 self-identified recruits for martyr attack from Hamas (in Nablus and Gaza City) and 12 members from Indonesia’s Jemaah Islamiyah (in Poso, Sulawesi). All were asked questions of the sort, ‘‘What if your family were to be killed in retaliation for your action?’’ or ‘‘What if your father were dying and your mother found out your plans for a martyrdom attack and asked you to delay until the family could get back on its feet?’’ To a person they answer along lines that there is duty to family but duty to God cannot be postponed (Atran, 2005, 2006). This way of thinking does not seem limited to small groups of highly radicalized individuals. In 2006 we surveyed 714 Palestinian university students across 14 campuses in the West Bank and Gaza and asked them to rate, on a scale of 1 (‘‘completely acceptable’’) to 4 (‘‘completely unacceptable’’) their approval of a would-be Palestinian suicide attacker indefinitely postponing his or her attack for different reasons. Mean disapproval was higher in response to indefinite delay to prevent the killing of his or her entire family in retribution for the attack (M = 2.35, SD = 1.19) than an indefinite delay to take care of an ill-father (M = 2.05, SD = 1.07; t(606) = 5.623, p < .001). This is an example of moral commitments trumping instrumental realities for ordinary people for whom the consequences of such decisions are not simply hypothetical but are part of their everyday lives.
1.2. Redefining Sacred Values to Predict Rigidity and Flexibility A good theory of sacred values needs to be able to explain when people will show flexibility over sacred values, but also when people will be resistant to flexibility.1 It needs to predict when sacred values may be reframed or compromised on the one hand, and the reality of acts like suicide bombings or a monk’s self immolation (Gambetta, 2005) on the other. To do this we sought to build on the important work of Baron and Tetlock by subtly redefining sacred values. Most research on sacred or protected values defines a value as being sacred when participants say ‘‘I would not do/would do ___ no matter what the cost or the benefit’’. Both Baron and Tetlock argue that when people
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make a statement such as this, they are making an assertion that a value has infinite worth for them. Tetlock further argues that it is this infinite worth which ‘‘precludes comparisons, trade-offs, or indeed any mingling with secular values’’ (Tetlock, 2003). We argue to the contrary that claims to sacred or protected values do not mean claims of infinite utility. We regard it as relatively uncontroversial that people can rank sacred values, and if sacred values can be ordered relative to each other they cannot be of infinite value. Emile Durkheim notes that a significant feature of religion is that it constitutes a system of beliefs and rites where ‘‘sacred things have relations of coordination and subordination to one another’’ (Durkheim, 1912/1995, p. 38). Indeed, in our own studies of religious and politically active samples of Israelis, Palestinians, and Indonesians we often ask participants to rank moral values such as belief in God and duty to family. Refusal is extremely rare and we find that people see the task as relatively intuitive. If it is possible to rank sacred values, it is impossible that a central feature of membership in the category ‘‘sacred value’’ is ‘‘infinite worth.’’ Instead, we regard sacred values as being defined simply by their separation from the secular or profane domain of everyday life. As Durkeim argues, The sacred and profane are always and everywhere conceived by the human intellect as separate genera, as two worlds with nothing in common. . .. They are different in kind (Durkheim, 1912/1995, p. 36).
We contend that when people say that no amount of money is worth compromising a behavior or resource, they are not saying that the behavior or resource is of infinite utility. Instead they are saying that their moral (or sacred) commitments cannot be measured along an instrumental (or profane) metric, expressing a reluctance to mingle the sacred/moral domain with the secular/material domain. To return to Durkheim, The mind experiences deep repugnance about mingling, because the notion of the sacred is always and everywhere separate from the notion of the profane . . . and because we imagine a kind of logical void between them (Durkheim, 1912/1995, p. 37).
Defining sacred values in this way restates the issue and parsimoniously explains both inflexibility and flexibility when reasoning about sacred values. Inflexibility will occur in response to requests to measure commitments to sacred values along an instrumental scale, when people are asked to compromise a sacred value in exchange for some material outcome (a socalled taboo trade-off ). Flexibility over sacred values will occur when asked to rank commitments between sacred values (a so-called tragic trade-off ). Redefining sacred values in this way has led to nonobvious predictions regarding decision making in the domain of sacred values. Consider the issue of whether judgments and decisions about sacred values are truly
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noninstrumental reasoning as we claim. Tetlock (2003) argues against this proposition. He interprets experimental evidence of flexibility over sacred values to imply that when the instrumental stakes are great enough people commonly use simple techniques that allow them to be flexible about commitments to ‘‘pseudosacred’’ values. The corresponding prediction is that instrumentally better deals to compromise sacred value will produce more flexibility. Our redefinition of sacred values led to the opposite prediction. We predicted that adding material incentives to compromise over sacred values would increase the saliency of the taboo against mingling the sacred with the profane, and so lead to greater opposition to compromise. We call this the ‘‘backfire effect’’ as instrumentally better offers to compromise sacred values are predicted to lead greater opposition to the compromise.
2. Testing the ‘‘Backfire Effect’’ in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict We first tested the backfire effect in several field experiments (Ginges et al., 2007) using samples of Palestinian refugees, Israeli settlers, and Palestinian students who strongly identified with Hamas. These experiments distinguished themselves from previous laboratory-based studies by examining issues centrally important to the lives of participants who are central players in a violent political dispute. Participants responded to a deal involving compromise over a core issue: ceding land in the case of Israeli settlers; sovereignty over Jerusalem in the case of Palestinian students; the ‘‘right of return’’ for Palestinian refugees; and recognition of the legitimacy of the adversaries’ national aspirations for all samples. No participant supported compromising over these issues but some additionally said the issues concerned were sacred values. That is, they said that they could not consider compromising a relevant issue irrespective of the benefits to their people. To test the backfire effect we used a between-subjects design, randomly allocating individual participants into one of two conditions: taboo or tabooþ. In the taboo condition, participants responded to a deal compromising one important value (such as sovereignty over Jerusalem) in exchange for a peace deal entailing a two state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian dispute. Participants in the tabooþ condition responded to this same deal with an added material incentive. These incentives varied. Sometimes they were monetary amounts that would go to individual families and sometimes they went to the entire nation. We also varied whether the adversary or a third party supplied the incentive. In one case we used a nonmonetary material incentive, promising a life free of political violence. Regardless of the incentives, the same pattern always emerged. For participants who had a
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strong preference for the issue concerned, added material incentives produced instrumentally rational behavior resulting in less support for violent opposition to the deal, and less anger or disgust. However when the deal implicated a sacred value the backfire effect was found: materially better deals led to less flexibility in the form of more anger or disgust and greater support for violent opposition to the deal.
3. Sequential Offers in Negotiations over Sacred Values In a negotiation, people typically exchange sequential offers. To exchange Y, people may first be offered X and if X is rejected, they may be offered X þ 1. Our previous work, which randomly assigned people to respond to deals that threatened their sacred values or to the same deals with added instrumental incentives, suggests that the X þ 1 offer in a sequential negotiation that implicates a sacred value may backfire. These initial studies supported our contention that sacred values are not pseudosacred but instead were characterized by a real repugnance to the idea of measuring commitments to sacred values along an instrumental metric. However, the participants in the aforementioned studies were in a disadvantage in that they had no deal (save perhaps an ideal offer) with which they could compare the taboo and tabooþ deals. Thus the external validity of previous work using a between-subjects design to many real world contexts, such as negotiations, may be questionable. In general, while people may behave irrationally in studies using a between-subjects design they often recognize such irrationality in more transparent tests that use a within-subjects design. For example, people value future events more than equivalent past events when betweensubjects designs are used but value both equally under a within-subjects design (Caruso et al., 2008). In a particularly relevant study, Bartels (2008) asked participants to rate their approval of actors in hypothetical scenarios who either acted, or refused to act, in accordance with cost-benefit calculations in choices between sacred or protected values, such as sacrificing the lives of a few children to save many. When judging choices separately, participants were more approving of refusals to act. However when judging choices jointly, participants were more approving of a person who acted in response to cost-benefit calculations. One cause of preference changes in within- versus between-subjects design is ease of evaluation (Hsee et al., 1999). Attributes that are easy to evaluate have an advantage in influencing choices when options are evaluated independently in a single isolated offer, an advantage that disappears when two offers can be compared (Bazerman et al., 1992; Hsee, 1996; Hsee
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et al., 1999). For example people prefer Dictionary A (which has 10,000 entries and has no defects) to Dictionary B (which has 20,000 entries but has a torn cover) when they are evaluated separately, but Dictionary B over Dictionary A when evaluated jointly (Hsee, 1996). It is possible that the relative ease of evaluating moral versus instrumental aspects of deals involving sacred values in a between-subjects design may have resulted in an overestimation of the negative impact of instrumental offers in negotiations over sacred values. People can evaluate offers that implicate sacred values from both moral (‘‘is this right or wrong?’’) and instrumental (‘‘is this likely to bring pleasure or pain?’’) perspectives. It seems more difficult to evaluate the instrumental aspect of a single isolated offer than it is to evaluate the moral aspect of the offer (violating the taboo against measuring commitments to sacred values). The moral violation is obvious and even more salient in the tabooþ condition. In contrast, the absence of a meaningful comparison offer renders the evaluation of the instrumental benefits more difficult.
3.1. Using a Within-Subjects Design for a Transparent Test of the Backfire Effect To test this alternative account, we conducted a study using a withinsubjects design where participants were first presented with a deal involving a compromise over one of their sacred values for some material benefit (taboo deal) and were then presented with the same deal with an added material benefit (tabooþ deal). This design allows a clear test of opposing hypotheses. If the relative difficulty of evaluating the material aspect of an offer explains our previous result, people would demonstrate less opposition to tabooþ than to taboo deals under a within-subjects design. In contrast if decisions over sacred values are noninstrumental, tabooþ deals would again backfire.
4. Retesting the Backfire Effect in a Study of Indonesian Madrassah Students In addition to using a different design, this study also examined reasoning over sacred values in a different cultural, linguistic, and political setting. Our previous work had taken place in the West Bank and Gaza, a small but geopolitically important area. The study we describe here took place in Indonesia during 2006 and involved willingness to compromise over the sacred value of sharia or strict Islamic law. We interviewed 102 students attending four different madrassahs or Muslim boarding schools: Darussalam, Al-Husainy, Ibnu Mas’ud, and
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Al-Islam. All schools were associated with Islamic political movements. Darussalam (located in Depok, West Java) and Al-Husainy (Tangerang, West Java), are associated with the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), or ‘‘Revival of Islamic Scholars’’. Ibnu Mas’ud (Lombok), is funded by the Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia (MMI), or ‘‘Council of Indonesian Holy Warriors,’’ an Islamist coalition whose goal is to convert Indonesia into a strict Sunni state ruled by sharia law. The fourth school, Al-Islam (in Tengulun, East Java), was established in 1992 by the father of three of the main Bali bombing plotters (Ali Imron, Amrozi, Mukhlas) and modeled on the famous al-Mukmin school in Ngruki (Solo, Central Java) created by Jemmah Islamiyah founder Abdullah Sungkar and his colleague Abu Bakr Ba’asyir. The participants in our studies had grown up during a time of increased group-based political violence. Between 1990 and 2003 Indonesia experienced significant amounts of group-based violence taking many forms. According to a report by Varshney et al. (2006), ethnocommunal violence has accounted for only 17 % of group-based violence during the period but has been particularly severe, causing 9612 out of 10,758 fatalities during the 13 year period. Group-based violence appears particularly common in Java, which witnessed severe periods of violence directed against ethnic Chinese (Sidel, 2006).
4.1. The Participants: Demographic Characteristics Age and gender: The median age of participants was 17, with 94% aged between 15 and 21. Most of the sample (74%) was male, but the distribution of gender differed significantly by school (Chi-square = 28.36, p < .001). Male students constituted more than 90% of participants in Al-Islam and Ibnu Mas’ud, 50% in Darussalam, and 56% in Al-Husainy participants. Socioeconomic status: We asked participants whether they considered their family to be ‘‘poor,’’ ‘‘middle or average compared to the rest of the population,’’ or ‘‘rich or wealthy compared to the rest of the population.’’ No participant self-classified as wealthy, but the distribution of poor and middle class students differed according to school (Chi square = 53.3, p < .001). Ibnu Mas’ud had the highest proportion of poor students (92%), followed by Al-Islam (43%) and Al-Hussainy (33%). All students at Darussalam classified themselves as being middle-class. Recruitment: We asked participants how they came to be at the school — because of contacts through ‘‘kin or family’’, ‘‘friends’’, or the ‘‘school’’. In three schools, kin/family was the dominant cause of recruitment (Ibnu Mas’ud, 77% through kin/family; Darussalam, 59%; Al Husainy, 78%).
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Only 5% of students in Al-Islam came to be there through kin/family contacts as the school recruited the remainder directly or through peer networks.
4.2. The Participants: Moral Worldview We asked several questions that related to moral beliefs about intergroup violence, finding that the beliefs of students at Al-Islam were unusual. In particular, students at Al-Islam seemed to believe less in the power of context to shape morality and that people deserved to be killed because of evil beliefs. For example, we asked ‘‘How can you be sure that some people deserve to be killed: due to things they have done, due to their beliefs and religion, or for other reasons?’’ Sixty-seven % of participants at Al-Islam said that people deserved to be killed because of their beliefs and religion and 33.3% because of things they have done. In contrast, across the other schools 13% said that people deserved to be killed because of their beliefs and religion and 87% because of things they have done (Chi-square = 48.1, p < .001). We also asked: ‘‘Do you think people are born good and learn to become evil, while others are born evil and learn to become good, or do you think people learn to be good or evil?’’ At Al-Islam, 90.5% of participants believed that people are born either good or evil, with the majority (67%) believing they were born evil and only 9.5% believing that people learn to be good or evil from a neutral state. In contrast, at the other schools the most common answer (45.5%) was that people learn to be good or evil, the next common response being that people are born good (32.5%) while only 12% believed people are born evil (Chi-square = 29.5, p < .001). Sharia as a sacred value: To measure whether sharia was a sacred value we asked: ‘‘Do you agree that there are some extreme circumstances where, in return for some great benefit to the people of your country, it would be permissible to accept that sharia would NOT be the law of the land?’’ Participants could answer ‘‘yes’’, ‘‘don’t know/unsure’’ or ‘‘no,’’ with the last response indicating sharia was a sacred value. Across all schools, 75% of participants answered ‘‘no.’’ At Al-Islam, the belief that sharia was a sacred value was near universal with 91.5% of participants (19 out of 21) indicating that their commitment to sharia was a sacred value. In contrast, beliefs about sharia were more heterogeneous in other schools, with 68% of participants (51 out of 75) believing that it was a sacred value. We should note that those who did not believe sharia to be a sacred value still exhibited a strong preference that Indonesia be ruled by sharia. We asked: ‘‘How important is it that a good government should implement
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sharia? Is it very important, important, not very important or not important at all?’’ All participants regarded it as either important or very important.
4.3. The Deals We asked all participants to respond to two slightly different types of deals. Under the first deal (taboo), participants were told that the United States and the European Union would agree to recognize the right of the Moslem Brotherhood to lead the government of Indonesia if elected in a free and fair manner as long as there was agreement that Indonesia would not ‘‘be ruled strictly according to sharia.’’ After responding to this deal, participants were asked to respond to the second deal (tabooþ) which was identical to the first except for the added material incentive: ‘‘In return the United States and the European Union would give Indonesia a privileged trade agreement, resulting in substantial economic benefits to our people.’’ To measure opposition to each deal, participants were asked: ‘‘Do you agree or disagree with a bombing campaign (involving what some call martyrdom attacks) to oppose this agreement?’’ Responses were coded from 1 to 4, where lower scores indicate greater support for violent opposition to the deal.
4.4. Results We analyzed support for suicide attacks against deals in a 2 (madrassah: Al Isalm vs. other schools) X 2 (deal type: taboo vs. tabooþ) ANOVA, with repeated measures on deal type. Support for violence was greater in response to the deal with the added instrumental incentive F (1, 76) = 19.35, p < .001. Thus we replicated the prior backfire effect, this time using a within-subjects design where participants were able to directly compare the taboo and tabooþ deals, and so could easily evaluate the instrumental value of the tabooþ deal. Interestingly the backfire effect was greater for al Al-Islam sample F (1, 76) = 4.13, p = .046 (see Figure 1), which was more strongly radicalized than the other samples; students at Al-Islam supported violent opposition more than those at the other schools, F (1, 76) = 7.43, p = .008. For students at Al-Islam, mean support for violence in response to the tabooþ deal was 1.32 (SD = .48), while mean support for violence in response to the taboo deal was 2.05 (SD = .32), t(18) = 5.72, p < .001, d = 1.94. For students at other schools, mean support for violence in response to the tabooþ deal was 2.08 (SD = .92), while mean support for violence in response to the taboo deal was 2.36 (SD = 1.02), t(58) = 2.21, p = .031, d = .29.
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Mean increase in support for violent opposition to deal
0.9 0.8
AI-Islam Other schools
0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0
Figure 1 Support for violent opposition to deals involving compromise over sharia increased when offered an additional material incentive to compromise. This effect was strongest for more radicalized students attending Al-Islam.
5. General Discussion In this chapter we have argued that when someone claims that an action, issue, or resource is a sacred value, they are not claiming that the action, issue, or resource has infinite utility. Rather, they are asserting that this is a thing that cannot be valued along an instrumental metric. This definition allows us to predict some of the conditions under which people are likely to be flexible about their commitments to sacred values as well as when they are likely to be rigid about those commitments, as is the case when ordinary people are willing to undergo extreme sacrifice in defense of a sacred value. Seen this way, sacred values are not ‘‘pseudosacred’’ social commitments vulnerable to instrumental realities. Instead, they can be real commitments to not compromise moral commitments for materially beneficial outcomes. One nonobvious prediction that follows from this definition is the ‘‘backfire effect’’ of material incentives to compromise over sacred values. If the central taboo surrounding sacred values is the prohibition against sacredsecular trade-offs (taboo trade-offs), greater incentives should arouse greater opposition as they make the taboo behavior more salient. In previous work with Israelis and Palestinians we have used between-subjects experimental
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designs to show that participants who responded to deals with greater material incentives to trade-off sacred values (tabooþ deals) responded with greater outrage (Ginges et al., 2007). In this chapter we described a new study carried out with Indonesian madrassah students that replicated these findings using a within-subjects design that made the instrumental advantages of the tabooþ deals transparent. Aside from demonstrating the robustness of the backfire effect, three other features of this study seem particularly noteworthy. The first is that the effect was found in a different cultural and political context. This indicates that our previous results in the Israeli–Palestinian context (Ginges et al., 2007) were not simply a function of some specific way Israelis and Palestinians talk and think about issues in this conflict. Second, we found it interesting that the backfire effect was strongest for those attending AlIslam, who were the most radicalized students. This indicates that noninstrumental responses to instrumental incentives to compromise sacred values may be greatest in contexts where compromise is most needed. This work also demonstrates the importance of studying sacred values in the field as well as in the laboratory. The research sites we chose allowed us to ask questions about values that were central to the lives of our participants. Moreover, we were able to ask questions about violent responses to compromise over sacred values in a context where participants were tragically familiar with the reality of such violence. Thus while our experiment involved hypothetical reactions to hypothetical situations (as in many laboratory studies) these reactions and situations were realistic and important to our participants (unlike many laboratory studies). Expectations that people in political or intergroup conflicts will compromise sacred values in exchange for much needed material improvements are likely to be unfounded. Many of these conflicts involve profound material suffering, and the reduction of this suffering is essential to longterm conflict resolution. However, the findings we have discussed here demonstrate that reasoning over sacred values differs from reasoning about purely economic goods and that attempts to resolve disputes over sacred values need to take this into account. When people transform issues, resources, or practices into sacred values, attempts to resolve disputes by focusing on increasing the costs or benefits of different actions can backfire.
REFERENCES Allison, G. (1999). Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. Longman, New York. Atran, S. (2005). The Emir: An Interview with Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, Alleged Leader of the Southeast Asian Jemaah Islamiyah Organization. Jamestown Foundation Spotlight on Terror, 3, Retrieved July 1, 2007, from http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article. php?articleid=2369782.
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Atran, S. (2006). The Moral Logic and Growth of Suicide Terrorism. The Washington Quarterly, 29, 127–147. Atran, S., Axelrod, R. and Davis, R. (2007). Sacred Barriers to Conflict Resolution. Science, 317, 1039–1040. Baron, J. and Leshner, S. (2000). How Serious are Expressions of Protected Values? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 6, 183–194. Baron, J. and Spranca, M. (1997). Protected Values. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 70, 1–16. Bartels, D. M. (2008). Principled Moral Sentiment and the Flexibility of Moral Judgment and Decision Making. Cognition, 108, 381–417. Bazerman, M. H., Loewenstein, G. F. and White, S. B. (1992). Reversals of Preference in Allocation Decisions: Judging an Alternative versus Choosing among Alternatives. Administrative Science Quarterly, 37, 220–240. Caruso, E. M., Gilbert, D. T. and Wilson, T. D. (2008). A Wrinkle in Time: Asymmetric Valuation of Past and Future Events. Psychological Science, 9, 796–801. Durkheim, E. (1995/1912). The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Free Press, New York. Gaddis, J. (1995). Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar National Security. Oxford University Press, New York. Gambetta, D. (2005). Making Sense of Suicide Missions. Oxford University Press, New York. Ginges, J., Atran, S., Medin, D. and Shikaki, K. (2007). Sacred Bounds on the Rational Resolution of Violent Political Conflict. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 104, 7357–7360. Haidt, J. and Joseph, C. (2004). Intuitive Ethics: How Innately Prepared Intuitions Generate Culturally Variable Virtues. Daedalus, 133, 55–66. Haidt, J., and Joseph, C. (2007). The Moral Mind: How Sets of Innate Moral Intuitions Guide the Development of Many Culture-Specific Virtues, and Perhaps Even Modules. In edited by P. Carruthers, S. Laurence, and S. Stich, (Eds.), The Innate Mind, Vol. 3 New York: Oxford University Press. Hsee, C. K. (1996). The Evaluability Hypothesis: An Explanation for Preference Reversals between Joint and Separate Evaluations of Alternatives. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 67, 247–257. Hsee, C. K. (2000). Attribute Evaluability and Its Implications for Joint-Separate Evaluation Reversals and Beyond. In edited by D. Kahneman, and A. Tversky, (Eds.), Choices, Values and Frames. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England. Hsee, C. K., Loewenstein, G. F., Blount, S. and Bazerman, M. (1999). Preference Reversals between Joint and Separate Evaluation of Options: A Review and Theoretical Analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 576–590. Sidel, J. T. (2006). Riots, Pogroms, Jihad: Religious Violence in Indonesia. Cornell University Press, Ithaca. Tetlock, P. E., Kristel, O., Elson, B., Green, M. and Lerner, J. (2000). The Psychology of the Unthinkable: Taboo Trade-Offs, Forbidden Base Rates, and Heretical Counterfactuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 853–870. Tetlock, P. (2002). Social Functionalist Frameworks for Judgment and Choice: Intuitive Politicians, Theologians, and Prosecutors. Psychological Review, 109, 451–471. Tetlock, P. (2003). Thinking the Unthinkable: Sacred Values and Taboo Cognitions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 320–324. Varshney, A. (2003). Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict and Rationality. Perspectives on Politics, 1, 85–99. Varshney, A., Panggabean, R. and Tadjoeddin, M. Z. (2006). Creating Datasets in InformationPoor Environments: Patterns of Collective Violence in Indonesia (1990–2003). Presented at the Annual Meeting of American Political Science Association, September 2006.
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Development and Dual Processes in Moral Reasoning: A Fuzzy-trace Theory Approach Valerie F. Reyna and Wanda Casillas Contents 1. Overview 2. An Introduction to Fuzzy-trace Theory 3. Building Blocks of Moral Reasoning 3.1. Knowledge and the Role of Gist Representations in Moral Reasoning 3.2. Retrieval and Application of Values to Reasoning Problems 3.3. Processing: The Role of Inhibition and Interference in Reasoning and Decision Making 3.4. Summary of Building Blocks of Moral Reasoning 4. Explaining Reversals and Paradoxes in Moral Reasoning 4.1. Framing Effects and Differences in Problem Representation 4.2. Insensitivity to Quantity and Relative Magnitude 4.3. Dual-Process Accounts of Reversals and Effects of Emotion 4.4. Summary of Reversals and Paradoxes in Moral Reasoning 5. Moral Values and Risky Decisions in Adolescence 6. Conclusions References
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Abstract Fuzzy-trace theory is used to explain: paradoxical reversals in moral reasoning (e.g., for trolley vs. footbridge scenarios); insensitivity to quantitative differences in outcomes, especially for protected values (and variations due to response formats); effects of dual opposing processes, such as emotion and cognitive control (inhibition); and the role of moral values in adolescents’ risky decision making. Fuzzy-trace theory is contrasted with standard dual-process approaches, and unique predictions are derived (e.g., about activation of specific brain areas). Evidence supports the conclusions that people tend to rely on fuzzy, gist-based intuition in reasoning generally; that this tendency is exacerbated for moral reasoning about protected values; that moral intuitions spring from a developmentally advanced semantic system in which the qualitative gist Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Volume 50 ISSN 0079-7421, DOI: 10.1016/S0079-7421(08)00407-6
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of decisions is processed, as opposed to an evolutionarily primitive ‘‘system 1’’ as standard dual-process theories assume; and that, ironically, such reasoning makes it more likely that people achieve the very utilitarian outcomes that this reasoning eschews.
1. Overview Moral reasoning and decision making have been domains of application of fuzzy-trace theory from its inception (e.g., Brainerd and Reyna, 1990; Reyna and Brainerd, 1991a, 1992). In this chapter, we apply evidence-based concepts from fuzzy-trace theory to explain paradoxical findings, such as the shift in reasoning that occurs for different formulations of moral dilemmas (e.g., the trolley car and footbridge problems; Greene et al., 2001). In particular, we focus on demonstrations that moral reasoning exhibits relative insensitivity to quantitative differences in outcomes (e.g., Bartels and Medin, 2007; Ritov and Baron, 1999; Slovic, 2007). For example, people will donate more money to save one starving child in Africa than to save two or more children (Kogut and Ritov, 2005a,b; Va¨stfja¨ll et al., 2007). Or, people with strong moral compunctions against destroying species will refuse to destroy any species in order to save a greater number of species; they refuse to trade off (Ritov and Baron, 1999). Such behavior violates rationality — it is not intellectually defensible to argue that more money should be donated to save one child than to save that same child and another child (Slovic, 2007). We do not claim that this kind of reasoning is superior, as the aforementioned example illustrates, but rather that when people reason in an advanced way, they often do so using this kind of qualitative gist-based processing. Thus, the processing that produces insensitivity to quantity also produces healthier outcomes and advanced reasoning performance across many tasks, including moral reasoning1. We will also draw parallels between such moral reasoning in adults and risky decision making in adolescents (Reyna and Farley, 2006). Specifically, we show that adolescents (and adults for that matter) who avoid unhealthy risks do so because they, too, fail to trade off. Instead of thinking quantitatively (i.e., trading off magnitudes of risk and reward), healthy risk avoiders invoke moral values that operate on vague mental representations of the qualitative gist of risky decisions. This counterintuitive prediction — that thinking qualitatively rather than quantitatively produces healthier 1
According to fuzzy-trace theory, gist-based reasoning is globally superior, but local violations, such as the example of the starving children in Africa, are real errors, contrary to other approaches that treat these behaviors as ‘‘smart.’’ Superiority, in turn, is assessed according to two types of criteria: internal coherence and external correspondence (to reality, i.e., healthier outcomes in the aggregate); see Adam and Reyna, 2005; Reyna and Adam, 2003; Reyna and Farley, 2006; and Reyna et al. (2003).
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choices — comes from fuzzy-trace theory, and has been supported by behavioral evidence (e.g., Mills et al., 2008). (‘‘Healthy’’ choices are defined with respect to rationality criteria of coherence and of correspondence in fuzzy-trace theory; Reyna and Farley, 2006; see also Adam and Reyna, 2005; Reyna and Adam, 2003; Reyna et al., 2003.) Finally, we discuss developmental differences in moral reasoning, and how predictions of fuzzy-trace theory diverge from those of other dual-process theories, despite elements of agreement (see also Reyna and Brainerd, 2008). In this connection, the core message is that moral intuitions spring from an advanced semantic system in which the qualitative gist of decisions is processed, as opposed to an evolutionarily primitive ‘‘system 1’’ as standard dual-process theories assume.
2. An Introduction to Fuzzy-trace Theory Fuzzy-trace theory is a dual-process theory of memory, reasoning, decision-making, and their development. The phrase ‘‘fuzzy trace’’ refers to a distinction between gist memory representations that are ‘‘fuzzy’’ (i.e., they are vague and impressionistic) and verbatim memory representations that are vivid (for a summary of the theory, see Reyna and Brainerd, 1995). The distinction between gist and verbatim representations was initially borrowed from psycholinguists, who had amassed substantial evidence for it, and had applied it to the representation and retention of verbal materials. However, despite the continued use of the term ‘‘verbatim’’ in fuzzy-trace theory, these types of representations were extended to nonverbal materials, including numbers, pictures, and events (e.g., Reyna and Brainerd, 1993, 1998). Research on many of the major paradigms of judgment and decision making and of developmental psychology showed a common pattern of results: Individuals encode parallel representations of information along a continuum of precision which is anchored at each end by gist and verbatim representations, or memory traces, respectively. Verbatim traces preserve veridical details at the precise end and gist traces preserve extracted meanings and patterns at the fuzzy end. This first tenet of fuzzy-trace theory is not an assumption, in the usual sense of that term, but rather, is based on results of numerous experiments that tested alternative hypotheses regarding memory representations (e.g., Brainerd and Reyna, 2005). A second tenet of the theory, central to the discussion of reasoning, is the idea that retrieval of either verbatim or gist representations is cue dependent, a conclusion that is also based on empirical evidence. That is, the two types of traces are stored separately and retrieved independently of one another, contrary to schema theory, and their successful retrieval depends on cues, or specific reminders, in the environment. As many studies have demonstrated, two different cues presented to the same individual can elicit
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contradictory responses about what is stored in memory (such as those found in false-memory reports). However, a number of factors conspire to make gist traces the default representations used in reasoning. For example, verbatim traces become rapidly inaccessible and they are sensitive to interference (e.g., noise or response outputs). Reasoning therefore gravitates to using gist (or fuzzy) representations, which minimizes errors due to fragile and cumbersome verbatim representations. Moreover, this adaptive tendency to use gist representations — the fuzzy-processing preference — increases with development as individuals gain experience at a task. Studies of children (comparing older to younger children) and of adults (comparing experts to novices in a domain of knowledge) have demonstrated that reliance on gist representations increases with development. People think using simple gist representations of information, often processing it unconsciously, and engage in parallel rather than serial processing of that information (leaping ahead based on vague gist impressions of the relations and patterns in information without fully encoding details; e.g., Reyna and Brainerd, 1992). This kind of thinking is what we mean by ‘‘gist-based intuitive reasoning.’’ Throughout this chapter, we illustrate the role of mental representations of problems in moral reasoning in light of the third tenet of the theory, that individuals exhibit a fuzzy-processing preference (i.e., a preference to mentally operate on the simplest representation of a problem). As we discuss, this preference tends to result in more coherent thinking (because working with gist representations is easier and less error prone; see Reyna and Brainerd, 1995) and in more positive decision outcomes (e.g., less unhealthy risk taking in adolescents; see Reyna and Farley, 2006). Indeed, as described in more detail below, recent research has explicitly linked gist-based reasoning using simple moral values to positive outcomes in adolescence (e.g., Mills et al., 2008; Reyna and Rivers, 2008). Thus, the final fuzzy-trace theory tenet has important implications and predictive value for developmental changes in moral reasoning, that reliance on gist as a default mode of processing is associated with more adaptive responses to risk as people mature. With a foundation of fuzzy-trace theory tenets in place, we continue with a discussion of the building blocks of reasoning in the following section, unifying moral and other kinds of reasoning using a fuzzy-trace theory framework.
3. Building Blocks of Moral Reasoning The building blocks of any type of judgment or decision consist of knowledge, representation (how a situation is perceived), retrieval (how knowledge and values are accessed when needed), and processing (how what is perceived is put together with what is retrieved to make a decision; Reyna and Adam, 2003; Reyna and Brainerd, 1995). This claim about the
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importance of knowledge, representation, retrieval, and processing is supported by experimental evidence from many studies and laboratories showing that each of these elements makes a unique contribution to performance (see Reyna and Brainerd, 1995, for a review). Moreover, these constructs have been defined operationally and parameterized in mathematical models, which are then tested for their reality against data from human beings (e.g., Brainerd et al., 1999). Thus, we can be confident (in the qualified way in which scientists are confident) that: (1) the human mind distinguishes among verbatim versus gist representations of information (defined below), (2) that simple moral values and reasoning principles are retrieved that are then applied to these representations, and (3) that the application of values/principles to representations to make moral decisions presents additional difficulties, beyond those associated with representation and retrieval. As the teaching of parables suggests, recognizing the gist of a situation and knowing the relevant moral principle does not guarantee that the principle is correctly applied to the situation (Reyna et al., 2003). These four constructs have been used to explain and predict framing and other shifts in performance across a range of decisions and populations (e.g., Reyna and Brainerd, 1991b; Reyna and Ellis, 1994). Unless people who engage in moral reasoning exchange their brains for ones that are specialized for moral reasoning, the immense literatures on memory, reasoning, and decision making must constrain our assumptions. This is not to say that moral reasoning is not special, and we will discuss ways in which morality pushes certain processing buttons. However, concepts such as automatic versus controlled processing, which were discovered in memory research and later imported into other domains, have evolved due to the progress of experimentation. It is no longer consistent with scientific evidence to argue, for example, that advanced reasoning is necessarily conscious or deliberative (Brainerd et al., 1998; Reyna and Lloyd, 2006). Based on more recent findings, ideas about automatic versus controlled processing have become integrated into the distinction between gist (unconscious, intuitive, and often familiarity-based) and verbatim (controlled, deliberative, and recollective) processes (which also explain the results of Brainerd and Reyna, 2008; Dijksterhuis et al., 2006). We discuss each of these four constructs in turn — knowledge, representation, retrieval, and application — followed by a brief review of how they explain dual-process results attributed to automatic versus controlled processing in moral reasoning.
3.1. Knowledge and the Role of Gist Representations in Moral Reasoning Knowledge (which includes knowledge from books and life experience) affects how situations are understood or represented, as well as mere recitation of facts. Differences in knowledge, for example, explain why people
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who differ in numeracy understand, retain, and use numerical information differently (e.g., Peters et al., 2006; Reyna and Brainerd, 2007). Background knowledge infuses an entirely different meaning into events that we experience, which, in turn, colors its representation (that is, its gist representation; Reyna, 1998). For every decision scenario, whether it presents itself in real life or in written form in an experiment, people base their decisions on mental representations of that scenario. Multiple representations are extracted roughly in parallel at varying levels of precision along a verbatim to gist continuum. As we have discussed, the endpoints of this continuum, however, are verbatim representations (literal representations of reality) and gist representations (representations of the meaning of experience). The theory is referred to as ‘‘dual’’ because of these two basic types of representation, but in fact multiple gist representations tend to be encoded and stored for any one situation. Although some dual-process theories have been criticized for a lack of evidence for their dual processes, there is careful, experimental evidence on this point in fuzzy-trace theory and for the specific finding of stochastic independence between verbatim and gist representations (for reviews, see Reyna, 1992; Reyna and Brainerd, 1995). Gist representations reflect every factor that shapes meaning or interpretation of information: knowledge, emotion, culture, social address, world view, developmental level, and so on (e.g., Rivers et al., 2008). Gist and verbatim representations are also associated with particular styles of processing, gist representations with the parallel and impressionistic process of intuition and verbatim representations with precise analysis such as quantitative trading off (e.g., Reyna and Brainerd, 1992, 1994; Reyna and Ellis, 1994). Gist representations are relied on preferentially in reasoning (called the fuzzy-processing preference), increasingly so with experience at a task. Because of this default reliance on gist representations, fuzzy-trace theory was referred to as the ‘‘new intuitionism’’ when it was introduced (Brainerd and Reyna, 1990; Reyna and Brainerd, 1990). Importantly, reliance on gist has not been found to result from working memory limitations, as commonly assumed (e.g., Simon, 1956). Instead, although verbatim representations are sensitive to interference and become inaccessible rapidly, reasoning tends to be based on gist representations that are independent of verbatim memory for problem or decision information. In fact, reasoners have to be goaded into using verbatim representations when other means of determining responses are not feasible (precise factors that affect the level of representation used in reasoning are discussed below, but see Reyna and Brainerd, 1995, for additional details). Thus, gist-based reasoning is not a result of memory load, and is unrelated to load, and this can be demonstrated even when facts and figures are present in writing in front of decision makers (i.e., they do not have to rely on memory for decision information). (In contrast to gist, verbatim memory has been
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shown to be sensitive to interference from cognitive load; see below and Reyna, 1995). Consider the classic Asian disease framing problem, which might be called a moral reasoning problem as it resembles those used by Greene et al. (2001), although what it is called is not yet germane to our argument (e.g., Tversky and Kahneman, 1981). Subjects are typically told that 600 people are expected to die from a dread disease, but that two programs designed to combat the disease are available. Subjects in a gain-frame condition are given a choice between saving 200 people for sure or taking a chance of saving 600 people with a 1/3 probability (and a 2/3 probability of saving no one). The loss-frame condition offers a choice between 400 people dying for sure versus a 2/3 probability of 600 dying (and a 1/3 probability of nobody dying). Many experiments revealed that mature adults make this decision by boiling it down to the simplest distinction that can be made with any quantitative dimension: presence or absence (i.e., some-none). A few such simple gist representations (i.e., the categorical distinction between some and none; the ordinal distinction between less and more; and so on) seem to be used in myriad tasks involving quantities (e.g., Reyna and Brainerd, 1994). Because of the fuzzy-processing preference, reasoners begin with the simplest categorical distinction to determine whether they can choose between options on that basis (only moving to finer distinctions when they cannot accomplish the task or other special considerations apply).
3.2. Retrieval and Application of Values to Reasoning Problems Therefore, the Asian disease problem is represented as saving some people for sure or taking a chance and either saving some people or saving no one. Without values, decision makers would have no preference between these options. However, most people value human life and subscribe to such principles as ‘‘saving some people is better than saving none.’’ Hence, they prefer saving some people for sure rather than risk saving no one in the gain frame. (Fuzzy-trace theory makes the surprising prediction, which has been confirmed, that the zero complement of the gamble is the key to framing effects, in contrast to prospect and other utility-type theories for which this complement literally adds zero to predictions; see Reyna, in press; Reyna and Brainerd, 1995; Rivers et al., 2008). In the loss frame, the same sort of bottom-line gist results in a choice between some people dying for sure versus taking a chance and either some people die or no one dies. Since none dying is better than some dying (a moral value), now the gamble is preferred because it offers the possibility of none dying. (If the options were two gambles, an 11 per cent chance of saving 600 people and 89 per cent of saving none versus a 10 per cent chance of saving 700 people and
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90 per cent chance of saving none, representing the two options as ‘‘some’’ and ‘‘none’’ would not discriminate between them, necessitating a move up the ladder of gist to ‘‘fewer’’ and ‘‘more’’; Reyna and Brainerd, 1995). Although these values or principles (e.g., better to save some than none; do no harm) are often referred to as ‘‘deontological rules’’ (e.g., Haidt, 2008), we have made a point of not calling them ‘‘rules’’ because their application is not rule-like (i.e., they are not universally applicable). Tetlock (1986), for instance, argues that moral principles such as equity and freedom can both be relevant to important decisions and yet they support conflicting preferences. Taxing the rich achieves equity but limits freedom of the rich to keep their money. Similarly, reminders of different values or principles lead to different preferences in framing problems. Considerations of equity dominate framing decisions if family will be involved, encouraging choice of the gamble in the gain frame because every family member has an equal chance at survival (e.g., Wang, 1996a,b). Studies have shown that cuing values or principles, prompting their ready retrieval, alters reasoning and decision making in accord with the cued value or principle (e.g., Reyna, 1991). Order effects also sometimes occur because retrieval is prompted earlier as opposed to later, as in query theory ( Johnson et al., 2007). Thus, even when moral reasoners attest to a strongly held value, its retrieval (and therefore application) is variable. Retrieval variability has been used to account for task variability, the ubiquitous finding that performance shifts when the underlying task or question remains the same (we reserve the term ‘‘task variability’’ for shifts that cannot be attributed to misunderstanding, ambiguity, or trick questions; Reyna and Brainerd, 1994, 1995; Reyna et al., 2003). Framing effects and other shifts in performance have been used to argue that preferences are constructed and that values, including moral values, are ephemeral constructions of phrasing or task description (Lichtenstein and Slovic, 2006). According to fuzzy-trace theory, however, people have relatively stable core values, but the expression of those values is perturbed by variability in representations evoked by different descriptions; by variability in which values of many applicable ones are retrieved; and in how those values are applied to representations (e.g., Reyna and Brainerd, 1994; Reyna et al., 2003). Moreover, values are represented in long-term memory as fuzzy gist representations, rather than as precisely articulated verbatim representations. For example, the principle of equity might be stored in long-term memory as ‘‘everyone should have the same.’’ That principle can be instantiated across a wide range of concrete situations (under the assumption that all else is equal): Everyone should earn the same amount of money; eat the same amount of pizza; and have the same voting rights, all else being equal. Storing values and principles in an underspecified form in long-term memory facilitates their instantiation in a broad array of contexts and solves
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what we have called the commensurability problem. That is, fuzzy values or principles can be mapped onto fuzzy representations of decision situations that would otherwise be incommensurable. If the default mode of reasoning is to rely on gist representations, it makes sense that values and principles would be stored in a commensurate form. It is easy to see how the gist-based value or principle that saving some people is better than saving none can be mapped onto the gist representation of decision options as saving some people or taking a chance and saving some people or no one. Far from being nonexistent or ephemeral, gist-based values and principles endure in longterm memory because they are stored in this robust form.
3.3. Processing: The Role of Inhibition and Interference in Reasoning and Decision Making Knowledge, representation, and retrieval in fuzzy-trace theory are connected to content stored in memory, albeit fuzzy content, rather than being abstract structures. However, one important aspect of processing that is not bound to any specific content is inhibition. The ability to inhibit interference facilitates processing. Specifically, the ability to inhibit sources of interference, such as inhibiting one or more of multiple competing gists, allows for the coherent application of retrieved moral values or principles to representations of situations. According to fuzzy-trace theory, inhibition operates alongside gist and verbatim representations, and is represented in our mathematical models with its own parameter (Reyna and Brainerd, 1998; Reyna and Mills, 2007b). From childhood through young adulthood, the ability to inhibit processing interference grows steadily as measured by this parameter and by behavioral measures of self-regulation (or, conversely, impulsivity; see also Reyna and Rivers, 2008). Interference may come from a seductive but wrong intuition, from an emotion, or from a competing gist or verbatim representation that is not appropriate for the task at hand (Reyna, 1995; Rivers et al., 2008). For example, absolute and relative risks are sometimes confused with one another because risk information evokes competing gists (for a process model, see Reyna and Brainerd, 2008; Reyna and Mills, 2007a). Developmentally, inhibition has been linked to the maturation of the prefrontal cortex (e.g., Casey et al., 2008; Steinberg, 2008), but there are also individual differences in inhibition (see Moffitt, 2003; Reyna and Rivers, 2008; Reyna and Farley, 2006). It is apparent that some individuals are more impulsive and find it harder to resist temptation. For example, impulsivity is known to be associated with violations of laws, and these types of individuals are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system. Traditional dual-process approaches assume that adolescents and impulsive criminals take risks (and engage in acts that sometimes violate their own morality) not because they decide to do so, but because they react rather
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than decide. This view is labeled the social reactivity path (Gerrard et al., 2008), the socioemotional system (Steinberg, 2008), or the subcortical limbic system (Casey et al., 2008). Fuzzy-trace theory similarly assumes that reactivity decreases from childhood through adulthood, and this development changes the nature of thinking as well as behavior (e.g., Agocha and Cooper, 1999). According to this theory, however, the ‘‘other’’ dual process that opposes reactivity (or inhibition) is not solely analytical. Fuzzy-trace theory remains essentially a dual-process theory of reasoning because there are two qualitatively different reasoning modes; inhibition is not a reasoning mode but operates to withhold thoughts and actions. In addition to a verbatim-based (focusing on precise literal details of information or experience) analytical mode of reasoning, a gist-based intuitive mode is assumed (operating on simple, bottom-line representations of the meaning of information or experience). Inhibition is applied (or not, when people lack self-control) to the thoughts and actions generated by verbatimand gist-based reasoning. As we presently discuss, basic constructs such as inhibition illuminate specific findings from the literature on moral reasoning.
3.4. Summary of Building Blocks of Moral Reasoning In sum, knowledge, verbatim and gist representations of decision situations, retrieval of moral values and principles, and processing (which involves inhibition) each contribute to moral reasoning and decision making. Although these four components are distinct, they are not unrelated; certain representations tend to evoke certain values and principles. For example, when numerical information is provided, and questions mention differences in numerical magnitude, quantitative principles tend to be evoked. When numerical information is provided, and questions mention morality, deontological principles tend to be evoked. In Section 4, we use these building blocks to construct an explanation for paradoxical shifts in moral reasoning and decision making.
4. Explaining Reversals and Paradoxes in Moral Reasoning A fuzzy-trace theory interpretation of the four basic reasoning concepts discussed thus far indicates that moral reasoning depends on the following: sufficient knowledge to understand a decision situation; extraction of the appropriate bottom-line gist of that situation; retrieval of appropriate moral values and principles; and the ability to inhibit interference with the coherent application of those values and principles to the decision
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representation. In this section, we use these constructs of fuzzy-trace theory to explain dual-process results attributed to automatic versus controlled processing in moral reasoning (e.g., Greene et al., 2008). More important, we identify effects that remain unexplained by the standard dual-process view, and develop divergent predictions. We begin with representations.
4.1. Framing Effects and Differences in Problem Representation As the examples of framing effects in risky choice illustrate, preferences often shift because descriptions of ostensibly similar situations evoke different gist representations (see Reyna, in press; Reyna et al., 2003). Consider the well-known trolley car problem (shown in Table 1). The gist of this dilemma might be summarized as a choice between the trolley killing one person or five people. A slick marketing campaign might describe this dilemma as protecting one person or protecting five. Protecting five people rather than one is the utilitarian choice because it achieves the greatest good for the greatest number. Most respondents choose to pull the lever and save more people, despite discomfort associated with choosing who will die. Inhibition of this repugnance is necessary to ‘‘do the right thing’’ in this situation and save more people (Moore et al., 2008). (Especially for highconflict dilemmas, we would predict activation of the prefrontal cortex contingent on choosing to inhibit this repugnance and proportional to its strength; see discussion below.) In this view, the trolley car problem is a moral choice, but one that involves choosing whether fewer people or more people die (analogous to choosing whether nobody dies or some people die in the Asian disease problem). As in the Asian disease problem, retrieval of the moral principle that fewer should die directs the choice. Although the footbridge problem also pits killing one person against killing five, the gist is not necessarily the same as that of the trolley problem (also shown in Table 1). The gist of the footbridge dilemma is something like the following: I kill one person or the trolley kills five people. Thus, the latter dilemma is more likely to evoke a protected value, a prohibition against killing that is aimed at individuals (Thou shalt not kill) and that discourages utilitarian tradeoffs. As suggested earlier, moral principles can compete, so it is possible that respondents also retrieve the moral principle that fewer people should die. However, representing the options as ‘‘I kill one person or the trolley kills five people’’ is not commensurate with the principle that compares fewer people dying to more people dying — all other factors being equal. All other factors are not equal because ‘‘I’’ kill one and ‘‘the trolley’’ kills the five. Consistent with this gist (that the footbridge problem is more likely to evoke first-person causal agency than the trolley car version), further variations in problem content that highlight personal agency reduce utilitarian
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Table 1 Examples of Moral and Nonmoral Problems Involving Tradeoffs. Scenario
Response Options
Reference
As a result of a dam on a river, 20 species of fish are threatened with extinction. By opening the dam for a month each year, you can save these species, but 2 species downstream will become extinct because of the changing water level. As a result of a dam on a river, 20 species of fish are threatened with extinction. By opening the dam for a month each year, you can save these species, but some species downstream will become extinct because of the changing water level.
Would you open the dam? Y/N What is the largest number of species made extinct by the opening at which you would open the dam?____
Ritov and Baron (1999)
Would you open the dam if it would kill 2 species of fish downstream as a result? Y/N Would you open the dam if it would kill 6 species of fish downstream as a result? Y/N Would you open the dam if it would kill 10 species of fish downstream as a result? Y/N Would you open the dam if it would kill 14 species of fish downstream as a result? Y/N Would you open the dam if it would kill 18 species of fish downstream as a result? Y/N If the government does nothing, 20 fish species will Should the government build the dam? Y/N become extinct due to naturally changing water What is the largest number of species lost as a result of building the barrier at which the government levels. Building a dam would save 20 species of should build the dam? 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 fish above the dam but cause 6 species to become extinct downstream. Statistical lives People leaving a psychological experiment have the Food shortages in Malawi are affecting more than opportunity to contribute up to $5 of their earnings to Save the Children. ‘‘Any money 3 million children. In Zambia, severe rainfall deficits have resulted donated will go toward relieving the severe food crisis in Southern Africa and Ethiopia.’’ in a 42 per cent drop in maize production from 2000. As a result, an estimated 3 million Zambians face hunger.
Connolly and Reb (2003)
Baron (2006)
Small et al. (2007)
Four million Angolans — one third of the
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population — have been forced to flee their homes. More than 11 million people in Ethiopia need immediate food assistance. People leaving a psychological experiment the have Identifiable lives opportunity to contribute up to $5 of their Rokia, a 7-year-old girl from Mali, Africa, is earnings to Save the Children. ‘‘Any money desperately poor and faces a threat of severe donated will go toward relieving the severe food hunger or even starvation. Her life will be crisis in Southern Africa and Ethiopia.’’ changed for the better as a result of your financial gift. With your support, and the support of other caring sponsors, Save the Children will work with Rokia’s family and other members of the community to help feed her, provide her with education, as well as basic medical care and hygiene education. (plus picture) Is it appropriate for you to hit the switch in order to You are at the wheel of a runaway trolley quickly avoid the deaths of the five workmen? approaching a fork in the tracks. On the tracks extending to the left is a group of five railway workmen. On the tracks extending to the right is a single railway workman. If you do nothing the trolley will proceed to the left, causing the deaths of the five workmen. The only way to avoid the deaths of these workmen is to hit a switch on your dashboard that will cause the trolley to proceed to the right, causing the death of the single workman. A runaway trolley is heading down the tracks Is it appropriate for you to push the stranger on to toward five workmen who will be killed if the the tracks in order to save the five workmen?
Small et al. (2007)
Greene et al. (2001) Trolley car Moralimpersonal
Greene et al. (2001) (continued)
Table 1
(continued)
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Scenario
Response Options
trolley proceeds on its present course. You are on a footbridge over the tracks, in between the approaching trolley and the five workmen. Next to you on this footbridge is a stranger who happens to be very large. The only way to save the lives of the five workmen is to push this stranger off the bridge and onto the tracks below where his large body will stop the trolley. The stranger will die if you do this, but the five workmen will be saved. Is it appropriate for you to use your old computer You are looking to buy a new computer. At the for a few more weeks in order to save $500 on the moment the computer that you want costs $1000. purchase of a new computer? A friend who knows the computer industry has told you that this computer’s price will drop to $500 next month. If you wait until next month to buy your new computer you will have to use your old computer for a few weeks longer than you would like to. Nevertheless you will be able to do everything you need to do using your old computer during that time. Is it appropriate for you to take Firm B’s offer in You have been offered employment by two order to have two more days of vacation per year? different firms, and you are trying to decide which offer to accept. Firm A has offered you an annual salary of $100,000 and 14 days of vacation per year. Firm B has offered you an annual salary of $50,000 and 16 days of vacation per year. The two firms and the two positions are otherwise very similar.
Reference
Greene et al. (2001) Nonmoral personal ‘‘dilemma’’ Temporal trade off (trade time for money)
Greene et al. (2001) Nonmoral personal dilemma Trade off money for vacation time.
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choices. For instance, Cushman et al. (2006) showed that utilitarian choices are reduced when harm results from contact, as opposed to no contact, from actions rather than omissions, and from intended rather than unintended harm. Cues in the problem that evoke an image of the decision maker actively causing death are likely to reduce utilitarian choices because they prompt retrieval of moral values and principles such as ‘‘Thou shalt not kill.’’ Kill means ‘‘cause to die,’’ which is contrasted in law and theology with allowing to die, and thus an active (not passive) image is more likely to prompt retrieval of a commensurate moral principle (McKoon and Ratcliff, 2008; Miller and Johnson-Laird, 1976). Although this account shares similarities with other interpretations of these effects, it makes unique predictions because it draws on theoretical principles of memory retrieval. For example, there is no expectation in this account that reasoners will recognize the applicability of moral principles in situations that lack cues that specifically elicit retrieval of those principles (in accord with the encoding specificity principle, transfer appropriate processing, and other more recent research on effectiveness of retrieval cues; e.g., see Brainerd and Reyna, 1998; Wolfe et al., 2005). In fact, task variability as illustrated by the trolley car and footbridge problems is predicted by fuzzytrace theory (Reyna and Brainerd, 1994, 1995). As we explained earlier, inconsistent choices are expected when the gist of supposedly equivalent decisions are not the same and when different moral or reasoning principles are retrieved, which is a function of the representation and of retrieval cues. In the trolley car and footbridge problems, the gist representations apparently differ in subtle but important ways involving personal agency, and the problems evoke different moral principles: it is better to save more people (trolley car problem) versus Thou shalt not kill (footbridge problem).
4.2. Insensitivity to Quantity and Relative Magnitude The former construal (of the trolley car problem) makes differences in relative magnitude central to the choice: saving five lives (more) is better than saving one (fewer). This ordinal gist of relative magnitude (i.e., more versus less) figures in many decision and preference tasks (for a review, see Reyna and Brainerd, 1994). The footbridge problem, however, illustrates the insensitivity to quantity that is a hallmark of reasoning involving protected values. People refuse trade offs on moral grounds when they involve accepting a secular gain (money or goods that can be purchased or sold) in exchange for compromising a protected moral value (such as auctioning body parts, or selling futures that bet on the likelihood of terrorism; Medin et al., 1999; Tetlock, 2002; Tetlock et al., 2000). Protected values also exhibit insensitivity to the magnitude of quantities to be traded off (Baron and Spranca, 1997; Ritov and Baron, 1999). For example, Ritov and Baron asked people how many species they were willing to destroy in order to
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save 20 species of fish that would become extinct if nothing were done. People were also asked whether they endorsed categorical rejection of trading off these alternative outcomes: ‘‘It is morally wrong and should not be allowed even if it leads to a great benefit, or prevented a great harm, no matter how great the benefit or harm.’’ Those who had protected values against the destruction of species had lower thresholds, where the threshold is the maximum number of species that they were willing to destroy in order to save 20 species. Some respondents were unwilling to destroy any species in order to save more, and these zero threshold responses were also associated with endorsing protected values (Baron, 2006). This aforementioned insensitivity to quantity varies, too, as a function of the precision of response formats, as predicted by fuzzy-trace theory (e.g., Reyna and Brainerd, 1995). That is, fuzzy-trace theory predicts that reasoners have a fuzzy-processing preference, and use the least precise gist representation they can to accomplish a task. However, the precision of the response format (such as choices, rankings, or price estimates; see Fischer and Hawkins, 1993) sometimes forces reasoners to make finer distinctions, and thus to use less fuzzy representations. As shown in Table 1, Connolly and Reb (2003) created a response format that encouraged reasoners to make finer distinctions among quantities, asking subjects to make yes/no judgments over a series of small stepwise increases in quantity (but see Baron, 2006). Bartels and Medin (2007) showed that, using this response format, people who endorsed protected values were more sensitive to quantity, but when the standard response format was used that focused on a single dichotomous judgment (followed by a single numerical estimate only if ‘‘yes’’ is initially selected), the standard results were obtained: People who endorsed protected values were less sensitive to quantity. Analogous results — insensitivity to quantity with less fine-grained response formats — have been found in other judgment and decision making tasks. Slovic and colleagues (e.g., 2007) have demonstrated similar insensitivity to the magnitude of quantitative outcomes, and even some reversals of preferences that violate the direction of quantitative differences, in moral decision making. For example, Fetherstonhaugh et al. (1997) showed that estimates of the number of lives that had to be saved to merit a $10 million investment in medical research varied depending on the size of the population at risk. When the at-risk population was 15,000 lives, a median of 9000 lives had to be saved to merit the $10 million investment. When the at-risk population was larger, 290,000 lives, the number that needed to be saved to merit the same investment was 100,000. Thus, people perceived saving 9000 lives in the smaller population as more valuable than saving 90,000 lives — ten times as many lives — in the larger population. This effect and others like it is called ‘‘psychophysical numbing’’ because it is consistent with the psychophysical principle of diminishing sensitivity as quantities increase, captured in prospect theory’s value function and in some other
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utility theories. Psychophysical numbing appears to diminish the capacity for moral reasoning (e.g., about genocide) as well as the capacity to discriminate between large quantities (Slovic, 2007). Consistent with diminishing sensitivity, the proportion of lives saved often carries more weight than the number of lives saved when people evaluate courses of action (Baron, 1997; Fetherstonhaugh et al., 1997; Friedrich et al., 1999; Jenni and Loewenstein, 1997; Ubel et al., 2001). According to Slovic and colleagues (e.g., Slovic et al., 2004), these results can be explained by standard dual-process theory: ‘‘This is consistent with an affective (System 1) account, in which the number of lives saved conveys little affect but the proportion saved carries much feeling: 80 per cent is clearly ‘‘good’’ and 20 per cent is ‘‘poor’’ (Slovic, 2007, p. 85). Unfortunately, when affect has been directly rated by participants for proportions versus counts (frequencies), it has not been found to differ consistently as predicted by dual-process theory (e.g., Peters et al., 2006; see Reyna and Brainerd, 2008, for a review of evidence). The observed differences between proportions and counts have been explained in fuzzy-trace theory by similar ideas, except that affect is not crucial to the account (e.g., Reyna and Brainerd, 1994, 2008). That is, one evidence-based principle of fuzzy-trace theory is that gist is relative. Thus, the gist of a quantity such as 9000 lives or 13 per cent lifetime risk of breast cancer is interpreted qualitatively in terms of its relations or patterns: Relative to 100 lives and a 0 per cent risk, respectively, 9000 and 13 per cent are large; relative to 9 million lives and 50 per cent risk, respectively, 9000 and 13 per cent are small (see Reyna, 2004, in press; Reyna and Hamilton, 2001; Reyna et al., 2001). Proportions along familiar dimensions lend themselves more readily to predictable gist interpretations (e.g., 98 per cent correct on a test is ‘‘excellent’’). However, known properties of gist representations (and of denominator neglect for phenomena not discussed here, see Reyna and Brainerd, 2008) are sufficient to account for extant findings without invoking affect. Nevertheless, affect is an important aspect of many gist representations in the real world (see Brainerd et al., 2008; Rivers et al., 2008). Psychophysical numbing and proportional responding diminish sensitivity to quantitative differences, but several studies have obtained the more dramatic finding of reversals, responses that violate the direction of quantitative differences. For example, Small et al. (2007) found that donations to a charity were greater in response to the portrayal of a specific starving child as opposed to a statistical description of a vast food crisis affecting ‘‘more than 3 million children.’’ Priming verbatim-based analysis (by first answering calculation problems) reduced donations for the single child relative to a ‘‘feelings’’ prime (e.g., What do you think of when you hear the word ‘‘baby’’?). Combining descriptions of the single child and the statistics also reduced donations relative to the description of the single child. Va¨stfja¨ll
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et al. (2007) showed that this quantitative reversal occurred for very small quantities. When donations were described as going to two specific starving children, contributions were significantly lower than to either child alone. Fuzzy-trace theory predicts that the psychological difference between none and one is a large one, because it is a categorical shift, whereas the difference between one and two is small (Reyna, in press; Reyna and Brainerd, 1995). Here, however, affective ratings seem to add explanatory power to the basic gist account because affective ratings for two children were lower than for one. Assuming that such ratings reflect affect per se (ratings of how subjects ‘‘feel’’ are notoriously ambiguous), the description of a single individual seems to call forth a more empathetic and emotional response.
4.3. Dual-Process Accounts of Reversals and Effects of Emotion These shifting patterns of responses, and the effects of priming, are consonant with dual-process explanations generally, including fuzzy-trace theory. Responses shift from an emphasis on relative magnitudes in the trolley car problem to reductions in sensitivity to magnitudes in psychophysical numbing to reversals in response to magnitudes in donations to one child over two. Just as fuzzy-trace theory emerged to explain dualities in cognition left unexplained by earlier stage theories, recent dual-process approaches have supplanted earlier stage theories of moral development (Kohlberg, 1969; Turiel, 1983; but see Narvaez, 2008, for a modern theory in this tradition). Classic theories of moral development emphasize what Greene et al. (e.g., 2008) have called ‘‘controlled’’ cognition as the apogee of mature reasoning. However, research has made it apparent that intuitive or ‘‘automatic’’ processes persist in adulthood (Mikhail, 2000; Nichols, 2002, 2004; Pizarro and Salovey, 2002; Rozin et al., 1999; Van den Bos, 2003). Like other standard dual-process approaches (Chaiken and Trope, 1999; Kahneman, 2003; Lieberman et al., 2002), dual-process theories of moral reasoning assume that intuitive processes represent an evolutionarily ancient mode steeped in primitive emotion, whereas controlled processes act as a censor or inhibitor of these ‘‘gut’’ responses (e.g., Greene et al., 2001, 2004; Haidt, 2001, 2008). Utilitarian moral judgments are ascribed to controlled cognitive processes, but nonutilitarian, deontological judgments are ascribed to automatic emotional responses (Greene, 2007). Evidence that nonutilitarian responses are emotional includes the following: ‘‘Personal’’ moral dilemmas, such as the footbridge problem, elicit increased activity in brain regions associated with emotion and social cognition (Greene et al., 2001, 2004). In addition, Mendez et al. (2005) found that patients with frontotemporal dementia who experience emotional numbing were more likely to endorse the utilitarian response in the footbridge problem. Similarly, Koenigs et al. (2007) and Ciaramelli et al.
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(2007) found that patients with emotional deficits due to ventromedial prefrontal lesions were more likely to give utilitarian responses. Finally, Valdesolo and DeSteno (2006) found that normal participants were more likely to endorse the utilitarian response in the footbridge dilemma after a positive emotion induction, a manipulation designed to reduce the repugnance or negative emotions noted earlier that accompany decisions to kill one to save more. Naturally, the claim that emotion is involved in nonutilitarian responses is not a process model, but these data indicate that emotion is a part of this process. Although these studies implicate emotion in nonutilitarian judgments (and lack of emotion in utilitarian judgments), they do not demonstrate the influence of cognitive control, the other side of the dual-process coin. Initially, it was thought that response time data supported cognitive control. It was reported that judgments in favor of moral violations (e.g. pushing the man off of the footbridge) took extra time, suggesting that this time was occupied by cognitive processes inhibiting emotional responses (Greene et al., 2001). However, reanalyses of these data revealed no reliable differences in response time (Greene et al., 2008). Some studies suggest a role for controlled cognitive processes in moral judgment (e.g., Cushman et al., 2006; Valdesolo and DeSteno, 2006), but they do not establish a causal relation between these processes and utilitarian judgments. Pizarro et al. (2003), however, directly instructed subjects to use either controlled or intuitive processes, and found that moral judgments shifted as predicted. Also, Greene et al. (2008) manipulated cognitive load with the expectation that it would interfere selectively with utilitarian processing but leave nonutilitarian processing unaffected, consistent with their interpretation as controlled versus automatic processes. In the load condition, numbers scrolled across the screen and participants hit a button each time they detected the number ‘‘5,’’ which occurred 20 per cent of the time. Load selectively increased response time for utilitarian judgments, but left nonutilitarian judgments unaffected, as predicted. This kind of selective impairment for verbatim as opposed to gist processing has been predicted, and found, many times in the cognitive literature (e.g., for a review, see Reyna, 1992). According to fuzzy-trace theory, verbatim memory is sensitive to interference (misinterpreted as ‘‘load’’ see Reyna, 1992), whereas gist processing has been shown to be independent of such ‘‘load’’ effects in many studies and often operates unconsciously (for a review, see Reyna and Brainerd, 1995). Assumptions about consciousness have been supported by tests of mathematical models; models with this assumption fit the data, but those without it did not (e.g., Brainerd et al., 1999). If utilitarian judgments are supported by verbatim-analytical processing and nonutilitarian, deontological judgments are supported by gist-based intuitive processing, we would expect the use of the former to be more accessible to consciousness than the latter.
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Haidt’s (2008) social intuitionistic perspective asserts that moral judgments are primarily determined by ‘‘automatic, affectively laden intuitions, not in conscious verbal reasoning’’ (p. 70). Evolution is said to shape moral emotions, which are the basis for these intuitions. Evolutionary arguments are not scientifically testable, but their processing implications are (Reyna and Brainerd, 2008). Ample experimental evidence exists for rapid, intuitive processing that is used in tasks ranging from recognition to reasoning (Brainerd et al., 2003; Reyna and Brainerd, 2008). Pizarro and Bloom (2003), however, make the important point that rapid responses may belie a highly deliberative process that occurred earlier in time. Moreover, rapid intuitive responses are often interpretive and inferential, not primitive associative responses (e.g., Brainerd and Reyna, 2005). Further evidence for this ‘‘semantic’’ processing, which is at odds with an evolutionarily older system 1, comes from brain imaging (Lieberman, 2006). However, theories of moral reasoning often conflate the definitions of moral intuition and moral emotion. For example, Haidt (2001) asserts that moral judgments are driven by fast and automatic moral intuitions, which he contrasts with reasoning. The causal role of conscious deliberation is limited and mainly serves in the post hoc evaluation of moral judgments. The phrases ‘‘moral intuitions’’ and ‘‘moral emotions’’ are used almost interchangeably. However, Hauser (2006) assigns different roles for emotion and intuition by asserting that individuals are ‘‘endowed with a moral faculty that generates judgments about permissible and forbidden actions prior to the involvement of our emotions (p. 214.)’’ This claim resembles those in developmental dualprocess theories that distinguish intuition and emotion, and highlights current debates about the temporal and causal relationships among moral emotions, moral intuitions, and moral judgments. Fuzzy-trace theory offers a process model that may clarify the role of emotion in moral intuitions. Rivers et al. (2008) developed a detailed processing account of how emotion interacts with different modes of thinking to produce risk-taking in adolescence, reviewing research on emotion conceived as valence (positive–negative), arousal (excited–calm), feeling states (moods), and discrete emotions (e.g., anger vs. sadness). Greene, et al. (2001) argues that contradictory responses to the footbridge and trolley scenarios are differentiated by the emotional arousal of pushing a person onto the tracks as opposed to pulling a lever. This explanation does not contradict fuzzy-trace theory, but it falls short of explaining how emotion becomes relevant to the decision. Fuzzy-trace offers a mechanistic explanation in which emotion enters in at encoding, retrieval, and processing, sometimes acting as a cue to facilitate reasoning (e.g., cognitive appraisals providing a template that allow extraction of the appropriate gist of a situation) but also interfering with verbatim analysis under predictable conditions. As Rivers et al. conclude, ‘‘emotion is gist, but gist is not necessarily emotion’’ (p. 136).
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For ‘‘high-conflict’’ dilemmas such as those studied by Greene et al. (2008), fuzzy-trace theory would also predict that the gist-based intuitive default response would be actively inhibited in order to produce a utilitarian response. This inhibition is analogous to that of subjects with higher SATs who appear to be less prone to some intuitive biases in judgment and decision making because they are better able to suppress the intuitive response (Stanovich and West, 1999). In both cases (moral conflict and decision conflict), the production of an analytical as opposed to intuitive response should be accompanied by activation in the anterior cingulate, reflecting conflict, and by activation in the prefrontal cortex, reflecting inhibition of the intuitive response (e.g., Greene et al., 2004; McClure et al., 2007). Indeed, according to fuzzy-trace theory, sensitive techniques should be able to detect a correlation between activation of prefrontal cortex and choice of the utilitarian (or verbatim-analytical) response.
4.4. Summary of Reversals and Paradoxes in Moral Reasoning In sum, moral reasoning is continuous with other reasoning, and involves many of the same principles. According to fuzzy-trace theory, ‘‘reasoning is more like understanding poetry than it is like doing logic’’ because it is subject to a fuzzy-processing preference (Reyna and Brainerd, 1993). That is, reasoning tends to be based on gist-based intuitive processing, which eschews quantitative trading off. However, moral reasoning engages stronger feelings overall, for good or ill, and discourages trading off even more than ordinary reasoning does. According to fuzzy-trace theory, a recipe for maximizing these effects is to encourage gist representations that are commensurate with protected values, to cue retrieval of those values, to interfere with verbatimbased analysis (so that it cannot be used to inhibit gist-based processing), and to discourage response formats that require fine discriminations.
5. Moral Values and Risky Decisions in Adolescence Historically, development was the domain of theories of moral reasoning. Currently, it provides an arena in which dual-process theories can be evaluated (Baron, 2007). A recent review of laboratory studies of risky decision making as well as survey studies of risk taking suggests a counterintuitive, but theoretically predicted conclusion about developmental change (Reyna and Farley, 2006): The tendency to trade off magnitudes of risk and reward declines from early childhood through adolescence. Given a standard gamble pitting a sure win against a gamble of equal expect
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value (i.e., the gain framing problem), younger children tend to prefer the gamble (although they do not do so indiscriminately). Younger children multiplicatively combine magnitudes of risk and reward, avoiding risk when the odds are poor (Reyna, 1996; Reyna and Ellis, 1994). Adolescents are more risk averse than young children but the latter take fewer risks in the real world presumably because they lack opportunity (Gerrard et al., 2008; Reyna and Rivers, 2008). Thus, adolescents generally have a lower preference for risk than younger children, but a higher preference than adults. An important mechanism accounting for this evolution in risk preferences is a shift from verbatim-based analysis to gist-based intuition, especially for personally catastrophic risks (e.g., acquiring HIV-AIDS; see Rivers et al., 2008, for a recent review of this evidence). (Although inhibition also increases during this period, differences in inhibition cannot account for some important developmental changes in risky decision making.) As children get older, they are increasingly likely to rely on gist representations of risky situations, to retrieve relevant values (notably, moral values), and to apply those values to their decisions to avoid unhealthy risks. In a recent study, for example, Mills et al. (2008) surveyed 596 high school students regarding their risky behaviors and behavioral intentions, administering three kinds of measures of gist-based processing. Adolescents were asked whether they perceived risks of sex as low, medium, or high (global gist of risk); whether they agreed with categorical statements describing gist-based thinking about risks (e.g., ‘‘Even low risks happen to someone.’’); and whether they agreed with simple, gist values or principles (e.g., ‘‘Better to not have sex than hurt my parents/family’’). Although some gist principles were not moralistic (e.g., ‘‘Avoid risk.’’), others clearly referred to moral duties and obligations. However, the internal reliability of the scale was good (a ¼ .82), and correlations with behavior and behavioral intentions were highly similar when only moral principles were used (and vice versa). Mills et al. (2008) found that risky behaviors and behavioral intentions to take risks were negatively correlated with all three gist measures, most strongly so with endorsement of simple moral values and principles. Therefore, the more that adolescents endorsed, for example, categorical thinking, which is antithetical to quantitative trading off (described as advanced and desirable in avoiding risks in other theoretical approaches, Fischhoff, 2008), the fewer risks adolescents took and the lower their behavioral intentions were to take risks. In addition, adolescents were half as likely to have engaged in sex if they endorsed only the absolute principle that ‘‘no risk is better than some risk’’ (30 per cent were sexually active) compared to endorsing only the relative principle that ‘‘less risk is better than more risk’’ (61 per cent were sexually active). This kind of simple, gist-based thinking echoes results with hypothetical risk taking in the laboratory in which gist-based thinkers avoided risk in the gain frame (but verbatimanalytical thinkers took risks). These results also cohere with many other
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studies showing that adolescent risk takers appear to engage in a kind of cost-benefit analysis (a mechanism quite dissimilar from the impulsive adolescent who takes risks without thinking; Reyna and Farley, 2006). These studies showed that risk takers were more likely to make fine distinctions among levels of risk and reward, and their self-reported behaviors (e.g., drinking, unprotected sex) were a predictable function of their perceived risk and reward. These results are also consistent with response time and neuroimaging findings of Baird and Fugelsang (2004). Baird and Fugelsang asked adolescents to say yes or no to various statements, and timed their responses: for example, whether it is a good idea to eat a salad and whether it is a bad idea to swim with sharks. Adolescents took significantly longer to reject the bad ideas compared to adults (good ideas did not exhibit age differences). Moreover, the brain regions activated by these bad ideas differed between adolescents and adults. Adults activated the right fusiform gyrus and the insula, suggesting that images and intuitions supported rejection of bad ideas. Adolescents, in contrast, activated the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, suggesting that executive functions involved in analytical processing supported their rejections of bad ideas. Consistent with the idea that adolescents were deliberating, their lengthened response times correlated with activation in the right dorsolateral area. Hence, adolescents who are less likely to take unhealthy risks, and mature adults (who are also less likely to take such risks), engage in gistbased intuitive processing and endorse simple, moral principles. However, adolescent risk takers appear to make finer distinctions among risks and benefits, and calculate that risks are ‘‘worth it’’ because benefits outweigh risks. It is not clear whether strong endorsement of ‘‘protected’’ values (e.g., ‘‘Avoid risk’’) fosters the development of gist-based intuition, or vice versa. However, this insensitivity to quantity of gist-based thinkers resembles qualitative thinking in moral dilemmas. Such reasoners see low risks as categorically ‘‘present’’ and high benefits as essentially negligible (or irrelevant). As Reyna and Farley (2006) describe, these gist-based thinkers ‘‘resist taking risks not out of any conscious deliberation or choice, but because they intuitively grasp the gists of risky situations, retrieve appropriate riskavoidant values, and never proceed down the slippery slope of actually contemplating tradeoffs between risks and benefits.’’ (p. 2).
6. Conclusions Research suggests that reasoning — whether it is logical, scientific, or mathematical — is not typically conscious, deliberative, or analytical. The default mode of processing even in these canonically rational domains
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involves reliance on fuzzy gist representations, processed in parallel with alternative representations, and accompanied by highly variable retrieval of values and principles applied to those representations. Moral reasoning, once thought of as inextricably bound to intelligence, appears to be fuzzy, too. Many of the evidence-based constructs used to explain ordinary reasoning can be applied in theoretically prescribed ways to explain moral reasoning. Our process model includes knowledge, representation, retrieval, and processing (especially interference and inhibition in processing). According to fuzzy-trace theory, task variability — the shifts in moral judgments and decisions with different formulations of a task — is explained by variations in these four constructs. Specifically, the trolley car and the footbridge problems, as well as other problems, differ in their gist representations: The simple bottom line of the trolley car problem is that one must choose between the trolley killing one or killing five. Because the gist of the problem involves relative magnitude, moral principles involving relative magnitude are retrieved (i.e., it is better to save more lives). Prior research on reasoning has revealed that the gist of relative magnitude is encoded in many tasks, and many reasoning principles also incorporate relative magnitude (e.g., probability, equity, class inclusion, and more; Reyna and Brainerd, 1995). The principles retrieved in the trolley car problem are moral values because they express duties and responsibilities to others. The gist of the footbridge problem differs in a subtle but important way: Its bottom line is that the choice is between my killing one or the trolley killing five. Thus, moral principles that pertain to ‘‘I kill’’ are retrieved, a salient one in Western culture being ‘‘Thou shalt not kill.’’ To ensure that the referent is clear, in the King James Bible, the word ‘‘Thou’’ is routinely italicized. Cues in the problem that signal first-person causal agency make it more likely that the aforementioned gist is encoded and that commensurate moral principles are retrieved. Although we have sharply distinguished the explanations for the trolley and footbridge problems for ease of exposition, research documents that multiple, competing representations can be encoded and competing principles can be retrieved. Fortunately, the theory predicts how factors in the description of a problem and in the wording of a question are likely to influence representation and retrieval. The theory also predicts how factors characterizing the individual are likely to influence processing with respect to inhibition or cognitive control. Fuzzy-trace theory shares features with standard dual-process approaches, and it explains the same phenomena, although processing assumptions differ in detail. For example a longstanding result in many studies involving fuzzy-trace theory is that verbatim-based analysis is subject to interference (or load), whereas gist-based intuition is not. Indeed, fuzzytrace theory specifies when memory will be related positively, negatively or not at all to reasoning performance. The theory goes beyond standard
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dual-process theory in generating novel predictions based on a process model, as opposed to being a post hoc typology. Thus, it avoids the criticism of circularity leveled at standard dual-process approaches. Circularity is exemplified by the following kinds of arguments: The existence of two types of thinking is supported by different types of responses to formally equivalent problems, and the explanation for the two types of responses is that there are two types of thinking. Despite commonalities, fuzzy-trace theory differs substantially from standard dual-process approaches. Fuzzy-trace theory’s assumptions about independent representations and processing have been tested extensively and its assumptions have been parameterized in mathematical models. Beyond dual processes of representation and processing, these models also incorporate a parameter measuring inhibition, which has been shown to vary developmentally and across individuals. Fuzzy-trace theory makes specific predictions about how conflicting modes of reasoning are reconciled, and how inhibition plays an important role in suppressing gist-based responding. Fuzzy-trace theory differs from standard dual-process theories in assigning an advanced role in reasoning to intuition. The theory also distinguishes effects of emotion from intuition, and provides a developmental framework for understanding how reasoning, moral and otherwise, changes with age. Thus, the theory makes the counterintuitive prediction that adolescents who get the gist of catastrophic risks, think categorically about those risks (rather than quantitatively trading off risk and reward), and retrieve simple moral values and principles will be less likely to take those unhealthy risks. Ironically, such gist-based reasoning makes it more likely that people achieve the very utilitarian outcomes that this reasoning eschews. Insensitivity to exact quantity (e.g., to the absolute magnitude of benefits to be obtained if one takes a life-threatening risk) is a feature of gist-based processing, which characterizes most mature reasoning when the task permits. However, insensitively to quantity is more likely in moral reasoning situations in which protected values are elicited (and responses involve categorical choices) or emotional appeals are made that apply to single individuals. Insensitivity to quantity can produce lower levels of deontological or moral responding when it reflects psychophysical numbing. Conversely, people with deeply held protected values are more sensitive to quantity when response formats encourage them to express finegrained distinctions, consistent with other findings in the literature. Thus, fuzzy-trace theory brings to bear research on memory, reasoning, and decision making in general to the domain of moral reasoning and its development, providing an integrative framework in which old findings can be accommodated and new predictions can be made.
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Moral Identity, Moral Functioning, and the Development of Moral Character Darcia Narvaez and Daniel K. Lapsley Contents 1. Introduction 2. Moral Self-Identity 2.1. Ethical Theory and Moral Development 2.2. Blasi on Moral Identity 2.3. Personality Theory 3. Development of Moral Self-Identity 3.1. Early Development of Moral Personality 3.2. Community and Context Models of Moral Identity 4. Schemas and Moral Information Processing 4.1. Moral Schemas 5. Moral Development as Ethical Expertise Development 5.1. An Integrative Framework for Moral Character Education 6. New Directions: Neuroscience and Moral Personality 6.1. Triune Ethics Theory: A Neurobiological Theory of Moral Development 7. Conclusions 7.1. Experience Shapes Brain Biases 7.2. Moral Functioning is Multivariate 7.3. Moral Experts are Different from Novices References
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Abstract We review how the construct of the moral self has arisen within moral development theory and discuss the search for integrative linkages with other domains of psychology, including personality. Next, we describe moral personality and then programs and approaches to developing moral identity in children. Moral schema development and moral information-processing research is outlined, including mapping expert-novice differences. Finally, we conclude with two emerging integrative theories, one on educational intervention for moral skill Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Volume 50 ISSN 0079-7421, DOI: 10.1016/S0079-7421(08)00408-8
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development and the other a neurobiological model of moral functioning which draws on evolutionary themes in the development of a moral brain.
1. Introduction There are few more pressing problems before psychological science than to account for human moral functioning. This is because moral agency is crucial to our conception of what it means to be a person (Carr, 2001). The belief in our own moral integrity is so central to our self-understanding that often we are tempted to shield it from refutation by recourse to sanitizing euphemisms and protective belts of denial, rationalization, and special pleading (Bandura, 1999). Indeed, as Taylor (1989) put it, ‘‘being a self is inseparable from existing in a space of moral issues’’ (p. 112). The alignment of moral integrity with our sense of self-identity might be one of those facts about ourselves that is so obvious that it hardly bears examination — something along the lines of fish being the last to discover water. This might go part of the way to explain the odd fact that the moral self does not have a long research tradition in psychology; but there are other explanations as well. These explanations point to paradigmatic doubts about whether the self is a legitimate construct for a behavioral science, and doubts evident in the study of moral development about how ‘‘thick’’ a self must be to render a rationally adequate moral judgment. It does not help that psychological research is fragmented and that relevant fields of study, or even research programs within fields, do not easily talk with one another. The relevance of findings on, say, motivation, social cognition, or personality is not drawn easily for understanding moral motivation, moral cognition, or moral personality. The literatures on expertise, decision making, and cognitive science more generally provide few explicit guidelines for understanding moral expertise, moral decision making, and moral cognition. Although self-identity has attracted significant research attention for decades, the frameworks of developmental and social psychologists who study it have often bypassed each other. Similarly research on temperament, attachment, and other developmental processes are often silent on their implications for the moral domain. Research on moral development has availed itself rarely of the theories, constructs, and methods of other disciplines; and these other disciplines rarely speculate on the developmental trajectories that bring one to adult moral functioning. Moreover, those interested in the educational implications of the self divide on the purpose and pedagogy of moral-character education, and on the very terms of reference for understanding the moral dimensions of selfhood (see Lapsley and Narvaez, 2006). What is virtue, for example, as a psychological construct? How is character to be understood as a dimension of personality?
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Fortunately there are signs that the estrangement of the moral self from the main currents of contemporary psychological research is coming to an end. Although the search for integrative linkages is of longer standing (e.g., Lapsley and Power, 1988; Lapsley and Quintana, 1985), there is a discernible increase in the pace and momentum of integrative research on moral cognition and moral self-identity (Narvaez and Lapsley, in press). Indeed, the ascendance of the moral self now animates integrative research at the intersection of several provinces of psychology, and, along with increasing research into the neuroscientific (Sinnott-Armstrong, 2008) and evolutionary bases of moral behavior (Narvaez, 2008b), the appearance of handbooks on moral development (Killen and Smetana, 2005) and education (Nucci and Narvaez, 2008), it is now clear that moral psychology is enjoying a renascence of interest in many areas of research. In this chapter, we review how the construct of the moral self has arisen within developmental studies of moral judgment, and how the search for integrative linkages with other domains of psychology, particularly with social cognition and personality, took on a certain urgency after the marginalization or collapse of the dominant stage-and-structure (‘‘Piagetian’’) approaches to moral development. We examine theoretical approaches to moral self-identity and moral personality, along with their developmental accounts, including a broader integrative theory that implicates evolutionary themes in the development of a moral brain.
2. Moral Self-Identity In this section, we begin our exploration of moral self-identity by examining briefly how it is considered in recent ethical theory. We then trace how Augusto Blasi’s view of the moral personality has evolved out of the problematic of moral development theory. Finally we describe theories of moral personality that have arisen in recent decades.
2.1. Ethical Theory and Moral Development On Frankfurt’s (1971, 1988) influential account a person (as opposed to a wanton) has a self-reflective capacity to examine his or her own desires and to form judgments with respect to them. A person cares about the desirability of his or her desires (‘‘second-order desires’’) and wishes to conform the will in accordance with them (‘‘second-order volitions’’). Similarly Taylor (1989) argues that a person is one who engages in strong evaluation, that is, makes careful ethical discriminations about what is better and worse, higher and lower, worthy and unworthy; and these discriminations are made against a ‘‘horizon of significance’’ that frames and constitutes our
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self-understanding (Taylor, 1989). Hence on this view our identity is defined by reference to things that have significance for us. Moreover, according to Taylor (1989) it is a basic human aspiration to be connected to something of crucial importance, to something considered good, worthy, and of fundamental value; and this orientation to the good ‘‘is essential to being a functional moral agent’’ (Taylor, 1989, p. 42). Hence, modern ethical theory draws a tight connection between personhood, identity, and moral agency. Moreover, the core notions of second-order desires and the identity-defining commitments of strong evaluation have found their way into recent psychological accounts of moral identity (e.g., Blasi, 2005; Lapsley, 2007). How it has done so is best considered from an historical reconstruction of Kohlberg’s influential theory of moral development, for the stage-and-structure approach championed by Kohlberg did not always welcome self-identity constructs into its theoretical fold, and for a number of reasons. First, Kohlberg’s theory appropriated the Piagetian understanding of stage. This entailed treating the moral stage sequence as a taxonomic classification of different kinds of sociomoral operations and not as a way of charting individual differences. Moral stages, on this account, are not ‘‘boxes for classifying and evaluating persons’’ (Colby et al., 1983, p.11). Instead they describe forms of thought organization of an ideal rational moral agent, an epistemic subject, and hence cannot be ‘‘reflections upon the self’’ (Kohlberg et al., 1983, p. 36). For this reason, it is not possible to use moral stages as a way of making ‘‘aretaic judgments’’ about the self (or of others), that is, of making judgments about one’s moral worthiness as a person. Second, Kohlberg thought that the behavioral manifestation of character traits could not be empirically confirmed. After all, the Hartshorne and May (1928–1930) studies appeared to show that certain dispositions (‘‘honesty’’) did not exhibit the cross-situational consistency thought necessary for character traits. Third, deeply personological constructs were viewed as obstacles to mature moral deliberation, or as sources of bias and backsliding that had to be surmounted by the rational moral agent. This follows from a Kantian view of the person as one beset by contending forces — the force of reason and the force of bodily desires and passions — each slugging it out for the control of the will (Johnson, 1993). If one links moral judgment too closely to our deeper human nature — to personality, to the self and its desires, passions and inclinations, or to social particularities, relationships, and identity-defining commitments, then one risks divorcing morality from rationality. Self-identity and personality, on this view, are too adhesive to bodily passions which can only compromise the universalizing tendencies required of the ‘‘moral point of view’’ instantiated in the highest stages of moral development. Finally, a focus on virtues and character traits was thought to give aid and comfort to ethical relativism and was therefore a
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poor guide to moral education. As Kohlberg and Mayer (1972, p. 479) famously put it: Labeling a set of behaviors displayed by a child with positive or negative trait terms does not signify that they are of adaptive significance or ethical importance. It represents an appeal to particular community conventions, since one person’s ‘integrity’ is another person’s ‘stubbornness, [one person’s] ‘honesty in expressing your true feelings’ is another person’s ‘insensitivity’ to the feelings of others.
Hence Kohlberg’s cognitive developmental approach to moral socialization did not leave much room for dispositional factors, and required only a thin conception of the ‘‘responsible self’’ in order to account for how moral cognition gets translated into moral action. For Kohlberg the responsible self is aware of the prescriptive nature of moral judgments and hence acts upon them, though awareness of this link is most pronounced at the highest stages of moral reasoning. Of course, Kohlberg’s moral stage theory no longer sets the agenda in moral development research despite the strength of empirical findings supporting at least neo-Kohlbergian models of development (e.g., Rest et al., 1999). The general decline of the Piagetian paradigm is one part of the explanation for the marginalization of moral stage theory. Other explanations point to factors internal to Kohlberg’s theory, such as doubts about how to understand fundamental concepts, such as stage and structure (Lapsley, 2005). Yet it also became clear that Kohlberg’s theory could not help us understand the moral formation of children, nor provide guidance for parents about how to raise children of a certain kind — children whose personalities are imbued with a strong ethical compass. Although the strictures of moral stage theory forbid aretaic judgments, they come easier to most everyone else; and it was the inability of moral stage theory to engage issues of character, selfhood, and personality that contributed to its diminishing visibility in developmental science, and to increasing recognition that the field was at an important crossroads (Lapsley and Narvaez, 2005).
2.2. Blasi on Moral Identity The relative neglect of self, identity, and personality in accounts of moral development has now come to an end. Beginning with the pioneering work of Blasi (1984, 1985), it is now evident that moral psychology is catching up with ethical theory in proposing thicker conceptions of moral personhood so that talk of moral self-identity and moral personality are now commonplace (Blasi, 2005; Lapsley, 2007; Lapsley and Narvaez, 2004a; Narvaez and Lapsley, in press; Walker and Frimer, in press). Blasi’s contributions to moral psychology can be described usefully in terms of five key themes that emerged in his writings. His early writings
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focused on the Self Model of moral action and moral identity. Later he took up the intentional self, the nature of moral character, and the development of the moral will. Throughout this work Blasi is influenced clearly by the notion of second-order desires (Frankfurt) and of the identity-defining commitments of strong evaluation (Taylor). The Self Model of moral action was developed in response to the disappointing finding that moral judgment did not predict moral action very strongly (Blasi, 1983). In contrast to Kohlberg’s position, Blasi argued that moral action did not follow directly from a deontic judgment but was instead filtered through a set of calculations that implicated the very integrity of the self. According to Blasi (1983) moral structures are only indirectly related to moral action. They serve to appraise the moral landscape, but do not directly generate action. Just because an agent appraises the social situation through the lens of sophisticated moral criteria does not guarantee that the agent will also see the personal relevance of the situation, or even its relevance for morality. The Self Model holds that action is more likely to follow moral judgment when moral considerations are deemed essential and core to one’s personal identity. After one makes a moral judgment one must next filter this judgment through a second set of calculations that speaks to the issue of whether the self is responsible. Responsibility judgments attempt to sort out the extent to which the morally good action is strictly necessary for the self. Moreover, the criteria for reaching responsibility judgments are a matter of individual differences insofar as it varies in accordance with one’s selfdefinition. Is acting in this way so necessary for my self-understanding that not to act is to lose the self? Are moral notions so central to my identity that failing to act, or indulging in excusing rationalizations, is to undermine what is core to my personhood? Blasi suggests that the cognitive motivation for moral action springs from this sense of fidelity to oneself-in-action. It springs from a tendency toward self-consistency, which he views as a cognitive motive for objectivity and truth. It springs from a moral identity that is deeply rooted in moral commitments — commitments so deeply rooted, in fact, that to betray these commitments is also to betray the self. Hence moral action, and inaction, implicates the self in important ways. As McFall (1987, p. 12) put it: We all have things we think we would never do, under any imaginable circumstances; some part of ourselves beyond which we will never retreat, some weakness however prevalent in others that we will not tolerate in ourselves. And if we do that thing, betray that weakness, we are not the persons we thought: there is nothing left that we may even in spite refer to as I.
Unconditional moral commitments that are core, deep, and essential to our self-understanding contributes to our sense of personal integrity-in-action. These are the ‘‘deepest most serious convictions we have; they define what
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we would not do, what we regard as outrageous and horrible; they are the fundamental conditions for being ourselves, for the integrity of our characters depends upon them’’ (Kekes, 1989, p. 167). But moral identity is a dimension of individual differences, that is, it is a way of talking about personality, but this time one’s moral personality is grounded by reference to moral reasons. One has a moral identity to the extent that moral notions, such as being good, being just, compassionate, or fair, is judged to be central, essential, and important to one’s selfunderstanding. One has a moral identity when one strives to keep faith with identity-defining moral commitments, and when moral claims stake out the very terms of reference for the sort of person one claims to be. Blasi’s account of the moral personality, his elevation of the subjective self-as-agent as an object of inquiry, his insistence on the rational, intentional nature of distinctly moral functioning, and his integration of self and identity with moral rationality and responsibility is a singular achievement (Lapsley and Narvaez, 2004a). His theory of moral identity also has empirical consequences. It is invoked, for example, to explain the motivation of individuals who sheltered Jews during the Nazi Holocaust (Monroe, 1994, 2001, 2003); and it underwrites a line of research on the psychological characteristics of ‘‘moral exemplars’’ whose lives are marked by uncommon moral commitment. For example, studies of adult (Colby and Damon, 1991) and adolescent (Hart and Fegley, 1995; Matsuba and Walker, 2004, 2005; Reimer, 2003) moral exemplars typically reveal that exemplars align their self-conceptions with ideal moral goals and personality traits, and that their moral action is undertaken as a matter of felt self-necessity. Blasi returned long-forgotten concepts to the vocabulary of modern psychology, including desire, will, and volition, and added new concepts, such as self-appropriation and self-mastery. To date these concepts have resisted straightforward translation into empirical research. Moreover there is no consensus on how to measure moral identity, which is a centerpiece of Blasian moral theory. Alternative approaches to moral identity have emerged that while friendly toward the general Blasian framework nonetheless have starting points other than the subjective self-as-agent.
2.3. Personality Theory There is an emerging consensus that the study of moral rationality can no longer be studied in isolation from the broader context of personality (Walker and Hennig, 1998; Lapsley and Narvaez, 2004b). For too long the study of moral judgment was pursued at the expense of studying the moral agent as a whole person (Walker, 1999). As a corrective it seems reasonable to insist that if moral self-identity (or ‘‘character’’) is a dimension of individual differences, and if it is the moral dimension of personality, then
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our accounts of these constructs must be compatible with well-attested models of personality. But which model? Modern personality theory provides a number of options. Cervone (1991) argues, for example, that personality psychology divides into two disciplines on the question of how best to conceptualize the basic units of personality. One discipline favors trait/dispositional constructs, the second discipline favors social-cognitive constructs. The traits/disposition approach (e.g., Costa and McCrae, 1992) accounts for the structure of personality in terms of between-person classification of interindividual variability. Individual differences are captured in terms of ‘‘top-down’’ dispositional constructs as might be found in latent variable taxonomies identified through factor analysis, such as the Big 5 taxonomy (extraversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and open-to-experience). In contrast, the social-cognitive approach understands the structure of personality in terms of intraindividual, cognitive-affective mechanisms, and attempts to account for individual differences from the ‘‘bottom-up,’’ that is, in terms of specific, within-person psychological systems that are in dynamic interaction with changing situational contexts (Cervone, 2005; Cervone and Tripathi, in press). Scripts, schemas, episodes, plans, prototypes, and similar constructs are the units of analysis for social-cognitive approaches to personality. Cervone’s ‘‘two disciplines’’ of personality has been joined by the ‘‘new Big 5’’ conceptualization proposed by McAdams and Pals (2006) as an integrative framework for personality science. The framework begins with the general evolutionary design for human nature (Level 1) as it is expressed in broadband dispositional traits that are organized early in development (Level 2). Later personality comes to include characteristic adaptations to specific contextual demands (Level 3), and then self-defining narratives (Level 4) that are expressed differentially in broader social and cultural contexts (Level 5). In this framework the personality is layered, with evolutionary biology at the bottom and sociocultural context at the top. Of most interest here are the three middle layers, dispositional traits, characteristic adaptations, and self-defining narratives. At Level 2 are dispositional traits like the Big 5 that encode those broadband variations in human behavior that have made a difference in human evolutionary history (McAdams, in press). These dispositional traits show cross-situational consistency and developmental continuity. But personality also is responsive to exigencies of specific contextual settings, and this pattern of responsiveness is captured by Level 3 ‘‘characteristic adaptations.’’ These include a large tool box of motivational, socialcognitive, and developmental constructs such as favored defense mechanisms, coping strategies, schemas of various kinds, personal projects, beliefs, goals, values, and ideologies. Finally, atop Level 2 dispositions and Level 3 adaptations is the construction at Level 4 of a life narrative that pulls
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together the elements of one’s biography into a story that yields ideally a sense of unity, coherence, and purpose. 2.3.1. Personality Theory and Moral Personality Recent research in moral psychology has appealed to both the Big 5 taxonomy (McAdams) and to social-cognitive theory (Cervone). For example, Walker and his colleagues have attempted to understand the personality of moral exemplars in terms of McAdams’ Big 5 taxonomy. In one study, the personality of moral exemplars was found to orient toward conscientiousness and agreeableness (Walker, 1999). Agreeableness also characterized young adult moral exemplars (Matsuba and Walker, 2005). In a study of brave, caring and just exemplars (as recognized by the Canadian honors system), Walker and Pitts (1998) found that brave exemplars aligned with a complex of traits associated with extraversion; caring exemplars aligned with agreeableness, and just exemplars with a mixture of conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience. This pattern was largely replicated by Walker and Hennig (2004). In contrast to McAdams’ Big 5 characterizations of moral personality are social-cognitive theories that appeal to the availability and accessibility of social-cognitive knowledge structures, such as schemas, scripts, and prototypes (Aquino and Reed, 2002; Aquino and Freeman, in press; Lapsley and Narvaez, 2004b). From this perspective schemas (rather than traits) are the cognitive carriers of dispositions (Cantor, 1990; Cantor and Kihlstrom, 1987). Schemas ‘‘demarcate regions of social life and domains of personal experience to which the person is especially tuned and about which he or she is likely to become a virtual ‘expert’’’ (Cantor, 1990, p. 738). Schemas that are frequently activated should, over time, become chronically accessible. Moreover, there should be individual differences in the accessibility of constructs just because of each person’s unique social developmental history (Bargh et al., 1988). Hence schema accessibility shows interindividual variability but also sustains patterns of individual differences over time, and is properly considered a personality variable (Higgins, 1996). For example, if schemas are chronically accessible, then attention is directed selectively to certain features of experience at the expense of others. It disposes one to select schema-relevant life tasks, goals, or settings which, in turn, canalize and maintain dispositional tendencies (which illustrate the reciprocal relationship between persons and contexts). It encourages one to develop highly practiced behavioral routines in those areas demarcated by chronically accessible schemas, which provide ‘‘a ready, sometimes automatically available plan of action in such life contexts’’ (Cantor, 1990, p. 738). Lapsley and Narvaez (2004b) and others (e.g., Aquino and Freeman, in press) have invoked the social-cognitive framework to understand moral
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personality. In this view, the moral personality is to be understood in terms of the accessibility of moral schemas for social information processing. A moral person, a person who has a moral character or identity, is one for whom moral constructs are chronically accessible (moral chronicity), where construct accessibility and availability are dimensions of individual differences. A social-cognitive model of moral personality has at least five attractive features. First, it provides an explanation for the model of moral identity favored by Blasi (1984) who argues that one has a moral identity just when moral categories are essential, central, and important to one’s selfunderstanding. A social-cognitive interpretation would add that moral categories that are essential, central, and important for one’s self-identity would also be ones that are chronically accessible for interpreting the social landscape. These categories would be online, vigilant, easily primed, easily activated, for discerning the meaning of events, for noticing the moral dimensions of experience and, once activated, to dispose one to interpret events in light of one’s moral commitments. Second, this model accounts for the felt necessity of moral commitments experienced by moral exemplars, their experience of moral clarity or felt conviction that their decisions are evidently appropriate, justified, and true. Typically moral exemplars report that they ‘‘just knew’’ what was required of them, automatically as it were, without the experience of working through an elaborate decision-making calculus (Colby and Damon, 1991). Yet this is precisely the outcome of preconscious activation of chronically accessible constructs — that it should induce strong feelings of certainty or conviction with respect to social judgments (Bargh, 1989; Narvaez and Lapsley, in press). Third, the social-cognitive framework is better able to account for the implicit, tacit, and automatic features of moral functioning (Narvaez and Lapsley, 2005). There is growing recognition that much of human decision making is under nonconscious control (Bargh, 2005) and occurs with an automaticity that belies the standard notions of rational, deliberative calculation (Bargh and Chartrand, 1999). Though this possibility offends traditional accounts of moral development, there is no reason to think that automaticity is evident in every domain of decision making except the moral domain. However, unlike the social intuitionist model (Haidt, 2001) which frontloads automaticity prior to judgment and reasoning as a result of intuitions that are constitutive of human nature (and hence prior to learning and enculturation) the social-cognitive approach to moral personality locates automaticity on the backend of development as the result of repeated experience, instruction, intentional coaching, and/or socialization (Lapsley and Hill, 2008). It is the automaticity that comes from expertise in life domains where we have vast experience and well-practiced behavioral routines (Cantor, 1990).
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Fourth, a social-cognitive model of the moral personality can account for situational variability in the display of a virtue (Cervone and Tripathi, in press). The accessibility of social-cognitive schemas underwrites not only the discriminative facility in the selection of situationally appropriate behavior, but also the automaticity of schema activation that contributes to the tacit, implicit qualities often associated with the ‘‘habits’’ of moral character (Lapsley and Narvaez, 2006). Fifth, social-cognitive theory accords with the paradigmatic assumptions of ecological ‘‘systems’’ models of development (Lerner, 2006). Both developmental systems and social-cognitive theory affirm that a dispositional behavioral signature is to be found at the intersection of Person Context interactions. Consequently, a preference for social-cognitive theory as a way to conceptualize the moral personality reflects a strategic bet that it is more likely to lead to robust integrative models of moral personality development than are approaches driven by the Big 5. Similarly, Olson and Dweck (2008) argue that the field of ‘‘social-cognitive development’’ (SCD) has strong integrative possibilities as it straddles the domains of social, developmental, and cognitive psychology. Recent research has attempted to document the social-cognitive dimensions of moral cognition. For example, moral chronicity (chronic activation of moral constructs in social information processing) appears to be a dimension of individual differences that influences spontaneous trait inference and moral evaluation (Narvaez et al., 2006). In two studies Narvaez et al. (2006) showed that moral chronics and nonchronics respond differently to the dispositional and moral implications of social cues. In addition, research shows that conceptions of good character (Lapsley and Lasky, 2002) and of moral, spiritual, and religious persons (Walker and Pitts, 1998) are organized as cognitive prototypes. Aquino and Reed (2002) proposed a model of moral identity that is compatible with the tenets of social-cognitive theory. They define moral identity as a self-schema that is organized around specific moral trait associations (e.g., caring, compassionate, fair, friendly, generous, helpful, hardworking, honest, kind) that are closely linked in memory (in the manner of spreading activation). They argue that moral identity has both a public and private aspect. Privately, moral identity is a cognitive representation of the moral self that reflects the degree to which moral traits are central to one’s self-concept. Publicly, moral identity can be projected symbolically in the forms of actions-in-the-world, or, alternatively, the degree to which the traits are reflected in one’s public actions. The private aspect of moral identity is labeled Internalization; the public aspect is labeled Symbolization. These aspects are derived as subscales on an instrument that uses the nine moral traits as ‘‘salience induction stimuli.’’ In some studies, these nine traits are used as an experimental manipulation to prime the accessibility of moral identity.
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Aquino and Reed (2002) showed that both dimensions predicted selfreported good deeds such as volunteering at a homeless shelter, organizing a food drive, mentoring troubled youth, or visiting patients at a nursing home ‘‘in the past two years.’’ The self-importance of moral identity (‘‘Internalization’’) was also a strong predictor of donating behavior in this study. A strong sense of internalized moral identity predicts whether one will share resources with outgroups or come to their aid (Reed and Aquino, 2003), donate personal time for a charitable cause (Reed et al., 2007) or lie in a business negotiation (Aquino and Freeman, in press). When individuals with internalized moral identity do lie in a business negotiation, they are strongly motivated to reduce its implication for the self by attempting various strategies that serve to neutralize the sting of hypocrisy, such as denial, denigrating the target, or minimizing the lie (Aquino and Becker, 2005). That said, when the self-importance of moral identity is high, it undermines the effectiveness of moral disengagement mechanisms that rationalize doing harm to others (Aquino et al., 2007).
3. Development of Moral Self-Identity The literature on moral self-identity and the moral personality seems largely preoccupied with sketching out what it looks like in its mature form in adulthood. This is not inappropriate. Often it is useful, if not essential, to get a handle on the telos of development before one can investigate the possible developmental trajectories that can get one there (Kitchener, 1983). Still, the relative paucity of work on the development of the moral self is striking. This is due partly to the lack of interest in developmental antecedents among personality, cognitive, and social psychologists, something that an emergent field of SCD might remedy (Olson and Dweck, 2008). But it is also due partly to a tendency among some development theorists to treat moral acquisitions as a philosophical competency that must await later stages of development. Or else to insist on such stringent and philosophized conceptions of what counts as ‘‘moral’’ that extant and possibly relevant developmental literatures are deemed unavailing and dismissed. The moral self is isolated from other developmental processes and is treated as some occult achievement that has a presumptive developmental history but of which little can be said. Perhaps this is the negative side-effect of starting with philosophical conceptions about what is ‘‘moral’’ about adult moral personality and then trying to push this conception back in developmental time in the search for antecedents. The result is a view we find untenable, namely, that development brings a child to a tipping point at which time he or she then becomes moralized. On this view attachment processes, for example, or the organization of temperament or the child’s
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expanding socio-emotional and cognitive competencies are not themselves markers of the developing moral self — nothing to see here — but rather are developmental achievements that are in need of something else (‘‘moralization’’) before the moral domain takes notice. Yet many extant literatures shed light on the foundation, emergence, and trajectory of moral self development, although often they are not unpacked to reveal their implications for moral development. Nonetheless these literatures are forcing a reconsideration of certain views about young children that have become calcified in the stage development literatures, for example, the notion that infants lack an appreciation of subjectivity (cf., Repacholi, 1998), that toddlers are egocentric (cf., Gelman, 1979; Light, 1983), incapable of discerning intentions (cf., Nunez and Harris, 1998) or of engaging in prosocial behavior (cf., Bar-Tal et al., 1982; Denham, 1986; Dunn, 2006; Warneken and Tomasello, 2007), or of describing the self in anything other than physicalistic or demographic terms (cf., Marsh et al., 2002), and so on. ‘‘It was not long ago,’’ Thompson (2006, p. 25) remarked, ‘‘that characterizations of young children as egocentric, concrete, preconventional, and preconceptual made this developmental period seem discontinuous with the conceptual achievements of middle childhood and later.’’ This now discredited view of early childhood seemed to discourage attempts to locate the early roots of moral self, personality and character in the infancy, toddler, and early childhood years. Take the stance of the Kohlberg paradigm on what constitutes a moral action. A moral action, on this view, is an action undertaken for explicit moral reasons. Moral action, under this definition, is most likely when one discerns the moral norm and understands its prescriptive quality, and this is most evident to individuals who are at the postconventional stages of moral reasoning. Kohlberg’s team never studied toddlers or children. The age range of their influential moral stage sequence begins much later in early adolescence and extends to adulthood. So it is silent on what early childhood contributes to moral development (other than to assume a blanket moral egocentrism), but leaves the impression that toddlers do not engage in moral action thus defined or do not feel the prescriptive weight of the moral law. The Kohlberg moral development sequence, then, is discontinuous with the early child development processes, mechanisms, and acquisitions that bring a child to its first conventional Kohlbergian stage in late childhood or early adolescence.
3.1. Early Development of Moral Personality We now know, of course, that an intuitive morality is an early developmental achievement. Soon after 18 months of age toddlers display an awareness and responsiveness to normative standards across a wide range of situations that includes, for example, their reacting with self-conscious
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emotions and mark-directed behavior to a spot of rouge on their face when looking in a mirror (Lewis and Brooks-Gunn, 1979); their expectations about daily routines and events (Fivush et al., 1992), or for how persons should act; or their negative reaction and concern to objects that are disfigured, broken or marred in some way (Kagan, 2005). What’s more toddlers have an early grasp of the different standards of obligation that obtain in moral and conventional violations (Smetana, 1985) and for how prescriptive rules apply to different situations (Harris and Nunez, 1996). They are aware of how things ought to be. They are cognizant of adult standards and the notions of responsibility and accountability (Dunn, 1988). Clearly toddlers seem to be aware of a wide range of conventional norms, and these serve as the foundation of an emerging intuitive morality that belies a greater moral capacity than has been credited to them (Thompson, in press). Indeed, the ‘‘relationships and other influences experienced in the early years set the context for the growth of an empathic humanistic conception toward others, balanced self-concept, capacities for relational intimacy, social sensitivity, and other capacities conventionally viewed as achievements of middle childhood and adolescence’’ (Thompson, 2006, p. 25). The development of moral self-identity, of moral personality, and character, then, is a banal developmental achievement in the sense that it results from ordinary developmental processes and mechanisms. The moral self emerges in the dynamic transaction between the inductive capacities and other personal qualities of the child and the familial and relational interactions that provide the context for development. As a result theoretical accounts of the developing moral self must take into account various person variables, including temperament, self-regulation skills, theory of mind, and conscience, but also contextual-relational variables, including attachment security and the parental interactions that support it. Kochanska and her colleagues (Kochanska, 2002a; Kochanska and Aksan, 2004; Kochanska et al., 2004; Kochanska et al., 1995) have shown how the moral self might emerge at the intersection of Person Context interactions. They proposed a two-step model of emerging morality that begins with the quality of parent–child attachment. A strong, mutually responsive relationship with caregivers orients the child to be receptive to parental influence (Kochanska, 1997a, 2002b). This ‘‘mutually responsive orientation’’ (MRO) is characterized by shared positive affect, mutually coordinated enjoyable routines (‘‘good times’’), and a ‘‘cooperative interpersonal set’’ that describes the joint willingness of parent and child to initiate and reciprocate relational overtures. It is from within the context of the MRO, and the secure attachment that it denotes, that the child is eager to comply with parental expectations and standards. There is ‘‘committed compliance’’ on the part of the child to the norms and values of caregivers which, in turn, motivates moral
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internalization and the work of ‘‘conscience.’’ This was documented in a recent longitudinal study. Children who had experienced a highly responsive relationship with mothers over the first 24 months of life strongly embraced maternal prohibitions and gave evidence of strong self-regulation skills at preschool age (Kochanska et al., 2008). Kochanska’s model moves, then, from security of attachment (MRO) to committed compliance to moral internalization. This movement is also expected to influence the child’s emerging internal representation of the self. As Kochanska et al. (2002a) put it: Children with a strong history of committed compliance with the parent are likely gradually to come to view themselves as embracing the parent’s values and rules. Such a moral self, in turn, comes to serve as the regulator of future moral conduct and, more generally, of early morality (p. 340).
But children bring something to the interaction, too, namely, their temperament. Kochanska (1991, 1993) argues that there are multiple pathways to conscience and that one parenting style is not uniformly more effective regardless of the temperamental dispositions of the child. In particular, she suggests that children who are highly prone to fearful reactions would profit from gentle, low power-assertive discipline. This ‘‘silken glove’’ approach capitalizes on the child’s own discomfort to produce the optimal level of anxiety that facilitates the processing and retention of parents’ socialization messages. But for ‘‘fearless’’ children another approach is called for, not the ‘‘iron hand,’’ which would only make the fearless child angry, highly reactive, and resistant to socialization messages (Kochanska et al., 2007), but rather one that capitalizes on positive emotions (rather than on anxiety). Hence there are at least two pathways to the internalization of conscience. For fearful children, it leads through the soft touch of gentle discipline; for fearless children, it leads through the reciprocal positive parent–child relationship. This has now been documented in a number of studies (Kochanska, 1997b; Kochanska et al., 2005). How does Kochanska’s model of the emergent moral self relate to characterizations of adult moral self-identity reviewed earlier? Recall that Blasian moral identity requires the moralization of self-regulation (‘‘willpower’’) and integrity by moral desires. The moral personality, at its highest articulation, is driven by a sense of ‘‘wholeheartedness,’’ by which Blasi (2005) means that ‘‘a general moral desire becomes the basic concern around which the will is structured’’ (p. 82). Wholehearted commitment to a moral desire, to the moral good, becomes an aspect of identity to the extent that not to act in accordance with the moral will is unthinkable. But how do children develop wholehearted commitment to moral integrity? What is the source of moral desires? How do children develop the proper moral desires as second-order volitions? What are the developmental pathways that bring us to the moral personality envisioned by Blasi’s
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theory? We suggest that Kochanska’s model is a good place to start. The developmental source of the moral personality lies in the shared, positive affective relationship with caregivers. It emerges as a precipitate of the ‘‘cooperative interpersonal set’’ — the mutual responsiveness and shared ‘‘good times’’ — that characterize the interpersonal foundation of conscience. This linkage is likely be resisted by Blasian moral theory because of the presumption that Kochanska’s moral self only brings one to mere compliance or mere internalization and therefore misses the subjective, agentic qualities of the mature moral will. But the compliance of the emergent moral self is not submission but rather a perceptual bias, an act of commitment that is motivated by strongly charged, mutually shared, positive affective interpersonal relationships with caregivers. The desire to be moral, in other words, is deeply social and therefore deeply emotional. There must be a developmental source for the moral desires of the subjective self-as-agent, and these arise from interpersonal relationships of a certain kind that are sustained over time by social institutions — by families, classrooms, schools, and neighborhoods, characterized by affective bonds of attachment and community. Indeed, there is strong evidence that caring classroom environments characterized by strong bonding to teachers and school, and an abiding sense of community, is associated with prosocial behavior and many positive developmental outcomes (Lapsley and Narvaez, 2006, for a review).
3.2. Community and Context Models of Moral Identity One limitation of Blasi’s framework is that it is does not give much attention to the social dimensions of self-identity. Kochanska helps us understand that the source of self-control, integrity, and of moral desires is deeply relational; moral self-identity emerges within a history of secure attachment. If true, such a model underscores the importance of attachment to teachers (Watson, 2008), school bonding (Catalano et al., 2004; Libby, 2004), and caring school communities (e.g., Payne et al., 2003; Solomon et al., 1992) as bases for continued prosocial and moral development. For example, Payne et al. (2003) showed that when a school is organized and experienced as a caring community its students report higher levels of bonding to school and greater internalization of community goals and norms which are related to less delinquency. Elementary school children’s sense of community leads them to adhere to the values that are most salient in the classroom (Solomon et al., 1996). At the same time, when high school students perceive a moral atmosphere they report more prosocial and less norms-transgressive behavior (Brugman et al., 2003). These findings show that secure attachments promote committed compliance and lead to internalization of norms and standards at every age.
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3.2.1. Just Community We examine two research programs to show the importance of community beyond the family for moral identity development. First, Power (2004) and Power and Higgins-D’Alessandro (2008) argue that the community is critical for understanding the moral dimensions of the self insofar as the self ‘‘does not experience a sense of obligation or responsibility to act in isolation but with others within a cultural setting’’ (p. 52). Power brings to the problem of self-identity a long interest in how classrooms and schools can be transformed into ‘‘just communities’’ (Power et al., 1989). In a just community there is a commitment to participatory, deliberative democracy but in the service of becoming a moral community. Members of a community — a classroom or school — commit to a common life that is regulated by norms that reflect moral ideals. These shared norms emerge as a product of democratic deliberation in community meetings. Here, the benefits and burdens of shared lived experience are sorted out in a way that encourages group solidarity and identification. One’s identification with the group and its communal norms generate a moral atmosphere that conduces to moral formation. Hence moral self-identity is a matter of group identification and shared commitment to its value-laden norms. The moral self identifies with the community by speaking on behalf of its shared norms and by taking on its obligations as binding on the self. Group identification is not simply awareness that one is a member of a group, but rather that one is responsible for the group. The responsible self is a communal self that takes on obligations and duties as result of shared commitment to group norms. In order to illustrate a possible trajectory in the development of the moral communal self, Power (2004) adapted Blasi’s (1988) typology of identity (identity as observed, managed, and constructed ) as understood from the perspective of the subjective self-as-agent. In an early phase, one simply acknowledges that one is a member of a group and is bound thereby to group norms (identity observed ). Then, one speaks up more actively in defense of a group norm, and urges the community to abide by its commitments (identity managed ). Finally, one takes ‘‘legislative responsibility for constructing group norms’’ (p. 55; identity constructed). Power (2004) argues that the democratic process challenges members to appropriate community group membership into one’s personal identity. He writes: This appropriation is rational and critical and is not a passive internalization of group norms and values. Moreover, the appropriation of membership in the community is to be based on the ideals of the community. In this sense the identification with the community not only allows for but encourages a critical stance toward its practices and commitment to change it (p. 55).
Class meetings are now a well-entrenched element of instructional best practice, particularly at the elementary school level. Giving students
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‘‘voice-and-choice’’ about classroom practices, giving them an opportunity to share, to cooperate, to discuss, to take joint responsibility, are recognized as important elements of character education (Lapsley and Narvaez, 2006). But these salutary practices are still some distance from the goal of participatory democratic decision making. Indeed most schools and classrooms who endorse caring classroom communities as a moral educational goal could not fairly be called ‘‘just communities’’ in the sense envisioned by Power and his colleagues. One problem is that the demands of academic accountability and the pressure to make adequate yearly progress on mandated state examinations tends to squeeze intentional, deliberate approaches to moral character education out of the curriculum. Teachers find it difficult even to reserve the ‘‘homeroom period’’ for building moral community. For this reason, Power and his colleagues have targeted youth sports programs as an alternative location for moral character intervention. Here children and adolescents might experience teams as a moral community, and coaching as a form of moral education. Their program, called ‘‘Play Like a Champion’’ (2008), teaches coaches to build an engaging team climate that emphasizes moral principles (justice, tolerance, respect, and cooperation) using child-centered strategies to advance the full personal development of the child. 3.2.2. Moral Development in Poor Neighborhoods We turn to a second research program that underscores the importance of community for moral identity development. Hart and Matsuba (in press) are concerned mostly with how the larger contextual settings, such as poor urban neighborhoods, influence enduring personality characteristics, and the suite of mediating factors. The influence is not encouraging. Poor urban neighborhoods generally provide a context that works against the formation of moral identity or the commitment to moral projects. For example, living in high-poverty neighborhoods tends to undermine moral attitudes and values such as tolerance for divergent viewpoints (Hart et al., 2006). It undermines personality resilience, and is associated with family dysfunction, stress, and increases in problem behavior (Hart et al., 2003). Moreover, very poor neighborhoods — particularly those marked by high levels of child saturation — are less able to provide opportunities for productive engagement in the community. This is because poor neighborhoods are relatively lacking in the rich network of organizations that support projects with moral goals. Indeed, adolescents in poor communities form fewer connections with these institutions than do children in affluent communities. They report fewer affiliations with clubs, teams, and youth organizations (Hart and Matsuba, in press), and fewer opportunities for volunteering. Institutional density, then, is a critical factor that influences the availability of identity-defining options for adolescents. Opportunities to engage in projects that facilitate the formation of moral identity are not
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evenly distributed across communities, neighborhoods, and social strata, which suggests that when it comes to the possibilities for structuring moral identity there is an element of moral luck (Nagel, 1979; Williams, 1971) in the way one’s moral life goes (Hart, 2005). 3.2.3. Community Service and Social Capital Of course the association between thin networks of community organizations and depressed rates of volunteering in very poor, child saturated neighborhoods does suggest a possible intervention strategy. There is mounting interest, for example, in providing service learning and community service opportunities for youngsters in poor urban neighborhoods as a way of changing moral and civic attitudes and the sense of self-identity. These forms of community service are associated with positive developmental outcomes (Hart et al., 2008). In one study, social opportunities to interact frequently with others in the community through social institutional structures (church, community meetings) predicted voluntary community service in a nationally representative sample of adults (Matsuba et al., 2007). Community service may be both a catalyst for moral development but also a signal of moral identity. In a longitudinal study, Pratt et al. (2003) constructed a moral self-ideal index that was based on participants’ endorsement of a set of six personal qualities (trustworthy, honest, fair, just, shows integrity, and good citizen). At age 19 participants who had endorsed a high moral self-ideal were more likely to participate in community activities. But it was the community involvement that led to subsequent endorsement of moral self-ideals. A strong moral self-ideal did not lead to community involvement but was its result. This suggests that the best way to influence attitudes and values is to first change behavior — in this case in the direction of greater community involvement (Pancer and Pratt, 1999). As Pratt et al. (2003) put it, ‘‘community involvement by adolescents leads to the development of some sort of sense of identity that is characterized by a greater prominence of moral, prosocial values’’ (p. 579). And it does not seem to matter whether youth involvement is one of service learning or simple volunteering, or whether the service is voluntary or mandated (Hart et al., 2008). In sum, service learning and volunteering increases social capital and community participation, thereby deepening the connection of adolescents to social institutions that provide a context for the construction of prosocial commitments and moral self-identity. And this implicates institutional density as a critical mediating variable. Power’s work with youth sports underscores the importance of community and neighborhood effects on moral identity. This theme is pronounced in Hart’s (2005) and Hart and Matsuba (in press) model of moral identity. Hart’s model is the closest thing we have to a developmental systems theory, one that articulates the multiple layers of influence on
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moral identity that includes the endogenous, dispositional factors of the developing child, the family dynamics in which he or she is raised, and the neighborhood in which the family resides. For Hart (2005) the constituents of moral identity fall under two broad headings. Under the heading of ‘‘enduring characteristics’’ are personality and family constituents that are relatively stable and hard to change. Under the heading of ‘‘characteristic adaptations’’ are factors that mediate the relationship between enduring characteristics and moral identity. One such factor, ‘‘moral orientation,’’ includes attitudes, values, and the capacity for moral deliberative competence and reflection, particularly the tendency to appreciate the prescriptive quality of moral judgments. We have seen that in Blasi’s theory moral identity requires that selfregulation and integrity be infused with moral desires. How moral desires are structured depends importantly on experience with caregivers (Kochanska), the practice of community (Power), and on neighborhood characteristics that influence the resources required for identity exploration (Hart). What is clear from these research programs is that a moral self takes time and experience to develop, and requires cultivation from those with more social experience. Particular experiences appear to make the difference in the development of a child’s moral identity and moral understanding. What is the mechanism for change? How does experience influence moral decisions and choices? Schema theory provides an answer.
4. Schemas and Moral Information Processing According to schema theories of development and understanding, schemas are the key structures that reflect ongoing changes in understanding. Schemas (generalized knowledge structures) develop first from sensorimotor experience, forming embodied knowledge that underlies thought and language (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999). The individual interprets subsequent experience according to existing schemas (assimilation) and modifies them in kind and number in response to new information (accommodation) in a continuous process of growth, change, and equilibration (Piaget, 1970). For example, children with warm responsive parents build positive, prosocial schemas about relating to others that they apply to future relationships; children with community service experience build schemas of self-efficacy in helping others, leading them to continue the practice as adults. Essentially, a schema is a cognitive mechanism that operates in one or more brain systems (Neisser, 1976), including memory systems, such as procedural or declarative knowledge (Hogarth, 2001; Kesner, 1986), and
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types of reasoning, such as analogical and/or intuitive reasoning (Ericsson and Smith, 1991; Hogarth, 2001). Schemas organize an individual’s operational activities, processing current experience according to concurrent goals (Piaget, 1970; Rummelhart, 1980; Taylor and Crocker, 1981), influencing perception, as well as decision making and reasoning (Girgenrize et al., 1999). Schemas develop from experience, and different types of experience cultivate different types of schemas. This holds true for moral schemas as well.
4.1. Moral Schemas Life experiences transform moral schemas of all kinds, including schemas for moral perspective taking, moral self-efficacy, and schemas for moral action (Narvaez, 2006). Moral judgment development involves transformations in how an individual construes obligations to others, reorganizing moral schemas about how it is possible to organize cooperation (Rest et al., 1999). With greater social experience (especially experiences that increase perspective taking), an individual’s sense of moral obligation expands, moving from concern for self, to concern for known others, to concern for the welfare of strangers. Research with the Defining Issues Test (DIT) (Rest, 1979; requires a 12-year-old reading level) has compiled results from tens of thousands of respondents showing that there is progression from a preference for the Personal Interest Schema in junior high (Kohlberg’s stages 2 and 3), to a preference for the Maintaining Norms Schema in high school (similar to Kohlberg stage 4), to a preference for Postconventional Schema in graduate school (similar to Kohlberg’s stages 5 and 6; Rest et al., 1999). (For more on schemas and moral judgment see Narvaez and Bock, 2002.) Moral judgment development is stimulated by particular experiences, such as intense diverse social experience (Rest, 1986) and interventions that use moral dilemma discussion (Rest and Narvaez, 1994). Some experiences can depress scores on moral judgment measures, such as fundamentalist ideology (Narvaez et al., 1999a). 4.1.1. Measuring Effects of Moral Schemas on Information Processing: Development and Expertise Everyday discourse processing requires domain-specific schema activation for comprehension to take place (e.g., Alexander et al., 1989). For example, lack of appropriate background knowledge when processing information in texts leads to poor understanding (Bransford and Johnson, 1972), misrecall and even distortion to fit with preexisting schemas (Bartlett, 1932; Reynolds et al., 1982; Steffensen et al., 1979). Low-knowledge readers form inadequate mental models of events, which leads to erroneous elaborations and inferences during recall (Moravcsik and Kintsch, 1993).
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Moral discourse processing is also influenced by differences in schema development. In research examining the influence of moral judgment schemas on moral information processing, Narvaez (1998) found that moral judgment sophistication among adolescents over and above age influenced what was accurately and inaccurately recalled when remembering narratives about moral situations. Similarly, when tested for theme comprehension in children’s moral stories, children did not grasp messages as intended by the author or understood by adult readers, taking away more simplistic, concrete messages based on limited schema development; even at age 11 less than half of participants understood the intended theme (Narvaez et al., 1998; Narvaez et al., 1999b). Before adulthood, life experience as measured by age, plays a large role in moral discourse comprehension. Among adults, life experience also matters. Extensive, coached immersion in a domain increases the sophistication and organization of schemas, usually termed ‘‘expertise’’ (Sternberg, 1998). Experts and novices have been compared using reading tasks, distinguishing novices from experts in multiple domains (e.g., Singer et al., 1997; Spilich et al., 1979). Schema effects can be studied between novices and experts in moral judgment using discourse-processing tasks, distinguishing the effects of general development from studied expertise (Narvaez and Gleason, 2007). As an ill-structured domain1 (King and Kitchener, 1994), the complexity of moral functioning may be better studied with discourse processing because of the variety of schemas that can be brought to the task. Knowledge in virtually every domain can be characterized as that in which expertise can be developed, including domains of study in school (Bransford et al., 1999). In the domain of morality, there are many subdomains beyond moral judgment; these can also be viewed as domains in which expertise can be fostered.
5. Moral Development as Ethical Expertise Development Taking the view of the mind sciences today and looking back, one can see that the ancients (e.g., Aristotle, 1988; Mencius, 1970) considered virtue as a form of expertise. The virtuous person is like an expert who has a set of highly cultivated skills, perceptual sensibilities, chronically accessible schemas for moral interpretation, and rehearsed sequences for moral action. Moral exemplars display moral wisdom (knowing the good) and practical 1
Domains can be parsed as ‘‘ill-structured’’ domains, characterized by uncertainty about the problem, feasibility of actions and goodness of solution, or ‘‘well-structured’’ domains, like baseball, which are completely specified in terms of possible actions and outcomes (Chase and Simon, 1973).
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wisdom (knowing how to carry it out in the situation). In contemporary terms, the expert has sets of procedural, declarative, and conditional knowledge that are applied in the right way at the right time. Expertise is being used to characterize knowledge in every domain, including the moral domain (see Narvaez, 2005, 2006, for more details and references). Experts and novices differ from one another in several fundamental ways. Experts have more and better organized knowledge (Sternberg, 1998) that consists of declarative (explicit), procedural (implicit) and conditional knowledge, much of which operates automatically. In brief, experts know what knowledge to access, which procedures to apply, how to apply them, and when. Expert perception picks up underlying patterns novices miss, including affordances for action (Neisser, 1976). Adaptive experts use intuition as well as explicit knowledge to come up with innovative solutions to problems in their domain (Hatano and Inagaki, 1986). In the realm of morality, expertise can take different forms. Using Rest’s four-component model of moral behavior, we can map expert behavior in the four processes required for moral action to take place: ethical sensitivity, ethical judgment, ethical focus, and ethical action or implementation (Narvaez and Rest, 1995; Rest, 1983). Experts in Ethical Sensitivity can speedily and precisely discern the elements of a moral situation, take the perspectives of others and determine what role they might play. Experts in Ethical Judgment access multiple tools for solving complex moral problems. They can reason about duty and consequences, and draw up rationale for one course of action or another. Experts in Ethical Focus cultivate ethical identity that leads them to prioritize ethical goals. Experts in Ethical Action know how to maintain focus and take the steps to complete the ethical action. Experts in a particular virtue have highly tuned perceptual skills for it, more complex and multiply organized knowledge about it, have highly automatized responses. Expertise is a set of capacities that can be put into effective action as skilled coping in the situation. Expertise in moral reasoning and virtue can be cultivated like other skills. Experts have explicit, conscious understanding of the domain as well as intuitive, implicit knowledge. Experts in training receive instruction that builds skills and theoretical understanding simultaneously. They are immersed in situated practice while being coached by someone with more expertise. They are immersed in well-functioning environments that provide corrective feedback so that appropriate intuitions are formed. In other words, expert-education in a particular domain cultivates deliberative understanding and intuitions simultaneously (Abernathy and Hamm, 1995). During expert training, interpretive and action frameworks are learned to automaticity, perception is honed to chronically accessed constructs (Hogarth, 2001). Children are virtual novices in nearly every domain (Bransford et al., 1999). In many aspects of morality, children are novices too. Novice-to-expert
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instruction for ethical development brings together virtue development, reasoning and emotion, intuition, and deliberation.
5.1. An Integrative Framework for Moral Character Education A framework that attempts to bring together all the elements of ethical character development for educators, parents, and community members is the Integrative Ethical Education model (full references and explanation in Narvaez, 2006, 2008a).2 It proposes five empirically derived steps for ethical character development. These have been applied in school settings (Narvaez et al., 2004) but may be applied in any setting and with any age. First, adults establish caring relationships with the child. Human brains are wired for emotional signaling and emotional motivation (Greenspan and Shanker 2004; Lewis et al., 2000; Panksepp, 1998). Caring relationships drive school and life success (Masten, 2003; Watson, 2008). Moral exemplars indicate an early history with supportive caregivers (Walker and Frimer, in press). Second, adults establish a climate supportive of excellence in achievement and in ethical character. Social climates and cultures influence perceptions and behavior (Power et al., 1989). Caring schools and classrooms are associated with multiple positive outcomes for students related to achievement and prosocial development (e.g., Catalano et al., 2004; Solomon et al., 2002). Third, adults foster ethical skills across activities (e.g., curriculum and extracurriculum) based on skills in ethical sensitivity, judgment, focus, and action, as mentioned above (see Narvaez, 2006 or Narvaez et al., 2004, for skills lists). Educators use a novice-to-expert pedagogy in which intuitions are developed through imitation of role models and timely and appropriate feedback, immersion in activity with mentor guidance, and the practice of skills and procedures across multiple contexts (Narvaez et al., 2003). Through theoretical explanation and dialogue, adults coach the child (the deliberative mind) in selecting activities and environments that foster good intuitions (the intuitive mind). Adults guide the child in developing a prosocial self-narrative of positive purpose and community responsibility (Stipek et al., 1992). Fourth, adults encourage student self-authorship and self-regulation, the type of self-monitoring skills experts demonstrate (Zimmerman, 1998). 2
The expertise development approach was initially developed in the Minnesota Community Voices and Character Education project, 1998–2002, a collaboration between the Minnesota Department of Education (formerly the Department of Children, Families, and Learning) and the University of Minnesota with funds from the U.S. Department of Education (USDE OERI Grant # R215V980001). Using materials provided by the project designers and teacher-designed lessons, the skills approach had a significant effect on students in schools that implemented broadly over 1 year time in contrast to a comparison group and to low implementing schools (see Narvaez et al., 2004). Project materials may be obtained from the first author.
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Adults help children understand that they themselves have to answer the central life question, who should I be? The final responsibility for character development lies with them. In an enriched moral environment, students are provided with tools for self-regulation in character formation. When solving problems, successful students learn to monitor the effectiveness of their strategies and when necessary to alter their strategies to meet their goals (Anderson, 1989). Aristotle believed that mentors are required for character cultivation until the individual is able to self monitor, subsequently maintaining virtue through the wise selection of friends and activities. Fifth, adults work together to build communities that coordinate support and relationships across institutions to foster resiliency. Truly democratic ethical education empowers all involved — educators, community members, and students — as they ally to learn and live together. It is in community living that persons develop ethical skills and self-regulation for both individual and community actualization (Rogoff et al., 2001). It is a community who establishes and nourishes the individual’s moral voice, providing a moral anchor, and offering moral guidance as virtues are cultivated. When the connections among children’s life spaces of home, school, and community are strengthened, children are adaptationally advantaged (Benson et al., 1998). An increasing number of scientists are realizing that adaptational advantage arise early in life, at least from birth if not from conception (Gluckman and Hanson, 2004). There appear to be epigenetically sensitive periods for particular brain system development in which environments switch genes on or off for life (e.g., Champagne and Meaney, 2006). The wiring of neurobiological systems appears to matter for moral functioning as well.
6. New Directions: Neuroscience and Moral Personality As knowledge about human development increases, so too has interest in the neurobiology of human behavior. For example, the neurobiology of infant attachment is far more important than previously realized for lifetime brain development and emotion regulation (Gross, 2007). There appear to be critical periods for fostering the systems that lead to sociality (Karr-Morse and Wiley, 1997). Developmental psychology finds that emotion regulation development begins neonatally and crucially depends on the caregiver to coregulate the infant’s emotions while the brain establishes its systems (Lewis et al., 2000; Schore, 1994). The caregiver acts as an ‘‘external psychobiological regulator’’ (Schore, 2001, p. 202) socially constructing the brain (Eisenberg, 1995). The mammalian brain and nervous system depend for their neurophysiologic stability ‘‘on a system of interactive
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coordination, wherein steadiness comes from synchronization with nearby attachment figures’’ (Lewis et al., 2000, p. 84). Otherwise mammals can develop erratic systems that are easily thrown off kilter in reaction to everyday stressors (Hofer, 1994). The field of affective neuroscience is demonstrating the centrality of well-wired emotions for optimal brain functioning. ‘‘Emotive circuits change sensory, perceptual, and cognitive processing, and initiate a host of physiological changes that are naturally synchronized with the aroused behavioral tendencies characteristic of emotional experience’’ (Panksepp, 1998, p. 49). Evidence for the importance of infancy and early childhood to establish a mammalian brain’s emotional circuitry has been accumulating since Harlow’s (1986) experiments. In fact, recent research documents the critical importance of early caregiving on cognition (Greenspan and Shanker, 2004), personality formation (Schore, 2003a,b), as well as gene expression in emotional circuitry (e.g., Weaver et al., 2002).
6.1. Triune Ethics Theory: A Neurobiological Theory of Moral Development Indications are that early experience has a bearing on moral development as well, in particular, the propensities for compassion and appreciation of others. Fundamental to the shaping of emotion for a moral life is the caregiving received in early life. Triune Ethics Theory (TET; Narvaez, 2008b) draws on evidence from neuroscience, anthropology, and other human sciences to postulate that three general ethical motivations arise from the neurobiological substrates of human evolution and influenced by early experience: Security, Engagement, and Imagination. The ’’environment of evolutionary adaptedness’’ (EEA) (Bowlby, 1988), as anthropologists have recently spelled out (Hewlett and Lamb, 2005), plays a large role in framing the emerging evidence on the effects of early experience on lifelong propensities, including moral functioning. The Security Ethic is rooted in the oldest parts of the brain, involving the R-complex or the extrapyramidal action nervous system (Panksepp, 1998), structures of the brain that focus on survival through safety, dominance, and status (MacLean, 1990). These systems are mostly hardwired and become the default when systems underlying the other ethics are underdeveloped or damaged. Situationally, when a person is threatened this ethic is likely to be activated, marshaling defense and offense (fight or flight), suppressing capacity for empathy (Mikulincer and Shaver, 2005), and exhibiting less flexible thinking (Stout, 2007). Long-term dispositional effects on personality occur as well; extensive stress, abuse or neglect in the early years can bring about a personality dominated by the Security Ethic (Henry and Wang, 1998; Karr-Morse and Wiley, 1997). On the positive side, the
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Security Ethic, worthwhile for occasional crises, engenders the values of loyalty, hierarchy, self-control of softer emotions, and following precedent. The second ethic, the Engagement Ethic, is rooted in the neurobiological systems that Darwin (1871/1981) identified as the source for humans’ ‘‘moral sense’’ — the visceral-emotional nervous system on the hypothalamic-limbic axis which underlie mammalian parental care and social bonding (Panksepp, 1998). These systems rely on warm, responsive caregiving for their development (e.g., Schore, 1994). Involving multiple limbic and subcortical structures and neurotransmitters (see Moll et al., in press), these structures underlie values of compassion, social harmony, and togetherness. Children develop a sense of security through intersubjectively safe and close nurturing (Field and Reite, 1985; Schore, 1994) that allows the systems related to the Engagement Ethic to develop properly. For example, the oxytocin that accompanies breastfeeding and snuggling is a pacifying and bonding agent (Carter, 1998; Perry et al., 1995; Young et al., 2001). Through a secure attachment and from extensive experiences of reciprocity and social exchange (Kochanska and Thompson, 1997; Laible and Thompson, 2000), children develop a sense of engaged enactive participation in social life, rooted in sensorimotor sensibilities for justice (Lerner, 2002). Physiologically, the Security Ethic and the Engagement Ethic are incompatible; the former is related to increased stress hormones (norepinephrine/adrenaline) while the latter is related to calming hormones (e.g., oxytocin). The Imagination Ethic, controlled primarily by the more recent components of the brain (neocortex, especially prefrontal cortex) collaborates with and coordinates the other two ethics. It has the capacity (when cultivated appropriately with responsive caregiving) for valuing universality, concern for outsiders, and conceptualizing alternative sophisticated resolutions of moral problems. Although more detached from the basic emotional drives of the other ethics, the Imagination ethic generally is motivated implicitly by one of the other ethics. Whereas the open-heartedness of the Engagement ethic feeds an imagination of helpfulness and altruism, the selfprotective rigidity of the Security Ethic fosters an imagination toward defense and perhaps offense. Children develop an ethical imagination when caregivers provide in situ modeled and guided training of prosocial perception and action (enactive learning) in their actions and words. In brief, Triune Ethics Theory (TET) points to what is fundamental for optimal moral development: neonatal and early childhood experiences, similar to those of the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (Bowlby, 1988; Hewlett and Lamb, 2005), that shape brain structures and brain wiring for general and for moral functioning. Moral learning involves developing unconscious ‘‘somatic markers’’ (Damasio, 1994) for what are good and not-so-good actions: ‘‘embodied (sensorimotor) structures are the substance of experience’’ which ‘‘motivate conceptual understanding and rational thought’’ (Varela, 1992/1999, p. 16). From recurrent patterns of
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sensory motor activity, general cognitive structures, including moral cognitive structures, emerge. In emphasizing the importance of early experience, TET advocates social policies and practices that support children, families and communities, and which build moral brains.
7. Conclusions The field of moral development has traveled beyond a narrow focus on moral judgment to include the moral self across the lifespan. No longer relegated to an individual’s conscious moral reasoning, the scope has moved beyond the individual and her decision making or virtue. Moral development and moral action are embedded in community contexts. Moral functioning is assumed to involve the whole brain and multiple systems inside and outside the individual. As moral psychology and the study of moral persons expands across domains of psychology and human sciences, the field will generate more intricate theories that offer more specific guideposts for fostering moral persons and communities. We draw three conclusions that bear on research into moral functioning generally.
7.1. Experience Shapes Brain Biases First, brains are differentially, functionally and structurally, shaped by experience. The processing of any type of morally relevant information is mediated by the schemas that individuals have developed through social experience from early life and onward. When individuals have been immersed in social environments that promote self-concern, especially during sensitive periods, it is likely that their schemas for processing moral information differ from those in loving, responsive environments. The latter build personalities that are agreeable and conscientious. So, for example, Amish cultures who emphasize submission, solidarity and kindness (Kraybill, 1989) will also foster brains that view the world differently from cultures that emphasize competition, dominance, and individuality. Particular environments promote particular brain functioning and biases. It is likely that most psychological studies in the United States examine biases cultivated by the particular individualistic society in which the participants were raised and that therefore do not represent the full evolved palette of moral capabilities.
7.2. Moral Functioning is Multivariate Second, moral judgments comprise only one element of moral functioning (which also includes moral perception, sensitivity, motivation/focus, and implementation), an element that weakly predicts moral action (and what is
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morality if it is not evident in action?). Studying moral judgments in the laboratory tap into an aspect of moral functioning that represents declarative or semantic knowledge that is not necessarily tied to self-concept, selfresponsibility or behavior. Moral identity may provide the greatest predictive power to moral behavior because it has its roots in lived relationships. Studying moral functioning in more ecologically valid ways, such as relating moral identity to moral discourse processing (Narvaez, 1999; Narvaez et al., 2006), may allow for a greater understanding of the range of moral performance.
7.3. Moral Experts are Different from Novices Third, examining differences in expertise offers a promising area of research. From long immersion in the domain (10 years or 10,000 h; Simon and Chase, 1973), experts build schemas that become automatically accessed and applied. Chronic schema use is linked to automatic or chronic accessibility of a construct, as true for morality as for any domain. Community-nominated moral exemplars demonstrate a consistent merging of personal and moral goals (Colby and Damon, 1991). Building chronicity through immersion and guided experience such as democratic participation (Power) or community service (Hart) are promising paths to building moral personality and improved moral functioning (see Narvaez, 2005). Interventions should include the full range of moral skill development, from moral perception and sensitivity to moral action skills. On a precautionary note, it appears that most laboratory research of moral functioning is conducted on college students. It is not clear that people under the age of 30 or so have fully developed capacities in the prefrontal cortex, a key player in moral functioning (Luna et al., 2001), so researchers of moral functioning in college students should keep in mind that mature adults with intact brain function likely behave differently. Novices are easily dumbfounded and college students are fairly inexperienced about life. Studying adults would provide a better look at mature moral functioning (Blasi, in press). However, adults may have sophisticated capacities in a specific type of moral expertise (e.g., action) and not another (e.g., judgment), and so research should examine what brings about these differences and what implications they have for moral functioning generally.
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‘‘Fools Rush In’’: A JDM Perspective on the Role of Emotions in Decisions, Moral and Otherwise Terry Connolly and David Hardman Contents 276 276 277 279 280
1. Introduction 1.1. Judgment and Decision Making as a Discipline 1.2. An Example 1.3. Themes and Outline of the Chapter 2. The Emergence of Emotion Research in JDM 2.1. The Cognitive Emphasis in Theories of Judgment and Decision Making 2.2. Emotions in Individual Decision Making 2.3. Emotions in Interactive Decisions 2.4. Summary 3. Feelings and Emotions in Moral Decisions 3.1. Some Illustrative Studies 3.2. Task Effects in Moral Choice 3.3. Complex Problems, Partial Representation 4. Some Conclusions and Some Suggestions Acknowledgments References
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Abstract Research in judgment and decision making ( JDM) has recently started to take a serious interest in decision-related emotions, after largely ignoring them in its theoretical models and empirical studies for many years. This interest converges with, and partially overlaps, a growing interest in moral philosophy in the mental processes involved in human moral judgment, which has also been concerned with issues of emotion, feeling, and intuition. This chapter samples studies in both traditions with a view to building some bridges between the two. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Volume 50 ISSN 0079-7421, DOI: 10.1016/S0079-7421(08)00409-X
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1. Introduction 1.1. Judgment and Decision Making as a Discipline Judgment and decision making ( JDM) has emerged over the past few decades as a distinct and flourishing focus of research attention at the intersection of several well-established disciplines, including psychology, economics and mathematics, and with claims to applicability across the entire domain of human activities in which people make choices — that is, almost everywhere. There are professional societies (the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, the European Association for Decision Making), mounting well-attended meetings, professional journals ( Judgment and Decision Making), handbooks (e.g., Koehler and Harvey, 2007), collections of key papers (e.g., Connolly et al., 2000; Goldstein and Hogarth, 1997; Kahneman and Tversky, 2000) and a growing list of textbooks at every level. JDM, in short, is a flourishing enterprise. Our purpose in this chapter is to examine some of the links between JDM and a growing effort within moral philosophy to enrich the empirical foundation of its inquiries. Specifically, we want to draw on a comparatively recent body of research in JDM that concerns the role of emotion in human choice and to explore its connections to related research in moral philosophy. In attempting this bridge, we are all too aware that we are taking on great issues, and following in the steps of great thinkers — hence our somewhat defensive title. Knowing, then, that out of simple ignorance we will blur important distinctions and overlook important arguments, we aim to press as far as we can the case that moral decision making is, as an empirical matter, not fundamentally different from other domains in which people make significant decisions. That is, we start with the defeasible assumption that the processes humans use, and the difficulties they face, in choosing a spouse, buying a house, or agreeing to a course of medical treatment are not fundamentally different from those they use in deciding whether or not to deflect a runaway train, smother a crying baby, or refuse a proffered bribe. A few preliminaries are in order. JDM uses the terms ‘‘judgment’’ and ‘‘decision’’ in essentially their everyday meanings, the former as an assessment of some situation (the diagnosis of a disease, the promise of a racehorse, or the probability of rain), the latter as a commitment to some course of action (the recommendation of surgery, the investment with the bookie, or the cancellation of a picnic). Three distinct though overlapping lines of research are commonly distinguished: Descriptive: Research that treats judgments and decisions as observable empirical phenomena, and tries to describe them in systematic ways. Laboratory experiments using student participants, field studies of qualified experts, and historical studies of major decisions are all in this tradition.
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Normative: Research that tries to specify the rules that would be followed by idealized intelligent actors with well-specified preferences under specific conditions of information and opportunity. Prescriptive: Advice-giving of various sorts, offered with the claim that it will improve the client’s decisions. Examples here include decision analysis, operations research, decision support systems, artificial intelligence, and straightforward warnings and remedial procedures aimed at correcting the decision errors thought to have been identified in descriptive research. The bulk of JDM research has emphasized descriptive studies, though one major research program, the ‘‘heuristics and biases’’ movement (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979, 1984; Tversky and Kahneman, 1974, 1992) has derived much of its impact by explicitly contrasting behavior as observed with normative standards such as Bayes’ Theorem and probability theory, and has investigated prescriptive procedures intended to close the gaps between the two.
1.2. An Example An example may help clarify these distinctions. Suppose a friend has damaged his knee in a sports accident and seeks your advice as he tries to decide whether or not to go ahead with a somewhat risky remedial surgery. Without the surgery, his sports activities will be seriously curtailed but he can expect to live an otherwise normal life. The surgery, if successful, will restore his knee to its prior healthy state; if unsuccessful he will walk with a marked limp for the rest of his life, experience significant intermittent pain, and from time to time be completely immobilized. A conventional representation of this situation would be a simple decision tree (see Figure 1). The decision maker confronts two alternatives. One (no surgery) leads, with little uncertainty, to a known outcome (some curtailment of activities). The other (surgery) leads to an important uncertainty: whether or not the surgery will be successful. If it is, full function is restored; if it is not, the outcome is much less satisfactory. The textbook analysis of the situation is similarly straightforward. First ask the client to assess his ‘‘utility’’ for each of the three possible outcomes Surgery successful Yes Surgery unsuccessful
Agree to surgery?
Cured
Incapacitated
No Activities_curtailed
Figure 1
A Simple Decision Tree for the Surgery/No Surgery Decision.
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(which, in this case, involves assessing only one number, his utility for the ‘‘some curtailment’’ outcome, since the other two are clearly ‘‘best’’ and ‘‘worst’’, and are conventionally assigned utility values of 1.0 and 0.0, respectively). Second work with the client and his medical advisers to estimate the probability that the surgery will, in fact, succeed, taking into account all available information such as the surgeon’s experience and track record, the client’s overall health, the quality of the hospital facilities available, and so on. Finally, combine the information developed using an appropriate normative rule. The ‘‘expected utility’’ (EU) rule has a strong, if not unchallenged, claim to be appropriate: Compare the utility of the ‘‘some curtailment’’ outcome to the sum of the utilities of the two outcomes resulting from surgery, each discounted by the probability of it eventuating. If the EU of surgery exceeds the utility of ‘‘some curtailment’’, go ahead; if not, don’t. There is, of course, a vast and fascinating literature attacking and defending this consequentialist, EU sort of approach, most of which we will bypass here (see, for a useful introduction, the papers collected in Edwards, 1992 and a dated though still extraordinary set of lectures by Raiffa, 1968). (We should note that two of the commonest attacks, that the approach relies on an inappropriate repeated-play assumption to justify the expected-value rule, and that it ignores risk aversion, both seem to us to fail in a practical setting such as this.) The more crucial challenge is a representational one, that the tree simply does not reflect the decision as framed by the client, even after extended thought. The tree, as drawn, presents only two options: surgery or not. It can, of course, be readily extended to include other options, such as physiotherapy, acupuncture, prayer, or painkillers. But it is less clear how far into the future the tree should be extended, what the appropriate planning horizon is for this decision. Some elements of outcome (hospitalization, inconvenience, pain, terror, and perioperative risks) are incurred in the short term, while others (incapacitation over many years, disfigurement, and weight gain) are long deferred or indefinitely prolonged. What is the appropriate temporal discount rate for long-deferred or continuing consequences? How much do I care about an episode of intense pain 10 years from now compared to an episode of modest pain right now, or a continuing dull ache that I will suffer for the rest of my life? There is no inherent difficulty in dealing in routine EU terms with elements that are built into one or other of the options, such as fear or surgical pain. Such elements can be simply considered as part of the utility of selecting the option to which they attach. For example, the outcome labeled ‘‘Cured’’ in our simple tree might be more fully labeled ‘‘Cured, but after a period of preoperative anxiety and some well-controlled post-operative pain and brief incapacitation’’. Utility elements important to the decision maker should, clearly, be included in the tree. It is possible that some inherent utility elements are so important to the decision maker that they
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overwhelm other, later outcomes of value. If, for example, she considers a particular action as absolutely forbidden, then no subsequent positively valued outcomes to which it might lead will compensate, and the choice becomes a ‘‘deontic’’ or ‘‘protected values’’ one (see Baron and Ritov, Chapter 4). This is not, however, necessarily a violation of the EU principle, simply an expression of one value (that associated with not undertaking the forbidden action) being overwhelmingly larger than the values associated with subsequent downstream consequences. The EU model thus joins consequentialist and ‘‘deontic’’ or ‘‘protected value’’ approaches in a single framework. But the attractive simplification of the decision tree should not obscure the fact that it is, even if artfully and sensitively drawn, a simplification. It is explicit about what the analyst has chosen to include, but implicitly makes strong and often undefended statements about what should be excluded. If the tree is to be of practical use in helping a decision maker to think, a great deal must inevitably be excluded.
1.3. Themes and Outline of the Chapter We draw on this simple example to introduce three themes that will reappear throughout this chapter. First, any serious decision framework must allow account to be taken of one’s valuation of the consequences of one’s actions and the uncertainty with which these consequences follow from the actions. Second, even quite simple decisions quickly get very large when one starts to consider them seriously. This implies both that the actor will commonly be working on a drastic simplification of the actual problem, and that there is no guarantee that the observer’s representation of the same problem has any good claim to be canonical. Third, given the huge size and complexity even of apparently simple decision problems, we should expect human responses to these problems to be readily shaped by shifts of frame, by partial analyses, by over-simplification, and by analytical failures. In short, we should expect decision errors to be common, perhaps ubiquitous, and especially so when the decision domain is unfamiliar and the decision stakes high. These seem to us to be the common characteristics of important moral choices. A final observation on the injured knee example is that the analysis leaves very little room for the commonplace observation that decisions are often drenched in emotion—in this case, quite possibly, fear of the surgery itself, anxiety about the possible outcomes, disgust at the prospect of carrying a large unsightly scar for the rest of one’s life, perhaps a deep-rooted concern about allowing a stranger access to the inside of one’s body. Until quite recently decision analysis mainly avoided such emotional issues, folding them to the extent necessary into the ‘‘utility’’ elements of the model, but mainly treating them as a likely impediment to the thoughtful choice of a course of action.
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This neglect of decision-related emotion has changed radically in the last few years, and a significant body of research findings has emerged. We will sample some of the major findings from this research in Section 2 of the chapter, including both individual and interactive decisions. In Section 3, we examine some of the recent work on the role of emotions in specifically moral decisions. In Section 4 of the chapter we return to the question of whether moral judgment and decision is usefully separated from JDM research as a whole. This draws us to a critique of some of the current lines of empirical research in moral choice and some suggestions for ways it could be improved in execution and interpretation. Section 4 draws together a number of our central arguments and conclusions.
2. The Emergence of Emotion Research in JDM 2.1. The Cognitive Emphasis in Theories of Judgment and Decision Making As noted earlier, the normative theory of decision making is based on the notion of maximizing expected utility (EU). The concept was developed by Bernoulli (1738/1954), but it was not until the twentieth century that it was placed on a rigorous formal basis (von Neumann and Morgenstern, 1947; Savage, 1954). Classical economics assumes that expected utility theory is not merely a normative theory, but actually describes human decision making. However, many instances have subsequently been reported where people fail to behave in accordance with EU (e.g., Allais, 1953; Slovic and Tversky, 1974). The initial explanations offered for such departures from optimality were essentially cognitive. For example, Simon (1955) argued that people are driven by their cognitive limitations to simplify their decision processes. They ‘‘satisfice’’ rather than optimize, examining options sequentially, and stopping as soon as they find an option that exceeds some minimum threshold. (It should be noted that refined versions of this satisficing strategy can be astonishingly effective in broad classes of decision problems: see Bearden and Connolly, 2007). Similarly, prospect theory (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979; Tversky and Kahneman, 1992) modifies the EU model by such cognitive moves as proposing that people do not evaluate potential decision outcomes in terms of their effect on overall wealth, but as gains or losses from a reference point such as the status quo. (Other reference points such as expectations or aspirations might serve a similar function). Such theories generally make no explicit reference to emotions. (Lopes, 1987, 1995, is an important exception, embodying emotions such as hope and fear into her theory of risky choice).
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It is interesting to note that one of the founding fathers of modern economic theory, Adam Smith, did in fact explicitly recognize the role of emotions — or ‘‘moral sentiments’’ as he called them — in decision making (Smith, 1759/2002). However, this aspect of decision making seems to have been subsequently neglected, perhaps because experimental psychology was not in place until more than a century after Smith’s writings. Whatever the reason, contemporary researchers are now increasingly recognizing Smith’s work on the moral sentiments (e.g., Gintis et al., 2005; Ketelaar, 2006). Furthermore, theories of judgment and decision making are increasingly incorporating references to emotions. Indeed, the past decade or so has seen a veritable eruption of research considering the role of emotions in decision making, an outpouring that makes brief summary impossible. The following sections thus present a very partial sampling of what is, in reality, a large and rapidly growing body of active research.
2.2. Emotions in Individual Decision Making An early line of research suggesting the centrality of emotions in human decision making came from the study of choice behavior in brain-damaged patients. Individuals with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC) are characterized by an emotional ‘‘flatness’’ that appears to impair their decision making. They often prevaricate over decisions of little consequence, and for significant life decisions often pursue courses of action that are not in their best interests (Damasio, 1994). However, in tests these individuals do not show any impairments of intellect, memory, language, or motor skills. They thus provide interesting case studies for the specific function of emotion in choice. The Iowa Gambling Task requires participants to make sequential card choices from four decks, where each card contains information about monetary gains or losses. Bechara et al. (1994) found that normal participants quickly learned to choose the most advantageous decks, but VMPC patients did not (Bechara et al., 1994). The proposal that VMPC patients were insensitive to future consequences was supported by a subsequent study which showed that normal participants’ mid-task hunches about the nature of the task were predicted by elevated skin conductance responses (Bechara et al., 1997). In contrast, VMPC patients did not show this response and none of them reported a hunch about the nature of the task. A few patients did eventually report a correct understanding of the task, but continued to choose disadvantageously. Bechara and Damasio (2005; see also Damasio, 1994) interpret these and similar findings in terms of their somatic marker hypothesis, according to which people experience somatic states (emotions) in response to stimuli or the memory of stimuli. These somatic states may operate in or out of consciousness, but they serve to
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direct attention to certain stimuli and away from others. In this way they can influence the decisions we make. Loewenstein and Lerner (2003) provide a useful overview of early studies of the role of emotion and affect in decision making. They distinguish two distinct pathways by which emotions influence decisions. Expected emotions enter the process via the decision maker’s anticipation of the emotions s/he may experience from the outcomes of the choice. She might, for example, anticipate that she will feel overjoyed if the speculative investment she is contemplating actually pays off. Conversely she might anticipate that, if the investment bombs, she will feel disappointment, regret, self-blame or guilt associated with her decision (Connolly and Zeelenberg, 2002; Loomes and Sugden, 1982). Note that these emotions are not actually experienced at the time of making the decision, though their anticipation can influence the choice made, exactly as the utility of each outcome influences choice in the EU model. The decision may also be influenced by emotions experienced at the time of the decision, referred to as immediate emotions. Incidental influences in the immediate environment are one source of such emotions. For example, an extensive body of work by Isen (1993) has demonstrated surprising effects on decision variables such as risk aversion of positive affect resulting from been given a small bag of candy. Sunny weather appears to have a similar effect (Schwartz and Clore, 1983). A second source of immediate emotions is the contemplation of the stakes involved in the decision and its possible outcomes. For example, most house buyers feel some degree of anxiety at the huge sums of money that change hands in making the purchase. Loewenstein and Lerner note that these anticipatory emotions experienced at the time of deciding may be quite different in content from the anticipated emotions one expects to experience later. A third source of immediate emotions might be the content of the decision alternatives considered. For example intense emotions can arise if the decision involves taboo actions or trade offs, such as putting monetary value on human life or engaging in an immoral action to achieve a valued moral goal (Tetlock, 2002). We shall have more to say on this last topic in a later section. Loewenstein et al. (2001) earlier proposed the risk as feelings model (see Figure 2) to account for the involvement of emotions in assessment of risk. The crucial part of this model is the link between cognitive evaluation and feelings. As the double-headed arrow between the two indicates, each can act causally on the other: a cognitive evaluation of a stimulus or situation can arouse feelings, and feelings that have been independently aroused can influence cognitions. As Loewenstein and Lerner (2003) note, it is sometimes difficult to determine whether cognitions or emotions came first, but in any case each can influence behavior. Sometimes the role of emotion may be the primary influence on behavior (see Garcia et al., 1966).
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Anticipated outcomes (including anticipated emotions) Cognitive evaluation Subjective probabilities
Other factors e.g., vividness, immediacy, background mood
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Figure 2 The ‘‘Risk as Feelings’’ Model. Source: After Loewenstein, G. F., Weber, E. U., Hsee, C. K. and Welch, N., Psychological Bulletin, 127(2), 267, 2001. Reproduced by permission of the American Psychological Association).
Cage-reared mice show a fear reaction to the smell of cat fur, even though they have never been exposed to a cat previously (Panksepp, 1998), suggesting that predator scent directly triggers an (adaptive) emotional response. Finucane et al. (2000) have argued that people use an affect heuristic when making some judgments. As with the somatic marker hypothesis, the affect heuristic proposes that people’s representations of objects and stimuli include affective tags. Instead of weighing up the pros and cons in some difficult judgment people may just ask themselves ‘‘How do I feel about this?’’ This explains why people tend to assume a negative relationship between the costs and benefits of a range of technologies and activities, especially when the judgment is made under time pressure (Finucane et al., 2000, Study 1). Thus far, we have been discussing immediate emotions, emotions that are experienced at the time of making a judgment or a decision. The risk-asfeelings model allows that both immediate emotions and cognitions may be influenced by anticipated emotions. In fact, many theories of decision making address anticipated emotion implicitly. For example, expected utility theory requires that we can anticipate which outcomes will be most or least satisfying to us should they occur. An early effort to include emotions in EU-type decision models was the work on regret and disappointment theories by economists in the early 1980s (Bell, 1982, 1985; Loomes and Sugden, 1982, 1987). The core move here was to relax the conventional assumption that each outcome has a fixed utility, regardless of the context in which it arises. Instead, decision makers were said to consider (1) what they would have received if the chosen
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option had turned out better or worse, and (2) what they would have received if they had chosen a different option. The first comparison was thought to generate disappointment if the comparison was negative, elation if it was positive. The second comparison was thought to lead to regret if the comparison was negative, rejoicing if it was positive. These ‘‘emotions’’ were represented in the models as adjustments to each outcome’s core, ‘‘choiceless’’ utility. However, no effort was made to show that these adjustments corresponded to emotions as actually experienced by subjects, and later evidence indicates that the correspondence is not close (e.g., Connolly and Butler, 2006). Worse still, initially encouraging results later came under a methodological cloud when a simple procedural artifact was shown to account for most of the findings (see Harless, 1992; Starmer and Sugden, 1993), and work on these models has largely ceased. Despite this, subsequent research suggests that the anticipation of regret and related emotions may well influence decision making after all (see Connolly and Zeelenberg, 2002, for a brief review). For example, the anticipation of regret has been shown to play a role in lottery participation in Holland, where there are two types of lottery. The State Lottery is a traditional lottery in which players purchase a ticket with a number printed on it. By contrast, the winning number in the Postcode Lottery is a randomly drawn postcode, and people living within the winning postcode receive a fixed payment for each ticket they have purchased. Thus, people within a winning postcode who did not purchase a ticket know that they would have won if they had purchased a ticket. Zeelenberg and Pieters (2004) found that everyone they questioned knew about the Postcode Lottery and that regret was the primary emotion mentioned when people were asked to imagine not having purchased a ticket within the winning postcode. They also found that the anticipation of regret predicted people’s intentions to play the Postcode Lottery but not the State Lottery. One set of experiments (Reb, 2005) found that several well-known decision errors were attenuated or eliminated when anticipated regret was made salient to the participants. However, in a study involving repeated decisions participants for whom regret was made salient more frequently declined feedback on unchosen options, thus impairing their task learning and ultimately reducing their performance in later trials (Reb and Connolly, 2008). Regret avoidance may itself be somewhat labile. Van Dijk and Zeelenberg (2007) showed that participants made regret-avoidant choices between a known sum of money and a mysterious package, but reversed their choices when their curiosity was piqued by providing undiagnostic but intriguing information about the package (that it was ‘‘round’’ or ‘‘not round’’). These studies and numerous others indicate that anticipated regret can influence the options people choose. However there is evidence that people
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can be inaccurate in predicting their future regret. Gilbert et al. (2004) found that subway commuters who had missed their train by about a minute expressed no more regret than those who had missed their train by about 5 min. However, commuters who had successfully caught their train believed that they would have felt more regret if they had missed their train by a narrow rather than a wide margin. This failure to predict accurately the intensity of one’s feelings about future outcomes is not restricted to the emotion of regret. In fact, there are now many instances of people’s failure to accurately predict various emotions.
2.3. Emotions in Interactive Decisions Thus far our focus has largely been on decisions that do not involve or affect other people (although regret may be especially influential in choices involving others: Richard et al. (1996) found evidence that regret priming concerning unsafe sexual practices led to a significant reduction in such practices over a period of several months). Of greater interest to students of moral choice are decisions that involve interactions with other people and/ or that have consequences for others. Hinde (2007) has described the role of morality in everyday life as being ‘‘to maintain a balance between two categories of human behavior, prosociality (roughly, actions that are beneficial to others) and selfish assertiveness (behavior that furthers one’s own interests, regardless of others)’’. Emotion researchers have been active in these interactive decisions, as well. Several researchers have extended the work on anticipated regret to interactive decision processes. For example, Larrick and Boles (1995) showed that anticipated regret influenced decision making in a hypothetical negotiation scenario. Participants were told they were deciding which of two equally desirable companies to sign for. They would first be negotiating a signing bonus with the vice president of company ALPHA, but if they did not reach agreement within half an hour they would receive, and have to accept, a nonnegotiable offer from company BETA. Before negotiating the participants were asked to set a reservation price (the minimum bonus acceptable to them). Half the participants were told that they would learn the value of BETA’s offer only if they failed to reach agreement with ALPHA. Thus, for those who reached agreement with ALPHA there was little prospect of regret because they would not learn what bonus BETA would have offered. Other participants were told that they would learn about BETA’s offer whether or not they signed for ALPHA, thus opening up greater potential for regret among those who do sign for ALPHA. As predicted participants set lower reservation prices and were more likely to reach agreement with ALPHA when they knew that agreement would prevent them from learning about BETA’s offer. They were apparently
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willing to settle for less in order to prevent the possibility of experiencing regret. The tension between self and other has been studied by researchers in a variety of experimental games. For example, in the Ultimatum Game a Proposer is endowed with a sum of money, say $10, and has to offer a share of this to a Responder. If the Responder accepts the offer the division goes forward as agreed. If the Responder rejects the offer then neither party gets anything. A purely economic analysis of the single-play game suggests that a rational Responder should accept any nonzero offer, however small, since the alternative is getting nothing. A rational Proposer, realizing this, should accordingly offer just one cent. Many studies show that Proposers actually tend to offer a far larger share than the economic analysis suggests, typically close to 50 per cent of their endowment (Camerer, 2003). They are wise to do so: Responders often reject small offers. Part of the reason for the size of Proposers’ offers appears to be fear of rejection. In the well-known Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) game the final payoffs depend on the two players’ independent decisions to cooperate with the other or to defect. The payoffs are structured such that, if Player 1 thinks that Player 2 is going to cooperate, he can improve his payoff by defecting. Similarly, if he believes that Player 2 is going to defect then defection is again his best strategy. The same analysis applies for Player 2, resulting in mutual defection, a ‘‘socially deficient equilibrium’’, as the predicted outcome. The payoffs for mutual cooperation are better for both players, but this combination of strategies should never arise among economically rational players; the moment that one person believes his partner is going to cooperate then he can improve his own payoff by defecting. Ahn et al. (2001) discuss the PD game in terms of the generalized payoff matrix shown in Figure 3. Mutual cooperation results in both players receiving a reward (R), mutual defection in both players being punished (P). In the other combinations one player is tempted (T) by the highest outcome
Player 2 Defect
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(P = Punishment, R = Reward, S = Sucker payoff, T = Temptation. Payoffs are ordered such that T>R>P>S)
Figure 3
A Generalized Payoff Matrix for the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game.
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whereas the other player is taken for a sucker (S). Ahn et al argue that players’ strategies are motivated by a combination of fear and greed, where fear is equivalent to the cost of cooperating when your partner defects (P–S) and greed is the benefit of defecting when your partner cooperates (T–R). They tested this idea by varying the players’ payoffs (and thus the size of P–S and T–R) across repeated play of the one-shot PD. They found that the extent of cooperation did indeed vary based on the levels of fear and greed (as indexed by (P–S) and (T–R)), with the latter apparently exerting the stronger effect. Participants in these experimental games can experience strong emotions. Ketelaar and Au (2003, Experiment 2) found that many players reported significant feelings of guilt after offering a classmate less than 50 per cent of their endowment in an ultimatum game. Interestingly those who did made much more generous offers to the same person when the game was repeated a week later. These subsequent offers were significantly more generous than those made by people who reported no guilt after offering less than 50 per cent in the first game. Being on the receiving end of another person’s apparently selfish behavior can induce anger leading to punishment. In Public Goods games participants can contribute to a pool of resources, to which interest is then added resulting in more for all. However, there is a temptation for individuals to withhold their contributions so as to enjoy both their own endowment and the shared payoff from the pool contributed by others. Fehr and Ga¨chter (2002) found that above-average contributors were often willing to punish below-average contributors when given the opportunity to do so, even at a cost to themselves. Punishment was motivated by anger at the low contributors. We have seen that payoff structures may lead people to behave in a more or a less prosocial fashion. There is also evidence that people differ in the extent of their prosocial orientations. Van Lange (1999) proposed that people can be categorized according to their social value orientation. Prosocial people wish to maximize joint gain and equality in outcomes, individualists are interested only in maximizing their own gains, and competitors wish to maximize relative gain (the difference between own and other’s outcome). Individualists and competitors are sometimes grouped together as proselfs (e.g., de Kwaadsteniet et al., 2006; Van Lange and Kuhlman, 1994). In Ultimatum Games prosocial individuals appear to make fair offers because they want to be fair. Proself individuals may make similarly fair offers, but as a strategic way to increase their own outcomes. In the ‘‘delta game’’, a modified version of the Ultimatum Game, rejection by the Responder leads not to the resource being withdrawn but to the division being reduced. When told that the division would be reduced by 10 per cent in the event of a rejection, proselfs but not prosocials reduced the offers that
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they made (van Dijk et al., 2004). In another study, when given the opportunity to withdraw resources from a limited common pool, proself individuals requested increasingly large amounts as the exact size of the pool became more uncertain (de Kwaadsteniet et al., 2006). Both individual differences in motivation and variation in incentive structures thus affect behavior in experimental games. In a final example of the role of emotion in determining behavior in experimental games, Kugler et al. (2008: Experiment 2) studied the effects of a regret salience manipulation of the type discussed earlier on behavior in a Trust Game. In this game, a Sender is given a cash endowment ($20 in this case) and may send any or all of it to a second player, the Receiver. Any money sent is tripled by the experimenter, so the receiver can get any amount up to $60. The Receiver can return any portion of the amount he receives to the Sender, keeping the rest. The Sender thus puts part or all of her financial fate in the hands of Receiver. Amount sent is interpreted as a measure of the Sender’s trust in the Receiver. A self-interested economic analysis predicts that the Sender will send nothing, since the Receiver has no incentive to return any part of what he receives, so any money sent is a dead loss. Actual results typically violate this prediction. Senders commonly send a large fraction, often all, of their endowments, and receive relatively generous returns when they do so. In Kugler et al.’s experiment, different regrets were made salient to different groups of Senders. Some (‘‘over-trustors’’) were asked to consider how they would feel if they sent a large fraction of their endowment and received nothing in return. Others (‘‘under-trustors’’) were asked to predict their feelings if they sent a small amount and received a generous return. Other groups received both or neither manipulation. The results showed that any consideration of possible regret, whether over-trusting, undertrusting, or both, tended to reduce the amount sent, a self-defeating move since it tended to reduce Sender’s total payoff. The authors’ interpretation is that the regret inductions did not spur specific motivations towards or against trusting behavior, but merely induced more consequential thinking, which appears to have deleterious effects on both players’ payoffs in this game.
2.4. Summary The last 20 years has seen a radical shift in the treatment of emotions by JDM researchers. Earlier research focused on purely cognitive factors to explain deviations of observed behavior from optimal, EU-maximizing models. Emotions, if considered at all, were seen as rogue elements distracting the decision maker from the serious business of thinking about his decision problem. More recent research has started to explore decisionrelated emotions, including those experienced at the time of making the
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decision, those expected at decision time to arise later associated with the experience of decision outcomes, and those actually experienced when the outcomes eventuate. Many of these concerns overlap with those that have been of interest to moral philosophers of an empirical orientation. We turn to a sampling of their findings in the following section.
3. Feelings and Emotions in Moral Decisions An evidently flourishing tradition in moral philosophy gives a central role to the emotions and intuitions that arise in the context of moral choices. Recent work has looked to supplement the arm-chair reflections of professional philosophers on these matters with systematic study of lay people (often, of course, college students, as being cheap and readily to hand). In this section we sample some of the landmark studies in this new tradition and later offer some critical thoughts on them.
3.1. Some Illustrative Studies It seems likely that our moral emotions have their evolutionary origins as solutions to the problems of living in groups with dominance hierarchies (De Waal, 1996). Emotions such as empathy, sympathy, happiness, anger, fear, and so on, are involved in behaviors such as reciprocity, alliancebuilding/repairing, aggression, and appeasement, to name a few. Although aggressive behaviors may be necessary in trying to achieve a dominant position within a group, members also need to be able to get along together, and ingroup cohesion is needed to deal with threats from outside the group (see, e.g., Choi and Bowles, 2007). Given the recurrent problems of group living it is no surprise that Darwin argued, as have others subsequently, for human universals in emotion and emotional expression (Darwin, 1872/1999). A common notion, described by Haidt et al. (1993), is that while specific moral rules may vary between cultures, these rules nonetheless all tend to be concerned with the notion of harm, whether it be psychological harm, injustice, or violation of rights. Nonetheless, he and others have argued that moral judgments extend beyond these harms in ways that are culture-specific (see also Kohlberg, 1969). We shall return to this issue in due course. Among JDM researchers there has been great interest in the roles played by emotion and reason in moral judgments and decision. This debate is not new, of course, and is frequently traced back to Hume (1739/1985), who argued that morals were not the product of reason. In more recent times, Kohlberg (1969) proposed the opposite position, that moral judgment is the result of a moral reasoning ability that develops over time and that children
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increasingly show this ability as they grow older. Although Kohlberg’s views dominated the field for much of the later twentieth century, some recent theorists have returned to ideas more Humean ideas. For instance, Haidt (2001) has proposed a social intuitionist model of moral judgment, which suggests that moral judgments are predominantly the result of moral intuitions. Haidt allows that moral judgments can arise from a process of reasoning, but argues that this is a relatively unusual occurrence. To the extent that reasoning is engaged in, it is usually to form a post hoc justification for a judgment that has already been arrived at. In this regard, Haidt’s model is very similar to other ‘‘dual-process’’ theories in the psychology of thinking (e.g., Evans, 1984, 1989, 2007; Kahneman and Frederick, 2002; Stanovich and West, 2000). These theories identify intuitions as thoughts that are generated by fast, automatic, parallel processes operating outside conscious awareness. They are the first thoughts that come to mind when one tries to solve a problem or answer a question. By contrast, reflective thinking can operate as a check on intuitions, and may lead us to reject them, but is slow, controlled, serial, and in conscious awareness. It is also more effortful and people may sometimes fail to reflect enough to reject an intuition. If engaged in at all, reflective thinking may be deployed more to justify intuitions than to edit or correct them. Haidt emphasizes the justificatory function, noting especially that the justifications produced for moral judgments often take place in a social context where they may directly influence the intuitions of another person. As evidence for his model, Haidt places great emphasis on the phenomenon of moral dumbfounding. This occurs when people say they know something to be wrong but are unable to explain why. Haidt describes a scenario that was presented to participants in which a brother and sister engage in a one-off act of sexual intercourse, with each taking birth control precautions. People generally agreed that this was wrong, but when pressed to explain why they often referred to reasons already nullified by the scenario (e.g., they mentioned the possibility of pregnancy, despite the scenario’s specification that both siblings used birth control). When these aspects of the scenario were pointed out to them, they gradually ran out of reasons but maintained that the behavior was still wrong. For further examples of choices that are morally disapproved though involving no harm to others, see Haidt et al. (1993). Other support for the social intuitionist model comes from Cushman et al. (2006). They presented participants with various moral dilemmas, including variants of the classic trolley problem. This dilemma involves a runaway trolley that is going to kill five people on the track ahead, unless something is done. By pulling a switch on the track the actor in the scenario can divert the trolley onto a different track where it will kill only one person. Most participants find this an acceptable action to take. However, variants of the task in which an individual is also sacrificed to save the five
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are deemed less acceptable. For example, people are much less willing to endorse the action of pushing a large stranger from a footbridge onto the track. Based on people’s justifications for their responses, Cushman et al. found that people were not always aware of the factors that had influenced their behavior. In particular, one problem variant specified either that the harm was intended as the means to a goal or that it was merely a foreseen side effect. Participants generally judged the former as morally worse but failed to articulate the principle in their justifications. In fact, when confronted with their patterns of responses participants often claimed they had pressed the wrong button on the computer or had made assumptions not actually stated in the scenario. Since there was no reason for participants to make more errors or additional assumptions in this particular condition, the reasons they gave sound more like post hoc rationalizations. Other authors have argued that the extent to which people engage in reasoning about moral problems depends on whether emotions are elicited. In an fMRI study that has spurred much subsequent research, Greene et al. (2001) found evidence that personal moral dilemmas activated different brain regions from impersonal moral dilemmas. For instance, the original trolley problem is considered impersonal because the potential sacrificial victim is at some remove from the actor at the time of the decision. The footbridge version is considered personal because the actor is close to the stranger and, moreover, physical contact is involved in pushing him off the bridge. Greene et al. found that personal dilemmas led to activation of the brain’s emotion-associated areas but impersonal dilemmas did not. In another study of hypothetical dilemmas Koenigs et al. (2007) found that VMPC patients were more willing to endorse utilitarian options on ‘‘high conflict’’ problems (e.g., they more readily endorsed pushing the stranger off the footbridge to stop the runaway trolley). Recall that VMPC patients are emotionally ‘‘flat.’’ The suggestion is they actively reason about moral dilemmas rather than acting on the basis of emotions. Hypothetical moral dilemmas involve actions that are universally acknowledged to be undesirable, such as killing/allowing someone to die or stealing. However, other studies have examined attitudes to actions where there is not universal agreement about the moral standing of that behavior. Blair (1995), in an extraordinary study of psychopaths in British prisons, examined the ability of these subjects to distinguish between violations of moral prohibitions, such as hurting another person, and violations of social conventions, such as a breach of table manners. In normal populations, conventional violations are generally judged to be less serious, more permissible, more dependent on authority, and as wrong because they violate social norms rather than because they harm a victim (Turiel, 1983). Psychopaths fail to make these distinctions, generally treating moral and conventional violations in much the same terms. Blair attributes this
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blurring to a failure of an emotional mechanism, specifically a proposed violence inhibition mechanism (VIM), by which cues to a victim’s distress trigger an aversive reaction on the part of the violator, mediated by cognitive situational interpretation. Thus moral judgment draws on the emotional forces triggered by the VIM as well as on an understanding and analysis of the situation and the relevant rules; conventional violations draw only on the latter. Nichols (2002) takes exception to Blair’s proposal on several grounds, and proposes in its place the idea of an Affect-Backed Normative Theory. He does not specify in any detail the precise emotional mechanism involved but argues strongly that ‘‘. . . some affective mechanism that is responsive to others’ suffering is plausibly implicated in moral judgment’’ (p. 11). More fully he suggests that . . .moral judgment depends on two mechanisms, A Normative Theory prohibiting harming others, and some affective mechanism that is activated by suffering in others. On this account, then, the system underlying moral judgment is what we might call an Affect-Backed Normative Theory in which the Normative Theory prohibits actions of a certain type, and actions of that type generate strong affective response’’ (Nichols, 2002, p. 12)
He then reports two experiments in which he shows that purely conventional violations (rather gross but not otherwise harmful violations of table manners) take on the characteristics of moral violations as they harness the emotion of disgust to the purely conventional normative theory on which they are based. (Additional experiments giving at least some support to Affect-Backed Normative Theory idea are reported in Nichols and Mallon, 2006). The research reviewed above indicates that emotions play a part in moral judgment, whether in moral dilemmas or judgments of specific behaviors. There is also evidence that the extent to which people are able or willing to engage in reflective thinking influences their moral judgments. For example, Moore et al. (2008) found that participants with higher working memory capacity made more utilitarian choices on certain types of moral dilemmas. Likewise, Bartels (2008) found that utilitarian choices were more prevalent among participants who had a higher self-reported level of deliberative thinking on the rational versus experiential inventory (Epstein et al., 1996). One of us (Hardman, 2008) found greater utilitarianism on moral dilemma tasks among participants who scored higher on Frederick’s (2005) cognitive reflection test, a measure of cognitive ability that does not rely on self-report. It is not clear to us that any of the foregoing argument and evidence does much to settle the question as to whether or not moral decisions are distinctively different from other types of decisions, whether conventional violations of the dinner-table sort or simply secular choices about medical,
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financial or interpersonal issues. Indeed, the demonstration that a disgusting violation of a merely conventional rule (such as spitting into one’s dinnertime water glass: Nichols, 2002) lends the act some of the characteristics of a moral violation surely argues that the distinction is not a clean one. Assuming that no personal insult or distress to the host is intended, the act, emotion-inducing though it certainly is, appears more quirky than moral. Emotional involvement, then, seems to add power and, perhaps, motivation to an act, without necessarily settling whether the act is morally violative or not. But Nichols and Mallon’s (2006) central conclusion would certainly suggest that they share a great deal of ground in common with most thoughtful JDM researchers. They propose that ‘‘. . .judgments of whether an action is wrong, all things considered, implicate a complex set of psychological processes, including representations of rules, emotional responses, and assessments of costs and benefits’’ (p. 530), and that ‘‘If judgments of all-in impermissibility arise from the interaction of a diverse collection of psychological mechanisms . . . then it is probably misguided to expect that there is a single normative criterion that can capture our intuitions about moral dilemmas’’ (p. 541, italics in original). Few JDM researchers would dispute either conclusion.
3.2. Task Effects in Moral Choice An abiding concern of JDM researchers, and perhaps increasingly of empirically oriented moral philosophers, is that the behaviors demonstrated in their experiments reflect highly specific reactions to the details of the procedure rather than broader human behavioral tendencies. A continuing critical tradition associated with the ideas of Egon Brunswik (1952, 1955) focuses heavily on this concern, and proposes a fundamental challenge to the mainstream practices of most modern behavioral science. We will return to his ideas in our conclusion. For the moment, we wish to explore the concern that our empirical discoveries may be shaped as much by the tools we use as by the phenomena we intend to address—that is, by task effects rather than by human nature. Monin et al. (2007) address the issue of task effects in moral judgment at the most fundamental level: that the behaviors and processes one observes are driven by the prototypical situations one considers as exemplifying moral choice, and that different prototypes evoke different behaviors. Each of the prototypical situations they consider asks subjects to make judgments or choices with clear moral components. The difficulty, as Monin et al. point out, arises when authors make the (implicit or explicit) claim that their particular prototype captures the core of all moral choice. Monin et al. distinguish four main types of moral tasks, the demands they make on the moral agent, and the paradigmatic moral figure they imply:
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a. Complex hypothetical dilemmas: In these studies the experimental materials are constructed so as to pit two or more moral imperatives against one another, as in the many variants of trolley problems (Greene et al., 2001; Mikhail, 2007) in which the injunction to save more lives rather than fewer is juxtaposed with the prohibition on direct killing of another person as a means to an end. The stock of such agonizing moral brainteasers is familiar enough that many have acquired their own shorthand: The crying baby (that threatens to betray one’s hiding place to the enemy soldiers); the midnight fumes (that threaten the hospital ventilation system); the lone gunman (who will kill exactly one customer at the shopping mall); the crop failure (in which the family can be fed only by hiring out your under-age daughter to a pornographer), the fish kill (in which a dam release will save several species of fish, but at the cost of eradicating a smaller number of species). Not surprisingly, studies based on such dilemmas show moral choice as involving extensive high-level cognition. The paragon of virtue in such struggles is the philosopher. b. Moral reactions: Studies in this tradition present the subject with an instance of some behavior (a photograph, a written description, a movie clip) and ask for a judgment of whether the act or the actor portrayed is morally acceptable or not. The answer is thought to reflect a ‘‘moral intuition,’’ a moral judgment that suddenly appears in consciousness ‘‘without any conscious awareness of having gone through steps of searching, weighing evidence, or inferring a conclusion’’ (Haidt, 2001, p. 818). The roots of this tradition are commonly traced to Hume (1777/1960), though it is unclear whether modern scholars in this line take emotion and intuition to be inescapably connected or simply to sometimes co-occur (see, for example, Schweder and Haidt, 1993). Haidt’s (2001) article is entitled ‘‘The emotional dog and its rational tail’’, which seems to place emotion front and center, though the final sentence (‘‘. . . moral emotions and intuitions drive moral reasoning. . .’’) seems to leave distinct roles for the two, albeit with reason secondary. Empirical studies in this line extend both to cultural variations in moral judgment (see Haidt’s, 2001 social intuitionist model) and to brain imaging studies (Sanfey et al., 2003). But the emphasis on speed and certainty of moral judgment leads Monin et al. (2007) to propose the wild west sheriff as the exemplary figure. c. Struggling with temptation:The third image of the archetypal moral task is the struggle for self-control, the ancient Greek concern with the ‘‘role of cognition in squash(ing) the passions in the service of reason’’ (Monin et al., 2007, p. 230). The work of Baumeister et al. (1994) on failures of self-control, of Ainslie (2001) on failure of will, of Loewenstein on decisions concerning addiction (Loewenstein, 1996), and of Read on temporal discounting (Read, 2007) exemplify this line. Asceticism, discipline, and self-control are the name of the moral game (Monin et al., 2007, p. 237). The exemplary figure is the monk.
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d. Moral fortitude: Perhaps as a subset of the moral brainteasers sketched above, Monin et al. consider a final type of moral encounter in which moral reasoning is in tension with emotion or intuition. (The babysmothering dilemma is their example here.) This goes beyond the struggle to overcome emotion to do the right thing, as in forcing oneself to plunge into a disgusting flooded sewer to save a drowning child. The struggle in Monin et al.’s classification is to overcome a precisely moral emotion or intuition, or otherwise to recruit emotion in the service of moral strength. They cite work in cognitive-appraisal theories of emotion (e.g., Frijda, 1986), in which emotional reactions to a situation are shaped by cognitive work, and the related tradition in emotion regulation, where, for example, one can reduce individuals’ reactions to a disgusting movie by asking them to adopt an analytical, unemotional posture (Ochsner et al., 2002). Emphasizing the struggle aspect of such situations, they label their exemplary figure as the cognitive wrestler. This classification of tasks used in empirical studies of moral choice casts useful light on efforts such as that of Prinz (2007) to elucidate the temporal and causal ordering among reason, judgment, emotion and intuition in moral decisions. It seems plausible that there is no single, general-purpose sequence, but rather a variety, perhaps heavily influenced by task features. Moral dilemmas, for example, seem especially likely to evoke sequences in which reasoning plays a large, perhaps predominant, part. Moral reaction tasks seem more likely to evoke intuition and emotion early in the sequence, perhaps followed by rationale-building cognition. Monin et al.’s partial taxomony of moral tasks may thus help to clarify the role and sequence of different cognitive activities in forming moral judgments. (See also Bucciarelli et al., 2008, Experiments 1 and 2, for examples of different moral judgment tasks in which emotion precedes or follows cognitive evaluation). To JDM researchers, however, the details of the tasks themselves need careful attention. Consider the well-studied ‘‘trolley problem’’ and its related dilemmas. First, what is the subject meant to bring to her task? Petrinovich and O’Neill (1996) are explicit in their experimental instructions: ‘‘Accept only the information given and try not to introduce additional assumptions that go beyond the problem as stated. Although some of the questions might appear artificial . . . ’’(p. 149). This, presumably, is intended to exclude possibly relevant general knowledge facts, such as that runaway trolleys are loud and tend to derail when encountering sharp turns, and that fat bystanders (in the ‘‘footbridge’’ version of the problem) are often quite strong and may resist being hurled from a bridge to act as a trolley-brake. Subjects, in short, are instructed that they are to play an odd game in which their relevant prior factual knowledge is to be suppressed while whatever preferences and values they find relevant are examined.
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One crucial category of excluded information is that of uncertainty, or rather the explicit absence of it. This, to a JDM researcher, is tantamount to throwing a dinner party with no food or wine. The subject is asked to believe that she knows that doing nothing will result, with probability 1.0, in the death of five (or twenty) down-track workers, while pulling the switch will result in the death of one worker, again with complete certainty. This is no mere quibble. There exist all sorts of moral rules of thumb, ranging from folk proverbs and maxims (‘‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’’) to what Sunstein (2005) calls ‘‘moral heuristics’’ that might be invoked in moral dilemmas. Several of them make sense under uncertainty (presumably the normal case) but not under certainty (the situation found in hypothetical research scenarios, though perhaps nowhere else). Pushing a stranger into the path of a speeding trolley seems very likely to cause his death. Allowing the trolley to speed on as it may surely involves some chance of all the downtrack workers dying, but the causal pathway that leads to their deaths is much longer and less certain. If both probabilities and numbers dying are considered the commonly observed choices (deflect the trolley, but do not push the bystander) may amount to nothing more than a prudent calculation of expected payoff in the (probability consequence) sense. (This reading is, incidentally, consistent with the preference reversals found in ‘‘catastrophist’’ versions of the footbridge problem. If the down-track lives saved are both few and uncertain, the expected value of stopping the trolley is low. If the number is sufficiently high, even with modest probability, the expected value will exceed the (near-) certain death of the single bystander.)
3.3. Complex Problems, Partial Representation The JDM researcher concerned that uncertainties may have been unrealistically omitted would worry also about the extent to which the subject’s real values and preferences are being brought into play in these problems. As Fischhoff (1991) famously noted, the fact that subjects are prepared to provide answers to value-relevant questions does not necessarily imply that these answers actually reflect their real values in any serious sense. He contrasted situations in which people are likely to have well-developed, clearly articulated values relevant to a specific choice setting with those in which the values they express must be developed on the fly from more basic, general values. (See also Payne et al., 1993, on constructed preferences). For example, if the issue is personally familiar to the subject, is uncontroversial, and has consequences that the subject has previously experienced and about which she is certain, then articulated values are more likely to be available. These conditions are likely to be satisfied in familiar consumption choices such as fast food purchases and apartment rentals. They are quite unlikely to be satisfied in the case of trolley problems, fish extinctions, and smothered babies.
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It is not only values that may be imperfectly reflected in responses to complex moral dilemmas. Studies such as those of Petrinovich and O’Neill (1996) have found substantial choice effects of theoretically irrelevant changes such as rewording the problem in terms of ‘‘lives saved’’ rather than of ‘‘people killed’’. The demonstration of such framing effects in moral dilemmas suggests that these moral choices may be shaped, and perhaps distorted, by the same factors that have been found in nonmoral domains. The past several decades of research, especially that in the ‘‘heuristics and biases’’ tradition, has showed how easily people can be deflected from using normative principles that they claim to endorse: transitivity of preferences, Bayesian revision, rules for assessing probabilistic conjunctions, and so on. As many critics have pointed out, this research has demonstrated numerous violations without developing very clear boundary conditions indicating when the effects will be found and how large they will be. However, there seems to be no good reason that they will stop at the water’s edge separating moral and nonmoral decisions. Indeed Sunstein’s (2005) proposal of ‘‘moral heuristics’’ suggests that rather similar cognitive mechanisms may be found in both domains. Moral philosophers who have considered the possibility of error in moral judgments propose a process aimed at reaching ‘‘wide reflective equilibrium’’ (Rawls, 1971) as a possible solution. Such a process would involve extended, hopefully convergent, iteration between individual moral judgments (such as the trolley problem responses) and underlying moral principles and background values. The professional help of moral philosophers would, we assume, be indispensable. Such a process is clearly an improvement on unaided snap moral judgments, but it is unclear that convergence will generally be achieved and, if it is, that it will reflect genuine conviction rather than the outcome of skilled professional bullying. An example may suggest the difficulties it might face. One of the authors (Connolly, 1985) was concerned some years ago with the issue of clarifying standards of reasonable doubt in criminal trials. He considered the situation of a juror who, having heard all the evidence in a case, is fairly sure of the defendant’s guilt, but still has some residual doubt. He looks for guidance as to whether or not this doubt qualifies as ‘‘reasonable.’’ Connolly formulated the juror’s problem as one of consequential choice under uncertainty. A ‘‘guilty’’ verdict carries some risk of an error of false conviction, a ‘‘not guilty’’ verdict that of false acquittal. The juror’s decision, on this view, should be guided by his evaluation of the four possible trial outcomes (correct or erroneous acquittal or conviction) and his postevidence estimate of the probability that the defendant is, in fact guilty. The worrying outcome of Connolly’s analysis was that it led to numerical incoherence. Most people feel that ‘‘beyond a reasonable doubt’’ means a very high probability of guilt, perhaps .95 or .99. Most also judge false acquittals, though less dreadful than false convictions, to be rather poor trial outcomes, typically rated at around 2/10 on a scale bounded
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at 0 (false conviction) and 10/10 (correct acquittal or correct conviction). Unfortunately, a probability threshold of .95 or above requires that one evaluate the false acquittal outcome as a near-excellent result, well above 9/ 10 on the rating scale. Conversely, an evaluation of this outcome in the 2/ 10 range requires conviction at any probability of guilt much over 50 per cent. Neither solution seems satisfactory to most observers, even after extended reflection in the ‘‘reflective equilibrium’’ manner. (It is perhaps worth noting that the ‘‘reflection’’ in this case has involved distinguished legal scholars and philosophers over a period of several centuries. The ‘‘equilibrium’’ reached thus far seems to be rather unsatisfactory, once verbal debate is disciplined by simple arithmetic.) In contrast to most moral dilemmas the reasonable doubt problem (a) has an extended history of scholarship, (b) is familiar to most respondents, if only from movies and television, and (c) can be represented in a plausible formal (EU) model to which most people sign on. Most moral choices enjoy none of these features. We would argue that they are simply difficult problems, and need to be treated accordingly. The stakes are high and the guidance, from either experience or analysis, is poor. We suspect, then, that most responses to such dilemmas, posed as questionnaire items to be answered in a few minutes, may be quite superficial, and may not reflect moral feelings, intuitions, or cognitions in any adequate way. In the reasonable doubt problem, one reaches one conclusion when focusing on the plight of the unfortunate innocent locked in jail, quite another when focusing on the smirking rapist turned loose to roam the streets. No guidance is provided as to which of these partial analyses is to be trusted, or how to resolve their differences. Similarly, we suspect, responses to trolley problems may reflect only which partial representation of the problem comes most readily to mind, whether it is the tragedy of the single victim or the fate of the downstream workers. Of course, if by some chance one were really thrown into such an awful situation and an instant response were demanded, an instant, partial analysis might be all one could manage. But plainly, the point of the dilemmas is not to train a cadre of quick-acting railway yard managers but to illuminate the interplay of thought and value in moral decision making. Our background in JDM research leaves us with serious concerns as to the extent to which they are achieving that goal.
4. Some Conclusions and Some Suggestions We started this chapter by proposing, as a defeasible assumption, that the processes used and difficulties faced by human decision makers are not fundamentally different between moral and nonmoral decisions. To our reading the assumption has survived reasonably well this very partial
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examination of the relevant literatures. JDM, though initially showing strong commitment to rational analysis as the core decision process, has evolved more recently into serious consideration of decision-related emotions and intuitions. At least one major tradition in moral philosophy, that descended from Hume, has from its initiation treated emotions and intuitions as central sources of guidance. Problem framing and task effects have proved to be central concerns in both areas, as have issues to do with problem complexity (and thus of partial and inconsistent analyses); of the multiattribute nature of choice outcomes, which demand specification of multiple values in sufficient detail to allow orderly trade offs to be made (or avoided, if one takes a strict protected values view); and of risk and uncertainty in the linkages between options chosen and outcomes resulting. In short, although we have made the case more by illustration than by comprehensive argument, we find plausible our assumption that moral and nonmoral choices are not in most crucial ways dissimilar. One candidate for an important dissimilarity is the issue of decision error. JDM has been heavily preoccupied with notions of decision error, both from the dominant recent paradigm (‘‘heuristics and biases’’, suggesting that the heuristics may lead one astray) and from the idea of decision aiding (which surely implies that help may often be needed). It is our impression that empirical moral philosophy commonly takes a subject’s responses as revealing underlying moral intuitions rather than underlying muddles, despite the warnings of scholars such as Unger (1996) and Hare (1981). As we have noted at several points, we think the muddle hypothesis deserves fuller consideration in interpreting much of the data. Supposing, then, that JDM research has reasonably broad relevance to empirical moral philosophy, does it have any useful procedural or interpretive suggestions to offer? Perhaps the most useful, if not the most original, is to reiterate standard cautions against premature generalizations from individual empirical results. Careful attention to verb tenses often reveals a slippage of verb tenses between Method and Discussion sections of empirical papers. The Method section is all chaste past tense: These people did these things in these tasks with these measures. The Discussion section switches, scandalously, to present tense: People do these things in tasks like these. Such over-claiming from demonstrations of existence possibilities (‘‘there exist circumstances in which this happens’’) into broad general claims (‘‘this happens, implicitly everywhere and always, for all participants, times, settings, task variants, incentive systems and measures’’) has bedeviled the JDM literature. Experiments showing that (some) people are (sometimes) overconfident in their judgments, prone to entrapment by sunk costs, or given to error in judging joint probabilities have been widely interpreted as showing that people generally do these things. The empirical evidence presented supports, of course, only the much narrower claim.
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Research bearing on issues of moral choice seems to have fallen into this trap, at least on occasion. Several studies (Ritov and Baron, 1990, 1999; Spranca et al., 1991) suggested that infants were undervaccinated because parents were prone to ‘‘omission bias,’’ a tendency to prefer harm arising from inaction to similar harm arising from action. (The parallel to trolley problems will be clear). However, when we (Connolly and Reb, 2003) revisited the same issue using different measures and scenarios, we found no omission bias (and, in fact, no way the experimental design would have clearly demonstrated such a bias if it were present). Bartels and Medin (2007) show similar sensitivity to the exact measures used in a variety of moral dilemmas. Similarly, Tanner and Medin (2004) found that earlier findings linking protected values to omission bias and reduced framing effects reversed when the studies were replicated with modified measures and scenarios. Simple method error aside, if we take seriously Nichols and Mallon’s (2006) view quoted earlier that ‘‘judgments of whether an action is wrong, all things considered, implicate a complex set of psychological processes’’ (p. 530), then we should not be surprised to find complexity and contradiction in the findings from single-factor, single-method studies. Minimally, multiple measures and methodological triangulation will be required. One area in which JDM research diverges from moral decision making is the question of whether or not there is, in some sense, a right answer to the problems we pose to our experimental subjects. In general JDM assumes that there is, and entertains the notion of decision error, either in the sense of demonstrating a failure to use an accepted normative rule such as Bayesian revision or preference transitivity, or in making a judgment or choice about the external world that turns out, by some acceptable measure, to be inaccurate. The first of these tests is referred to as ‘‘coherence,’’ the second as ‘‘correspondence’’ (see, for example, Hammond, 1996). The underlying view is that judgments and decisions are undertaken with some purpose in mind, whether it be amassing wealth, curing the sick, or correctly predicting the outcome of the 3:30 race. Even when no external standard exists, as in judging a painting or a meal, certain standards apply, such as consistency over time and objects, and rated pleasure in the possession or consumption of the object judged. It is not clear to us, as outsiders, whether or not some equivalent standard exists for views of correct moral judgment, and thus of assigning the term ‘‘error’’ to failure to reach this standard. Our guess is that no such agreed-upon standard exists. Certainly the work of Monin et al. (2007), discussed earlier, suggests that different scholars have different views on the question. A related worry, which we have touched on at various points in this essay, is that the problems posed to subjects in moral choice experiments are, in some important way, ‘‘artificial’’. In JDM this issue was posed most trenchantly by Egon Brunswik (1952, 1955) who espoused a quite radical
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alternative to the conceptual and methodological practices of traditional experimental psychology. A key part of his argument is that we are interested in complex adaptive skills that allow us to operate effectively in uncertain worlds by exploiting complex patterns of intercorrelation among the cues we use. Unless these patterns are preserved in the stimuli used in our experiments (as they are not in conventional factorial designs), their impact will not appear in the data. But their preservation requires sampling from a specified task domain: real patients with real diseases, real photographs of real hogs, or real applicants for real jobs. It is this that leaves us, finally, with a lingering sense that trolley problems and their like are ‘‘artificial’’ in some important way. As we argued earlier, they are, first, constructed to be cognitively difficult, brainteasers that will elicit complex and contradictory thoughts. They are, if taken seriously, also likely to elicit powerful emotions. But what, exactly, do they demand of the participants? They imply, or specifically ask, that the participant should bring no external factual knowledge into play. They are, surely, unfamiliar in the sense that Fischhoff (1991) suggested would be required for people to have worked out reasonably articulated and consistent values and preferences. They make preposterous assertions of certainly about what any prudent person would know to be uncertain connections in any realworld problem they resemble. They seem, in short, totally unrepresentative of any conceivable ecology of problem to which a human might have adapted. Unless one holds extremely strong assumptions about the degree to which the relevant psychology is trans-situationally consistent—that moral intuitions, like reactions to contact with hot metal surfaces, are everywhere and always the same—we are at a loss to know just what the responses represent. They may well be law-like and orderly, but it seems the orderliness is that of moral ping pong, not of real moral choice. As Baron (1995) pointed out some time ago, the fact that people arrive at strong intuitions on such problems is no guarantee that that they represent anything very deep. JDM research, if nothing else, has provided us with myriad examples of strongly held, wrong intuitions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors thank Shaun Nichols for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.
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Motivated Moral Reasoning Peter H. Ditto, David A. Pizarro, and David Tannenbaum Contents 307 309 312 315 316 317 317 322 322 325 326 330 332 334
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Introduction Motivated Reasoning Motivated Moral Reasoning Motivated Assessments of Moral Accountability 4.1. Controllability and Culpability 4.2. Memory for the ‘‘Facts’’ 4.3. Intentionality 5. Motivated Use of Moral Principles 5.1. The Use and Abuse of Principle 5.2. Tales of Political Casuistry 5.3. Trolleys, Lifeboats, and Collateral Damage 5.4. Is Reliance on Moral Principles Really Motivated? 6. Motivated Moral Reasoning and Views of the Moral Thinker References
Abstract Moral judgments are important, intuitive, and complex. These factors make moral judgment particularly fertile ground for motivated reasoning. This chapter reviews research (both our own and that of others) examining two general pathways by which motivational forces can alter the moral implications of an act: by affecting perceptions of an actor’s moral accountability for the act, and by influencing the normative moral principles people rely on to evaluate the morality of the act. We conclude by discussing the implications of research on motivated moral reasoning for both classic and contemporary views of the moral thinker.
1. Introduction A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true. Socrates as quoted in Phaedo (360 BCE) Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Volume 50 ISSN 0079-7421, DOI: 10.1016/S0079-7421(08)00410-6
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Civilization’s oldest written documents attest that evaluating and regulating moral conduct were among the earliest concerns of human social life (Haidt, 2008). And we have been fretting and fighting about it ever since. Few topics inflame passions like issues of right and wrong, and few things drive our impressions of others more than moral virtues or moral failings. We respond viscerally to acts that affirm or offend our moral sensibilities. Acts of compassion inspire us, acts of self-sacrifice humble us, acts of injustice outrage us, and acts of indecency disgust us. Infuse any pragmatic question with moral significance and the emotional stakes are immediately raised (Skitka et al., 2005; Tetlock, 2003). A cocktail party conversation about the effectiveness of some government program will quickly bore all but your most wonkish acquaintances and send them scurrying for the bar. But question that program’s morality, and your audience is likely to swell and, before long, voices are likely to rise. In short, despite the distaste expressed by Socrates (and many other moral philosophers) for mixing the two, morality and emotion are inextricably intertwined. Humans care deeply about right and wrong, and will go to extraordinary lengths to protect and promote their moral beliefs. Because moral judgments are so frequently made against a backdrop of emotion, it seems obvious to ask how the passionate feelings we often have about moral issues affect our judgments about them. Interestingly, however, modern psychology’s first foray into the study of moral reasoning paid little attention to the role of affect. Reacting in part to Freud’s depiction of moral thinking as ensnared in a web of conflicted and largely unconscious motivational forces (Freud, 1923/1962), Kohlberg built on Piaget’s cognitivedevelopmental infrastructure to depict moral reasoning as an essentially analytical and rational enterprise, that grew ever more so as an individual’s reasoning abilities became more sophisticated (Kohlberg, 1969, 1984). This view of moral judgment as a reasoning task, albeit one often marred by faulty or simplistic logic, was in perfect sync with the cold, information processing perspective that was the driving force behind the ‘‘cognitive revolution’’ that set the agenda for psychological research throughout the last few decades of the twentieth century. But psychology is now in the throes of an affective revolution (Forgas and Smith, 2003; Haidt, 2007). The dominant view in contemporary social cognitive research is one in which affect, intuition, and analytical thinking are all recognized as necessary characters in a comprehensive narrative of mental life, and considerable research attention is devoted to redressing the previous lack of attention both to affective forces as crucial determinants of how information is processed (Forgas, 1992; Kunda, 1990; Slovic et al., 2007), and to the importance of hedonic as well as judgmental outcomes as central topics of psychological science (Gilbert, 2006; Kahneman et al., 1999). Accordingly, understanding the role of affect in moral reasoning has now become a prominent focus of research in moral psychology (Greene et al., 2001; Haidt, 2001; Monin et al., 2007).
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In this chapter, we will explore one aspect of the morality-affect interface that has not received extensive empirical or theoretical attention: how the motivated reasoning processes that have been well documented in other spheres of judgment affect thinking about moral issues. That is, our specific goal in this chapter is to examine how moral reasoning is perturbed when individuals have an affective stake in perceiving an act as moral or immoral. Given that moral beliefs are among the most strongly held beliefs we possess (Skitka et al., 2005), it should come as no surprise that people often have deep feelings about what and who is moral or immoral and that these feelings may affect how they think about moral issues. In the sections that follow, we will first lay out a general view of motivated reasoning processes and discuss why moral judgment should be particularly susceptible to their influence. We will then review research examining two general pathways by which motivational forces can alter the moral implications of an act: by affecting perceptions of an actor’s moral accountability for the act, and by influencing the normative moral principles people rely on to evaluate the morality of the act. We conclude by discussing the implications of research on motivated moral reasoning for both classic and contemporary views of the moral thinker.
2. Motivated Reasoning Passion and prejudice govern the world; only under the name of reason. John Wesley from a letter to Joseph Benton (1770)
Imagine for a moment that you are in the Supreme Court of the United States. At the front of the high-ceilinged room, august in their long black robes and seated behind a tall and imposing bench, are the nine Justices. Facing them on opposite sides of the room are the two opposing attorneys and their supporting legal teams. Everyone in the room has a prescribed part to play. The two teams of attorneys each have a conclusion that they want the Justices to reach, and their job is to muster any evidence or argument they can to support their preferred conclusion. In our adversarial system of justice, it is not up to the attorneys to present a balanced view of the strengths and weaknesses of their case, nor to fairly present the merits of the arguments they put forth. Their job is to advocate; to build a compelling case for whatever conclusion they have been handsomely paid to defend. It is the Justices, of course, whose job it is to fairly, analytically, and objectively adjudicate ‘‘the truth.’’ As the embodiment of ‘‘blind’’ justice, their charge is to be free of a priori preferences for one conclusion over
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another, or at least not allow any biases or preconceptions they do have to influence their evaluation of the merits of the case. Whereas attorneys accepted role is to work from a particular conclusion ‘‘backward’’ to construct a convincing foundation for their case, the Justices are to go about their work in precisely the opposite direction, working ‘‘forward’’ to combine fact patterns and legal principles in a way that leads them agnostically to whatever conclusion these facts and principles seem to demand. To use a different but more common spacial metaphor, attorneys can be top-down, but Justices, and justice more generally, must always be bottom-up. The conflicting motives that characterize the highest courtroom of the United States provide a helpful metaphor to frame the nuances of social psychological research on motivated reasoning. In the world of everyday judgment, most of us recognized ourselves more in the visage of a Supreme Court Justice than a hired gun attorney. When faced with a decision like who should be hired for a position at our workplace, we perceive ourselves as proceeding with judicial objectivity. We look at each applicant’s qualifications, weight them by the criteria we believe best predict success at the job, and choose the applicant whose qualifications best exemplify the most important criteria. We understand the potential to be biased by irrelevancies like race, gender, or physical attractiveness, but we perceive ourselves as able to rise above their influence. After all, the facts on the resumes and their fit with our stated standards seem to us clear evidence for the impartial, bottom-up nature of our decision. And yet, a wealth of social psychological research suggests that in many judgment situations, particularly those that involve people and issues we care about deeply, people act more like lay attorneys than lay judges (Baumeister and Newman, 1994). Although the motivation to be accurate can sometimes improve the quality of inferences (Kunda, 1990; Lerner and Tetlock, 1999), people (like attorneys) often have a preference for reaching one conclusion over another, and these directional motivations (Kunda, 1990) serve to tip judgment processes in favor of whatever conclusion is preferred. Much of this research examines responses to self-relevant feedback, showing that people tend to perceive information that supports their preferred images of themselves as smart, well-liked, and healthy as more valid than information that challenges these flattering self-conceptions (Ditto and Lopez, 1992; Ditto et al., 1998; Wyer and Frey, 1983). But judgments about other people and about the facts of the world have also been shown to be subject to motivational influence. People make more charitable attributions for the behavior of people they like than those they dislike (Reeder et al., 2005), and perceive evidence that supports cherished social attitudes as more valid and compelling than evidence that challenges those attitudes (Lord et al., 1979; MacCoun, 1998; Munro and Ditto, 1997).
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But how do people accomplish this ‘‘sleight of mind’’? How can people act like attorneys yet perceive themselves as judges? First, it is important to recognize that maintaining this ‘‘illusion of objectivity’’ (Kunda, 1990; Pyszczynski and Greenberg, 1987) is essential if motivated reasoning processes are to affect genuine belief. Explicitly, most people, most of the time desire an accurate view of the world. We are naı¨ve realists (Ross and Ward, 1996), who believe that truth exists and that our senses and intellect are the way that truth reveals itself. In matters of truth, of course, anything an attorney says is suspect because everyone knows they have both a professional duty and a financial stake in arguing for one particular conclusion. Attorneys are often reviled, in fact, because their motivation to construct a particular reality by the selective use of facts and strategic manipulation of reasoning seems naked and unrepentant. While most of us accept this kind of backward reasoning as a necessary evil of our adversarial system of justice, we reject it as a way to approach everyday decisions. If we approached our judgments like an attorney with an explicit goal of reaching a particular conclusion, or even if we recognized that our judgments could be biased by our preferences, their value to us as reflections of the true state of the world would be sorely compromised. But even when an individual’s conscious motivation is accuracy, one conclusion can still be preferred over another because it supports a desired view of self or others, or the validity of a cherished belief. In this case, we use the term ‘‘preference’’ not in the sense of an explicit judgment goal, but rather as a set of implicit affective contingencies that underlie how we process information related to the judgment. That is, we say that someone has a preference for a particular judgment conclusion when that person would be happier if that conclusion were true than if it were false. Consequently, as people consider information relevant to a judgment where they have a preferred conclusion, they experience positive affect if that information seems to support their preferred conclusion, and negative affect if it seems to challenge their preferred conclusion (Ditto et al., 2003; Munro and Ditto, 1997). These affective reactions are quick, automatic, and ubiquitous (Winkielman et al., 2005; Zajonc, 1980) and can exert a host of subtle organizing effects on the processing of preference-relevant information. A number of studies have shown, for example, that people test more favorable hypotheses when considering preference-consistent than preference-inconsistent information (Dawson et al., 2002; Kunda, 1990; Pyszczynski and Greenberg, 1987), are more likely to perceive ambiguous information in preference-consistent rather than preference-inconsistent ways (Balcetis and Dunning, 2006), apply less rigorous judgmental standards to preference-consistent than preference-inconsistent information (Ditto and Lopez, 1992; Ditto et al., 1998, 2003), and weight most heavily general
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decision criteria that are most consistent with preference-consistent conclusions (Dunning et al., 1995; Norton et al., 2004; Uhlmann and Cohen, 2005). The crucial aspect of these motivated reasoning mechanisms is that their subtlety allows them to operate well within the confines of what people perceive as the dictates of objectivity. So returning to the job hiring scenario we described above, liking for applicant X (based let us say on an implicit preference to hire a male) may lead the individual in charge of the hiring decision to begin the evaluation process with the hypothesis that applicant X is a strong rather than a weak candidate for the position, to interpret vague aspects of applicant X’s record in a favorable rather than an unfavorable light, to accept applicant X’s positive qualifications at face value while carefully considering alternative explanations for the weak spots in his resume, and to weight prior work experience (of which applicant X has a lot) as a more important criterion for the position than a high-quality educational background (where applicant X’s credentials are less stellar). In each case, the decision maker’s preference for the male candidate operates implicitly to bend but not break normative rules of decision making, leaving behind little introspective evidence of an untoward decision process (Pronin, 2008). Instead, the decision maker is likely to perceive himself as carrying out the hiring process in a judicious, bottom-up fashion — testing hypotheses, scrutinizing evidence, and comparing qualifications to standards — failing to recognize that his implicit preference for a male employee subtlely shaped his decision process from the top-down, and tipped the scales toward his preferred verdict.
3. Motivated Moral Reasoning All morality depends upon our sentiments; and when any action or quality of the mind pleases us after a certain manner we say it is virtuous. . . David Hume from A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740)
Motivated reasoning has been examined in a wide range of judgment domains in which the motivation to reach a particular conclusion derives from a number of different sources. We use the term motivated moral reasoning to describe situations in which judgment is motivated by a desire to reach a particular moral conclusion. That is, in this chapter we are interested in situations in which an individual has an affective stake in perceiving a given act or person as either moral or immoral, and this preference alters reasoning processes in a way that adjusts moral assessments in line with the desired conclusion. There are a number of characteristics of moral judgment that should make it particularly fertile ground for motivated reasoning processes. First,
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moral judgment is deeply evaluative, so people should have strong preferences about whether certain acts and certain people are perceived as moral or immoral. The evaluative significance of moral judgment stems from its fundamentally social nature. Most contemporary treatments of moral judgment situate its development in the evolutionary pressures of group living (e.g., Gintis et al., 2005; Haidt, 2001). Coordinated group activity requires that we can trust others not to harm us, to deal with us fairly, and to generally act in the best interests of the larger ingroup (Fehr and Ga¨chter, 2000; Haidt and Graham, 2007). It also requires others to trust us in a similar fashion. This social component of moral reasoning explains not only why we have a deep affective stake in wanting others to perceive us as actors of good moral character (and thus to perceive ourselves in similar fashion), but also why we care deeply about the moral character of others. Moreover, as researchers have noted for years, people desire a world that makes good moral sense (e.g., Lerner and Miller, 1977). A just world is one that is predictable and controllable, a world that can be trusted to reward good people and good behavior (including our own). This again suggests that we should have a strong preference to believe in our own moral worthiness, but also that we should be motivated to believe that the people we like and the groups we identify with are good moral actors, while often assuming that people and groups we feel negatively about have moral qualities consistent with our overall negative feelings about them. Second, moral judgment is inherently intuitive, and so should be particularly amenable to affective and motivational influence. An influential paper by Haidt (2001) argued that contrary to Kohlberg’s rationalist view of moral judgment in which reasoning is thought to precede and determine moral evaluation, moral reasoning more typically follows from moral evaluations rather than precedes them. Building on the philosophy of Hume (1739– 1740/1969) and the psychology of Zajonc (1980), Haidt argued that moral evaluations most typically arise through an intuitive, and generally affective, process. Certain acts just ‘‘feel’’ wrong to us, and this realization comes in a form more akin to aesthetic judgment (‘‘Lima beans disgust me!’’) than reasoned inference (‘‘Having sex with one’s sibling is wrong because it increases the probably of potentially dangerous recessive phenotypes if pregnancy should result’’). Haidt’s point was not to say that reasoned moral analysis never occurs or can never override intuitive moral reactions (Haidt, 2007; Pizarro and Bloom, 2003), but rather that in sharp contrast to the Kohlbergian view of moral judgment, the primary sources of our moral evaluations are relatively automatic and affective as opposed to thoughtful and cognitive. From an intuitionist perspective, moral reasoning is, fundamentally, motivated reasoning. Rather than being driven from the bottom-up, by data or reason, moral judgments are most typically top-down affairs, with the individual generating moral arguments with intuitions about the
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‘‘correct’’ moral conclusion already firmly in place. These moral intuitions can derive from factors that most everyone would see as morally relevant, such as whether an act causes harm to others or violates basic principles of justice. But they can also derive from factors that are more controversially ‘‘moral’’ in nature, such as whether an act is perceived as disgusting (Haidt et al., 1993; Wheatley and Haidt, 2005), or even from factors that would consensually be viewed as irrelevant to a rational moral analysis, such as one’s liking for the actor or the actor’s social group, or how the morality of the act reflects on valued beliefs and attitudes held by the perceiver. Finally, moral judgment is complex and multifaceted, and so motivational forces should have considerable latitude to perturb moral reasoning in ways that support affective preferences while still allowing individuals to maintain a veneer of objectivity. Part and parcel of the legal analogy we presented in the previous section is the notion that motivated reasoning processes are constrained by plausibility (Ditto and Lopez, 1992; Kunda, 1990; Pyszczynski and Greenberg, 1987). People only bend data and the laws of logic to the point that normative considerations challenge their view of themselves as fair and objective judges, and motivated reasoning effects are most pronounced in situations where plausibility constraints are loose and ambiguous (Ditto and Boardman, 1995; Dunning et al., 1995). As we will expand upon in subsequent sections, moral evaluation of an act involves a complicated set of judgments that can be profitably parsed into two categories: those focused on the ‘‘actor,’’ with the goal of assessing his or her moral accountability for the act and its consequences, and those focused on the ‘‘act itself,’’ with the goal of evaluating how the act and its consequences conform with general normative principles regarding what constitutes moral and immoral behavior. Judgments of moral accountability involve inferences about the actor’s motives, intentions, and knowledge; internal states of mind that can only be inferred indirectly, and thus are seldom unambiguous. Similarly, despite centuries of philosophical bickering, little consensus exists regarding the appropriate normative principles by which an act’s morality should be judged, and individuals often have conflicting intuitions about which moral principle should prevail, especially in classic ‘‘moral dilemmas’’ in which seemingly unsavory acts also bring about positive moral consequences. What this means is that the morality of any given act is seldom self-evident, and is notoriously difficult to ‘‘prove’’ in any uncontroversial way with either data or reason (Sunstein, 2005). This ambiguity should leave a motivated moral judge considerable flexibility to construct plausible justifications for preferred moral conclusions without offending their sense of their own objectivity, either by adjusting perceptions of an actor’s accountability for a moral act, or by altering the principles brought to bear in evaluating the morality of the act itself. We will take up these two different pathways, in turn and in detail, in Sections 4 and 5.
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4. Motivated Assessments of Moral Accountability Even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and kicked. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. from The Common Law (1881)
Many of our moral judgments are concerned with determining whether an act is morally permissible or impermissible — such as whether having an abortion, eating meat, or cheating on our federal taxes is wrong. But because most of us already possess a mental list of sins and virtues, much of our daily moral judgment ends up being about whether or not to hold a particular individual responsible for one of these moral breaches. Not only is this a common concern in daily life (when a slightly neurotic friend insults you, should you blame her or excuse her because of her personality quirks?), but we are also constantly faced with tough cases in the media and popular culture in which it is unclear whether or not an individual should be held responsible for a moral transgression. Take one distressing example: should Andrea Yates, the mother who drowned her five young children in a bathtub while suffering from severe depression, have been held responsible for murder, or simply institutionalized for mental illness? We go to great lengths to try to arrive at the right answer to these questions. A wrong answer, after all, could mean punishing a person who simply does not deserve it (or failing to punish someone who does). Accordingly, a pressing concern for psychologists, legal theorists, and philosophers alike has been to specify how we ought to arrive at a judgment that an individual should be held fully responsible for an act. Across these disciplines, theorists have posited a variety of necessary conditions for the ascription of responsibility (Aristotle, 1998; Kant, 1795/1998; Shaver, 1985; Weiner, 1995). The most influential psychological theories of moral responsibility suggest that for an individual to be held fully responsible for an act, that act should have been caused, controllable, and intended by the actor (Shaver, 1985; Weiner, 1995). While psychological theories of responsibility draw heavily from normative philosophical and legal theories, they also often assume that everyday moral decision makers actually adhere to the prescriptions of these normative theories. As it turns out, there is a great deal of evidence suggesting that we often do go about making judgments of responsibility in such a careful fashion. If an individual is believed to have contracted HIV because of a blood transfusion, for instance, people are less likely to blame the individual for his plight than if he contracted the disease through licentious sex (a presumably controllable act; Weiner, 1995). Similarly, individuals make fine-grained distinctions about causality in determining whether or not to
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hold an individual responsible. In fact, even when a negative act was clearly caused by an agent, people do not hold the agent as responsible for the act if the causal chain failed to proceed in the precisely intended manner (cases of so-called ‘‘causal deviance’’; Pizarro et al., 2003a). Finally, individuals are very sensitive to the presence of intentionality — whether or not a bad action was performed purposefully. When there is reason to believe that the ability to formulate intentions might have been compromised (such as in the case of some forms of mental illness), individuals reduce judgments of responsibility. For instance, relatives of schizophrenic patients reduce blame for negative (and even extremely harmful) acts caused by the presence of delusions and hallucinations (although less so for negative acts stemming from negative symptoms such as flattened affect; Provencher and Fincham, 2000). Even in cases of emotional impulsivity among presumably normal individuals, if a strong emotional impulse (such as extreme anger) leads to a negative act, individuals discount blame for that act (Pizarro et al., 2003b). Presumably, most people’s lay theories of emotion hold that under the influence of strong feelings, one loses the ability to formulate intentions and act upon them. And yet, despite the evidence that individuals are capable of making sensitive, objective distinctions among the features of various acts to arrive at a judgment of blame, there is also good evidence that this process can be distorted by motivational factors. Indeed, a fairly clear picture is emerging that judgments that an individual is ‘‘bad’’ or ‘‘good’’ often come prior to rather than as a product of more fine-grained judgments of intentionality, controllability, and causality, and these component assessments are then ‘‘bent’’ in a direction consistent with the overall moral evaluation. It is to this evidence that we now turn.
4.1. Controllability and Culpability One set of findings that demonstrates the role that motivation can play in judgments of responsibility are those of Alicke (1992) showing that individuals are more likely to judge that an individual possesses causal control over an outcome if they are motivated to blame that individual. In one example, when participants were told that a man was speeding home in a rainstorm and got in an accident (injuring others), they were more likely to say that he had control over the car if he was speeding home to hide cocaine from his parents than if he was speeding home to hide their anniversary gift (Alicke, 1992). Alicke (1992, 2000) argues that spontaneous judgments of blame lead participants to distort judgments of control and causality in order to justify the initial blame — a process he refers to as ‘‘blame validation.’’ According to this blame validation model, the spontaneous assessment of blame made when first evaluating a man who would be despicable enough to hide drugs
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in his parents house, leads us to distort the evidence in the direction of finding him more culpable for the accident.
4.2. Memory for the ‘‘Facts’’ Judgments of control and causality are inherently subjective, making them excellent candidates for motivated distortion. But there is evidence that even more ‘‘objective’’ facts about an event can be distorted in the right direction, given sufficient time. Pizarro and colleagues (Pizarro et al., 2006) demonstrated that the degree of blame given to an individual could influence memory for the facts of the blameworthy act itself. Participants were given a description of a man who dined by himself at a fine restaurant one night, and then finished his meal by walking out on the check. One group of participants (the low-blame condition) was told that he had received a phone call that his daughter had been in an accident and left the restaurant in such a hurry that he forgot to pay his bill. Another group (the high-blame condition) was told that the reason the man walked out on his check was that he disliked paying for things and was happy whenever he could get away with stealing. Approximately one week later, participants were asked to recall the price of the items the man had purchased for dinner, as well as the price of the total bill (which had been explicitly stated in the original scenario). Those in the high-blame condition recalled the values as significantly higher than those in the low-blame condition, and significantly higher than they actually were. Those in the low-blame condition, by comparison, had, on average, an accurate memory of the prices a week later. In addition, the degree of blame participants gave the man initially upon reading the description of the act was a significant predictor of the magnitude of inflation in memory a week later. These findings provide initial evidence that the motivation to justify blameworthiness may even lead to a distortion of the objective facts surrounding an event.
4.3. Intentionality Perhaps the most compelling set of evidence that motivations can shift judgments of moral responsibility comes from recent work on judgments of intentionality. In an influential set of findings by Knobe and his colleagues, it has been shown that people are more inclined to say that a behavior was performed intentionally when they regard that behavior as morally wrong (Leslie et al., 2006; see Knobe, 2006, for a review). For instance, when given a scenario in which a foreseeable side effect results in a negative outcome, individuals are more likely to say that the side effect was brought about intentionally than if the side effect results in a positive outcome. In the most common example, the CEO of a company is told that implementing a
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new policy will have the side effect of either harming or helping the environment. In both cases, the CEO explicitly states that he only cares about increasing profits, not about the incidental side effect of harming or helping the environment. Nonetheless, participants perceive that the side effect of harming the environment was intentional — but not the side effect of helping the environment. This pattern of findings (with simpler scenarios) is evident in children as young as six and seven years old. One plausible account for this pattern of findings, consistent with Alicke’s ‘‘blame validation’’ approach, is that the motivation to blame the bad guy — someone who would be capable of such an immoral act — directly leads to a distortion in judgments of intentionality. If this were indeed the case, it should be possible to show that individuals with divergent moral views would perceive acts (whose moral status they disagreed upon) as more or less intentional depending on their beliefs about that particular act. Such findings would provide evidence that the so-called ‘‘side-effect effect’’ is not simply due to the nonconventional nature of the infractions (i.e., since most people obey rules and norms most of the time a harmful or infrequent act might be inferred to be more intentional simply because it deviates from modal behavior; Kahneman and Miller, 1986). Accordingly, we sought to provide evidence that an individual’s moral preferences could influence the very criteria for what is thought to constitute intentional action (Tannenbaum et al., 2008). In order to test this hypothesis, we first looked at individuals who had protected values within a certain domain, compared to individuals who did not. By protected values, we mean absolute beliefs about the impermissibility of certain acts that serve as a strong form of moral motivation to prevent any moral breach. Protected values are thought to be both nonfungible and to motivate behavior in numerous ways (Baron and Spranca, 1997; Skitka et al., 2005; Tetlock, 2003). For example, if an individual has a protected value regarding the sanctity of animal life, that individual would be very reluctant to trade-off the lives of animals in exchange for another good (food for the poor), or even to agree that cutting down on meat consumption is a virtue (it would seem about as reasonable as a pedophile cutting down on the number of children he molests). In our initial experiment, we presented a large group of subjects with two versions of the scenario originally used by Knobe (2003), in which a corporate executive decides to undertake a business venture that will bring him a direct profit, but which also has the side effect of (depending on scenario version) either harming or helping the environment. Afterwards, we examined the degree to which participants were willing or unwilling to make trade-offs on the environment (Baron and Spranca, 1997; Tanner and Medin, 2004), as well as some straightforward attitude items about the relative priority for the environment over the economy. Using these items, we identified a group of participants who expressed both a preference
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for the environment and also a complete unwillingness to make trade-offs on the environment, even if doing so led to a more beneficial outcome (environmental absolutists). For our control group, we selected individuals who expressed a similar preference for the environment, but were willing to make trade-offs on the environment if doing so led to some beneficial outcome (nonabsolutists). Because environmental absolutists placed greater moral worth on outcomes that affect the environment, we expected that (compared to nonabsolutists) they would be more likely to judge the CEO’s decision as intentionally harming the environment in the harm condition, but less likely to see the CEO’s decision as intentionally helping the environment in the help condition. And this was indeed the case. Overall, we replicated the basic asymmetry in intentionality judgments documented by Knobe (2003): 75% of our subjects reported that the CEO intentionally harmed the environment, but only 11% reported that the CEO intentionally helped the environment. But we also found that this asymmetry was greater for environmental absolutists compared to nonabsolutists: 81% of absolutists saw the harm to the environment as intentional compared to 62% of nonabsolutists, and only 7% of absolutists saw the help to the environment as intentional compared to 21% of nonabsolutists. This pattern supports a motivational account of the side-effect effect, in that individuals who presumably had particularly strong evaluative reactions to harming or helping the environment also showed an exacerbated effect across conditions. Even more interestingly, we asked all participants to justify why they believed the action to be intentional or unintentional, and a clear pattern emerged. Of the subjects who reported that the CEO acted intentionally, they quite often (61%) made reference to the CEO’s foreknowledge of the policy’s side effects (e.g., ‘‘I believe it was intentional because he knew ahead of time that it was going to harm the environment yet he chose to do it anyways’’). Conversely, subjects who reported that the CEO acted unintentionally almost always (99%) focused on goal-directed mental states (e.g., ‘‘The chairman said that he did not care about the environment. He was only motivated by monetary gain’’). That is, participants seemed to be using two different definitions of intentionality, one strict (requiring that the CEO desire the effects for them to be considered intentional) and one loose (requiring only that the CEO have foreknowledge that the side effects would occur). Both of these definitions are plausible (in fact, they generally correspond with two basic legal standards of criminal culpability; direct and oblique intent; Duff, 1990), and it may have been this conceptual flexibility that allowed participants to define ‘‘intentional’’ in a way that fit their desire to blame or not blame the CEO for his actions. In a follow-up study, we replicated this finding using protected values concerning the economy (a value that cut quite differently across liberal– conservative lines). We presented subjects with a scenario modeled closely
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on Knobe (2003), but this time describing the chairman of an environmental protection organization whose decision to preserve the environment also had the effect of harming or helping the economy (in the form of increasing or decreasing unemployment, respectively). We once again selected only those who expressed a genuine preference for the economy (when pitted against the environment), and who also expressed an unwillingness to make trade-offs on economic welfare (market absolutists) versus those who expressed a willingness to make trade-offs if doing so promoted other beneficial outcomes (nonabsolutists). Consistent with the results of our first study, 75% of market absolutists reported that the chairman intentionally harmed the economy, whereas only 44% of nonabsolutists reported the harm as intentional. Moreover, only 16% of market absolutists reported that the environments intentionally helped the economy, whereas 28% of nonabsolutists reported such help to the economy as intentional. Participants again justified their judgments by using convenient definitions of ‘‘intentional.’’ When reporting that the chairman unintentionally harmed or helped the economy, almost all participants (96%) focused on the agent’s goal-directed mental states (i.e., his desire to merely preserve the environment). When reporting that the chairman intentionality harmed or helped the economy, on the other hand, they typically (74%) focused on the chairman’s foreknowledge of the effect it would have on the economy. In a final follow-up study, we sought to investigate attributions of intentionality in a more realistic context. A controversial moral issue is whether collateral damage in the conduct of war is permissible. Is it morally wrong, for example, for the U.S. military to bomb a village where it is believed a suspected terrorist is hiding, even though it will also result in the death of innocent civilians? Proponents of such military strikes note that the collateral damage caused to innocent civilians is not an act of intentional harm — the goal is to strike at the enemy, and any harm to innocent civilians is both unwanted and unfortunate. Opponents of such military strikes might argue, however, that collateral damage to innocent civilians although not desired is clearly foreseeable, and thus such decisions knowingly (and by their definition, intentionally) bring about harm to innocent civilians. Given that the issue of collateral damage contains the right conceptual structure of knowing but not wanting bad outcomes when making decisions with moral gravity, we chose to utilize it in an experimental context. We presented participants with one of two military scenarios. Half of the participants received a scenario describing American military leaders deciding to carry out an attack to stop key Iraqi insurgent leaders in order to prevent the future deaths of American troops. The other half read about Iraqi insurgent leaders deciding to carry out an attack to stop key leaders of the American military in order to prevent future deaths of Iraqi insurgents. In both cases, it was explicitly stated that the attackers (whether American or
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Iraqi) did not want nor intend to cause civilian casualties, but in both cases the attack did. After reading the scenario, participants were asked to indicate whether the military leaders had intentionally harmed the innocent civilians, and to indicate their political ideology on a standard 7-point liberal– conservative scale. Our motivational prediction was simple. We suspected that political conservatives would be more motivated than political liberals to view American military action in a positive light, especially in comparison to the action of Iraqi insurgents. For many conservatives, patriotism in general, and support for the American military in particular, take on the quality of protected values. This is consistent with research suggesting the conservative’s moral judgments are more influenced than those of liberals by issues of ingroup loyalty (Haidt and Graham, 2007), and suggests that conservatives should be more likely than liberals to make a moral distinction between the acts and lives of Americans and those of a disliked outgroup like Iraqi insurgents. Consistent with this analysis, the study showed that liberal participants showed no significant difference in their intentionality judgments depending on the nationality of the perpetrators. Conservative participants, however, were significantly more likely to see the killing of innocent civilians as intentional when the deaths were caused by Iraqi insurgents than when they were caused by the American military. Moreover, we once again found a very similar pattern in how participants justified their intentionality judgments. When subjects reported the harm to innocent civilians as intentional, they typically (77%) justified their response by focusing on the military leader’s foreknowledge of harm to the innocent civilians. When subjects saw the harm as unintentional, however, they almost always (95%) made reference to the agent’s goal-directed mental states — that they were only trying to target key enemy leaders. To recap, our studies of perceived intentionality suggest that people with divergent moral values are likely to make different intentionality judgments. If an action poses little affront to our moral sensibilities, we tend to think of intentional behaviors as only those that are directly intended or desired. Foreseeability is not enough. The more we view an act as morally offensive, however, the more we seem to loosen our criteria for intentionality to include actions that may not have been desired but should have been foreseen. Utilizing differing definitions of intention is a powerful way of maintaining an illusion of objectivity. In fact, this analysis suggests that two people could view the same act in exactly the same way — they could agree on what the actor did and did not desire and what the actor did and did not foresee — and nevertheless disagree on whether that act was performed intentionally, simply because their differing moral responses to the act led them to think about intentional behavior in qualitatively different ways.
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5. Motivated Use of Moral Principles You can’t be the President unless you have a firm set of principles to guide you as you sort through all the problems the world faces. George W. Bush during a Presidential Press Conference (December 20, 2007)
Politicians are famous for portraying themselves as men and women of principle, and infamous for adjusting their principles for the sake of political expediency. But while politicians may be the most shameless and visible manipulators of principle, there is good reason to believe that they are not alone in adopting a flexible approach to principled argumentation. In Section 4, we illustrated how motivational factors can influence perceptions of an actor’s moral responsibility for his or her actions. To the extent that an action provokes negative feelings in the perceiver, that perceiver is likely to interpret the act as more controllable, more intentional, and with time may even have a more negative memory of the act itself. But moral evaluation does not stop at moral accountability. Even when the evidence is clear that someone is morally responsible for an action, assessment of the morality of the act still requires the application of normative principles. This is most clearly illustrated when an act has both negative and positive consequences, as in the classic moral dilemmas that have captured the imagination of both philosophers and psychologists for generations (Foot, 1967; Greene et al., 2001; Kohlberg, 1969; Thompson, 1986). The iconic example here is the so-called ‘‘trolley problem’’ in which one has to decide whether is it morally justified to sacrifice the life of one individual to the stop a runaway trolley car that will otherwise kill five. How one resolves this dilemma is generally accepted to depend on whether one endorses a deontological ethic, in which certain acts are thought to be ‘‘wrong’’ in and of themselves and no matter their consequences, or a consequentialist ethic, in which an act’s morality is judged solely based on the extent to which it maximizes positive consequences. An individual relying on deontological principles should conclude that killing the innocent individual is morally wrong even though the act would save five others, whereas an individual relying on consequentialist principles should reach the opposite conclusion; that killing the one, while obviously unfortunate and regrettable, is morally justified based on the net gain in positive consequences that results from saving the other five.
5.1. The Use and Abuse of Principle Principle-based reasoning plays an important role in moral judgment because moral reasoning occupies a peculiar middle ground between aesthetic preference and fact-based inference. Although people sometimes
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press us for the reasons why we like a painting or hate lima beans, ultimately, that we simply like or hate with no articulable reason is acceptable when it comes to matters of personal taste. Because moral judgments, like aesthetic ones, often come to us intuitively, people frequently find themselves similar dumbstruck when asked to justify why a given act is thought to be right or wrong (Haidt, 2001; Haidt et al., 1993). But the pressure to provide a rationale for moral assessments is stronger than it is for aesthetic preferences because most of us see morality as something more than just a matter of taste. Our tendency toward naı¨ve realism extends into the moral realm as well (Goodwin and Darley, 2008). While people are certainly capable under some circumstances of accepting a position of moral relativism, most people most of the time have a strong intuitive sense that moral claims, like factual ones, are either true or false. This naı¨ve moral realism consequently leads us to feel that moral claims require some rational basis to establish their validity. If a moral claim is to be taken as universally ‘‘true,’’ rather than a mere personal preference or social convention, some reasonable justification for the claim must be provided. But how does one justify a moral belief? Factual beliefs (e.g., cigarette smoking causes cancer) can be supported by data, but what data can be mustered to prove one’s assertion that terrorism is immoral or that a white lie is morally justified if it leads to a greater good? What often takes the place of data-based inference in moral reasoning is grounding a specific moral belief as an instantiation of a general moral principle. Principles can be understood as foundational rules that, while not always fully universal, are at least widely applicable across a defined set of situations. Reasoning one’s way from a general moral principle to a specific moral belief allows moral reasoning (e.g., I believe terrorism is immoral because it is immoral to deliberately sacrifice innocent life even for a greater good) to take a form very much like fact-based inference (e.g., I believe smoking causes cancer because epidemiological research provides overwhelming support for the link). Kohlberg (1984), of course, viewed principle-based reasoning as the hallmark of mature moral judgment, and most moral philosophers would recognize it as the primary way they go about their business. Fundamental to principle-based reasoning is the idea that principles are general rather than case-specific, and that they should not be applied (or ignored) selectively. The power of principles as explanatory mechanisms derives precisely from their generality, but this is also what makes them so darn inconvenient. The same general rule that can provide justification for a desirable course of action in one case will often compel a less palatable course in another. If one relies on principle only when it is convenient, however, the door is opened to charges of hypocrisy or casuistry, and the normative status of the principle as a justification for the validity of any specific moral claim is correspondingly weakened.
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Nonetheless, there is good evidence from outside the realm of moral reasoning that people use general judgment standards in just this kind of selective fashion. Dunning and colleagues (Dunning and Cohen, 1992; Dunning et al., 1995), for example, showed that if people are asked to identify general criteria of excellence in a given domain, they typically endorse standards that put their own idiosyncratic credentials in the best possible light. Studies examining mock hiring and legal decisions have similarly shown that evaluators tend to inflate the value of general decision criteria (e.g., the importance of particular job credentials or types of legal evidence) that tend to favor preferred conclusions (Norton et al., 2004; Uhlmann and Cohen, 2005; Simon et al., 2004a,b). Somewhat closer to the domain of moral reasoning, a recent series of studies by Furgeson et al. (2008, in press) suggest that reliance on principles of constitutional interpretation can be affected by one’s preferred legal conclusion. The irony of our use of Supreme Court Justices as icons of objectivity is that legal scholars have long noted the tendency for political ideology to influence even this highest level of judicial reasoning (e.g., Bork, 1990; Brennan, 1990). While judges like to couch their specific judicial decisions as guided by broad constitutional principles (such as originalism or expansive interpretation) it seems frequently the case that principles are favored or ignored depending on their fit with politically palatable conclusions. The classic anecdotal example is the Supreme Court’s 2000 decision in Bush v. Gore (Dershowitz, 2001). In brief, the essential decision in that case concerned whether to let stand the decision of the Florida State Supreme Court to allow vote recounting to continue (knowing that if recounting was stopped, George W. Bush would almost inevitably be awarded Florida’s electoral votes and consequently the Presidency of the United States). Interestingly, the five most conservative Justices, whose previous court decisions frequently favored state-sovereignty over federal intervention, decided in this case that it was appropriate to overturn the Florida State Supreme Court’s ruling, while the four more liberal and historically more federalism friendly Justices favored allowing the state court’s ruling to stand. This interpretation of the Justices’s reasoning is obviously speculative and unsurprisingly controversial (Dionne and Kristol, 2001), but Furgeson et al. (2008, in press) have demonstrated just this sort of politically motivated reliance on constitutional principle in experiments using both college undergraduates and law students. Despite its dubious normative status, selective reliance on general standards is likely a particularly common and particularly effective form of motivated reasoning, first, because in most domains more than one standard can plausibly be seen as appropriate, and second, because motivated reliance on a particular standard is difficult to detect unless the individual is confronted with multiple cases where the affective implications of reliance on the standard conflict. In any single case, the preferential weighting of
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judgment standards occurs through a subtle, intuitive (and likely bidirectional; Simon et al., 2004a,b) process. At an explicit level, individuals should thus experience little that would lead them to question the objectivity of their reliance on one particular (and seemingly plausible) standard. It is only if an individual is quickly confronted with a second case in which the same general standard obviously compels a more objectionable conclusion that awareness of conflict should arise, and the individual will be forced to struggle with the normative implications of their decision-making strategy.
5.2. Tales of Political Casuistry Like almost all judgmental biases, however, selective reliance on principle is more easily recognized by observers than actors (Pronin, 2008), especially when it is motivated by preferences that the observer does not share. And in fact, our initial inspiration to study the motivated use of moral principles arose from our observations of moral rationales offered by politicians in support of politically conservative policy positions. For example, many political conservatives (including President Bush) have staked out a principled deontological stand in opposition to government support for embryonic stem cell research, arguing that the potential lives saved by any technology generated by this research does not justify the sacrificing of innocent fetal life. Their moral assessment of the extensive civilian death toll caused by the invasion of Iraq, however, has been decidedly more consequentialist in tone, suggesting that in this case the sacrificing of innocent life is a necessary cost to achieve a greater good. More generally, although political conservatism is often seen as a bastion of deontological thinking (involving lots of uncompromising rules about the moral permissibility of various sexual and reproductive behaviors in particular), its recent approach to issues of national security (e.g., the use of electronic surveillance and harsh interrogation techniques as means of combating terrorism) is firmly rooted in consequentialist logic. Of course, it should not take long for a truly objective observer to recognize that on virtually every issue mentioned above where conservatism suggests a deontological position, liberals swing consequentialist, and on the issues where conservatives adopt a consequential position, liberalism favors a less-forgiving deontological stance. Although the intuitive ‘‘triggers’’ that engage motivation for liberals and conservatives may differ (Haidt and Graham, 2007), there is little reason to believe that any particular political ideology is more or less conducive to motivated reasoning (Munro and Ditto, 1997; but see Jost et al., 2003 for a different view). An equally obvious limitation of our informal observations is that real-life anecdotes are a weak basis on which to draw inferences about motivated inconsistency. Issues like stem cell research and collateral war casualties, although arguably comparable in general moral structure, differ in
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numerous subtle and not so subtle ways that could form a legitimate basis for what might superficially seem to be inconsistent and motivated moral assessments. Accordingly, we have now conducted a number of controlled laboratory studies to examine the motivated use of moral principles by comparing the judgments of political liberals and conservatives to scenarios that we believed would invoke in them differing moral intuitions (Uhlmann et al., 2008). There are two things to note before we describe these studies. First, the studies all use political ideology as their motivational source, but this does not mean that we believe the effects are limited to political judgments. Rather, it simply reflects our personal interest in the intersection of political and moral reasoning and our belief that a political context provides both sufficient motivation and testable predictions for examining selective principle use. Second, the studies all examine scenarios in which consequentialist principles are pitted against deontological ones, but this should again not be taken to indicate that any effects are necessarily limited to this context. We chose to utilize the distinction between deontological and consequentialist reasoning because of the keen interest it has received in both moral philosophy and moral psychology (Greene, 2007), and because many moral dilemmas (both in the laboratory and in the real world) present individuals with conflicting choices of action based on these two moral ethics. Moreover, there is good reason to believe that people harbor intuitions consistent with both views, in that relatively subtle manipulations can lead people to shift from near consensual endorsement of deontological action (e.g., when a man must be pushed onto the tracks to stop an oncoming trolley from killing five innocent workmen) to near consensual endorsement of consequentialist action (e.g., when the trolley can be redirected to kill one person rather than five by simply flipping a switch; Greene et al., 2001). Access to multiple plausible intuitions is conducive to motivated reasoning as it allows people to comfortably draw upon whichever set of principles seems to best justify the moral conclusion they find most emotionally satisfying, without also challenging their view of themselves as logical and well-meaning moralists.
5.3. Trolleys, Lifeboats, and Collateral Damage In the first study we conducted, college students were presented with a modified version of the trolley/footbridge dilemma, in which the morality of pushing one man into the tracks to save the lives of many others must be assessed. Our key modification was to include in the scenario extraneous information that we believed would evoke differing affective reactions depending on students’ political ideology. There is a strong disdain among American college students in general, but among politically liberal Americans in particular, for harboring feelings that may be considered prejudiced
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(Monin and Miller, 2001; Norton et al., 2004; Plant and Devine, 1998; Tetlock, 2003). We therefore decided to vary the race of the characters in the trolley scenario (subtlely and between-subjects) to see whether this would influence participants’ judgments concerning the appropriate moral action. Specifically, half of the participants were faced with a decision about whether to push a man named ‘‘Tyrone Payton’’ onto the tracks to save ‘‘100 members of the New York Philharmonic,’’ while the other half had to decide whether to push a man named ‘‘Chip Ellsworth III’’ onto the tracks to save ‘‘100 members of the Harlem Jazz Orchestra.’’ It should be clear that our goal was to lead our subjects, without using actual racial labels, to infer that in the first case their decision involved whether to sacrifice one African-American life to save 100 that were mostly White, and in the second case whether to sacrifice one White life to save 100 that were mostly African-American (our scenario used a larger than typical number of people to be saved in order to minimize floor effects caused by people’s general reluctance to endorse the consequentialist action in the footbridge dilemma). After reading the scenarios, participants completed a series of scales assessing their beliefs about whether sacrificing Chip/ Tyrone was the morally appropriate course of action, and measuring their endorsement of consequentialism as a general moral principle (e.g., ‘‘It is sometimes necessary to allow the death of an innocent person in order to save a larger number of innocent people’’). In this study, as in all of the others in this series, these items were combined into an overall consequentialism index, and participants also indicated their political ideology on a standard liberal–conservative scale. The results revealed that, as predicted, our race manipulation significantly affected participant’s moral judgments. First, there was a general tendency for participants presented with the scenario in which Tyrone Payton was sacrificed to save 100 members of the New York Philharmonic to be less likely to endorse consequentialism than participants who read the version in which Chip Ellsworth III was sacrificed to save members of the Harlem Jazz Orchestra. In other words, participants were generally more likely to invoke a consequentialist justification for sacrificing a man with a stereotypically White American name than one with a stereotypically Black American name. When participant’s political orientation was entered into the regression, however, a significant interaction effect was found. The tendency to view Chip’s life in more consequentialist terms than Tyrone’s was limited to political liberals. Political conservatives showed no hint of this effect. The problem with this study, despite its intriguing results, is that it raises as many questions as it answers. Were the effects driven by the race of the individual being sacrificed or of the people being saved? Did people really draw inferences about race from the stereotypically Black and White names we used? Why did only liberals show changes in their use of moral
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principles and is this pattern due to the relatively unique (and particularly liberal) political perspective of a college student sample? To address these questions, we replicated the study, this time using the ‘‘lifeboat’’ dilemma in which a decision has to be made about whether or not to throw a severely injured person off of a crowded lifeboat in order to prevent the drowning of all of the others aboard. As in the first study, the injured person was named Tyrone Payton for half of the participants, Chip Ellsworth III for the other half. No information was provided about the race of those who would be saved. After participants completed the key dependent measures, they were asked to guess the race of Chip or Tyrone. The data were collected in an outdoor shopping mall. The average participant was 37 years old and the sample had a better mix of liberals and conservatives than the college student participants in our first study. Participants’ moral responses in this study were very similar to those found in the first. Although in this study there was no overall effect for Tyrone to evoke less consequentialism than Chip, a significant interaction pattern was found of the same form as that found in our trolley study. When considering the morality of sacrificing an injured man to save the other occupants of a lifeboat, liberals were more likely to evoke a consequentialist justification for sacrificing the man if he was named Chip than Tyrone. Conservatives, on the other hand, although seeming to show something of the opposite tendency, revealed no statistical difference in their moral responses to the Chip and Tyrone scenarios. When asked to guess the race of the injured man, 79% of those in the Chip condition believed that Chip was White, and 64% of those in the Tyrone condition believed that Tyrone was Black. We suspect that the percentage assuming Tyrone was Black was suppressed by a general political correctness bias (people believing that it is wrong to guess someone’s race based solely on an ethnic sounding name), but nonetheless, the pattern of results is identical if only participants making the desired racial inferences are examined. Taken together then, the results of our Chip and Tyrone studies show good evidence of motivated recruitment of moral principles, at least among political liberals. But why were the effects limited to our liberal participants (in two different studies using two different moral dilemmas and two different study samples)? Our speculation is that egalitarian considerations, especially those relevant to race, play a greater role in influencing liberals’ judgments compared to conservatives. A recent meta-analysis by Jost et al. (2003) indicates that one of the fundamental differences between liberals and conservatives lies in conservative’s greater tolerance for social inequality. Research on the moral foundations underlying liberal and conservative ideologies also suggests that fairness concerns are particularly acute for political liberals (Haidt and Graham, 2007), and race is likely the key symbol evoking these concerns in contemporary America. As such, we believe that
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this particular situation simply held more motivational power for liberals than conservatives. Our Chip–Tyrone manipulation faced liberals with choices sure to alert their sensitivity to inequality, and they likely felt more negative affect when asked to sacrifice a Black life than a White life (especially a White person with a vaguely aristocratic-sounding name). Conservatives, on the other hand, not overtly prejudiced but simply lacking liberals’ highly accessible intuitions regarding inequality, tended to respond in a more evenhanded fashion (both affectively and cognitively). This pattern is consistent with a number of recent studies (e.g., Norton et al., 2004) showing that college student samples (which are often skewed liberal) tend to show what might be called a ‘‘political correctness’’ bias in racial issues. We were confident, however, that other moral dilemmas could be found that would be more likely to push conservative’s motivational buttons. We also wanted to examine our ideas in the context of a moral issue that held more real-life import than those involved in the fanciful world of trolleys and lifeboats. So, we chose to return to the military scenarios we had previously used to examine attributions of intention. In addition to involving questions about intentionality, collateral damage scenarios pit deontological and consequentialist ethics against one another in much the same way as the trolley or lifeboat dilemmas. Is the possibility (or certainty) of innocent civilians inadvertently being killed by a military operation justified by any greater good that might be achieved by military victory? This situation has clear real-world relevance, particularly in the context of U.S. involvement in military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and as we saw in our intentionality study, tends to evoke particularly strong moral intuitions among political conservatives. We thus presented a sample of undergraduates with our collateral damage scenarios, one involving American military and the other involving Iraqi insurgents, and asked them questions measuring their tendency to offer consequentialist principles as justification for civilian casualties. Perhaps not surprisingly, there was an overall tendency for conservatives to take a more permissive (i.e., consequentialist) view of collateral military damage than did liberals. In addition, however, conservatives endorsed more consequentialist justifications for American-caused casualties than Iraqi-caused casualties. Liberals, on the other hand, showed a nonsignificant trend in the opposite direction. Importantly, this study confirms that both liberals and conservatives engage in the motivated recruitment of moral principles. It also reveals, however, the moderated nature of the phenomenon. For motivated reasoning effects to occur, information must evoke significant affective stakes, and in the domain of moral reasoning, this requires an understanding of the intuitive infrastructure underlying moral judgment, and how moral intuitions may vary across individuals and groups.
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5.4. Is Reliance on Moral Principles Really Motivated? One of the constants of research on motivated reasoning is the challenge of ruling out cognitive counterexplanations (Ditto, in press; Tetlock and Levi, 1982). It is almost always possible to construct an amotivational and at least semirational explanation for putatively motivationally driven effects, usually based on a subtle informational confound buried in the motivational manipulation (Erdeyli, 1974; Miller and Ross, 1975). The current situation is no exception. In this case, it might be argued that the seeming inconsistency in our participants’ reliance on moral principles is not really inconsistency at all because our participants actually view the ‘‘extraneous’’ information we provided (about the race and nationality of individuals involved in the scenarios) as morally relevant. That is, perhaps our participants are not recruiting general normative principles via an implicit motivational process, but rather are simply naı¨ve particularists (Dancy, 1993, 2004) who are cognizant of and comfortable with the fact that they are using different moral rules to evaluate Black and White or American and Iraqi lives. There are three good reasons, however, to reject this interpretation of our results. First, our participants explicitly denied that race and nationally were relevant factors in their decisions. When asked at the end of our lifeboat study, 92% of participants in both the Chip and Tyrone conditions believed that their responses would not have been different if the target person was of a different race. In another study, we asked 238 students to evaluate the relevance of a host of factors in making life-or-death moral decisions. Participants overwhelmingly rated both race (87%) and nationality (87%) as morally irrelevant factors. Importantly, they did not hold the belief that all contextual factors were irrelevant to such life-of-death decisions. For example, 49% indicated that the health of the person was relevant and 62% thought the potential victim’s age was relevant. Participants’ political orientation was not reliably associated with their responses to any of these questions. Second, if our participants believed that differential reliance on consequentialist versus deontological principles based on race or nationality was defensible, then they should report differing responses across our experimental scenarios if given both scenarios together (just as they gave differing responses when this information was manipulated between subjects). If, however, participants believe that these factors hold no moral weight, and that the moral principles they are invoking are normatively invariant, then their responses to the first scenario they receive should be an effective predictor of their responses to a second. In fact, when we did just this kind of within-subjects version of the Chip and Tyrone study, the pattern of responses clearly showed this latter pattern. For their first scenario, half
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of the participants got the Chip version and half got the Tyrone version. The pattern seen in the original between-subjects study was replicated. Liberals gave more consequentialist justifications for sacrificing Chip than Tyrone, while conservatives showed little difference. When participants then received the alternative scenario to evaluate immediately afterward, their responses remained remarkably consistent (in fact, the correlation between the consequentialism index scores in the two scenarios was .98!). This effect produced the most striking pattern for liberals, as it led to a complete reversal of their initial bias. Whereas liberals were more consequentialist toward Chip than Tyrone in the first scenario, they were more consequentialistic toward Tyrone than Chip in the second. Participants seemed to perceive a strong constraint to remain consistent in their use of moral principles across the two scenarios, even when their initial choice of principle was evoked by motivational factors. This ‘‘carry-over’’ pattern again supports the motivational account of our effects, and suggests that the moral principles our participants were in fact using selectively, were ones that they believed were general in nature. Finally, a key weakness of all of the studies we have described so far is that their designs rely on a nonmanipulated factor (political orientation). While this is a perfectly reasonable way of examining individuals with differing moral preferences, a more ideal approach would be to manipulate individuals’ favored moral judgments and demonstrate that this manipulation affects their endorsement of moral principles. We sought to provide such a test by nonconsciously priming participants (Bargh and Chartrand, 1999) with words related to either patriotism (e.g., patriots, American, loyal) or multiculturalism (e.g., multicultural, diversity, equal) and then examining their reactions to our collateral damage scenarios. It was thought that these two primes mapped roughly onto intuitive reactions conservatives and liberals are likely to have when considering issues involving American troops and Iraqi insurgents. Consistent with this notion, we found these primes to produce a pattern of moral responses that closely matched those seen in our original collateral damage study. Participants exposed to patriotic words mimicked the pattern of judgments shown by political conservatives, endorsing a more consequentialist view of American-caused collateral damage than when the casualties were inflicted by Iraqi insurgents. Individuals exposed to multicultural words on the other hand, tended to show the opposite pattern, consistent with the judgments made by political liberals. The experimental nature of this evidence, and particularly its use of a nonconscious priming procedure, provide a final piece of evidence that reliance on normative moral principles can be driven by the kind of intuitive affective processes posited by a motivated reasoning account (Haidt, 2001).
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6. Motivated Moral Reasoning and Views of the Moral Thinker There is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral. Walter Lippmann from A Preface to Politics (1914)
We have now reviewed research suggesting a variety of ways that moral reasoning is subject to motivational influence. Several characteristics of moral judgment make it particularly hospitable to motivated reasoning processes, but perhaps the clearest conclusion that emerges from our review regards the essential similarities between motivated reasoning mechanisms in moral and nonmoral domains. In either case, when individuals have an affective stake in reaching a particular conclusion, it can affect both descriptive beliefs about the evidence for that conclusion (e.g., whether a poor test grade really reflects poor underlying ability or an act that brings about negative consequences really reflects a negative underlying intention) as well as the normative criteria individuals use to evaluate that evidence (e.g., whether a hiring decision should be based on educational attainment or prior work experience or a moral decision should be based on deontological or consequentialist logic). What our review suggests more than anything else, however, is that additional research is needed to fully explore the territory of motivated moral reasoning, including what may make it unique from or similar to motivated reasoning in its various other manifestations. More generally, thinking about moral judgment through the lens of motivated reasoning research has a number of implications for both classic and contemporary views of the moral thinker. The normative role of affect in moral thinking has been an issue of long-standing debate. Plato, Kant, and a host of other scholars have all viewed emotion as an irrational and essentially corrupting force on moral judgment, its influence something that is best eradicated or at least channeled toward virtuous goals by the powers of rationality and reason. Others, however, have challenged this view (mostly prominently Hume), arguing that our emotions reflect an inherent ‘‘moral sense,’’ and that reason without emotion would leave people with no moral compass by which to divine ethical behavior. Contemporary research on moral reasoning suggests a nuanced view that captures elements of both sides of this ancient debate. Considerable research now supports the Humean position that moral judgment is inherently affective (Greene et al., 2001; Haidt, 2001; Moll et al., 2003; Valdesolo and Desteno, 2006; Wheatley and Haidt, 2005). Moreover, the intuitive infrastructure guiding these affective reactions is thought by many to have a functional logic grounded in evolved group living (Haidt, 2007; Haidt and Graham, 2007; Hauser, 2006). And yet, we would argue that it is precisely
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this intuitive quality of moral judgment that leaves it open to potentially biasing motivational and affective influences. If moral reasoning is guided by affective intuitions, any factor that contributes to an individual’s initial affective response — feelings about the actor, self-serving motivations, incidental affect — could potentially perturb how that reasoning proceeds (see Valdesolo and Desteno, 2006 and Wheatley and Haidt, 2005 for examples). It is important to point out again, however, that any form of judgmental bias is subject to the constraints of plausibility. Although the normative vagaries of moral judgment may give affective influences a relatively wide berth within which to operate, Lippman’s assertion that there is no behavior so abhorrent that it cannot be recast as moral would seem an overstatement, or at least limited to cases of clinical psychopathy. There are likely certain behaviors that provoke in us such a strong visceral reaction (e.g., compunction or revulsion) that they simply cannot be rationalized as moral without offending our emotional sensibilities. Thus, the interesting thing about moral reasoning is that affect may play an important role both in promoting bias and restraining it. Research on motivated moral reasoning also has implications for recent work equating deontological judgment with affective processing and consequentialist judgment with more systematic reasoning (Greene, 2007; Greene et al., 2004). Although there is certainly some insight to this observation, and some support for it from functional brain imaging studies (Greene et al., 2001, 2004), it almost as certainly underestimates the complexity of affective influences on moral reasoning (Bartels, 2008). Our work, for example, shows that motivational factors can lead people toward reliance on either consequentialist or deontological principles depending on whether sacrificing innocent lives is consistent or inconsistent with an individual’s ideologically based preferences. Research on moral reasoning will clearly benefit as more attention is directed toward situating it within the large body of work in social psychology documenting the multifaceted roles of affect, mood, motivation, and emotion on judgment. A related limitation of current moral judgment research is a tendency to view deontological and consequentialist reasoning as qualitatively different. Our research, and that of others represented in this volume, increasingly suggests that rather than representing two distinctly different modes of reasoning, deontology and consequentialism reflect competing intuitions deriving from the belief that both acts and their consequences have moral import. The world is not populated with Immanuel Kants or Peter Singers, individuals who through sheer dint of will and intellect are able to advocate unforgivingly-consistent deontological or consequentialist moral systems. For most of us, intuition tells us that in some cases the ends do not justify the means, but in other cases they do. Thus, it would seem more apt to characterize people as having at their disposal a ‘‘moral toolbox’’ that can
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be flexibly drawn upon depending on which moral intuitions are ‘‘primed’’ by any number of motivational or cognitive (e.g., attentional) factors. Finally, another point we hoped to highlight in this review concerns the essentially social nature of moral thinking. This point, of course, has been made quite eloquently by others (e.g., Haidt, 2001), but the research reviewed here reminds us that central to moral judgments are assessments of people’s motives, thoughts, and intentions. Actions only become fully eligible for moral evaluation to the extent that an individual or group is perceived to have intentionally enacted them with reasonable knowledge of their good or bad consequences — that is, when the act can be fully attributed to the knowing desires of a social agent. A motivated reasoning perspective also highlights the fact that moral judgments can be affected by a host of social factors — our feelings about other people, the social groups to which we and other’s belong, etc. As psychological researchers increasingly utilize the complex puzzle cases drawn from normative ethics (sometimes referred to as ‘‘trolleyology’’), it is important to remember that moral judgment is more than just an abstract reasoning task. It is a deeply social enterprise, subject to all the complexities, passions, and pressures that characterize human life across a wide variety of domains. At the end of the day, most moral judgments are not based on written descriptions of the implausible plights of ‘‘Jones’’ and ‘‘Smith,’’ but rather are made about friends, enemies, criminals, and politicians — people about whom we cannot help but feel strongly.
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In the Mind of the Perceiver: Psychological Implications of Moral Conviction Christopher W. Bauman and Linda J. Skitka Contents 1. Introduction 2. What Is Moral Conviction? 2.1. Psychological Characteristics Associated with Moral Conviction 2.2. Examples of Moral Conviction 3. How Does Research on Moral Conviction and Moral Judgment Differ? 3.1. Defining Moral Contexts 3.2. Interpreting Counter-normative Responses 3.3. Expectations about Principle-driven Cross-situational Coherence 3.4. Focal Situations 4. The Consequences of Moral Conviction on Choice and Action 5. Implications References
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Abstract Moral conviction is a subjective assessment that one’s attitude about a specific issue or situation is associated with one’s core moral beliefs and fundamental sense of right or wrong. A growing body of research demonstrates that level of moral conviction reliably predicts changes in the way people think, feel, and act in situations, irrespective of whether that situation fits normative definitions of morality. Therefore, it is important to measure whether and how much individuals perceive a given situation to be moral rather than assert that a situation is moral based on philosophical criteria. This chapter compares and contrasts moral conviction and moral judgment research and argues that both approaches are necessary to develop a complete science of morality.
Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Volume 50 ISSN 0079-7421, DOI: 10.1016/S0079-7421(08)00411-8
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1. Introduction Over the last decade there has been a strong resurgence of academic interest in morality. Researchers from a variety of disciplines now share an area of inquiry that philosophers and developmental psychologists dominated for a long time. This new diversity of interest in the science of morality is important because scholars’ backgrounds affect both the way they formulate questions and what information they perceive to be relevant to them (Kuhn, 1962). Therefore, interdisciplinary dialogue can help identify issues that previously were either shrouded by any one set of assumptions or perceived to be untestable due to limitations of the methods any one discipline tends to use. In the case of morality, work completed over the last several years has shed new empirical light on enduring questions and has unearthed a host of fresh avenues to explore. For example, recent theoretical and methodological advances have helped reinvigorate debates over the roles of reason and emotion (e.g., Haidt, 2001; Greene et al., 2001) and how people weigh means and ends (e.g., Bartels, 2008; Cushman et al., 2006; Skitka and Houston, 2001) when making moral decisions. Perhaps most important, researchers have begun to develop sophisticated theoretical approaches to morality that integrate previously disparate positions on these longstanding debates and explain how they can be incorporated into a single framework (e.g., Krebs, 2008; Moll et al., 2005; Monin et al., 2007). Moral judgment, however, represents only one area within the broader field of morality research that could benefit from the cross-pollination of ideas. Psychological questions about morality address ‘‘the mental states and processes associated with human classification of good/bad’’ (Shweder, 2002, p. 6). Research on moral judgment has significantly advanced knowledge about the processes that drive decisions about right and wrong. Much less is known, however, about the mental states that accompany recognition that a particular action has moral significance. The purpose of this chapter is to review a distinct approach to examining moral phenomena that represents a considerable departure from the moral judgment tradition. Rather than attempting to determine how people decide whether something is right or wrong, our program of research seeks to identify the antecedents and consequences of individuals’ perceptions that something has moral implications. Building on social psychological research on attitudes, we wish to better understand the cognitive, affective, and behavioral tendencies associated with moral conviction. The remainder of the chapter is divided into three major sections. In Section 2, we define what we mean by moral conviction and provide a brief overview of research that has informed our view of the construct. In Section 3, we compare and contrast moral conviction research with
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trends in moral judgment research by discussing four key differences between the approaches. Finally, in Section 4, we present some of our recent research that addresses the function of moral conviction.
2. What Is Moral Conviction? Our research centers on the psychological experience of moral conviction, that is, the subjective belief that something is fundamentally right or wrong. People perceive the attitudes they hold with strong moral conviction to be sui generis, or unique, special, and in a class of their own (Skitka et al., 2005; see also Boyd, 1988; Moore, 1903; Sturgeon, 1985). In this sense, the moral conviction approach is consistent with the domain theory of social cognitive development, which postulates that people act and reason differently as a function of whether a given situation is personal, conventional, or moral (e.g., Nucci, 2001; Turiel, 1983). According to the theory, personal preferences are subject to individual discretion and are not socially regulated. For example, Donald Trump and Don King are entitled to choose their hairstyle, regardless of what anyone else might think of their choices. Conventions include norms and cultural standards that a social group generally endorses. Conventions apply to group members, but variability across groups is tolerated. For example, people in Japan, Great Britain, and several former British colonies drive on the left side of the road, whereas most of the rest of the world drives on the right. Although it is important to abide by these norms while driving in a particular country, the standard itself is arbitrary, and variability across cultures is well-tolerated. Morals, in contrast, consist of standards that people believe everyone ought to both endorse and obey. Morals represent basic rules of interpersonal conduct, or beliefs that there are some things that people just should not do to each other. For example, people should not physically harm another individual without extreme provocation. In sum, people apply different social rules to different types of situations, and morals represent an exclusive set that is the most psychologically imperative. Although the moral conviction approach shares the view that people parse their social world into segments that include different sets of rules and consequences, they differ in regard to what defines morality. According to Turiel (1983), morality represents ideas about human welfare, justice, and rights. The moral conviction approach refuses to commit a priori to a theoretical definition of morality beyond suggesting that people can recognize a moral sentiment or conviction when they experience one. Whether this recognition always is associated with conceptions of human welfare, justice, and rights is open to empirical question and test. For example, it is likely that people’s recognition that something is a moral conviction not
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only comprises concerns about harm and fairness, but also duty, purity, and potentially other sources as well (e.g., Haidt and Graham, 2007; Shweder et al., 1997). Moreover, the boundaries of moral conviction may extend beyond concerns about human welfare and also encompass concerns about the environment, animals, and so on (e.g., Clayton and Opotow, 1994). Irrespective of what factors elicit moral conviction, however, people perceive their morals to apply more universally than conventions or preferences, and they are likely to be intolerant of those who do not share their moral convictions (Bauman, 2006; Skitka et al., 2005; see also Gwirth, 1978; Hare, 1981; Kant, 1959/1785). In summary, one way to study morality is to take an empirical approach to defining what constitutes the moral realm. Although we have a number of hypotheses about what leads people to recognize that a given attitude is connected to their sense of morality, these hypotheses are open to empirical investigation.
2.1. Psychological Characteristics Associated with Moral Conviction The moral conviction approach posits that people confronted with moral issues typically expect that the critical features of the situation (i.e., those that are salient in their own minds) are obvious and support only one possible interpretation. In other words, people experience morals as if they were readily observable, objective properties of situations, or as facts about the world (Skitka et al., 2005; see also Goodwin and Darley, 2008). Unlike facts, however, morals carry prescriptive force. Reactions to facts typically are static, but moral judgments both motivate and justify consequent behaviors (a Humean paradox; Gwirth, 1978; Mackie, 1977; Smith, 1994). Moreover, the moral conviction approach proposes that emotions play a prominent role in how people conceptualize and react to moral stimuli. Morals are inherently linked to strong emotions that both guide cognitive processing and prompt action (Haidt, 2001, 2003; Kohlberg, 1984; Nucci, 2001; Shweder, 2002). Nonmoral issues may be associated with affect, but the magnitude (if not also the type) of affect that accompanies moral and nonmoral judgments differs (e.g., Arsenio, 1988; Arsenio and Lover, 1995). For example, consider someone who strongly prefers Apple over Microsoft operating systems and has a strong moral conviction that child labor is wrong. This person’s reaction to witnessing someone else boot Windows Vista is likely to be mild in comparison to the reaction to even the thought of sweatshops. An essential feature of the moral conviction approach that differentiates it from many other approaches to studying morality is that it classifies stimuli as moral or nonmoral as a function of individuals’ perceptions of situations rather than according to characteristics of the situations or stimuli
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themselves. Moral conviction is a psychological state that resides in the mind of perceivers. The amount of moral conviction an individual experiences in a given situation is a joint function of the person and the situation. That is, one situation may be more or less likely than other situations to trigger moral conviction across individuals, but whether a specific person experiences moral conviction in a given situation depends not only on aspects of the situation, but also the person’s disposition, encoding tendencies, competencies, and prior experiences, among other things (cf. Bandura, 1986; Cervone, 2004; Mischel, 1973). In short, people’s psychological reality does not necessarily correspond to theoretical definitions of morality that classify situations as moral or nonmoral1. Empirical investigations of moral conviction rely on one important assumption; they assume that people are able to identify and accurately report the extent to which they associate a given action or belief with their personal conceptualization of morality. That is, when it comes to their own moral sentiments, people know when they are activated. For example, issues such as premarital sex, drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or the Terry Schiavo case2 may or may not strike a chord with individuals’ personal moral belief systems. However, one can directly assess the extent that a given issue engages moral conviction and then use those responses to classify whether situations are or are not moral for a specific individual. Although there are reasons to be skeptical about whether people are able to introspect and consciously access why they have a particular moral conviction (Haidt, 2001; Hauser et al., 2007), people seem quite capable of identifying whether they perceive something to have moral implications. Consistent with this idea, moral conviction research routinely reveals differences in the way that people think about and act toward others as a function of how much they associate a given stimulus with their moral beliefs (for a review see Skitka et al., 2008). In short, variability in self-assessments of moral convictions predicts people’s subsequent judgment and behavior.
2.2. Examples of Moral Conviction To illustrate the moral conviction approach, consider the ongoing debate over whether abortion should be legal in the United States. We have studied people’s attitudes about abortion extensively, and our data always include considerable variability in the extent to which people associate their 1
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This statement is not intended to represent our stance on metaethical issues (e.g., moral realism, cognitivism, and nativism). We simply wish to explain why the moral conviction approach uses this particular empirical strategy. Terry Schiavo was a Florida woman with extensive brain damage and a diagnosis of persistent vegetative state. Her parents and husband disagreed over whether she would have wanted to continue to live supported by medical devices, including a feeding tube. After a protracted legal battle, her husband won the right to remove the feeding tube and let her die.
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position on abortion with their own moral beliefs and convictions (e.g., Bauman, 2006; Bauman and Skitka, in press; Mullen and Skitka, 2006; Skitka, 2002; Skitka et al., 2005). Despite the fact that activists and pundits can vividly articulate ways in which their view on abortion constitutes a moral imperative, the issue does not uniformly engage moral conviction in everyone. Given this empirical reality, the moral conviction approach does not uniformly classify abortion as a moral issue. Instead, it first establishes who does and who does not perceive it to be a moral issue and then uses these subjective assessments of moral conviction to predict subsequent perceptions, choices, and behavior. To date, we have examined people’s attitudes about many contemporary issues, including abortion, capital punishment, legalization of marijuana, gay marriage, physician assisted suicide, gun control, immigration, the War in Iraq, building new nuclear power plants, and others. Although each of these topics could be and often is labeled a ‘‘moral issue,’’ we find a full range of responses when we ask individuals to indicate the extent to which their attitude about each of them is rooted in their personal sense of morality. Moreover, stronger moral conviction is associated with a greater likelihood of voting, increased physical distance between one’s self and attitudinally dissimilar others, difficulty resolving conflict, and a host of other effects (see Skitka et al., 2008). We have examined issues on which people with positions on either side of the issue could potentially moralize, and we have yet to observe instances when the consequences of moral conviction change across positions on an issue. That is, effects are driven by whether others’ actions or expressed attitudes are consistent or inconsistent with the perceiver’s position, but the position itself (i.e., which side of the issue the individual advocates) is relatively unimportant (e.g., Bauman, 2006; Bauman and Skitka, in press; Mullen and Skitka, 2006; Skitka et al., 2005). In the case of abortion, for example, people with morally motivated prolife and prochoice attitudes focus on different aspects of the issue and invoke different moral principles (Scott, 1989). Prolife advocates tend to focus on the unborn fetus and cite the sanctity of life, whereas prochoice advocates tend to focus on the pregnant woman and cite individuals’ rights to exert control their own bodies. Although we sometimes find differences in the frequency of strong moral conviction as a function of issue valence (e.g., how many people are prochoice or prolife; Bauman and Skitka, 2005), people with moral conviction respond similarly to threats to their beliefs, irrespective of which position they hold on a given issue (e.g., both prochoice and prolife people pull away from those who disagree with them; Bauman, 2006; Skitka et al., 2005). In short, the similarity of how moral conviction functions across situations and across positions within situations suggests strongly that moral conviction is a coherent phenomenon rather than a hodgepodge of issue-specific reactions.
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In summary, the moral conviction approach seeks to understand the psychological states that accompany the subjective recognition that something has moral implications. It also is designed to explore whether these subjective assessments explain variance in relevant judgments, feelings, and behavior, such as whether people vote in presidential elections or shun individuals who disagree with them (e.g., Skitka and Bauman, 2008; Skitka et al., 2005). Although many situations theoretically could trigger moral conviction in individuals, people do not relentlessly police the moral perimeter and react to every potentially moral stimulus. Instead, they attend to a select subset of instances that spark associations between aspects of the situation and their moral beliefs. Therefore, identifying when people perceive a situation to have moral implications is a cornerstone of the approach. In Section 4, we review the conclusions about moral conviction that our research supports. Before doing so, however, we will attempt to further clarify our approach by focusing on major differences that exist between the way that we examine moral conviction and how researchers often examine moral judgment.
3. How Does Research on Moral Conviction and Moral Judgment Differ? Our conceptualization of moral conviction differs considerably from how many researchers tend to think about and study moral judgment. To a large extent, these differences reflect the fact that the moral conviction and judgment approaches are designed to address different research questions. The moral judgment approach is designed to examine how people tend to respond in normatively moral situations (i.e., situations that meet philosophical definitions of morality) in an effort to reveal essential features of morality. In contrast, the moral conviction approach is designed to examine psychological phenomena that are associated with the subjective recognition of moral relevance. Given that many readers of this volume are likely to be familiar with the moral judgment tradition, and that a major goal of this volume is to build bridges across research traditions, we believe it is useful to make direct comparisons between the two approaches. Of course, both approaches have benefits and liabilities, and we want to state explicitly that we believe that there is much to be learned by studying moral judgment. That said, we will highlight what we believe to be the merits of the moral conviction approach with the hope that doing so will help integrate the findings from our approach and the moral judgment tradition, broaden the focus of morality research, and ultimately build a more complete understanding of morality.
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Moral judgment and moral conviction research differ in at least four important ways, including (a) who defines whether a situation or decision is moral — the participant or the theorist, (b) how counter-normative responses are interpreted, (c) the degree to which the approaches expect people to exhibit principle-consistent choices across situations, and (d) the types of situations each approach tends to examine. Broader treatment of each of these issues is provided below.
3.1. Defining Moral Contexts One major difference between the moral judgment and moral conviction approaches is who determines whether a given set of stimuli represent moral situations. When examining moral judgment, researchers typically create a situation that includes criteria that theoretically should prompt people to perceive the situation to involve a moral choice. In other words, moral judgment researchers typically assert that the situations they study are moral. In contrast, the moral conviction approach assumes that there is considerable variability in the extent to which people are likely to associate any specific situation with their personal moral worldview; unless one knows whether a given situation arouses moral sentiments, one does not really know whether the individual’s response is motivated by morality or some other concern (e.g., material self-interest, social pressures). That is, the moral conviction approach is particularly sensitive to the notion that a given situation is likely to engage moral processing in some people but not others, irrespective of whether it meets a philosophical standard. To help parse the moral from the nonmoral, moral conviction research capitalizes on people’s apparent ability to recognize whether they perceive their morals to be at stake in specific situations. To illustrate the difference in how moral judgment and moral conviction researchers tend to identify morality, consider the large body of work that has investigated trolley problems (e.g., Foot, 1967; Thomson, 1985). Many versions of the trolley problem have been created and examined, but the original version involved a runaway tram and a decision of whether to direct the tram onto one track that had five workers or another that had one worker on it; the tram would kill anyone working on the track it went down (Foot, 1967). Trolley problems constitute moral dilemmas according to philosophical definitions of morality because they force people to decide whom the trolley will harm (e.g., Shweder et al., 1997; Turiel, 1983). Moreover, the trolley problem is designed to force trade offs between utilitarian (i.e., the right choice minimizes the amount of harm; Bentham, 2007/1789; Mill, 2002/1863) and deontic reasoning (i.e., one should not intentionally cause harm to an innocent person; Kant, 1959/1785), and therefore also put in conflict two well-known normative theories of morality. Although central features of trolley problems theoretically are associated with morality, not everyone perceives the situation to involve a
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moral decision. In a recent study that asked participants to report the extent to which their choice in the ‘‘bystander at the switch’’ trolley problem was related to their core moral beliefs and convictions, only slightly more than half (58 per cent) responded above the midpoint of the scale (Bauman, 2008). Moreover, responses varied across the full range of the scale (i.e., from 1 not at all to 5 very much; M ¼ 3.58, SD ¼ 1.14). Although these data clearly demonstrate that decisions about trolley problems represent moral judgments for many or even most people, it is equally clear that there is considerable variability in the extent that people perceive the dilemma to be a situation that involves a moral choice. When viewed through the lens of moral conviction research, the standard approach to analyzing responses to moral dilemmas, such as trolley problems, leaves an important question unanswered. How often do people confronted with moral dilemmas truly weigh the moral implications of each potential choice alternative? Moral judgment researchers often manipulate aspects of scenarios to identify what flips the proportion of responses from one choice to another; they examine factors that trigger different types of cognitive or affective processes, which in turn shape judgments. However, it is relatively unusual for researchers interested in moral judgment to assess directly whether people believe that they are making moral choices (cf. Baron and Spranca, 1997; Ritov and Baron, 1999). If people do not associate their choice with their moral beliefs, then are they really exhibiting moral judgment? As we will describe in Section 4, people think about and respond to situations differently as a function of the extent that they personally experience moral conviction about them.
3.2. Interpreting Counter-normative Responses Another major difference between the moral judgment and moral conviction approaches is whether and how each uses normative theories to frame discussions of results. Moral judgment theory and research tends to focus on normative claims, whereas the moral conviction approach is descriptive and leaves normative implications more open for interpretation. Moral judgment research often operates from the perspective of a normative theory (e.g., utilitarianism). In most cases, moral judgment researchers use the normative theory as a comparative standard to which they compare the choices people make. In these cases, the normative theory frames the discussion, but researchers do not make their own value judgment on the appropriateness of people’s choices. However, there are other instances when some researchers use normative theories in a prescriptive way and suggest that those who make counter-normative choices (e.g., those who chose not to push a fat man off a footbridge to stop a trolley from killing five workers on the tracks) are somehow deficient or ‘‘inappropriate’’ (e.g., Greene, 2007; Valdesolo and DeSteno, 2006). Curiously, people who make counter-normative trolley
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problem choices nonetheless often strongly associate their choice with their moral beliefs (Bauman, 2008). When asked, people were very likely to report very strong moral conviction about their choice in the bystander at the switch trolley problem when they chose not to divert the trolley to the track with one rather than five workers on it. Therefore, to categorize and to dismiss these people as having gotten it morally ‘‘wrong’’ seems to ignore a potentially important phenomenon, given that they believe their choice was moral. That is, these atypical respondents present a puzzle. Why do some people perceive it to be morally impermissible to divert the train to the track with one rather than five people on it whereas others see it as a moral imperative to do so? Are the psychological consequences of having moral conviction about one choice or another different or the same? Taking a moral conviction approach to answer these questions would allow one to more directly investigate the psychology of what makes some choices moral and others not. The moral conviction approach does not attempt to make normative claims about which standard of morality people ought to use in a given situation. Instead, it maintains that multiple moral standards could be justified in a given situations. Consider, for example, Gilligan’s (1982) famous critique of Kohlberg’s (1976, 1984) cognitive developmental theory of morality. Gilligan argued that individual rights and justice are not necessarily the standards that everyone seeks to optimize. Instead, many people focus on relationship maintenance, care, and connectedness, and these standards are as legitimate as justice. Similarly, others have demonstrated that variability exists in how people from different groups are likely to access and apply various moral standards across situations (e.g., Haidt and Graham, 2007; Shweder et al., 1997). The question of whether different standards that could be applied to the same situation gets at the heart of what our moral conviction approach seeks to examine. Irrespective of the answer, it is clear that there is as much to be learned about morality from respondents who make atypical choices that they believe to be consistent with their personal conceptions of morality as there is to be learned from those whose choices are more typical. Taken together, the moral judgment and moral conviction approaches can complement each other by providing a more complete understanding of moral phenomena. Moral judgment research can help explain why people typically choose one course of action over another in a situation that is normatively moral, whereas moral conviction research can help identify the psychological consequences of perceiving a situation to have moral implications.
3.3. Expectations about Principle-driven Cross-situational Coherence The moral judgment and moral conviction approaches also differ in the extent to which they expect people to use top-down strategies to make moral decisions. As mentioned above, moral judgment research tends to
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operate from the perspective of a normative theory, and results often are discussed in terms of whether people exhibit rule-based consistency across situations. Although few moral judgment researchers are likely to be surprised that they find cross-situational variability, they nonetheless emphasize deviations from the normative theory’s predictions, and some even label instances of switching standards as ‘‘bias.’’ In short, moral judgment research often implicitly suggests that to be optimally moral, people should apply a single standard consistently across situations. Expecting people’s aggregated moral choices to represent a coherent system of beliefs that directly map onto a given normative definition of morality is a straw man hypothesis that portrays people in an unnecessarily negative light. A strong parallel exists between the variability in how people apply moral principles such as utilitarianism and research that reveals considerable inconsistency in how people apply values (e.g., Rohan, 2000; Rokeach, 1973; Schwartz, 1992). Moral principles and values represent abstract propositions or decision criteria that are selectively applied to specific situations. Although, for example, operationalizing utilitarianism seems very straightforward, there are several decisions one must make to apply utilitarian principles to a specific situation. One must determine what constitutes ‘‘the good’’ one is seeking to maximize, and one also must identify who is included in the population of those who stand to benefit from one’s decision. Similarly, values have a very broad focus and require that people apply them to specific contexts. The process by which people operationalize their values can generate considerable variability in the specific positions people take on issues, despite the fact that the same people might equally endorse a given value. For example, many people are likely to list the sanctity of human life as one of their core values. This single value, however, may lead two people to take opposing positions on specific issues, such as capital punishment. For some, murder represents the ultimate violation of this value, which in turn demands an equally severe punishment. For others, taking a human life is wrong, irrespective of whether a person has committed murder. Differences in the extent to which people endorse the sanctity of life are unlikely to capture specific positions on the death penalty. Moreover, there are many instances in which people could potentially apply a given value to one issue but not another. For example, a person could endorse the sanctity of life and experience moral conviction about abortion but not physician assisted suicide. Although one could potentially construe both as expressions of the same value, people do not always have strong opinions on issues presumed to be ideologically significant, nor do they tend to have highly integrated belief systems (Converse, 1964). The inherent ambiguity associated with abstract moral principles or values makes it difficult to use these constructs to identify factors that remain consistent across experiences with morality. Given that the goal of the moral
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conviction approach is to describe the psychological profile that accompanies the subjective belief that something has moral implications, it defines moral convictions as object-specific attitudes rather than as abstract values (Skitka et al., 2005). Although many discussions of morality — perhaps especially those in the media — center on underlying values (see Skitka and Bauman, 2008), being specific about the target of moral beliefs is critical for understanding what is similar across moral situations. Moreover, moral judgment research that focuses primarily on whether choices conform to abstract principles may obscure the fact that relatively little is known about the psychological mechanisms that filter people’s perceptions and elicit moral conviction. Abstract principles are not sufficient as psychological mechanisms, but they contribute to a sense that we understand what is going on when people are making choices. Although principles certainly are useful tools that researchers can use to efficiently describe patterns of choices people (in aggregate) make, they cannot explain why people (as individuals) abruptly abandon one standard and employ another based on relatively small changes in the scenario. More research needs to examine how aspects of situations direct people’s attention and shift their evaluative focus (e.g., Bartels, 2008), and how people’s attitudes direct their attention and shift which aspects of a situation they process (e.g., Baumeister and Newman, 1994; Ditto and Lopez, 1992; Kunda, 1990). In sum, people do not appear to apply general principles in uniform ways across situations. Like values, principles are too abstract to accurately predict what specific positions people are likely to take or whether they are even likely to associate a given issue with their moral beliefs. Therefore, the moral conviction approach centers on selective, concrete, and object-specific expressions of commitments to a core moral value or principle (Skitka et al., 2005). This definition of moral conviction provides the precision required to identify exactly how moral motivation differs from other motives, but remains agnostic about whether consistency itself ought to be a goal people seek when expressing their moral beliefs or sentiments.
3.4. Focal Situations Another way that moral conviction and moral judgment research differ is in the type of situation that they tend to examine. Moral judgment research often focuses on moral dilemmas. Moral dilemmas, or ethical paradoxes, are instances when well-articulated ethical positions come in conflict and potentially break down. Perhaps the most famous examples of moral dilemmas and their potential use in research are those that Kohlberg created and used to assess moral development (e.g., Colby and Kohlberg, 1987; Kohlberg, 1963). Kohlberg believed that the rationale people provide for their choices in moral dilemmas accurately reflects their understanding of deeper philosophical standards of what is right. That is, Kohlberg thought
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that people’s responses are diagnostic of a person’s capacity to understand morality (as he defined it), and he sought to document changes in moral reasoning over the course of a child’s development. Although focused more on the choice itself rather than accompanying explanations, much moral judgment research also has examined moral dilemmas. Although moral dilemmas are both intrinsically fascinating and practical for research, they may represent a special subset of moral situations, which potentially limits the extent that the results from studies of moral dilemmas generalize. One way in which moral dilemmas differ from many other moral choices people confront is that, by definition, moral dilemmas pit two moral standards against each other. For example, Kohlberg’s famous Heinz dilemma forces people to choose between a person’s duty to save his spouse and prohibitions against stealing. Similarly, trolley dilemmas include conflict between utilitarian and deontological concerns. In short, moral dilemmas involve choices of ‘‘wrong-versus-wrong’’ but many other moral decisions involve choice of ‘‘right-versus-wrong’’ or ‘‘right-versus-right’’ (Kidder, 1995). Situations that involve ‘‘wrong-versus-wrong’’ and ‘‘right-versus-wrong’’ alternatives seem to have different psychological consequences. For example, Tetlock et al. (2000) investigated people’s reactions to decisions hospital administrators made in difficult situations. In one condition, participants read that the administrator needed to chose between saving the hospital $1,000,000 and providing a child with an organ transplant. In another condition, participants read that the administrator needed to chose between two children who both desperately needed the same organ that recently had become available for transplant. People expressed the most moral outrage and wanted to punish most severely administrators who chose to save the hospital money over the life of the child, despite the fact that the money saved was likely to improve the hospital and ultimately allow it to provide better care (i.e., save lives) in the long run. People seem to have framed the situation as a choice of ‘‘right-versus-wrong’’ and were intolerant of those who made the ‘‘wrong’’ choice. In contrast, people were relatively tolerant of administrators who had chosen the life of one child over another, irrespective of which child they elected to save. However, people also clearly were less comfortable with either choice in the latter case than they were when the administrator chose to prioritize the child’s life over $1,000,000. In sum, people perceive choices between competing moral claims to be upsetting but manageable; either outcome potentially could be tolerated (Tetlock, 2003; Tetlock et al., 2000). In other situations that include a clear ‘‘right-versuswrong’’ choice, people react very strongly to choices with which they do not agree, and they tend to vilify the decision maker who makes the ‘‘wrong’’ choice. Therefore, perhaps the major difference between moral dilemmas and other moral choices is that people confronted with moral dilemmas are likely to be able to recognize and understand why others might choose alternative responses, whereas other moral choices are associated with disidentification
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and rejection of others who choose responses dissimilar to one’s own (Bauman, 2006). A second unusual quality of moral dilemmas is that they seem especially likely to elicit calm examination and careful thought. People seem to try to rationally weigh the pros and cons associated with the choices in a moral dilemma. In contrast, other moral choices tend to be heavily laden with emotions (e.g., Haidt, 2003; Mullen and Skitka, 2006). People seem to approach moral dilemmas in the same way that they approached ‘‘story problems’’ in their elementary school math workbook. This comparison is not meant to trivialize moral dilemmas. Rather, it is intended to illustrate the calm and highly rational manner that people tend to exhibit as they ponder which choice to make. In our experience, classroom discussions of moral dilemmas always stay perfectly civil, with people treating counternormative respondents with curiosity more than repulsion. No one lambasts or ostracizes those who advocate pushing a fat man off the footbridge to save five workers from a runaway trolley, even if that is not what they would choose to do in that situation. In contrast, students cringe when others advocate a decision to continue to produce a lucrative but potentially harmful product, shake their heads when talking about accounting scandals, and become enraged during discussions of discrimination in the workplace. The absence of emotion people exhibit while making and discussing their choices in moral dilemmas compared to other moral situations suggests that moral dilemmas capture a different — yet certainly important — phenomenon than do many other moral choices. In contrast to the moral judgment focus on dilemmas, moral conviction research often has focused on moral controversies. According to theories of moral politics (e.g., Mooney, 2001), all it takes to make something a moral controversy is for one side to frame their position in moral terms. However, there are many contemporary issues about which people on both sides perceive their positions to be morally obligatory. Moral controversies differ from moral dilemmas in a number of ways. For example, moral controversies are intrinsically more difficult to manage. It is one thing to resolve conflict over competing preferences, but it is something else to resolve conflict when one (or more) factions frame the issue in terms of a moral imperative (e.g., Skitka et al., 2005, Study 4). To support alternatives or possible compromises to what one side sees as ‘‘right,’’ ‘‘moral,’’ and ‘‘good’’ is to be absolutely ‘‘wrong’’ or ‘‘immoral,’’ if not evil (e.g., Black, 1994; Bowers, 1984; Meier, 1994; Skitka et al., 2005; Tetlock et al., 2000). That is, people morally invested in social controversies see these issues as questions of ‘‘right-versus-wrong’’ rather than as ‘‘wrong-versus-wrong,’’ and people are likely to dismiss arguments made by the other side based on the belief that opponents fundamentally are missing the point. Moreover, people without a moral stake in a given decision may well recognize that they can get embroiled in moral controversies, and consequently choose
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to tread very carefully around these issues and those who are morally committed to them. In summary, moral dilemmas and moral controversies represent different subsets of moral situations. Studying each is likely to contribute to our understanding of moral phenomena, and a general theory of morality will need to be able to explain both types of situations, as well as other more common moral choices, such as whether to lie, cheat, or steal to promote self-interest. It is important to point out, however, that the moral conviction approach can be used to examine any situation, including dilemmas; its use is not limited to contemporary social controversies. That said, research has yet to consider how and why some people do not personally feel a moral connection to either side of a controversy or a dilemma that is moral for most other people. The absence of moral conviction in normatively moral situations is not well-understood. So far, we have attempted to describe why we believe our research on moral conviction represents a unique approach to studying moral phenomena. To help make our case, we discussed four ways in which moral judgment and moral conviction research differ and identified the value added by our approach. Nevertheless, we hope we have made clear that we believe that the two approaches are complementary rather than competing models for research. Moral judgment and moral conviction research ask different questions, and we hope this chapter helps build bridges and ultimately leads to an integrated theory of morality. In the final section of this chapter, we will summarize the results of several studies that we and others have conducted to better understand the psychology associated with the subjective belief that an attitude is associated with one’s own moral beliefs and convictions.
4. The Consequences of Moral Conviction on Choice and Action From an intuitive perspective, it seems obvious that people should act based on their preferences. However, the lack of attitude–behavior correspondence is a well-known conundrum across fields of social science research. One of the longest standing challenges for attitude theory and research has been the generally weak association between attitudes and attitude–relevant behavior. Wicker’s (1969) classic review of the attitude literature, for example, indicated that typical correlations between attitudes and overt attitude–relevant behavior ‘‘are rarely above .30, and often are near zero’’ (p. 75). Although researchers have identified many ways to assess attitude or preference strength that can boost the empirical association between attitudes and behavior (see Fabrigar et al., 2005; Petty and
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Krosnick, 1995), it may be important to consider the effect of attitude content (e.g., moral vs. nonmoral) on the extent that attitudes drive choice and prompt action. When attitudes reflect nonmoral preferences — even very strong preferences — they might easily be overwhelmed by other factors that prevent people from translating those preferences into action. In contrast, the anticipated public and private negative consequences (e.g., sanctioning, shunning, guilt, regret, and shame) of failing to do something one ‘‘ought’’ to do may be much more severe than failing to do something one would ‘‘prefer.’’ Similarly, the anticipated public and private positive consequences (e.g., praise, reward, pride, satisfaction, and elevation) of standing up for what is ‘‘right’’ may be much more uplifting than the satisfaction of doing something one would ‘‘prefer.’’ We have conducted several studies that have tested and found support for the idea that measuring the degree to which people’s attitudes or preferences are rooted in moral conviction increases one’s ability to predict choices and behaviors (for a recent review see Skitka et al., 2008). For example, we conducted two studies to predict voting and voting intentions in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections (Skitka and Bauman, 2008). The first study tested hypotheses with a national survey immediately following the 2000 election3. We measured whether participants voted and for whom (and among those who did not vote, which candidate they preferred to win the election), strength of candidate preferences, and the extent to which their candidate preferences were moral convictions. Other measures included participants’ political party identification and strength of political party identification. Results indicated that strength of moral conviction explained significant unique variance in voting behavior, even when controlling for candidate and party preferences, as well as strength of those preferences. That is, people who reported higher levels of moral conviction about their preferred candidate were more likely to have gone to the polls to vote, all else being equal. Moreover, moral conviction was an equally strong motivator of voting behavior for both those on the political left and the political right (see Figure 1). Although the 2000 election results were consistent with our moral conviction hypothesis, the study measured moral conviction about the candidates themselves rather than about salient political issues. Therefore, one might question whether issue-based moral conviction functions in similar way. Moreover, people were asked to report their moral conviction 3
The outcome of the 2000 presidential election hung in abeyance between November 7, 2000 and December 12, 2000 because the election was too close to call in Florida. The Florida State Constitution required a recount, but there was considerable ambiguity about how it should proceed, that is, whether ballots should be recounted by hand or by machine. Eventually, the Supreme Court intervened and stopped hand counts of ballots in Florida on December 12, 2000, a decision that led Florida’s Electoral College votes to go to Bush. Our survey was in the field during the first 17 days of the election impasse, several weeks before the Supreme Court ruling and the outcome of the election was known.
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Moral conviction
3 Voted Did not vote 2
1
0 Bush supporters
Gore supporters
Figure 1 Moral Conviction as a Function of Candidate Preference in the 2000 Presidential Election (N ¼ 1,853).
about their preferred candidate after they voted. Therefore, people may have inferred stronger or weaker moral conviction by referencing their voting behavior instead of their feelings (e.g., Bem, 1967). A follow-up study addressed these issues in the context of the 2004 presidential election. Specifically, it examined voting intentions rather than retrospective reports of voting to (a) conceptually replicate the 2000 election results, (b) test whether there is an issue-based, in addition to a candidate-based, moral conviction effect, and (c) rule out a self-perception interpretation of the 2000 election study results. Results indicated that moral convictions associated with various hot-button political issues of the day (e.g., the Iraq War, abortion, and gay marriage) predicted unique variance in participants’ intentions to vote in the 2004 presidential election, even when controlling for participants’ position on these issues (e.g., support vs. opposition), the strength of their support or opposition to these issues, and their candidate preferences (Skitka and Bauman, 2008). As in the first study, results supported the moral conviction hypothesis. Taken together, the results of these two studies indicated that knowing whether people experienced moral conviction about their candidate choice or specific issues increased the degree of correspondence between their attitudes and actions. Of considerable interest to those who study elections was the finding that the effect of moral conviction on intentions to vote and voting behavior was the same for those on both the political right and left. That is, moral conviction motivated political engagement for both Republicans and Democrats and for people on either side of contemporary social issues. Since the late 1970’s when Moral Majority successfully branded itself, many people likely associate the word ‘‘morality’’ with a politically conservative stance. Our research, however, suggests that moral conviction on either side of the political spectrum incites action and activism, despite the fact that the moral compasses of those on the political right and left may be set in different directions (e.g., Haidt and Grahm, 2007).
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Other research indicates that moral conviction about decision outcomes predicts people’s willingness to accept decisions made by authorities and the degree to which they perceive these decisions to be fair. For example, Bauman (2006) presented students with descriptions of a decision their university ostensibly made regarding whether student insurance that was funded by their tuition and fees would cover abortions at the university health clinic. The decision making procedures university officials used were either maximally or minimally fair. Although procedural fairness often overrides people’s nonmoral outcome preferences and causes people to accept even very unfavorable outcomes (e.g., Lind and Tyler, 1988), results indicated that students who morally disagreed with the decision were prepared to petition, protest, withhold tuition and fees, and ‘‘make trouble’’ for the university administration, even when they perceived the decision making procedures to be maximally fair. Conversely, students had no ambition to protest a decision when it was consistent with their moral beliefs, even when they had explicitly acknowledged that the procedures used to make the decision were illegitimate and unfair. In other words, concerns about morality took priority over other factors that typically are central to people’s perceptions of fairness and decision acceptance. Students cared about whether their university made the ‘‘moral’’ decision and were willing to take rather dramatic steps to protect their sense of what was ‘‘right’’, irrespective of whether the decision making procedures suggested that they were valued and respected members of the group (i.e., appeased belongingness needs; Lind and Tyler, 1988) or that they were likely to receive their just deserts over the long run (i.e., appeased material selfinterest; Thibaut and Walker, 1975). Therefore, moral convictions appear to provide checks on the power of authority that nonmoral outcome preferences do not provide. Similarly, Mullen and Nadler (2008) explored whether laws that violate people’s moral convictions erode perceptions of the legitimacy of authority systems and prompt retaliation. They exposed people to legal decisions that supported, opposed, or were unrelated to participants’ moral convictions. The experimenters distributed a questionnaire and a pen and asked participants to return both at end of the experimental session, after they reviewed the legal decisions that ostensibly were the primary focus of the study. Consistent with expectations, participants were more likely to steal the pen after exposure to a legal decision that violated rather than supported their moral convictions. Of course, one could question the extent to which the results of the studies described above are influenced by a variety of other factors that are associated with type of issues and situations moral conviction research typically examines. That is, what other variables correlate with self-reported moral conviction that might account for the observed effects? To date, we
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have assessed and ruled-out a host of alternative explanations for the effects of moral conviction. Some of the most intriguing of these potential alternative explanations involve individual difference variables. Individual difference variables comprise demographic characteristics or stable trait-like psychological tendencies. If a given individual difference were to correlate with self-reports of moral conviction, then one could argue that observed differences in moral conviction actually were due to characteristics of the individuals who tended to report strong or weak moral conviction rather than something about moral conviction itself. For example, if women were much more likely than men to report strong moral conviction about abortion, then the effects moral conviction research typically detects potentially could be attributable to something about how women tend to respond to questions rather than something about moral conviction. Similarly, if political orientation were correlated with moral conviction about abortion, then the moral conviction effects we observe could be attributable to liberals’ or conservatives’ cognitive style rather than something about moral conviction (e.g., Jost et al., 2003). Although these arguments are plausible, controlling for prominent individual difference variables — including age, gender, income, education, religiosity, political orientation, and dogmatism — does not substantially diminish the unique effect of issue-specific moral conviction on both psychological and behavioral dependent measures (Bauman et al., 2008; Skitka et al., 2005). Moreover, the relationship between individual difference variables and moral conviction is generally weak and inconsistent across issues. Therefore, it appears that the moral conviction measure accurately identifies the experience of having moral conviction rather than separates respondents as a function of characteristics tangential to morality. In summary, a growing body of research indicates that it is important to know whether people’s choices, judgments, and preferences reflect their personal moral convictions. Variance in moral conviction predicts a host of variables, including voting and voting intentions (Skitka and Bauman, 2008), intolerance and prejudice toward attitudinally dissimilar others (Skitka et al., 2005, Studies 1 and 2); willingness to sit near to an attitudinally dissimilar other (Skitka et al., 2005, Study 3); people’s ability to develop procedural solutions to resolve conflict (Skitka et al., 2005, Study 4); and willingness to accept authorities’ decisions as well as the perceived fairness of those decisions (e.g., Bauman, 2006; Mullen and Skitka, 2006; Skitka and Houston, 2001; Skitka and Mullen, 2002). The existing body of research has established that moral convictions have unique consequences that cannot be explained by nonmoral characteristics of attitude strength. That is, moral convictions are more than just strong preferences. Importantly, moral conviction research also has systematically addressed and dismissed a host of alternative explanations for moral conviction, thus supporting the notion
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that people perceive morals as sui generis. Despite the apparent success of the moral conviction approach regarding these initial goals, however, one could argue that moral conviction research has not yet examined what leads people to identify that a given attitude or preference represents a moral conviction. Therefore, a major task for future research will be to empirically test hypotheses about the antecedents of moral conviction. Although further research is required to gain a better understanding of what gives rise to moral conviction, research and theory have begun to converge on the function of morality. Morality is fundamental to coordinated social behavior (e.g., de Waal, 2006; Rokeach, 1973), and moral conviction research supports this conclusion. In particular, a desire for moral homogeneity of beliefs appears to be a foundation upon which social interactions and group membership rest. People avoid those who are morally dissimilar to them (Skitka et al., 2005), and they are willing to leave important social groups that make choices that are inconsistent with their moral beliefs (Bauman, 2006). Moreover, people’s sense of morality drives who they want to represent them (Skitka and Bauman, 2008). Furthermore, moral conviction sets limits on the power of authority and affects the way that people evaluate decisions made by others (e.g., Skitka and Houston, 2001; Skitka and Mullen, 2002).
5. Implications Moral conviction research supports at least two major conclusions. First, there exists considerable variability in the extent to which individuals experience moral conviction, even regarding issues that could clearly be classified as moral issues based on theoretical definitions of morality. That is, the typical person on the street does not necessarily categorize their world in the same way as do intellectual elites, and it is important for researchers to consider these classification differences as they draw conclusions about the results of their studies. Second, differences in moral conviction predict reliable tendencies in the way that people respond in situations. Moral conviction affects (a) the way people process information and make judgments in moral situations, (b) the extent to which people experience emotion, and (c) the likelihood that people will take action to support or defend their beliefs. In short, self-reported moral conviction has important consequences for the way that people think, feel, and behave. One important implication of moral conviction research is that normative theories and principles are not sufficient to explain moral phenomena. Although it is well known that people seek cognitive consistency (Festinger, 1957), they do so at the level of their object-specific attitudes rather than at the more abstract level of values or principles. Therefore, it seems unlikely
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that any normative theory that demands perfect consistency with a single or even several principles would accurately depict people’s judgments and actions in moral situations. The moral conviction approach addresses moral phenomena at a level of analysis that corresponds to the way people see their own world. It does not assume that moral judgment and behavior always is the end-product of elegant top-down arguments that stem from general propositions (see also Haidt, 2001). Although principles may be important tools that can help researchers organize and describe morality, we must be careful not to let our quest for explanatory parsimony influence our expectations of how multifaceted people’s understanding of moral phenomena is or should be. Moral conviction necessarily is complicated because a variety of situational, social, and intrapsychic factors that determine whether people moralize specific stimuli. Much more research needs to examine what causes individuals to perceive one situation but not another seemingly similar situation to have moral implications. Similarly, research must address what causes one individual but not others to perceive the same situation to have moral implications. A complete theory of morality will describe aggregated moral tendencies as well as account for individual deviations from those tendencies. Variability in how people approach moral questions across situations represents something the needs to be understood and explained. In conclusion, moral conviction research places primary importance on people’s apparent ability to recognize a moral belief when they have one. Although there may be some degree of consensus about what kinds of attitude objects or judgments are moral, there also is considerable variance around these mean appraisals; not everyone sees the same issue, dilemma, or choice in moral terms, and knowing whether they do or do not see a given situation in moral terms predicts perceivers’ subsequent judgments, choices, and behavior. In short, the moral conviction approach is designed to examine psychological phenomena that are associated with the subjective recognition of moral relevance, whereas moral judgment research typically examines how people make difficult choices in situations that fit theoretical definitions of morality. The two approaches ask complementary questions, and both are necessary to develop a complete science of morality.
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Subject Index
A Abortion and moral beliefs, 343–344 Affect-Backed Normative Theory, 292 Affective revolution, 308 Agent relative and omission bias, 142–143 Anchoring effects and moral values, 180–181 Antidiscrimination laws, 102 Antisodomy laws, 102 Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 343 Argument, course of making, 2 Asian disease problem framing, 213 moral principle, retrieval of, 217 B Backfire effect testing in Indonesian madrassah students study, 200–204 in Israeli–Palestinian conflict, 198–199 within-subjects design in, 200 Backward reasoning, 311 Battery, definition of, 54–55 Better Alternative problem, 63 Biases and utilitarianianism, 134–137 Bilingual education, 121 Brains shapes, 264 C Capital punishment, 107 Casual models of abstract cases of commission and omission, 15 for evaluating morality of event, 21 feature of, 13 necessary for everyday moral judgment, 13 role in determining fairness, 20 Causal Bayes net, for representing traffic accident, 6 Causal structure, formal representation of, 4 Ceteris paribus, 11 Civil Rights Act of 1968, 102 Civil rights movement, 111 Cognitive control, 225 Cognitive perspective, of sacred values, 178–182 Cognitive science, 29 Committed compliance, 250
Community involvement, by adolescents, 255 Community service, 255 Computational principle, iterated applications of, 48 Connolly/Reb (CR) method, 145 Contingent valuation method, 173 Contradictory responses, 210 Conventional violations, 250 Conversion rules, 81–88 Cost-benefit analysis, 61 Costless rescue problem, 64 Counterfactual interventions, 6 Counter-normative responses, 347–348 Criminal punishment, 105 Cross-situational variability, 348–349 D Decision, 276 Decision making factors motivating, 3 fairness of proposal supporting, 20 sacred values affect on, 170–171 Default bias, 141–142 Defining Issues Test, 257 Deliberative reasoning, 22 moral appraisal, role of, 3 Delta game, 287 Deontic logic, principles of, 44 Deontic Rules, 51–52 moral calculus of risk, 56–63 principle of natural liberty, 52 prohibition of battery and homicide, 53 rescue principle, 55–56 self-preservation principle, 55–56 Deontological theory, 135 DIT. See Defining Issues Test Dual-process theories, 212 E EEA. See Environment of evolutionary adaptedness Egalitarianism, 20 Emotionally generated intuitions, 110 Emotional reactions and conflict with moral rules, 8 moral appraisals and, 8 Emotions anticipated regret and, 284–285
363
364
Subject Index
Emotions (cont.) and decision making expected emotions, 282 immediate emotions, 282 in moral decisions, 289–298 in nonutilitarian judgments, 225 and regret and disappointment theories, 283–284 regulation, 261 and risk assessment, 282–283 Environment of evolutionary adaptedness, 262 Ethical judgment, moral problem solving, 259 Ethics, code of, 11 Evolutionary arguments, 226 Expected utility (EU) rule, 277 Expected utility (EU) theory, 277, 280 and departures from optimality, 280 and prospect theory, 280 External psychobiological regulator, 261 F Federal laws, in United States, 104 Framing effects, 214 Fuzzy gist representations, long-term memory, 214 Fuzzy-trace theory adaptive tendency, 210 dualities, 224 dual-process explanations, 224 theory, 216 evidence-based principle of, 223 gist-based intuitive default response, 227 knowledge, representation, and retrieval, 215 mechanistic explanation, 226 memory, dual-process theory of, 209 moral reasoning, 208, 210 psychological difference, 224 risk saving, 213 sensitive techniques, 227 verbatim memory, sensitive to interference, 225 G Gay sodomy laws, 106 Gist representations fuzzy-processing preference, 210 information, interpretation of, 212 verbatim representations, 212 Goldman’s theory of level-generation, 45 Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, 28 Group identification, 253 H Haidt’s model, 37 Heuristic process, 109
Heuristics and biases in judgments and decisions, 134 movement, 277 Homicide, definition of, 53 I I-Generation, definition of, 49–50 Imagination ethic, 263 Immediate emotions, 282 Indirectness bias, 142 Indonesian madrassah student study, Backfire effect testing in, 200–204 Infinite utilities, 171 Inhibit interference facilitates processing, 215 Intentional Homicide problem, 59 Interactive decision processes, and anticipated regret, 285 Interdisciplinary dialogue, 340 Intervention, logic of, 6 Iowa Gambling Task, 281 Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Backfire effect testing, 198–199 J Judgment, 31–35, 276 Judgment and decision making (JDM), 278–279, 300–303. See also Moral decisions, feelings and emotions in emotion research, emergence of, 280 cognitive factor, in decision making, 280 emotions in, individual decision making, 281–285 emotions in, interactive decisions, 285–288 injured knee example, 276 research on, 276 descriptive, 276 normative, 277 prescriptive, 277 Jurisprudence, building blocks of intuitive, 67 Justice, principle of, 19 K K-Generation, definition of, 49 Knowledge affect, 211 Kohlberg moral development, 249 Kohlberg’s moral stage theory, 241 L Law behavioral backlashes against, 117–119 and group identity, 122–123 as representation of group attitudes, 111–113 and symbolic politics, 120–122
365
Subject Index
Legal appraisal, intuitive acts and circumstances, 45–49 K-Generation and I-Generation, 49–51 Legal desegregation, of schools, 110 Legal regulation, of behaviors, 122 Linguistic grammars, 8 Linguistics, 30 Locus of intervention, 11 Logical reasoning, 90 Logistic mixed-effect model, coefficients for prediction of PV-Act and PV-Omit, 148 Long-term dispositional effects, 262 M Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia, 201 Marginal Calculus of Risk, 60–63 Mentors, 261 MMI. See Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia Modern psychology, 243 Moral accountability, motivated assessments of controllability and culpability, 316–317 intentionality, 316–322 psychological theories of responsibility, 315 Moral action, self model of, 242 Moral agents, 62 Moral and conventional violations, difference between, 291–292 Moral appraisal difference with moral judgment, 9 and emotional reactions, 8 made by moral grammars, 8 principles of, 20 role in deliberative reasoning, 3, 8 role of causal models in, 2 and theories of emotion, 9 Moral assessment, aspects of, 2 Moral attribution, 2 Moral Calculus of Risk, 80 Moral-character education, 238 Moral chronics, 247 Moral cognition, social-cognitive dimensions of, 247 Moral commitments, 246 Moral competence, computational theories of, 30 Moral computation, 47 Moral condemnation, requirements of, 2 Moral conviction and abortion, 343–344 on choice and action, consequences of attitude–behavior correspondence, 353–354 decision outcomes, 356 individual difference variables, 357 legal decisions, 356 voting intentions, 354–355
implication of normative theories and principles, 358 situational, social, and intrapsychic factors, 359 and moral judgment, difference between counter-normative responses interpretation, 347–348 focal situations, 350–353 principle-driven cross-situational coherence, 348–350 trolley problems, 346–347 psychological characteristics associated with assumptions, 343 reactions to facts, 342 psychological states, 345 subjective belief, 341 Moral decisions, feelings and emotions in complex moral dilemmas, 296–298 illustrative studies on, 289–293 task effects, in moral judgment, 293–296 Moral development, 238 classic theories of, 224 ethical expertise development expert perception, 259 moral action, 258 moral character education, integrative framework for, 260–261 theories of, 107 Moral dilemmas vs. moral choices, 351 and moral conviction, 352 and moral judgment, 350 Moral dumbfounding, 290 Moral elements, periodic table of, 71–81 Moral entrepreneurs, 117 Moral exemplars, personality of, 245 Moral experts, 265 Moral functioning, element of, 264–265 Moral geometry, 91 Moral grammar hypothesis of, 29–31, 62 for identifying properties of mental representations, 48 theory of, 29 Moral guidance, 261 Moral identity cognitive representation, 247 self-importance of, 248 self-regulation and integrity, 256 Moral information processing moral schemas, measuring effects of, 257–258 schema theories of, 256 Moral integrity, alignment of, 238 Moral intuition emotion, role of, 226 Moralistic values, 138 Morality, role in everyday life, 285 Moral judgment, 226, 239, 242
366 Moral judgment (cont.) architectural considerations for, 7–9 aspects of intuitive, 29 based on deontological principles, 10 causal analysis affecting, 3 causal interpretation and, 3 causes and consequences, evaluation of, 2 cognitive architecture of, 3 in decision making, 134 difference with moral appraisal, 9 expanded perceptual model for, 40 Haidt’s model of, 39 intuitionist theory of, 7 necessary precondition of, 49 primary representational medium for, 7 for reasoning and decision making, 7 role of causal analysis in, 2–3 roles for causal models in appraisal, 9–10 causal proximity, 16–17 deliberation, 10–11 fairness, 19–20 locus of intervention, 18–19 in specific situation, 4 Moral judgment research, 340 behaviors, 340, 342 and moral conviction research, difference between, 346 counter-normative responses interpretation, 347–348 focal situations, 350–353 principle-driven cross-situational coherence, 348–350 trolley problems, 346–347 in normatively moral situations, 345 Moral personality, 243, 248 characterizations of, 245 neuroscience and human behavior, neurobiology of, 261 Triune Ethics Theory, 262–264 social-cognitive model of, 246–247 wholeheartedness, 251 Moral principles based on casual structure, 11 intention, 12–13 omission/commission, 13–16 Moral principles, motivated use of collateral damage, 329 consequentialist vs. deontological principles, 330 lifeboats, 329 political casuistry deontological and consequentialist reasoning, 326 political conservatives, 325 race and nationally, 330 reliance on political orientation, 331 trolley scenario, 326–328
Subject Index
use and abuse of principle judgment standards, 324–325 moral belief, 323 in moral judgment, 322 moral reasoning, 324 motivated reliance, 324 principle-based reasoning, 323 Moral problems, 218–220 Moral psychology, 30, 36, 241 Moral rationality, and responsibility, 243 Moral realism, 138–139 Moral reasoning in adults, 208 automatic vs. controlled processing, 211 building blocks of gist representations, role of, 211–213 judgment, type of, 210 knowledge, importance of, 211 reasoning problems, retrieval, 213–215 exchange, 211 moral emotion, theories of, 226 problem, 213 reversals and paradoxes in aforementioned insensitivity to quantity, 222 diminishing sensitivity, 223 dual-process accounts of, 224–227 footbridge problem, 217 framing effects, 217 fuzzy-trace theory, interpretation of, 216 moral grounds, 221 psychophysical numbing, 222 quantitative outcomes, magnitude of, 222 relative magnitude, insensitivity, 221 role of affect in, 308 verbatim-based analytical mode, 216 Moral responsibility, determination of, 8 Moral schemas measuring effects of, 257–258 postconventional schema, 257 Moral self-identity, 253 development of community and context models of, 252–254 community service and social capital, 255–256 moral acquisitions, 248 moral personality, 249–252 in poor neighborhoods, 254–255 ethical theory, 240 exploration of, 239 Kohlberg’s influential theory, 240 moral development, 239–241 moral identity, 241–243 personality theory moral dimension, 243 and moral personality, 245–248
367
Subject Index
personality psychology, 244 Moral sentiments, role in decision making, 281 Moral socialization, Kohlberg’s cognitive developmental approach, 241 Moral-sounding commitments, 102 Moral stages, 240 Moral tasks, types of, 293 complex hypothetical dilemmas, 294 moral fortitude, 295 moral reactions, 294 struggle for self-control, 294 Moral values in adolescence, 227–229 in laboratory contingent valuation, 173 judgment on previously viewed options, 176–177 omission bias and quantity insensitivity, 174–175 pseudosacred values, 177 trade-offs in, 174 tragic and taboo trade-offs, 175–176 Motivated moral reasoning affective stake in perceiving given act, 312 views of moral thinker motivational factors, 333 normative role of affect in moral thinking, 332 nuanced view, 332 social nature of moral thinking, 334 Motivated reasoning, 311. See also Motivated moral reasoning affective reactions, 311 backward reasoning, 311 cognitive counter explanations, 330 conflicting motives, 310 from intuitionist perspective, 313–314 judgment situations, 310 mechanisms, crucial aspect of, 312 moral judgment in, 312 from intuitionist perspective, 313–314 moral evaluation of acts, 314 motivational forces, 314 social nature, 313 Motivational forces, 308–309, 314 MRO. See Mutually responsive orientation Multiple gist representations, 212 Mutually responsive orientation, 250 N National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP’s) campaign, 103 Naturalism bias, 143 Negligence liability, 59 Neurophysiologic stability, mammalian brain and nervous system, 261
Nonmoral issues, 342 Nonmoral problems, 218–220 Nonutilitarian processing, 225 Nonutilitarian responses, 224 Normative model, in decision making, 134–135 O Omission bias, 139–141 agent relativity, 142–143 default bias and status-quo bias, 141–142 and emotion, relation of, 150–156 and indirectness bias, 142 naturalism and physical proximity and contact, 143 nature of, 156–163 and protected values, relation of, 143–150 Optimal brain functioning, 262 Optimal moral development, 263 P Perceptual stimulus, poverty of, 37–40 Personal–impersonal distinction, 39 Personality science, integrative framework for, 244 Philosophical conceptions, 248 Predictive inferences, 5 Priming verbatim-based analysis, 223 Principle of Double Effect (PDF), 67–71 Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) game, generalized payoff matrix for, 286–287 Probability distribution, 5 Protected values, 134, 137, 171 authority independence, 139 and emotion, relation of, 150–156 and moralistic values, 138 moral realism, 138–139 and omission bias, relation of, 143–150 Psychological consequences, situations, 351 Psychophysical numbing, 223 Public choice model, 105 Public choice theory, 105 Public interest model, 106 PVs. See Protected values Q Quantity insensitivity, 174 R Rational actor model, 194 Rational choice model, 113–114 Rawls’ Linguistic Analogy, 81 Reasoning problems values, application of deontological rules, 214 framing effects, 213
368
Subject Index
Reasoning problems (cont.) order effects, 214 Residual Permission Principle, 44, 52 Residual Prohibition Principle, 52 Risk as feelings model, 282–283 Risky decision making, 227 Risky decisions in adolescence brain regions activation, 229 important mechanism, 228 trade off magnitudes, tendency, 227 unhealthy risks, 229 Ritov/Baron (RB) method, 145 S Sacred values, 194–196 cognitive perspective of, 178–182 definition of, 170 protection model, 175 in rigidity and flexibility prediction, 196–198 sequential offers in negotiations of, 199–200 SCD. See Social-cognitive development Self model, moral judgment, 242 Self-Preservation Principle, 90 Sexual harassment law prohibiting, 112 laws in Israel, 106 Social-cognitive approach, 244 Social-cognitive development, 247 Social-cognitive framework, 245–246 Social-cognitive interpretation, 246 Social-cognitive research, 308 Social conventions, violations of, 62 Social intuitionist model, 246 of moral judgment, 290
Social norms and conventions, distinction of, 139 Social psychological research, 340 Sociobiological instinct, 90 Somatic marker hypothesis, 281–283 Status-Quo Bias, 141–142 Stroop effects, 179–180 Subjective belief, 340, 350, 353 Supreme Court Justice, 310, 324 T Taboo trade-off, 175–176 TETpoints, 263 Torts, 59 Trade-offs, attending of, 182–188 Traditional dual-process approaches, 215 Tragic trade-off, 175–176 Trolley problems, morality, 346–347 U Unconditional moral commitments, 242 Utilitarianianism and biases, 134–137 Utilitarian judgments, 225 Utilitarian processing, 225 V Ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC) patients, and decision making, 281, 291 Violence inhibition mechanism (VIM), 292 W Wide reflective equilibrium, process for, 297 Within-person psychological systems, 244
CONTENTS OF RECENT VOLUMES
Volume 40 Different Organization of Concepts and Meaning Systems in the Two Cerebral Hemispheres Dahlia W. Zaidel The Causal Status Effect in Categorization: An Overview Woo-kyoung Ahn and Nancy S. Kim Remembering as a Social Process Mary Susan Weldon Neurocognitive Foundations of Human Memory Ken A. Paller Structural Influences on Implicit and Explicit Sequence Learning Tim Curran, Michael D. Smith, Joseph M. DiFranco, and Aaron T. Daggy Recall Processes in Recognition Memory Caren M. Rotello Reward Learning: Reinforcement, Incentives, and Expectations Kent C. Berridge Spatial Diagrams: Key Instruments in the Toolbox for Thought Laura R. Novick Reinforcement and Punishment in the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game Howard Rachlin, Jay Brown, and Forest Baker Index
Volume 41 Categorization and Reasoning in Relation to Culture and Expertise Douglas L. Medin, Norbert Ross, Scott Atran, Russell C. Burnett, and Sergey V. Blok On the Computational basis of Learning and Cognition: Arguments from LSA Thomas K. Landauer Multimedia Learning Richard E. Mayer Memory Systems and Perceptual Categorization Thomas J. Palmeri and Marci A. Flanery
Conscious Intentions in the Control of Skilled Mental Activity Richard A. Carlson Brain Imaging Autobiographical Memory Martin A. Conway, Christopher W. Pleydell-Pearce, Sharon Whitecross, and Helen Sharpe The Continued Influence of Misinformation in Memory: What Makes Corrections Effective? Colleen M. Seifert Making Sense and Nonsense of Experience: Attributions in Memory and Judgment Colleen M. Kelley and Matthew G. Rhodes Real-World Estimation: Estimation Modes and Seeding Effects Norman R. Brown Index
Volume 42 Memory and Learning in Figure–Ground Perception Mary A. Peterson and Emily Skow-Grant Spatial and Visual Working Memory: A Mental Workspace Robert H. Logie Scene Perception and Memory Marvin M. Chun Spatial Representations and Spatial Updating Ranxiano Frances Wang Selective Visual Attention and Visual Search: Behavioral and Neural Mechanisms Joy J. Geng and Marlene Behrmann Categorizing and Perceiving Objects: Exploring a Continuum of Information Use Philippe G. Schyns From Vision to Action and Action to Vision: A Convergent Route Approach to Vision, Action, and Attention Glyn W. Humphreys and M. Jane Riddoch Eye Movements and Visual Cognitive Suppression David E. Irwin
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What Makes Change Blindness Interesting? Daniel J. Simons and Daniel T. Levin Index
Volume 43 Ecological Validity and the Study of Concepts Gregory L. Murphy Social Embodiment Lawrence W. Barsalou, Paula M. Niedinthal, Aron K. Barbey, and Jennifer A. Ruppert The Body’s Contribution to Language Arthur M. Glenberg and Michael P. Kaschak Using Spatial Language Laura A. Carlson In Opposition to Inhibition Colin M. MacLeod, Michael D. Dodd, Erin D. Sheard, Daryl E. Wilson, and Uri Bibi Evolution of Human Cognitive Architecture John Sweller Cognitive Plasticity and Aging Arthur F. Kramer and Sherry L. Willis Index
Volume 44 Goal-Based Accessibility of Entities within Situation Models Mike Rinck and Gordon H. Bower The Immersed Experiencer: Toward an Embodied Theory of Language Comprehension Rolf A. Zwaan Speech Errors and Language Production: Neuropsychological and Connectionist Perspectives Gary S. Dell and Jason M. Sullivan Psycholinguistically Speaking: Some Matters of Meaning, Marking, and Morphing Kathryn Bock Executive Attention, Working Memory Capacity, and a Two-Factor Theory of Cognitive Control Randall W. Engle and Michael J. Kane Relational Perception and Cognition: Implications for Cognitive Architecture and the Perceptual-Cognitive Interface Collin Green and John E. Hummel An Exemplar Model for Perceptual Categorization of Events Koen Lamberts
Contents of Recent Volumes
On the Perception of Consistency Yaakov Kareev Causal Invariance in Reasoning and Learning Steven Sloman and David A. Lagnado Index
Volume 45 Exemplar Models in the Study of Natural Language Concepts Gert Storms Semantic Memory: Some Insights From Feature-Based Connectionist Attractor Networks Ken McRae On the Continuity of Mind: Toward a Dynamical Account of Cognition Michael J. Spivey and Rick Dale Action and Memory Peter Dixon and Scott Glover Self-Generation and Memory Neil W. Mulligan and Jeffrey P. Lozito Aging, Metacognition, and Cognitive Control Christopher Hertzog and John Dunlosky The Psychopharmacology of Memory and Cognition: Promises, Pitfalls, and a Methodological Framework Elliot Hirshman Index
Volume 46 The Role of the Basal Ganglia in Category Learning F. Gregory Ashby and John M. Ennis Knowledge, Development, and Category Learning Brett K. Hayes Concepts as Prototypes James A. Hampton An Analysis of Prospective Memory Richard L. Marsh, Gabriel I. Cook, and Jason L. Hicks Accessing Recent Events Brian McElree SIMPLE: Further Applications of a Local Distinctiveness Model of Memory Ian Neath and Gordon D. A. Brown What is Musical Prosody? Caroline Palmer and Sean Hutchins Index
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Contents of Recent Volumes
Volume 47 Relations and Categories Viviana A. Zelizer and Charles Tilly Learning Linguistic Patterns Adele E. Goldberg Understanding the Art of Design: Tools for the Next Edisonian Innovators Kristin L. Wood and Julie S. Linsey Categorizing the Social World: Affect, Motivation, and Self-Regulation Galen V. Bodenhausen, Andrew R. Todd, and Andrew P. Becker Reconsidering the Role of Structure in Vision Elan Barenholtz and Michael J. Tarr Conversation as a Site of Category Learning and Category Use Dale J. Barr and Edmundo Kronmu¨ller Using Classification to Understand the Motivation-Learning Interface W. Todd Maddox, Arthur B. Markman, and Grant C. Baldwin Index
Volume 48 The Strategic Regulation of Memory Accuracy and Informativeness Morris Goldsmith and Asher Koriat Response Bias in Recognition Memory Caren M. Rotello and Neil A. Macmillan What Constitutes a Model of Item-Based Memory Decisions? Ian G. Dobbins and Sanghoon Han Prospective Memory and Metamemory: The Skilled Use of Basic Attentional and Memory Processes Gilles O. Einstein and Mark A. McDaniel Memory is More Than Just Remembering: Strategic Control of Encoding, Accessing Memory, and Making Decisions Aaron S. Benjamin
The Adaptive and Strategic Use of Memory by Older Adults: Evaluative Processing and ValueDirected Remembering Alan D. Castel Experience is a Double-Edged Sword: A Computational Model of the Encoding/ Retrieval Trade-Off With Familiarity Lynne M. Reder, Christopher Paynter, Rachel A. Diana, Jiquan Ngiam, and Daniel Dickison Toward an Understanding of Individual Differences In Episodic Memory: Modeling The Dynamics of Recognition Memory Kenneth J. Malmberg Memory as a Fully Integrated Aspect of Skilled and Expert Performance K. Anders Ericsson and Roy W. Roring Index
Volume 49 Short-term Memory: New Data and a Model Stephan Lewandowsky and Simon Farrell Theory and Measurement of Working Memory Capacity Limits Nelson Cowan, Candice C. Morey, Zhijian Chen, Amanda L. Gilchrist, and J. Scott Saults What Goes with What? Development of Perceptual Grouping in Infancy Paul C. Quinn, Ramesh S. Bhatt, and Angela Hayden Co-Constructing Conceptual Domains Through Family Conversations and Activities Maureen Callanan and Araceli Valle The Concrete Substrates of Abstract Rule Use Bradley C. Love, Marc Tomlinson, and Todd M. Gureckis Ambiguity, Accessibility, and a Division of Labor for Communicative Success Victor S. Ferreira Lexical Expertise and Reading Skill Sally Andrews Index
