Why would someone's judgments and choices disregard the consequences he or she cares about most? Considerable research appears to show that in many contexts, people show precisely this paradoxical tendency. Researchers interpret these results as showing that people sometimes make choices on the basis of moral factors -- factors that may have little to do with the likely consequences of a choice alternative. In other words, previous research in judgment and decision making has documented a number of departures from expected utility theory, which is generally taken to be the "gold standard" for rationality. Utilitarianism as a normative ethical theory attempts to justify moral judgments with the demands of rationality in a similar way. Because "morally-motivated" judgment and decision making sometimes disavows any consideration of utilitarian concerns (i.e., costs and benefits), it has been viewed as especially rigid. The studies in this thesis attempt to probe deeper than previous research into how the processes underlying morally-motivated judgment and decision making differ from those underlying non-moral judgment and decision making. They show that a number of variables exert powerful influences on moral cognition, and they suggest a different conclusion than that arrived at by previous research. Namely, they suggest moral cognition is flexible and context-sensitive, and that these properties of moral judgment and preference are diagnostic of a number of competing influences and psychological processes. The studies reported here examine people's use of utilitarian and non-utilitarian judgment and decision making strategies across a variety of experimental paradigms and contexts of judgment and choice. The studies demonstrate the flexibility of value-driven judgment and preference, explaining a number of different ways in which utilitarian and non-utilitarian judgment and decision principles are promoted. Part One casts doubt on the simplistic picture of morally-motivated judgment and preference as characteristically rigid. Some previous views suggest that when moral values are brought to bear on a choice situation, we should expect a single pattern of responses that is uncharacteristic of non-moral preference. Studies 1 and 2 suggest that, in fact, what differentiates morally-motivated from non-moral preference is that the former is especially flexible in some contexts. Whereas non-moral preference is relatively invariant across experimental conditions in Studies 1 and 2, morally-motivated preference is more malleable, showing greater effects of manipulations that target attentional (Study 1) and representational processes (Study 2) Part Two reiterates the point made in Part One, that moral cognition is flexible because it is constituted by multifarious psychological processes. Moral cognition appears to be part emotion-laden intuition and part deliberation, and appears to make use of both moral rules and assessments of the costs and benefits associated with different courses of action. Studies 3 and 4 account for some of the flexibility of moral judgment and preference by developing a process-based framework that incorporates methodologies and insights from a number of perspectives in moral psychology and philosophical ethics. Taken together, the current studies offer initial steps toward synthesis across theoretical perspectives in moral psychology and generalization of when we should expect utilitarian and non-utilitarian judgment and decision making across a variety of contexts.

Last modified

• 08/01/2018

Creator

• Daniel Merrill Bartels

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/N2FQ49

Subject

• Psychology

Keyword

• Psychology

Date created

• 2007-08-20

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright