Topic
Moral psychology research, explained
8 open-access moral psychology studies, each with a flashcard deck and a quiz.
- Are 'logical' moral choices driven by coldness or calculation?
People who make counterintuitive utilitarian moral choices often do so because of a reduced emotional aversion to harming others, rather than increased logical deliberation.
- Why do students cheat even when they know it's wrong?
Students are less likely to cheat when they view it as a moral issue, but this relationship depends on whether they take personal responsibility and avoid making excuses for their behavior.
- How do perspective and gender affect 'what if' thinking in morals?
When resolving tough personal moral dilemmas from a first-person perspective, people take longer to think of alternatives and often invent unrealistic details to avoid making painful choices, a tendency that is especially strong in women.
- Does physical coldness make us more utilitarian?
Feeling physically cold makes people more likely to accept sacrificing a single individual to save many, driven by a reduction in empathy rather than increased logical thinking.
- How do we judge colleagues' morals and choose to work with them?
When deciding whether to cooperate with a coworker, people judge the moral acceptability of the coworker's actions first, which then directly guides their willingness to work together.
- Problems Measuring Utilitarian and Deontological Moral Thinking
A popular method for measuring individual differences in moral decision-making relies on mathematically flawed formulas and produces highly unreliable scores.
- How Intent Focus and Free Will Beliefs Affect Moral Judgment
People judge a person's moral responsibility differently depending on whether they focus on the immediate physical action or the ultimate goal, a choice influenced by psychological distance and free will beliefs.
- Do story details change our moral choices?
Providing background stories for moral dilemmas makes people more likely to choose utilitarian actions, but does not alter their abstract moral judgments.