A Person-Centered Approach to Moral Judgment

Abstract

Both normative theories of ethics in philosophy and contemporary models of moral judgment in psychology have focused almost exclusively on the permissibility of acts, in particular whether acts should be judged on the basis of their material outcomes (consequentialist ethics) or on the basis of rules, duties, and obligations (deontological ethics). However, a longstanding third perspective on morality, virtue ethics, may offer a richer descriptive account of a wide range of lay moral judgments. Building on this ethical tradition, we offer a person-centered account of moral judgment, which focuses on individuals as the unit of analysis for moral evaluations rather than on acts. Because social perceivers are fundamentally motivated to acquire information about the moral character of others, features of an act that seem most informative of character often hold more weight than either the consequences of the act or whether a moral rule has been broken. This approach, we argue, can account for numerous empirical findings that are either not predicted by current theories of moral psychology or are simply categorized as biases or irrational quirks in the way individuals make moral judgments.

Good Night, and Good Luck: Perspectives on Luck in Management Scholarship

“…The motivation of moral judgment is ultimately about judging others' moral character -one should avoid interacting with a person who is perceived to be immoral. The bad luck the first manager experienced may be informative about character: being reckless or imprudent, for example, means the manager deserves to be blamed (Uhlmann et al, 2015). This is also consistent with the research on the belief in lucklucky or unlucky outcomes are associated with perceived personal characteristics (Day & Maltby, 2003;Maltby et al, 2008).…”

“…Each perspective is closely tied to a particular literature that entails as yet unsolved puzzles that suggest promising directions for future research. For example, while prior studies in psychology uniformly suggest that people tend to mistake luck for skill when evaluating performance differences (Baron & Hershey, 1988;Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky, 1982;Langer, 1975;Nisbett & Ross, 1980;Rosenzweig, 2007;Ross & Nisbett, 1991), recent studies point at an asymmetry in the evaluations between successes and failures (Denrell & Liu, 2012;Pizarro, Uhlmann, & Salovey, 2003;Uhlmann, Pizarro, & Diermeier, 2015). While people appreciate the role of (bad) luck in failures, they do not necessarily do the same when it comes to explaining success.…”

“…So the bad luck the manager experienced would not have been entirely beyond the manager's control. Another possible inference involves a judgment of the character of the manager based on observed outcomes (Pizarro et al, 2003;Uhlmann et al, 2015). The motivation of moral judgment is ultimately about judging others' moral character -one should avoid interacting with a person who is perceived to be immoral.…”

Causal Conceptions in Social Explanation and Moral Evaluation

“…This practice is supported by data demonstrating a relationship between conviction rates and whether a jury learned of a defendant's previous crimes (Eisenberg & Hans, 2009) and by studies showing that conviction rates are greater when the previous crimes are related to the present one (Wissler & Saks, 1985). More directly, experimental evidence suggests that blame and perceived causation are increased by general information about the defendant's bad moral character and that these relationships are mediated by emotional reactions to the character information (Nadler, 2012;Uhlmann, Pizarro, & Diermeier, 2015). Finally, studies have shown that blame and causal judgments are influenced by global dispositional information (such as likableness) in addition to dispositional information that is related to a specific offense (e.g., an aggressive personality matched to an aggressive crime; Alicke & Yurak, 1995;Alicke & Zell, 2009).…”

Feeling hurt: advances in the social psychology of pain

“…Social observers are highly motivated to obtain information about the moral qualities of others (Uhlmann, Pizarro, & Diermeier, 2015). Affective states and displays provide social information of moral relevance that the observer can utilise to make inferences about the moral character of the target, and their propensity to undertake relevant behaviours that signal character (Szczurek, Monin, & Gross, 2012;Uhlmann et al, 2015;Watson-Jones & Legare, 2016).…”