Abstract:In this paper we report a study on how different types of normatively relevant transgressions are evaluated by Chinese participants. We hypothesized that, given the continuing influences of Confucian worldview on contemporary Chinese societies, the Chinese will not make a distinction between moral (daode) and conventional norms of cultured behavior (wenming). Our results indicate that Chinese participants expressed a strong normative conviction not only towards harmful and unfair actions, usually subsumed unde… Show more
“…Can it be another peculiarity of WEIRD psychology (Henrich et al, 2010b;Henrich, 2020;Apicella et al, 2020)? Contrary to that, research in China (e.g., Buchtel et al, 2015;Berniūnas et al, 2019) and Mongolia (Berniūnas, 2020) suggests that these cultures also have some "special classes of norms", which bear some similarities to morality but also differ from it in other ways. I discuss them in more detail in Sections 2.3 and 2.4.…”
Section: Can All Norms Be Moral Norms?mentioning
confidence: 92%
“…Although harm may be a uniquely important factor in some cases, such as moralization of a prior personal preference (Skitka et al, 2021, pp. 357-361), there is a substantial variation in what people consider moral issues or how authority-independent and universal their judgments on particular issues are, both within cultures (Wright et al, 2008;Wright, 2012;Berniūnas et al, 2019) and between them (Skitka et al, 2013).…”
Section: The Bottom-up Methodsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…At the same, some cultures seem not to have the concept of "morality" in the Western sense, although at least some of them, make other subdivisions of the normative domain (Chinese: Buchtel et al, 2015, Berniūnas et al, 2019Hindu: Levine et al, 2021;Mongols: Berniūnas, 2020). Although the Chinese category of dàodé and Mongolian yos surtakhuun may not correspond to the Western concept of morality, they appear to have something in common.…”
Section: Arguments Against Moral Eliminativismmentioning
Although the concept of morality is central to moral psychology, it is understood differently by different researchers, as evidenced by decades of unsuccessful search for its definition or other specification, as well as diversity of conceptions used throughout moral psychology literature. I overview the most popular ways of conceptualizing morality and argue that it is most appropriate to view it as a subset of normativity with fuzzy boundaries. Norms, beliefs, and attitudes, that subjects themselves label as moral, are characterized by a cluster of co-occurring properties. The degree to which this finding generalizes to non-Western cultures is uncertain, and probably not all cultures distinguish a special category of moral norms. However, morality may be a particular case of a more general phenomenon of a culture developing a category of norms it considers of special importance.
“…Can it be another peculiarity of WEIRD psychology (Henrich et al, 2010b;Henrich, 2020;Apicella et al, 2020)? Contrary to that, research in China (e.g., Buchtel et al, 2015;Berniūnas et al, 2019) and Mongolia (Berniūnas, 2020) suggests that these cultures also have some "special classes of norms", which bear some similarities to morality but also differ from it in other ways. I discuss them in more detail in Sections 2.3 and 2.4.…”
Section: Can All Norms Be Moral Norms?mentioning
confidence: 92%
“…Although harm may be a uniquely important factor in some cases, such as moralization of a prior personal preference (Skitka et al, 2021, pp. 357-361), there is a substantial variation in what people consider moral issues or how authority-independent and universal their judgments on particular issues are, both within cultures (Wright et al, 2008;Wright, 2012;Berniūnas et al, 2019) and between them (Skitka et al, 2013).…”
Section: The Bottom-up Methodsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…At the same, some cultures seem not to have the concept of "morality" in the Western sense, although at least some of them, make other subdivisions of the normative domain (Chinese: Buchtel et al, 2015, Berniūnas et al, 2019Hindu: Levine et al, 2021;Mongols: Berniūnas, 2020). Although the Chinese category of dàodé and Mongolian yos surtakhuun may not correspond to the Western concept of morality, they appear to have something in common.…”
Section: Arguments Against Moral Eliminativismmentioning
Although the concept of morality is central to moral psychology, it is understood differently by different researchers, as evidenced by decades of unsuccessful search for its definition or other specification, as well as diversity of conceptions used throughout moral psychology literature. I overview the most popular ways of conceptualizing morality and argue that it is most appropriate to view it as a subset of normativity with fuzzy boundaries. Norms, beliefs, and attitudes, that subjects themselves label as moral, are characterized by a cluster of co-occurring properties. The degree to which this finding generalizes to non-Western cultures is uncertain, and probably not all cultures distinguish a special category of moral norms. However, morality may be a particular case of a more general phenomenon of a culture developing a category of norms it considers of special importance.
“…Following these cultural conceptual considerations, two further predictions could be generated (see also Berniūnas et al., 2019). Specifically, we will also address these two research questions. RQ3: Do Chinese moralise (i.e., evoke “moral signature” in response to) cases of uncultured behaviour whereas Americans and Lithuanians do not moralise uncultured behaviour? RQ4: Do Chinese use the notion of unculturedness to determine whether or not an action is morally wrong whereas Americans and Lithuanians do not use unculturedness to determine whether an action is morally wrong?…”
Section: Culture and The Scope Of Morality: Comparing English Moral A...mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Following these cultural conceptual considerations, two further predictions could be generated (see also Berni unas et al, 2019). Specifically, we will also address these two research questions.…”
In this article, we report a cross‐cultural study on how different types of social transgressions are moralised by Chinese, Americans, and Lithuanians. We hypothesised that given the continuing influences of Confucian worldview on contemporary Chinese societies, the Chinese will not make a distinction between moral (daode 道德) and conventional cultural norms (wenming 文明). Following Turiel’s moral/conventional task, we characterised moral transgressions in terms of two dimensions: Their wrongness is perceived to be independent of any authorities’ opinion and general in scope. The results indicate that Chinese participants were slightly more “moralising” than Americans and Lithuanians in the typical (Haidtean) moral domains. More importantly, unlike Americans and Lithuanians, the Chinese strongly moralised uncultured (wenming 文明) behaviour. Results also indicate that explicit considerations about purity were quite important across all three cultural groups. These mixed results are discussed in the light of recent debates about the scope of morality and the moral/conventional distinction.
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