Moral Principles or Consumer Preferences? Alternative Framings of the Trolley Problem

Tage, S.; Holyoak, Keith J.

doi:10.1111/j.1551-6709.2009.01088.x

Cited by 42 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Differences in prior beliefs can lead to conflicting interpretations of argument strength, consequent accusations of hypocrisy, and attempts at rebuttal. By linking moral hypocrisy to Bayesian decision theory, we extend recent work that has argued for more domain-general accounts of moral cognition (Cushman & Young, 2011;Rai & Holyoak, 2010;Waldmann & Dieterich, 2007;Waldmann, Nagel, & Wiegmann, 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 66%

Rational Hypocrisy: A Bayesian Analysis Based on Informal Argumentation and Slippery Slopes

Tage

Holyoak

2014

Cognitive Science

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Moral hypocrisy is typically viewed as an ethical accusation: Someone is applying different moral standards to essentially identical cases, dishonestly claiming that one action is acceptable while otherwise equivalent actions are not. We suggest that in some instances the apparent logical inconsistency stems from different evaluations of a weak argument, rather than dishonesty per se. Extending Corner, Hahn, and Oaksford's (2006) analysis of slippery slope arguments, we develop a Bayesian framework in which accusations of hypocrisy depend on inferences of shared category membership between proposed actions and previous standards, based on prior probabilities that inform the strength of competing hypotheses. Across three experiments, we demonstrate that inferences of hypocrisy increase as perceptions of the likelihood of shared category membership between precedent cases and current cases increase, that these inferences follow established principles of category induction, and that the presence of self-serving motives increases inferences of hypocrisy independent of changes in the actions themselves. Taken together, these results demonstrate that Bayesian analyses of weak arguments may have implications for assessing moral reasoning.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 66%

Rational Hypocrisy: A Bayesian Analysis Based on Informal Argumentation and Slippery Slopes

Tage

Holyoak

2014

Cognitive Science

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“…Notice that this rule is actually a detailed analysis of the causal structure of the action, but unlike the other causal principles discussed here, it is focused solely on morally relevant situations, in which both positive and negative outcomes result from the same intervention, and in which a situation can be parsed into means, ends, and side effects. Although the experiments presented here were not designed as a direct argument against domain-specific causal principles in morality, the results demonstrate a surprising role of domain-general causal factors (see also Rai & Holyoak, 2010). When combined with previous findings on actionomission, the roles of directness and physical contact, and personal force, our results suggest a large and consistent role of causal inferences in moral judgments (for a recent discussion on the domain specificity and domain generality of moral principles, see Young & Dungan, 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moral kinematics: The role of physical factors in moral judgments

2012

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Harmful events often have a strong physical component-for instance, car accidents, plane crashes, fist fights, and military interventions. Yet there has been very little systematic work on the degree to which physical factors influence our moral judgments about harm. Since physical factors are related to our perception of causality, they should also influence our subsequent moral judgments. In three experiments, we tested this prediction, focusing in particular on the roles of motion and contact. In Experiment 1, we used abstract video stimuli and found that intervening on a harmful object was judged as being less bad than intervening directly on the victim, and that setting an object in motion was judged as being worse than redirecting an already moving object. Experiment 2 showed that participants were sensitive not only to the presence or absence of motion and contact, but also to the magnitudes and frequencies associated with these dimensions. Experiment 3 extended the findings from Experiment 1 to verbally presented moral dilemmas. These results suggest that domain-general processes play a larger role in moral cognition than is currently assumed.Keywords Moral judgments . Causality . Motion . Agency . Physical factorsIn this study, we asked a simple empirical question: Do people take physical factors into account when making moral judgments? At first glance, our ability to distinguish good from bad seems more or less independent from the way that we perceive the physical aspects of our surroundings. Moral principles such as "do no harm" are abstract and largely decontextualized, and many would argue that they have transcendental or sacred aspects embedded in them that go beyond the physical plane. Yet our cognitive system is attuned to the physical aspects of reality

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“…A critical question in this literature is what the results reveal about moral reasoning. Hauser, Cushman, Young, Jin, and Mikhail () argue that the results reveal underlying universal moral competencies (the ability to sacrifice one to save five), while Rai and Holyoak () question whether the paradigm could disentangle universal competencies from heuristic‐type biases famously documented by Tversky and Kahneman ().…”

Section: How To Specify the Alternative: A Real‐world Examplementioning

confidence: 99%

Is There a Free Lunch in Inference?

Rouder

Morey

Verhagen

et al. 2016

Topics in Cognitive Science

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The field of psychology, including cognitive science, is vexed by a crisis of confidence. Although the causes and solutions are varied, we focus here on a common logical problem in inference. The default mode of inference is significance testing, which has a free lunch property where researchers need not make detailed assumptions about the alternative to test the null hypothesis. We present the argument that there is no free lunch; that is, valid testing requires that researchers test the null against a well-specified alternative. We show how this requirement follows from the basic tenets of conventional and Bayesian probability. Moreover, we show in both the conventional and Bayesian framework that not specifying the alternative may lead to rejections of the null hypothesis with scant evidence. We review both frequentist and Bayesian approaches to specifying alternatives, and we show how such specifications improve inference. The field of cognitive science will benefit because consideration of reasonable alternatives will undoubtedly sharpen the intellectual underpinnings of research.

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Moral Principles or Consumer Preferences? Alternative Framings of the Trolley Problem

Cited by 42 publications

References 33 publications

Rational Hypocrisy: A Bayesian Analysis Based on Informal Argumentation and Slippery Slopes

Rational Hypocrisy: A Bayesian Analysis Based on Informal Argumentation and Slippery Slopes

Moral kinematics: The role of physical factors in moral judgments

Is There a Free Lunch in Inference?

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