Moral Judgments in Social Dilemmas: How Bad is Free Riding?

Trust is an important factor for cooperation in social dilemmas because of uncertainty and free-riding fears. Many contemporary social problems are characterized by uncertainty because they depend on the cooperation of thousands to resolve. Social trust as a personal belief is necessary but not sufficient for cooperation under these conditions. In contemporary social dilemmas, the trust-cooperation relationship likely depends on cultural trust: what people believe most other people believe about the trustworthiness of people in general. I test this theory in two experimental studies. In the first, cultural trust has an effect on cooperation independent of participants’ first-order social trust. In the second, I find that if participants learn that others expect them to not believe information on the trustfulness of most other people, they will behave more or less cooperatively, depending on whether the information indicates most others’ trust is high or low. I end with a discussion of the implications my findings have for addressing social dilemmas in an era of declining social trust.

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Cautiously optimistic rationalism may not be cautious enough

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x18002613 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 42 ◽

Author(s):

Justin F. Landy

Keyword(s):

Moral Knowledge ◽

Moral Judgments

Abstract May expresses optimism about the source, content, and consequences of moral judgments. However, even if we are optimistic about their source (i.e., reasoning), some pessimism is warranted about their content, and therefore their consequences. Good reasoners can attain moral knowledge, but evidence suggests that most people are not good reasoners, which implies that most people do not attain moral knowledge.

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Neuroscience and Ethics

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000352 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 64 (2) ◽

pp. 82-92 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

S. Matthew Liao

Keyword(s):

Empirical Evidence ◽

Moral Judgments ◽

Empirical Results ◽

Joshua Greene

Abstract. A number of people believe that results from neuroscience have the potential to settle seemingly intractable debates concerning the nature, practice, and reliability of moral judgments. In particular, Joshua Greene has argued that evidence from neuroscience can be used to advance the long-standing debate between consequentialism and deontology. This paper first argues that charitably interpreted, Greene’s neuroscientific evidence can contribute to substantive ethical discussions by being part of an epistemic debunking argument. It then argues that taken as an epistemic debunking argument, Greene’s argument falls short in undermining deontological judgments. Lastly, it proposes that accepting Greene’s methodology at face value, neuroimaging results may in fact call into question the reliability of consequentialist judgments. The upshot is that Greene’s empirical results do not undermine deontology and that Greene’s project points toward a way by which empirical evidence such as neuroscientific evidence can play a role in normative debates.

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Why People With High Alexithymia Make More Utilitarian Judgments

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000474 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 67 (1) ◽

pp. 23-30

Author(s):

Xiangyi Zhang ◽

Zhihui Wu ◽

Shenglan Li ◽

Ji Lai ◽

Meng Han ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Empathic Concern ◽

Moral Judgments ◽

Affective Processing ◽

Process Dissociation ◽

The Difference

Abstract. Although recent studies have investigated the effect of alexithymia on moral judgments, such an effect remains elusive. Furthermore, moral judgments have been conflated with the moral inclinations underlying those judgments in previous studies. Using a process dissociation approach to independently quantify the strength of utilitarian and deontological inclinations, the present study investigated the effect of alexithymia on moral judgments. We found that deontological inclinations were significantly lower in the high alexithymia group than in the low alexithymia group, whereas the difference in the utilitarian inclinations between the two groups was nonsignificant. Furthermore, empathic concern and deontological inclinations mediated the association between alexithymia and conventional relative judgments (i.e., more utilitarian judgments over deontological judgments), showing that people with high alexithymia have low empathic concern, which, in turn, decreases deontological inclinations and contributes to conventional relative judgments. These findings underscore the importance of empathy and deontological inclinations in moral judgments and indicate that individuals with high alexithymia make more utilitarian judgments over deontological judgments possibly due to a deficit in affective processing.

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