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Intuitive Probabilities and the Limitation of Moral Imagination
Author(s) -
Ryazanov Arseny A.,
Knutzen Jonathan,
Rickless Samuel C.,
Christenfeld Nicholas J. S.,
Nelkin Dana Kay
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.498
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1551-6709
pISSN - 0364-0213
DOI - 10.1111/cogs.12598
Subject(s) - intuition , psychology , moral disengagement , outcome (game theory) , moral reasoning , social psychology , action (physics) , social cognitive theory of morality , epistemology , cognitive science , philosophy , mathematical economics , economics , physics , quantum mechanics
There is a vast literature that seeks to uncover features underlying moral judgment by eliciting reactions to hypothetical scenarios such as trolley problems. These thought experiments assume that participants accept the outcomes stipulated in the scenarios. Across seven studies ( N = 968), we demonstrate that intuition overrides stipulated outcomes even when participants are explicitly told that an action will result in a particular outcome. Participants instead substitute their own estimates of the probability of outcomes for stipulated outcomes, and these probability estimates in turn influence moral judgments. Our findings demonstrate that intuitive likelihoods are one critical factor in moral judgment, one that is not suspended even in moral dilemmas that explicitly stipulate outcomes. Features thought to underlie moral reasoning, such as intention, may operate, in part, by affecting the intuitive likelihood of outcomes, and, problematically, moral differences between scenarios may be confounded with non‐moral intuitive probabilities.