Premium
Folk Moral Relativism
Author(s) -
SARKISSIAN HAGOP,
PARK JOHN,
TIEN DAVID,
WRIGHT JENNIFER COLE,
KNOBE JOSHUA
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
mind and language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.905
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1468-0017
pISSN - 0268-1064
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0017.2011.01428.x
Subject(s) - relativism , objectivism , morality , moral relativism , moral disengagement , epistemology , moral psychology , social cognitive theory of morality , moral reasoning , psychology , social psychology , philosophy
It has often been suggested that people's ordinary understanding of morality involves a belief in objective moral truths and a rejection of moral relativism. The results of six studies call this claim into question. Participants did offer apparently objectivist moral intuitions when considering individuals from their own culture, but they offered increasingly relativist intuitions considering individuals from increasingly different cultures or ways of life. The authors hypothesize that people do not have a fixed commitment to moral objectivism but instead tend to adopt different views depending on the degree to which they consider radically different perspectives on moral questions.