Patterns of Moral Judgment Derive From Nonmoral Psychological Representations
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Ordinary people often make moral judgments that are consistent with philosophical principles and legal distinctions. For example, they judge killing as worse than letting die, and harm caused as a necessary means to a greater good as worse than harm caused as a side-effect (Cushman, Young, & Hauser, 2006). Are these patterns of judgment produced by mechanisms specific to the moral domain, or do they derive from other psychological domains? We show that the action/omission and means/side-effect distinctions affect nonmoral representations and provide evidence that their role in moral judgment is mediated by these nonmoral psychological representations. Specifically, the action/omission distinction affects moral judgment primarily via causal attribution, while the means/side-effect distinction affects moral judgment via intentional attribution. We suggest that many of the specific patterns evident in our moral judgments in fact derive from nonmoral psychological mechanisms, and especially from the processes of causal and intentional attribution.
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Harmful actions are judged more harshly than harmful inactions.
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Recent empirical work on the relationship between causal judgements and norms
Willemsen, P., & Kirfel, L. (2018) · Philosophy Compass · doi:10.1111/phc3.12562 · Cited by 38 · see citing works
What Dilemma? Moral Evaluation Shapes Factual BeliefPreprint
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Cognitive parallels between moral judgment and modal judgment
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Attitudes towards euthanasia in Iran: the role of altruism
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The Psychological Origins of the Doctrine of Double Effect
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Self-citationEthical Learning, Natural and Artificial
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Dual processes of emotion and reason in judgments about moral dilemmas
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Switching codes and shifting morals: how code-switching and emotion affect moral judgment
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Will I Regret It? Anticipated Negative Emotions Modulate Choices in Moral Dilemmas
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Moral Education (2010-2019): A Bibliometric Study (Part 2)
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Counterfactuals and the logic of causal selection.
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Moral Dynamics: Grounding Moral Judgment in Intuitive Physics and Intuitive PsychologyPreprint
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People's judgments of humans and robots in a classic moral dilemma.
Malle, B. F., Scheutz, M., Cusimano, C. J., Voiklis, J., Komatsu, T., Thapa, S., & Aladia, S. (2024) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105958 · Cited by 23 · see citing works
Moral kinematics: The role of physical factors in moral judgments
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Vila‐Henninger, L. A. (2021) · Sociological Forum · doi:10.1111/socf.12763 · Cited by 25 · see citing works
Morality in Our Mind and Across Cultures and Politics
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Experimental or Empirical Political Philosophy
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Reversing the side-effect effect: the power of salient norms
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Optimality bias in moral judgment
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Moral dilemmas in females: children are more utilitarian than adults
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The Role of Learning in Punishment, Prosociality, and Human Uniqueness
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For the greater goods? Ownership rights and utilitarian moral judgment
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Is there really an omission effect?
Willemsen, P., & Reuter, K. (2016) · Philosophical Psychology · doi:10.1080/09515089.2016.1225194 · Cited by 22 · see citing works
Affirmative action and other group tradeoff policies: Identifiability of those adversely affected
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Moral Judgment and Deontology: Empirical Developments
May, J. (2014) · Philosophy Compass · doi:10.1111/phc3.12172 · Cited by 19 · see citing works
Barak‐Corren, N., Tsay, C., Cushman, F. A., & Bazerman, M. H. (2017) · Management Science · doi:10.1287/mnsc.2016.2659 · Cited by 21 · see citing works
Self-citationReasoning about intentions: Counterexamples to reasons for actions.
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New ambitions for a new paradigm: Putting the psychology of reasoning at the service of humanity
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Global Justice and Charity: A Brief for a New Approach to Empirical Philosophy
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Switching Away from Utilitarianism: The Limited Role of Utility Calculations in Moral Judgment
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How to weigh lives. A computational model of moral judgment in multiple-outcome structures
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Verdiesen, I., de Sio, F. S., & Dignum, V. (2019) · IEEE Technology and Society Magazine · doi:10.1109/mts.2019.2948439 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
Public perceptions of autonomous lethal weapons systems
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Tepe, B., & Byrne, R. M. J. (2022) · Memory & Cognition · doi:10.3758/s13421-022-01315-0 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
From Virtue Epistemology to Abilism: Theoretical and Empirical DevelopmentsPreprint
Turri, J. (2020) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.3649785 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
Moral judgments of risky choices: A moral echoing effect
Parkinson, M., & Byrne, R. (2017) · Judgment and Decision Making · doi:10.1017/s1930297500005854 · Cited by 10 · see citing works
WITHDRAWN: Consequences are far away: Psychological distance affects modes of moral decision making
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Lyashevsky, I., Cesarano, M. M., & Black, J. (2019) · American Educational Research Journal · doi:10.3102/0002831219865220 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
A Counterfactual Explanation for the Action EffectPreprint
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Utilitarian Moral Judgment Exclusively Coheres with Inference from Is to Ought
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The philosopher in the theater.
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Self-citationReason and emotion, not reason or emotion in moral judgment
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Insight into hackers’ reaction toward information security breach
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Moral discourse boosts confidence in moral judgments
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From meaning well to doing well: ethical expertise in the GIS domain
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Making moral principles suit yourself
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The disunity of moral judgment: Evidence and implications
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The Effects of Intent, Outcome, and Causality on Moral Judgments and Decision Processes
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Beyond killing one to save five: Sensitivity to ratio and probability in moral judgment
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Outline of a sensory-motor perspective on intrinsically moral agents
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Wronging past rights: The sunk cost bias distorts moral judgment
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- Authors
- Cushman, F., & Young, L.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
- Corresponding author
- Cushman, Fiery
- Venue
- Cognitive Science
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2011-01-31
- Volume
- 35
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 1052-1075
- ISSN
- 0364-0213 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2133646840
- Cited by
- 179
- References
- 70
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 12 · 2020: 18 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 14 · 2016: 10 · 2015: 9 · 2014: 21 · 2013: 10 · 2012: 9
- FWCI
- 7.06
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Cognitive Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Harvard University
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Philosophical Ethics and Theory
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Ethics in Business and Education
- Keywords
- moral judgment, causal attribution, intentional attribution, killing versus letting die, moral intuitions
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Humans, Judgment, Morals, Social Perception, Intention, Theory of Mind
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