Does moral valence influence the construal of alternative possibilities
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20254558 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Neele Engelmann (0000-0002-0000-9940, Ruhr University Bochum, corresponding author), Ivar R Hannikainen (0000-0003-0623-357X, Universidad de Granada) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 2 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 318-331 |
| Publication date | 2024-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Possibility Studies & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2753-8699 • E-ISSN: 2753-8699 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/27538699241231026 |
| OpenAlex | W4392294940 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 24 |
It is often thought that an agent may be held morally responsible for bringing about a negative outcome only if they could have done otherwise. Inspired by previous research linking moral judgment to free will ascriptions and representations of possibility, we probe the reverse link: Does learning about a morally undesirable outcome make preferable alternatives appear more possible? We find modest evidence that this could be the case. In a preregistered experiment, we presented 317 participants with animated footage of a traffic accident in which two bystanders fail to intervene as a third person gets run over by bus, and manipulated whether the victim was evil, virtuous, or neutral. Judging from the same visual input, people indicate that saving an evil victim would have been slightly less possible than saving a virtuous or neutral victim, and arriving at the conclusion that it would have been possible demanded more time. Using drift-diffusion modeling to better understand the underlying cognitive processes, we found that participants were biased against counterfactual attempts to save the evil victim’s life, but then gathered evidence toward their decisions at the same rate regardless of the victim’s morality
Construal level theory · Counterfactual thinking · Epistemology · Moral behavior · Moral disengagement · Morality · Emotions and Moral Behavior · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology
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How peer influence shapes value computation in moral decision-making
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Are morally good actions ever free
Half a century of research on the Stroop effect
Free to punish
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2024 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |