The Three-C Model of Moral Cognition: Why Moral Judgments Flip, Freeze, and Drift

Moral psychology has made considerable progress in describing moral judgments, identifying their dimensions, and measuring their sensitivities. Yet none of the existing frameworks provides a cognitive mechanism that explains why the integration of multiple evaluative perspectives systematically fails—and why this failure takes specific forms: judgments flip, freeze, or drift. I propose an architectural explanation: the Three-C Model, in which moral judgment operates through three competing evaluative modes—Character, Constraint, and Consequence. Each mode produces its output in a distinct format: Character as a sense of fit, Constraint as a yes-or-no decision, Consequence as a more-or-less comparison. These formats cannot be directly converted into one another. Drawing on research on task switching and working memory limits, I propose that these modes compete for limited executive resources and that only one can be focused at a time. Switching between modes incurs measurable costs that vary in a situation-dependent manner—under ideal conditions, integration is possible; under extreme conditions, it systematically fails. The model reframes moral inconsistency as an architectural phenomenon rather than a character deficit. It explains why the three patterns follow from the same mechanism, predicts under which conditions each occurs, and opens pathways for intervention. Eight hypotheses with falsification criteria and a cued-evaluation paradigm operationalize the model. .