Locating value in moral progress: Valence asymmetries in folk intuitions

What makes social change morally progressive or regressive? Recent debates on moral progress have largely overlooked the “location” issue: which goods are taken to bear the value that makes change progressive or regressive. This paper addresses this issue empirically, asking whether laypeople locate such value in well-being, principles-norms, or virtues, and whether they do so symmetrically across progress and regress. In two experiments, participants rated how much positive or negative changes in these three dimensions made a society more just or unjust. Improvements in principles-norms were judged more progressive than improvements in well-being or virtues. By contrast, losses in well-being and virtues were judged more regressive than losses in principles-norms. We suggest possible interpretations of this asymmetry, asking whether it reflects a rational and defensible structure or a cognitive bias in moral judgments about social change.