What question did this study set out to answer?

To determine whether people consider moral obligations to be legitimate justifications for adopting beliefs that lack impartial, evidence-based support.

January 19, 2021CognitionOpen Access

Morality justifies motivated reasoning in the folk ethics of belief

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Authors

CCCorey CusimanoJohn Brown University TLTania LombrozoPrinceton University

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Implication

Behavioral experiments uncover that moral values legitimize biased reasoning in everyday decision-makers, indicating that intuitive ethics justify adopting beliefs unsupported by evidence.

Key Points

To determine whether people consider moral obligations to be legitimate justifications for adopting beliefs that lack impartial, evidence-based support.
Conducted three behavioral experiments evaluating how individuals assess belief formation across diverse everyday scenarios featuring conflicts between evidence and moral duty.
Assessed changes in the evidential threshold required for morally beneficial versus morally risky beliefs.
Evaluated whether people actively prescribe evidentially unsupported beliefs to others based on moral considerations.
Participants systematically treated moral considerations as legitimate grounds for holding beliefs unsupported by objective, evidence-based reasoning.
The moral value of a belief altered evidential standards, with morally beneficial beliefs demanding lower evidential thresholds than morally risky beliefs.
Evaluators used moral value as an independent justification for belief, routinely prescribing evidentially poor beliefs to others.

Cite This Study

Cusimano et al. (2021) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a0f9c485725bbd5cc5fe9d2 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104513

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Implication

Behavioral experiments uncover that moral values legitimize biased reasoning in everyday decision-makers, indicating that intuitive ethics justify adopting beliefs unsupported by evidence.

Morality justifies motivated reasoning in the folk ethics of belief

Discussion

Member takes

Implication

Key Points

Cite This Study

Morality justifies motivated reasoning in the folk ethics of belief

Discussion

Member takes

Implication

Key Points

Cite This Study

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