A Cognitive Prototype Model of Moral Judgment and Disagreement

This research presents the groundwork for a cognitive prototype model of moral judgment and disagreement. Within this framework, I investigated the effects of moral properties (i.e., social context, intentions, consent/autonomy, and outcomes) on moral judgment. It was predicted that immoral prototypes would lead to a high degree of blame and wrongfulness; promoral prototypes would lead to a high degree of praise and rightfulness; and nonprototypes would act as a source of disagreement and be more difficult to judge. Finally, it was predicted that the language used to respond to moral scenarios would vary according to the orientations of the moral properties. A total of 714 people participated in two studies by responding to online surveys (Study 1: 233 participants, Mage = 40, range = 18 – 71; Study 2: 481 participants Mage = 44, range = 18 – 80). Experiments using ANOVA and MANOVA designs were run to compare how the manipulation of moral properties affects levels of right/wrong, praise/blame, difficulty level, and frequency of moral property language. The results demonstrated that moral prototypes produced a high level of agreement while nonprototypes were more prone to disagreement. Additionally, when compared to nonprototypes, most of the promoral prototypes received higher levels of praise and rightfulness and most of the immoral prototypes received higher levels of wrongfulness and blame. There were no consistent patterns with difficulty level. However, none of the nonprototypes were easier to judge than the prototypes. Finally, the response language varied according to the orientations of the properties and, in some cases, the content of the scenario. Together, these studies lend support for the moral asymmetry hypothesis as the effect sizes show that moral judgment appears to be more sensitive to immoral properties than promoral properties. The results also suggest that the blame intensification hypothesis (i.e., bad intentions + bad outcomes = intensified blame) could be strengthened by including social context and consent factors and by adding a praise intensification component. Finally, because moral judgment appears to be influenced by how a situation is presented, these findings pose additional implications for policymaking and moral education programs.