moral-psychology.
31 of 1538 NOTE documents. Back to the full index.
| # | Title | Summary | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| NOTE-034 v3 | Curry et al. 2019, morality-as-cooperation in 60 societies | Coding 3,460 eHRAF paragraphs on the 60 Probability Sample Files societies found 962 morally valenced mentions of seven cooperative behaviours, 961 of them positive. The one negative is Chuuk admiration of open theft as dominance. Presence varied widely by domain: property 54/60 (90%), kin 47 (78%), group 44 (73%), reciprocity 43 (72%), respect 35 (58%), bravery 32 (53%), fairness 9 (15%). Presence correlated with ethnographic coverage (r = 0.43). The design can detect a morally positive mention but has almost no way to register a negative one, so the 99.9% is weak evidence for universality. | Read |
| NOTE-132 v2 | Moral disciplining: foundations of puritanical morality | Puritanical norms (condemning lust, gluttony, intoxicants, immodesty, idleness; praising temperance and piety) are argued to be cooperative morality after all: people believe cooperation needs self-control and that indulgence erodes it (and discipline trains it), so a single harm/fairness-sensitive moral system condemns victimless pleasures as indirect, probabilistic threats to cooperation. Its decline in rich societies is put down to people seeing others as already self-controlled and trustworthy. The theory is explicitly agnostic about whether the norms actually work. Its most direct support is the authors’ own vignette studies (N > 1,100), in which perceived loss of self-control mediated 100% of the perceived effect of indulgence on cooperativeness. | Read |
| NOTE-185 | The moral psychology of obligation | Tomasello proposes that the human sense of obligation is “the internalized social/rational pressure from a joint or collective self-regulating agent ‘we’… to do what ‘we’ expect me to” (§3). It arises first, around age 3, inside joint-commitment collaboration with a partner, and then, from about 3–5 years, toward in-group members through collective identification. It is a “self-conscious motivation” whose coercive force is a threat to one’s cooperative identity. The support is a synthesis of developmental and comparative experiments, mostly from his own lab, on WEIRD children versus chimpanzees; the paper runs no new experiment. | Read |
| NOTE-396 | Graham et al. 2013, Moral Foundations Theory | MFT in four claims: a first draft of the moral mind organized in advance of experience, edited by culture, working through fast intuitions, with several foundations because there were several adaptive challenges. Five foundations, each with an evolutionary model (Care: kin selection; Fairness: reciprocal altruism; Loyalty: coalitions; Authority: rank; Sanctity: disease avoidance). MFQ findings: liberals rely on Care and Fairness, conservatives on all five, in every region sampled; Sanctity predicts culture-war attitudes best. Five criteria for foundationhood; Liberty, Efficiency, Ownership and Honesty named as candidates. | Read |
| NOTE-397 | Yilmaz, Harma & Doğruyol 2021, the MAC-Q in Turkey | An independent validation of the MAC-Q. In Turkish undergraduates (n = 445) seven factors fit the Relevance items (CFI .949, RMSEA .053, SRMR .046) but not the Judgement items (CFI .828) or the full form (CFI .752), as in the original. Family and deference track resistance to change; deference tracks, and fairness counters, opposition to equality. Resource-scarcity primes in Turkey (n = 576) and in a preregistered US MTurk study (n = 921) had no effect. Relevance scores correlate about .1–.3 with prosocial intentions. The seven are strongly intercorrelated. | Read |
| NOTE-398 | Atari et al. 2023, the MFQ-2 | A new Moral Foundations Questionnaire, built across 25 populations in local languages: 116 candidate items cut to 36, six each for Care, Equality, Proportionality, Loyalty, Authority and Purity, in a “describes me” format. Six factors fit across 19 nations (ESEM CFI .979); reliabilities ω .73–.95; Purity alone fails the alignment invariance threshold. Equality and Proportionality are nearly orthogonal in WEIRD samples. Purity rises most with cultural distance from the U.S. The individualizing–binding split appears in only three national networks. The MFQ-2 predicts criterion scales better than the MFQ-1. | Read |
| NOTE-399 | Curry et al. 2021, moral molecules | The seven morality-as-cooperation domains are cast as elements whose pairwise combinations are moral “molecules”. For each of 21 pairs the authors hypothesise a concept and find a definition or quotation that fits: fraternity, blood revenge, family pride, filial piety, gavelkind, primogeniture, friendship, patriotism, tribute, diplomacy, common ownership, honour, confession, turn-taking, restitution, modesty, mercy, munificence, arbitration, mendicance and queuing. The counts are right (127 positive combinations, 2,186 of mixed valence). The test is a search for confirming instances with no stated protocol, and the theory says it does not predict which molecules exist. | Read |
| NOTE-400 | Haidt & Joseph 2004, intuitive ethics | An essay, not a study. Humans are innately prepared to feel quick approval or disapproval at four patterns, suffering, hierarchy, reciprocity and purity, each a module with an evolved proper domain and a culturally widened actual domain; ingroup is the best fifth candidate (fn. 15). Three of the four were the concerns all five surveyed works shared; purity was added from the authors’ own research on disgust. Cultures vary in actual domains, in which modules they lean on, in what a virtue means, and in how virtues cluster. No data are reported. | Read |
| NOTE-402 | The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism | A verbal model: altruists who withhold help from non-reciprocators beat non-altruists when benefit exceeds cost, encounters are many, partners stable and exposure symmetric. Cleaner-fish hosts that do not eat their cleaners fit it; bird alarm calls are explained by a different, self-interested model. Human friendship, moralistic aggression, gratitude, sympathy, guilt, trust, suspicion and their sham forms are proposed as adaptations regulating exchange, supported by 1960s social psychology, not tested. | Read |
| NOTE-403 | Haidt 2001, the social intuitionist model | The social intuitionist model: moral judgments appear in consciousness as quick intuitions with an affective valence, and moral reasoning is usually a post-hoc search for supporting reasons, used to persuade others. Six links are drawn, four of them reasoning links, two of them private. The case rests on dual-process research, motivated reasoning, post-hoc confabulation and the weak tie between moral reasoning and moral action, mostly from outside morality. Harmless taboo violations are condemned regardless, and affect predicts the condemnation better than perceived harm. | Read |
| NOTE-405 | Rai & Fiske 2011, relationship regulation | A theoretical review. Moral psychology is the regulation of social relationships: an act is right or wrong according to the relational model participants and observers apply, not according to its harm, fairness or purity in the abstract. Fiske’s four models (communal sharing, authority ranking, equality matching, market pricing) each carry a moral motive: Unity, Hierarchy, Equality, Proportionality. Honour killing, obedient massacre, blood feud and collateral damage are each read as one motive at work. Purity and ingroup loyalty are both Unity. No new data are reported. | Read |
| NOTE-406 | Alfano, Cheong & Curry 2024, moral universals in 256 societies | The Morality-as-Cooperation Dictionary (fourteen virtue and vice sub-dictionaries, built by brainstorming, colleague crowd-sourcing and WordNet expansion, culled by two coders at κ ≈ .65–.70) is run with LIWC over 9,653 eHRAF Ethics paragraphs from 256 societies. Most domains are detected in most societies. Region and subsistence matter significantly but slightly. Against the sixty-society hand codes, agreement is about 80% but κ only .08–.25, with false positives outnumbering true ones. The method cannot detect valence. A spot-check found admired theft in four societies and societies that do not value bravery or reciprocity. | Read |
| NOTE-407 | Baumard, André & Sperber 2013, mutualistic morality | Partner choice with outside options constrains how the gains of cooperation are split: nobody accepts less than they could get elsewhere, so with equal options the stable split is proportional to each partner’s contribution of effort and talent. Being chosen then rewards a genuine sense of fairness over calculated fairness. Dictator, ultimatum, trust and public-goods results are read as allocations by perceived entitlement. Twenty-eight commentators accept partner choice and dispute that fairness is all of morality; the authors reply with a broad and a narrow position they have not settled between them. | Read |
| NOTE-408 | Curry 2016, morality as cooperation: a problem-centred approach | The founding statement of morality-as-cooperation. Nonzero-sum game theory gives seven cooperation problems (kin, coordination, exchange, hawk and dove contest displays, division, possession), and their solutions are said to be what morality is. Each domain gets an animal case, a human case and quotations from moral philosophers. No data are reported. The sharpest content is the predictions on pp. 39–40: non-cooperative behaviour is morally neutral, no culture moralizes “aesthetics or nutrition”, and religious morality and food taboos will turn out cooperative. | Read |
| NOTE-412 | Curry, Jones Chesters & Van Lissa 2019, the MAC-Q | A 42-item questionnaire for morality-as-cooperation’s seven domains, written by the authors from the theory and reduced to three items per subscale. In UK (n = 1,392) and US (n = 469) online samples, seven factors fit the Relevance items well (CFI .98) and the Judgement items poorly (CFI .87). The two sets cannot be pooled into seven domains (CFI .73); the best model keeps fourteen correlated factors. The MFQ’s five factors are not recovered. MFQ purity items are rated about as morally relevant as its loyalty and authority items, which the authors concede contradicts the theory. The data cannot be shared. | Read |
| NOTE-548 | Moral Responsibility | A survey of moral responsibility. Its most exact reports, for this record: Fischer and Ravizza’s guidance control as an owned, moderately reasons-responsive mechanism, with page references (§2.3); Wolf’s critique of Real Self views and the requirement that an agent be able to form her values on the basis of the True and the Good (§3.1.1); and the moral competence condition, through JoJo (§3.2). Wolf’s praise/blame asymmetry is noted in one sentence. | Read |
| NOTE-565 | Responsibility, Moral and Otherwise | A lecture arguing that deep responsibility extends beyond the moral, to prudential and aesthetic traits and to art, and that the self-disclosure view explains this. Watson’s two-level view, attributability with accountability stacked on top, is rejected: the two are independent, and accountability may need nothing metaphysically robust. What makes a self a fit target of reactive attitudes is offered as a hunch: an intelligent self that perceives, understands and appreciates the world as we do. | Read |
| NOTE-1094 | Psychopathy as a Clinical and Empirical Construct | The PCL-R’s items form four correlated factors, Interpersonal, Affective, Lifestyle and Antisocial, which pair into Factors 1 and 2 and are explained by one superordinate factor. Psychopathy is dimensional, its antisocial features belong to it as much as its affective ones, and the authors deny that any one component is its essence. Cleckley’s 1941/1976 profile is a clinical synopsis from an unrepresentative sample, not the standard the measure should be judged by. | Read |
| NOTE-1245 | Preregistered Replication and Extension of “Moral Hypocrisy: Social Groups and the Flexibility of Virtue” | Two preregistered online experiments (Prolific, US). One used minimal groups (n = 590 analysed) and one used Democrats versus Republicans (n = 577). Neither replicated Valdesolo and DeSteno’s intergroup moral hypocrisy (the original N was 76 and d was 1.11); the minimal-group contrast is statistically equivalent to zero. In minimal groups, in-group favouritism appeared only as it rose with collective identification (interaction b = −.39); the in-group/out-group contrast was not significant (p = .07). Partisans judged an out-party member’s identical selfish act as less fair (p = .003). About a third of those free to choose took no advantage for themselves. | Read |
| NOTE-1262 | Group-level self-definition and self-investment: A hierarchical (multicomponent) model of in-group identification | Seven studies with Dutch students. Identification has five components on two correlated dimensions (r = .61 to .77): self-definition (self-stereotyping, in-group homogeneity) and self-investment (solidarity, satisfaction, centrality). The model fit Dutch, European and university identification better than one-factor or cognitive-versus-affective models. Weeks to months later, the components predicted different reactions. Shown their group’s mistreatment of Rwandan asylum seekers, those who saw themselves as like the average European felt more guilt, while those satisfied with being European, and for whom it was central, legitimized the policy. The self-circle overlap measure correlated with self-investment as much as with self-stereotyping. | Read |
| NOTE-1267 | Population ethical intuitions | Nine experiments with US online samples. People require more happiness than suffering for a population to be better existing than not (about 75% happy; about 61% when the two are stated to be equally intense). Yet they judge adding one extremely happy person as good as adding one extremely unhappy person is bad: they reject the intuition of neutrality and the procreation asymmetry. With averages fixed they prefer larger happy and smaller unhappy populations, but the preference for more happy people fades and, at a billion against ten billion, reverses. With totals fixed they prefer higher averages. In conflicts averagism tends to win, to the point of preferring to add near-maximally unhappy people who raise the average. Prompts to reflect move judgements toward totalism. | Read |
| NOTE-1270 | The Psychology of Existential Risk: Moral Judgments about Human Extinction | Parfit’s three outcomes, put to laypeople: no catastrophe, 80% of humanity killed, 100% killed. Most judge extinction bad and to be prevented (78% on a binary item), but of those who rank the outcomes as expected only 23% (UK), 19% (US) and 37% (Oxford students) judge the step from 80% to 100% the greater. More do when the victims are zebras (44%, 35%), when the catastrophe sterilizes rather than kills (47%, 29%), or when reminded that only extinction ends humanity’s future (50%, 39%). A majority do only when the surviving future is described as long and utopian (77%, 67%, 77%). Existential-risk mitigators do so unprompted (86%). The authors read this as a focus on immediate harm to fellow humans and neglect of the long term. | Read |
| NOTE-1273 | Leaving a Legacy: Intergenerational Allocations of Benefits and Burdens | Six experiments on intergenerational allocation. Framing a climate decision as leaving burdens rather than using up benefits raised concern with one’s legacy, felt responsibility and affinity toward future generations, ethical concern and moral emotions. In allocation tasks people favoured themselves more with benefits than with burdens, but only when the other person would receive the resource in the future, and only when they themselves were a party to the trade-off. Perceived ethical considerations accounted for the first condition. The authors read this as legacy concern, the wish to extend the self beyond death. Legacy concern was measured only in the attitude studies, never alongside an allocation. | Read |
| NOTE-1274 | Empirical Approaches to Altruism | A survey by Doris, Stich, Walmsley and Schulz. Under the standard account, altruism means an ultimate desire for another’s well-being, and evolutionary and social-science senses of the word do not bear on it. Batson’s experiments tell against the social-punishment and aversive-arousal versions of egoism. Self-other merging would make helping egoistic only if the helper took herself to be numerically identical with the other. The four measures used in the 1997 exchange test likeness or something unclear, not identity. On the causal question, the entry says only that Batson et al. corrected Cialdini’s methods and found empathy’s role “clearly evident”. Altruism is still unproven: divine punishment, principles, norms and habit remain open explanations. | Read |
| NOTE-1286 | Recategorization and Prosocial Behavior: Common In-Group Identity and a Dual Identity | The common in-group identity model’s authors on helping. Recategorizing two groups as one removed in-group bias in helping in a laboratory study (posters for an out-group member rose to the in-group level), and at a stadium White fans complied with a Black interviewer more when he wore their university’s hat (59% vs 36%). A dual identity is another matter: White students volunteered least for a Black student who called himself a Black Colgate student, as little as for one who called himself Black, and most when he called himself a Colgate student. Empathic concern partly mediated the effect on helping (β for condition .46 to .35); attitudes did not. Sample sizes are not reported. | Read |
| NOTE-1293 | Responsibility to Future Generations: A Moral Reframing Strategy for Combatting Climate Change | Felt responsibility to future generations is held by most people in 33 of 34 European countries and is nearly unrelated to ideology, age and gender. In US samples it is endorsed more than responsibility to cut one’s own climate contribution, is half as tied to conservatism (r = −.21 against −.45), and predicts self-reported proenvironmentalism. A preregistered experiment (N = 3,175) found five brief interventions each raised it a little; a letter to a person born today did most, a longtermist text least, and reflecting on past generations’ sacrifices raised it without raising responsibility for climate. Nothing measures how far the self extends, and responsibility is not separated from caring. | Read |
| NOTE-1360 | Franklin — The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin | Franklin’s memoir of his life to 1757, written in four sittings from 1771 to 1790 and left unfinished. Its constant subject is how he got others to act with him: by modest, undogmatic speech, by putting his projects forward as “a scheme of a number of friends”, by preparing opinion in print and through the Junto’s satellite clubs, and, in the borrowed-book anecdote of Part Three, by asking an opponent for a favour. He gives that anecdote as proof of an “old maxim” and as a lesson in prudence, not as a claim about how liking forms. | Read |
| NOTE-1407 | Pettigrew and Tropp — A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory | Meta-analysis of 515 studies (713 samples, 1,383 tests, 250,089 people, 38 countries, through 2000) of face-to-face intergroup contact and prejudice. The random-effects mean is r ≈ −.21, 94% of samples are negative, experiments give −.34, and the most rigorous samples −.32. Samples structured to meet Allport’s conditions give −.29 against −.20 for the rest, so the conditions help but are not needed; they work as a bundle. One of six publication-bias checks, Vevea and Hedges’s, leaves no significant overall effect. | Read |
| NOTE-1408 | Pettigrew — Intergroup contact theory | Pettigrew reformulates Allport’s contact hypothesis as a longitudinal theory. Contact works through four processes (learning about the outgroup, changed behavior, affective ties, ingroup reappraisal, the last yielding “deprovincialization”). Its effects generalize through a sequence of decategorization, salient categorization and recategorization. A fifth essential condition, friendship potential, joins Allport’s four; other proposed conditions are facilitating. Selection bias is real, but in European survey data the path from outgroup friendship to less prejudice is stronger than the reverse. | Read |
| NOTE-1439 | Schroeder & Prentice — Exposing pluralistic ignorance | First-year students who heard, in a peer-led discussion, that peers are privately less comfortable with campus drinking than they seem reported drinking less months later than students given a decision-making discussion. Their estimates of peer comfort did not differ by condition: the authors infer that the correction weakened the norm’s force, not its content. Men closed the self–other gap by revising their view of others, not their own attitude, the reverse of the 1993 result this paper restates. | Read |
| NOTE-1537 | Van Lange and Bergmann — Human cooperation is strong among individuals but fragile between groups | A Perspective, not a systematic review. Cooperation is strong between individuals, above all in dyads, through precise reciprocity, empathy and a partner who cannot be excluded at no cost. It is fragile between groups. Categorization alone yields schema-based mistrust and in-group favouritism by bounded reciprocity, and seeing the out-group favour itself hardens that into distrust. Only negative interdependence and perceived threat turn it into costly competition, aggression and hate. The same processes that build in-group cooperation can fuel intergroup conflict. The remedy proposed is cooperative cross-group dyads, untested. | Read |