Faculty Articles
Representations of moral violations: Category members and associated features
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Judgment and Decision Making
ISSN
1930-2975
Publication Date
2016
Abstract
I present a novel way to conceptualize Turiel and colleagues’ Social Domain Theory (SDT), and Haidt and colleagues’ Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), as theories of how concepts of moral violations are mentally represented. I argue that SDT is best viewed as a theory of the features that are associated with concepts of moral violations, including wrongness, generalizability across cultures, and intrinsic harmfulness, and that MFT, in contrast, is best viewed as a theory of individual differences in what kinds of acts are categorized as moral violations (i.e., of category membership). This perspective generates a novel prediction: the same individual difference variables that predict variation in moral values according to MFT should predict ascription of the features predicted by SDT. That is, judgments of wrongness, generalizability, and intrinsic harmfulness should covary with the same predictors as do endorsed moral values, specifically, political orientation and analytic thinking. Three studies supported this hypothesis.
DOI
10.1017/S1930297500004587
Volume
11
Issue
5
First Page
496
Last Page
508
NSUWorks Citation
Landy, J. F.
(2016). Representations of moral violations: Category members and associated features. Judgment and Decision Making, 11(5), 496-508.
Available at: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/cps_facarticles/1767
