The role of intuition and reasoning in moral judgment.

• author: Björklund, Fredrik
• organization: Department of Psychology
• publishing date: 2003
• type: Contribution to conference
• publication status: published
• subject: Psychology
• conference name: Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), 2003
• conference location: Los Angeles, CA, United States
• conference dates: 2003-02-06 - 2003-02-08
• language: English
• LU publication?: yes
• additional info: Abstract: Most of our current knowledge about moral functioning originates in cognitive-developmental work on moral reasoning. In the relevant models moral judgment is seen as the result of a reasoning process, its level of sophistication being the main measure employed in research. As a consequence of the strong focus on the slow, effortful, controllable, and verbalizable reasoning process, the possible influence of implicit processes on moral judgment has been left virtually unstudied. We tested the hypothesis that moral judgment can be based on affect or intuition rather than reason. In our experiments participants were presented with a classic moral reasoning dilemma (Heinz), and with tasks that were designed to put intuition and reason in conflict. On these tasks, but not the reasoning dilemma, judgments were based more on gut feelings than on reasoning, and participants more frequently laughed and directly stated that they could give no reasons in support of their judgments. This phenomenon, the stubborn and puzzled maintenance of a judgment without supporting reasons, was dubbed “moral dumbfounding.” The existence of moral dumbfounding calls into question models in which moral judgment is seen as solely produced by moral reasoning. An alternative model that considers the role of reasoning as well as intuition and how they are related to one another will be discussed.
• id: 587a3aaa-cc82-4d2c-a281-5d4367f9e6e5 (old id 934334)
• date added to LUP: 2016-04-04 13:53:12
• date last changed: 2018-11-21 21:16:58