Commentary on Cass Sunstein: Moral Heuristics
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Abstract: 53 words
Main Text: 970 words
References: 269 words
Total Text: 1306 words
Abstract: Sunstein’s review of research on moral heuristics is rich and informative—even without his central claim that individuals often commit moral errors. We question the value of positing such a normative moral framework for the study of moral judgment. We also propose an alternative standard for evaluating moral judgments—that of subjective rationality.
Cass Sunstein wants to extend Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky’s (1982) thesis that generally adaptive cognitive heuristics also lead to systematic and predictable errors in judgment, and makes the provocative argument that moral heuristics can “lead to mistaken and even absurd moral judgments” (p.1). Sunstein makes an important contribution to the literature on moral judgment by highlighting the role of intuitions everyday moral thinking (see also Haidt, 2001). But while Sunstein does not endorse any grand moral theory explicitly (e.g., Utilitarianism or Kantianism), he agrees that the very concept of a “moral error” requires a normative benchmark and endorses “weak consequentialism” as, on his view, a relatively uncontroversial standard by which to judge the successes and failures of various moral judgments.
We do not wish to debate the virtues and vices of any normative moral theory—this is a task best left to philosophers. However, we do question the necessity of positing a normative framework for understanding the psychology of moral judgment. Does a good theory of moral judgment require an objectively “right” set of moral criteria with which to compare lay judgments? Perhaps not. We believe that the research reviewed by Sunstein is extremely informative without the additional claim that individuals are making mistakes. For instance, knowing and predicting the conditions under which individuals rigidly adhere to principles despite consequences is important for any successful moral theory. So the fact that individuals are willing to accept a (slightly) increased risk of dying in order to punish a betrayal is quite provocative—but does it add more value to claim that this is an error?
One possible downside of such an approach is a proliferation of error-focused work in the moral domain—a domain in which claiming an objective standard may simply lead to a whole lot of argument about which standard is right at the expense of paying attention to the data. In our opinion, this was equally problematic with the approach of Kohlberg and his colleagues—a willingness to embrace a Kantian/Rawlsian theory of justice led to the questionable claim that certain individuals were at a “lower stage” of moral reasoning. Much like focusing on Kantian justice, focusing on moral errors may divert attention away from more fruitful areas of inquiry, such as (for example) cross-cultural differences in moral judgment (e.g., Haidt, Koller, & Dias, 1993), or the emotional processes that underlie moral judgments (e.g., Pizarro, 2000).
This does not mean that psychologists must abandon all talk of error in moral judgment—there is one sense of the word “error” that may still be useful in this domain. To the extent that people’s moral judgments are influenced by factors that even they perceive as irrational, their judgments may be said to be in error (Kruglanski, 1989).
Empirical examples of this subjective irrationality in moral judgment are already available. For instance, people believe that they punish to deter future criminals, yet their judgments are driven by the severity of the crime, not deterrence-related variables (Carlsmith, Darley, & Robinson, 2002; Sunstein refers to this as the ‘moral outrage’ heuristic). Presumably, were a participant in this research aware of this influence she would revise her judgment, as it fails to match her own standard.
In another study, Pizarro, Uhlmann, and Bloom (2003) found that participants discounted blame for intentional actions that were not carried out quite as intended (i.e., acts that lacked ‘intentions-in-action’; Searle, 1983). For instance, when a murderer tripped and accidentally stabbed his victim in the process of attempting to kill him, he was perceived as less blameworthy. Interestingly, when asked to give their most rational response, participants judged acts that did and did not possess intention-in-action to be equally blameworthy. This suggests that, at least for some, discounting blame for acts that lacked intention-in-action was subjectively irrational.
In another example, Tetlock et al. (2004) examined conservative and liberal managers’ reactions to a hypothetical employee error (failure to mail a package on time) with either mild or severe consequences. Both conservative and liberal managers judged the employee more harshly when the consequences of the error were severe (this has been referred to as an ‘outcome bias’ and ‘moral luck; Baron & Hershey, 1988). Liberals viewed this outcome bias as an error, reducing their recommended punishment in the severe consequences case when asked to consider how they would have reacted had the consequences been mild. In contrast, conservatives saw it as perfectly appropriate to determine the employee’s punishment based on the consequences of his or her actions.
Liberals and conservatives also disagree regarding whether certain socialized intuitions are rational. Ingenious studies by Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues demonstrate that most people find it intuitively wrong to wash one’s toilet with the American flag, eat one’s recently expired pet, or masturbate into a dead chicken (Haidt, 2001; Haidt et al., 2003). When asked to make the most rational judgment possible, liberals appear to correct for their intuitions— reducing blame for eating Fido, for example (Uhlmann, Pizarro, & Brescoll, 2004; see also Haidt & Hersh, 2001). In contrast, conservatives provide essentially the same judgments when asked to respond rationally vs. intuitively. For liberals, the judgments identified by Haidt exert a subjectively irrational influence on their judgments. But for conservatives, who place a high priority on traditional values, such judgments may seem perfectly well-grounded.
If people are indeed exhibiting “absurd moral judgments” (p. 1), we suggest that this is not because heuristics lead individuals’ moral judgments to diverge from some objective standard of morality (such as weak consequentialism), but because these judgments would be deemed irrational by the participant himself upon reflection. Perhaps this sense of the term “error” may be the best way to avoid the morass of subjectivity inherent in studying the moral judgments of other people, and may also keep researchers from hurling insults at each other’s normative theory of choice.
References
Baron, J., & Hershey, J. C. (1988). Outcome bias in decision evaluation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 569-579.
Carlsmith, K.M., Darley, J.M., & Robinson, P.H. (2002). Why do we punish? Deterrence and just deserts as motives for punishment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 284-299.
Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review. 108, 814-834.
Haidt, J., & Hersh, M. (2001). Sexual morality: The cultures and emotions of conservatives and liberals. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 31, 191-221.
Haidt, J., Koller, S., & Dias, M . (1993). Affect, culture, and morality, or is it wrong to eat your dog? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 613-628.
Kahneman, D., Slovic, P. & Tversky, A. (Eds.) (1982). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Cambridge University Press.
Kruglanski, A. W. (1989). The psychology of being "right": The problem of accuracy in social perception and cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 106, 395-409.
Pizarro, D.A. (2000). Nothing more than feelings?: The role of emotions in moral judgment. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 30, 355-375.
Pizarro, D.A., Uhlmann, E., & Bloom, P. (2003). Causal deviance and the attribution of moral responsibility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 653-660.
Tetlock, P.E., Visser, P., Singh, R., Polifroni, M. Scott, A. Elson, B., Mazzocco, P., & Rescober, P. (2004). People as Intuitive Prosecutors: The Impact of Social-Control Goals on Punitiveness and Attributions of Responsibility. Manuscript under review.
Searle, J. (1983). Intentionality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Uhlmann, E., Pizarro, D.A., & Brescoll, V. (2004). The role of reason in moral judgment. Manuscript in preparation.
Acknowledgement(s)
We thank Andy Poehlman for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper.