Cohen, Dale, Quinlan, Philip Thomas orcid.org/0000-0002-8847-6390 and Liu, Xingyu (2023) Moral judgments are value-based decisions driven by culturally stable valuations and culturally variable decision biases. Social Psychological and Personality Science. ISSN 1948-5506
Abstract
Many theorize that cultural similarities in moral judgments arise from a specialized cognitive system devoted to morality. We claim, in contrast, that people make moral judgments using a general-purpose, value-based decision-making process. We present a computational cognitive model to predict response time and response choice to moral dilemmas using valuations as input. Cultural similarities in moral judgment are explained by a culturally stable set of valuations that drives choices that aid survival. Corresponding cultural differences are explained by changes in a decisional bias parameter that accounts for differences in the perceived costs of making various kinds of decisional errors. The model accurately predicts the timed choices of both UK and Chinese respondents from values collected from USA respondents.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2023. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the University’s Research Publications and Open Access policy. |
Keywords: | Cross Culture,Moral Judgment,Psychological Values,Social Cognition |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Sciences (York) > Psychology (York) |
Depositing User: | Pure (York) |
Date Deposited: | 23 Aug 2023 09:10 |
Last Modified: | 02 Apr 2025 23:26 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506231199527 |
Status: | Published online |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/19485506231199527 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:202632 |