
The Library
Contractualist concerns shape moral decisions and moral judgments
Tools
Le Pargneux, Arthur, Chater, Nick and Zeitoun, Hossam (2022) Contractualist concerns shape moral decisions and moral judgments. In: CogSci 2022, Toronto, Canada, 27-30 Jul 2022. Published in: Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society., 44
![]() |
PDF
CogSci_2022_acceptance_letter.pdf - Unspecified Version Embargoed item. Restricted access to Repository staff only - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (0b) |
Official URL: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6sw8750n#author
Abstract
Understanding human morality is of major interest across the cognitive and behavioral sciences. Empirical approaches often focus on two theories from moral philosophy — consequentialism and deontology —, explaining moral cognition by appealing to either calculation of consequences, adherence to rules, or both. By contrast, a third influential philosophical tradition — contractualism — has received little empirical investigation. According to contractualism, ethics is a matter of forming, adhering to, and enforcing (hypothetical) agreements. Drawing upon virtual bargaining — a recent psychological proposal that models social interactions in contractualist terms — we investigate moral contractualism in five preregistered online experiments (n = 3,636). We find that characteristically contractualist concerns (e.g., agreement, consent, mutual interests) heavily shape incentivized decisions in a new experimental game designed to split apart contractualism from consequentialism and deontology. Moreover, they influence moral judgments in three distinct settings. Contractualist reasoning may play a central role in human morality.
Item Type: | Conference Item (Paper) | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Subjects: | H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) | ||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School > Behavioural Science Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School > Strategy & International Business Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School |
||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. | ||||||
Publisher: | Cognitive Science Society | ||||||
Official Date: | 2022 | ||||||
Dates: |
|
||||||
Volume: | 44 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||
Conference Paper Type: | Paper | ||||||
Title of Event: | CogSci 2022 | ||||||
Type of Event: | Conference | ||||||
Location of Event: | Toronto, Canada | ||||||
Date(s) of Event: | 27-30 Jul 2022 | ||||||
Related URLs: |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
![]() |
View Item |