Skip to main content

The Perceived Objectivity of Ethical Beliefs: Psychological Findings and Implications for Public Policy

Review of Philosophy and Psychology volume 1, pages 161–188 (2010)Cite this article

Abstract

Ethical disputes arise over differences in the content of the ethical beliefs people hold on either side of an issue. One person may believe that it is wrong to have an abortion for financial reasons, whereas another may believe it to be permissible. But, the magnitude and difficulty of such disputes may also depend on other properties of the ethical beliefs in question—in particular, how objective they are perceived to be. As a psychological property of moral belief, objectivity is relatively unexplored, and we argue that it merits more attention. We review recent psychological evidence which demonstrates that individuals differ in the extent to which they perceive ethical beliefs to be objective, that some ethical beliefs are perceived to be more objective than others, and that both these sources of variance are somewhat systematic. This evidence also shows that differences in perceptions of objectivity underpin quite different psychological reactions to ethical disagreement. Apart from reviewing this evidence, our aim in this paper is to draw attention to unanswered psychological questions about moral objectivity, and to discuss the relevance of moral objectivity to two issues of public policy.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Access options

Buy single article

Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Price includes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Fig. 1

Notes

  1. For the purposes of this paper we use the terms “moral” and “ethical” interchangeably.

  2. This way of describing objectivism is itself not uncontroversial, however (see Putnam 1987).

  3. Whether this falsehood is supposed to be a contingent or necessary matter is not entirely clear in Mackie (1977).

  4. Thomas Nagel, an ethical objectivist (see Nagel 1997) argues that there may be situations where various moral values are incommensurate, and there is decisive support for two or more incompatible courses of action (Nagel 1979). Although we may look for a “single scale on which all these apparently disparate considerations can be measured, added, and balanced” (Nagel 1979, p.131), there may be no such scale.

  5. A note about our use of the term “belief”: although it is the standard philosophical position, we do not intend the term “belief” to imply that a person assents to the truth of the proposition they believe (see e.g., Lacey 1996)—that would presuppose an answer to the question we want to investigate. Rather, we intend a weaker, more psychological reading of the term belief, which denotes an attitude of agreement or assent, without a further commitment to truth (see e.g., Reber 1996).

  6. Although see Gill (2008, 2009) for philosophical critique of this uniformity assumption, and for a defense of meta-ethical variability.

  7. Note, however, that other arguments exist which call into question whether harm is the fundamental basis of morality (see e.g., Kelly et al. 2007).

  8. We thank Walter Sinnott-Armstrong for this point. Gert (2005, p. 322) makes the point, which we agree with, that the terms “morally good” and “morally right” tend to refer to different kinds of action, whereas “morally bad” and “morally wrong” are used more interchangeably. We interpret this point as counting in favor of our valence hypothesis regarding negative moral actions—it suggests to us that there will not be a substantial difference in judgments of objectivity regarding the categories morally bad and morally wrong. Gert himself, however, takes wrongness to be a more objective property than badness (see p. 325). For positive moral actions, Gert’s point about the non- interchangeability between the terms “good” and “right” suggests that in order to clearly test whether goodness is considered less objective than rightness, these moral properties may need to be predicated of different actions.

  9. A further possible explanation of our finding, suggested by an anonymous reviewer, is that people may think that it is more likely that people would do morally good (or right) things for the wrong reasons, than that they would do morally bad (or wrong) things for the right reasons. This is an intriguing possibility, and worth investigating.

  10. In this game, participants are first divided into pairs. One participant is given a small sum of money (say $10), and makes an offer to the other participant which that person has the choice either to accept or reject.

  11. Consistent with this interpretation, some theorists have argued that the law has an ‘expressive’ function, by which it signals the social values of a society, particularly in cases where existing norms about a particular behavior are weak or undecided (e.g., Lessig 1996; Sunstein 1996).

References

  • Ajzen, I., and M. Fishbein. 1975. Belief, attitude, intention and behavior: An introduction to theory and research. Reading: Addison-Wesley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ajzen, I., and M. Fishbein. 1977. Attitude-behavior relations: a theoretical analysis and review of empirical research. Psychological Bulletin 84: 888–918.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ajzen, I., and M. Fishbein. 1980. Understanding attitudes and predicting social behavior. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ayer, A.J. 1936. Language, truth, and logic. London: Gollancz.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baron, J., and M. Spranca. 1997. Protected values. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 70: 1–16.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blackburn, S. 1984. Spreading the word. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blackburn, S. 1993. Essays in quasi-realism. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blackburn, S. 1998. Ruling passions. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brink, D. 1986. Externalist moral realism. Southern Journal of Philosophy 24(Suppl): 23–42.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bucciarelli, M., S. Khemlani, and P.N. Johnson-Laird. 2008. The psychology of moral reasoning. Judgment and Decision Making 3: 121–139.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burden, B.C. 2004. An alternative account of the 2004 Presidential election. The Forum, 2. http://www.bepress.com/forum/, last accessed on October 10, 2008.

  • Cacioppo, J.T., R.E. Petty, and C.F. Kao. 1984. The efficient assessment of need for cognition. Journal of Personality Assessment 48: 306–307.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cushman, F.A., L. Young, and L.D. Hauser. 2006. The role of reasoning and intuition in moral judgments: testing three principles of harm. Psychological Science 17: 1082–1089.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Darley, J.M., and T.R. Shultz. 1990. Moral rules: their content and acquisition. Annual Review of Psychology 41: 525–556.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Epstein, S. 1991. Cognitive-experiential self-theory: An integrative theory of personality. In The relational self: Theoretical convergences in psychoanalysis and social psychology, ed. R.C. Curtis, 111–137. New York: Guilford.

    Google Scholar 

  • Epstein, S. 1994. Integration of the cognitive and the psychodynamic unconscious. American Psychologist 49: 709–724.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fiorina, M., C.M. Abrams, and J.C. Pope. 2004. Culture war? The myth of a polarized America. New York: Longman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Forsyth, D.R. 1980. A taxonomy of ethical ideologies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39: 175–184.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Forsyth, D.R. 1981. Moral judgment: the influence of ethical ideology. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 7: 218–223.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Forsyth, D. R., and W. R. Pope. 1984. Ethical ideology and judgments of social psychological research: Multidimensional analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 46: 1365–1375.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Forsyth, D.R., and R.E. Berger. 1982. The effects of ethical ideology on moral behavior. Journal of Social Psychology 117: 53–56.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frederick, S. 2005. Cognitive reflection and decision making. Journal of Economic Perspectives 19: 24–42.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gabennesch, H. 1990a. The perception of social conventionality by children and adults. Child Development 61: 2047–2059.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gabennesch, H. 1990b. Recognizing conventionality: reply to Shweder and Helwig et al. Child Development 61: 2079–2084.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gert, B. 2005. Morality: Its nature and justification (Rev. ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.

  • Gibbard, A. 1990. Wise choices, apt feelings. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gibbard, A. 2003. Thinking how to live. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gill, M.B. 2008. Metaethical variability, incoherence, and error. In Moral psychology, Vol. 2, The cognitive science of morality: Intuition and diversity, ed. W. Sinnott-Armstrong, 387–401. Cambridge: MIT.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gill, M.B. 2009. Indeterminacy and variability in metaethics. Philosophical Studies 145: 215–234.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodwin, G.P. 2009. Individual differences in judgments of moral objectivity. Manuscript in preparation.

  • Goodwin, G.P., and J.M. Darley. 2008. The psychology of meta-ethics: exploring objectivism. Cognition 106: 1339–1366.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodwin, G.P., and J.M. Darley. 2009. Why are some moral beliefs treated more objectively than others?: Implications for ethical disagreement. Manuscript in preparation.

  • Graham, J., J. Haidt, and B. A. Nosek. 2009. Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96: 1029–1046.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Greene, J.D. 2002. The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, truth about morality and what to do about it. Doctoral dissertation, Department of Philosophy, Princeton University.

  • Greene, J.D., R.B. Sommerville, L.E. Nystrom, J.M. Darley, and J.D. Cohen. 2001. An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment. Science 293: 2105–2108.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Greene, J.D., L.E. Nystrom, A.E. Engell, J.M. Darley, and J.D. Cohen. 2004. The neural bases of cognitive conflict and control in moral development. Neuron 44: 389–400.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haidt, J. 2001. The emotional dog and its rational tail: a social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review 108: 814–834.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haidt, J. 2007. The new synthesis in moral psychology. Science 316: 998–1002.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haidt, J., and J. Graham. 2007. When morality opposes justice: conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize. Social Justice Research 20: 98–116.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haidt, J., S.H. Koller, and M.G. Dias. 1993. Affect, culture, and morality, or is it wrong to eat your dog? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65: 613–628.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harman, G. 1975. Moral relativism defended. Philosophical Review 84: 3–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hauser, M.D., F.A. Cushman, L. Young, R. Kang-Xing Jin, and J. Mikhail. 2007. A dissociation between moral judgments and justifications. Mind and Language 22: 1–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Helwig, C.C., M.S. Tisak, and E. Turiel. 1990. Children’s social reasoning in context: reply to Gabennesch. Child Development 61: 2068–2078.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hillygus, D.S., and T.G. Shields. 2005. Moral issues and voter decision making in the 2004 Presidential election. Political Science and Politics 38: 201–210.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hunter, J.D. 1991. Culture wars: The struggle to define America. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jost, J.T. 2006. The end of the end of ideology. American Psychologist 61: 651–670.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Joyce, R. 2009. Review: Jesse J. Prinz: The emotional construction of morals. Mind 118: 508–518.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kant, I. 1959. Foundations of the metaphysics of morals (L.W. Beck Trans.). Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill (Original work published 1786).

  • Kelly, D., S. Stich, K.J. Haley, S.J. Eng, and D.M.T. Fessler. 2007. Harm, affect, and the moral/conventional distinction. Mind and Language 22: 117–131.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kohlberg, L. 1963. The development of children’s orientation toward a moral order. I. Sequence in the development of moral thought. Vita Humana 1: 11–33.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kohlberg, L. 1969. Stage and sequence: The cognitive-developmental approach to socialization. In Handbook of socialization theory and research, ed. D.A. Goslin. New York: McNally.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kohlberg, L. 1976. Moral stages and moralization: The cognitive-developmental approach. Moral development and behavior: Theory, research, and social issues, ed. T. Lickona, 31–53. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

  • Kohlberg, L. 1981. Essays on moral development (Vol. 1). The philosophy of moral development: Moral stages and the idea of justice. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kruglanski, A.W., D.M. Webster, and A. Klem. 1993. Motivated resistance and openness to persuasion in the presence or absence of prior information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65: 861–876.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lacey, A.R. 1996. A dictionary of philosophy, 3rd ed. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Langer, G., and J. Cohen. 2005. Voters and values in the 2004 election. Public Opinion Quarterly 69: 744–759.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lessig, L. 1996. Social meaning and social norms. University of Pennsylvania Law Review 144: 2181–2189.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levesque, H.J. 1986. Making believers out of computers. Artificial Intelligence 30: 81–108.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levesque, H.J. 1989. Logic and the complexity of reasoning. In Philosophical logic and artificial intelligence, ed. R.H. Thomason, 73–107. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lovett, B.J., and A.H. Jordan. 2005. Moral values, moralism, and the 2004 Presidential election. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy 5: 165–175.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mackie, J.L. 1977. Ethics: Inventing right and wrong. New York: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moll, J.R., R. de Oliveirra-Souza, and P.J. Eslinger. 2003. Morals and the human brain: a working model. Neuroreport 14: 299–305.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Monin, B., and D.T. Miller. 2001. Moral credentials and the expression of prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81: 31–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moore, A.B., B.A. Clark, and M.J. Kane. 2008. Who shalt not kill? Individual differences in working memory capacity, executive control, and moral judgment. Psychological Science 19: 549–557.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nadler, J. 2005. Flouting the law. Texas Law Review 83: 1399–1441.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nagel, T. 1970. The possibility of altruism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nagel, T. 1979. Mortal questions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nagel, T. 1997. The last word. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nichols, S. 2002. Norms with feeling: toward a psychological account of moral judgment. Cognition 84: 223–236.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nichols, S. 2004. Sentimental rules: On the natural foundations of moral judgment. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nichols, S., and T. Folds-Bennett. 2003. Are children moral objectivists? Children’s judgments about moral and response-dependent properties. Cognition 90: B23–B32.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Over, D., J. St. B. T. Evans, and S. Elqayam. in press. Conditionals and non-constructive reasoning. In Cognition and conditionals: Probability and logic in human thought, ed. M. Oaksford. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Piaget, J. 1965. The moral judgment of the child. New York: Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prinz, J.J. 2006. The emotional basis of moral judgments. Philosophical Explorations 9: 29–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Prinz, J.J. 2007. The emotional construction of morals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Putnam, H. 1987. The many faces of realism. LaSalle: Open Court.

    Google Scholar 

  • Railton, P. 1986. Moral realism. Philosophical Review 95: 163–207.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reber, A. 1996. The penguin dictionary of psychology, 2nd ed. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robinson, P.H., and J.M. Darley. 1997. The utility of desert. Northwestern University Law Review 91: 453–499.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rorty, R. 1999. Achieving our country: Leftist thought in twentieth-century America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosen, H. 1980. The development of sociomoral knowledge. New York: Colombia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ross, L., and A. Ward. 1995. Psychological barriers to dispute resolution. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 27: 255–304.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Royzman, E.B., R.F. Leeman, and J. Baron. 2009. Unsentimental ethics: Towards a content specific account of the moral-conventional distinction. Cognition 112: 159–174.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rozin, P., L. Lowery, S. Imada, and J. Haidt. 1999. The CAD triad hypothesis: a mapping between three moral emotions (contempt, anger, disgust) and three moral codes (community, autonomy, divinity). Journal of Personality & Social Psychology 76: 574–586.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sachdeva, S., R. Iliev, and D.L. Medin. 2009. Sinning saints and saintly sinners: the paradox of moral self-regulation. Psychological Science 20: 523–528.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sanfey, A.G., J.K. Rilling, J.A. Aronson, L.E. Nystrom, and J.D. Cohen. 2003. The neural basis of economic decision-making in the ultimatum game. Science 300: 1755–1758.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sayre-McCord, G. 1986. The many moral realisms. The Southern Journal of Philosophy 24(Suppl): 1–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schifter, D.E., and I. Ajzen. 1985. Intention, perceived control, and weight loss: an application of the theory of planned behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 49: 843–851.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schnall, S., J. Haidt, G.L. Clore, and A.H. Jordan. 2008. Disgust as embodied moral judgment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34: 1096–1109.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sears, D.O., R.L. Lau, T.T. Tyler, and H.M. Allen Jr. 1980. Self-interest vs. symbolic politics in policy attitudes and presidential voting. The American Political Science Review 74: 670–684.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shantz, C.U. 1982. Children’s understanding of social rules and the social context. In Social cognitive development in context, ed. F.C. Serifica, 167–198. New York: Guilford.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shweder, R.A. 1990. In defense of moral realism: reply to Gabennesch. Child Development 61: 2060–2067.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shweder, R. A. 2003. Why do men barbecue?: Recipes for cultural psychology. Harvard University Press.

  • Shweder, R.A., N.C. Much, M. Mahapatra, and L. Park. 1997. The “big three” of morality (autonomy, community, and divinity), and the “big three” explanations of suffering. In Morality and health, ed. A. Brandt, and P. Rozin, 119–169. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sinnott-Armstrong, W. 2006. Moral skepticisms. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Sinnott-Armstrong, W. 2009. Mixed-up meta-ethics. Philosophical Issues 19: 235–256.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, M. 1994. The moral problem. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Snare, F. 1992. The nature of moral thinking. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stevenson, C.L. 1937. The emotive meaning of ethical terms. Mind 46: 14–31.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sturgeon, N. 1985. Moral explanations. In Morality, reason and truth, ed. D. Copp, and D. Zimmerman, 49–78. Totowa: Rowman & Allenheld.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sunstein, C. 1996. On the expressive function of law. The University of Pennsylvania Law Review 144: 2021–2053.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tetlock, P.E. 2003. Thinking the unthinkable: sacred values and taboo cognitions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7: 320–324.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tetlock, P.E., O.V. Kristel, B. Elson, M. Green, and J. Lerner. 2000. The psychology of the unthinkable: taboo trade-offs, forbidden base rates, and heretical counterfactuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78: 853–870.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tisak, M.S., and E. Turiel. 1988. Variation in seriousness of transgressions and children’s moral and conventional concepts. Developmental Psychology 24: 352–357.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Toplak, M.E., and K.E. Stanovich. 2002. The domain specificity and generality of disjunctive reasoning: Searching for a generalizable critical thinking skill. Journal of Educational Psychology 94: 197–209.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Turiel, E. 1978. Social regulations and domains of social concepts. In New directions for child development. Vol. 1. Social cognition, ed. W. Damon, 45–74. New York: Gardner.

    Google Scholar 

  • Webster, D.M., and A.W. Kruglanski. 1994. Individual differences in need for cognitive closure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67: 1049–1062.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wheatley, T., and J. Haidt. 2006. Hypnotic disgust makes moral judgments more severe. Psychological Science 16: 780–784.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, B. 1972. Morality: An introduction to ethics. New York: Harper & Row.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, B. 1985. Ethics and the limits of philosophy. Harvard: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank Adam Alter, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier draft.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, 3720 Walnut St., Solomon Lab Bldg., Philadelphia, PA, 19146, USA

    Geoffrey P. Goodwin

  2. Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    John M. Darley

Authors
  1. Geoffrey P. Goodwin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. John M. Darley
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Geoffrey P. Goodwin.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Goodwin, G.P., Darley, J.M. The Perceived Objectivity of Ethical Beliefs: Psychological Findings and Implications for Public Policy. Rev.Phil.Psych. 1, 161–188 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-009-0013-4

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-009-0013-4

Keywords

  • Moral Judgment
  • Moral Belief
  • Vote Behavior
  • Moral Emotion
  • Moral Intuition