Abstract

We investigate whether moral judgments rely on default, rather than deliberative, representations of possibility. We provide clear evidence for the role of possibility representations in moral cognition, specifically demonstrating how default representations of permissibility reflect default representations of possibility.

Jane Acierno, Sarah Mischel, Jonathan Phillips

Proceedings B.   preprint   Dataverse

Abstract

What drives our judgments of whether an agent was forced or acted freely? We find that force judgments depend on both the prescriptive normality (how good something is) and descriptive normality (how common something is) of counterfactual alternatives.

Regan Bernhard, Hannah LeBaron, Jonathan Phillips

Cognition   preprint   Dataverse

Abstract

Three studies differentiate explicit reasoning about possibilities from default implicit representations, demonstrate that human adults often default to treating immoral and irrational events as impossible, and demonstrate that high-level cognitive judgments rely on default implicit representations of possibility rather than explicit reasoning.

Jonathan Phillips, Fiery Cushman

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2017)

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Supporting Information   .bib   github   scholar     Dataverse   blog post

Abstract

When agents violate norms, they are typically judged to be more of a cause of resulting outcomes. In this paper, we suggest that norm violations also affect the causality attributed to other agents, a phenomenon we refer to as ‘causal superseding’.

Jonathan Kominsky, Jonathan Phillips, Tobias Gerstenberg, David Lagnado, Joshua Knobe

Cognition (2015)

preprint     scholar     CogSci proceeding     .bib

Abstract

When we evaluate moral agents, we consider many factors, including whether the agent acted freely, or under duress or coercion. In turn, moral evaluations have been shown to influence our (non-moral) evaluations of these same factors. For example, when we judge an agent to have acted immorally, we are subsequently more likely to judge the agent to have acted freely, not under force. Here, we investigate the cognitive signatures of this effect in interpersonal situations, in which one agent (“forcer”) forces another agent (“forcee”) to act either immorally or morally. The structure of this relationship allowed us to ask questions about both the “forcer” and the “forcee.” Paradoxically, participants judged that the “forcer” forced the “forcee” to act immorally (i.e. X forced Y), but that the “forcee” was not forced to act immorally (i.e. Y was not forced by X).