Moral Psychology

May 2025

• May 25, 2025CultureMoral Intuitions vs. Moral ReasoningHaidt's 2001 incest scenario produced what he named moral dumbfounding: participants stripped of every justification still insisted the act was wrong. His social intuitionist model casts reasoning as a press secretary for a verdict already reached, and the article reports moral evaluations arriving within 200 to 300 milliseconds. Singer and Greene push back, arguing reason can override and slowly reshape intuitions, which is where Rawls's reflective equilibrium fits.39 MIN54.4k

January 2025

• Jan 15, 2025ConceptsMoral Foundations Theory: Why Liberals and Conservatives DifferHaidt's subjects judged harmless taboo scenarios wrong, watched their own reasons collapse under questioning, and refused to change their verdicts. He called it moral dumbfounding, and it became the case for intuitions arriving first with reasoning following as justification. The Moral Foundations Questionnaire, validated in 2011 on more than 34,000 respondents, found liberals weighting care and fairness most heavily while conservatives spread weight across all five.15 MIN12.2k

March 2024

• Mar 26, 2024CultureWhy Good People Commit Bad Acts: Moral PsychologyMilgram's single most powerful finding was not the 65% who delivered the maximum shock. It was that compliance collapsed to 10% when two confederate peers refused first, making visible dissent a stronger protection than any appeal to character. The article traces the same pattern through Reserve Police Battalion 101, where fewer than 12 of 500 men took a genuine offer to step aside, and through Bandura's eight mechanisms of moral disengagement.21 MIN4.4k

February 2024

• Feb 20, 2024ConceptsExploring the Biology of Disgust and Moral PsychologyPaul Rozin dropped a dead, autoclaved, pathogen-free cockroach into a glass of orange juice and offered it to participants. Almost none would drink. They knew it was safe, knew the contamination was psychological, and the knowing made no difference. Disgust evolved for pathogen avoidance but acquired the capacity to respond to moral violations and ideological opponents with the same visceral withdrawal.15 MIN8.9k