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Manipulating Moral Dumbfounding 1 Running head: MANIPULATING MORAL DUMBFOUNDING 1 1 Manipulating Moral Dumbfounding: Inhibiting the Identification of Reasons for a Moral 2 Judgement 1 2 1 1 3 Cillian McHugh , Marek McGann , Eric R. Igou , & Elaine L Kinsella 1 4 University of Limerick 2 5 Mary Immaculate College ~ University of Limerick 6 Author Note 7 All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were approved by 8 institutional research ethics committee and conducted in accordance with the Code of 9 Professional Ethics of the Psychological Society of Ireland, and with the 1964 Helsinki 10 declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was 11 obtained from all individual participants included in the study. The authors declare that 12 there are no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or 13 publication of this article. All authors consented to the submission of this manuscript. This 14 work was part funded by Mary Immaculate College seed funding. 15 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Cillian McHugh, 16 University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland. E-mail: [email protected] MANIPULATING MORAL DUMBFOUNDING 2 17 Abstract 18 Moral dumbfounding occurs when people defend a moral judgement even though they 19 cannot provide a reason in support of this judgement. It manifests as an admission of not 20 having reasons, or the use of unsupported declarations (“it’s just wrong”) or tautological 21 reasons (“because it’s incest”) as justifications for a judgment. We test a dual-processes 22 explanation of moral dumbfounding, where moral dumbfounding is an example of conflict 23 between a habitual response (making a judgement) and a response that results from 24 deliberation (providing a reason for the judgement). The dumbfounding paradigm involves 25 three possible responses: (a) providing reasons for a judgement (deliberative/controlled 26 process); (b) accepting the counter-arguments and rating the behaviour as “not wrong” 27 (habitual/automatic process); (c) a dumbfounded response (habitual/automatic process). 28 Cognitive load manipulations have been shown to inhibit deliberative responding. We 29 present 5 studies in which dumbfounded responding was investigated under cognitive load 30 manipulations. We hypothesised that rates of providing reasons would be reduced under 31 cognitive load. The identification of reasons was inhibited in Studies 1 and 3, but not in 32 Studies 2, 4 or 5. The results provide weak evidence for a dual-process explanation of moral 33 dumbfounding. We found some evidence that dumbfounded responding may be linked with 34 Need for Cognition. 35 Keywords: moral dumbfounding, dual-processes, reasons, intuitions, need for cognition 36 Word count: 11,025 MANIPULATING MORAL DUMBFOUNDING 3 37 Manipulating Moral Dumbfounding: Inhibiting the Identification of Reasons for a Moral 38 Judgement 39 Moral dumbfounding occurs when people defend a moral judgement even though they 40 cannot provide a reason in support of this judgement (Haidt, 2001; Haidt, Björklund, & 41 Murphy, 2000; see also McHugh et al., 2017). It is seen as evidence for the intuitive nature of 42 moral judgements and has been cited as support for both intuitionist and dual-process 43 theories of moral judgement (e.g., Cameron, Payne, & Doris, 2013; Crockett, 2013; Cushman, 44 2013; Cushman, Young, & Greene, 2010; Greene, 2008; Haidt, 2001; Prinz, 2005). Despite 45 the influence of moral dumbfounding on the morality literature, the phenomenon is not well 46 understood. Until recently (e.g., Royzman, Kim, & Leeman, 2015; McHugh et al., 2017), 47 empirical evidence testing the phenomenon was limited to a single study with a final sample 48 of N = 30, unpublished in peer-reviewed form. The dumbfounding paradigm involves 49 presenting participants with a moral scenario, and asking them to judge the behaviour in the 50 scenario. Participants are then asked to provide reasons for their judgement. Typically the 51 scenarios in the dumbfounding paradigm depict “harmless taboos” (Haidt & Björklund, 2008, 52 p. 196). McHugh et al. (2017), building on the original work by Haidt et al. (2000), 53 identified two measurable responses that may be taken as indicators of moral dumbfounding. 54 Firstly, people may explicitly admit to not having reasons for their judgement. Secondly, 55 people may use unsupported declarations (“it’s just wrong”) or tautological reasons 56 (“because it’s incest”) as justifications for a judgement. The current research uses the 57 methods developed by McHugh et al. (2017) to test one potential explanation of moral 58 dumbfounding. 59 Moral Dumbfounding: A Dual-Process Perspective 60 Drawing on dual-process theories of moral judgement (e.g., Greene, 2008; Brand, 2016; 61 Cushman, 2013), the studies presented here aim to test the hypothesis that moral 62 dumbfounding can be explained as a result of a dual-process conflict (Bonner & Newell, 2010; MANIPULATING MORAL DUMBFOUNDING 4 63 De Neys, 2012; De Neys & Glumicic, 2008; Evans, 2007). Conflicts occur when a 64 habitual/intuitive response is different from a response that results from deliberation. 65 Examples of such conflicts include, base rate neglect problems (Bonner & Newell, 2010; De 66 Neys, 2012; De Neys & Glumicic, 2008; Evans, 2007), the conjunction fallacy (De Neys, 2012; 67 Tversky & Kahneman, 1983), and the persistence of apparently “irrational” behaviours 68 (Evans, 2007), and compulsive behaviours (e.g. overeating, smoking, or gambling, Evans, 69 2008). 70 Another example of this kind of dual-process conflict is identified by Lerner and 71 Goldberg (1999), discussing a study by Rozin, Markwith, and McCauley (1994). In this 72 study, Rozin et al. (1994) found that people reported reduced willingness to contact various 73 items that they believed had prior contact with (i) an AIDS victim, (ii) someone who had 74 been in a car accident, or (iii) a murderer. This unwillingness persisted despite assurances 75 that these items are sanitary (Rozin et al., 1994). The original unpublished moral 76 dumbfounding study (Haidt et al., 2000) included a similar task; in addition to three moral 77 judgement tasks, Haidt et al. (2000) included two non-moral tasks. As part of one of the 78 non-moral tasks, the experimenter dipped a sterilised cockroach in a glass of juice. 79 Participants were then asked to drink from the glass. Much like the study by Rozin et al. 80 (1994), participants were unwilling to drink from the glass (Haidt et al., 2000). 81 Haidt et al. (2000) present this response as equivalent to dumbfounded responding in a 82 moral task; in both tasks participants reject a given action (either performing it in the case 83 of the drink, or accepting it in the case of the moral vignettes) despite the context removing 84 the typical reasons given for doing so. This parity suggests that the cognitive processes that 85 lead to this unwillingness to contact items seen as contaminated (identified as dual-process 86 conflict by Lerner & Goldberg, 1999) may similarly lead to moral dumbfounding. It is 87 possible that dumbfounded responding may also be explained as the result of dual-process 88 conflict, where the making of a moral judgement is a habitual/intuitive response, and MANIPULATING MORAL DUMBFOUNDING 5 89 identifying reasons involves deliberation. According to this interpretation, conflict occurs 90 when deliberation fails to identify reasons for an intuitive judgement, and this results in a 91 dumbfounded response. We aim to test this explanation here. 92 Dual-Processes in the Dumbfounding Paradigm 93 Normal cases of conflict can be resolved either by (a) the over-riding of the habitual 94 response or (b) the ignoring of the inconsistent information from deliberation. Consider the 95 following problem (taken from De Neys, 2012, p. 29): 96 A psychologist wrote thumbnail descriptions of a sample of 1000 participants 97 consisting of 995 females and 5 males. The description below was chosen at 98 random from the 1,000 available descriptions. 99 Jo is 23 years old and is finishing a degree in engineering. On Friday nights, Jo 100 likes to go out cruising with friends while listening to loud music and drinking 101 beer. Which one of the following two statements is most likely? 102 (i) Jo is a man 103 (ii) Jo is a woman 104 Jo appears to present as stereotypically male, and so the intuitive/habitual response is 105 (i): Jo is a man. Deliberation (and attending to the make up of the sample) reveals that Jo 106 is 199 times more likely to be a woman (99.5%) than to be a man (0.5%). In this case there 107 is a clear conflict between the intuitive/habitual response and the deliberative response. This 108 conflict can resolved if a person accepts that their intuition was incorrect and adopts the 109 deliberative response. Alternatively a person may choose to ignore the inconsistent 110 information that resulted from deliberation and maintain their initial judgement. 111 In the dumbfounding paradigm, conflict cannot be as easily resolved using these MANIPULATING MORAL DUMBFOUNDING 6 112 strategies. Firstly, regarding an attempt to over-ride the intuitive/habitual moral judgement, 113 there is considerable evidence suggesting that people are unwilling to over-ride habitual 114 responses, or revise their intuitive judgements, on certain issues, and this is particularly true 115 for moral issues (Abelson, 1988; Kruglanski & Webster, 1996; Kruglanski, Webster, & Klem, 116 1993; McGregor, 2006a, 2006b; McGregor, Zanna, Holmes, & Spencer, 2001). This 117 robustness of the habitual/intuitive response means that resolving conflict requires either the 118 identification of reasons that are consistent with the initial judgement, or ignoring the 119 inconsistent information. If further reasons cannot be identified, and inconsistencies cannot 120 be resolved (e.g., because of direct questioning) a person may maintain their judgement 121 while also acknowledging that they cannot provide supporting reasons for it (i.e., presenting 122 as dumbfounded).
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