The case of the drunken sailor: On the generalisable wrongness of harmful transgressions

Abstract

There is a widespread conviction that people distinguish two kinds of acts: on the one hand, acts that are generalisably wrong because they go against universal principles of harm, justice, or rights; on the other hand, acts that are variably right or wrong depending on the social context. In this paper we criticise existing methods that measure generalisability. We report new findings indicating that a modification of generalisability measures is in order. We discuss our findings in light of recent criticisms of moral/conventional research.

Keywords:

• Moral/conventional distinction
• Morality
• Harm
• Transgression
• Social cognition

Notes

¹ Two reviewers asked whether pooling answer option 2 with answer option 1 had an effect on the results. We therefore explored whether employing different inclusion criteria (based on the justifications) altered the results; however, this procedure did not affect the results (see Results section).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katinka J. P. Quintelier

K. Q. received funding from the FWO (Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek) to conduct this research. The authors thank Stephen Stich for help with the pilot study, as well as two anonymous reviewers and Paulo Sousa for their comments.