Confounds in moral/conventional studies

Abstract

In ‘The nature of moral judgments and the extent of the moral domain’, Fraser (2012) criticises findings by Kelly et al. (2007) that speak against the moral/conventional (M/C) distinction, arguing that the experiment was confounded. First, we note that the results of that experiment held up when confounds were removed (Quintelier, Fessler, and De Smet 2012). Second, and more importantly, we argue that attempts to prove the existence of a M/C distinction are systematically confounded. In contrast to Fraser, we refer to data that support our view. We highlight the implications for the moral/conventional theory.

Keywords:

• moral/conventional distinction
• morality
• harm
• social cognition
• confounds

Acknowledgements

Katinka Quintelier received funding from the FWO-Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek to conduct this research.

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments that helped improve the manuscript.

Notes on contributors

K.J.P. Quintelier received her PhD in philosophy from Ghent University, Belgium. She was a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University and at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research in Altenberg, Austria, and she is now a researcher at the University of Amsterdam. Her research interests are reputation, individual differences in morality, and empirically informed normative ethics.

D.M.T. Fessler is an associate professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture at the University of California, Los Angeles. Combining experiments, ethnography, and published data, he explores the determinants of behaviour, experience, and health in domains such as emotions, disease avoidance, aggression, cooperation, morality, food and eating, sex and reproduction, and risk taking.