Question framing effects and the processing of the moral–conventional distinction

ABSTRACT

Prominent theories in moral psychology maintain that a core aspect of moral competence is the ability to distinguish moral norms, which derive from universal principles of justice and fairness, from conventional norms, which are contingent on a specific group consensus. The present study investigated the psychological bases of the moral-conventional distinction by manipulating the framing of the test question, the authority’s license, and the historical context. Participants evaluated moral and conventional transgressions by answering an ‘okay for you’ test question (i.e., judging according to their opinion) or an ‘okay in context’ test question (i.e., judging by imagining being a contemporary of the story protagonist). In evaluating moral transgressions that happened in a distant context or with the authority’s license, most of the participants condemned the violations when responding to the ‘okay for you’ test question, but did not do so when responding to the ‘okay in context’ test question. A similar effect of the question framing was found also on scenarios presenting conventional violations suggesting that subtle changes in the framing of the test question can influence people’s evaluations of both moral and conventional prototypical transgressions. We propose that these effects indicate the presence of moral and conventional construals of social actions that are highly flexible and context-sensitive.

KEYWORDS:

• Moral judgment
• normative reasoning
• moral violations
• conventional violations
• moral-conventional distinction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Francesco Margoni

Francesco Margoni is a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, University of Trento. He holds a PhD in Developmental Psychology, and he is currently doing experimental research in cognitive, moral and developmental psychology. Of particular relevance, he has published a 2018 paper in PNAS reporting that very young children can distinguish between a fear-based social power and a respect-based social power (“Infants distinguish between leaders and bullies”). He is now continuing this line of research on the origins and development of the notion of authority.

Luca Surian

Luca Surian is a Full Professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of Trento, Italy. Before he held appointments at the Medical Research Council - Cognitive Development Unit in London, and at the Departments of Psychology of the Universities of Padua, Trieste and Greensboro (North Carolina), where he was supported by a Fullbright Scholarship.  For many years, Prof. Surian has been carrying out research on the development of language and cognitive processes, with a particular interest in the conceptual development and the acquisition of communicative competence and social cognition both in typically developing children and in children with atypical development, such as those with autism and specific language impairment. Recently, he has carried out research on the development of cognitive processes in preverbal infants, monolingual and bilingual children and deaf children. Prof. Surian’s research was reported in more than 100 scientific publications.