On the possibility of intuitive and deliberative processes working in parallel in moral judgment

Abstract

Is moral judgment intuitive or deliberative? The parallel morality hypothesis suggests that the answer is both, such that intuitive and deliberative processes operate in parallel to drive moral judgment, and there is an asymmetry such that deliberative processes are more easily impaired than intuitive processes (the former needing more cognitive resources and motivated correction than the latter). In this chapter, I focus on the issue of how people form judgments of morality and social justice. That is, how do people come to ascertain that something is right or wrong? An important issue pertaining to this question is the debate about whether people primarily rely on their gut feelings, automatic affective reactions, and other intuitive processes to assess what they think is right and wrong or whether morality and justice judgments are derived by careful conscious reasoning, rationalistic thought, and other deliberative processes. A main aim of the current chapter is to argue that both intuitive and deliberative processes are important in understanding the psychology of moral judgment. form moral judgments, there is a good possibility that intuitive and deliberative processes tend to operate in parallel. That is, the parallel morality hypothesis that I put forward here suggests that intuitive and deliberative processes simultaneously influence the construction of moral judgments. However, there is an asymmetry such that it may be more likely that deliberative processes are impaired to some extent than intuitive processes are. This asymmetry is proposed because it can be assumed that intuitive processes are more automatic and need fewer cognitive resources and are less affected by motivation to correct for self-interested impulses than deliberative processes do. This suggests that people’s capability and motivation to reason should have strong effects on the exact moral judgments that people construct.