Department of Psychology, Appalachian State University.
Department of Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences, Brown University.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2017 Jan;146(1):123-133. doi: 10.1037/xge0000234.
There is broad consensus that features such as causality, mental states, and preventability are key inputs to moral judgments of blame. What is not clear is exactly how people process these inputs to arrive at such judgments. Three studies provide evidence that early judgments of whether or not a norm violation is intentional direct information processing along 1 of 2 tracks: if the violation is deemed intentional, blame processing relies on information about the agent's reasons for committing the violation; if the violation is deemed unintentional, blame processing relies on information about how preventable the violation was. Owing to these processing commitments, when new information requires perceivers to switch tracks, they must reconfigure their judgments, which results in measurable processing costs indicated by reaction time (RT) delays. These findings offer support for a new theory of moral judgment (the Path Model of Blame) and advance the study of moral cognition as hierarchical information processing. (PsycINFO Database Record
人们普遍认为，因果关系、心理状态和可预防性等特征是对责备进行道德判断的关键输入。目前还不清楚人们究竟如何处理这些输入信息来做出这样的判断。三项研究提供了证据，表明人们对违反规范是否是故意的这一判断，直接沿着以下两条路径之一进行信息处理：如果违反行为被认为是故意的，那么责备处理依赖于违反者做出违反行为的原因的信息；如果违反行为被认为是无意的，那么责备处理依赖于违反行为是否可预防的信息。由于这些处理承诺，如果新信息要求感知者改变路径，他们必须重新配置自己的判断，这会导致反应时间（RT）延迟，从而产生可衡量的处理成本。这些发现为一种新的道德判断理论（责备的路径模型）提供了支持，并推进了作为分层信息处理的道德认知研究。
