1 Macalester College, Saint Paul, MN, USA.
2 Brown University, Providence, RI, USA.
Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2017 Jul;43(7):957-971. doi: 10.1177/0146167217702375. Epub 2017 May 4.
When people make moral judgments, what information do they look for? Despite its theoretical and practical implications, this question has largely been neglected by prior literature. The recent Path Model of Blame predicts a canonical order in which people acquire information when judging blame. Upon discovering a negative event, perceivers consider information about causality, then intentionality, then (if the event is intentional) reasons or (if the event is unintentional) preventability. Three studies, using two novel paradigms, assessed and found support for these predictions: In constrained (Study 1) and open-ended (Study 2) information-acquisition contexts, participants were most likely, and fastest, to seek information in the canonical order, even when under time pressure (Study 3). These findings indicate that blame relies on a set of information components that are processed in a systematic order. Implications for moral judgment models are discussed, as are potential roles of emotion and motivated reasoning in information acquisition.
当人们进行道德判断时，他们会寻找哪些信息？尽管这个问题具有理论和实践意义，但之前的文献在很大程度上忽视了它。最近的责备路径模型预测了人们在判断责备时获取信息的典型顺序。在发现负面事件后，感知者会考虑关于因果关系的信息，然后是意图，然后（如果事件是有意的）是原因，或者（如果事件是无意的）是可预防的。三项研究使用两种新的范式评估并支持了这些预测：在受限制的（研究 1）和开放式的（研究 2）信息获取情境中，即使在时间压力下（研究 3），参与者最有可能且最快地按照典型顺序寻求信息。这些发现表明，责备依赖于一组按照系统顺序处理的信息成分。讨论了这些发现对道德判断模型的意义，以及情绪和动机推理在信息获取中的潜在作用。
