Moral judgments reflect default representations of possibility

Materials, data, and code for the paper "Moral judgments reflect default representations of possibility". Abstract: Moral judgment requires representing what is possible: judging that someone ought to do something implies that they actually can do that thing. And if they cannot do that thing, then it’s not the case that they ought to have done it. Moral judgments are often made quickly and effortlessly, suggesting that they may rely on default, rather than deliberative, representations of what is possible. To investigate this possibility, we asked participants to make 10 different kinds of moral judgments either very fast or more slowly about 240 different actions across 12 contexts. We found that these moral judgments were more similar to one another when participants were forced to quickly assess the morality of immoral actions, suggesting a common default template for moral judgment that becomes more differentiated upon reflection. When making moral permissibility judgments quickly, participants were more likely to judge that improbable, irrational, and impossible actions were not permissible, indicating that default representations of permissibility may be reflecting default representations of possibility. A direct investigation revealed a close relationship between default representations of possibility and fast judgments of moral permissibility. These findings demonstrate the role of default representations of possibility in moral cognition.