• DOI:10.18452/16820
• Corpus ID: 153940119

Moral judgment and decision making under uncertainty

@inproceedings{Fleischhut2013MoralJA,
  title={Moral judgment and decision making under uncertainty},
  author={Nadine Fleischhut and Gerd Gigerenzer and Elke Van der Meer and Werner G{\"u}th},
  year={2013}
}

• Nadine Fleischhut, G. Gigerenzer, +1 author W. Güth
• Published 16 September 2013
• Political Science

From virtue theory to moral psychology to behavioral economics, a range of disciplines have explained behavior in moral situations by states of the individual mind, such as character traits, moral stages, or social preferences. These internal explanations predict that moral behavior is stable across a range of situations and thus struggle with the common observation of inconsistencies in moral judgment and behavior. In contrast, we first outline how the same heuristic predicts systematically different outcomes, ethical or unethical, depending on differences in the environment. Behavior that appears inconsistent from an internal point of view is actually consistent when the interaction between heuristics and social environments is taken in consideration. Second, we argue that the heuristics determining much of judgment and behavior in moral situations are not specifically moral rules, but morally neutral heuristics that serve particular social goals. Specifying these processes can facilitate understanding when and why humans succeed or fail in pursuing ethical goals. The approach thus emphasizes the relevance of designing better environments, not just better people, in order to effectively promote the ethical goals valued by a society.