The emotional dog and its rational tail: a social intuitionist approach to moral judgment.

@article{Haidt2001TheED,
  title={The emotional dog and its rational tail: a social intuitionist approach to moral judgment.},
  author={Jonathan Haidt},
  journal={Psychological review},
  year={2001},
  volume={108 4},
  pages={
          814-34
        }
}
  • J. Haidt
  • Published 1 October 2001
  • Psychology
  • Psychological review
Research on moral judgment has been dominated by rationalist models, in which moral judgment is thought to be caused by moral reasoning. The author gives 4 reasons for considering the hypothesis that moral reasoning does not cause moral judgment; rather, moral reasoning is usually a post hoc construction, generated after a judgment has been reached. The social intuitionist model is presented as an alternative to rationalist models. The model is a social model in that it deemphasizes the private… 
View on PubMed
faculty.umb.edu
6,082 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
767
Background Citations
3,101
Methods Citations
243
Results Citations
231

Figures and Tables from this paper

6,082 Citations

Is the emotional dog wagging its rational tail, or chasing it?

According to Haidt's (2001) social intuitionist model (SIM), an individual's moral judgment normally arises from automatic ‘moral intuitions’. Private moral reasoning—when it occurs—is biased and…

Social intuitionism and the psychology of moral reasoning

Rationalism about the psychology of moral judgment holds, among other things, that the justifying moral reasons we have for our judgments are also the causally effective reasons for why we make those…

Cognitive Attraction Theory and Moral Judgment

The present article deals with the processes that underpin moral judgment. In the specialized literature, some concepts are proven to be important mechanisms that build up the moral judgment. For…

Morphological Rationalism and the Psychology of Moral Judgment

According to rationalism regarding the psychology of moral judgment, people’s moral judgments are generally the result of a process of reasoning that relies on moral principles or rules. By contrast,…

The Empirical Identity of Moral Judgment

I argue that moral judgement is a natural kind on the grounds that it plays a causal/explanatory role in psychological generalizations. I then develop an empirically grounded theory of its identity…

A Cognitive–Intuitionist Model of Moral Judgment

The study of moral decision-making presents to us two approaches for understanding such choices. The cognitive and the neurocognitive approaches postulate that reason and reasoning determines moral…

Thinking and feeling: Moral deliberation in a dual-process framework

Empirical research in the field of moral cognition is increasingly being used to draw conclusions in philosophical moral psychology, in particular regarding sentimentalist and rationalist accounts of…

What Experimental Evidence Shows Us about the Role of Emotions in Moral Judgement

In empirically minded research, it is widely agreed that emotions play an important, even essential, role in moral judgment. Experimental research on moral development, psychopathology, helping…

The Creativity of Everyday Moral Reasoning: Empathy, Disgust, and Moral Persuasion

At first glance, morality has nothing in common with creativity. It has long been clear to many philosophers that moral judgment (at least the right kind of moral judgment) is achieved through the…

A psychological perspective on moral reasoning, processes of decision-making, and moral resistance

ABSTRACT This article presents a psychological approach on the development of social and moral judgments that has relevance for the topics of public justification and world politics. In contrast with…
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 232 REFERENCES

An fMRI Investigation of Emotional Engagement in Moral Judgment

It is argued that moral dilemmas vary systematically in the extent to which they engage emotional processing and that these variations in emotional engagement influence moral judgment.

Moral dumbfounding: when intuition finds no reason

Are moral judgments based on reason, or on intuition and emotion? Thirty participants were presented with a classic moral reasoning dilemma, and with four tasks that were designed to put intuition…

Affect, culture, and morality, or is it wrong to eat your dog?

For Brazilian and U.S. adults and children of high and low socioeconomic status, moral judgments were better predicted by affective reactions than by appraisals of harmfulness and suggestions are made for building cross-culturally valid models of moral judgment.

The development of morality

Evidence that individuals distinguish between moral and conventional rules is reviewed. Moral rules prohibit actions that result in victims (e.g., violence, stealing, etc.). Conventional rules …

Implicit social cognition: attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes.

The present conclusion--that attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes have important implicit modes of operation--extends both the construct validity and predictive usefulness of these major theoretical constructs of social psychology.

Does Moral Judgment Development Reduce to Political Attitudes or Verbal Ability? Evidence Using the Defining Issues Test

Recent critics of the Defining Issues Test (DIT) suggest that moral judgment development as currently measured is neither developmental nor moral. Instead, scores on the DIT are claimed to be the…

Toward an integration of cognitive and motivational perspectives on social inference: A biased hypothesis-testing model

Prosocial Motivation: Is it ever Truly Altruistic?

Moral politics : what conservatives know that liberals don't

Taking a look at current thought about political and moral ideas, this book analyzes political discussion to find that the family - especially the ideal family - is the most powerful metaphor in…

Subjective Construal, Social Inference, and Human Misunderstanding

...