Are good reasoners more incest-friendly? Trait cognitive reflection predicts selective moralization in a sample of American adults

Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 9, No. 3, May 2014, pp. 176–190 Are good reasoners more incest-friendly? Trait cognitive reflection predicts selective moralization in a sample of American adults Edward B. Royzman∗ Justin F. Landy† Geoffrey P. Goodwin† Abstract Two studies examined the relationship between individual differences in cognitive reflection (CRT) and the tendency to accord genuinely moral (non-conventional) status to a range of counter-normative acts — that is, to treat such acts as wrong regardless of existing social opinion or norms. We contrasted social violations that are intrinsically harmful to others (e.g., fraud, thievery) with those that are not (e.g., wearing pajamas to work and engaging in consensual acts of sexual intimacy with an adult sibling). Our key hypothesis was that more reflective (higher CRT) individuals would tend to moralize selectively — treating only intrinsically harmful acts as genuinely morally wrong — whereas less reflective (lower CRT) individuals would moralize more indiscriminately. We found clear support for this hypothesis in a large and ideologically diverse sample of American adults. The predicted associations were not fully accounted for by the subjects’ political orientation, sensitivity to gut feelings, gender, age, educational attainment, or their placement on a sexual moralsspecific measure of social conservatism. Our studies are the first to demonstrate that, in addition to modulating the intensity of moral condemnation, reflection may also play a key role in setting the boundaries of the moral domain as such. Keywords: moral/conventional, CRT, harm, rational, judgment. 1 Introduction The notion that thinking well can make a difference to a person’s moral outlook has a long and illustrious history in the annals of Western thought (e.g., Plato [e.g., Protagoras and Meno]; Kant, 1785/1959; Rawls, 1971; Singer, 2005). Ironically, it was David Hume, the reputed ubersentimentalist, who penned one of the most impassioned testimonials in its defense: The final sentence, it is probable, which pronounces characters and actions amiable or odious, praise-worthy or blameable. . . . It is probable, I say, that this final sentence depends on some internal sense or feeling. . . . But in order to pave the way for such a sentiment, and give a proper discernment of its object, it is often necessary, we find, that much reasoning should precede, that nice distinctions be made, just conclusions drawn, distant comparisons formed, complicated relations examined, and general facts fixed and ascertained . . . . In many orders of beauty, particularly those of the finer arts, it is requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment; and a false relish may frequently be corrected by argument and reflection. There are just grounds to conclude, that moral beauty partakes much of this latter species . . . . (Hume, 1751/1983, p. 5, italics added) More recently, Edvard A. Westermarck — an anthropologist, a philosopher, and Hume’s fellow sentimentalist — offered an intriguing and largely untested conjecture: two parties or peoples who share core moral ideals may nevertheless find themselves in a state of pervasive moral disagreement owing strictly to the degree of cognitive sophistication with which they apply these ideals to an issue at hand. We are grateful to Gordon Pennycook and an anonymous reviewer for their comments on an earlier version of this draft and to Jonathan Baron for his comments, editorial advice, and contributions to various aspects of this project. Copyright: © 2014. The authors license this article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. ∗ Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, 3720 Walnut St., Solomon Lab Bldg., Philadelphia, PA, 19146. Email: . † Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania. 176 Most people follow a very simple method in judging of an act. Particular modes of conduct have their traditional labels many of which are learnt with language itself and the moral judgment commonly consists simply in labeling the act according to certain obvious characteristics . . . But a conscientious and intelligent judge proceeds in a different manner. He carefully examines all the details connected with the act, the external and internal conditions under which it was performed, its consequences, its motive and since the moral estimate in a large measure depends upon the regard paid to these circumstances his judgment may differ greatly from Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 9, No. 3, May 2014 that of the man in the street even though the moral standard which they apply be exactly the same (Westermarck, 1906, pp. 9–10). Thus, divergent as their philosophical outlooks might have been in other respects (see Westermarck, 1906), Hume and Westermarck appear to be largely in agreement on one key point: a general aptitude for thinking well is likely to exert a profound, even foundational, influence on a person’s moral outlook. In what follows, we further elaborate and offer an empirical assay of this point by making use of what has long been taken to be one of the most reflexive and cognitively impenetrable moral cognitions ever (see Pennycook, Cheyne, Barr, Koehler, & Fugelsang [2014] for discussion) — the widespread repudiation of consensual sibling incest — and of one of the most demonstrably valid and widely used measures of “thinking well” — the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT). 1.1 Repudiation of sibling incest and the social intuitionist model The notion that principled moral opposition to third-party sibling incest is a result of automatic “negative imprinting” enabled by early childhood experiences (whose development both bypasses and is impervious to rational reflection) goes at least as far back as Westermarck’s Histories of Marriage (e.g., Westermarck, 1921) (see Lieberman, Tooby, & Cosmides [2003] for a recent revival of this perspective, but see Royzman, Leeman, & Baron [2009] and Royzman, Goodwin, & Leeman [2011] for a contrarian viewpoint). The putatively non-reflective quality of this opposition is front and center in the lead paragraphs of Jonathan Haidt’s (2001) influential “The emotional dog and its rational tail”. The paper opens with a duo of college-age siblings, Julie and Mark, opting for a night of non-committal sex while vacationing abroad. In Haidt’s (2001) positive analysis, when reading the story, “one feels a quick flash of revulsion . . . and one knows intuitively that something is wrong” (p. 814), with subsequent reasoning being largely utilized to marshal a range of posthoc arguments for the validity of the initial impression, while remaining largely impotent to alter the impression itself (see Haidt, Bjorklund, & Murphy, 2000). That is, in Haidt’s politically minded update of Hume’s metaphor, moral reflection, can (at least, in this particular case) aspire to no higher office than that of the press-secretary of the “ (...truncated)