engleski

A deontic blind spot: An argument for a specialized moral reasoning schema

Deontic reasoning is a type of logical reasoning that uses rule-type operators (obligations and permissions). It can also be used as a normative for determining and comparing rule-reasoning accuracy across content-types, such as morality and conventions, which was the goal of this study. We designed a 3x2x2 deontic reasoning task that tracked participants' performance (response time and accuracy) across three contents (moral, conventional, abstract), two rule-types (obligation, permission), and two induced dilemma-types (punishment dilemma, reward dilemma). Participants (N=78) were psychology undergraduates and graduates. They solved a total of 96 deontic dilemmas. We correctly hypothesized superior performance for moral over KOGNITIVNA PSIHOLOGIJA31conventional, and conventional over abstract contents (RT: F(2, 132) = 11.33, p < .01 ; accuracy: F(2, 134) = 19.71, p < , 01) ; as well as better performance for punishment over reward dilemmas (RT: F(1, 66) = 12.26, p < .01 ; accuracy: F(1, 67) = 13.47, p < .01). However, contrary to our expectations, not only was the performance for obligations superior, it yielded the largest effect size (RT: F(1, 66) = 97.35, p < .01, ηp2 = .596 ; accuracy: F(1, 67) = 121.47, p < .01, ηp2 = .645). Looking into main effect interactions, we discovered an interesting phenomenon. Participants, when reasoning conventionally and abstractly, often made a logical error in rules that had the form of "It's permissible to perform [an undesirable action]". If understood correctly, this permission-type rule was supposed to induce a reward dilemma. However, it seems participants perceived this situation as a punishment dilemma, dropping their accuracy by 21-25%. We dubbed this bias "the deontic blind spot". Even more interestingly, it seems this effect was not present during moral reasoning. A specialized moral reasoning schema, implied by Turiel's Domain theory, may account for the compensatory effect of moral content for that bias. The possible existence of a moral reasoning schema is further explained by the fact that moral reasoning performance does not seem to depend on either rule-type, or the induced dilemma, unlike abstract and conventional deontic reasoning.

moral reasoning, conventions, deontic logic, deontic blind spot

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