Implicit morality

a methodological survey

Nina Strohminger

Brendan Caldwell

Daryl Cameron

Jana Schaich Borg

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

pp. 133-156

in: Christoph Luetge, Hannes Rusch, Matthias Uhl (eds), Experimental ethics, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014

Abstract

A large hunk of research in moral psychology is devoted to self-reports, which represent the end product of a complex and diverse bundle of underlying cognitive processes.¹ There is more to the moral processing, however, than what can be discerned from introspection or straightfor-ward paper-and-pencil methodologies. A complete account must include all of the processes — explicit or implicit, articulated or unspoken — that go into everyday moral responses.