David Turon

Date of Award

2013

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Graham, Steven

Keywords

Morality, Judgment, Beliefs, Philosophy, Moral, Psychology, Objectivism, Relativism

Area of Concentration

Psychology, Philosophy

Abstract

Atrocities are often seen as paramount cases of immorality – events that involved some of the most surely immoral actions out of any imaginable. From the certainty about the immorality of those actions, it seems that perceived objectivity – the feature of being immoral regardless of any particular sentiment or sensibility – follows. Is it actually the case, however, that firmness of conviction about the moral status of an issue causes the intuition that the conviction is objectively true? The present study was designed to address this question. Forty participants were primed to endorse one or another rule before being presented with a moral dilemma and prompted to make a judgment both about the dilemma and about the objectivity of that judgment. The priming manipulation was not successful in swaying responses to the moral dilemma and thus no causal inferences could be determined. Theoretical explanations and future directions for research are discussed.

Rights

The author has granted New College of Florida the nonexclusive right to archive, make accessible, and distribute for educational purposes this work in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The copyright of this work remains with the author.

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