{"id":173,"date":"2016-05-26T16:03:23","date_gmt":"2016-05-26T14:03:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/?p=173"},"modified":"2023-07-24T16:18:24","modified_gmt":"2023-07-24T14:18:24","slug":"how-not-to-combine-ethnography-and-experiments-in-the-study-of-moral-judgment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/dan-sperber\/how-not-to-combine-ethnography-and-experiments-in-the-study-of-moral-judgment\/","title":{"rendered":"How not to combine ethnography and experiments in the study of moral judgment"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his latest blog post<\/a>, Hugo Mercier, discusses\u00a0Clark Barrett et al.\u2019s paper in PNAS<\/em>: \u201cSmall-scale societies exhibit fundamental variation in the role of intentions in moral judgment.\u201d [\u00b41] Unlike Hugo, I don\u2019t find this piece of work fascinating. In fact, given that excellent scholars I respect and admire have invested a good amount of effort in this work, I am quite disappointed, disappointed enough that I could write a long post detailing what I see as many serious theoretical and methodological weaknesses in this article, and too disappointed to bother to do so. Still, prodded by Hugo, I will react. To begin with, let me quote the way the authors describe what they see as the significance of their article:<\/p>\n

It is widely considered a universal feature of human moral psychology that reasons for actions are taken into account in most moral judgments. However, most evidence for this moral intent hypothesis comes from large-scale industrialized societies. We used a standardized methodology to test the moral intent hypothesis across eight traditional small-scale societies (ranging from hunter-gatherer to pastoralist to horticulturalist) and two Western societies (one urban, one rural). The results show substantial variation in the degree to which an individual\u2019s intentions influence moral judgments of his or her actions, with intentions in some cases playing no role at all. This dimension of cross-cultural variation in moral judgment may have important implications for understanding cultural disagreements over wrongdoing.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sound promising but what does this study really show about moral judgment across culture, if anything?<\/p>\n

The word \u201cmoral\u201d appears more than an hundred times in the article, but the concept is not discussed at all: does any notion of \u201cmoral\u201d have cross-cultural relevance and, if so, which notion? Not discussed. Which notion(s), if any, correspond(s) to \u201cmoral\u201d in the societies compared? Not discussed.
\nFood taboos and disgusting food (in societies where there no food taboos) are considered on par, and both as unproblematically moral, two less-than-obvious decisions but no discussion.<\/p>\n

So, to begin with, it is not that clear what the article is really about.<\/p>\n

Participants were presented with vignettes describing some objectionable actions such as a theft and were asked in particular:<\/p>\n