Year: 2025
Type: preprint
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Recent work suggests that morality may be surprisingly absent from everyday life (Atariet al., 2023; Hofmann et al., 2014). Across four daily life studies (Total N = 1,663 people fromNorth America, Germany, and China; 90,002 observations), we revisit the everyday relevance ofmorality by examining how often people perceive opportunities to express 12 moral virtues (e.g.,honesty, kindness), 12 corresponding vices (e.g., dishonesty, unkindness), and (im)morality.Participants perceived opportunities to express at least one of the 12 virtues > 49% of the time.However, they rarely perceived these opportunities to express virtues as opportunities to be“(im)moral” (< 8% in North America and Germany; 26% in China). Patience, responsibility, andrespectfulness were most often relevant, whereas forgiveness, courage, and loyalty were leastoften relevant. We conclude that conceptualizing morality in more concrete terms reveals aplethora of morally relevant situations that have gone unnoticed in previous studies.
Authors: Benjamin Hardin, Qilin Zhang, Jessie Sun
Institution: Washington University in St. Louis
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W4414819745
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