The folk conception of moral hypocrisy
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Existing research suggests that moral hypocrisy may involve several features, including inconsistency between publicly expressed moral positions and actual behavior, the use of different standards for oneself and others, the concealment of one’s own misconduct, and the pursuit of a favorable reputation through moral expression. However, it remains unclear whether laypeople generally understand moral hypocrisy in terms of these features. It is also possible that lay conceptions of moral hypocrisy contain additional features that have not been sufficiently addressed by existing theories. Rather than providing participants with a predefined definition, this study will explore their spontaneous understanding of moral hypocrisy through definition questions, prototypical positive examples, borderline counterexamples, and minimal-change questions. The study aims to: Identify the conceptual features that laypeople spontaneously associate with moral hypocrisy; Determine the typical structure of prototypical cases of moral hypocrisy; Examine the boundaries between moral hypocrisy and related phenomena, including ordinary inconsistency between words and actions, weakness of will, and general moral failure; Identify the features that participants believe would change a judgment from “hypocritical” to “not hypocritical,” or vice versa; Develop a candidate set of features and a codebook for testing in subsequent experimental research.
Source: OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints)
Author: HY
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7167318304