Abstract Why is discrimination morally wrong, and how does political partisanship shape moral judgments of discrimination? Several theories locate the distinctive moral wrongness of discrimination in its disrespectfulness. However, such theories disagree on whether disrespect derives from the deliberation of the discriminating agent, or from the expressive content of the discriminatory act. In a preregistered vignette-based experiment (N = 1019), we tested the extent to which people are sensitive to deliberation and expressive content in their moral judgments of gender-based workplace discrimination, and whether this sensitivity is moderated by political partisanship. Results suggest that while all participants are sensitive to expressive disrespect, only Independents and Republicans are sensitive to the difference between high and low deliberation-based disrespect.

Is discrimination wrong because of what it expresses or how it’s deliberated? Bjørn Hallsson & @vikipedersen.bsky.social argue expressive disrespect drives moral judgment for everyone, while deliberation matters mainly for Independents & Republicans. More: buff.ly/o9ah6YE

#CEPDISC #philsky #xPhi

Moral Judgments of Discrimination: The Effects of Expressive and Deliberative Disrespect - Bjørn Gunnar Hallsson, Viki Lyngby Hvid, 2026 Why is discrimination morally wrong, and how does political partisanship shape moral judgments of discrimination? Several theories locate the distinctive moral ...

Is discrimination wrong because of what it expresses or how it’s deliberated? Bjørn Hallsson & @vikipedersen.bsky.social argue expressive disrespect drives moral judgment for everyone, while deliberation matters mainly for Independents & Republicans. More: buff.ly/v1LX1qC

#CEPDISC #philsky #xPhi

"In terms of individual differences, there is a positive main effect of logical reasoning (𝛽 ̂ = 0.22, 95% CrI = [0.06, 0.38]) and ToM (𝛽 ̂ = 0.26, 95% CrI = [0.10, 0.42]), meaning that participants with higher logical reasoning and ToM selected the target more often. There is no main effect of memory (𝛽 ̂ = 0.06, 95% CrI = [-0.10, 0.22]). There is also a positive interaction of logical reasoning with condition, whereby the effect of logical reasoning is stronger in the simple condition (𝛽 ̂ = 0.45, 95% CrI = [0.13, 0.78]), but no interaction of memory or ToM with condition."

"Fig 8 visualizes the effects of logical reasoning and ToM in the two implicature conditions."

What helps people understand conversational cues?

Correctly identifying implications correlated not just with "theory of mind", but also reflective and logical reasoning. Short-term memory? Not so much.

doi.org/10.1371/jour...

#communication #cogSci #linguistics #xPhi #logic

Is discrimination wrong because of what it expresses or how it’s deliberated? Bjørn Hallsson & @vikipedersen.bsky.social argue expressive disrespect drives moral judgment for everyone, while deliberation matters mainly for Independents & Republicans. More: buff.ly/v1LX1qC

#CEPDISC #philsky #xPhi

"Fig. 2 Influence of advice on moral judgment. The figure plots the proportions, along with the 95% confidence intervals, of subjects who find sacrificing one person the right thing to do after receiving advice. The numbers of observations figure above the boxes"

"Fig. 3 Perceived moral authority and plausibility of advice among subjects who follow advice. The figure plots the mean ratings and standard errors of the mean as well as the number of subjects at the bottom of each bar"

"Fig. 1 Advice by ChatGPT against sacrificing one life to save five with an argument (top) and without (bottom). Advice by moral advisor looked identical except that the icons on the left and the like/dislike buttons on the right were cut off"

Is moral advice more compelling if it includes an argument? What if it's from an #AI?

Advice strongly influenced decisions to sacrifice-one-to-save-five, regardless of whether advice
- came from #chatGPT (3.5).
- included an argument.

doi.org/10.1007/s436...

#xPhi #ethics #edu

How can researchers overcome #AcquiescenceBias?

In a #questionnaire, acquiescence is a tendency to agree with statements or answer affirmatively regardless of survey content.

Alvarado-Leiton et al. report simple ways to mitigate it.

doi.org/10.1093/jssa...

#PsychMethods #xPhi

Experimental Philosophy - Bibliography - PhilPapers

https://philpapers.org/browse/experimental-philosophy

#xPhi #ExperimentalPhilosophy #papers

Original post on degrowth.social

"a movement that is blurring the lines between philosophy and psychology. This new approach, called experimental philosophy, aims to apply the practical tools and findings of the cognitive sciences to philosophical problems"

thenewjournalatyale.com/2012/04/we-started-the-f...

#xPhi […]

UZH ATV on Vimeo Join the web’s most supportive community of creators and get high-quality tools for hosting, sharing, and streaming videos in gorgeous HD with no ads.

https://vimeo.com/showcase/8267237?video=1167686450

"Ethics in the Lab: Experimental

Philosophy between Is and Ought"

by www.philosophie.uzh.ch/de/seminar/people/resear...

#xphi

Decisions in moral dilemmas: The influence of subjective beliefs in outcome probabilities | Judgment and Decision Making | Cambridge Core Decisions in moral dilemmas: The influence of subjective beliefs in outcome probabilities - Volume 12 Issue 5

Can we assume research participants accept the stipulations of vignettes?

This paper reports that moral dilemma decisions varied according to how much people seemed to believe stipulations (e.g., that intervening would actually save five people).

doi.org/10.1017/S193... #xPhi

#xphi

Figure 1. "Responses showed the expected baseline patterns across dilemmas. The determinism manipulation reduced willingness to intervene in the Spur dilemma (p = 0.0385, fewer participants pulled the switch) and reduced willingness to help in the Singer scenario (p = 0.0261), but had no detectable effect on Footbridge judgments (p = 0.783)."

Table 1. Logistic regression models

Do neuroscientists' claims about #freeWill impact students' #ethics?

A "deterministic passage ...from Crick" sometimes reduced decisions to proactively intervene in moral thought experiments compared to a "neutral #neuroscience text".

doi.org/10.3389/fpsy...

#xPhi #cogSci #edu

“In addition, it is fairly reasonable to assume that confronting participants with tricky questions makes them suspicious of and more attentive to the experimental questions. Conditioned by the CRT, they will be more inclined to try to spot a trick in the scenarios. In several studies, this strategy has proven to be successful. Pinillos et al. (2011, p. 126) have shown that conditioning the participants with the CRT prompts more careful responses by demonstrating the possibility that initial gut responses may be wrong.”

Byrd 2025 Figure 3b shows that reflection test scores are actually lower in the condition in which people get a long reflection test *before* they complete other tasks (compared to when they get other tasks before the reflection test).

Another #failedReplication of a reflection test priming effect on the #sideEffectEffect: doi.org/10.1111/mila...

But our data above cast doubt on this paper's expectation that reflection test primes actually cause reflection (we saw *less* reflection in the test-first group).

#cogSci #xPhi #Psych

No evidence that reversibility affects causal judgments in late-preemption cases Recently, Ross and Woodward (2022) argued that the reversibility of an outcome – that is, whether the outcome can be undone – affects causal judgments. One prediction of their account is that rever...

In three experiments, Paul Henne, Karla Perez & Chad McCracken found no evidence that #reversibility affects causal judgments in late-preemption cases doi.org/10.1080/0951... #vol39issue2 #xphi #philsky #philpsy
8/20

In a sample of over 5000 English speakers recruited from six continents via Google ads, attention scores were 2.6 out of 3 and ReCAPTCHA (v3) scores 0.94 out of 1.0 (on average).

We've found good results on overt and covert #dataQuality measures by recruiting people via #onlineAdvertising (perhaps because participation incentives aren't financial):

Attention ≅ 2.6 out of 3
ReCAPTCHA (v3) ≅ 0.94 out of 1.0

doi.org/10.1017/S003...

#surveyMethods #cogSci #psychology #xPhi

What is Experimental #Philosophy Of #Medicine? Find out Thursday!

#xPhi #psychology #cogSci #health

Some key features of the Journal of #Pragmatics:
- Once accepted for review, submissions receive a DOI, making them #preprints.
- Reviewer and Editor comments are made publicly available online.
- Diamond #OpenAccess – no fees for authors or readers.

#cogSci #xPhi #language

🙏 @uclpress.bsky.social

Experiments 1a and 1b: "...participants judged the explanations to be less satisfactory when the questioner was aware of the object’s category identity compared to when the questioner was unaware of it (Experiment 1a: β = −0.61, se = 0.24, t = −2.51, p = .015; Experiment 1b: β = −1.23, se = 0.37, t = −3.36, p = .001)."

Experiments 2a and 2b: "...participants judged the questioner to be less aware of the categorical identity of the object, when the questioner was presented as satisfied with the explanation provided in Experiment 2a (β = −2.18, se = 0.25, t = −8.82, p < .001) and Experiment 2b (β = −0.97, se = 0.40, t = −2.46, p = .017)."

Experiment 3: "We conducted a content analysis of participants’ responses and grouped them into six possible types of answers. ...significant main effect of answer type when comparing the overall probability of CATEGORY and Function to appear as answer (β = −2.55, se = 1.29, z = −1.98, p = .048). More importantly, CATEGORY had the highest probability of appearing as an answer (compared to the other five types of answers) when the characters were satisfied, and the lowest probability of appearing as an answer (compared to the other five types of answers) when the characters were not satisfied."

Experiment 4: "A significant interaction between condition (i.e., Tautology vs. Choice) and CR was observed (β = 0.24, se = 0.11, t = 2.09, p = .039). .... the difference between Tautology and the Choice conditions was significant only at the highest level of CR (β = 0.61, se = 0.20, z = 3.13, p = .002)."

People DID find formal explanations more satisfying when the category seemed unknown!

But only the most reflective thinkers realized tautological (uninformative) formal explanations were less satisfying than informative ones.

doi.org/10.1111/cogs...

#xPhi #cogSci #SciComm
2/2

"we investigate whether moral evaluations vary depending on the relationship between the actor and the victim. Unlike previous research that primarily adopts a third-party perspective, this study uses a first-person approach, focusing on judgments made by individuals directly involved in the moral interaction. Three empirical studies were conducted: Study 1 tests the influence of social relationships on moral judgment using Chinese participants; Study 2 explores how moral judgments differ across various moral domains in relational contexts; and Study 3 compares Chinese and American participants to assess cross-cultural differences in the impact of social relationships on moral evaluation. Across all three studies, the results consistently show that social relationships significantly affect moral judgment, supporting the view that moral evaluations are shaped not only by the nature of the act but also by the relational context in which it occurs."

Study 1: "Post hoc comparisons using Tukey’s HSD test revealed that moral transgressions involving parents were perceived as the least immoral, whereas those involving a salesperson were judged as the most immoral. The difference between these two groups was statistically significant (p < 0.001; 95% CI = [−0.97, −0.30]). No significant differences were found among the other relational contexts."

Study 2: "There was an interaction between social context and moral foundation (F(12, 2424) = 33.00; p < 0.001; partial η 2 = 0.14). The results also showed a main effect for the relational context. Post hoc comparisons using Tukey’s HSD test indicated that moral transgressions involving parents were perceived as the least immoral, whereas those involving a superior were judged as the most immoral. The difference between these two groups was statistically significant (p < 0.001; 95% CI = [−0.34, −0.13]), while no significant differences were found among the other relational contexts."

Study 3: "results from the interaction analysis indicated a significant interaction effect between social relationships and culture (F(3, 1716) = 51.88; p < 0.001; partial η 2 = 0.08). Furthermore, both the main effect of social relationships and the main effect of culture reached statistical significance. To further examine the main effect of social relationships, a post hoc analysis using Tukey’s HSD test was conducted. The findings indicated that moral transgressions involving parents were perceived as the least immoral, whereas those involving a salesperson were judged as the most immoral. The difference between these two relational contexts was statistically significant (p < 0.001; 95% CI [−0.34, −0.13]), while no significant differences were observed among the remaining relational categories."

Does #morality of a violation depend on your relationship to the wrongdoer?

People from #China and the #UnitedStates rated transgressions involving parents less immoral than transgressions involving a #sales person or superiors (N > 1200).

doi.org/10.3390/bs15...

#ethics #xPhi

#PhilPerception #XPhi

#PhilPerception #ExperimentalPhilosophy #XPhi

Feltz & Cokely conducted many of these studies themselves, but cite many others. They review work by Josh Knobe @xphilosopher.bsky.social,
Fiery Cushman (@fierycushman.bsky.social), and others in #xphi. The book is a great review of a lot of good work in experimental philosophy (#xphi).

A poster presentation at UPenn with Nick Byrd and a poster about antibiotic resistance in the foreground.

Ashley West, PhD, Director of Behavioral Design at Lirio (left), discusses her poster, “Designing an ‘At Home’ Digital Health Intervention for Supporting Chronic Condition Lifestyle Management,” with LDI Senior Fellow Renée Betancourt, MD, an Associate Professor of Clinical Family Medicine and Community Health at the Perelman School of Medicine.

A panel discussion featuring Adam Rodman, Carissa Kathuria, Craig Joseph, and Kenrick Caito, moderated by Sri Adusimalli.

A panel discussion featuring Kim Waddell, Meeta Kerlin, Zahera Farhan, Sunita Desai, and Hayley Belli.

How can #AI and #cognitiveScience improve #healthcare?

We got some answers from the #NudgesInHealthcare Symposium at #UPenn.

Check out this summary of some themes in the write-up below:

ldi.upenn.edu/our-wo...

#medicine #psych #econ #compSci #tech #LLM #edu #bioethics #xPhi

About the "everyday dilemmas".

Descriptive statistics about the data.

The descriptions of intuition, deliberation, friends' advice, and wisdom of a crowd.

Results

Thousands of people in a dozen countries thought reflective reasoning was usually the best way to make a decision in ordinary dilemmas.

Runners up were intuition, friends' advice, and the wisdom of a crowd (in that order).

doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

#cogSci #epistemology #xPhi

Descriptive statistics about the samples

"Figure 1. Top ten most frequent co-occurrence of Adjectives with ‘rational’ (blue) and ‘reasonable’ (orange) when asked to describe most important characteristics of a person showing sound judgment (Study 1a) / good judgment in a challenging situation (Study 1b). Adjectives are ordered from those most associated with ‘rational’ to those with ‘reasonable.’ Dumbbell nodes represent the percentage of each adjective’s co-occurrence relative to the sum of independent occurrences of each pair of terms."

"Figure 2. Qualities attributed to rational and reasonable persons in Study 1. Color-coded adjectives reflect Analytical, Moral, and Inner Fortitude items (Study 1a)/Agency and Communion factors (Study 1b). Top panels: Estimates from linear mixed model with responses to all characteristics nested in participants, with target order (rational vs. reasonable) as a covariate and false discovery rate correction for multiple testing. Dashed vertical line delineates effects 1 unit above midpoint of the 1–7 scale in Study 1a / half a unit above the midpoint of the 1–5 scale in Study 1b. Bottom panels: Pearson’s correlations and 95% CIs of average scores across items making up each factor. ***p < .001, **p < .01, *p < .05."

"Figure 3. Top Panel: Preference proportions for reasonable vs. rational agents in social roles. Displays proportions (with 95% CI) derived from logits in generalized mixed models. The dashed line at .50 indicates parity; above this, preference leans towards reasonable agents, and below, towards rational agents. Bottom Panel: Necessity ratings for rationality and reasonableness by role (1–5 rating scale). Shows estimated means and 95% CI. Ratings indicate moderate to high necessity (3–4) for both rationality and reasonableness across rule-based (on the right) and holistic roles (on the left)."

Might the concept of "good judgment" vary by framing or social roles?

Five studies of four nations (🇺🇸🇨🇦🇬🇧🇨🇳) found some words and roles were more associated with "rational" than "reasonable" (and vice versa).

doi.org/10.1162/opmi...

#CogSci #xPhi #linguistics #dataViz

Financial decisions were about 4 times more likely to involve analytic reasoning (45%) than visual imagery (12%). Recreational decisions were about 3 times more likely to involve visual imagery (31%) than analytic reasoning (12%).

Mental imagery was similarly easy to generate and it was similarly vivid across financial and recreational decisions.

The vividness of imagery during decision-making predicts risk-taking.

Conclusions • Mental imagery seems to be a distinct decision-making mode that complements other established modes (calculation, affect, recognition). • Its application is context-dependent: Recreational decisions (experiential, concrete) - imagery use is more tural, images are more vivid, and their valence stronger predicts risk-taking willingness. • Financial decisions (abstract, analytical) - imagery use is less frequent and less influential; calculation seem to dominate. • Implication: Decision-making frameworks should include imagery-based processing as a mode that bridges cognition and emotion, particularly in experiential domains.

Remember the viral studies inferring some people are less likely to think visually?

Well some DECISIONS are also less likely to involve #visualation — e.g., #finance versus #recreation: doi.org/10.1080/2044...

And visual vividness predicted #risk taking: doi.org/10.1016/j.co...

#cogSci #xPhi #edu

The experimental design with images of the students using generative AI chatbots in each phase of learning.

Examples of the chatbot prompts and responses.

The test of learning and self-reported reflective thinking scale.

Effects of chatbot (vs. teacher) facilitated dialogue on learning — the chatbot dialogue usually produced more learning.

Can #AI chatbots handle student discussion better than teachers?

In a controlled study of 83 Chinese adolescents, dialogue with a #generativeAI resulted in more learning than dialogue with a human teacher.

doi.org/10.1080/1049...

#edu #LLM #tech #teaching #policy #CogSci #xPhi

Fabiano, F., Ganapini, M. B., Loreggia, A., Mattei, N., Murugesan, K., Pallagani, V., Rossi, F., Srivastava, B., & Venable, K. B. (2025). Thinking Fast and Slow in Human and Machine Intelligence. Commun. ACM, 68(8), 72–79. https://doi.org/10.1145/3715709

Byrd, N. (2025). Strategic Reflectivism In Intelligent Systems (No. arXiv:2505.22987). https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2505.22987

"We do not assume [system 2 is] always better ...than [system 1], or vice versa, .... Some tasks might be better handled by S1..., especially once the system has acquired enough experience": doi.org/10.1145/3715...

Amen! Long live pragmatism: doi.org/10.48550/arX...

#cogSci #AI #xPhi #epistemology

Our article is online: The Moral Justifications of Disability Discrimination in Health Care Allocation: An Experimental Assessment #bioethics #xphi #experimentalphilosophy

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

New experimental conceptual engineering paper!

Does the name you give to novel ideas affect people's understanding of those ideas? Yes, but only certain kinds of names and less so when the idea is explicitly defined.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

#xphi #philsky