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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

I've mentioned it before on this blog, but if you take the view that "morality" or ethics are just attempts to rationalize genetic based group cooperation strategies, then you should not expect to be able to perform calculus with morality - it is not a logical construct, it is simply feelings. Any attempt to perform moral calculations (I should help this person rather than this other person) is doomed to fail if approached analytically. Go with your feelings, if you want to help A rather than B, then do so.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Eyal, Liberman, and Trope (2008) have a paper (pdf) applying near-far theory (aka construal level theory) to morality. The abstract:

We propose that people judge immoral acts as more offensive and moral acts as more virtuous when the acts are psychologically distant than near. This is because people construe more distant situations in terms of moral principles, rather than attenuating situation-specific considerations. Results of four studies support these predictions. Study 1 shows that more temporally distant transgressions (e.g., eating one’s dead dog) are construed in terms of moral principles rather than contextual information. Studies 2 and 3 further show that morally offensive actions are judged more severely when imagined from a more distant temporal (Study 2) or social (Study 3) perspective. Finally, Study 4 shows that moral acts (e.g., adopting a disabled child) are judged more positively from temporal distance. The findings suggest that people more readily apply their moral principles to distant rather than proximal behaviors.

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