title: Action trees and moral judgment.
abstract: It has sometimes been suggested that people represent the structure of action in terms of an action tree. A question now arises about the relationship between this action tree representation and people's moral judgments. A natural hypothesis would be that people first construct a representation of the action tree and then go on to use this representation in making moral judgments. The present paper argues for a more complex view. Specifically, the paper reports a series of experimental studies that appear to show that people's moral judgments can actually impact their representations of the action tree itself.
authors.affiliation: Program in Cognitive Science and Department of Philosophy, Yale University.
authors.forename: Joshua
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Knobe
mesh_terms: D003071:Cognition / Q000941:ethics*; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000941:ethics*; D009014:Morals; D011582:Psychological Theory
keywords: Action trees; Moral cognition; Moral grammar; Moral judgment