HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Human Developmental Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1380048
This article is part of the Research TopicMoral Reasoning, Emotions, Motivations, Biases, Intuitions, and Their Interplay as Determinants of Moral Behaviour During DevelopmentView all 6 articles
MEANS TO AN END: TELEOLOGICAL BIAS IN MORAL REASONING
Provisionally accepted
- Northeastern University, Boston, United States
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No model to date has integrated findings from teleological explanation with findings from moral reasoning to explore an underlying mechanism of moral cognition. We hypothesize that a preference for teleology, whereby consequences are assumed to be intentional, can explain instances where adults make judgments that seemingly neglect to account for intent. Across two studies, we investigated whether manipulating teleological reasoning influences moral judgment. 291 participants were evaluated in a 2x2 experimental design to assess the effects of teleology priming on adults' endorsement of teleological misconceptions and moral judgments. Results provide some evidence that teleological reasoning influences moral judgment, but the findings are limited, context-dependent, and suggest that teleology is unlikely to be a strong influence in the explanation of outcome-based moral judgments.
Keywords: Promiscuous teleology, Moral judegments, Causal reasoning and explanation, Perceived Intention, moral reasoning, Cognitive Load, Outcome bias, accidental harm
Received: 31 Jan 2024; Accepted: 21 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Davenport and Coley. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Eloise Davenport, Northeastern University, Boston, United States
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