The costs and benefits of calculation and moral rules

Will M. Bennis, Douglas L. Medin, Daniel M. Bartels

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

110 Scopus citations

Abstract

There has been a recent upsurge of research on moral judgment and decision making. One important issue with this body of work concerns the relative advantages of calculating costs and benefits versus adherence to moral rules. The general tenor of recent research suggests that adherence to moral rules is associated with systematic biases and that systematic cost-benefit analysis is a normatively superior decision strategy. This article queries both the merits of cost-benefit analyses and the shortcomings of moral rules. We argue that outside the very narrow domain in which consequences can be unambiguously anticipated, it is not at all clear that calculation processes optimize outcomes. In addition, there are good reasons to believe that following moral rules can lead to superior consequences in certain contexts. More generally, different modes of decision making can be seen as adaptations to particular environments.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)187-202
Number of pages16
JournalPerspectives on Psychological Science
Volume5
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 2010

Funding

We thank Scott Atran, Gerd Gigerenzer, Rumen Iliev, Sonya Sachdeva, and Carmen Tanner for comments on this article. This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant SES 0527396 and Air Force Office of Scientific Research Grant FA9550-05-1-0321 (MIT) subaward 5710001864 to Northwestern University.

Keywords

  • Cost-benefit analysis
  • Decision-making processes
  • Domain specificity
  • Moral rules
  • Moral values

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Psychology

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