The Attachment Approach to Moral Judgment

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

Original languageAmerican English
Title of host publicationAtlas of Moral Psychology
EditorsKurt Gray, Jesse Graham
Place of PublicationNew York
PublisherGuilford Press
Pages300-319
ISBN (Print)9781462541225, 9781462532568
StatePublished - 2018

Bibliographical note

What are the rules and patterns guiding the rapid, automatic, and unconscious processes of moral judgment?
The attachment approach suggests that early interactions with caregivers give rise to a dyadic representation of morality—adult acting upon a child—that determines how moral judgments are construed, used, and understood. When looking at moral situations, one can discern that despite the variety and differences in content of moral situations, people recognize them immediately, intuitively, and effortlessly. Just think of how situations such as medical negligence, the death penalty, rape, theft, and torture methods used against terrorists are crucially different. And yet people easily categorize all of these situations as requiring right–wrong judgments. What cognitive processes unite different moral situations in one category? How are moral situations represented in our minds? How do people recognize moral situations and notice their patterns?

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