Applying the Advice Taking Paradigm to Moral Cognition Research – A Follow-Up to the Case of Asymmetric Moral Conformity

Though models of moral cognition recognize the importance of social influences, experimental investigations of conformity effects in moral judgment are surprisingly rare. A notable exception, Bostijn and Roets (2017a) demonstrated greater conformity to “deontological” compared to “consequentialist” majorities when judging moral dilemmas. Although they interpreted this effect in terms of a strategic shifting of responses, this was not actually investigated, as only post-manipulation judgments were measured. We reinvestigate this finding by also considering participants initial judgments prior to majority manipulation, thereby investigating judgment shifts directly. In addition, we will conduct an internal meta-analysis to investigate the influence of majority consistency on moral judgments. We plan to recruit 389 English-speaking adult participants based in the UK, 50% males and females, respectively. Participants judge the 10 moral dilemmas of Bostijn and Roets (2017a), providing initial and final judgment for each. In between, they are presented with fake information regarding the percentage of previous participants favouring either response (majority deontological vs. majority consequentialist vs. no-information control). Manipulation is within-participant, random assignment