ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper was to test whether imaginative resistance – a term used in the philosophical literature to describe the reluctance to imagine counter-moral worlds – is experienced by people when they are asked to do something rather than just imagine it. Prior research suggests that people find it more difficult to imagine morally deviant worlds. Here, in a within-subjects design, we asked participants to describe in writing morally deviant, dystopian, and fantastical worlds; tell us if they had successfully completed the task, and if not, why not; and report how easy it was for them to imagine the fictional world. Despite producing more words in the morally deviant condition, participants were more likely to believe they had failed to describe a world in which the prescribed scenario was true. Associations between creativity, moral identity, need for cognition, disgust sensitivity, and personality and task performance were explored.

摘要

本文的目的是检验人们是否被要求去做某件事，而不是仅仅想像一下，人们是否经历了想象中的抵抗（在哲学文献中用来形容不愿想象反道德世界的术语）。先前的研究表明，人们很难想象道德上存在偏差的世界。在这里，我们采用受试者内部设计，要求参与者以书面形式描述道德偏差，反乌托邦和梦幻世界；告诉我们他们是否成功完成了任务，如果不成功，为什么？并报告他们想象虚拟世界的难易程度。尽管在道德背离的情况下发表了更多的言论，但参与者更有可能认为他们未能描述所描述的场景是真实的世界。创造力之间的联系，