The examination of a test case, the popular movement to abolish slavery, demonstrates that the insights of recent psychological research about moral judgment and motivated reasoning can contribute to historians’ understanding of why large-scale shifts in cultural values occur. Moral psychology helps to answer the question of why the abolitionist movement arose and flourished when and where it did. Analysis of motivated reasoning and the just-world bias sheds light on the conditions that promoted recognition of the moral wrongfulness of chattel slavery, as well as on the conditions that promoted morally motivated social action. These findings reveal that residents of Great Britain and the northern United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were in an unusually good position to perceive, and to act on, the moral problems of slavery. Moral psychology is also applicable to other social issues, such as women’s liberation and egalitarianism.

中文翻译：

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道德心理与社会变革：废除死刑

对一个测试案例的审查是废除奴隶制的流行运动，它表明，最近关于道德判断和动机推理的心理学研究的见解可以有助于历史学家理解文化价值为什么会发生大规模变化。道德心理学有助于回答为什么废奴运动在何时何地兴起和繁荣的问题。对动机推理和公正世界偏见的分析揭示了促进承认动产奴隶制道德不法性的条件，以及促进了出于道德动机的社会行为的条件。这些发现表明，在18世纪和19世纪，英国和美国北部的居民处于异常有利的位置，可以感知并采取行动解决奴隶制的道德问题。