Despite the promise to boost human potential and wellbeing, enhancement drugs face recurring ethical scrutiny. The present studies examined attitudes toward cognitive enhancement in order to learn more about these ethical concerns, who has them, and the circumstances in which they arise. Fairness-based concerns underlay opposition to competitive use—even though enhancement drugs were described as legal, accessible and affordable. Moral values also influenced how subsequent rewards were causally explained: Opposition to competitive use reduced the causal contribution of the enhanced winner’s skill, particularly among fairness-minded individuals. In a follow-up study, we asked: Would the normalization of enhancement practices alleviate concerns about their unfairness? Indeed, proliferation of competitive cognitive enhancement eradicated fairness-based concerns, and boosted the perceived causal role of the winner’s skill. In contrast, purity-based concerns emerged in both recreational and competitive contexts, and were not assuaged by normalization.

尽管有望提高人类潜力和福祉，但增强药物仍面临反复出现的伦理审查。目前的研究检查了对认知增强的态度，以便更多地了解这些伦理问题、谁拥有这些问题以及它们出现的环境。基于公平的担忧是反对竞争性使用的基础——尽管增强药物被描述为合法、可及且负担得起。道德价值观也影响了后续奖励的因果解释方式：反对竞争性使用会降低获胜者技能的因果贡献，尤其是在具有公平意识的个人中。在后续研究中，我们问：增强实践的规范化会减轻对其不公平性的担忧吗？的确，竞争性认知增强的扩散消除了基于公平的担忧，并增强了获胜者技能的感知因果作用。相比之下，基于纯度的担忧出现在娱乐和竞争环境中，并没有通过正常化来缓解。