ABSTRACT

Moral abolitionists claim that morality ought to be abolished. According to one of their most prominent arguments, this is because making moral judgments renders people significantly less tolerant toward anyone who holds divergent views. In this paper we investigate the hypothesis that morality’s tolerance-decreasing effect only occurs if people are realists about moral issues, i.e., they interpret these issues as objectively grounded. We found support for this hypothesis (Studies 1 and 2). Yet, it also turned out that the intolerance associated with realism is mediated by moral conviction and perceived consensus. People tend to feel more strongly about those moral issues they ground objectively and, in doing so, are more prone to display the vice of moral smugness toward those who disagree with them. The remedy for this that has been recommended is humility which we found (Study 3) is indeed related to reduced intolerance, in part by predicting a reduction in realism, but also in part through a direct connection to intolerance. These results put pressure on abolitionists’ “argument from intolerance.”

摘要

道德废除主义者声称应该废除道德。根据他们最突出的论点之一，这是因为做出道德判断会使人们对持有不同观点的人的容忍度大大降低。在本文中，我们研究了这样一个假设，即只有当人们对道德问题是现实主义者时，道德的容忍度降低效应才会发生，即他们将这些问题解释为客观有根据的。我们找到了对这一假设的支持（研究 1 和 2）。然而，事实证明，与现实主义相关的不容忍是由道德信念和感知的共识所调节的。人们往往对他们客观地立足的道德问题有更强烈的感觉，并且在这样做时，更容易对那些不同意他们的人表现出道德自鸣得意的恶习。对此建议的补救措施是谦逊，我们发现（研究 3）确实与减少不容忍有关，部分是通过预测现实主义的减少，但部分是通过与不容忍的直接联系。这些结果对废奴主义者的“不容忍论点”施加了压力。