Moral Grandstanding and the Norms of Moral Discourse

Social Norms and Moral Norms Workshop Social Norms and Moral Norms Workshop Welcome Address

Dear Participant, We are very pleased to welcome you at the GATE research institute. This workshop aims at developing scientific discussions about Social Norms and Moral Norms. The objective is to better understand when people are more, or less, likely to act honestly and follow the moral course of action and norms instead of serving their strict self-interest at the others' expense. We are ext...

Evolution of Moral Norms

Moral norms are the rules of morality, those that people actually follow, and those that we feel people ought to follow, even when they don’t. Historically, the social sciences have been primarily concerned with describing the many forms that moral norms take in various cultures, with the emerging implication that moral norms are mere arbitrary products of culture. Philosophers, on the other ha...

Social and Moral Norms in the Laboratory

Social norms involve observation by others and external sanctions for violations, while moral norms involve introspection and internal sanctions. We develop a simple model of individual preferences that incorporates moral and social norms. We then examine dictator choices, where we create a shared understanding by providing advice from peers with no financial payoff at stake. We vary whether ad...

Moral discourse, bioethics, and the law.

Moral Repair and the Moral Saints Problem

This article explores the forms of moral repair that the wrongdoer has to perform in an attempt to make amends for her past wrongdoing, with a focus on the issues of interpersonal moral repair; that is, what a wrongdoer can do to merit her victim‘s forgiveness and achieve reconciliation with her community. The article argues against the very general demands of atonement that amount to an obliga...