publications | moral science lab

2024

Does Moral Valence Influence the Construal of Alternative Possibilities?

Neele Engelmann, and Ivar R Hannikainen

Possibility Studies & Society, 2024

in press
Strong bipartisan support for controlled psilocybin use as treatment or enhancement in a representative sample of US Americans: need for caution in public policy persists

Julian D Sandbrink, Kyle Johnson, Maureen Gill, and 4 more authors

AJOB Neuroscience, 2024
Advance Medical Decision-Making Differs Across First-and Third-Person Perspectives

James Toomey, Jonathan Lewis, Ivar Hannikainen, and 1 more author

AJOB Empirical Bioethics, 2024

2023

The experimental jurisprudence of the concept of rule: Implications for the Hart-Fuller debate

Guilherme Almeida, Noel Struchiner, and Ivar R Hannikainen

In Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Law , 2023
Cognition

Rule is a dual character concept

Guilherme Almeida, Noel Struchiner, and Ivar R Hannikainen

Cognition, 2023

PDF
LHB

Moral appraisals guide intuitive legal determinations

Brian Flanagan, Guilherme Almeida, Noel Struchiner, and 1 more author

Law and Human Behavior, 2023

Abs PDF

Objectives: We sought to understand how basic competencies in moral reasoning influence the application of private, institutional, and legal rules. Hypotheses: We predicted that moral appraisals, implicating both outcome-based and mental state reasoning, would shape participants’ interpretation of rules and statutes—and asked whether these effects arise differentially under intuitive and reflective reasoning conditions. Method: In six vignette-based experiments (total N = 2,473; 293 university law students [67% women; age bracket mode: 18–22 years] and 2,180 online workers [60% women; mean age = 31.9 years]), participants considered a wide range of written rules and laws and determined whether a protagonist had violated the rule in question. We manipulated morally relevant aspects of each incident—including the valence of the rule’s purpose (Study 1) and of the outcomes that ensued (Studies 2 and 3), as well as the protagonist’s accompanying mental state (Studies 5 and 6). In two studies, we simultaneously varied whether participants decided under time pressure or following a forced delay (Studies 4 and 6). Results: Moral appraisals of the rule’s purpose, the agent’s extraneous blameworthiness, and the agent’s epistemic state impacted legal determinations and helped to explain participants’ departure from rules’ literal interpretation. Counter-literal verdicts were stronger under time pressure and were weakened by the opportunity to reflect. Conclusions: Under intuitive reasoning conditions, legal determinations draw on core competencies in moral cognition, such as outcome-based and mental state reasoning. In turn, cognitive reflection dampens these effects on statutory interpretation, allowing text to play a more influential role.
Normality and the Treatment-Enhancement Distinction

Daniel Martı́n, Jon Rueda, Brian D Earp, and 1 more author

Neuroethics, 2023

2022

PNAS

Coordination and expertise foster legal textualism

Ivar R Hannikainen, Kevin P Tobia, Guilherme da FCF Almeida, and 8 more authors

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022

Abs HTML PDF

In a complete theory there is an element corresponding to each element of reality. A sufficient condition for the reality of a physical quantity is the possibility of predicting it with certainty, without disturbing the system. In quantum mechanics in the case of two physical quantities described by non-commuting operators, the knowledge of one precludes the knowledge of the other. Then either (1) the description of reality given by the wave function in quantum mechanics is not complete or (2) these two quantities cannot have simultaneous reality. Consideration of the problem of making predictions concerning a system on the basis of measurements made on another system that had previously interacted with it leads to the result that if (1) is false then (2) is also false. One is thus led to conclude that the description of reality as given by a wave function is not complete.
Trolleys, triage and Covid-19: The role of psychological realism in sacrificial dilemmas

Markus Kneer, and Ivar R Hannikainen

Cognition and Emotion, 2022
The folk concept of law: Law is intrinsically moral

Brian Flanagan, and Ivar R Hannikainen

Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2022
Whose words hurt? Contextual determinants of offensive speech

Manuel Almagro, Ivar R Hannikainen, and Neftalı́ Villanueva

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2022
New findings on unconsented intimate exams suggest racial bias and gender parity

Lori Bruce, Ivar R Hannikainen, and Brian D Earp

Hastings Center Report, 2022
The typicality effect in basic needs

Thomas Pölzler, and Ivar R Hannikainen

Synthese, 2022

2021

How pills undermine skills: Moralization of cognitive enhancement and causal selection

Emilian Mihailov, Blanca Rodrı́guez López, Florian Cova, and 1 more author

Consciousness and Cognition, 2021
Are there cross-cultural legal principles? Modal reasoning uncovers procedural constraints on law

Ivar R Hannikainen, Kevin P Tobia, Guilherme da FCF De Almeida, and 8 more authors

Cognitive Science, 2021
Experimental philosophical bioethics and normative inference

Brian D Earp, Jonathan Lewis, Vilius Dranseika, and 1 more author

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 2021

2020

JDM

An experimental guide to vehicles in the park

Noel Struchiner, Ivar R Hannikainen, and Guilherme da FCF Almeida

Judgment and Decision Making, 2020

HTML PDF
How do people use ‘killing’, ‘letting die’ and related bioethical concepts? Contrasting descriptive and normative hypotheses

David Rodrı́guez-Arias, Blanca Rodriguez Lopez, Anibal Monasterio-Astobiza, and 1 more author

Bioethics, 2020
Legal decision-making and the abstract/concrete paradox

Noel Struchiner, Guilherme da FCF De Almeida, and Ivar R Hannikainen

Cognition, 2020
Moral migration: Desires to become more empathic predict changes in moral foundations

Ivar R Hannikainen, Nathan W Hudson, William J Chopik, and 2 more authors

Journal of Research in Personality, 2020

2019

Ideology between the lines: Lay inferences about scientists’ values and motives

Ivar R Hannikainen

Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2019
The dual nature of partisan prejudice: Morality and identity in a multiparty system

Hugo Viciana, Ivar R Hannikainen, and Antonio Gaitan Torres

PloS one, 2019
Gender stereotypes underlie child custody decisions

Luiza Lopes Franco Costa, Ana Beatriz Dillon Esteves, Roxana Kreimer, and 2 more authors

European Journal of Social Psychology, 2019
For whom does determinism undermine moral responsibility? Surveying the conditions for free will across cultures

Ivar R Hannikainen, Edouard Machery, David Rose, and 8 more authors

Frontiers in Psychology, 2019
Rationalization and reflection differentially modulate prior attitudes toward the purity domain

Ivar R Hannikainen, and Alejandro Rosas

Cognitive Science, 2019

2018

Is utilitarian sacrifice becoming more morally permissible?

Ivar R Hannikainen, Edouard Machery, and Fiery A Cushman

Cognition, 2018

PDF

2017

A deterministic worldview promotes approval of state paternalism

Ivar Hannikainen, Gabriel Cabral, Edouard Machery, and 1 more author

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2017
Act versus Impact: Conservatives and liberals exhibit different structural emphases in moral judgment

Ivar R Hannikainen, Ryan M Miller, and Fiery A Cushman

Ratio, 2017

2014

Bad actions or bad outcomes? Differentiating affective contributions to the moral condemnation of harm

Ryan M Miller, Ivar A Hannikainen, and Fiery A Cushman

Emotion, 2014