Solicited moral judgments risk demand effects.

Evidence

We worry, however, about the artificiality of this paradigm and its potential susceptibility to effects of experimental demand. Unlike participants in studies in which the independent or dependent variables, or both, are disguised to sidestep expectancy or demand effects, participants in moral judgment studies like these are typically given every opportunity to discern and consider what the experimenter might demand. Some of the moral typecasting effects we have observed in such settings, however, do not seem transparent to participants’ perceptions of demands on their judgments: Why, for example, might participants feel demand to report that Mother Theresa should be punished for her sainthood? — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 156

Categorization

• QUESTION: Relevant to designing a disguised paradigm for the religious-group recategorization experiment — explicit judgments of ‘threat’ may track demand more than real attitude change.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting: Divergent…, 156
• XREF: connects to: Forced comparison of moral targets reveals effects that solitary ratings mask — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting: Divergent…, 158; Informed consent in medicine reshaped legal ethics toward collaborative lawyer-client decision-making. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1168

Broader Connections

• Forced comparison of moral targets reveals effects that solitary ratings mask #expands (0.82) — Kurt Gray and Daniel M. Wegner, Moral Typecasting, 158