Reasoning in moral conflicts

Following the assumptions of the model theory, we argue that moral conflicts may arise because of conflicts between norms and values for judging an action as morally ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, and that they are dealt with through reasoning. In four experiments we invited adult participants to evaluate scenarios describing moral or immoral actions. Our results confirm the predictions deriving from our assumptions: given a moral or immoral scenario, the manipulation of the propositions which refer to norms and values results in a scenario eliciting a moral conflict (Experiment 1); when invited to create conflict versions from no-conflict versions of moral or immoral scenarios, individuals manipulate the propositions in the scenario which describe norms and values rather than emotional factors (Experiment 2); the evaluation of conflict scenarios takes longer than the evaluation of no-conflict scenarios (Experiment 3), and this is because conflict scenarios involve more deliberative reasoning (Experiment 4). We discuss our results in relation to competing theories of moral judgments.