Moral judgments and impressions
Current Opinion in PsychologyPublished 5 April 2015
Bogdan Wojciszke, Michał Parzuchowski, Konrad Bocian
Citations14
SJR quartileQ1
SJR score3.04
SNIP2.84
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Abstract
Moral psychology is booming and recent years brought a large body of research on moral judgments and impressions. We review up to date results about this important constituent of human morality focusing mainly on: (1) how deontology vs. utilitarianism drives moral judgments, (2) what is the role of intuition and deliberation in moral judgments, (3) how and why morality influences impressions of persons, and (4) how people perceive moral character. We also highlight some limitations of previous research and show how these limitations are being overcome recently.
Keywords
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