Distopya gerçek olduğunda: İnsanlar başkalarını onların ahlaki inançlarına göre yargılıyor, suçluyor ve cezalandırıyor mu?

Moral judgment is the outcome of moral reasoning process in which individuals reach a conclusion about rightness or wrongness of a specific act or person. Previous research in this area focused on how people judge, blame, and punish based on an agent's mental states (i.e., intentions, desires, and beliefs), behaviors of the agent, and the consequences of those behaviors (for a review, see Guglielmo, 2015). However, one important yet neglected question in this field is how individuals reach a moral judgment, when they encounter an agent who holds a moral conviction that does not accord with those of the individuals. In a within-subject design, 120 participants were presented four different moral scenarios that pitted conviction against action and asked to judge the agent in those scenarios in terms of the following aspects: the agent's moral character, wrongness of the agent's behavior, culpability of the agent, and the punishment that the agent deserved. Supporting our hypotheses, the results showed that participants judged, blamed, and punished the agent with bad conviction significantly more harshly, even in the absence of any harmful behavior. Moreover, it was found that moral character judgment relied on both the agent's conviction and behavior, whereas wrongness, blame, and punishment judgments were heavily dependent on the agent's action. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed, and directions for further research are established.