Moral Ambivalence: Modeling and Measuring Bivariate Evaluative Processes in Moral Judgment

Moral judgments often appear to arise from quick affectively toned intuitions rather than from conscious application of moral principles. Sometimes people feel that an action they observe or contemplate could be judged as either right or wrong. Models of moral intuition need to specify mechanisms that could account for such moral ambivalence. The basic implication of moral ambivalence is that right and wrong are regions of a bivariate scale rather than a bipolar scale. The former allows for equally strong positive and negative evaluations of a stimulus, but the latter requires one evaluation to get weaker as the other one gets stronger (Cacioppo & Berntson, 1994). Covariation of evaluative activations is supported by classic animal research on approach–avoidance conflict showing that when rats are both rewarded and punished in the goal region of a runway, their approach and avoidance tendencies both increase as they get closer to the goal. The relevance of this research to moral judgment is underscored by recent studies indicating that judgments of right and wrong are fundamentally expressions of approach and avoidance motivation. Experimental and historical analyses illustrate 2 potential effects of ambivalence on moral judgment, vacillation and suppression, and a proposed model shows how the bivariate scale can be applied to existing formulations, including Haidt's moral foundations theory. Studies of moral judgment that use rating scales, questionnaires, or interviews should give participants the option to express ambivalence (e.g., “can't decide,” “don't know”) instead of requiring definitive judgments, which is the current practice.