Uniquely positioned to shed light everyday moral dilemmas

July 28, 2024 1:00 AM

Questions of right and wrong are central to daily life, yet scientific understanding of everyday moral dilemmas is limited. We conducted a data-driven analysis of these phenomena by combining state-of-the-art tools in machine learning with survey-based methods ... Overall, this paper shows that many moral experiences that are underexplored in psychological science are nevertheless common in everyday life. from A Large-Scale Investigation Reveals Unexplored Regions in the Landscape of Everyday Moral Experience [PsyAriv preprints]

In Study 1, we extracted and analyzed 369,161 descriptions (“posts”) and 11M evaluations (“comments”) of dilemmas from the largest known online repository of everyday moral dilemmas: Reddit’s “Am I the Asshole?” Users described a wide variety of underexplored everyday dilemmas, concerning everything from broken promises to judgmentalness. Dilemmas involving relational obligations were the most frequently reported, while those pertaining to honesty were the most broadly condemned. In Study 2, a preregistered follow-up investigation showed that similar dilemmas are reported in a census-stratified representative sample of the US population (N = 510). [full PDF]

posted by chavenet (9 comments total)

AITA for posting this comment before finishing the paper?
posted by flabdablet at 1:55 AM on July 28 [4 favorites]

Wow, 4.2% of all AITA posts are about weddings. What a world.

I went into this skeptical (B-school affiliation, academic psychology) but after skimming I came away pleasantly surprised: the taxonomy seems plausible, and some of the general findings (21c Redditors approve of honesty and respect the setting of boundaries) made sense to me. I would love to read a longitudinal study of fifty years of Dear Abby, Ann Landers, and Miss Manners. Thanks for posting this.
posted by sy at 4:23 AM on July 28 [6 favorites]

Basically what sy said. Neat!
posted by Wretch729 at 5:24 AM on July 28 [1 favorite]

AITA for asking if this is a self-double?
posted by mittens at 6:17 AM on July 28 [2 favorites]

I think IATA for posting this twice. D'oh
posted by chavenet at 6:44 AM on July 28 [2 favorites]

So much more sensible than trying to learn something from trolley problems.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 8:28 AM on July 28 [4 favorites]

mods are asleep

say say things things twice twice!
posted by lalochezia at 8:53 AM on July 28 [2 favorites]

I, too, have not read this yet, but I appreciate sy's comment, which made me add this to my To Read list, and I would like to posit that YANotTA, chavenet; it may be a repost, but I didn't recognize it as having been posted before, and YOU didn't realize you'd posted it before, and I think many thoughtful people do indeed present the same idea more than once to their friends, so I am actually glad you reposted. Looking forward to reading it.

Thank you!
posted by kristi at 10:49 AM on July 28 [1 favorite]

So much more sensible than trying to learn something from trolley problems.

As a fat man, and therefore in frequent danger from trolley problem zealots, I'm quite glad to have learned about slipping the switch to achieve a controlled derailment. Thanks, railway workers!
posted by flabdablet at 11:35 AM on July 28 [4 favorites]