Moral realism as moral motivation: The impact of meta-ethics on everyday decision-making

► We primed moral realism, the belief that moral facts are like mathematical truths. ► Priming meta-ethical views (realism vs. antirealism) affected actual behavior. ► Priming a belief in moral realism increased charitable giving. ► Moral realism may raise the moral stakes and motivate moral behavior. a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o People disagree about whether " moral facts " are objective facts like mathematical truths (moral realism) or simply products of the human mind (moral antirealism). What is the impact of different meta-ethical views on actual behavior? In Experiment 1, a street canvasser, soliciting donations for a charitable organization dedicated to helping impoverished children, primed passersby with realism or antirealism. Participants primed with realism were twice as likely to be donors, compared to control participants and participants primed with antirealism. In Experiment 2, online participants primed with realism as opposed to antirealism reported being willing to donate more money to a charity of their choice. Considering the existence of non-negotiable moral facts may have raised the stakes and motivated participants to behave better. These results therefore reveal the impact of meta-ethics on everyday decision-making: priming a belief in moral realism improved moral behavior. Introduction Whether there is a fact of the matter about morality has produced Moral realists maintain that objective moral facts exist, treating them like mathematical truths (e.g., 1+1=2) or scientific facts (e.g., what constitutes physical health). Moral antirealists deny the existence of moral facts, maintaining there are no real answers to moral questions, often citing moral disagreement as a reason to doubt realism. Importantly, moral antirealists do not deny the existence and importance of moral values; antirealists simply assert that moral values reflect the beliefs of a person or a culture, rather than immutable facts that exist independent of human psychology. In other words, like subjective preferences (e.g., chocolate tastes better than vanilla), rather than objective facts, moral values may depend on the psychology of an individual or a community. Realist and antirealist views alike are found among Here, we investigate whether priming realism versus antirealism influences moral decision-making. Although the effects of meta-ethical views on moral behavior have not been directly investigated, several proposals are on offer. Some researchers suggest there may be no effects, based on observations of how ethicists with different meta-ethical views behave (Schwitzgebel & Rust, 2011). By contrast, …