A Self for Others: Joint Self-Other Representation of Value During Morally Relevant Action

The cognitive science of moral action seeks accounts of moral cognition – and their conceptual and valuational structures – that explain stable or unstable, reasoned or unreasoned, moral commitments in the real world. To be successful, cognitive science requires experimental approaches that are relevant to the lives and choices of people who demonstrate stable moral commitment in real life. Further, cognitive science should be able to develop models analogous to the theories from other scholarly inquiries into moral cognition, such as moral philosophy and theology. We applied cognitive valuational modeling and Bayesian model comparison to analyze choices in groups of people who 1) demonstrate real-world stable and reasoned action for others in long-term commitments of compassionate care; 2) demonstrate stable and reasoned action in the laboratory over 2-3 years and across context; and 3) a large group of young adults. We compared 4 different models, intended to correspond with being insensitive to context (Model 1), with simple ethical utilitarianism (Model 2), with an ethics of nondual self (Model 3), and with an ethics of relationally nondual self (Model 4). In all 3 studies, greater action for others associated with having a joint representation of values for self and others while still differentiating between the two (Model 4). Our findings show that action for others is facilitated by having a “self for