The Importance of Emotions in Moral Persuasion

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I think that there is nothing like the work of an artist to convince me about things. I just came back from a trip to Europe and I'm going to these museums. And the art of somebody a thousand years ago can touch me. If we watched a few more films about animals being tortured, I may stop wearing leather. That's the energy that can fuel moral action. The link from emotion to behavior is much stronger than the link from just like the accepting the reason.

Dave and Tamler try their best to do a show without guests--we talk about moral persuasion, motivated reasoning, and whether it's legitimate to use emotionally charged rhetoric in a philosophical argument. Plus, we describe how students proceed through the "Stages-of-Singer," and Tamler finally defends himself against Dave's slanderous accusation of hypocrisy about animal welfare.

Links

Thomson, J. J. (1971). A defense of abortion. Philosophy & Public Affairs,1, 47-66.

Marquis, D. (1989). Why abortion is immoral. The Journal of Philosophy, 86(4), 183-202.

Ditto, P. H., & Lopez, D. F. (1992). Motivated skepticism: Use of differential decision criteria for preferred and nonpreferred conclusions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63 (4), 568.

Ditto, P.H., Pizarro, D.A., & Tannenbaum, D. (2009). Motivated Moral Reasoning. In B. H. Ross (Series Ed.) & D. M. Bartels, C. W. Bauman, L. J. Skitka, & D. L. Medin (Eds.), Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Vol. 50: Moral Judgment and Decision Making. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Dawson, E., Gilovich, T., & Regan, D. T. (2002). Motivated Reasoning and Performance on the Wason Selection Task. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1379-1387.

Sam's House, an orphanage in Nepal [sams-house.org]

The identifiable victim effect [wikipedia.org]

Tamler's mediocre TEDx talk on Moral Persuasion [youtube.com]

10 Classic South Park Impressions (including Sally Struthers) [youtube.com]

*musical breaks in this episode stolen from DJ Premier and Jay Electronica. Please don't sue.

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