TikTok: Is Your Morality Flexible and Situational, or Fixed As the North Star?

Imagine you’re out in public and you see a parent with a crying baby. But you notice the parent is not paying attention — instead they’re playing a game on their phone … On a scale of 1-10, how morally unacceptable would you rate this? OK, now imagine some circumstance that would make that more acceptable. For example, it’s not actually their kid; they’re watching it while the parent is in the bathroom. Or you can think of something else. Now, rate it again on a scale of 1-10: How morally unacceptable is it?

@dr.brein What is “moral imagination?” _________ This video was supported by the Pulitzer Center through the Truth Decay Grant Initiative, in collaboration with OpenMind Magazine. To read more about this topic, check out the accompanying article featured on OpenMind’s website, found in my bio 🔗. _________ #PulitzerCenter #OpenMind #imagination #morality ##psychology##parenting##truthdecay #greenscreen ♬ original sound - Dr. Ben Rein

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That was an exercise in something called “moral imagination,” when we imagine all sorts of possibilities and circumstances that could explain or resolve an ethical issue.

Moral imagination can be a bad thing in certain cases — for example, you may have just excused some very bad parenting: What if it actually was their kid, but you convinced yourself that it was fine.

But on the other hand, it can be a very good thing. Moral imagination lets us take ourselves out of the equation and engage empathy. We can objectively judge what’s right and wrong by opening all possibilities and thinking from new perspectives. And that is incredibly powerful.

As a scientist studying empathy, I believe that it’s incredibly important for making ethical decisions. If our actions can impact others, we should be putting ourselves in their shoes and imagining the impact we might have. It’s an amazing feature of being human that we’re even able to do this, and so we should do everything in our power to make sure we don’t forget to do it.