Thinking and Deciding

TYPES OF JUDGMENT 395
if people tried to change it. Conventions can be changed, but moral rules cannot
be changed. Later researchers added questions about whether rules were objective
obligations, which people should follow whether or not the people themselves acknowledged
the rules. For example, Miller, Bersoff, and Harwood (1990) asked,
after a story about someone failing to give helpful directions, “If people do not want
to give other people directions in situations like this, do you think they still have an
obligation to give them directions anyway?”
Nucci (2001) also found a type of judgment that seems to be between morality
and convention, a judgment that something is a moral issue but only for members
of a certain group, for example, that Jewish men must wear a head covering, which
some Jews saw as a moral requirement — unchangeable and independent of what
others thought — but only for Jews.
Turiel, Nucci, and others have also found that some people categorize issues as
matters of personal choice that other people categorize the same issues as matters of
morality or convention. Abortion is an obvious example, where some of the advocates
of leaving abortion decisions to the woman deny that moral issues are involved
at all. Other examples often create conflict. For example, an adolescent may regard
her choice of clothes as a personal issue, while her parents see it in moral or
conventional terms.
Social norms
Bicchieri (2006) argues, in essence, for a distinction between two types of judgment
that for Turiel and Nucci would both fall under the heading of convention. She would
distinguish conventions and social norms. True conventions are rules that can be
followed without cost, and typically with some benefit, provided that enough others
are following them. Examples of conventions are using the alphabet for ordering,
driving on the right (or left) side of the road. It is to your advantage to drive on the
right if everyone else is driving on the right.
Social norms require cost. They are like conventions in that they are contingent
on the behavior of others. A person who embraces a social norm is willing to pay
some personal cost to abide by it, provided that enough others are doing the same.
Examples are norms of fashion or dress (some of which require considerable effort),
norms of politeness, and codes of ethics (written or unwritten), such as those that
forbid sexual relationships between students and teachers. A person who embraces
a norm against such relationships will not regard the issue as fully moral (that is,
applicable regardless of what people think and do) but will abide by the rule if it is
expected and if others live up to the expectation. Moral rules also involve some cost,
but people who endorse these rules think they should be followed regardless of what
others think.