Yudkin, D. A., Goodwin, G., et al. (2023, July 11).
Abstract
Questions of right and wrong are central to daily life, yet how people experience everyday moral dilemmas remains uncertain. We combined state-of-the-art tools in machine learning with survey-based methods in psychology to analyze a massive online English-language repository of everyday moral dilemmas. In 369,161 descriptions (“posts”) and 11M evaluations (“comments”) of moral dilemmas extracted from Reddit’s “Am I the Asshole?” forum (AITA), users described a wide variety of everyday dilemmas, ranging from broken promises to privacy violations. Dilemmas involving the under-investigated topic of relational obligations were the most frequently reported, while those pertaining to honesty were the most widely condemned. The types of dilemmas people experienced depended on the interpersonal closeness of the interactants, with some dilemmas (e.g., politeness) being more prominent in distant-other interactions, and others (e.g., relational transgressions) more prominent in close-other interactions. A longitudinal investigation showed that shifts in social interactions prompted by the “shock” event of the global pandemic resulted in predictable shifts in the types of moral dilemmas that people encountered. A preregistered study using a census-stratified representative sample of the US population (N = 510), as well as other robustness tests, suggest our findings generalize beyond the sample of Reddit users. Overall, by leveraging a unique large dataset and new techniques for exploring this dataset, our paper highlights the diversity of moral dilemmas experienced in daily life, and helps to build a moral psychology grounded in the vagaries of everyday experience.
Significance Statement
People often wonder if what they did or said was right or wrong. In this paper we leveraged a massive online repository of descriptions of everyday moral situations, along with new methods in natural language processing, to explore a number of questions about how people experience and evaluate these moral dilemmas. Our results highlight just how often daily moral experiences concern questions about our responsibilities to friends, neighbors, and family. They also reveal the extent to which such experiences can change according to people’s social context—including large-scale social changes like the COVID-19 pandemic.
My take:
This study may be very important to clinical psychologists. It provides insights into the diversity and prevalence of everyday moral dilemmas that people encounter in their daily lives.
Clinical psychologists often work with clients to navigate complex moral and interpersonal situations, so understanding the common types of dilemmas people face is valuable. The study shows that dilemmas involving relational obligations are the most frequently reported, with honesty and betrayal as major themes. This suggests that clinical work should pay close attention to how clients navigate moral issues within their close relationships and the importance they place on honesty.
