The results were striking: Even when two people made different choices, their brains represented those choices similarly if they endorsed the two utilitarian principles to a similar degree. In other words, alignment in intuitive moral theories shaped how people mentally represented moral problems🧠

We used a moral decision-making task that was not explicitly aligned with either theory, making its relevance intentionally ambiguous. Using neuroimaging, we examined neural representational similarity across participants while controlling for similarities in their behavioral choices.

Recent research suggests that individual differences in utilitarian tendencies fall along two dimensions: a permissive attitude toward harming others for greater good (instrumental harm) and an impartial concern for others’ welfare (impartial beneficence).

In this work, we asked: what are the consequences of holding different intuitive moral theories? Do distinct moral theories shape how people represent and reason about moral problems—and do these effects extend beyond contexts directly tied to a theory’s content? 🤔

I’m thrilled to share that our paper is now published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General!🧵👇 psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...