Talk through a moral dilemma with someone who reasons differently

Take a real moral question to someone whose reasons you do not share, and listen until you can state their reasons back.

Pourquoi ça marche

Blatt and Kohlberg (1975) tested children in school, not adult conversations: one group was given twelve hours of discussion of moral problems other than the test dilemmas, spread over twelve weeks, and that group tended to move toward higher levels of moral thinking compared with controls. The abstract reports that outcome and gives no mechanism. This page’s hypothesis, not a finding from that study, is that a conversation with someone who reasons from a different place brings in the contrast between your reasons and theirs, which you have to hold in view at the same time, and so brings in considerations you would not generate alone.

Comment faire

1. Pick a real question you are facing at work or at home where a reasonable person could land differently.
2. Find one person who you know reasons about it from another starting point, and ask them to walk through their reasons.
3. Before replying, restate their main reason in a sentence they would recognize as their own.
4. Note the one consideration you had not weighed, and say whether it changes your view, even slightly.

Données probantes

Blatt and Kohlberg (1975) report a controlled school experiment in which children received twelve hours of discussion of moral problems other than Kohlberg’s test dilemmas, spread over twelve weeks; the experimental group tended to move toward higher levels of moral thinking compared with controls. The study is of children, not adults, and the abstract does not report group assignment or sample size. (observational)

The effect was a tendency to move, measured in children in schools. It does not show that a single conversation changes an adult’s moral stage, and the small size of the shift is not described in the abstract.

Sources

• Blatt, M. M., & Kohlberg, L. (1975). The Effects of Classroom Moral Discussion upon Children’s Level of Moral Judgment. Journal of Moral Education, 4(2), 129–161.

Erreur fréquente

Treating the conversation as a debate to win. If you come out having only defended your position, the other person’s reasons never reached you, and nothing in the exercise has changed.