Adults spontaneously make moral judgments consistent with the logic of universalization, and children show a comparable pattern of judgment as early as 4 years old

Levine, Sydney, Max Kleiman-Weiner, Laura Schulz, josh tenenbaum, and Fiery A. Cushman. 2020. “Universalization Reasoning Guides Moral Judgment.” PsyArXiv. February 23. osf.io/p7e6h

Abstract: To explain why an action is wrong, we sometimes say: “What if everybody did that?” In other words, even if a single person’s behavior is harmless, that behavior may be wrong if it would be harmful once universalized. We formalize the process of universalization in a computational model, test its quantitative predictions in studies of human moral judgment, and distinguish it from alternative models. We show that adults spontaneously make moral judgments consistent with the logic of universalization, and that children show a comparable pattern of judgment as early as 4 years old. We conclude that alongside other well-characterized mechanisms of moral judgment, such as outcome-based and rule-based thinking, the logic of universalizing holds an important place in our moral minds.