To the extent that judgments about individual scenarios are driven by stable moral principles, those judgments should not be affected by order of presentation of the scenarios. And to the extent that people choose to endorse or reject moral principles for stable, consistent reasons, those decisions should not be strongly influenced by the order in which several previous judgments were made. Philosophers—especially ethics PhDs at well-ranked research departments—should seemingly be particularly resistant to order effects on their scenario judgments and endorsements of principles, due to prior familiarity with the principles and general types of scenarios. However, even this ‘best-case’ group of participants showed substantial order effects on their judgments about moral scenarios and their endorsement of moral principles. Our analysis found no support for the view that philosophical expertise enhances the stability of moral judgment against order effects; it suggests, instead, that philosophical expertise may actually enhance post-hoc rationalization.
(Eric Schwitzgebel and Fiery Cushman, "Expertise in Moral Reasoning? Order Effects on Moral Judgment in Professional Philosophers and Non-Philosophers," Mind & Language 27 [April 2012]: 135-53, at 147 [boldface added])
Note from KBJ: Richard Posner had it right.
