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(Created page with "Michael Sargent This research work addresses one question: under what conditions are people’s judgments and decisions organized around the same principles that they conscio...") |
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D*A*R*IA: Testing a Model of Principled Reasoning | D*A*R*IA: Testing a Model of Principled Reasoning | ||
The focus of Sargent’s project is explicit principled reasoning, by which he means reasoning that is driven by principles that individuals can articulate. Intuitionist models of judgment assert that such reasoning is rare, if not impossible. Instead, such models assume that the language of principle is invoked post hoc to justify judgments that are in fact driven by intuition, which itself may be a product of affect and/or partisan preferences. The purpose of Sargent’s work is to test a theoretical model that describes the necessary conditions for explicit principled reasoning. In short, it asks what must be true for genuine rationalism to prevail? At its core, Sargent’s model assumes that explicit principled reasoning can occur when (a) principles are well-defined in advance of encountering any cases to which they would be applied, (b) such principles come to mind at the time of a judgment, (c) those principles are deemed relevant, and (d) the person rendering the judgment is sufficiently motivated to act consistently that he or she feels bound by their prior definition. Sargent proposes a series of experiments to test this model, including two with nationally representative samples. The goal is to show that when these conditions hold, individuals’ judgments are influenced by considerations relevant to the principles that they endorse, and that their judgments are not influenced by factors irrelevant to those principles. The theoretical promise lies in its potential to suggest why genuine explicit principled reasoning is so rare by default (i.e., the necessary conditions are too numerous). Its practical promise lies in its potential to suggest concrete steps real-world decision-makers might take to promote such reasoning. | The focus of Sargent’s project is explicit principled reasoning, by which he means reasoning that is driven by principles that individuals can articulate. Intuitionist models of judgment assert that such reasoning is rare, if not impossible. Instead, such models assume that the language of principle is invoked post hoc to justify judgments that are in fact driven by intuition, which itself may be a product of affect and/or partisan preferences. The purpose of Sargent’s work is to test a theoretical model that describes the necessary conditions for explicit principled reasoning. In short, it asks what must be true for genuine rationalism to prevail? At its core, Sargent’s model assumes that explicit principled reasoning can occur when (a) principles are well-defined in advance of encountering any cases to which they would be applied, (b) such principles come to mind at the time of a judgment, (c) those principles are deemed relevant, and (d) the person rendering the judgment is sufficiently motivated to act consistently that he or she feels bound by their prior definition. Sargent proposes a series of experiments to test this model, including two with nationally representative samples. The goal is to show that when these conditions hold, individuals’ judgments are influenced by considerations relevant to the principles that they endorse, and that their judgments are not influenced by factors irrelevant to those principles. The theoretical promise lies in its potential to suggest why genuine explicit principled reasoning is so rare by default (i.e., the necessary conditions are too numerous). Its practical promise lies in its potential to suggest concrete steps real-world decision-makers might take to promote such reasoning. | ||
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