Exercise 2: Why people differ on moral rules?

Time

40 min

The goals of this exercise

• to make students aware that people can differ on moral rules,
• to provide a safe space for discussion of controversial issues, yet not that much sensitive for the students personally. 

Teaching methods

Case study, discussion 

Instruction for teacher and students

There are two stories in this exercise. You can use both, or just the first, if you consider the second to be too sensitive. Both are taken from Haidt (2012).  

Story 1: A woman was dying, and on her deathbed she asked her son to promise that he would visit her grave every week. The son loved his mother very much, so he promised to visit her grave every week. But after the mother died, the son didn’t keep his promise, because he was very busy.

Ask students to make their own opinion about this case: did the son behaved morally right or wrong? Then ask students what do they think about the son, and whether they believe that he did something wrong; what is morally wrong, was anyone hurt by this situation? The students might engage into different types of narratives and explanations. Some can blame the son for not keeping up to the promise, others can say that he did a good thing by saying what the mother wanted to hear. 

Story 2: A family’s dog was killed by a car in front of their house. They had heard that dog meat was delicious, so they cut up the dog’s body and cooked it and ate it for dinner.

Again, ask students to make their own judgment about this case: was what the family did it morally right or wrong? Then ask them to express their opinions, what do they think about the family and the situation. What moral principle was compromised here? Was anyone hurt by this situation? The students will engage in a discussion and present different narratives about the case. Use those narratives to provoke further discussion: you should not eat your own dog – but why when you eat other animals? What is the difference between your dog and a pig? Why should that dog be excluded from consumption? The dog was dead anyway, and only the family knew that they have eaten him. Moreover, maybe this way some other animal has been spared and not eaten for dinner, etc.

If you decided to discuss both cases, you can ask about the underlying moral principle behind the deeds. In both cases you can discuss different perspectives within the group. Go through and summarise all arguments in favour and against the statement that the acts in both stories were morally right or wrong.

At the end, ask if anyone has changed his primary opinion. If so – what was the reason. Most probably not many students will change their opinion, even if no harm has been caused to anyone in both cases, and arguably some positive sides could be pointed to (e.g. the mother died having high hopes for her son; the dog was eaten – thus some other animal was spared for dinner). This is the moral dumbfounding – we tend to stick to our moral opinion even after receiving many rational arguments against. This proves Haidt’s theory on intuitive rather than reasonable morality.