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Is there a tension between the theory of cultural cognition and the effects on our moral actions from seemingly insubstantial situational differences? And if so, what kind of experiments could help us resolve that tension?

Recent empirical research has provided us with important insights into the connection of cultural values and the perception of risks. Not only do cultural worldviews influence how we evaluate facts, they also determine (to a significant extent) what the facts are, that is, what we perceive as relevant facts in a particular context. At the heart of the theory of cultural cognition is a statistical model that relates a set of stated values (v1…vn) to a set of stated beliefs (b1…bn). By building causal hypotheses on existing correlations, we should be able to predict the likelihood of certain unknown beliefs on the basis of certain known value commitments.

Another body of empirical research, loosely labeled “situationism,” attempts to understand if and to what extent our moral behavior depends on minimal situational differences. A current account of situationalism and the challenges that it poses to the “robust character traits” assumed by most variants of virtue ethics, is provided by John Doris and Stephen Stich in their excellent contribution to The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy, “Empirical Perspectives on Ethics.” (Experimental Philosophy Blog has the link. Note that, annoyingly, the .pdf is password protected. As always, PDFKey helps.) Among other things, Doris and Stich report the following findings:

Mathews and Canon (1975: 754-5) found subjects were five times more likely to help an apparently injured man who had dropped some books when ambient noise was at normal levels than when a power lawnmower was running nearby (80 per cent v. 15 per cent).
Darley and Batson (1973: 105) report that passers-by not in a hurry were six times more likely to help an unfortunate who appeared to be in significant distress than were passers-by in a hurry (63 per cent v. 10 per cent).
Isen and Levin (1972: 387) discovered that people who had just found a dime were twenty-two times more likely to help a woman who had dropped some papers than those who did not find a dime (88 per cent v. 4 per cent).

To the extent that we understand cultural cognition as a theory of value-oriented behavior, the situationalist findings are indeed disturbing, because cultural cognition would then have to assume that correlations between values and beliefs are reasonably robust across a broad range of situations in order to permit useful predictions. However, in its present state, the theory of cultural cognition is probably more a theory of stated values and stated beliefs, as opposed a theory of values and beliefs revealed through non-verbal behavior. The correlations on which the theory of cultural cognition relies are correlations between answers to questions about values and beliefs, not correlations between (any other) actions revealing values and beliefs. It seems plausible that people’s stated values and beliefs are more robust than their revealed values and beliefs. (People would probably deny that having found a dime prior to helping or not helping the woman who had dropped her papers had any influence on their actions.)

Further empirical research could probably shed light on whether and to what extent correlations identified by the theory of cultural cognition are influenced by minimal situational differences. One could think of experiments where different groups of test subjects would be confronted with the same situation (e.g., whether to help someone in distress), but with different degrees of physically active involvement. I would assume that the less active and the more verbal the involvement becomes (e.g., ordering an assistant to call an ambulance, making a decision based on the reading of a transcript), the less situational and more predictable our value responses get.

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