Vladimir Chituc

All Publications

• How to show that a cruel prank is worse than a war crime: Shifting scales and missing benchmarks in the study of moral judgment. Cognition Chituc, V., Crockett, M. J., Scholl, B. J. 2026; 266: 106315

  Abstract

  Moral judgment is central to both everyday life and cognitive science, but how can it be studied with quantitative precision? By far the most direct and ubiquitous method is to simply ask people for their judgments, in the form of ratings on a labeled scale (e.g. Likert or Visual Analog Scales). As has long been recognized in sensory psychophysics, however, such responses are meaningful only in a relative sense. (Is your dog "big"? Perhaps yes in the context of house pets, but not in the context of all mammals?) Here we illustrate the nature and extremity of this problem using two case studies. First, to explore this theme in principle, we show in a series of nine experiments that this problem can readily lead subjects to (seemingly) judge a cruel prank (involving humiliation) to be just as immoral as (or even worse than) an internationally recognized war crime (involving murder). In contrast, such nonsensical results disappear when using magnitude estimation - a psychophysical method employing an explicit moral benchmark. Second, to demonstrate the importance of this theme in practice, we show that the use of magnitude estimation (vs. Likert scales) radically changes the proper interpretation of a recent study of 'moral luck', fueling essentially the opposite conclusion. Taken together, this work illustrates how insights from psychophysics can help improve measurement in contemporary moral psychology.

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.cognition.2025.106315

  View details for PubMedID 41014959

• The El Greco Fallacy, this Time with Feeling: How (not) to Measure Group Differences in Emotional Intensity. Affective science Chituc, V., Scholl, B. J. 2025; 6 (3): 526-533

  Abstract

  We all get angry. And some of us get angrier than others. But are such differences systematic across groups? Affective scientists often make claims about group differences in emotional intensity by comparing group averages on labeled (e.g. Likert) scales. For example, prominent research has used such scales to claim, perhaps counterintuitively, that women experience anger more intensely than men. Despite their ubiquity, these measures are susceptible to a subtle but notorious problem: the El Greco fallacy. (El Greco famously painted elongated figures. Could this be because he experienced a stretched-out world, due to a type of astigmatism? No, since then he would also have experienced a stretched-out canvas, and the effects would necessarily cancel out.) Here, across four experiments, we replicate the apparent finding with labeled scales that women experience anger more intensely than men. But we then go on to show that this finding reliably disappears when tested with a general Labeled Magnitude Scale (gLMS) - a psychophysical measure designed to detect such differences, avoiding the El Greco fallacy. This demonstrates how insights from sensory psychophysics can be usefully employed in affective science, and supports skepticism about purported group differences in emotional intensity based on labeled scales. The deep lesson for psychological measurement: the most obvious tools are not always the best.The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-025-00314-z.

  View details for DOI 10.1007/s42761-025-00314-z

  View details for PubMedID 41185777

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC12579646

• Moral dilemmas and trust in leaders during a global health crisis. Nature human behaviour Everett, J. A., Colombatto, C., Awad, E., Boggio, P., Bos, B., Brady, W. J., Chawla, M., Chituc, V., Chung, D., Drupp, M. A., Goel, S., Grosskopf, B., Hjorth, F., Ji, A., Kealoha, C., Kim, J. S., Lin, Y., Ma, Y., Maréchal, M. A., Mancinelli, F., Mathys, C., Olsen, A. L., Pearce, G., Prosser, A. M., Reggev, N., Sabin, N., Senn, J., Shin, Y. S., Sinnott-Armstrong, W., Sjåstad, H., Strick, M., Sul, S., Tummers, L., Turner, M., Yu, H., Zoh, Y., Crockett, M. J. 2021; 5 (8): 1074-1088

  Abstract

  Trust in leaders is central to citizen compliance with public policies. One potential determinant of trust is how leaders resolve conflicts between utilitarian and non-utilitarian ethical principles in moral dilemmas. Past research suggests that utilitarian responses to dilemmas can both erode and enhance trust in leaders: sacrificing some people to save many others ('instrumental harm') reduces trust, while maximizing the welfare of everyone equally ('impartial beneficence') may increase trust. In a multi-site experiment spanning 22 countries on six continents, participants (N = 23,929) completed self-report (N = 17,591) and behavioural (N = 12,638) measures of trust in leaders who endorsed utilitarian or non-utilitarian principles in dilemmas concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. Across both the self-report and behavioural measures, endorsement of instrumental harm decreased trust, while endorsement of impartial beneficence increased trust. These results show how support for different ethical principles can impact trust in leaders, and inform effective public communication during times of global crisis. PROTOCOL REGISTRATION STATEMENT: The Stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 13 November 2020. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13247315.v1 .

  View details for DOI 10.1038/s41562-021-01156-y

  View details for PubMedID 34211151

  View details for PubMedCentralID 2714687

• Moral conformity and its philosophical lessons PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY Chituc, V., Sinnott-Armstrong, W. 2020; 33 (2): 262-282

  View details for DOI 10.1080/09515089.2020.1719395

  View details for Web of Science ID 000512632500006

• Blame, not ability, impacts moral "ought" judgments for impossible actions: Toward an empirical refutation of "ought" implies "can". Cognition Chituc, V., Henne, P., Sinnott-Armstrong, W., De Brigard, F. 2016; 150: 20-5

  Abstract

  Recently, psychologists have explored moral concepts including obligation, blame, and ability. While little empirical work has studied the relationships among these concepts, philosophers have widely assumed such a relationship in the principle that "ought" implies "can," which states that if someone ought to do something, then they must be able to do it. The cognitive underpinnings of these concepts are tested in the three experiments reported here. In Experiment 1, most participants judge that an agent ought to keep a promise that he is unable to keep, but only when he is to blame for the inability. Experiment 2 shows that such "ought" judgments correlate with judgments of blame, rather than with judgments of the agent's ability. Experiment 3 replicates these findings for moral "ought" judgments and finds that they do not hold for nonmoral "ought" judgments, such as what someone ought to do to fulfill their desires. These results together show that folk moral judgments do not conform to a widely assumed philosophical principle that "ought" implies "can." Instead, judgments of blame play a modulatory role in some judgments of obligation.

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.cognition.2016.01.013

  View details for PubMedID 26848732