What is 'universalism,' and how does it help us make moral choices?
We spend a lot of mental energy trying to decide what is right and what is wrong. And rightly so: The world would not be nearly as nice a place if humans didn't engage in the deep moral reasoning that they do.suggests that there might be an easier way to discern right from wrong.
And, it turns out that moral universalism yields more accurate predictions of real-world behavior than other theories in moral psychology. Consider this clever experiment from Levine’s paper: The researchers asked 1000 online respondents to consider a hypothetical scenario—whether it was acceptable for a vacationer at a lakeside village to use an advanced fishing hook.
Universalism, on the other hand, suggests that people should make their determination based on the number of people interested in using the advanced hook, which is exactly what the researchers found. When people were informed that none of the other vacationers were interested in using the advanced hook, approximately 75% of people said that it would be morally permissible for the one interested vacationer to use it.