TY - JOUR T1 - Omissions and Byproducts across Moral Domains A1 - DeScioli, Peter A1 - Asao, Kelly A1 - Kurzban, Robert Y1 - 2012/10/11 N2 - Research indicates that moral violations are judged less wrong when the violation results from omission as opposed to commission, and when the violation is a byproduct as opposed to a means to an end. Previous work examined these effects mainly for violent offenses such as killing. Here we investigate the generality of these effects across a range of moral violations including sexuality, food, property, and group loyalty. In Experiment 1, we observed omission effects in wrongness ratings for all of the twelve offenses investigated. In Experiments 2 and 3, we observed byproduct effects in wrongness ratings for seven and eight offenses (out of twelve), respectively, and we observed byproduct effects in forced-choice responses for all twelve offenses. Our results address an ongoing debate about whether different cognitive systems compute moral wrongness for different types of behaviors (surrounding violence, sexuality, food, etc.), or, alternatively, a common cognitive architecture computes wrongness for a variety of behaviors. JF - PLOS ONE JA - PLOS ONE VL - 7 IS - 10 UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0046963 SP - e46963 EP - PB - Public Library of Science M3 - doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0046963 ER -