Affect, Moral Intuition, and Risk

The natural way to deal with moral issues involving risk is to rely on our intuitive feelings. “How bad is it? Well, how bad does it feel?” We can also rely on reason to determine right and wrong but, as Jonathan Haidt has demonstrated, intuition comes first and dominates our responses unless we make an effort to critique and, if necessary, override it. We argue that our intuitive feelings are insensitive to large losses of life and thus mislead us in the face of natural disasters or human disasters associated with poverty, disease, and violence. Our intuitions seduce us into calmly turning away from these catastrophes, when we should be driven by outrage or sorrow to act. We propose ways to overcome this insensitivity through new forms of education and communication coupled with reliance on moral deliberation aimed at designing laws and institutions that compel attention to such problems.