Nicole Hassoun at Public Reason has posted an experiment on how people think about “meeting needs” (here). The results appear in an article that will be published Utilitas, though the experimental results will play only a “minor” role. Yali Corea-Levy of Arizona conducted the experiment.
A colleague in Political Science (at Weber State) and I have been mining data on policy issues and how philosophy – particularly recent work in moral psychology – will contribute to more robust explanations of the oftentimes scattered data set. Hassoun and Corea-Levy’s efforts have clearly opened new avenues of research in political philosophy. We hope to show how a person’s moral concerns play a (significant) role in their views on policy issues and – perhaps – how these concerns play a role in voting behavior.
