normative research hypothesis

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• Published: 04 July 2018

Normative and conceptual ELSI research: what it is, and why it’s important

• Lisa S. Parker PhD 1 ,
• Pamela L. Sankar PhD 2 ,
• Joy Boyer 3 ,
• JD Jean McEwen PhD 3 &
• David Kaufman PhD 3  

Genetics in Medicine volume  21 ,  pages 505–509 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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The Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) Research Program of the National Human Genome Research Institute sponsors research examining ethical, legal, and social issues arising in the context of genetics/genomics. The ELSI Program endorses an understanding of research not as the sole province of empirical study, but instead as systematic study or inquiry, of which there are many types and methods. ELSI research employs both empirical and nonempirical methods. Because the latter remain relatively unfamiliar to biomedical and translational scientists, this paper seeks to elucidate the relationship between empirical and nonempirical methods in ELSI research. It pays particular attention to the research questions and methods of normative and conceptual research, which examine questions of value and meaning, respectively. To illustrate the distinct but interrelated roles of empirical and nonempirical methods in ELSI research, including normative and conceptual research, the paper demonstrates how a range of methods may be employed both to examine the evolution of the concept of incidental findings (including the recent step toward terming them ‘secondary findings’), and to address the normative question of how genomic researchers and clinicians should manage incidental such findings.

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In 1990, Congress appropriated funds as part of the Human Genome Project to create the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) Research Program “to foster basic and applied research on the ethical, legal and social implications of genetic and genomic research” ( https://www.genome.gov/elsi/ ). The impact of ELSI research is evident in subsequent scientific and public policy, conduct of genomic research, and implementation of genomic medicine, 1 with ELSI research credited, for example, with changing the way investigators draft consent forms for genomic studies, informing policies and governance mechanisms for biobanks/repositories, advancing understanding of how people perceive risk, clarifying the meaning of race in genomic research, and influencing intellectual property law surrounding genomics.

The recognized value of ELSI research has led to increasing calls for ELSI researchers to collaborate with genomics researchers and even to embed ELSI research within genomic research projects. 1 Moreover, partly as a result of the ELSI Program’s success, the term “ELSI research” has become familiar and indeed is used beyond the context of both National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and genomics research to describe ethical, legal, and social research in other domains, including synthetic biology 2 (e.g.), neuroscience, 3 nanotechnology, 4 Big Data, 5 and other emerging technologies in information and computing science 6 and diagnostics. 7 Despite the prevalence of ELSI research related to genomics (and its increasing presence regarding other fields), the methods employed in some ELSI research—particularly normative and conceptual research—remain relatively unfamiliar, even opaque, particularly to researchers in the basic biomedical and translational sciences.

In this paper, we explain methods of ELSI research with reference to genetics/genomics research, though we believe the explanation may be of value to scientists in many fields. While several recent efforts have sought to explain the methods and value of ELSI research, for example by devising comprehensive taxonomies that include normative and conceptual research and that clarify its relationship to empirical approaches or to policy development (e.g., 8 , 9 ), we pay particular attention to the nonempirical methods employed to address normative and conceptual questions and to the nature of the questions they address. This paper proceeds from the understanding that “research” is not solely the province of empirical study, but refers more broadly to systematic study or inquiry, of which there are many types and methods. Using as an example the problem of how researchers and clinicians should manage incidental findings of genomic testing, we elucidate the range of methods used in ELSI research. In particular, we demonstrate the relationship of conceptual research—here, focused on the evolution of the meaning of ‘incidental findings’ and the introduction of ‘secondary findings’—to normative research, including the method of argument.

ELSI research on what is and what ought to be

In the classic divide between what is and what ought to be, science seeks to know what is. Science poses and pursues empirical questions (e.g., is there an association between genetic variants on chromosome 7 and cystic fibrosis?) by observation and by empirical methods (e.g., linkage analysis or genome-wide association studies [GWAS]).

ELSI research involves asking questions on both sides of the classic divide between “is” and “ought.” Some ELSI research asks what the implications of genomic research are , and employs empirical research methods to collect data to test hypotheses, evaluate programs, or develop a theory of a phenomenon. Do people receiving genetic test results suffer emotional distress? Does persistence of posttest distress correlate with pretest temperament or traits? The empirical methods used to pursue these ELSI questions are familiar not only to social scientists but to basic biomedical and translational scientists.

However, other questions cannot be addressed solely or primarily by analyzing data, because they ask questions about value and meaning. These value-focused normative questions and meaning-focused conceptual questions require nonempirical research methods, including philosophical and legal analysis (and argument), and the methods of the humanities. Answering questions of value and meaning requires evaluating, among other data, what people think, and then providing reasoned arguments to inform subsequent consideration of the issues, as well as future directions for research.

While scientific research pursues what “is” in terms of observable facts, conceptual research focuses on “is” in the special sense of “what is meant by.” What, for example, is meant by “health,” “race,” or “research”? Of course, one could conduct an empirical study and discover that, for example, 65 of 100 people surveyed think of race as a biological fact, a grouping of people according to shared biological features or physical traits. Conceptual research, however, is not concerned solely with learning what people mean by the concepts they use, but also seeks to understand the origins, variety, and implications of these understandings. Conceptual research frequently offers, and perhaps argues for, alternative conceptualizations. Conceptual research on race may, for example, examine the origins of the concept and argue that use of “racial categories” in other research should not be separated from the genealogy or history of the concept (e.g., 10 ), or argue that race is a socially constructed concept and should not be reified (e.g., 11 , 12 ). Conceptual research may examine the implications, for example, of viewing and using race as a “sorting schema.” 13

Further, in contrast to science’s focus on discovering what “is,” normative research is concerned with “ought” or with what action (or policy or practice) is ethically justified or most appropriate. If a study reveals an incidental finding (e.g., misattributed parentage), should an investigator reveal that finding? If so, to whom? Should the informed consent process specify whether incidental findings will be revealed? If an incidental finding has health implications for other family members, should the law permit or compel a clinician to attempt to inform those family members, perhaps over the objection of the patient tested? Data—about family members’ preferences, different cultural views (for example, regarding paternity), the terms of the informed consent document, studies of psychosocial responses to return of incidental findings, and existing laws—are relevant to addressing these normative questions, because they may help to inform the analysis. However, these facts alone cannot answer questions of what should be done or what a policy or law should be.

Argument: a method of normative research

Normative research seeks to discover, and inform or persuade people, what they ought to do, according to some set of norms or values. These may include ethical, legal, religious, and cultural values. Just as scientific theories may be evaluated and compared in light of desirable features such as their internal consistency, simplicity, explanatory power, and “fit” with other theories, 14 normative research may examine different arguments and sets of values to assess consistency, utility, scope, and fit with other value commitments.

To scientists—or to those steeped in what they understand to be a largely value-free scientific tradition that seeks the truth with an open mind—a research method involving making arguments in support of a claim may appear spurious. Unlike scientists who must not assume what they seek to prove, researchers engaged in normative argument appear to begin with their conclusion. In ethical (and many legal) arguments, this is a value-laden claim (e.g., that X is right, that Y is justified, that Z is fair or beneficial, that people’s preferences are the most important consideration, or that the expectations established during informed consent must be fulfilled). Then normative researchers seek ways of reasoning, as well as empirical evidence, that support that claim.

The most methodologically sound arguments consider counterarguments and do not simply ignore contrary normative claims. Instead they attempt to refute them, perhaps by showing that they embrace inconsistencies, lead to untenable conclusions, or support undesirable practical consequences. They also do not simply ignore empirical evidence that seems not to support the conclusion, but instead explain why that evidence is flawed, not really relevant, misinterpreted, or ambiguous. Responding to counterarguments and contrary evidence in this way can maintain and even strengthen support for the original claim or conclusion.

Both scientific and normative claims are falsifiable, but differently falsifiable. Sometimes the investigator making a normative argument discovers that her initial claim cannot be upheld. She discovers that her argument cannot really be made—or is not as strong—as she anticipated. Perhaps she was partly or completely wrong about the empirical facts or the relationship of ideas, or overlooked some considerations (empirical or normative). Perhaps the argument proved to be contradictory. She may then modify her claim/conclusion, perhaps making it more modest or adding some qualifications or constraints to her position. Or, she may abandon her original conclusion/claim, and pursue another line of reasoning. Just as an hypothesis may not be supported or may be disproved, a normative claim can fail to be supported or be ultimately unsupportable or untenable. Just as in science, such a refutation or negative finding may still advance basic understanding or suggest new avenues of inquiry or claims to be examined.

In the absence of, or prior to normative ELSI research on a topic, people—scientists, clinicians, the public, and ELSI researchers themselves—may have more or less well-grounded opinions, for example, about which incidental findings should be offered to research participants or patients. Normative research lays out the range of possible opinions, indicates which are more strongly supported than others, and establishes consistency among well-grounded opinions. People, including ELSI researchers, may still disagree about particular issues or frameworks for considering issues, but basic conceptual and normative research advances our understanding and allows the arguments between disagreeing parties and positions to become more clearly focused on remaining points of disagreement while acknowledging common ground. We—both those engaged in ELSI research and those who are the audience for it—move toward ever more nuanced arguments. Along the way, ELSI investigators frequently find points of overlap and areas where compromise of apparently opposing positions can be justified to those on both sides of an argument (e.g., 15 ). Policies and practices supported by strong ethical arguments may be considered the applications of basic normative research, much as basic science is translated into or applied in evidence-based medicine.

Then, another wave of empirical ELSI research may undertake to evaluate these policies and practices—for example, surveying the public’s acceptance of a policy implemented regarding the return of incidental findings of various types, or studying the psychosocial response to the return of such findings. In an iterative process, these empirical findings can then be used to inform future normative analyses, which in turn are used to shape future policies and practices.

Using as an example the question of how genomic researchers and clinicians should manage incidental findings, we illustrate the distinct but interrelated roles in ELSI research of empirical and nonempirical methods, including normative and conceptual research.

ELSI research regarding the management of genomic incidental findings

Prior to and during the Human Genome Project, incidental findings in genetics were often conceptualized as unanticipated or unexpected findings. 16 Misattributed paternity discovered by clinicians in the course of carrier testing or by researchers in family studies, as well as a growing understanding (and number of cases) of pleiotropy, were the most frequently noted examples. 17 Indeed, such findings were discovered with sufficient frequency that they were far from unexpected in the field, even if they were unexpected/unanticipated on the part of particular individuals and families. As management of incidental findings of genomic research became a more pressing concern, the need emerged for conceptual analysis about the very concept of “incidental findings,” a term that was borrowed from diagnostic and research uses of imaging technologies. 18 Could they be conceptualized as unanticipated or unexpected findings if investigators and clinicians were being urged to plan for their discovery? Conceptual analysis suggested that explaining them as “a finding concerning an individual research participant that has potential health or reproductive significance and is discovered in the course of conducting research but is beyond the aims of the study” 19 was more helpful to the normative project of recommending that investigators plan for their management.

With increasing recognition that genomic technologies—especially genome or exome sequencing—give rise to incidental findings, it became clear that investigators and clinicians needed to plan to manage these findings, i.e., to decide whether and which findings to disclose to research participants and patients, and how to disclose them. 20 These normative questions about what ought to be done cannot be addressed by empirical data alone; assessing people’s preferences regarding return of incidental findings, for example, cannot answer the question of whether the findings should be returned or under what conditions. Although data about people’s preferences are relevant to drafting policies about return of incidental findings, the normative policy question (the “ought”) must also be informed by normative (value-based) analysis of why and how much preferen1ces should matter for policy. 2 Moreover, given people’s differing preferences, a normative position must be taken on whose preferences should matter or matter most. Which stakeholders’ preferences should be given most weight: those whose samples actually yield incidental findings, all those involved in the study who might have incidental findings discovered, or professionals (investigators or clinicians)?

More recently, it has been argued that there is an ethical obligation to search intentionally for such findings when performing clinical sequencing for a primary diagnostic question. 21 This normative stance has led to further conceptual analysis criticizing the very idea of an incidental finding and supporting reconceptualization of these findings as secondary findings: findings of “a deliberate search for pathogenic or likely pathogenic alterations in genes that are not apparently relevant to a diagnostic indication for which the sequencing test was ordered.” 3 The change is not merely in terminology; it marks a shift in normative stance among some ethicists, genomicists, and clinicians. Even those who disagree—i.e., who do not endorse there being an obligation to search for or offer back such findings—tend to embrace the concept of secondary findings, if only to communicate effectively with those with whom they disagree.

ELSI research employs both empirical and nonempirical research methods. Conceptual research increases conceptual clarity by examining what is meant by various terms and ideas, and arguing that some understandings are better justified than others. Ethical, social, and legal issues—and research on those issues—frequently have conceptual components whose meaning may be contested. Conceptual research may begin by mapping out and comparing possible meanings, but usually makes an argument that there are good reasons to conceptualize something—e.g., race, incidental findings, preferences—in a particular way. Based on reasons specified, something should be understood to have a particular meaning or should be conceptualized in a particular way.

After a requisite degree of conceptual clarity has been achieved, normative research may map out a range of possible courses of action or reasonable positions to take in regard to a question of value, i.e., a question about what should be valued or what should be done. Normative research then seeks to evaluate these options—usually with the goal of guiding action.

Normative research proceeds by making arguments that are grounded in value commitments, supported by empirical evidence, and assessed in terms of their consistency, utility, scope, and fit with other value commitments and empirical data. Normative research may study, for example, what role people’s preferences should play in determining whether incidental/secondary findings should be offered to participants in genomic research. According to some normative arguments, people’s preferences should be decisive or at least should be given great weight. 22 , 23 Other arguments are made, however, that people’s preferences are only one consideration among many, such as the economic costs and psychological impact of return, the result’s clinical utility, the impact of return on healthcare utilization, and effects on therapeutic misconception, public understanding of research, and researcher–participant relationships. 23 , 25 , 26 Normative analysis must be invoked to address the normative question of which data should be brought to bear on policy development, and how. While empirical ELSI research can, for example, survey people’s preferences, measure healthcare utilization, and elucidate any constraints imposed by existing law, normative research provides arguments about how to weigh these considerations.

ELSI research employs both empirical and nonempirical research methods. Conceptual research increases conceptual clarity by examining what is meant by various terms and ideas, and arguing that some understandings are better justified than others. Normative research proceeds by making arguments that are grounded in value commitments, supported by empirical evidence,and assessed in terms of their consistency, utility, scope, and fit with other value commitments and empirical data. Just as scientific research that seeks to discover facts and explain phenomena does not result in “once and for all,” immutable accounts of what “is,” ELSI research yields guidance for action that also evolves as conditions change, new information is discovered, and better arguments are made. 27

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge their fruitful discussions regarding normative and conceptual ELSI research with members of the National Human Genome Research Institute’s Genomics and Society Working Group ( https://www.genome.gov/27551917/the-genomics-and-society-working-group/ ).

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Parker, L.S., Sankar, P.L., Boyer, J. et al. Normative and conceptual ELSI research: what it is, and why it’s important. Genet Med 21 , 505–509 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41436-018-0065-x

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The Fundamental Importance of the Normative Analysis of Health

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Normative analysis involves thinking in a systematic way about the evaluative (e.g., good, bad, better than) and deontic (e.g., right, wrong, just, unjust, required, prohibited) dimensions of actions, policies and institutions. This includes identifying and assessing normative reasons, evidence and argumentation about, for instance, the objectives and aims of governance, prioritization of ends, allocation of resources, and the scope and limits of resulting rights, obligations, and responsibilities. This means advancing prescriptive or evaluative value-based statements in the construction of recommendations about how we should understand an issue, what kind of action should be undertaken, or which type of policy ought to be advanced. In the context of health, normative analysis seeks to employ normative theories, frameworks, methods, concepts, principles, and values in order to better comprehend the moral, political, and legal nature of, and improve the practice of, health care, public health, policy, and research.

The incorporation and use of normative analysis of health is fundamentally important in order to help us understand what health is, why health should be protected, why we should care about inequalities in the distribution of health determinants and outcomes, and what means it would be permissible to employ in order to achieve the conditions under which people can be healthy and enjoy health equity. We need normative analysis to interrogate the soundness of normative premises, to help us closely examine the value judgments underpinning policy and practice, and ensure our actions and institutions are justified and legitimate. Normative analysis also helps to elucidate how health policies or practices may be fragmented, inconsistent, implausible, contradictory, or incomplete. This emphasises not only the importance of distinguishing between the technical and normative aspects of health and health care, but seeking to figure out the best ways to integrate and combine the technical and normative components of health policy, practice, and research. Ultimately, the normative analysis of health seeks to advance critical engagement and inquiry about the proper place and shape of health in our personal lives, social relations, and political institutions.

Advancing Dialogue Between Health, Philosophy and Policy Through Normative Analysis

Health Care Analysis is a journal that promotes dialogue and debate about conceptual and normative issues related to health and health care, including health systems, health care provision, health law, public policy and health, professional health practice, health services organisation and decision-making, and health-related education at all levels of clinical medicine, public health, and global health. It is committed to the view that all aspects of health—from the social determinants of health, to health care delivery, to health systems—are interrelated, and publishes papers that explore links between these areas.

As a journal for everyone interested in philosophical issues surrounding health and health care, Health Care Analysis seeks to support the conversation between philosophy and policy, and illustrate the importance of conceptual and normative analysis to health policy, practice, and research. It publishes contributions from philosophers, lawyers, social scientists, health care educators, health care professionals and administrators, and other health-related academics and policy analysts. The Journal seeks to publish high-quality, innovative, and novel research which reflects a diversity of approaches and areas of investigation interested in exploring conceptual and normative questions related to all aspects of health broadly understood. As Cribb [ 3 ] has noted: “Its purpose is philosophical—but it is not written by, or for, professional philosophers alone. This has always been the underlying organizing principle of the journal, and it is this which gives it its distinctiveness”.

In preparation for writing my first editorial for Health Care Analysis , I had the pleasure of reviewing the editorials of past Editors-in-Chief when taking over or leaving their role [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]. It was heartening to read how the mission and approach of the Journal has consistently been reflected and strengthened over the years around the interrelation between health, philosophy, and policy—and their advocacy of the importance of analysing these relations. I am humbled to follow these distinguished editors emeriti and to continue their legacy of providing a preeminent venue for connecting normative theory, health policy, and health practice.

Heath Care Analysis: The Next Phase

I am very proud and excited to be taking over as Editor-in-Chief of Health Care Analysis . It is daunting yet invigorating to be given the opportunity to carry on the mantle of what has been accomplished by the Journal’s past Editors-in-Chief. Under their direction, John Coggon (2014–2018), Andrew Edgar (2006–2014), Alan Cribb (1999–2006) and David Seedhouse (1993–1999) have adeptly and persistently created a distinctive academic venue for dialogue between health, philosophy, and policy that has steadily attracted influential articles, noteworthy special issues, engaging debates, and an increasing impact factor. I am particularly grateful to John Coggon who brought me on as an Associate Editor, and characteristically provided supportive encouragement and collaborative partnership from which I learned a great deal.

In taking over the editorial helm, I have used the opportunity to refresh and update a number of key aspects of the Journal. I have ensured that our editorial and advisory boards, as well as associate editors, are even more reflective the Journal’s mission and approach—they are more international, more gender-balanced, more disciplinarily rich. It is hoped that these changes will further attract first-rate submissions from both high-income and low- and middle-income countries.

We have also adopted a new cover. I remember as an eager undergraduate student, in between classes, heading over to the section of the university library where new journal issues were placed. With all of their colourful covers laid out, I would expectantly turn them over to inspect their tables of contents and decide which articles to read there and then or to photocopy for later reading. Today, however, the way in which we access journal articles is much different. While we rarely spend time looking at journal covers, we have updated the cover to reflect its vibrant and modern nature. This will be seen on the Journal website, electronic table of content alerts and social media—such as the Journal’s new Twitter (@HCAnalysis).

With the support Janet Kim (senior editor for Springer), the wonderful editorial and technical team who support the production of the Journal, the Journal’s editorial and advisory boards, and the Journal’s authors and peer-reviewers, I am looking forward to the next phase of Health Care Analysis and seeing its continued positive contributions to academia, policy, and society.

Coggon, J. (2014). Health care analysis: Advancing discourses between philosophy, health, and policy. Health Care Analysis, 22, 103–104.

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Empirical-ethical research constitutes a relatively new field which integrates socio-empirical research and normative analysis. As direct inferences from descriptive data to normative conclusions are problematic, an ethical framework is needed to determine the relevance of the empirical data for normative argument. While issues of normative-empirical collaboration and questions of empirical methodology have been widely discussed in the literature, the normative methodology of empirical-ethical research has seldom been addressed. Based on our own research experience, we discuss one aspect of this normative methodology, namely the selection of an ethical theory serving as a background for empirical-ethical research.

Whereas criteria for a good ethical theory in philosophical ethics are usually related to inherent aspects, such as the theory’s clarity or coherence, additional points have to be considered in the field of empirical-ethical research. Three of these additional criteria will be discussed in the article: (a) the adequacy of the ethical theory for the issue at stake, (b) the theory’s suitability for the purposes and design of the empirical-ethical research project, and (c) the interrelation between the ethical theory selected and the theoretical backgrounds of the socio-empirical research. Using the example of our own study on the development of interventions which support clinical decision-making in oncology, we will show how the selection of an ethical theory as a normative background for empirical-ethical research can proceed. We will also discuss the limitations of the procedures chosen in our project.

The article stresses that a systematic and reasoned approach towards theory selection in empirical-ethical research should be given priority rather than an accidental or implicit way of choosing the normative framework for one’s own research. It furthermore shows that the overall design of an empirical-ethical study is a multi-faceted endeavor which has to balance between theoretical and pragmatic considerations.

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Empirical-ethical research constitutes a relatively new field of enquiry which is characterized by the fact that socio-empirical research and ethical analysis are integrated for the treatment of concrete moral questions in modern medicine [ 1 ]. A broad variety of methodologies for empirical-ethical research has been suggested in recent years [ 2 - 4 ] and has been applied to concrete studies [ 5 - 7 ]. In this article, the argumentative structure upon which empirical-ethical research is based will be understood as “mixed judgments”, which contain both normative and descriptive or prognostic propositions ([ 8 , p. 9]). Regarding the methodology of empirical-ethical research, all the different aspects of this argumentative structure should be considered: the justification and origin of the normative premises, the development of the empirical premises and the integration of both into an ethical judgment. However, not all of these parts are currently addressed in the literature on empirical-ethical research to the same extent.

The question of normative-empirical interaction , i.e. the interplay between empirical data and normative elements, has been extensively investigated in recent years [ 9 - 11 ]. Methodological questions related to the empirical research which forms part of empirical-ethical studies have also been debated to a considerable extent [ 12 , 13 ]. By contrast, the normative methodology of empirical-ethical research remains rather underexposed so far. Therefore, this article focuses on the normative side of empirical-ethical research methodology and aims to shed light on one particular aspect: based on our experience, we will make a suggestion of how to proceed in the selection of a normative background for a concrete empirical-ethical study. Our own ETHICO project (“Empirical-Ethical Interventions in Oncology”), which forms a multistep empirical-ethical study for the development of interventions supporting clinical decision-making, made us aware of key aspects which are relevant for the selection of a normative background.

In the first section of this article, we discuss several meta-theoretical preconditions which underlie the idea of theory selection in ethics. We then address the consequences which emanate from the pluralism of ethical theories for philosophical ethics and for the applied ethics domain. Subsequently, we will present three criteria which we encountered as relevant in our own empirical-ethical study: the adequacy of the ethical theory for the issue at stake, the suitability of the theory for the purposes and design of the empirical-ethical research project and the interrelation between the ethical theory selected, and the theoretical backgrounds of the socio-empirical research. These criteria will be illustrated by reference to the ETHICO project and the limitations of our theory selection will be discussed. The article closes with a short summary of the main points developed.

Our main aim in this article is to provide, based on our own experience, a first suggestion of how to develop a strategy for utilizing normative-ethical theories in empirical-ethical research. However, the topic of theory selection in empirical-ethical research touches on a number of fundamental problems in ethical theory and the philosophy of science, such as whether the plurality of normative-ethical theories can be reduced to one overarching approach [ 14 ] or whether a rational selection between scientific theories is possible at all [ 15 , 16 ]. These and other challenges can only be dealt with superficially in this article. We do not aim to provide answers to these highly controversial issues, but to stimulate and enhance the current research practice of empirical-ethical studies.

Meta-theoretical considerations

The question of how to determine, justify and make the normative framework explicit for empirical-ethical research is a crucial one because direct inferences from descriptive data to normative conclusions are problematic for theoretical, methodological and pragmatic reasons [ 17 ]. Furthermore, depending on the normative background chosen, the impact of the empirical data for ethical judgment differs with regard to which type of data is needed and how it is processed within normative deliberation. There are different types of normative background which could be principally considered when conducting empirical-ethical research. Researchers can, for example, refer to a common morality or they can build on their private moral opinion. The potential of philosophical-ethical theory for concrete questions in medical ethics has been doubted for various reasons, such as a perceived lack of practical usefulness or problems arising from morally pluralistic societies [ 18 , 19 ]. However, the authors of this article appreciate the potential of philosophical-ethical theories to be utilized for empirical-ethical research. One reason for this position lies in the idea that philosophical-ethical theories (in contrast to theories which have a descriptive or explanatory character) do not primarily aim to fit the world as it is, but to guide human agency [ 20 ]. Due to this reverse “direction of fit” of philosophical-ethical theories compared to other types of theory, the question of the justification or well-foundedness of the theory is of particular importance in ethics. Ethical theories are usually based on elaborated accounts of normative justification. Building on such theories permits an external critical evaluation of the moral issues at stake. By contrast, only referring to the “lived morality” of stakeholders’ moral experiences and beliefs is fraught with the danger of perpetuating wrongful practices. In this respect, we see the benefit of utilizing philosophical-ethical theories for empirical-ethical research.

This article should generally be understood as a plea for a more transparent and reasoned approach in selecting an ethical-theoretical background for empirical-ethical research. Consequently, we will start from the assumption that there is a plurality of coexisting normative-ethical theories which could be applied to a concrete issue [ 21 ]. In contrast to philosophy of science, where skepticism towards a universal theory of justification has been widespread since the beginning of the 20 th century, the idea of a comprehensive theory is still vivid in ethical theory ([ 22 ], p. 312 f.). However, a generally accepted overarching ethical meta-theory, integrating all accounts without losing their specific perspectives, is not available. Following Julian Nida-Rümelin’s coherentist approach, the plurality of normative-ethical accounts mirrors the variety within our actual moral thinking ([ 22 ]; p. 314 f.). In our everyday moral judgments, we operate with a diversity of moral concepts and criteria, such as rights, duties and principles. Theory selection in empirical-ethical research, along these lines, can be understood as the question of what aspect of moral thinking should have priority in the current discussion. While different theoretical accounts could be applied similarly to a certain subject there are also reasons, why one theory might be a better fit than another. Our article tries to elucidate some of these reasons and to make a suggestion of how to proceed explicitly and deliberately in theory selection.

The issue of theory selection is not a matter of rational argument alone. In research practice, personal and biographical factors and pragmatic considerations of acceptance in the scientific community have a strong influence on researchers’ decisions regarding which ethical theory to choose. Reflection on the researchers’ own socio-cultural embeddedness is, thus, crucial for dealing with conflicts of interest and biases in bioethical research [ 23 ]. In the context of this article, we would like to stress the need to develop a critical stance towards one’s own ethical-theoretical commitments based on systematic criteria for theory selection. Along these lines, we will start by discussing the consequences which arise from the plurality of normative-ethical theories for philosophical ethics and applied ethics.

Dealing with the pluralism of ethical theories

In philosophical ethics, the plurality of normative theories does not usually lead to major practical problems. By contrast, within the ethical-theoretical sphere, the diversity of accounts about normative justification often serves as a reference point for fruitful discussions about ethical concepts and the general nature of morality. There is also an intensive reflection in philosophy about the interrelation between different types of theory, such as contractualist and consequentialist accounts. In general, a large number of current discussions in philosophical ethics are (next to meta-ethical topics) dedicated to issues of discussing, modifying and combining divergent accounts of normative justification.

This situation of (more or less) harmonic coexistence changes when we leave the theoretical realm and enter the field of applied ethics. The relationship between the emerging branch of empirical-ethical research and the more traditional idea of “applied ethics” is ambiguous. In this article, the term “applied ethics” is used in a rather broad sense, and is not restricted to one particular methodology or to so-called “top down” -approaches ([ 24 ], p. 321 ff.). Empirical-ethical research will, therefore, be regarded as one option to follow working in applied ethics. Applied ethics (including empirical-ethical research) is supposed to deal with concrete ethical problems. If normative solutions are provided, this often has far-reaching consequences for society and the future of individuals. Using different ethical theories as starting points can lead to divergent answers regarding concrete ethical problems [ 24 , 25 ]. A main difference can be observed between consequentialist theories and theories arguing on a deontological basis, for example, in referring to human dignity. These approaches often result in divergent normative evaluations, for example with regard to the question of how much protection must be given to early forms of human life. Hence, it often makes a great difference in the sphere of applied ethics whether a certain problem is treated on one ethical-theoretical background or the other. Or, as Konrad Ott puts it: “If you are unlucky, you will catch an adherent of Singer, Tooley or colleagues when you are a disabled infant, or as an asylum seeker, somebody who defends a mixture of ‘hard’ communitarianism and evolutionary ethics” ([ 26 ], p. 73; own translation).

The selection of an ethical theory underlying one’s own research is, thus, a crucial factor which influences the outcome of applied ethics, including empirical-ethical research. Unfortunately, the topic is rarely addressed in textbooks or introductory seminars on applied ethics. Philosophical-ethical theories are presented and discussed much more often without much explanation regarding their inherent relatedness or the ways of selecting one for the treatment of a concrete ethical issue [ 27 - 29 ]. It is also rather uncommon for authors writing in applied ethics to declare explicitly why they feel themselves committed to a specific ethical theory ([ 30 ], p. 62). In some instances, this may be an issue of the author’s individual preferences or a byproduct of their academic socialization. However, in light of the practical relevance of applied ethics work, the selection of a normative background is far from being of mere scholarly interest. Instead, it is closely linked to the researcher’s commitment to diligence and transparency and, thus, can be regarded as a core aspect of the ethics of carrying out ethics research.

Criteria for theory selection: theoretical considerations and their application in the ETHICO project

How, then, can the selection of a normative background proceed with regard to empirical-ethical research? In the following, three criteria for theory selection which we encountered as being relevant in our own project will be discussed. The ETHICO project aims at the development of interventions which support clinical decision-making on an empirical-ethical basis. It has a double-tracked structure encompassing qualitative empirical research as well as normative analysis. The interrelation between descriptive and normative aspects and theories applied is of central interest within the project. The ETHICO project has a model character and takes place in the oncology department of one German hospital [ 31 ]. It consists of six stages which range from the identification of ethical problems up to the development, implementation and evaluation of an intervention to support the clinical decision-making. The general structure of the project can be seen below:

The ETHICO project (“Empirical-ethical interventions in oncology”)

Main Features:

→ development of interventions to support clinical decision-making in oncology

→ empirical-ethical methodology

“Preparation“

development of a framework for the empirical-ethical intervention project

“Exploration “

qualitative research to identify ethical challenges in the context of an oncologic department

“Deliberation“

development of an empirically and normatively founded solution for the ethical problems identified

“Development“

development of empirical-ethical interventions to support the decision making

“Intervention“

implementation of the interventions (communication guidance for the ward team, leaflet with questions for the patients)

“Evaluation“

evaluation of the intervention and the overall study concept.

The requirements for the selection of a normative background in the ETHICO project differ from both philosophical ethics and “general” applied ethics. In philosophical ethics , normative theories are typically understood as systematic accounts regarding the question of what constitutes morally right or wrong actions, or – in an evaluative sense – good or bad human conduct ([ 32 ], p. 1). Criteria for the good quality of an ethical theory are mainly related to aspects which are inherent to the theory itself, such as clarity, coherence and simplicity ([ 33 ], p. 352 ff.). These criteria are not only valid for ethical theory, but are also well-known from the philosophy of science regarding other fields of scientific enquiry. A main focus in philosophical ethics, thus, lies on the well-foundedness and acceptability of a normative-ethical account, while only rarely other more practice-related requirements towards an ethical theory are discussed.

When we enter the field of applied ethics , additional criteria become relevant regarding the question of what constitutes a “good ethical theory.” Applied ethics, as a practice-related discipline, is supposed to deliver answers and support with regard to concrete and often urgent ethical issues, such as challenges arising from new technologies or societal developments. Applied ethics is, thus, expected to provide a normative orientation which is helpful in practice. To develop such an action-guiding potential, the normative theory applied, for example, needs to be compatible with the stakeholders’ actual moral thinking and behavior ([ 24 ], p. 325). Therefore, not only the theory’s acceptability (in the sense of its well-foundedness), but also its factual acceptance by the stakeholders has to be considered. Hence, ethical theories in applied ethics – more than in the “pure” philosophical realm – gain the character of “problem-serving tools”. This leads to additional, more pragmatic requirements becoming relevant compared to the use of the theories in the philosophical ethics field [ 34 ].

In the specific interdisciplinary field of empirical-ethical research , of which the ETHICO project forms part, even more facets must be considered for the selection of a normative background. Socio-empirical research in ethics serves a variety of different aims, ranging from the mere description of ethically relevant attitudes, through normative evaluations of the respective practices, to intervening in practice to modify people’s behavior [ 9 , 35 ]. Furthermore, empirical-ethical research forms a particularly intricate research field, as the demands of empirical research methodology have to be integrated with criteria for a good normative-ethical analysis [ 36 ]. In the following, we will discuss three relevant requirements which we encountered in our own empirical-ethical study. The aspects do not provide an exhaustive list of all relevant considerations; other aspects are also important, such as the researchers’ competence to deal with certain theoretical concepts or the acceptance of the theory’s results by the stakeholders involved. The three points discussed can, thus, be seen as main examples for what has to be considered when selecting the normative background for an empirical-ethical research project. All three aspects will firstly be first presented in a more abstract manner. Subsequently, the concrete outcome of theory selection in the ETHICO project will be briefly sketched.

The adequacy of the ethical theory for the issue at stake has to be considered in the selection of a theoretical background

An ethical theory which is selected to underlie an empirical-ethical research project has to fit the study’s thematic subject. Subject here means the practical problems and the empirical context to which the study is directed. This idea of a fit between an ethical theory and its subject needs further explanation: Most philosophical-ethical theories are – by their own self-understanding – not restricted to a specific field of practice, but are supposed to guide human action in general ([ 26 ], p. 73). However, normative concepts and principles contain descriptive elements [ 37 ] in referring to aspects of human life, such as happiness, preferences, moral experience, and much more. Hence, empirical characteristics form part of normative premises which are integrated into ethical judgment. It can, therefore, be argued that an ethical theory fits a certain subject if it is in line with salient features of the issue which is under discussion. Ethical theories can also fail in this respect, by not matching particular problems. Utilitarianism, for example, has its focus on particular aspects of the social reality (such as benefit and harm), but does not capture other aspects which are of equal importance to understand the moral phenomenon under discussion. A utilitarian account, therefore, might not adequately address ethical questions about caring relations at the end of life.

A second line of argument which is important for the fit between an ethical theory and the issue at stake is the more pragmatic consideration of an alignment between the ethical-theoretical background and the stakeholders’ actual moral deliberation and behavior, which form part of the moral phenomenon observed. If the ethical theory applied does not fit the stakeholders’ actual moral thinking, ethical interventions might not be successful ([ 24 ], p. 321). Therefore, the ethical theory selected also has to be in line with the lived normativity already embedded in practice.

It is also important to take into consideration that theories which, at first glance, do not seem to fit a certain subject very well, bear the potential of shedding a new and fresh light on the issue at stake, especially if they highlight aspects which might have been overlooked without that specific theoretical perspective. Using a virtue ethics framework for questions of distributive justice, for example, might not be the most obvious option, but helps to gather a new and broader understanding of the issue. The capability approach, for instance, rests on the idea of human thriving and, therefore, goes beyond “traditional” approaches to distributive justice which focus on personal utility, negative freedoms or comparisons of resource holdings [ 38 ].

Considering the relationship between an ethical theory and the specific research topic is relevant for applied ethics in general. However, it occurs in a specific form with respect to empirical-ethical research. Empirical-ethical research bears the characteristic that many features of the issue at stake are not well-known prior to the empirical research, because a better knowledge about the empirical characteristics is one of the expected outcomes. The fit of a theoretical background, therefore, often cannot be fully evaluated ex ante in empirical-ethical research. How then can the matching between the study’s subject and the ethical theory proceed in empirical-ethical studies? Different strategies could be principally applied here. A first option would be to determine the ethical-theoretical background before starting on the empirical research. As – depending on the theory chosen – different types of data are needed (e.g. a preference utilitarian needs different empirical data for the ethical analysis compared to a virtue theorist [ 17 ]), the choice of a specific theory has a strong influence on the selection and processing of empirically gathered data. This would lead to a preponderance of ethical theory which might contradict the methodological requirements and aims of social science research – especially in the case of qualitative social research. A second strategy would, thus, be to conduct the empirical research first and then designate an ethical theory for normative evaluation. However, going along this road would miss the potential of ethical theories for gaining a more comprehensive understanding of an empirical issue. Therefore, the third (and preferable) strategy is to stay rather undetermined in terms of ethical theory before the beginning of data gathering. If the field is then approached empirically, the researcher has the opportunity to select a theory which is best suited to capture the relevant features of the ethical problem. A constant interchange between the normative theory selected and the empirical data ensures that both sides are respected as playing an important role in the empirical-ethical research process ([ 4 ], p. 473 f.). The reflection has a cyclical character: the empirical phenomenon is understood against the background of the ethical theory and, on the other hand, helps to provide a deeper understanding of the semantic implications of the normative concepts and principles applied.

It was important for the ETHICO project that the normative background could be linked with the core features of oncologic practice, especially with empirical aspects of decision-making in advanced cancer. However, the researchers did not have full knowledge about the clinical practice in the department before conducting the empirical research. A spectrum of possibly suitable ethical theories was, therefore, prepared before the beginning of the empirical research based on a literature review which focused on normative theories which had been applied to similar issues previously. Our empirical study then consisted of a triangulation of qualitative methods (interviews, non-participant observation and focus groups). During our empirical research, we were aware of the spectrum of ethical theories which could be applied for a normative analysis and we correlated this with our (preliminary) empirical results. The final selection of a theoretical background was not made until the qualitative research had progressed to a stage which allowed us to gather a first understanding of the most important empirical characteristics of the social phenomenon observed. The ethical theory subsequently selected had an influence on the further qualitative data gathering, while, at the same time, the empirical data collected were used to specify and adjust the ethical theory with respect to the particular context. Hence, in a circular process, the selection of an ethical framework was considered during the empirical research, while, simultaneously, the theory selection was influenced by our preliminary empirical results.

As a result of preliminary data collection and analysis, we identified the issue of respect for the patient’s will as being important in the different settings of decision-making (tumor conference, ward round, outpatient clinic). This finding could be related to concepts of patient autonomy from the medical-ethical literature. It also became obvious that the way in which patient autonomy is exercised in practice is very much dependent on structures of decision-making [ 31 ]. We, therefore, decided to select an ethical theory which did not conceptualize autonomy in a liberalistic way but stressed the importance of institutional structures which promote patient autonomy [ 39 ].

The selection of a normative background has to account for the purposes and design of the empirical-ethical research project

Empirical research in medical ethics can contribute to normative arguments in a variety of ways. Examples are the identification of morally relevant problems, the provision of facts important for normative arguments, the description of the actual conduct of a group of stakeholders [ 9 ], the analysis of moral concepts, the construction of a normative standpoint, or the implementation of an intervention to enhance the moral quality of a practice ([ 30 ], p. 45 f.). Therefore, the purposes and design of concrete empirical-ethical studies can vary to a considerable extent. One ethical theory might be more adequate than others, depending on the exact aims of the empirical-ethical research project. The idea of the “application” of an ethical theory to a concrete issue should be understood as having a three-sided relationship: something is applied to something to some end ([ 26 ], p. 58 f.). “Application,” thus, always carries a teleological momentum, as it is inherently related to a purpose to which the application is supposed to serve. The selection of a normative background, therefore, should take into account the purposes of the concrete research project.

There are some approaches in the spectrum of philosophical-ethical theories which seem to be quite well-fitted to develop clear normative guidance. Other approaches are better suited to providing rich and comprehensive descriptions of moral phenomena. This latter type can be designated as “normatively weak” approaches [ 40 ]. This does not mean that these theories are less elaborate. Instead, they are not primarily directed towards normative evaluation, but serve better for other purposes. One example of such a “normatively weak” approach would be narrative ethics [ 41 , 42 ]. Narrative ethics uses the medium of stories to better understand phenomena such as sickness, dependency or disability, which are of great importance for medical ethics. Therefore, it serves different aims than ethical theories which have been developed to serve concrete practical (e.g. political) purposes and, consequently, carry a stronger action-guiding character. Classical utilitarianism, as presented by John Stuart Mill, for example, is based very much on the author’s political ideas and targets concrete suggestions for an improvement of practice. Utilitarianism is, thus, more than narrative ethics directed towards normative evaluation. While both types of theory can contribute principally to an improvement of practice, their different aims and character should be considered in the selection of a normative background. If an empirical-ethical research project is, for example, supposed to contribute to a clear-cut normative evaluation, it would be advisable to select an ethical theory which allows for concrete action-guiding suggestions. If the project aims more at a fuller understanding of a moral phenomenon, a “normatively weak” approach, such as narrative ethics, might be the better choice.

In the ETHICO project, we had to face the challenge that the ethical theory selected was supposed to serve a variety of aims during the different stages of the research (see section  The ETHICO project (“Empirical-ethical interventions in oncology”) ). In the “deliberation” stage, for example, the ethical-theoretical framework was needed to guide the normative deliberation aiming at an ethically justified assessment of the moral problems which had been identified in the earlier project stages. Therefore, the ethical theory had to indicate what would be an appropriate solution to the moral deficits observed. Another example would be the “evaluation” stage, where a normative background was needed to determine whether the ethical quality of the practice had improved subsequent to the empirical-ethical intervention. The development of evaluation criteria is of great importance here. While there are some ethical theories (such as utilitarianism) which may even allow for a quantitative measurement, other theories (e.g. Kantian accounts) may not provide good opportunities for an empirical evaluation of the ethical quality of a practice.

The diverging aims of the different project stages finally led us to the conclusion that it would not be advisable to stick to one and the same ethical theory throughout the project. Instead, we drew on different normative backgrounds (partly in combination), depending on the purposes of each stage in the ETHICO project. During its first stages, which aimed at the identification and characterization of ethical problems, we stayed rather open and considered different theories which are suitable to deliver an empirically rich understanding of the moral phenomenon observed (such as narrative ethics or virtue ethics accounts). In stage three, “deliberation”, which aimed at the development of an ethically justified solution, we referred to O’Neill’s account on principled autonomy [ 39 ], which also had an influence on the intervention, which was then designed to establish trustworthy structures in the respective oncological department. In the final “evaluation” stage, we included, in addition to O’Neill’s account, Alan Gewirth’s theory, which considers basic structures of human agency [ 43 ]. We then tried to assess how far patients were enabled to exercise their right to self-determination in hospital,and whether they are hindered by factors, such as misinformation or a symptom burden, which do not allow them to exercise their autonomy.

The combination of diverse ethical theories and, thus, different approaches to ethical justification (e.g. virtues ethics and Kantian accounts) became necessary due to the comprehensive structure of the overall project, which is an empirical-ethical intervention study and, therefore, combines different aims. In addition, this approach mirrors our meta-theoretical view that the plurality of normative-ethical accounts corresponds to the variety within actual moral thinking. It was, therefore, necessary to draw on more than one ethical theory to deal adequately with the multifaceted phenomenon of decision-making in advanced cancer from a normative perspective.

The interrelation between the ethical theory selected and theoretical backgrounds of the socio-empirical research should be reflected

Empirical-ethical research includes socio-empirical inquiry as well as normative analysis. Hence, methodological requirements and theoretical backgrounds on “both sides” and their interrelationship should be taken into consideration throughout a project [ 36 ]. The choice of an ethical theory, therefore, has to consider the interrelation between the ethical theory selected and the theoretical backgrounds of the empirical research which forms part of the study. Empirical research methodologies carry certain normative assumptions which can be either in line or in tension with central ethical concepts. It has been stressed, for example, that quantitative surveys constitute society and subjects in a way in which the survey method can succeed [ 44 ]. This may contradict ethical notions, such as civic liberty or the person’s right to self-determination.

Besides this implicit normativity, socio-empirical research is laden with theoretical presuppositions about the social reality observed. Social theories make assumptions about what counts as a social phenomenon and which concepts should be regarded as core items in this context (e.g. agency, interaction or communication) ([ 45 ], p. 237). Such socio-theoretical presuppositions, which underlie empirical data gathering and analysis, and their relationship to the ethical theory selected should be respected when planning and conducting an empirical-ethical study [ 45 ]. There are some social theories which share the central premises of main philosophical-ethical theories, while others rest on assumptions which cannot be linked to ethics so easily. One “linking element” in the first respect would be the assumption that there are rational actors ([ 45 ], p. 239). This idea underlies, for instance, Grounded Theory methodology [ 46 ], which is based on the concept of interactiondeveloped by George Herbert Mead [ 47 ]. Regarding the idea of actors being the main concept, Grounded Theory stands in a “harmonic relationship” with most ethical theories which similarly focus on action ([ 45 ], p. 239). In other respects, a tension can be noticed when Grounded Theory is applied in the context of ethics. The understanding of reality, for example, as a social interaction with others and shared interpretative process is in contrast with those ethical theories which have a rather individualistic account of human agency.

The tension between ethics theory and social theory also becomes obvious when other socio-theoretical backgrounds are taken for empirical-ethical studies. One example in this respect would be systems theory, developed by Niklas Luhmann [ 48 , 49 ]. In systems theory, actors are not the main concept, therefore, it cannot be as easily aligned with ethical theory. We do not want to suggest that social theory and ethical theory should be congruent in all relevant features, however, researchers should be aware of whether the ethical theory they select harmonizes or stands in a strained relationship with the socio-theoretical presuppositions on which they draw. When this is not respected, there is a danger of missing ethically problematic issues if they are not in the focus of the social theory which underlies the empirical research.

We decided on a qualitative research methodology in the ETHICO project. We used an observational research method which is based on Symbolic Interactionism [ 50 ] in the “exploration” stage to investigate the clinical practice with regard to the question, which ethical problems are relevant and how can they be further characterized [ 31 ]. We tried to understand and reconstruct the meanings which certain objects and actions had for the research participants. An underlying presupposition of Symbolic Interactionism is the existence of intentional actors who stand in relationship with other actors and choose means to achieve their aims. This interaction is based on processes of mutual interpretation. The socio-theoretical model of intentional actors can be linked to many approaches from the spectrum of philosophical-ethical theories, which equally start from the assumption of purposeful human agency.

Therefore, the socio-theoretical framework selected gave us ample scope for the choice of an appropriate ethical theory in the ETHICO project. All ethical theories selected rest on the assumption of actors who make their choices on the basis of preferences and information. In addition, O’Neill’s non-individualistic account of autonomy stresses the importance of (social) structures and human interaction and can, therefore, serve as a linking element between the social-theoretical reconstruction and the ethical reflection on social practices in oncological decision-making.

Limitations

We generally tried to apply a transparent and reasoned approach regarding the choice of a normative background in the ETHICO project. However, the issue of theory selection appeared to be highly complex and led to a need for compromises, especially with regard to the tension between the theoretical well-foundedness of normative-ethical accounts and their applicability in practice. As displayed above, there are criteria inherent to an ethical theory which are important for judging its quality. If an ethical theory is insufficient with respect to clarity and coherence, it should not be applied in empirical-ethical research – even if it fits the designated subject very well, is in line with the overall aims of the project and matches the project’s socio-empirical research methodology very nicely. In addition to these three aspects which pertain to the appropriateness of a theory within a specific project, normative theories fulfil a critical function. When there is no theoretical justification apart from the suitability for the research, this external critical evaluation is not executed. A theoretical justification independent of the concrete context of application is crucial for empirical-ethical research to develop a critical stance towards the social practice observed. However, even the best-founded ethical theory cannot be successfully applied when any link between the theoretical notions and the empirical reality is missing. Researchers into the practice of empirical-ethical study should be aware of this ambivalence and the problems which arise from a preponderance of either the theory’s well-foundedness or its suitability within the concrete project.

A second important result emerging from our research is the need to apply diverging ethical theories within the different stages of the ETHICO project. This necessity mainly arises from the varying purposes we had during the research project: from the designation of an ethical problem up to the designing, implementation and evaluation of an intervention. While one ethical theory serves better for a deeper understanding of the relevant empirical phenomena, other normative backgrounds are better suited to measure the ethical quality of a social practice. This finding suggests that ethical theoriesin empirical-ethical research ethical theories cannot often be used in their “pure” form but have to be further modified to meet the requirements of the topic chosen and the aims of the respective research. A syncretic combination of different theories, which might be regarded as problematic from a philosophical perspective alone, can be justified in the context of an empirical-ethical research project. However, arbitrariness in theory selection should be avoided by explaining the reasons why certain approaches have been chosen, modified and combined for a concrete project.

In this paper, we aimed to stress that the specific set-up of empirical-ethical research necessitates a comprehensive reflection with regard to the selection of an ethical background theory. In contrast to traditional research in philosophical ethics, additional issues should be considered here which pertain to pragmatic aspects of conducting the research, as well as to more theoretical facets, such as the interrelation between the ethical-theoretical and the socio-theoretical background of the respective study.

It also became obvious that the requirements which are imposed on an ethical theory in the empirical-ethical field are rather high. Based on our practical experience in the ETHICO project, we have learned that there is probably no single ethical theory which fully accomplishes all the criteria relevant for theory selection. As a jack of all trades device consistent with all aspects discussed above will not be found in the spectrum of ethical theories, researchers should consider a modification or combination of different accounts. The overall design of an empirical-ethical study is a multi-faceted endeavor which has to balance between more theoretical and rather pragmatic considerations.

In summary, this paper aimed to show that a systematic and reasoned approach towards theory selection in empirical-ethical research should be given priority compared to an accidental or implicit way of choosing the normative framework for one’s own research (or to only referring to the researcher’s personal moral stances). The criteria discussed above may, therefore, serve as relevant points to consider when it comes to the matter of theory selection in the planning and conducting of an empirical-ethical research project.

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Salloch, S., Wäscher, S., Vollmann, J. et al. The normative background of empirical-ethical research: first steps towards a transparent and reasoned approach in the selection of an ethical theory. BMC Med Ethics 16 , 20 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-015-0016-x

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The Psychology of Normative Cognition

From an early age, humans exhibit a tendency to identify, adopt, and enforce the norms of their local communities. Norms are the social rules that mark out what is appropriate, allowed, required, or forbidden in different situations for various community members. These rules are informal in the sense that although they are sometimes represented in formal laws, such as the rule governing which side of the road to drive on, they need not be explicitly codified to effectively influence behavior. There are rules that forbid theft or the breaking of promises, but also rules which govern how close it is appropriate to stand to someone while talking to them, or how loud one should talk during the conversation. Thus understood, norms regulate a wide range of activity. They exhibit cultural variability in their prescriptions and proscriptions, but the presence of norms in general appears to be culturally universal. Some norms exhibit characteristics that are often associated with morality, such as a rule that applies to everyone and prohibits causing unnecessary harm. Other norms apply only to certain people, such as those that delimit appropriate clothing for members of different genders, or those concerning the expectations and responsibilities ascribed to individuals who occupy positions of leadership. The norms that prevail in a community can be more or less fair, reasonable, or impartial, and can be subject to critique and change.

This entry provides an overview of interdisciplinary research into the psychological capacity for norm-guided cognition, motivation, and behavior. The notions of a norm and normativity occur in an enormous range of research that spans the humanities and behavioral sciences. Researchers primarily concerned with the psychology distinctive of norm-governed behavior take what can be called “cognitive-evolutionary” approaches to their subject matter. These approaches, common in the cognitive sciences, draw on a variety of resources and evidence to investigate different psychological capacities. This entry describes how these have been used to construct accounts of those cognitive and motivational features of minds that underpin the capacity to acquire, conform to, and enforce norms. It also describes how theories of the selective pressures and adaptive challenges prominent in recent human evolution have helped to inform and constrain theorizing about this psychological capacity, as well as how its features can influence the transmission and cultural evolution of norms.

By way of organization, the entry starts with basics and proceeds to add subsequent layers of intricacy and detail. Researchers taking cognitive-evolutionary approaches to norms come from a wide range of disciplines, and have formulated, explored, and debated positions on a large number of different issues. In order to present a comprehensible overview of these interconnected literatures, the entry starts by laying out main contours and central tenets, the key landmarks in the conceptual space common to different theories and claims. It goes on to provide a more detailed description of the kinds of theoretical resources that researchers have employed, and identifies important dimensions along which more specific accounts of the psychology of norms have varied. It then canvasses different sources of empirical evidence that have begun to illuminate other philosophically interesting features of the capacity for norms. Finally, it ends with a discussion of the relationship between norm cognition and morality, with a few illustrations drawn from recent debates in moral theory.

1.1 Background: Evolution and Ultimate Considerations

1.2 psychology and proximate explanations: theoretical tools and dimensions, 2.1 sociology, anthropology, and cultural psychology, 2.2 behavioral economics, 2.3 developmental and comparative psychology, 3. norm cognition and morality, other internet resources, related entries, 1. a psychological capacity dedicated to norms.

Norms are the rules of a group of people that mark out what is appropriate, allowed, required, or forbidden for various members in different situations. They are typically manifest in common behavioral regularities that are kept in place by social sanctions. From an early age, humans see certain behaviors, contexts, and roles as governed by norms. Once a person adopts a norm, it functions both as a rule that guides behavior and as a standard against which behavior is evaluated. Moreover, individuals typically become motivated to enforce the norms they adopt, and so to participate in regulative practices such as punishment and the ascription of blame. Such practices in turn help stabilize the community’s social arrangements and the norms that structure them. Norms are often classified into kinds or subcategories, with common examples including moral, social, conventional, epistemic, aesthetic, and organizational norms. The correct or theoretically most useful way to distinguish and taxonomize kinds of norm is the subject of much debate, but one that will be set aside here (see O’Neill 2017 for a review, Kelly forthcoming for discussion). Rather, this section will sketch a general overview of the conceptual space common to cognitive-evolutionary work on the psychology of norms, and later sections will elaborate on its contents, locating different claims and specific theories within it.

An idea central to work on the psychology of norms is that human minds contain a norm system of some kind, a set of psychological mechanisms dedicated to handling information and producing behaviors relevant to norms. Such mechanisms feature in an explanatory strategy common throughout psychology (R. Cummins 2000). In this case, theorists appeal to different properties of the norm system to help account for different aspects of a complex capacity for norm-guided behavior—a capacity to “do” norms. This capacity is characterized by a broad but distinctive pattern of behavior: when faced with norm relevant stimuli, typically centered on other peoples’ actions or their own, along with other cues concerning the context of those actions and the roles of the actors, individuals exhibit a robust and multifaceted type of response that is centered on conformity and punishment. Taken together, the responses of individuals aggregate up to produce stabilizing group-level effects on patterns of collective social organization. The complexity and robustness of the individual capacity suggests the operation of dedicated psychological machinery—a norm system—which sensitizes humans to certain social stimuli (behavior, contexts, roles) and reliably produces the coordinated facets (physiologically, inferentially, behaviorally) of the characteristic response.

This picture raises the question of how it is that humans are able to spontaneously and reliably track norm-relevant features of their world, infer the rules which govern it, and bring those rules to bear on their own and others’ behavior. It also calls for a psychological answer, one that sheds light on what mediates the stimuli and the response. By analogy, an automobile is capable of acceleration—it reliably speeds up in response to the depression of the gas pedal—but one needs to “look under the hood” to see what sort of mechanisms are reliably translating that kind of input into that kind of output. Moving from the acceleration of a car to the norm-guided activity of a person, cognitive-evolutionary approaches posit and investigate the psychological machinery that is responsible for translating certain kinds of social inputs into the kind of behavioral outputs associated with norms. This strategy—of positing psychological mechanisms that mediate stimulus and response—is supported by a now familiar way of understanding the mind as an information processing system. The inputs under consideration are treated as information, which is routed and processed by a suite of psychological mechanisms and finally translated into behavioral outputs. Those focused on the psychology distinctive of normative cognition have posited the existence of this kind of dedicated package of mechanisms, and have investigated different possibilities about its nature.

To introduce a couple terms of art, accounts of psychological capacities often aspire to provide both a proximate explanation and an ultimate explanation . Where proximate explanations try to answer, “How does it work?”, ultimate explanations try to answer, “How did we come to be like this?” This distinction originates in biology (Mayr 1961; Ariew 2003), but is applicable to behavioral and psychological traits as well (Griffiths 2007). Central to proximate explanations in these latter contexts are the models of the psychological processes that underlie specific capacities. After identifying a relatively complex ability, that ability is explained in terms of the operation and interaction of a set of relatively simpler underlying component mechanisms. Thus, proximate explanations of norms aim to show how human individuals are psychologically capable of the rich array of activity associated with norm-guided behavior by identifying the component parts of the norm system and describing how they operate.

Ultimate explanations , on the other hand, aim to explain the likely origins of different traits. It is now common for the cognitive sciences to make extensive use of evolutionary theory, taking what is known about the environments and selective pressures faced by ancestral populations and using it to help inform hypotheses about minds (Barkow, Cosmides, & Tooby 1992). Central to many of the ultimate explanations proposed by researchers interested in the psychology of norms are the adaptive challenges raised by collective action and large-scale cooperation (Gintis, Bowles, et al. 2005; Boyd & Richerson 2005b; N. Henrich & J. Henrich 2007; Tomasello 2009). For the sake of clarity, it is helpful to remember that these two styles of explanation are analytically distinct, but that proximate and ultimate explanations for a given trait will ideally be complementary and mutually reinforcing. Thus, evolutionary accounts of norm cognition can inform and constrain proximate models, and vice versa.

The psychological focus of cognitive-evolutionary approaches to norms gives them a fairly clear research agenda. It is worth noting, however, that while questions about the nature of norms are relevant to a range of debates in philosophy (and beyond), work on the psychology of norms is not primarily driven by one particular philosophical tradition or debate. Rather, those focused on normative psychology are typically guided by a set of general issues concerning human nature: the structure and distinctive features of human minds, the pathways of human evolution that produced them, and the commonalities and differences between human minds and behaviors, on one hand, and those found in non-human species, on the other (Tomasello 1999; Richerson & Boyd 2005; Tooby & Cosmides 2005; J. Henrich 2015; Vincent Ring, & Andrews 2018). One upshot of this is that theorists draw on the full range of explanatory resources made available by contemporary cognitive science. Thus, these accounts of normative cognition are not constrained by folk-psychological explanations of behavior, and so are free to posit and appeal to psychological mechanisms, states, and processes that need not bear much resemblance to beliefs and desires, credences and preferences, conscious deliberation and explicit inference.

This entry is organized around research whose focal point is the psychology distinctive of normative cognition. However, any discussion of norms and norm-guided behavior will involve, tacitly or otherwise, some picture or other of agents and the characteristics that make them responsive to normative influence. Some begin with analytic formalizations of the kinds of agents and mental states assumed by common sense folk psychology, and use these formalizations, along with various refinements, to account for different norm related phenomena. These fall beyond the scope of this entry, but see especially Bicchieri, Muldoon, and Sontuoso (2018) for an overview of such approaches (also see Bicchieri 2006, 2016; Brennan et al. 2013; Conte, Andrighetto, & Campennì 2013; Hawkins, Goodman, & Goldstone 2019; cf. Morris et al. 2015). It is also worth noting that cognitive-evolutionary approaches are sometimes presented as importantly different from classic rational choice approaches to human decision and social behavior (Boyd & Richerson 2001; Henrich, Boyd, et al. 2001, 2005). Whether these are genuinely distinct alternatives remains unclear (Elster 1991, cf. Wendel 2001), but those who make the case typically point to a growing body of evidence that suggests humans rarely approximate the unboundedly rational, purely self-interested agents of classical economics (Gigerenzer & Selten 2001; Kahneman 2011, cf. Millgram 2019, Other Internet Resources). To illustrate, participants in one-time, anonymous cooperation games have been observed to routinely cooperate, even when they are made explicitly aware of their anonymity and the fact that they will play the game just once (Marwell & Ames 1981; see Thaler 1992 for a review). Those sympathetic to cognitive-evolutionary approaches to norms have an explanatory template for this kind of finding ready at hand, and will construe participants’ behavior as motivated by their norm systems and the pro-social norms that they have internalized.

With the expanded repertoire of psychological entities at their disposal, explanations that appeal to a psychological capacity dedicated to norms also appear well suited to capture the kinds of dissonance and dissociation that can occur between individuals’ attention, implicit categorization, and normative motivation, on the one hand, and their explicit beliefs and avowed principles, on the other. A person may, for example, explicitly endorse feminism and sincerely wish to extinguish the sexist norms and expectations he has about women, but nevertheless find himself monitoring the social world through the lens of those sexist norms, and experiencing recalcitrant motivation to enforce and comply with them (cf. work on implicit biases Brownstein & Saul 2016). In short, on this kind of picture different psychological systems that comprise an individual’s mind (perhaps the norm system and the practical reasoning system) can work independently from, and be at slight odds with, each other.

Several more specific features that appear distinctive of normative cognition have drawn considerable attention from psychological researchers. These include the propensities to acquire norms, to comply with norms, and to enforce norms. When a person is born into or otherwise enters a community, she needs to be able to identify and extract information about the broad assortment of norms that shape it, who different norms apply to and when, and what the consequences of breaking them are. She must be able to see some behaviors as normatively regulated, and then to infer what the governing rule is. Learning how to do this is sometimes supported by intentional pedagogical behavior by her mentors (Sterelny 2012), but need not be (Schmidt, Rakoczy, & Tomasello 2011). Gaining knowledge of the rules is not where it ends. Individuals rarely just observe such social activities, but rather come to competently participate in them. To do this, a person typically learns to behave in compliance with the norms she identifies as applying to herself; acquiring those norms results in their coming to guide her own conduct. Finally, prevalent norms and standards of conduct are collectively maintained by a community when its members enforce them, punishing those who fail to follow the rules. Enforcement and punishment are broad categories, and can include correcting, withholding cooperation, communicating disapproval through body language or explicit criticism, ostracizing or gossiping about norm violators, or even physical violence. Thus, individuals become responsive to norms and the social pressure by which they are enforced, and motivated to apply social pressure to others who transgress.

Further questions arise about each of these propensities. One cluster of questions concerns the details of acquisition: what sort of perceivable cues are salient to the norm system, prompting a person to perceive a behavior, context, or role as normatively governed? And once a norm is identified, what causes a person to internalize it? Perhaps the merely statistical fact that most people behave the same way suffices in some cases, while in others a sanctioning response may be required to activate the acquisition process. A second family of issues concerns motivation: is norm-guided behavior typically driven by intrinsic or instrumental motivation? People may comply with a norm for its own sake, simply because it is felt to be the right thing to do. They may also, however, obey a norm merely in order to avoid punishment and blame. Some behaviors may be driven by both kinds of motivation. Similar and perhaps more puzzling questions arise about the psychological roots of people’s motivation to punish others who violate norms. A third family of questions can be framed in terms of innateness: to what degree are the mechanisms responsible for norm cognition innately specified or culturally acquired? Aside from the mechanisms, is any of the content—any of the norms themselves—innately specified?

Cognitive-evolutionary approaches to norms treat these as empirical questions, and thus see value in, and aspire to be sensitive to, a wide range of evidence. Before looking more closely at some of that evidence however, it will be useful to be familiar with the types of theoretical tools researchers typically use to generate and interpret it.

A working hypothesis of cognitive-evolutionary approaches is that the psychological mechanisms underlying norm cognition are evolved adaptations to important selection pressures in human evolutionary history (Richerson & Boyd 2005; Sripada & Stich 2007, Tomasello 2009; Chudek & Henrich 2011; Kelly & Davis 2018, cf. Cosmides & Tooby 1992). Even if a detailed proximate account were already available, other questions could be asked about the provenance of the norm system: how—that is, due to which evolutionary factors—did human minds come to be equipped with these psychological mechanisms? To what adaptive problem or problems was normative cognition a solution? What selection pressures were primarily responsible for the evolution of a norm system, and what phylogenetic trajectory did that evolution take? A brief summary of the types of answers currently on offer to these questions provides useful context for the discussion of proximate explanations that follows.

A fairly uncontroversial background tenet of the received view is that humans are extraordinarily social animals, and that our hypertrophied abilities to learn from and cooperate with each other are key to what set us apart from our closest primate ancestors and other hominid species. A crucial difference is thought to be that human capacities to imitate and learn from each other became powerful enough to sustain cumulative culture (Tomasello 1999; J. Henrich & McElreath 2003, Laland 2017). Culture is understood as information that is transmitted between individuals and groups via behavior, rather than processes like genetic transmission (Ramsey 2013). Beliefs, preferences, norms, skills, techniques, information-containing artifacts, etc., are passed from individual to individual, and thus across populations and between generations, mainly by social learning (Mathew & Perreault 2015). For example, development of the set of techniques and skills associated with throwing spears, or the knowledge and tools enabling the controlled use of fire, have been tied to increases in opportunities for social learning provided by expanding social networks and more complex forms of social activity (Thieme 1997; Gowlett 2006). Culture is cumulative in the sense that the body of information in the cultural repository does not remain static, but can itself grow larger and more complex. Grass huts evolve into wood-frame houses, then brick buildings, and eventually skyscrapers. Tribal leaders evolve into kings, then emperors, then prime ministers. Simple sets of norms evolve into more complicated informal institutions, then byzantine formalized legal codes. As each generation adds its own new innovations, discoveries, and improvements, functional sophistication is accumulated in cultural traits in much the same way as it is accumulated in genetic traits.

This general evolutionary outlook gives reason to think that as human groups increased in size, they also grew in their capacity to carry more culture and produce more cultural innovations (Kline & Boyd 2010; J. Henrich 2015: chapter 12), though the causal relationship between population size and cultural complexity remains controversial (Fogarty & Creanza 2017, cf. Vaesen et al. 2016). As cultural innovations continued to accumulate, they allowed humans to more significantly control and reshape the environments in which they lived. Such transformations also reshaped the environments inhabited by subsequent generations, thus shifting the contours of the physical, social, and informational niches in which they evolved. Such changes, in turn, created a range of new selection pressures, many of which favored bodies, brains, and minds better equipped for sociality and cultural inheritance. Researchers continue to develop and debate the merits of different conceptual tools with which to conceive of this kind of evolutionary dynamic (Tomasello 1999; Laland, Odling-Smee, & Feldman 2001; Laland, Odling-Smee, & Myles 2010; Sterelny 2003, 2012; Richerson & Boyd 2005; Tennie, Call, & Tomasello 2009; Boyd, Richerson, & Henrich 2011, J. Henrich 2015; Boyd 2017).

Humans are able to inhabit a wide range of environments, and socially transmitted information—as opposed to innately specified and biologically transmitted information—is particularly useful in the face of ecological and social variation (Richerson & Boyd 2013). Information about which plants in various environments are edible and which are toxic has straightforward adaptive advantage. Information about what kinds of norms prevail in various social environments is also important, and knowing it allows individuals to smoothly participate in their community and coordinate with other members in an array of collective activities that ranges from producing food and raising children to responding to threats and dealing with outsiders (Chudek & Henrich 2011). While different types of cultural variants can be useful in different ways, not all socially transmittable information is equally valuable, and individuals are not indiscriminate social learners. Theorists posit that human minds evolved to contain a number of social learning biases or heuristics that help facilitate more selective learning. These influence which, of the many cultural variants to which an individual is exposed, she will actually adopt for herself. Two heuristics appear to be particularly important in amplifying the advantages of a system of cultural inheritance. One is a conformity bias, which prompts individuals to adopt those cultural variants that have been adopted by most others in their community (Muthukrishna, Morgan, & Henrich 2016), and another is a prestige bias, which sensitizes individuals to hierarchy and status, prompting them to model their behavior on those who have achieved success and high social rank (J. Henrich & Gil-White 2001; Cheng et al. 2012; Maner 2017). In addition to these two, researchers have posited other learning biases that can influence norm acquisition, including one that makes information about norms easier to remember than other, non-normative information about behavior (O’Gorman, Wilson, & Miller 2008).

Culture looms increasingly large in evolutionary explanations of human ultrasociality, i.e., our species’ ability to cooperate on a remarkably large scale (Tomasello 2009, 2016; Richerson 2013; though see Hagen & Hammerstein 2006; Burnham & Johnson 2005 for alternative views, and Sterelny, Calcott, & Fraser 2013 for broader context on the evolution of cooperation). An increasingly prominent idea is that explaining the full range of behaviors involved in human sociality will require some appeal not just to culture in general, but to culturally transmitted norms and institutions in particular (Mathew, Boyd, & van Veelen 2013). Some have taken the significance and complexity of the adaptive challenges posed by large-scale cooperation to have implications for human psychology, arguing from these grounds that human minds have a capacity specific to norms (Chudek, Zhao, & Henrich 2013), which may have evolved in tandem with our capacities for language (Lamm 2014). Others argue further that cultural group selection, generated by various forms of competition between cultural groups like communities, tribes, clans, and even nations, has contributed to the spread of more effective cooperative norms (Turchin 2018; Richerson, Baldini, et al. 2016, though see Krasnow et al. 2015). On such views, these kinds of selective pressures further remodeled human social psychology, supplementing more evolutionarily ancient social instincts to form what have been called tribal social instincts (Richerson & Boyd 2001; Boyd & Richerson 2008; Richerson & Henrich 2012). This family of evolutionarily recent “instincts” is posited as including a capacity for norms, but also other psychological features thought to refine norm-guided behavior in various ways, including sensitivities to markers of tribal membership and the boundaries between ethnic groups (McElreath, Boyd, & Richerson 2003) and social emotions like guilt, pride, and loyalty.

The theoretical toolkit common in the cognitive and behavioral sciences affords several key dimensions along which different theorists stake out and explore more specific positions about normative psychology. Capacities like the one for norms are understood as complex in the sense that they are subserved by a number of simpler, interrelated processes and subsystems. Such complex systems are usefully analyzed by reference to those simpler ones that comprise them. When used in psychology, this general method of analyzing complex systems by appeal to the character and interactions of their component parts often takes the form of what has been called homuncular functionalism (Lycan 1990), where it is paired with the metaphysical doctrine of functionalism about the mind. This, briefly stated, is the view that mental states and processes are functional states, identified by the characteristic role they play in the psychological system of which they are a part (Putnam 1963, 1967; Fodor 1968; Levin 2004 [2018]). Dennett, an early proponent of homuncular functionalism, urged psychologists to follow a method parallel to that used in artificial intelligence research:

The AI researcher starts with an intentionally characterized problem (e.g., how can I get a computer to understand questions of English?), breaks it down into sub-problems that are also intentionally characterized (e.g., how do I get the computer to recognize questions, distinguish subjects from predicates, ignore irrelevant parsing?) and then breaks these problems down further until he reaches problem or task descriptions that are obviously mechanistic. (Dennett 1978: 80)

An important step in any explanation is delineating the target phenomena itself. In cognitive science, this step often takes the form of characterizing a capacity via task analysis, which amounts to identifying and distinguishing the tasks or functions that are performed in exercising the relevant capacity. For example, some tasks currently thought to be central to the functioning of a norm system include those mentioned above: acquisition, compliance, and enforcement. Another step is concerned with modeling the psychological mechanisms responsible for carrying out those tasks: the typical algorithms and patterns of information processing that perform those functions. The final step in completing a full account of a capacity would be an explanation of how those mechanisms and algorithms are implemented and thus realized in the person’s physical, chemical, and biological structures (see Marr 1982 for the classical discussion of these different levels of explanation).

While experimental and other behavioral evidence can help to more directly characterize a capacity and identify its associated tasks, many theoretically important issues have to do with determining what kind of psychological mechanisms should be posited to account for them. Theorists defending different views might hypothesize different mechanisms that underpin a particular capacity, or give different accounts of how a mechanism performs its function. They can also agree or disagree about how the relevant mechanisms are organized, developing different accounts of their proprietary algorithms, and the types of causal and informational links each bears to each other and to other elements of a person’s overall psychological economy (perceptual systems, short term memory, action production systems, etc.).

Within this conceptual space there are number of prominent dimensions along which accounts might vary. The following list of such dimensions is not exhaustive, but it gives a sense of some of the most significant ones. The psychological mechanisms posited by different proximate accounts of a norm system can differ with respect to

• Whether and to what extent they are fast, automatic, intuitive, non-conscious, or otherwise fit the description of “type 1” cognition, or are slow, controlled, effortful, conscious, or otherwise fit the description of “type 2” cognition
• Whether and to what extent they bear the markings of modularity, i.e., are cognitively impenetrable, informationally encapsulated, domain specific, etc.
• Whether and to what extent they require or are subject to voluntary control
• Whether and to what extent mechanisms and their content are universal aspects of human psychological nature, or instead exhibit variation across habitats and cultures
• Whether and to what extent the mechanisms and their content are innate, genetic adaptations, or are instead socially learned and culturally transmitted
• Whether and to what extent the motivation associated with the mechanisms is intrinsic or instrumental

The first dimension concerns a distinction between type 1 and type 2 cognitive processes made by dual processing and dual systems theories (see Frankish 2010 for a review, Cushman, Young, & Greene 2010). Type 1 processes are typically characterized as “fast and frugal,” intuitive, heuristic processes which deliver “rough-and-ready” responses (Gigerenzer et al. 2000). These processes take place automatically and unconsciously and are prone to error, but they make up in speed and resource-efficiency what they lack in precision. Type 2 processes, by contrast, are typically characterized as slower, rule-based, analytical processes which require more concentration and cognitive effort, take place consciously, and deliver more precise responses.

The second dimension concerns the view that the mind is, to some degree, made up of modules: psychological mechanisms that are informationally encapsulated, fairly autonomous, automatic, and domain-specific (Fodor 1983; Carruthers 2006; Robbins 2009 [2017]). Modules are informationally encapsulated in the sense that they are insensitive to information present in the mind but not contained within the mechanism itself, leaving their internal processes unaffected by, for example, what the person reflectively believes or prefers. A related property is cognitive impenetrability. This captures the fact that the information and processes inside a module are themselves inaccessible to central systems, such as those involved in introspection or deliberation. Although it is often possible to consciously consider the output of a modular mechanism, the endogenous processes responsible for producing that output will remain opaque to direct introspection (Carruthers 2011).

Turning to the third dimension, it should be clear how commitments along the first two dimensions could support different views about the extent to which normatively governed expectations and behavior require or are susceptible to voluntary control. If the processes subserving the capacity for norms are to some degree automatic and unconscious, and are insensitive to changes a person makes to her explicit beliefs, judgments, or volitions, those processes would be able to affect her behavior without the need of any guidance from her will, and could help produce behaviors and judgments that oppose it. Research on implicit bias may provide useful resources for thinking about the relationship between normative cognition and voluntary control. Recent work sheds light on what kind of intervention strategies are effective (Lai et al. 2014; Devine et al. 2012), and suggests that deliberate cognitive effort and voluntary control can, under certain conditions, override the influence of implicit and automatic cognition. Turning to normative cognition, research suggests that self-control may be required to violate a norm one has internalized, such as the norm against breaking promises (Baumgartner et al. 2009), but the details remain unclear (Peach, Yoshida, & Zanna 2011; Yoshida et al. 2012; also see Kelly forthcoming for discussion of differences between internalized and avowed norms).

The fourth and fifth dimensions are where the traditional nature/nurture debate plays out with respect to norms and normative psychology. It is part of the standard account of modules that they are innate in the sense that they will develop in more or less the same way in normal humans, irrespective of cultural setting. Advocates of so-called Evolutionary Psychology, one especially visible way of applying evolutionary thought to human behavior, have embraced the idea of modules, even arguing that human minds are “massively modular”, i.e., composed exhaustively or almost entirely of modular psychological mechanisms (Barkow, Cosmides, & Tooby 1992; Samuels 1998; Carruthers 2006). On such a view, normative psychology will also be modular in many respects. One way to develop this idea would be to make the case that all human cultures are structured by some set of norms or another, suggesting the presence of modular cognition. The ways in which norms differ from one group to the next might then be explained by appeal to an evoked culture model (Tooby & Cosmides 1992, though see Sperber 1996 for a different account of the relationship between modular cognition and culture). According to this model, the norm-guided behaviors found across cultures would be construed as innately constrained, rooted in endogenous mental form and content of the “cognitive adaptations for social exchange” common to all human minds. Normative variation, then, would be explained by appeal to the fact that different groups live in different circumstances, and variation in the external conditions they face evokes different subsets of the set of all norms and norm-governed behaviors made possible by the norm system. Such a view has been suggested but not yet fully worked out (though see Buchanan & Powell 2018). An alternative family of views puts the ideas of innateness and domain-specificity to different uses (Fessler & Machery 2012). These, which have been more developed for normative psychology, depict humans as having an innate capacity dedicated to acquiring and performing norms, but whose underlying mechanisms contain little if any innately specified content. No particular norms would be innate on such a view; rather, the capacity (perhaps together with some set of learning biases) guides acquisition in its specific domain, and thus equips individuals to easily internalize whatever norms are present in her local social environment (Boyd & Richerson 2005a; Sripada & Stich 2007; Chudek & Henrich 2011; Kelly & Davis 2018).

A general alternative to these kinds of nativist, modular views has recently been developed in more detail. It holds that psychological mechanisms bearing many characteristics of type 1 processes might be learned cognitive gadgets rather than innate cognitive instincts or modules. On this account, a complex capacity—for, say, reading and writing or playing chess—is still underpinned by a number of relatively integrated psychological mechanisms and routinized processes, but these mechanisms themselves (as opposed to merely the content they process) are fashioned and bundled together by cultural evolution. These packages of skills, once available in the group’s cultural repertoire, can then be acquired by individuals via domain general learning processes (Heyes 2018). The idea of a cognitive gadget provides a promising new theoretical option for psychology in general. Its advocates have not yet systematically addressed the question of whether it best captures the capacity for norms, however (though see Sterelny 2012 chapter 7 for a discussion that anticipates this line of thought).

Others interested in moral cognition more generally—which outstrips work on norm-guided behavior to include work on the psychology of altruism, well-being, character and virtue, moral emotions, intentional versus unintentional action, and so forth—have sought to develop an analogy between Chomskyan theories of language acquisition and use, on one hand, and the acquisition and application of moral rules, on the other (Mikhail 2007, 2011; Dwyer, Huebner, & Hauser 2010; Hauser, Young, & Cushman 2008; Roedder & Harman 2010). This approach is generally nativist, positing a universal moral competence that guides learning specifically in the domain of morality, and contains enough innately specified structure to account for the putative poverty of moral stimulus that children face when attempting to learn the norms that prevail in their local environment (see Laurence & Margolis 2001 for discussion of poverty of the stimulus arguments in cognitive science). Some advocates also suggest that in addition to information specifying the structure of the mechanisms dedicated to acquiring and processing moral norms, a few particular norms themselves may also be included as part of the innate moral capacity, perhaps norms against incest or intentionally causing harm (e.g., Mikhail 2007, 2011). Others have criticized this view (Prinz 2008; Sterelny 2012), but only recently has a more detailed positive account of rule acquisition begun to be developed. Central to this newly emerging empiricist alternative is the idea that individuals are rational rule learners, but they rely on domain general learning strategies to acquire norms from their social environment, rather than on an innately specified, domain specific moral competence (Gaus & Nichols 2017; Ayars & Nichols 2017, 2020; Nichols forthcoming.)

The sixth and final dimension concerns motivation. Especially in light of the roles that punishment and reward play in the stabilization of group-level patterns of behavior, an initially plausible idea is that normative motivation is instrumental (for discussion see Fehr & Falk 2002). On such views, an individual conforms to a norm in order to receive some benefit, or to avoid reprimand, or because she wants to behave in the way she thinks others expect her to behave. Such motivation would be instrumental in the sense that people obey norms merely as a means to some further end that more fundamentally drives them; in counterfactual terms, remove the external reward, punishment, or social expectation, and the individual’s norm compliant behavior will disappear along with it. Those who explore this kind of account have recently emphasized the role of psychological states like conditional preferences, together with 2 nd order social beliefs, i.e., people’s beliefs about other people’s expectations, and people’s beliefs about other people’s beliefs about what should be done (see Bicchieri, Muldoon, & Sontuoso 2018 for discussion of such a family views).

Other accounts construe normative motivation as intrinsic (Kelly & Davis 2018; Nichols forthcoming, especially chapter 10). On such a view, once a norm is acquired and internalized, it typically becomes infused with some kind of non-instrumental motivation. People will be motivated to comply with and enforce a such rule for its own sake, and experience an impetus to do so that is independent of external circumstances or the perceived likelihood that they will receive social sanctions even if they flout the norm. Intrinsic motivation does not imply unconditional behavioral conformity, of course. For example, a person may feel the intrinsic pull of a norm that prescribes leaving a 20% tip, but still choose to override it and instead act out of material self-interest, stiffing the waiter. This second family of accounts raises a broader set of questions about the psychological nature of normative motivation, and if and how it might be special. Is normative motivation best treated as a primitive, its own sui generis psychological category? Or is it better construed as being generated by more familiar psychological elements like desires, emotions, drives, or other types of conative states, posited on independent grounds, that are recruited to work in conjunction with normative psychology? (see Kelly 2020 for discussion)

An early and influential account of the psychology of norms given by Sripada and Stich (2007) illustrates how these kinds of theoretical pieces might be put together. The preliminary model posits two innate mechanisms, a norm acquisition mechanism and a norm execution mechanism. The functions or tasks of the norm acquisition mechanism are

• to identify behavioral cues indicating the existence of a norm
• to infer the content of that norm, and finally
• to pass information about that content on to a norm execution mechanism

The tasks of the norm execution mechanism, on the other hand, are

• to encode and store those norms passed along to it by the acquisition system in a norm database , which may have some proprietary processes for reasoning about the contents represented therein
• to detect cues in the immediate environment that indicate if any of those norms apply to the situation, and if so to whom
• to generate motivation to comply with those norms that apply to oneself,
• to generate motivation to punish those who violate norms that apply to them

Sripada and Stich provide an initial pictorial representation:

Figure: Sripada & Stich 2007: 290, figure redrawn. [An extended description of the figure is in the supplement.]

The acquisition and execution mechanisms themselves are posited as innate, but are highly sensitive to the local social setting in which an individual develops. As described above, this bifurcation into innate psychological architecture, on the one hand, and socially learned normative content, on the other, is taken to explain why the presence of norms is culturally universal, whereas the behaviors, roles, and social arrangements governed by those norms exhibit variation. In addition, the model depicts the operation of many components of the norm system as “automatic and involuntary” (Sripada & Stich 2007: 290), but takes no stand on particular processes or more granular characteristics associated with modularity or dual processing. Finally, the model is designed to accommodate evidence suggesting that when a norm is acquired and represented in the database it thereby gains a distinctive kind of motivational profile. Specifically, this profile construes normative motivation as

• intrinsically as opposed to instrumentally motivating
• both self- and other-oriented
• potentially powerful

On this account, normative motivation has the third property in the sense that in some cases it is capable of overpowering even fairly compelling motivations that pull in conflicting directions; extreme examples include suicide bombers overriding their instincts for self-preservation, or other fanatics who expend significant resources to enforce their favored norms on others. The self- and other-directedness of normative motivation captures the idea that the norm system produces motivation to keep one’s own behavior in compliance with a norm as well as motivation to enforce it by punishing others who violate it.

Finally, the model depicts normative motivation as intrinsic in the usual sense that people comply with norms as ultimate ends, or for their own sake. Sripada and Stich suggest that intrinsic motivation helps explain a property of norms they call “independent normativity”. This marks the fact that norms can exert reliable influence on people’s behavior even when those norms are not written down or formally articulated in any formal institution, and thus not enforced via any official mechanisms of punishment and reward (also see Davidson & Kelly 2020). They also discuss motivation and independent normativity in terms of an “internalization hypothesis” drawn from sociology and anthropology, and suggest that the idea of internalization can be interpreted in terms of their model. On this story, a person has internalized a norm when it has been acquired by and represented in her norm database. The internalization hypothesis can then be construed as a claim that internalized norms are intrinsically motivating for the simple reason that it is a fundamental psychological feature of normative psychology that once a norm has been acquired, delivered to, and represented in a person’s norm database, the norm system automatically confers this distinctive motivational profile on the norm. Being accompanied by self- and other-directed intrinsic motivation is part of the functional role a rule comes to occupy once it is represented in the database of a person’s norm system—when it is “internalized”—in something analogous to the way that being accompanied by avoidance motivation and contamination sensitivity is part of the functional role a cue comes to occupy once it is represented in a person’s disgust system (Kelly 2011; also see Gavrilets & Richerson 2017 for a computational model exploring the evolution of norm internalization and the kinds of selective forces that may have given normative psychology this intriguing characteristic).

2. Empirical Research

The explanatory strategies and theoretical toolkit of the cognitive sciences have been used to guide and account for an enormous range of empirical work. Cognitive-evolutionary approaches to normative psychology are likewise interdisciplinary, and aspire to accommodate empirical research done on norms by anthropologists, sociologists, behavioral economists, and developmental, comparative, and other kinds of psychologists. This section provides a sampling of the sorts of findings that have been marshalled to illuminate interesting aspects of norm-guided behavior and support different claims about normative cognition.

As noted above, the ethnographic record indicates that all cultures are structured by norms—rules that guide behavior and standards by which it is evaluated (Brown 1991). Evidence also suggests that norms are fairly evolutionarily ancient, as there is little indication that the capacity for norms spread from society to society in the recent past. Anthropologists also have shown that norms governing, e.g., food sharing, marriage practices, kinship networks, communal rituals, etc., regulate the practices of extant hunter-gatherers and relatively culturally isolated groups, which would be unlikely if norms were a recent innovation (see J. Henrich 2015 for a review). Much attention, however, has been given to the ways in which the prevailing sets of norms vary between cultures (House, Kanngiesser, et al. 2020; cf. Hofstede 1980, 2001) and the manner in which packages of norms develop and change over time within particular cultures (Gaus 2016, Schulz et al. 2019; cf. Inglehart 1997; Bednar et al. 2010).

For example, one line of evidence from comparative ethnography looks at cooperative behavior, and reveals variation between groups even in the kinds of activities, relationships, and contexts that are governed by norms. Some groups “cooperate only in warfare and fishing, while others, just downstream, cooperate only in housebuilding and communal rituals” (Chudek, Zhao, & Henrich 2013: 426). That behavioral variations like these can persist even in the face of the same ecological context (i.e., “just downstream”) suggests that they are due to differences in norms and other socially transmitted elements of culture, rather than responses more directly evoked by the physical environment (also see N. Henrich & J. Henrich 2007).

It is a platitude that different individual norms, identified by the context in which they apply, their scope and content, and the specific behaviors they prescribe and proscribe, are present in different cultures. Systematic empirical work has also recently investigated the prominence of different normative themes across cultures. Familiar examples include the different families of norms that mark cultures of honor versus cultures of shame, especially those that that govern violence and its aftermath (Nisbett & Cohen 1996; Uskal et al. 2019), or the different kinds of norms found in societies that prize individualistic values versus those dominated by more collectivist ones, especially norms that delimit the scope of personal choice (McAuliffe et al. 2003; Nisbett 2004; Ross 2012, Hagger Rentzelas, & Chatzisarantis 2014; J. Henrich forthcoming, also see J. Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan 2010 for discussion of methodological issues). Other researchers have distinguished still other themes, for instance identifying the kinds of values and “purity” norms that predominate in a community governed by what they call an ethics of divinity, in comparison to those prevalent in communities that are governed by an ethics of autonomy or an ethics of community (Shweder et al. 1997; Rozin et al. 1999; this line of thought has been further developed in the influential Moral Foundations Theory, Haidt 2012; Graham et al. 2013). Theorists also use these kinds of empirical findings to help assess claims about norm psychology, shedding light on those features of individual normative cognition that are more rigid and universal versus those that are more culturally malleable, and on how such psychological features might make various patterns of group-level variation more or less likely (O’Neill & Machery 2018).

A recent and intriguing contribution along these lines is Gelfand and colleagues’ investigation of patterns in the tightness and looseness of different cultures’ norms. This work looks at differences in the general overall “strength” of norms within and across cultures: how many norms there are, how tolerant members of a culture tend to be of deviations from normatively prescribed behavior, and how severely they punish violations (Gelfand, Nishii, & Raver 2006; Gelfand, Raver, et al. 2011; Gelfand, Harrington, & Jackson 2017). Tighter cultures have more numerous and exacting standards, with members who are less tolerant of slight deviancies and prone to impose more severe sanctions. Cultures whose members are more lenient and accepting of wiggle room around a norm, and who are less extreme in their enforcement, fall more towards the loose end of this spectrum. Gelfand and colleagues explore the manifestations of tightness and looseness not just at the level of cultures but also across a number of other levels of description, from the communal and historical down to the behavioral, cognitive, and neural (Gelfand 2018). A central claim of this account is that a culture’s orientation towards norms—whether the norm systems of its members tend to be calibrated more tightly or more loosely—reflects the severity of the challenges faced in its past and present:

[t]he evolution of norm strength is adaptive to features of ecological environments and, in turn, is afforded by a suite of adaptive psychological processes. (Gelfand, Harrington, & Jackson 2017: 802, our italics)

A group whose ecology is characterized by things like frequent natural disasters, disease, territorial invasion, or resource scarcity is likely to possess a more comprehensive and exacting system of norms and to take a stricter stance towards its norms, in part because more efficiently coordinated social action is required to overcome more severe threats. Groups faced with less extreme ecological stressors have less dire need for tightly coordinated social action, and so can afford to have weaker norms and more tolerance for deviation.

Behavioral economics began by focusing on how real people make actual economic decisions, and on explaining the type of information processing that leads them to fall short of ideal economic rationality (Kahneman 2011). In the last few decades, many behavioral economists have also begun to investigate cross cultural variation in economic behavior, and to interpret findings in terms of the different norms of, e.g., fairness, equity, and cooperation adopted by their participants (e.g., Lesorogol 2007). Much of this evidence comes from patterns in how people from different cultures perform in economic games (J. Henrich, Boyd, et al. 2001, 2005). Such variation, for example, has been found in ultimatum game experiments, in which two participants bargain about how to divide a non-trivial sum of money. The first participant makes a proposal for how to divide the sum between the two, which is offered as an ultimatum to the other. The second participant can either accept or reject the offer. If she accepts, then both participants receive the respective amounts specified by the proposal; if she rejects it, however, neither participant receives anything. If they were ideal economic agents, then the first participant, acting from self-interest, would offer the lowest possible non-zero amount to the second participant, who would accept it because something is better than nothing. This result is quite rare in humans, however (though it is more common, intriguingly, in chimpanzees; see Jensen, Call, & Tomasello 2007). Actual people do not just diverge from it, but diverge from it in different ways. Several experiments found that cultural factors affect how people tend to play the game, and that variability in norms and conceptions of fairness can help explain different patterns in the offers participants make and are willing to accept (Roth et al. 1991; though see Oosterbeek, Sloof & van de Kuilen 2004 for discussion of difficulties in interpreting such results). Other experiments use a wider range of games to gather evidence of similar patterns of cultural variation in economic behavior (see J. Henrich, Boyd, et al. 2004 for a collection of such work).

Another family of findings that is puzzling from the point of view of classical economic rationality shows that individuals will routinely punish others even at a cost to themselves (Fehr & Gachter 2002; J. Henrich, McElreath, et al. 2006). Evidence suggests that this propensity to punish is influenced by norms and other cultural factors as well (Bone, McAuliffe, & Raihani 2016). For example, in public goods games participants are given a non-trivial sum of money and must decide if and how much to contribute to a common pool over the course of several rounds. How much each investment pays off depends on how much everyone collectively contributes that round, so each participant’s decisions should factor in the behavior of every other participant. In some versions, participants can also spend their money to punish others, based on knowledge of the contributions they have made. Results indicate that some participants are willing to incur a cost to themselves to sanction low contributors, but also to punish high contributors, a surprising phenomenon called anti-social punishment . Participants from different cultures exhibit different patterns in their willingness to punish others, including in their enthusiasm for anti-social punishment (Herrman, Thöni, and Gächter 2008). Another noteworthy aspect of punitive behavior revealed by behavioral economic experiments is that humans are willing to punish even when they are mere bystanders to the incident that they are responding to. In such cases of third-party punishment , an individual enforces a norm despite the fact that she is neither the offend er who commits the violation and becomes the target of the punishment, nor the offend ed who was wronged or the victim affected by the transgression (Fehr & Fischbacher 2004; though see Bone, Silva, & Raihani 2014).

More broadly, the general psychological propensity for punishment illuminated by this kind of empirical work has been claimed by researchers to emerge early in humans (Schmidt & Tomasello 2012; McAuliffe, Jordan, & Richerson 2015). Some have argued that it is crucial to a host of features of human social life, including the group-level stabilization of norms (Boyd & Richerson 1992) and the capacity to sustain cooperation on large scales (Price, Cosmides, & Tooby 2002; Mathew & Boyd 2011; Mathew, Boyd, & van Veelen 2013). Others have used such results to support inferences about the character of normative psychology, including the nature of normative motivation. For instance, Chudek and Henrich summarize several neuroeconomic studies (Fehr & Camerer 2007; Tabibnia, Satpute, & Lieberman 2008; and de Quervain et al. 2004) that investigate economic behavior using the methods and technology of neuroscience (i.e., fMRI) by pointing out that

both cooperating and punishing in locally normative ways activates the brain’s rewards or reward anticipation circuits in the same manner as does obtaining a direct cash payment. (Chudek & Henrich 2011: 224)

An impressive range of evidence suggests that humans are natural-born norm learners. The developmental trajectory of norm-guided cognition in humans appears to exhibit robust similarities across cultures, with children beginning to participate in normative behavior around the same early age (see House et al. 2013 and Tomasello 2019 for context). Between three and five years of age children exhibit knowledge of different kinds of normative rules (Turiel 1983; Smetana 1993; Nucci 2001), and at as early as three years of age they are able to perform competently in deontic reasoning tasks (R. Cummins 1996; Beller 2010). They also enforce norms, both when they believe the transgressive behavior was freely chosen (Josephs et al. 2016) but also when they understand that it was unintentional (Samland et al. 2016) at least in some circumstances (cf. Chernyak & Sobel 2016; also see Barrett et al. 2016 and Curtin et al. forthcoming for evidence and discussion of cross cultural variation in people’s sensitivity to the mental states of norm violators). Moreover, children are alert to how other people respond to transgressions, showing more positive feelings towards those who enforce a norm violation than toward those who leave violations uncorrected (Vaish et al. 2016).

Perhaps most striking is the ease and rapidity with which children acquire norms. Preschoolers have been found to learn norms quickly (Rakoczy, Warneken, & Tomasello 2008), even without explicit instruction (Schmidt, Rakoczy, & Tomasello 2011), although learning is facilitated when norms are modeled by adults (Rakoczy, Haman, et al. 2010). Children’s enthusiasm for rules—their “promiscuous normativity” (Schmidt, Butler, et al. 2016)—even appears to outstrip being sensitive to common norm-governed behavior in their social environment. Evidence suggests that sometimes a single observation of an action is sufficient for children to infer the existence of a norm, and that left to their own devices they will spontaneously create their own norms and teach them to others (Göckeritz, Schmidt, & Tomasello 2014).

That said, behaviors that are perceived to be normal in a community are particularly salient to individuals’ norm psychology. Children are also normatively promiscuous in that they appear prone to false positives in the course of acquisition, seeing behavior as norm-guided even when it is merely common, and inferring the presence of normative rules when there are none. One series of studies found that when participants (children and adults from both the United States and China) detected or were told that a type of behavior was common among a group of people, they came to negatively evaluate group members who behaved in a non-conforming way (Roberts et al. 2018; Roberts, Ho, & Gelman 2019). Researchers have investigated this feature of norm acquisition from different angles, and have labeled it with various names, including the “descriptive-to-prescriptive tendency” (Roberts, Gelman, & Ho 2017) the “common is moral heuristic” (Lindström et al. 2017), and the “injunctive inference hypothesis” (Davis, Hennes, & Raymond 2018, discussing, e.g., Schultz et al. 2007). Since the evidence suggests that human normative cognition invites an easy inference from the “is” of a perceived pattern of common behavior to the “ought” of a norm (Tworek & Cimpian 2016), philosophers may be tempted to think of this as a “naturalistic fallacy bias”.

Another line of research suggests that key to understanding the roots of human normativity is the fact that human children are overimitators . They are not just spontaneous, intuitive, and excellent imitators, but they also tend to copy all of the elements in the sequence of a model’s behavior, even when they recognize some of those elements are superfluous to the task at hand (Lyons, Young, & Keil 2007; Kenward, Karlsson, & Persson 2011; Keupp, Behne, & Rakoczy 2013; Nielsen, Kapitány, & Elkins 2014, cf. Heyes 2018: chapter 6). Children attend to the specific manner in which an action is carried out rather than merely to the goal it is aimed at, and conform to the full script even if they see that the goal can be achieved in some more direct way. Moreover, children monitor others to see if they are doing likewise, and enforce overimitation on their peers by criticizing those who fail to perform the entire sequence of steps (Kenward 2012; Rakoczy & Schmidt 2013). Overimitation can lead to the unnecessary expenditure of energy on these extraneous behaviors, but the trait may be an adaptation nevertheless. According to this argument, the costs of what look like individual “mistakes” are ultimately outweighed by the communal benefits generated by a population whose individual capacities for transmitting norms and other cultural variants are more insistent in this way, erring on the side of too much imitation rather than too little (J. Henrich 2015: chapter 7). Whatever it was initially selected for, researchers have suggested that the psychological machinery responsible for overimitation makes important contributions to normative cognition. Evidence indicates that this machinery generates strong (perhaps intrinsic) social motivation aimed at behavioral conformity with others. When working in conjunction with a norm system, this source of motivation may also help facilitate performance of the key task of keeping an individual’s behavior compliant, inducing her to conform not just to behaviors she is observing but to those norms she has internalized (Hoehl et al. 2019 for overview).

Overimitation is also noteworthy because it may be distinctively human. For example, although chimpanzees imitate the way conspecifics instrumentally manipulate their environment to achieve a goal, they will copy the behavior only selectively, skipping steps which they recognize as unnecessary (Whiten et al. 2009, also see Clay & Tennie 2018 for similar results with bonobos). Evidence suggests that learning in human children is comparatively more attuned to peer influence in other ways as well. Once chimpanzees and orangutans have figured out how to solve a problem, they are conservative, sticking to whatever solution they learn first. Humans, in contrast, will often switch to a new solution that is demonstrated by peers, sometimes even switching to less effective strategies under peer influence (Haun, Rekers, & Tomasello 2014).

However, other researchers have recently contested the claim that overimitation is strictly absent in non-humans (Andrews 2017). This is one front of a much larger debate over which features of human psychology are unique to our species, and which are shared with others. Recent work relevant to norms has focused on whether and to what extent species other than humans have the capacities to sustain cumulative culture (Dean et al. 2014), with plausible cases being made that the basic psychological wherewithal is present not just in some great apes but also in songbirds (Whiten 2019) as well as whales and dolphins (Whitehead & Rendell 2015). Another area of focus has been on aspects of moral cognition, where much illuminating work has explored the continuities between humans and other animals (de Waal 2006; Andrews & Monsó forthcoming). Much of this is relevant to, but does not directly address, the question of whether a psychological capacity dedicated to norms is distinctively human, or which of its component mechanisms might be present in rudimentary form in other animals. Some have suggested that the propensity to punish, and especially the tendency for third party sanctioning of norm violations, is not found in other species (Riedl et al. 2012; Prooijen 2018, though see Suchak et al. 2016). Others point to humans’ exceptional ability to cooperate and their resulting ecological dominance, suggesting it provides indirect evidence for the uniqueness of our capacities for culturally transmitted norms (J. Henrich 2015; Boyd 2017). Not all are convinced, arguing that animals like elephants (Ross 2019) and chimpanzees (von Rohr et al. 2011) exhibit socially sophisticated behaviors best explained by the presence of psychological precursors to core components of the human norm system. Important preliminary progress has been made on this cluster of questions concerning non-human normativity (Vincent, Ring, & Andrews 2018; Andrews 2020; Fitzpatrick forthcoming), but much conceptual and empirical work remains to be done.

Norms are relevant to areas of research across philosophy, the humanities, and the behavioral sciences, and the kinds of cognitive-evolutionary accounts of norm psychology described here have the potential to inform and enrich many of them. The most immediate implications would seem to fall within the domain of moral theory. However, the relationship of norms and norm psychology to morality and moral psychology is not straightforward, and is itself a subject of debate (Machery 2012). The quest to delimit the boundaries of the moral domain, and to distinguish the genuinely moral from non-moral norms, has a long history, but has yet to produce a view that is widely accepted (Stich 2018). For example, some researchers argue that there are proximate psychological differences that can be used to distinguish a set of moral rules from others (conventional rules, etiquette rules, pragmatic rules). According to one prominent account rooted in developmental psychology, moral rules are marked by the fact that individuals judge them to hold generally rather than only locally, and to apply independently of the pronouncement of any authority figure, and to govern matters concerning harm, welfare, justice, and rights (Turiel 1983; Nucci 2001). Some have drawn inspiration from the sentimentalist tradition in moral theory to build on this account, explaining the features posited as distinctive of moral rules by appeal to their connection to emotions like anger or disgust (Nichols 2004; cf. Haidt 2001). Others have contested the initial characterization of moral norms, marshalling arguments and evidence that it is not psychologically universal, but is rather parochial to certain cultures (Kelly et al. 2007; Kelly & Stich 2007, also see Berniūnas, Dranseika, & Sousa, 2016; Berniūnas, Silius, & Dranseika, 2020; cf. Kumar 2015; Heath 2017).

Shifting focus from proximate to ultimate considerations seems to add little clarity. While some theorists hold that our species possesses an evolved psychological system dedicated specifically to morality (Joyce 2007; Mameli 2013; Stanford 2018; cf. Kitcher 2011), others remain skeptical. They argue instead that the evidence better supports the view that humans have an evolved psychological system dedicated to norms in general, but there is nothing about the mechanisms that underlie it, the adaptive pressures that selected for it, or the norms that it can come to contain that would support a distinction between moral norms and non-moral norms (Machery & Mallon 2010; Davis & Kelly 2018; Stich forthcoming). On this view, rather, the human norm system evolved to be able to deal with, and can still acquire and internalize, a wide range of norms, including epistemic norms, linguistic norms, sartorial norms, religious norms, etiquette norms, and norms that might be classified by a contemporary westerner as moral. Indeed, the claim has been taken to support a historicist view of morality itself, according to which the practice of distinguishing some subset of norms and normative judgments as moral, and thus as possessing special status or authority, is a culturally parochial and relatively recent historical invention (Machery 2018).

That said, several debates with broadly moral subject matter have already begun drawing on empirically inspired accounts of norm psychology. For example, philosophical discussions of the moral questions raised by implicit social biases have recently assumed the shape of venerable and long-standing debates between individualists and structuralists (Beeghly & Holroyd 2020, also see Brownstein 2015 [2019]). A central issue has been whether behaviors are best explained and injustices best addressed by focusing attention on individual agents and their implicit biases and other psychological characteristics, on the one hand, or on features of the institutions and social structures that those agents inhabit, on the other (Haslanger 2015). This has inspired attempts to develop an interactionist account that can combine the virtues of both approaches (Madva 2016; Soon 2020). Several of these have put norms center stage (Ayala-López 2018), and drawn on empirical research on norm psychology to show how norms serve as a connective tissue that weaves individuals and soft social structures together (Davidson & Kelly 2020).

Cultural variation in norms and persistent disputes over right and wrong have been thought to have significant implications for metaethics as well. The “argument from disagreement” (Loeb 1998) holds that if dispute over the permissibility of some activity or practice persists even after reasoning errors and non-moral factual disagreements have been resolved, such intractable disagreement would militate against moral realism (Mackie 1977). Empirically establishing the existence of persistent disagreement is difficult (Doris & Plakias 2008), but the character of the norm system and its influence on judgment may speak to whether or not it is likely. Consider two individuals from different cultures, who have internalized divergent families of norms (individualistic and collectivist, honor based and shame based, divinity and autonomy, tight and loose, etc.) Such individuals are likely to disagree about the permissibility of a range of activities and practices, such as what counts as a fair division of resources, or whether people should get to choose who they marry, or what is and is not an appropriate way to respond to an insult. This disagreement may very well endure even in the face of agreement about the non-moral facts of the matter, and even when neither side of the dispute is being partial or making any reasoning errors. Such persistent disagreement may be explainable by appeal to differences in the individual’s respective norm systems, and to the different norms each has internalized from his or her culture (Machery et al. 2005). Empirical details of the operational principles of normative cognition—especially knowing whether and the extent to which it is informationally encapsulated, cognitively impenetrable, or otherwise recalcitrant and insensitive to other psychological processes—can help assess the plausibility of this argument.

A final set of debates to which the details of norm psychology are becoming increasingly relevant are those concerning the nature and explanation of moral progress. Recent progress is understood to have largely come in the form of expansions of the moral circle, the spread of inclusive norms, and the demoralization of invalid ones (Singer 1981; Buchanan & Powell 2018; cf. Sauer 2019.) Much attention has focused on understanding changes in the distribution of norms that occur as the result of reasoning about norms (Campbell & Kumar 2012), but important steps towards moral progress may also occur as the result of myopic, though not fully blind, processes of cultural evolution (cf. Kling 2016; Brownstein & Kelly 2019). A more detailed empirical understanding of the relationship of internalized norms to rationalization, critical reasoning, and explicit argumentation (Summers 2017; Mercier & Sperber 2017), along with a clearer view of the other psychological and social factors that influence norms and the dynamics of their transmission, will help further illuminate these important philosophical debates.

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• Vaesen, Krist, Mark Collard, Richard Cosgrove, and Wil Roebroeks, 2016, “Population Size Does Not Explain Past Changes in Cultural Complexity”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 113(16): E2241–E2247. doi:10.1073/pnas.1520288113
• Vaish, Amrisha, Esther Herrmann, Christiane Markmann, and Michael Tomasello, 2016, “Preschoolers Value Those Who Sanction Non-Cooperators”, Cognition , 153: 43–51. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2016.04.011
• Vargas, Manuel and John M. Doris (eds), forthcoming, The Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Vincent, Sarah, Rebecca Ring, and Kristin Andrews, 2018, “Normative Practices of Other Animals”, in Zimmerman, Jones, and Timmons 2018: 57–83 (ch. 3).
• de Waal, Frans, 2006, Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Wendel, W. Bradley, 2001, “Mixed Signals: Rational-Choice Theories of Social Norms and the Pragmatics of Explanation”, Washington & Lee Public Law Research Paper , 01-8. doi:10.2139/ssrn.278277
• Whitehead, Hal and Luke Rendell, 2015, The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins , Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
• Whiten, Andrew, 2019, “Cultural Evolution in Animals”, Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics , 50(1): 27–48. doi:10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-110218-025040
• Whiten, Andrew, Nicola McGuigan, Sarah Marshall-Pescini, and Lydia M. Hopper, 2009, “Emulation, Imitation, over-Imitation and the Scope of Culture for Child and Chimpanzee”, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences , 364(1528): 2417–2428. doi:10.1098/rstb.2009.0069
• Yoshida, Emiko, Jennifer M. Peach, Mark P. Zanna, and Steven J. Spencer, 2012, “Not All Automatic Associations Are Created Equal: How Implicit Normative Evaluations Are Distinct from Implicit Attitudes and Uniquely Predict Meaningful Behavior”, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , 48(3): 694–706. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2011.09.013
• Zimmerman, Aaron, Karen Jones, and Mark Timmons (eds), 2018, The Routledge Handbook of Moral Epistemology , Abingdon, UK: Routledge Press. doi:10.4324/9781315719696

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Millgram, Elijah, 2019, “ Bounded Agency ”, unpublished manuscript.
• Culture and the Mind , UK Arts & Humanities Research Council.
• Culture, Cognition and Coevolution Lab , Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University.
• Tomasello Lab , CHILD Studies group, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University.
• Culture Lab , Michele Gelfand, Social Decision and Organizational Sciences (SDOS) group, Psychology Department, University of Maryland/College Park.
• Moral Psychology Research Group .

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• v.36(50); 2021 Dec 27

Formulating Hypotheses for Different Study Designs

Durga prasanna misra.

1 Department of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology, Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow, India.

Armen Yuri Gasparyan

2 Departments of Rheumatology and Research and Development, Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust (Teaching Trust of the University of Birmingham, UK), Russells Hall Hospital, Dudley, UK.

Olena Zimba

3 Department of Internal Medicine #2, Danylo Halytsky Lviv National Medical University, Lviv, Ukraine.

Marlen Yessirkepov

4 Department of Biology and Biochemistry, South Kazakhstan Medical Academy, Shymkent, Kazakhstan.

Vikas Agarwal

George d. kitas.

5 Centre for Epidemiology versus Arthritis, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK.

Generating a testable working hypothesis is the first step towards conducting original research. Such research may prove or disprove the proposed hypothesis. Case reports, case series, online surveys and other observational studies, clinical trials, and narrative reviews help to generate hypotheses. Observational and interventional studies help to test hypotheses. A good hypothesis is usually based on previous evidence-based reports. Hypotheses without evidence-based justification and a priori ideas are not received favourably by the scientific community. Original research to test a hypothesis should be carefully planned to ensure appropriate methodology and adequate statistical power. While hypotheses can challenge conventional thinking and may be controversial, they should not be destructive. A hypothesis should be tested by ethically sound experiments with meaningful ethical and clinical implications. The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has brought into sharp focus numerous hypotheses, some of which were proven (e.g. effectiveness of corticosteroids in those with hypoxia) while others were disproven (e.g. ineffectiveness of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin).

Graphical Abstract

DEFINING WORKING AND STANDALONE SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESES

Science is the systematized description of natural truths and facts. Routine observations of existing life phenomena lead to the creative thinking and generation of ideas about mechanisms of such phenomena and related human interventions. Such ideas presented in a structured format can be viewed as hypotheses. After generating a hypothesis, it is necessary to test it to prove its validity. Thus, hypothesis can be defined as a proposed mechanism of a naturally occurring event or a proposed outcome of an intervention. 1 , 2

Hypothesis testing requires choosing the most appropriate methodology and adequately powering statistically the study to be able to “prove” or “disprove” it within predetermined and widely accepted levels of certainty. This entails sample size calculation that often takes into account previously published observations and pilot studies. 2 , 3 In the era of digitization, hypothesis generation and testing may benefit from the availability of numerous platforms for data dissemination, social networking, and expert validation. Related expert evaluations may reveal strengths and limitations of proposed ideas at early stages of post-publication promotion, preventing the implementation of unsupported controversial points. 4

Thus, hypothesis generation is an important initial step in the research workflow, reflecting accumulating evidence and experts' stance. In this article, we overview the genesis and importance of scientific hypotheses and their relevance in the era of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

DO WE NEED HYPOTHESES FOR ALL STUDY DESIGNS?

Broadly, research can be categorized as primary or secondary. In the context of medicine, primary research may include real-life observations of disease presentations and outcomes. Single case descriptions, which often lead to new ideas and hypotheses, serve as important starting points or justifications for case series and cohort studies. The importance of case descriptions is particularly evident in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic when unique, educational case reports have heralded a new era in clinical medicine. 5

Case series serve similar purpose to single case reports, but are based on a slightly larger quantum of information. Observational studies, including online surveys, describe the existing phenomena at a larger scale, often involving various control groups. Observational studies include variable-scale epidemiological investigations at different time points. Interventional studies detail the results of therapeutic interventions.

Secondary research is based on already published literature and does not directly involve human or animal subjects. Review articles are generated by secondary research. These could be systematic reviews which follow methods akin to primary research but with the unit of study being published papers rather than humans or animals. Systematic reviews have a rigid structure with a mandatory search strategy encompassing multiple databases, systematic screening of search results against pre-defined inclusion and exclusion criteria, critical appraisal of study quality and an optional component of collating results across studies quantitatively to derive summary estimates (meta-analysis). 6 Narrative reviews, on the other hand, have a more flexible structure. Systematic literature searches to minimise bias in selection of articles are highly recommended but not mandatory. 7 Narrative reviews are influenced by the authors' viewpoint who may preferentially analyse selected sets of articles. 8

In relation to primary research, case studies and case series are generally not driven by a working hypothesis. Rather, they serve as a basis to generate a hypothesis. Observational or interventional studies should have a hypothesis for choosing research design and sample size. The results of observational and interventional studies further lead to the generation of new hypotheses, testing of which forms the basis of future studies. Review articles, on the other hand, may not be hypothesis-driven, but form fertile ground to generate future hypotheses for evaluation. Fig. 1 summarizes which type of studies are hypothesis-driven and which lead on to hypothesis generation.

STANDARDS OF WORKING AND SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESES

A review of the published literature did not enable the identification of clearly defined standards for working and scientific hypotheses. It is essential to distinguish influential versus not influential hypotheses, evidence-based hypotheses versus a priori statements and ideas, ethical versus unethical, or potentially harmful ideas. The following points are proposed for consideration while generating working and scientific hypotheses. 1 , 2 Table 1 summarizes these points.

Evidence-based data

A scientific hypothesis should have a sound basis on previously published literature as well as the scientist's observations. Randomly generated (a priori) hypotheses are unlikely to be proven. A thorough literature search should form the basis of a hypothesis based on published evidence. 7

Unless a scientific hypothesis can be tested, it can neither be proven nor be disproven. Therefore, a scientific hypothesis should be amenable to testing with the available technologies and the present understanding of science.

Supported by pilot studies

If a hypothesis is based purely on a novel observation by the scientist in question, it should be grounded on some preliminary studies to support it. For example, if a drug that targets a specific cell population is hypothesized to be useful in a particular disease setting, then there must be some preliminary evidence that the specific cell population plays a role in driving that disease process.

Testable by ethical studies

The hypothesis should be testable by experiments that are ethically acceptable. 9 For example, a hypothesis that parachutes reduce mortality from falls from an airplane cannot be tested using a randomized controlled trial. 10 This is because it is obvious that all those jumping from a flying plane without a parachute would likely die. Similarly, the hypothesis that smoking tobacco causes lung cancer cannot be tested by a clinical trial that makes people take up smoking (since there is considerable evidence for the health hazards associated with smoking). Instead, long-term observational studies comparing outcomes in those who smoke and those who do not, as was performed in the landmark epidemiological case control study by Doll and Hill, 11 are more ethical and practical.

Balance between scientific temper and controversy

Novel findings, including novel hypotheses, particularly those that challenge established norms, are bound to face resistance for their wider acceptance. Such resistance is inevitable until the time such findings are proven with appropriate scientific rigor. However, hypotheses that generate controversy are generally unwelcome. For example, at the time the pandemic of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and AIDS was taking foot, there were numerous deniers that refused to believe that HIV caused AIDS. 12 , 13 Similarly, at a time when climate change is causing catastrophic changes to weather patterns worldwide, denial that climate change is occurring and consequent attempts to block climate change are certainly unwelcome. 14 The denialism and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, including unfortunate examples of vaccine hesitancy, are more recent examples of controversial hypotheses not backed by science. 15 , 16 An example of a controversial hypothesis that was a revolutionary scientific breakthrough was the hypothesis put forth by Warren and Marshall that Helicobacter pylori causes peptic ulcers. Initially, the hypothesis that a microorganism could cause gastritis and gastric ulcers faced immense resistance. When the scientists that proposed the hypothesis themselves ingested H. pylori to induce gastritis in themselves, only then could they convince the wider world about their hypothesis. Such was the impact of the hypothesis was that Barry Marshall and Robin Warren were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2005 for this discovery. 17 , 18

DISTINGUISHING THE MOST INFLUENTIAL HYPOTHESES

Influential hypotheses are those that have stood the test of time. An archetype of an influential hypothesis is that proposed by Edward Jenner in the eighteenth century that cowpox infection protects against smallpox. While this observation had been reported for nearly a century before this time, it had not been suitably tested and publicised until Jenner conducted his experiments on a young boy by demonstrating protection against smallpox after inoculation with cowpox. 19 These experiments were the basis for widespread smallpox immunization strategies worldwide in the 20th century which resulted in the elimination of smallpox as a human disease today. 20

Other influential hypotheses are those which have been read and cited widely. An example of this is the hygiene hypothesis proposing an inverse relationship between infections in early life and allergies or autoimmunity in adulthood. An analysis reported that this hypothesis had been cited more than 3,000 times on Scopus. 1

LESSONS LEARNED FROM HYPOTHESES AMIDST THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

The COVID-19 pandemic devastated the world like no other in recent memory. During this period, various hypotheses emerged, understandably so considering the public health emergency situation with innumerable deaths and suffering for humanity. Within weeks of the first reports of COVID-19, aberrant immune system activation was identified as a key driver of organ dysfunction and mortality in this disease. 21 Consequently, numerous drugs that suppress the immune system or abrogate the activation of the immune system were hypothesized to have a role in COVID-19. 22 One of the earliest drugs hypothesized to have a benefit was hydroxychloroquine. Hydroxychloroquine was proposed to interfere with Toll-like receptor activation and consequently ameliorate the aberrant immune system activation leading to pathology in COVID-19. 22 The drug was also hypothesized to have a prophylactic role in preventing infection or disease severity in COVID-19. It was also touted as a wonder drug for the disease by many prominent international figures. However, later studies which were well-designed randomized controlled trials failed to demonstrate any benefit of hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19. 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 Subsequently, azithromycin 27 , 28 and ivermectin 29 were hypothesized as potential therapies for COVID-19, but were not supported by evidence from randomized controlled trials. The role of vitamin D in preventing disease severity was also proposed, but has not been proven definitively until now. 30 , 31 On the other hand, randomized controlled trials identified the evidence supporting dexamethasone 32 and interleukin-6 pathway blockade with tocilizumab as effective therapies for COVID-19 in specific situations such as at the onset of hypoxia. 33 , 34 Clues towards the apparent effectiveness of various drugs against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 in vitro but their ineffectiveness in vivo have recently been identified. Many of these drugs are weak, lipophilic bases and some others induce phospholipidosis which results in apparent in vitro effectiveness due to non-specific off-target effects that are not replicated inside living systems. 35 , 36

Another hypothesis proposed was the association of the routine policy of vaccination with Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) with lower deaths due to COVID-19. This hypothesis emerged in the middle of 2020 when COVID-19 was still taking foot in many parts of the world. 37 , 38 Subsequently, many countries which had lower deaths at that time point went on to have higher numbers of mortality, comparable to other areas of the world. Furthermore, the hypothesis that BCG vaccination reduced COVID-19 mortality was a classic example of ecological fallacy. Associations between population level events (ecological studies; in this case, BCG vaccination and COVID-19 mortality) cannot be directly extrapolated to the individual level. Furthermore, such associations cannot per se be attributed as causal in nature, and can only serve to generate hypotheses that need to be tested at the individual level. 39

IS TRADITIONAL PEER REVIEW EFFICIENT FOR EVALUATION OF WORKING AND SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESES?

Traditionally, publication after peer review has been considered the gold standard before any new idea finds acceptability amongst the scientific community. Getting a work (including a working or scientific hypothesis) reviewed by experts in the field before experiments are conducted to prove or disprove it helps to refine the idea further as well as improve the experiments planned to test the hypothesis. 40 A route towards this has been the emergence of journals dedicated to publishing hypotheses such as the Central Asian Journal of Medical Hypotheses and Ethics. 41 Another means of publishing hypotheses is through registered research protocols detailing the background, hypothesis, and methodology of a particular study. If such protocols are published after peer review, then the journal commits to publishing the completed study irrespective of whether the study hypothesis is proven or disproven. 42 In the post-pandemic world, online research methods such as online surveys powered via social media channels such as Twitter and Instagram might serve as critical tools to generate as well as to preliminarily test the appropriateness of hypotheses for further evaluation. 43 , 44

Some radical hypotheses might be difficult to publish after traditional peer review. These hypotheses might only be acceptable by the scientific community after they are tested in research studies. Preprints might be a way to disseminate such controversial and ground-breaking hypotheses. 45 However, scientists might prefer to keep their hypotheses confidential for the fear of plagiarism of ideas, avoiding online posting and publishing until they have tested the hypotheses.

SUGGESTIONS ON GENERATING AND PUBLISHING HYPOTHESES

Publication of hypotheses is important, however, a balance is required between scientific temper and controversy. Journal editors and reviewers might keep in mind these specific points, summarized in Table 2 and detailed hereafter, while judging the merit of hypotheses for publication. Keeping in mind the ethical principle of primum non nocere, a hypothesis should be published only if it is testable in a manner that is ethically appropriate. 46 Such hypotheses should be grounded in reality and lend themselves to further testing to either prove or disprove them. It must be considered that subsequent experiments to prove or disprove a hypothesis have an equal chance of failing or succeeding, akin to tossing a coin. A pre-conceived belief that a hypothesis is unlikely to be proven correct should not form the basis of rejection of such a hypothesis for publication. In this context, hypotheses generated after a thorough literature search to identify knowledge gaps or based on concrete clinical observations on a considerable number of patients (as opposed to random observations on a few patients) are more likely to be acceptable for publication by peer-reviewed journals. Also, hypotheses should be considered for publication or rejection based on their implications for science at large rather than whether the subsequent experiments to test them end up with results in favour of or against the original hypothesis.

Hypotheses form an important part of the scientific literature. The COVID-19 pandemic has reiterated the importance and relevance of hypotheses for dealing with public health emergencies and highlighted the need for evidence-based and ethical hypotheses. A good hypothesis is testable in a relevant study design, backed by preliminary evidence, and has positive ethical and clinical implications. General medical journals might consider publishing hypotheses as a specific article type to enable more rapid advancement of science.

Disclosure: The authors have no potential conflicts of interest to disclose.

Author Contributions:

• Data curation: Gasparyan AY, Misra DP, Zimba O, Yessirkepov M, Agarwal V, Kitas GD.

• Open access
• Published: 19 December 2017

What methods do reviews of normative ethics literature use for search, selection, analysis, and synthesis? In-depth results from a systematic review of reviews

• Marcel Mertz 1 ,
• Daniel Strech 1 &
• Hannes Kahrass 1  

Systematic Reviews volume  6 , Article number:  261 ( 2017 ) Cite this article

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(Semi-)systematic approaches to finding, analysing, and synthesising ethics literature on medical topics are still in their infancy. However, our recent systematic review showed that the rate of publication of such (semi-)systematic reviews has increased in the last two decades. This is not only true for reviews of empirical ethics literature, but also for reviews of normative ethics literature. In the latter case, there is currently little in the way of standards and guidance available. Therefore, the methods and reporting strategies of such reviews vary greatly. The purpose of the follow-up study we present was to obtain deeper methodological insight into the ways reviews of normative literature are actually conducted and to analyse the methods used.

Our search in the PubMed, PhilPapers, and Google Scholar databases led to the identification of 183 reviews of ethics literature published between 1997 and 2015, of which 84 were identified as reviews of normative and mixed literature. Qualitative content analysis was used to extract and synthesise descriptions of search, selection, quality appraisal, analysis, and synthesis methods. We further assessed quantitatively how often certain methods (e.g. search strategies, data analysis procedures) were used by the reviews.

The overall reporting quality varies among the analysed reviews and was generally poor even for major criteria regarding the search and selection of literature. For example, only 24 (29%) used a PRISMA flowchart. Also, only 55 (66%) reviews mentioned the information unit they sought to extract, and 12 (14%) stated an ethical approach as the theoretical basis for the analysis. Interpretable information on the synthesis method was given by 47 (60%); the most common methods applied were qualitative methods commonly used in social science research (83%).

Reviews which fail to provide sufficient relevant information to readers have reduced methodological transparency regardless of actual methodological quality. In order to increase the internal validity (i.e. reproducibility) as well as the external validity (i.e. utility for the intended audience) of future reviews of normative literature, we suggest more accurate reporting regarding the goal of the review, the definition of the information unit, the ethical approach used, and technical aspects.

Peer Review reports

The number of publications of (semi-)systematic reviews for finding and synthesising ethics literature has increased in the last two decades [ 1 ]. This is not only true for reviews that search and synthesise ethically relevant empirical literature, but also for reviews of normative literature. Similarly, the scholarly debate on the opportunities and limitations of (systematic) reviews in ethics has expanded. This is particularly true for reviews of normative literature [ 2 , 3 , 4 ], which is also reflected in philosophy, one of the disciplines most concerned with ethics [ 5 ].

Since established standards for the conduct of especially systematic reviews of normative literature are still lacking, in a recent study [ 1 ], we assessed how reviews of normative literature report on their methods for search, selection (including quality appraisal), analysis, and synthesis of the literature and also compared the reporting to an (adapted) version of criteria related to PRSIMA statements [ 6 ]. Proposals for systematic review methods are rare and rather vague when it comes to analysis and synthesis of ethics literature [ 7 , 8 ]. The more comprehensive and technical manuals on review methodology [ 9 ], guideline development [ 10 , 11 , 12 ], and Health Technology Assessments [ 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ] also lack explanation of how to search, analyse, and synthesise relevant information from the ethics literature in a systematic and transparent manner (cf. [ 17 ]).

Search methods and, to a certain degree, selection methods for (systematic) reviews of normative literature can use tried and tested methods for general (systematic) reviews with the important difference that in ethics, books and book chapters can have much relevance, which has to be reflected in a search, selection, and also quality appraisal strategy. However, the experience of researchers undertaking such reviews is often that the desired normative literature is not easy to find [ 18 ]. Defining inclusion and exclusion criteria can also be harder than in, for example, reviews of clinical studies. As far as analysis and synthesis methods are concerned, it is becoming clear that qualitative research approaches are much more relevant in this kind of review than in “traditional” systematic reviews, such as those of clinical studies [ 19 ], but there is a lack of meta-research to show which methods can be employed in reviews of normative literature and how.

Therefore, in order to obtain deeper insight into how the reviews searched for selected, analysed, and synthesised normative information, in this paper, we take a closer look at the specific steps and processes used and the methodological information reported. Thereby, our analysis aimed both to identify common (“uniform”) steps or strategies in the search, selection, analysis, and synthesis methods of reviews on normative literature, and at the same time to capture existing variance in these methods. Both are needed to understand the current state of the art of such reviews and to provide the basis for future methodological improvement.

Study registration and PRISMA checklist

No review protocol was published beforehand, and the review was not registered (e.g. with PROSPERO). The description of methods follows the PRISMA statement [ 6 ] as far as applicable to this kind of review (see Additional file  1 for PRISMA checklist).

Search and selection

The search and selection method we used to identify (semi-)systematic reviews of ethics literature is described in more detail in [ 1 ]. In summary, our review of reviews was based on two PubMed searches, with additional searches in PhilPapers and Google Scholar, in April 2015. The searches produced 1393 hits, of which 189 were deemed relevant based on title or abstract and 183 after full-text screening. (See Fig.  1 ). Only articles which focused on the normative and “mixed” (empirical and normative) literature ( n  = 84) were analysed, leaving aside reviews that solely focused on empirical literature ( n  = 99). However, we also included “empty reviews” which explicitly stated that they found or included 0 hits if their research question matched our inclusion criteria. Because of language barriers, only articles in English, German, or French were considered for in-depth analysis.

PRISMA flow diagram (originally published in [ 1 ]; see for further details also [ 1 ])

Development of the coding matrix

We used a combined deductive and inductive strategy to construct categories [ 20 , 21 ] for a coding matrix (coding frame). The deductive component encompassed the overarching categories related to the different basic methodical steps of a review, i.e. search, selection, quality appraisal, analysis, and synthesis, relative to the PRISMA statement [ 6 ].

To develop fine-grained subcategories, an inductive strategy was employed. Therefore, introduction and method sections (or equivalent textual parts) of a purposive sample of n  = 20 articles were read. Descriptions of search, selection, quality appraisal, analysis, and synthesis methods were extracted. First, two researchers (MM, HK) each analysed five reviews of normative and five of mixed literature, discussed their suggested revisions, and finally agreed on refinements of the preliminary coding matrix. This was done in two consecutive rounds including ten more articles. Then, the plausibility of the categories developed was checked by the third researcher (DS). A further random sample of 10 articles was then examined to identify potentially overlooked issues. Because no subcategory was added, categorical saturation had been reached and the coding matrix was deemed final.

Main analysis of the individual reviews

To analyse methods applied by the reviews, qualitative content analysis (QCA) [ 20 , 21 ] was used. The analysis was independently conducted for all included reviews by two researchers (MM, HK). Usually, only explicit statements about search, selection, quality appraisal, analysis, and/or synthesis were considered as reported. However, when both researchers independently judged that a certain method was used implicitly in a review, this was also coded accordingly. The analysis employed closed (yes/no) and open answer modes. Any disagreement was discussed with the third researcher (DS) and agreement sought. We did not send the extracted data to the authors of the reviews to check if they agreed with our analysis mainly due to time constraints. Also, an earlier pilot study trying to do such a “member check” showed a rather low response rate [ 22 ], which casts at least some doubts on the success of a similar strategy in this review.

The synthesis method for the information extracted was mainly quantitative, e.g. how often the date/period of the search was stated (closed answer mode). In categories with open modes of data, the individual answers were counted (e.g. about which databases were used in a review) or subsumed under a broader description (e.g. approaches to becoming acquainted with the text). For the latter, we defined new synthesis categories corresponding either to what the authors of the reviews explicitly stated or to what we, on the basis of our experience and expertise in ethics and empirical methodology, found the most appropriate interpretation of what was said about the methods or procedures.

In our systematic review, we identified 84 reviews published between 1997 and 2015 in 65 different journals [ 1 ]. We included semi-systematic reviews that had at least an identifiable description of a reproducible literature search (search and selection) as well as (full) systematic reviews that further explicitly or implicitly reported on analysis and synthesis. When comparing the reporting to an (adapted) version of criteria related to PRISMA statements [ 6 ], only a small fraction of the included reviews fulfilled all criteria (for search 8%, for selection 21%, for analysis 8%, and for synthesis 11%) [ 1 ].

Methods used for search, selection, and quality appraisal

Most reviews stated the databases or search engines they used ( n  = 78, 93%) and the search terms ( n  = 73, 87%). Search strings were mentioned to a lesser extent ( n  = 33, 39%); the statement was not counted if the information about the search string did not allow replication of the search. If it was replicable, we differentiated between sufficient information (e.g. Boolean operators for search terms) and the statement of a “copy-paste” search string (“original” search string). Of these 33 reviews, 26 (78%) presented a search string that allows for copying and pasting it directly into the database or search engine. (See Fig.  2 .)

Search methods used in the reviews

Search restrictions were mentioned by 50 reviews (59%), with publication date restrictions ( n  = 42, 50%) and language restrictions ( n  = 11, 13%) mentioned most often. Even though exclusion criteria were stated less often ( n  = 50, 59%) than inclusion criteria ( n  = 60, 71%), only 14 (17%) of the reviews stated neither inclusion nor exclusion criteria. Hardly any reviews made clear whether there was a difference regarding the selection criteria and/or selection procedure between selection at the title/abstract level and at the full-text level ( n  = 6, 7%). (See Figs.  2 and 3 ).

Of the 20 reviews (24%) that addressed the issue of quality appraisal of the literature they included, one in four ( n  = 5, 25%) explicitly wrote that they disregarded quality appraisal procedures and also stated an explicit reason for this by mentioning that there are no usable or suitable methods or criteria for a quality appraisal of normative literature. There were also few reviews ( n  = 2) that stated without further explanation that they did not apply a quality appraisal, making it difficult to understand the rationale for forgoing quality appraisal. The remaining reviews ( n  = 13) mentioned how they conducted the quality appraisal. (See Fig.  3 .)

Selection methods used in the reviews

Finally, most reviews stated the number of results retrieved ( n  = 50, 59%) and included ( n  = 63, 75%). This number reflects the mentioned number, irrespective of whether the numbers included duplicates and further search strategies. About a third ( n  = 24, 29%) of the reviews used a PRISMA flowchart to represent the search and selection procedure. (See Fig.  4 .)

Representation of search and selection results used in the reviews

Databases/search engines used

Of the 84 reviews, 78 (93%) stated which databases or search engines they used for the search (multiple responses possible). Overall, there were 108 different databases or search engines used, though they were not equally popular. Of the 78 reviews, nearly all used at least PubMed / MEDLINE ( n  = 76, 97%). Other databases or search engines often mentioned were CINAHL ( n  = 30, 38%), EMBASE ( n  = 20, 26%), PsycINFO ( n  = 19, 24%), and Web of Science ( n  = 17, 22%). Many databases and search engines were mentioned only once ( n  = 68, 87%). Furthermore, most reviews used at least two databases or search engines ( n  = 62, 74% of all reviews, 79% of the reviews that stated databases/search engines). Of the 16 reviews that relied on one database or search engine, 14 (88%) used PubMed/MEDLINE (see Fig.  5 ).

Databases/search engines used in the reviews

Methods used for analysis and synthesis

In our sample of 84 reviews, 55 (66%) mentioned what kind of normative information unit they sought to extract from the material and synthesise thereafter. Twenty-one (25%) stated the theoretical approach they used to define information units (e.g. methods of qualitative analysis such as qualitative content analysis or grounded theory, definitions of philosophical arguments, or sociological theories regarding organisational justice), and of these 21, 12 (57%) gave sufficient information regarding the use of an ethical approach (e.g. ethical theory, framework, principles etc.). (See Fig.  6 ).

Analysis methods used in the reviews (information units)

For the information unit we differentiated between (1) ethical issues/topics/dilemmas, (2) ethical arguments/reasons, and (3) ethical principles/values/norms. Of the 55 reviews stating the information unit, half extracted ethical issues, topics or dilemmas as information units ( n  = 28, 51%), a quarter extracted ethical arguments or reasons ( n  = 14, 25%), and a further quarter ethical principles, values, or norms ( n  = 14, 25%). Of the 12 reviews mentioning the ethical approach, “principlism” was dominant ( n  = 5, 42%). (See Fig.  6 .)

Thirty-one (37%) reviews mentioned the procedure used to extract the information. Most used a “coding and categorising” approach ( n  = 9, 29%); in another nine reviews (29%), we found their statements to be too unclear to place them conclusively in one of the three procedure types that we were able to identify in our analysis. (See Fig.  7 .) On the other hand, 43 (51%) said something about the overall analysis procedure, e.g. how many researchers were involved and whether there were, for example, consensus rounds between researchers if they disagreed with an analysis result. Of these 43, 33 (77%) seemed to involve more than one researcher in the analysis process; 5 (12%) stated that the analysis was done only by one researcher (of which 1 review was written by a sole author, which means that the entire analysis in the other 4 reviews, although written by two or more authors, was performed nonetheless by one researcher). (See Fig.  7 .)

Analysis methods used in the reviews (information extraction)

Of our sample, 47 (60%) reviews gave interpretable information about the way they synthesised the analysed material. Of these 47, 39 (83%) used qualitative methods (as mainly understood in empirical social science research), 3 (6%) used quantitative methods, 2 (5%) used both qualitative and quantitative methods, and 3 (6%) reported some kind of narrative or hermeneutic methods (as understood in humanities traditions). (See Fig.  8 .)

Synthesis methods used in the reviews

Regarding qualitative methods ( n  = 41), 12 (29%) employed a purely deductive approach (a priori defined categories, e.g. based on a theory or framework), 18 (44%) a purely inductive approach (a posteriori built categories), and 11 (27%) combined deductive and inductive approaches.

Deductive approaches mostly relied on existing thematic groupings of the debate or literature ( n  = 14, 34% of the 41 reviews using a qualitative approach), while some involved a theory or another existing category system ( n  = 8, 20%). One review re-applied the categories from the analysis process for the synthesis (2%). Inductive approaches were often not interpretable regarding a specific approach; these we categorised under “Unspecified Thematic Analysis” ( n  = 18, 44%). The other reviews with inductive approaches used qualitative content analysis ( n  = 9, 22%), grounded theory ( n  = 1, 2%), or a focus group ( n  = 1, 2%). Here again, we took implicit as well as explicit information into account. (See Fig.  8 .)

Reviews that used a quantitative approach ( n  = 5) to synthesis mostly relied on statistical analysis ( n  = 4, 80% of the 5 reviews using a quantitative approach), be it a correlation analysis or an analysis of the distribution of the topics (both n  = 2, 40%). One review (20%) used a quantitative approach that relied not on a specific statistical analysis, but was mere counting. (See Fig.  8 .)

In this paper, based on a systematic review of reviews, we present detailed findings on how 84 reviews of normative or “mixed” literature report their methods for the search, selection, analysis, and synthesis of relevant information.

Applied search and selection methods

The search and selection methods used correspond to the items in the PRISMA guidelines [ 1 , 6 ]. Therefore, there are not many qualitative differences from methods of more established kinds of (semi-)systematic reviews. It is known, though, that there are some practical complications in both searching [ 18 ] and selecting normative literature. These include the interdisciplinarity of the field and the resultant variation in terminology, publication standards, and journals [ 18 ], which might be reflected in the use of many databases ( n  = 108) in the sample of reviews in our meta-review.

Possibly because of this, only a few of the reviews used one database or search engine (21%). One might argue that using more databases and search engines leads to better results. However, it is unclear whether this hypothesis holds true for reviews of normative literature. On the basis of our analysis, we cannot make any statement about the effectiveness of using several databases and search engines. Better reporting of the attribution of included results and duplicate search results from different sources would be necessary in order to prove this hypothesis.

PubMed/MEDLINE was by far the most common database (97%). On the basis of our data, however, we cannot elucidate the reasons for its prevalence. It might be that PubMed/MEDLINE is deemed a relevant and fruitful database not only for biomedical topics, but also for bioethical topics as well. It could also be that PubMed/MEDLINE is regarded as a “standard” database that is commonly used in systematic reviews related to health care and is thus preferred. Another explanation, namely that other databases/search engines are not widely known, seems unsubstantiated in the face of the large number mentioned (see Fig.  5 ).

Given the possible problems in searching literature and given the humanities tradition of ethics as a “book” discipline, it is interesting that additional search strategies are not so widespread. About 60% of the reviews stated that they used such strategies, with “hand search” (e.g. manually checking monographs, collections) being mentioned by 26%; most mentioned was “snowballing”/“reference check” (66%). Though there is no evidence currently that hand search can improve the amount or quality of normative information gathering, it seems plausible to assume that in fields such as ethics—which traditionally rely on book publications which are harder (or impossible) to find with some of the common databases/search engines—such additional search strategies would yield greater returns than in, e.g., systematic reviews of clinical interventions.

Applied analysis and synthesis methods

There is a clearly discernible tendency to favour qualitative approaches in both analysis and synthesis in our sample of reviews of normative literature (with “qualitative approaches”, we refer to an overarching category that encompasses both qualitative (social science) methods and narrative or hermeneutic methods insofar as they are both non-quantitative methods). In the 31 reviews that reported information extraction (analysis) procedures, “coding and categorising” dominates (29%); but “close reading” was almost as popular (19%). “Collecting” (23%) could also be understood as a quantitative way of information extraction; most often, though, our observations indicated that it too was used in a qualitative way.

Furthermore, of the 47 reviews that stated or described their synthesis methods, 44 (94%) used qualitative methods ( n  = 41, 87%) or narrative/hermeneutic methods ( n  = 3, 6%). Quantitative methods were much less represented ( n  = 5, 11%) (see Fig.  8 ). This tendency towards the use of qualitative approaches for reviews of normative information is supported by the findings of Tricco et al., who reviewed emerging knowledge synthesis methods for complex interventions in health care [ 19 ].

When using qualitative methods, the authors of the analysed reviews separately applied inductive or a posteriori categorisation (71%), and deductive or a priori categorisation (56%), or used a mixed approach (27%). When using deductive categorisation, a third (35%) relied on an (ethical) theory or existing category system, which is interesting given the fact that ethical theories in particular offer ample opportunities to define a priori categories for synthesising normative information. The presence of thematic analysis that is not specified in more detail (62%) and qualitative content analysis (31%) makes clear, however, that at the same time inductive strategies might often be better suited for this task. Arguably, this also depends on the goals of the review and the type of information unit sought.

Further research is needed to assess whether the synthesis of information units such as ethical issues works better with the use (additionally) of deductive/a priori categories, or if in general, the openness of inductive strategies is essential for finding suitable synthesis categories. Arguably, this depends on synthesis objectives. Here, one might differentiate two broad objectives: first, reproducibility (securing “internal validity”); second, “ease of use” and/or utility for the intended audience (securing “external validity”). “Ease of use”/utility in this regard might also be understood as “ecological validity”, that is the applicability of the results to the real-world setting of practitioners working in the health care system.

The overall tendency towards qualitative approaches in form of text analysis and synthesis seems natural, as normative information is extracted from texts and is itself textual or conceptual information. This might be a reason why it is not always explicitly stated. But as there is some variety regarding methods, in particular for the synthesis (see above), it is still important information for readers of such reviews.

Reporting quality and transparency

The variance mentioned above regarding qualitative approaches shows that not only the methods used varied among the reviews in our sample, but also the reporting of the methods varied greatly—even for the well-established standardised search and selection part of the reviews (see Figs.  2 and 3 ). The more topic-specific analysis and synthesis parts of the reviews did not fare much better (see results in Figs.  6 , 7 , and 8 ).

However, it is important to note that the lack of a statement does not necessarily imply methodological negligence. Sometimes, not having stated something or, more particularly, not having done something, can make perfect sense given the aim of a review, the time available, and the limits of publication (e.g. article length). For example, in a review with a purely descriptive purpose of developing a comprehensive spectrum of ethical issues at stake in a specific health care situation, bypassing quality appraisal of the included literature can be appropriate [ 23 , 24 ]. However, to demonstrate awareness of this key element of a traditional systematic review, a possible minimal standard could be to say why no quality appraisal was done. Hereto, our review reveals insufficient reporting, as only 24% included any information about quality appraisal.

Some information essential for the reproduction of systematic reviews was lacking in many reports. Although databases and search terms were often reported, we found that 61% of reviews did not give enough information on the search string to reproduce the search, and 59% reported on search restrictions. Even more important, a definition of the used information unit was given by only 25% of authors. In such cases, we would argue that the reviews do not provide enough relevant information to the reader, which therefore reduces their methodological transparency (e.g. impeding an external assessment of their “internal validity”), regardless of the actual quality of the review conducted.

Further, there is information we would not describe as key to transparency which would nevertheless benefit readers. For example, our review indicated that only three reviews (4%) provided a separate full list of the included publications, besides mentioning them in the normal references of the article. Such a list can be most useful, as it makes it easier to identify the literature included. Because of practical limitations such as article length, authors might consider providing further information in an online supplement.

Further developments towards best practice standards

Improved reporting in ethics reviews could increase overall methodological transparency, and thereby methodological quality, formally and informally. This is because an author who has to describe the methods used in meaningful detail will probably reflect more upon these methods and their use. Furthermore, a reader can be sensitised to questions of quality by reading a detailed report of methods. Finally, more explicit reporting enables formal analysis of how methods are used and how they could be improved.

To this end, having first identified different methods to conduct such reviews, a next step would be to define quality criteria or develop a reporting guideline for systematic reviews of normative literature. The fact that some reviews did not explicitly describe the methods used also shows that there might be a lack of relevant information for untrained readers of such reviews, who are unable to interpret the text to reconstruct the missing information. This can be a further motivation for reporting guidelines, as they can not only orient researchers conducting ethics reviews, but also the often interdisciplinary readership of this sort of review. The Q-SEA instrument [ 25 ], though developed for the quality assessment of ethical analyses in the context of Health Technology Assessment (HTA), could be understood in part as such a guideline, as it describes key issues of (systematic) literature search and inclusion/exclusion criteria, and sees the subsequent reporting of these issues as key to the process quality of an ethical analysis in HTA.

We would argue that when reporting on reviews of normative literature more transparency is particularly important regarding the following methods/parts of a review in order to increase “internal validity” as well as “external validity”:

Goals of the review : goals definitely play a role in the way the synthesis is framed for the intended audience (academics, HTA professionals, guideline development groups etc.). An ethics review can be descriptive (e.g. “What are the issues?”) as well as prescriptive (“What should one do?”). Both are valid goals for such reviews, but have to be stated clearly as they can influence the methodological aspects of a review.

Information unit definition: the normative information analysed and synthesised in the reviews should be stated more explicitly, e.g. ethical issues, arguments or principles and values.

Ethical approach: stating the theoretical approach (e.g. ethical theory, framework, set of principles or values) used for defining the information unit to analyse and synthesise improves the understanding of these steps and clarifies some of the inevitable normative underpinnings.

Technical aspects: systematic reviews should strive to describe all information needed to reproduce all steps performed to produce the reported results. Furthermore, the overall use of PRISMA flowcharts could be improved.

Limitations

The analysis procedure was dependent on our background knowledge and our interpretation of the texts. We tried to counter the subjectivity of this approach by double assessment (MM, HK) and by a critical review of the intermediate results (DS). However, this does not give absolute protection against mistakes, or guarantee that our value judgements are shared by every reader. Therefore, there might be some leeway regarding the (synthesis) categories themselves as well as the placing of the methods used in reviews in specific (synthesis) categories. Also, because of time constraints, we did not check for inter-rater reliability by having two (or more) researchers analyse the same literature. We did this for some articles at the beginning, with the aim not to improve the quality of the data, but to identify problems in applying the analysis matrix, to refine category descriptions, and to formulate (further) decision rules where necessary.

Conclusions

Together with our first paper [ 1 ], this paper is, to our knowledge, the first analysis of the state-of-the-art of (systematic) reviews of normative and mixed ethics literature on medical topics. It provides an in-depth view of the search, selection, quality appraisal, analysis, and synthesis methods used by such reviews. This information could be used to inform future reviews (e.g. what aspects of the method to report, what databases to use, approaches to use for synthesis, and so on), to write methodologies on conducting reviews in ethics, or to develop reporting guidelines for such reviews. The results of our study indicate that pursuit of the latter two goals especially would be worthwhile for improving the quality of conduct, transparency of reporting, and feasibility of evaluating reviews of normative literature.

Abbreviations

Health Technology Assessment

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Marcel Mertz, Daniel Strech & Hannes Kahrass

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MM was the first author of the systematic review this paper is based on, wrote the main draft of the paper, analysed most of the material presented, and revised and finalised the manuscript. HK was the second author in the systematic review this paper is based on, assisted in analysing the material presented, and contributed to the writing and revising of the manuscript. DS was the senior author of the systematic review this paper is based on, contributed to the writing and revising of the manuscript. All authors designed the study and approved the final manuscript.

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Financial competing interest: The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Non-financial competing interest: In three reviews finally included in the meta-review, DS was one of the authors. In one review, MM and HK were co-authors.

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Mertz, M., Strech, D. & Kahrass, H. What methods do reviews of normative ethics literature use for search, selection, analysis, and synthesis? In-depth results from a systematic review of reviews. Syst Rev 6 , 261 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-017-0661-x

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1.3 The Economists’ Tool Kit

Learning objectives.

• Explain how economists test hypotheses, develop economic theories, and use models in their analyses.
• Explain how the all-other-things unchanged (ceteris paribus) problem and the fallacy of false cause affect the testing of economic hypotheses and how economists try to overcome these problems.
• Distinguish between normative and positive statements.

Economics differs from other social sciences because of its emphasis on opportunity cost, the assumption of maximization in terms of one’s own self-interest, and the analysis of choices at the margin. But certainly much of the basic methodology of economics and many of its difficulties are common to every social science—indeed, to every science. This section explores the application of the scientific method to economics.

Researchers often examine relationships between variables. A variable is something whose value can change. By contrast, a constant is something whose value does not change. The speed at which a car is traveling is an example of a variable. The number of minutes in an hour is an example of a constant.

Research is generally conducted within a framework called the scientific method , a systematic set of procedures through which knowledge is created. In the scientific method, hypotheses are suggested and then tested. A hypothesis is an assertion of a relationship between two or more variables that could be proven to be false. A statement is not a hypothesis if no conceivable test could show it to be false. The statement “Plants like sunshine” is not a hypothesis; there is no way to test whether plants like sunshine or not, so it is impossible to prove the statement false. The statement “Increased solar radiation increases the rate of plant growth” is a hypothesis; experiments could be done to show the relationship between solar radiation and plant growth. If solar radiation were shown to be unrelated to plant growth or to retard plant growth, then the hypothesis would be demonstrated to be false.

If a test reveals that a particular hypothesis is false, then the hypothesis is rejected or modified. In the case of the hypothesis about solar radiation and plant growth, we would probably find that more sunlight increases plant growth over some range but that too much can actually retard plant growth. Such results would lead us to modify our hypothesis about the relationship between solar radiation and plant growth.

If the tests of a hypothesis yield results consistent with it, then further tests are conducted. A hypothesis that has not been rejected after widespread testing and that wins general acceptance is commonly called a theory . A theory that has been subjected to even more testing and that has won virtually universal acceptance becomes a law . We will examine two economic laws in the next two chapters.

Even a hypothesis that has achieved the status of a law cannot be proven true. There is always a possibility that someone may find a case that invalidates the hypothesis. That possibility means that nothing in economics, or in any other social science, or in any science, can ever be proven true. We can have great confidence in a particular proposition, but it is always a mistake to assert that it is “proven.”

Models in Economics

All scientific thought involves simplifications of reality. The real world is far too complex for the human mind—or the most powerful computer—to consider. Scientists use models instead. A model is a set of simplifying assumptions about some aspect of the real world. Models are always based on assumed conditions that are simpler than those of the real world, assumptions that are necessarily false. A model of the real world cannot be the real world.

We will encounter our first economic model in Chapter 35 “Appendix A: Graphs in Economics” . For that model, we will assume that an economy can produce only two goods. Then we will explore the model of demand and supply. One of the assumptions we will make there is that all the goods produced by firms in a particular market are identical. Of course, real economies and real markets are not that simple. Reality is never as simple as a model; one point of a model is to simplify the world to improve our understanding of it.

Economists often use graphs to represent economic models. The appendix to this chapter provides a quick, refresher course, if you think you need one, on understanding, building, and using graphs.

Models in economics also help us to generate hypotheses about the real world. In the next section, we will examine some of the problems we encounter in testing those hypotheses.

Testing Hypotheses in Economics

Here is a hypothesis suggested by the model of demand and supply: an increase in the price of gasoline will reduce the quantity of gasoline consumers demand. How might we test such a hypothesis?

Economists try to test hypotheses such as this one by observing actual behavior and using empirical (that is, real-world) data. The average retail price of gasoline in the United States rose from an average of $2.12 per gallon on May 22, 2005 to $2.88 per gallon on May 22, 2006. The number of gallons of gasoline consumed by U.S. motorists rose 0.3% during that period.

The small increase in the quantity of gasoline consumed by motorists as its price rose is inconsistent with the hypothesis that an increased price will lead to an reduction in the quantity demanded. Does that mean that we should dismiss the original hypothesis? On the contrary, we must be cautious in assessing this evidence. Several problems exist in interpreting any set of economic data. One problem is that several things may be changing at once; another is that the initial event may be unrelated to the event that follows. The next two sections examine these problems in detail.

The All-Other-Things-Unchanged Problem

The hypothesis that an increase in the price of gasoline produces a reduction in the quantity demanded by consumers carries with it the assumption that there are no other changes that might also affect consumer demand. A better statement of the hypothesis would be: An increase in the price of gasoline will reduce the quantity consumers demand, ceteris paribus. Ceteris paribus is a Latin phrase that means “all other things unchanged.”

But things changed between May 2005 and May 2006. Economic activity and incomes rose both in the United States and in many other countries, particularly China, and people with higher incomes are likely to buy more gasoline. Employment rose as well, and people with jobs use more gasoline as they drive to work. Population in the United States grew during the period. In short, many things happened during the period, all of which tended to increase the quantity of gasoline people purchased.

Our observation of the gasoline market between May 2005 and May 2006 did not offer a conclusive test of the hypothesis that an increase in the price of gasoline would lead to a reduction in the quantity demanded by consumers. Other things changed and affected gasoline consumption. Such problems are likely to affect any analysis of economic events. We cannot ask the world to stand still while we conduct experiments in economic phenomena. Economists employ a variety of statistical methods to allow them to isolate the impact of single events such as price changes, but they can never be certain that they have accurately isolated the impact of a single event in a world in which virtually everything is changing all the time.

In laboratory sciences such as chemistry and biology, it is relatively easy to conduct experiments in which only selected things change and all other factors are held constant. The economists’ laboratory is the real world; thus, economists do not generally have the luxury of conducting controlled experiments.

The Fallacy of False Cause

Hypotheses in economics typically specify a relationship in which a change in one variable causes another to change. We call the variable that responds to the change the dependent variable ; the variable that induces a change is called the independent variable . Sometimes the fact that two variables move together can suggest the false conclusion that one of the variables has acted as an independent variable that has caused the change we observe in the dependent variable.

Consider the following hypothesis: People wearing shorts cause warm weather. Certainly, we observe that more people wear shorts when the weather is warm. Presumably, though, it is the warm weather that causes people to wear shorts rather than the wearing of shorts that causes warm weather; it would be incorrect to infer from this that people cause warm weather by wearing shorts.

Reaching the incorrect conclusion that one event causes another because the two events tend to occur together is called the fallacy of false cause . The accompanying essay on baldness and heart disease suggests an example of this fallacy.

Because of the danger of the fallacy of false cause, economists use special statistical tests that are designed to determine whether changes in one thing actually do cause changes observed in another. Given the inability to perform controlled experiments, however, these tests do not always offer convincing evidence that persuades all economists that one thing does, in fact, cause changes in another.

In the case of gasoline prices and consumption between May 2005 and May 2006, there is good theoretical reason to believe the price increase should lead to a reduction in the quantity consumers demand. And economists have tested the hypothesis about price and the quantity demanded quite extensively. They have developed elaborate statistical tests aimed at ruling out problems of the fallacy of false cause. While we cannot prove that an increase in price will, ceteris paribus, lead to a reduction in the quantity consumers demand, we can have considerable confidence in the proposition.

Normative and Positive Statements

Two kinds of assertions in economics can be subjected to testing. We have already examined one, the hypothesis. Another testable assertion is a statement of fact, such as “It is raining outside” or “Microsoft is the largest producer of operating systems for personal computers in the world.” Like hypotheses, such assertions can be demonstrated to be false. Unlike hypotheses, they can also be shown to be correct. A statement of fact or a hypothesis is a positive statement .

Although people often disagree about positive statements, such disagreements can ultimately be resolved through investigation. There is another category of assertions, however, for which investigation can never resolve differences. A normative statement is one that makes a value judgment. Such a judgment is the opinion of the speaker; no one can “prove” that the statement is or is not correct. Here are some examples of normative statements in economics: “We ought to do more to help the poor.” “People in the United States should save more.” “Corporate profits are too high.” The statements are based on the values of the person who makes them. They cannot be proven false.

Because people have different values, normative statements often provoke disagreement. An economist whose values lead him or her to conclude that we should provide more help for the poor will disagree with one whose values lead to a conclusion that we should not. Because no test exists for these values, these two economists will continue to disagree, unless one persuades the other to adopt a different set of values. Many of the disagreements among economists are based on such differences in values and therefore are unlikely to be resolved.

Key Takeaways

• Economists try to employ the scientific method in their research.
• Scientists cannot prove a hypothesis to be true; they can only fail to prove it false.
• Economists, like other social scientists and scientists, use models to assist them in their analyses.
• Two problems inherent in tests of hypotheses in economics are the all-other-things-unchanged problem and the fallacy of false cause.
• Positive statements are factual and can be tested. Normative statements are value judgments that cannot be tested. Many of the disagreements among economists stem from differences in values.

Look again at the data in Table 1.1 “LSAT Scores and Undergraduate Majors” . Now consider the hypothesis: “Majoring in economics will result in a higher LSAT score.” Are the data given consistent with this hypothesis? Do the data prove that this hypothesis is correct? What fallacy might be involved in accepting the hypothesis?

Case in Point: Does Baldness Cause Heart Disease?

Mark Hunter – bald – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

A website called embarrassingproblems.com received the following email:

What did Dr. Margaret answer? Most importantly, she did not recommend that the questioner take drugs to treat his baldness, because doctors do not think that the baldness causes the heart disease. A more likely explanation for the association between baldness and heart disease is that both conditions are affected by an underlying factor. While noting that more research needs to be done, one hypothesis that Dr. Margaret offers is that higher testosterone levels might be triggering both the hair loss and the heart disease. The good news for people with early balding (which is really where the association with increased risk of heart disease has been observed) is that they have a signal that might lead them to be checked early on for heart disease.

Source: http://www.embarrassingproblems.com/problems/problempage230701.htm .

Answer to Try It! Problem

The data are consistent with the hypothesis, but it is never possible to prove that a hypothesis is correct. Accepting the hypothesis could involve the fallacy of false cause; students who major in economics may already have the analytical skills needed to do well on the exam.

Principles of Economics Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Empirical Research and Normative Theory

Transdisciplinary perspectives on two methodical traditions between separation and interdependence.

• Edited by: Alexander Max Bauer and Malte Meyerhuber
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• Language: English
• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Copyright year: 2020
• Audience: Scholars, institutes, libraries
• Front matter: 12
• Main content: 354
• Keywords: Is-ought dichotomy ; empirical research and evidence ; normative theory ; interdisciplinary perspectives
• Published: April 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9783110613797
• ISBN: 9783110612097
• Published: January 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9783110777079

What are you looking for?

Normative vs. positive.

The one of the important questions along the research journey is to ask what the motive for the study is. It can be seen from the perspective of describing the state of the world or it can be seen from the perspective of changing it. The previous, I.e., positivistic approach, is about to explore and describe. The latter is about giving instructions about how things should be managed or even manipulated in order to achieve the desired state of the world.

Normative research

Normative research is about to define how the findings should be applied to the study population as wells as set the context or define phenomena and interpret the results. Normative research is about measuring, assessing and comparing goodness, value, practicality and functionality. As ‘normative’ proposes it is about setting standards for behaviour by setting norm by explicitly defining possible, desired or feasible way to act. Normative research is also about setting expectations for interaction. In researching the sociotechnical normative research often concentrated on making feasible or desirable ways to behave visible as well as describing causal relations between acts or deeds. In general, or most contexts, it is about relating to an evaluation or value judgement and giving instructions about how to achieve desired state of the world. In normative research there are sound justification or reasons for ending to certain status. In general term it is “in state A you need to X in order to achieve state of the world B”. Very often normative research aims to explain causality and coexistence. Normative research often reflects common values and if is subject to cultural bias

Normative approach is common in disciplines conjuncting social sciences. For example, software engineering is about how to develop easy to use, accessible and high user experience services and applications as a detailed study of engineering to the design, development and maintenance of software. Those principles are subject to human behavior and derived from the body of knowledge accumulated for the centuries. As principles of human action remain somewhat unaltered normative research is also finding new context to existing knowledge and setting norms.

Positive research

Positivism is by definition about seeking ultimate truth and authentic knowledge. The quest is defined by the  need to have certainty on behavioral logic. As a sociological construct positivism represents certainty and to some extent neglecting the relative nature of knowledge. Positivism can be seen as using scientific methods to uncover logic and laws human behavior and social interactions. Positivism as scientific ideal underlines the aim for certainty that is subject to rigor and excelling with methods. Even the positivistic approach is free of prior value judgement, it also contains some normative undertones.

Positive research often describes and explores yet remaining without judgement of desired state of the world. On the other hand, positivistic approach delivers confirmation and assurance, Even it does not neglect relative nature of the knowledge it suggests the value of exploration of the ultimate truth. Positivism can be seen as a tendency to research the nature of things without value judgement or burden of encultured behaviour.

Pros and cons of normative research

The most evident gain of normative research is the motivation by providing actionable research results. Often normative research, seeks to change the current status or improve the state of things. It therefore requires an assessment of the present state of things, to determine the implications for development. By definition, evaluation is only possible if it acknowledges, that it is a self-construct and thus holds biases. In general normative research aims to provide recommendations, rules, advice, artefacts or designs to enhance the state of the world. It also offers a set of do’s and don’ts, which can be implemented. 

Pros and cons of positive research

Positive research is somewhat free from value bias as it prescribes to the ‘general’ laws of behaviour. It is not purely contextual but maintains objectivity through the recognition of conditions and determinants. It also provides a point of reference for situational normative behavior. It evaluates the conditions as well as forecasts the outcomes without judgment.

chevron-down References

Armstrong, D.M. (1973) . Belief, Truth, and Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Gettier, E. L. (1963), Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? Analysis, Vol. 23, pp. 121–123 (1963). doi:10.1093/analys/23.6.121

Markie, P (2021) . Rationalism vs. Empiricism. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University

• print Print

Jussi Okkonen

Jussi Okkonen, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Information Technology and Communication of Tampere University (FI). Okkonen’s research interests lie in socio-technical environments and digital literacy. He has recently done research on educational technology, children and youth in socio-technical context, and impact of AI.

The team at the Faculty of Information Technology and Communication of TUNI identifies, develops and provides access to resources on qualitative, quantitative and mixed research methods together with evaluating their validity in research practice. These resources are collated in the CO:RE methods toolkit that cross-references resources from the evidence base, the compass for research ethics, and the theory toolkit, to give users tools to apply to their individual research contexts.

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3 Normative Methodology

Russell Hardin is Professor in the Wilf Family Department of Political Science, New York University.

• Published: 05 September 2013
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This article shows that one should start social science inquiry with individuals, their motivations, and the kinds of transactions they undertake with one another. It specifically discusses four basic schools of social theory: conflict, shared-values, exchange, and coordination theories. Conflict theories almost inherently lead into normative discussions of the justification of coercion in varied political contexts. Religious visions of social order are usually shared-value theories and interest is the chief means used by religions to guide people. Individualism is at the core of an exchange theory. Because the first three theories are generally in conflict in any moderately large society, coercion is a sine qua non for social order. Coordination interactions are especially important for politics and political theory and probably for sociology, although exchange relations might be most of economics, or at least of classical economics. Shared-value theory may possibly turn into the most commonly asserted alternative to rational choice in this time as contractarian reasoning recedes from center stage in the face of challenges to the story of contracting that lies behind it and the difficulty of believing people actually think they have consciously agreed to their political order.

Modern political philosophy begins with Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, and others who train their focus on the individual and on interactions between individuals. The purpose of politics in their view is to regulate the behavior of individuals to enable them to be peaceful and productive. They treat of behavior and virtually ignore beliefs. They are interested in social order and its maintenance, not in the salvation of the soul, the creation of a heavenly city, or the ideal society. Hobbes’s (1642; 1651) great works of political theory, De Cive and Leviathan , were published in the first and last years, respectively, of the English Civil Wars, one of the most devastating periods of English history. Against this background, his view of the role of political theory is the explanation and therefore the enablement of social order, a focus that continued through Locke and Hume, although they are increasingly concerned with the working of government and the nature of politics. If any of these three theorists were concerned with “the good society,” they would have meant a society that is good for individuals. In an important sense, they are normatively behaviorist. That is to say, they attempt to explain rather than to justify political institutions and behavior. They are also forerunners of the modern self-interest and rational-choice schools of social thought. They are normative theorists only in the very limited sense of explaining what would get us to better states of affairs, in the sense of those states’ being de facto in our interest or better for us by our own lights. From this vision, the main contemporary approaches to explanation derive. In contemporary normative social theory, there are three main schools—conflict, shared-value, and exchange theories—based, respectively, on interests, shared values, and agreement (as in contractarian theories of both explanation and justification).

The first move in much of normative social science, especially in normative political theory, is to establish a background of self-interested motivation and behavior. Indeed, the transformation of political theory by Hume in his Treatise of Human Nature is based on an account of normative issues that is not specifically a theory of those issues and how we should deal with them but is rather an account of how we see them and why we see them that way ( Hume 2000 [1739–40], book 3; Hardin 2007 , ch. 5 ). His account is essentially psychological. The way we see normative issues is to fit them to our interests. In keeping with their program to explain, not to justify, Hobbes and Hume are naturalists. Their explanations are grounded in the assumption that people are essentially self-interested and that their actions can be explained from this fact. From their time forward, the development of normative social science has depended heavily on the assumption that individuals are relatively self-interested.

1 Self-interest

One need not suppose that people are wholly self-interested, but a preponderance or a strong element of self-interest makes behavior explicable in fairly consistent terms. Consistency of individual motivations is central to the task of general explanation of behavior. Many normative or moral theories might yield explanations of behavior but only idiosyncratically, so that we can explain much of your behavior and commitments but not those of your neighbor. No standard moral theory comes close to the general applicability of self-interest as a motivation for large numbers of people.

Hobbes and Hume are not alone in this view. Bernard Mandeville, 1 Adam Smith, and Alexis de Tocqueville, among many others, conclude that self-seeking behavior in certain very important and pervasive contexts promotes the good of society in the—to them—only meaningful sense, which is promoting the good of individuals. Consider Tocqueville (1966 [1835 and 1840], ii, ch. 8 ) who, with his characteristic clarity, justifies the interest-based normative program in a forceful chapter on “Individualism and the doctrine of self-interest properly understood.” He says that the doctrine of self-interest properly understood is the best moral theory for our time . He comes from a background in which French Catholic virtue theory was the dominant strain of moral judgment. He notes that in the United States, where he famously toured as de facto an ethnographer, there was no talk of virtue. Clearly he approves of this fact. In virtue theory, he says, one does good without self-interest. The American trick combines interest and charity because it is in the interest of each to work for the good of all, although they need not know or intend this. This is Smith’s argument from the invisible hand and it leads us to a resolution of the logic of collective action in the provision of large-scale public benefits. I seek my own good, you seek yours, and all together we promote the good of all. The happiness of all comes from the selfishness of each (ii. 376). Recall one of Smith’s most quoted aphorisms, that it is “not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest” ( Smith 1976 [1776], 1.2.2, 26–7). Arguably, Tocqueville’s central thesis is that, if you give democratic peoples education and freedom and leave them alone, they will extract from the world all the good things it has to offer ( Tocqueville 1966 [1835 and 1840], ii. 543). This is, of course, a collective achievement based on individually motivated actions.

This view is not strictly only a modern vision. Aristotle states a partial version of it, in passing, in his praise of farmers as especially good citizens for democracy: “For the many strive for profit more than honor” ( Politics , 1318b16–17). Aristotle says this with approval. If his claim were not true, he supposes that society would not cohere, because it is founded on the generality and stability of the motivations of farmers, whose productivity is fundamentally important for the good of all in the society. The scale of the contributions of farmers to the good of society remained relatively constant from the time of Aristotle until roughly two or three centuries ago in Europe when industrial production began to displace it as the main locus of employment. Today 2 or 3 percent of the workforce in the advanced economies suffices for agricultural production. It is an extraordinary fact that all of our main strands of political theory originate in the earlier era, when social structure was radically different.

A slight variant of the Aristotle–Hobbes–Hume view of the role of interest in the ordering of society is an assumption at the foundation of John Rawls’s theory of justice. Rawls (1999 , 112 [1971, 128]; see also Hardin 2003 , 3–8) supposes that citizens are mutually disinterested . By this he means that my assessment of my own benefits from the social order established under his theory of justice does not depend on your benefits from that order. For example, I do not envy you and you do not envy me. Our social order has been established as just and there is no alternative that is similarly just and that would better serve my interests. 2 If we are mutually disinterested, then we have no direct concern with the aggregate outcome, but only with our own part or share in that outcome. This is a fundamentally important assumption in Rawls’s theory, without which the theory would not go, but it is not often addressed in the massive literature on that theory. But even that theory, put forward in a nonagricultural world, builds on earlier visions of society.

2 Three Schools of Social Theory

One can do normative political analysis without starting from rational choice principles and, indeed, such analysis is often done as an alternative to rational choice theories. But one cannot do very systematic, coherent political analysis without a clear delineation of basic principles on which the analyses are to be built. So for example, there are three grand theories—or schools of theory—on social order, each of which is based on a systematic set of theoretical assumptions. First are conflict , as represented by Thrasymachus (in Plato’s Republic ), Karl Marx, and Ralf Dahrendorf (1968 ; also see Wrong 1994 ). Hobbes is also commonly considered strictly a conflict theorist, but I think that this is wrong; that, as noted below, he is largely a coordination theorist. Conflict theories commonly turn to coercion or the threat of coercion to resolve issues. Hence, they almost inherently lead us into normative discussions of the justification of coercion in varied political contexts ( Hardin 1990 ). They can also lead to debates about the nature of power and compliance as in Machiavelli, Marx, Gramsci, Nietzsche, or Foucault.

Second are shared-value theories , as represented by John Locke, Ibn Khaldun, and Talcott Parsons (1968 [1937], 89–94). Religious visions of social order are usually shared-value theories and, as Tocqueville notes, interest is the chief means used by religions to guide people. Religious and theological theories and justifications once held sway but are now of little import in Western social science. Now religious commitments and beliefs are merely social facts to be explained. Many contemporary shared-value theorists in the social sciences in the West are followers of Parsons. These followers are mostly sociologists and anthropologists—there are virtually no economists and there are now few political scientists in the Parsons camp. There was a grand Parsonian movement in political science from the 1950s through some time in the 1970s. The most notable and creative example of this movement is the civic culture of Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba (1963) and others. Although there is not much of a grand-synthesis view of norms that remains in political science or even in much of sociology, there are still ad hoc theories of norms. For example, political scientists often explain the voting that occurs as public spirited, altruistic, or duty driven. And there is today a rising chorus of political scientists who take a more or less ad hoc stand on the importance of a value consensus, as represented by those concerned with the supposed declines in trust, family values, and community (e.g. Putnam 2000 ).

Contractarians in social theory are typically shared-value theorists. This may sound odd, because legal contracts typically govern exchanges. But social contract theory requires a motivation for fulfilling one’s side of a contractual arrangement and a social contract is not analogous to a legal contract in this respect. Because there is no enforcer of it, a social contract is commonly therefore seen to require a normative commitment—essentially the same normative commitment from everyone (see Hardin 1999 , ch. 3 ). For example, in the view of Thomas Scanlon (1982 , 115 n.; 1999; see further Barry 1995 and Hardin 1998 ) the motivation to keep to a social contract is the desire to achieve reasonable agreement on cooperative arrangements. This appears to entail a straightforward factual issue about the existence of this desire. Is this desire prevalent? Because of the difficulty of defining reasonable agreement, it seems unlikely. The methodological task of demonstrating the prevalence of such a desire seems simple enough, but the reasonable agreement theorists have not bothered to test their assumption. It seems very unlikely that there is such a desire, so that Scanlon’s contractualism cannot undergird social cooperation or, therefore, social theory. Contracts for ordinary exchanges are backed by various incentives to perform, especially by the threat of legal enforcement, by the interest the parties have in maintaining the relationship for future exchanges, or in maintaining their reputations. Social contracts have none of these to back them.

And, third, there are exchange , which are relatively more recent than the other two schools, with Bernard Mandeville and Adam Smith among the first major figures, and, in our time, George Homans and many social choice theorists and economists. 3 At the core of an exchange theory is individualism. Tocqueville (1966 [1835 and 1840], vol. ii. 506–08), writing in the 1830s, says “individualism” is a new term. It turns on the calm feeling that disposes each to isolate himself from the mass and to live among family and friends. It tends to isolate us from our past and our contemporaries. The rigorous, uncompromising focus on individuals is a distinctive contribution of Hobbes, the contribution that puts us on the track to modern political philosophy and that makes Hobbes at least partially an exchange theorist. For him, the assumption of individualism is de facto a method for focusing on what is central to social order. It is also, of course, a descriptive fact of the social world that he analyzes. It becomes Tocqueville’s assumption in analyzing American society two centuries later, when it is also the basis for criticizing his own French society. He says that, at the head of any undertaking, where in France we would find government and in England some territorial magnate, in the United States we are sure to find an association (513). These associations are made up of individuals who voluntarily take on their roles; they are not appointed to these roles, which are not part of any official hierarchy. Tocqueville has a forceful method: go to the core of any activity to explain the form of its successes and failures. And when we do that for America in the 1830s, we find individuals motivated by their own interests. When we do it for France, we find government agents and regulations. Anyone who has lived in both France and the United States might reasonably conclude that the two societies have moved toward one another in this respect, but that they still differ in the way Tocqueville finds nearly two centuries ago.

Note that these three sets of assumptions—individualism, self-interest, and the collective benefits of self-seeking behavior—are the assumptions of both positive and normative theories. This should not be a surprise because the world we wish to judge normatively is the same world we wish to explain positively. Moreover, all of the normative theories we might address are likely to have positive elements that we could analyze from the perspective of relevant positive theories. For example, to argue persuasively for shared-value theories we must be able to show that there are shared values. This is often not done very well or even at all, but is merely assumed as though it were obvious. A fully adequate normative theory must therefore fit both positive and normative assumptions and must depend on both positive and normative methodologies. Often this must mean that the methodological demands of normative claims are more stringent than the methodological demands of any parallel positive claims. Normative claims must pass muster on both positive and normative methodological standards.

Given the pervasiveness of shared-value theories in contemporary social and political theory, we should consider whether there are shared values of the relevant kind and force. This is, again, a positive issue and it should not be hard to handle. Once we establish that there are or are not relevant shared values, we can go on to discuss how they are constructed and what implications they might have for social theory, actual institutions, and political behavior.

3 Shared Values

Suppose it is established that we do share some important set of political values, X, Y, and Z. What follows? Our shared values do not directly entail any particular actions because acting on those values might conflict with our interests in other things, and acting on our shared values might cost you heavily enough to block you from acting in our common interest. Superficially it might seem that interest, for example in the form of resources, is merely another value, or rather a proxy for values that could compare to X, Y, and Z. But this will commonly be wrong. For an important political example, suppose we are all or almost all patriotic. Your patriotism benefits me if it motivates you to act in certain ways, but acting in those ways likely has costs for you, so that although we share the value of patriotism we may not have incentives to act in ways that benefit each other. Given that we share the value of patriotism to a particular nation, we might want to ask on what that value commitment is founded. It could be founded on interests, identity, or bald commitment to our nation, right or wrong. It might not be easy to establish which, if any, of these plays a role. Tocqueville supposes that patriotism founded on interests must be fragile, because interests can change ( Tocqueville 1966 [1835 and 1840], i. 373). We might also suppose that our interests in patriotism here could be compromised in favor of other interests.

Perhaps our commitment turns on our ethnic identity, as is commonly claimed for nationalist commitments. There can typically be no compromise on ethnicity and the costs of defending one’s ethnicity may be discounted heavily for that reason. You cannot trade half of your ethnic commitments for half of mine. Of course, the next generation might do exactly that. They might marry across our ethnic divide, engage in joint corporate activities, and have friendship groups that straddle ethnic lines. Sadly, such actions and even merely their possibility might be sources of deep conflict between our groups. On economic issues, there commonly is some possibility of compromise that lets the parties split differences to allow all to gain from staying involved with each other, even cooperating together and coordinating on many fundamentally important activities. This is, for Smith and many other political economists, a major unintended benefit of the market for exchange.

Contract or agreement theories suggest a need or at least an urge to explain why we agree, and the answer often must be that it is in our interest to agree on some particular social arrangement or that we share the values on which we are to contract. Hence, agreement theories threaten to reduce to simple interest or to shared-value theories or explanations. But even then they have a strength that shared-value theories often lack. Once your interests, pro and con, are established, there is likely no further need to explain why you act in relevant ways. Motivations and interests tend to collapse into each other if they are fully defined. Unless someone’s commitment to some value translates in standard terms into their interests (hence, the odd locution “can be cashed out” as), we still face the task of determining how that value commitment will motivate action, if at all. In sum, interest is both a value and a motivation. Shared-value theories must first establish what values are shared and then give an account of how commitment to them motivates action. Both steps here may be very difficult. Indeed, each of these steps might challenge some of our standard methodologies for establishing social and psychological facts.

An important subcategory of shared-value theory is the body of norms that regulate our behavior in social interaction. The category of norms is much broader than that for social order, but it is these that matter for political theory. We may parse the category of norms in many ways. The most common move is simply to list many norms and to apply them to particular problems, as with the putative norms on voting. In a far more systematic approach, Edna Ullmann-Margalit (1977) lays out several categories as based on the game-theoretic structure of the underlying problems that the norms help to resolve or at least address. Her deep insight is that norms must handle the strategic structure of the incentives people face if the norms are to get them to behave cooperatively. Her modal strategic categories are prisoner’s dilemma, coordination and unequal coordination, and conflict. Some of Ullmann-Margalit’s norms help us, respectively, to coordinate, to cooperate, or to manage conflict in these contexts.

It is striking that Ullmann-Margalit’s book from only four decades ago is among the first serious efforts to bring strategic analysis systematically to bear on normative theory and problems. Indeed, we might well speak of the strategic turn in social theory, a turn that has been heavily influenced and even guided by game theory, which was invented roughly during the Second World War ( Neumann and Morgenstern 1953 [1944]). That turn has influenced both positive and normative theory. There are standard norms that address all of Ullmann-Margalit’s strategic categories and those norms have vernacular standing in ordinary life contexts. But Ullmann-Margalit shows that many norms are strategically related and thereby shows how they are grounded in incentives. In political theory, the norms that most interest us are those that regulate social order ( Hardin 1995 , chs. 4 and 5 ).

4 A Fourth Theory: Coordination

Because there generally is conflict in any moderately large society, coercion is a sine qua non for social order. But it is only one sine qua non. Two others are exchange and coordination. All are needed because the strategic structures of our potential interactions are quite varied, and we need devices for handling all of these reasonably well if we are to have desirable order and prosperity. In a subsistence agricultural society, coercion might be very nearly the only point of government. But in a complex society, coercion seems to be a minor element in the actual lives of most people, although the threat of it might stand behind more of our actions than we suppose. In such a society, exchange and coordination loom very large, radically larger than in the subsistence economy.

The three grand, broadly established schools of political thought—conflict, shared values, and agreement or exchange—are right about particular aspects of social order. But they miss the central mode of social order in a complex modern society, which is coordination ( Lindblom 1977 ; Schelling 1960 ). We do not necessarily share values but we can coordinate to allow each of us to pursue our own values without destructive interaction or exchange. To grossly simplify much of the problem of social order in a complex society, consider the relatively trivial problem of maintaining order in traffic on roads. There are two main coordinations at stake. The first is the obvious one of merely getting all drivers to drive on the same side of the road—either all on their left or all on their right—in order to prevent constant accidents and difficult problems of negotiating who gets to go first. The second is the problem of controlling the flow of traffic at intersections, for which traffic signals and signs are used when the traffic is heavy enough. Two striking things about the collection of drivers are that they are not genuinely in conflict and that they do not typically have to share any general social values in order for these coordinations to work well. Furthermore, there is no exchange that they can make to solve the problems arising from their interactions. I have my purposes, you have yours, and we want merely to avoid getting in each other’s way while going about our own affairs. The seeming miracle is that often we can do all of this spontaneously. For example, some coordinations can be managed by relying on focal points ( Schelling 1960 ) that make a particular solution obvious or on institutions, which can define a resolution. Getting everyone to drive right is an instance of the first of these devices; managing traffic flow at intersections is an instance of the second.

As are conflict theories, coordination is an interest theory. Hobbes is perhaps the first major coordination theorist. 4 But David Hume (2000 [1739–40], book 3), Adam Smith (1976 [1776]), and C. E. Lindblom (1977) see much of social order as a matter of coordinating the disparate interests of many people. A shared-value theory could be essentially a coordination theory if the values motivate coordinated actions, but coordination does not require broadly shared values . This is the chief reason why coordination is fundamentally important in modern social and political theory. Shared-value theories typically make adherence to relevant values a matter of overriding one’s interests and, when put into political power, overriding the interests of many citizens. For example, I help to defend my community despite the risks that such effort entails, I submerge my identity in the collective identity (whatever that might mean), or I vote despite the burden to me of doing so and despite the virtual irrelevance of the effect of my vote on my interests. But against the strenuous and implausible view of Parsons, a collection of quite diverse pluralists can coordinate on an order for the society in which they seek their diverse values. In sum, coordination interactions are especially important for politics and political theory and probably for sociology, although exchange relations might be most of economics, or at least of classical economics. In a sense, the residual Parsonians are right to claim that conflict relations are not the whole of political order, although not for reasons that they might recognize. They are right, again, because the core or modal character of social order is coordination.

While at a commonsense level the problem of coordination is typically not difficult to grasp, its general significance and its compelling nature have not been central understandings in the social sciences or in political philosophy. Hobbes had a nascent coordination theory in his vision of our coordinating on a single sovereign ( Hardin 1991 ). Had he been more supple in his views, he might have recognized that the dreadful problem of civil war in his England was a matter of multiple coordinations of various groups in mortal conflict with each other. There was no war of all against all but only war between alternative factions for rule, each of which was well enough coordinated to wreak havoc on the others and on nonparticipant bystanders. Hume made the outstanding philosophical contribution to understanding coordination problems, but his insights were largely ignored for two centuries or more after he wrote and they are still commonly misread. 5   Thomas Schelling (1960 , 54–8) gave the first insightful game-theoretic account of coordination problems and their strategic and incentive structures. But their pervasive importance in social life is still not a standard part of social scientific and philosophical understanding.

In social life, coordination occurs in two very different forms: spontaneously and institutionally. We can coordinate and we can be coordinated as in the two-part coordination of traffic. In Philadelphia in 1787 a small number of people coordinated spontaneously to create the framework to organize the new US nation institutionally. Once they had drafted their constitution, its adoption was beneficial to enough of the politically significant groups in the thirteen states that, for them, it was mutually advantageous ( Hardin 1999 ). Therefore, they were able to coordinate spontaneously on that constitution to subject themselves to being coordinated institutionally by it thereafter. This is the story of very many institutional structures that govern our social lives, and the more often this story plays out in varied realms, the more pervasively we can expect to see it carried over to other realms and to organize our institutions, practices, and even, finally, our preferences, tastes, and values. As it does so, it might be expected then to drive out or to dominate alternative ways to create and justify our social organization.

5 Concluding Remarks

In the era of Hobbes, writing during the English Civil War, the first focus of political theory was social order in which individuals might survive and prosper. Success in managing order has pushed worry about social order out of its formerly central place, even virtually out of concern altogether for many political theorists. The meaning of justice has changed to match this development. Through Hume’s writings, justice is commonly conceived as “justice as order,” as in Henry Sidgwick’s (1907 , 440) somewhat derisive term. This is more or less the justice that legal authorities and courts achieve in the management of criminal law and of the civil law of contracts and property relations. By Sidgwick’s time, it begins to be conceived as, or at least to include, distributive justice, as in the theory of John Rawls (1999 [1971]). Hume and John Stuart Mill (1977 [1861]) also shift the focus toward the institutions of government, which in large modern societies entails representative government. This move brings back classical and Renaissance political thought. It also makes great demands on causal understandings and therefore on positive theory and methodology, again tying the normative and the positive tightly together in a single account. Rawls’s theory also requires massive positive understandings when he says that now the task is to design institutions capable of delivering distributive justice, a task that he leaves to others, who have so far generally failed to take it up. Rawls’s and Hobbes’s theories are relatively holistic and general; Hume’s and Mill’s are relatively piecemeal and specific. Perhaps no methodology gives us serious entrée to handling holistic social and political theory at the level and scale required by Hobbes and Rawls. Eventually, therefore, we must want to break down the institutional moves entailed by Rawls’s theory to make them piecemeal and manageable.

It is an interesting fact that normative methodologies have changed substantially over the past several decades. Methodologies in many fields of social theory and explanation have been refined extensively during that period, especially under the influence of rational choice and game theory but few if any of them have been dropped or developed de novo . Today’s three leading normative methods have come into their own during that period, so much so that it is hard to imagine what normative theories would be like today without those methods driving their articulation and refinement. Developments have not been equally dramatic in all three methods. Two of the methods, shared-value and contractarian arguments, threaten to be narrowed down to use by academic moral theorists with little resonance beyond that narrow community. Any method that becomes as esoteric as much of contemporary moral theory has become is apt to be ignored and even dismissed by the overwhelming majority of social theorists as irrelevant. That would be a profoundly sad separation of normative from positive theory, the worst such separation in the history of social theory, worse than the separation of economic from utilitarian value theory wrought by G. E. Moore (1903 , 84) a century ago, when he literally took utility into the vacuousness of outer space.

The theorists who work in the normative vineyard often seem to strive more for novelty than for comprehensiveness or even comprehension. Great novelty cannot generally be a worthy goal for us in social theory. The occasional major novel invention, such as Hobbes’s all-powerful sovereign as a form of institutionally enforced coordination, Hume’s convention as a form of spontaneously enforced coordination, Smith’s classical economics, Vilfredo Pareto’s (1971 [1927]) value theory, John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern’s (1953 [1944]) game theory, or Schelling’s (1960) coordination theory takes a long time to be incorporated into the main stream of theory and explanation of social institutions and practices. A flood of supposedly novel contributions is apt to be ignored or openly dismissed. Creativity in social theory is not likely to depend on such major innovations except on relatively rare occasions. Most of the creativity we see is in the application of well-established innovations across many realms.

Over the past four or five decades, rational-choice normative theory, the third major branch of contemporary normative methodology, has become a vast program that increasingly leaves the other two branches behind in its scope and sheer quantity of work. This development is made more readily possible by the clarity and systematic structure of game theory and game-theoretic rational choice. Game theory and rational choice methodology are very well laid out and easily put to use. Perhaps at least partially because of that fact, rational choice methods are taking over normative theorizing and theories. Early steps along the way in this seeming conquest include Richard Braithwaite’s (1955) use of game theory in moral reasoning, David Lewis’s (1969) analysis of convention in the spirit of Hume, Ullmann-Margalit’s (1977) theory of norms, and a flood of other works from the 1980s on.

In this program, method and theory tend to merge. One might wonder whether this is a typical tendency for relatively developed theories and the methods successfully associated with them. Shared-value theory is perhaps becoming the most commonly asserted alternative to rational choice in our time as contractarian reasoning recedes from center stage in the face of challenges to the story of contracting that lies behind it and the difficulty of believing people actually think they have consciously agreed to their political order, as long ago noted by Hume (1985 [1748]). But it faces a harder task than rational-choice normative theory because it has barely begun at the basic level of establishing a set of demonstrably shared values other than own welfare. Own welfare is, of course, the shared value that shared-value theorists most want to reject, although one wonders how many of the most ardent opponents of that value as a general guiding principle in social theory would actually reject that value in their own lives.

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Mandeville’s subtitle is “Private Vices, Publick Virtues.”

There could be two equally qualified just orderings, in one of which I am better off than I am in the other. It does not follow that a society of people who are committed to justice would rank the one of these equally qualified orderings in which I am better off above the other, because someone else will be worse off in that ordering. Hence, there would be no mutual advantage move that would make both of us better off.

There are also many theories and assumptions, such as structural theories as represented by Marx and articulated by many structuralist sociologists in our time, that are much less broadly applicable, both positively and normatively.

Not all Hobbes scholars would agree with this assessment. For an argument for understanding him as a coordination theorist, see Hardin (1991) .

Hume’s arguments may have been overlooked because they are chiefly in a series of long footnotes in Hume (2000 [1739–40], 3.2.3.4 n–11 n).

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OPINION article

Normativity of predictions: a new research perspective.

• Institute of Philosophy, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

Introduction

One of the most interesting philosophical aspects of predictive processing (PP) is the normativity of predictive mechanisms and its function as a guide of action. In my opinion this framework provides us with good tools to describe and explain the phenomenon of normativity. It is possible to justify the thesis that explanations in the PP approach are normative in nature. They are like that because predictive mechanisms themselves are normative. By normative function of prediction I understand a feature of prediction which is constitutive ( Bickhard, 2003 ) for action control as well as for the structure and content of the world model that is internal to a given cognitive system. They are normative in the sense of possibly being wrong ( Bickhard, 2015a , b , 2016 ). Normative are also some properties of the environment. Both those factors are crucial for content and truth-value of representations. With no normativity, there is no error and it is hard to explain the possibility of misrepresentations. It means that predictions are also normative for action because they can be true (more probably in the Bayesian manner) or false (less probably in the Bayesian manner).

Predictive Processing Framework

In the PP framework ( Friston, 2010 ; Clark, 2013 , 2016 ; Hohwy, 2013 ), the main function of the brain (understood as a multilevel, hierarchical, and generative model) is to minimize prediction errors, i.e., any potential discrepancies between information from sensory input and expectations related to the source and nature of such information. This function is of key importance for the organism because, according to the PP framework, all perception serves the aim of ensuring that the organism operates efficiently in its environment: the brain keeps creating statistical predictions of what happens in the world. It predicts the current and future forms of information reaching the brain through sensory modalities. The predictions are hierarchically arranged and created at individual levels of the model. Thus, estimates made at different hierarchical levels relate to predictions present at other levels. More precisely, predictions impose a top-down structure on the bottom-up flow of information coming from the senses. Prediction errors are used by the model (at each level) to correct its current estimate of the input signal and generate the next prediction. The aim of low-level predictions is to clarify the spatial and temporal dimensions of incoming information. Predictions at higher levels of the model are more abstract. This framework suggests that the brain copes with making predictions by continuously estimating and re-estimating its own uncertainty ( Clark, 2016 , p. 57). What does it mean?

Estimations of uncertainty alter the impact of prediction errors. This function is directly related to so-called attention, i.e., a means of balancing the relations between top-down and bottom-up influences via precision, which is a measure of their estimated certainty. The greater the precision, the lesser the uncertainty ( Friston, 2010 ). In this approach, “uncertainty” means that a given piece of information may be described through probability distribution. Here, the best possible prediction is made by applying Bayes' Rule which describes the probability of a given hypothesis (prediction) based on the brain's prior knowledge of conditions that might be related to the incoming sensory signal (e.g., Hohwy, 2013 ; Harkness and Keshava, 2017 ). The Bayesian approach offers a rational solution to the problem of how the brain updates the generative model (together with the internal model of the world) on incoming sensory signals and the question of the hidden causes behind these signals.

Minimization of Free Energy

Minimization of free energy (in the informational-theoretical sense) consists in changing internal representations of the model in such a way as to approximate the posterior density of the causes of sensations ( Friston et al., 2010 ). This means that free energy is minimized when there is a change in predictions about the sources of statistical information obtained from sensory input. The change can be achieved by either (1) altering the properties of the model (changing adopted predictions)—perceptual inference; or (2) changing the environment through active inference, i.e., an action that modifies the state or causal structure of the world; thereby generating new sensory information. Perception reduces free energy by changing predictions, whereas action achieves the same by changing the information reaching the model. Therefore, the biological systems described by Friston should be interpreted in terms of active agents who minimize prediction errors with the use of a probabilistic generative model. It follows that the minimization of prediction errors serves a normative function in relation to the agent. First, it maintains a homeostatic balance; second, it obliges the agent to make predictions about the state of the world in order to learn the unknown parameters responsible for its motion by optimizing the statistical information coming from sensory input ( Friston et al., 2010 , p. 233).

This normative and abductive aspect of policy selection plays a key role for the interpretation of free energy minimization as approximate Bayesian inference or self-evidencing ( Hohwy, 2016 ). In other words, it speaks to the fact that uncertainty-reducing policies have to be selected via a process of Bayesian model selection. This in turn rests upon the capacity to entertain counterfactual hypotheses like “what would happen if I did that.” Hence, active inference and PP goes beyond homoeostasis and, possibly, becomes a purely personal inference ( Seth, 2015 ) 1 .

Normative Predictions

The issue of normativity is crucial for PP framework. Minimization of prediction errors directly implies “low-level” biological normativity. Friston connects it with the free energy principle (FEP) which suggests that all biological systems are driven to minimize information-theoretic “free energy,” which he understands as the difference between an organism's predictions about its sensory inputs and the sensations it actually encounters ( Friston, 2010 ; Friston et al., 2012a ). In this sense, FEP is a normative theory of action and perception, because it provides a well-defined objective function (variational free energy) that is optimized both by action and perception. The normative aspect of FEP is complemented with PP approach as a neuronally plausible implementation of this function ( Schwartenbeck et al., 2013 , p. 1). At higher levels of the model, normativity may be linked with (1) patterns of neural excitations based on predictions and (2) the role played by predictions in decision-making and action-control processes, among others, to minimize uncertainty in the environment 2 . The latter functionality is specifically important for our reflections and should be primarily related to active inference.

In Bickhard's opinion minimization of uncertainty alone is not enough to talk about normativity, because it is rather a “supposed consequence of the effect of prior evolutionary selection.” This means that the functioning of an organism is explained based on the existence of factual and casual conditions which minimize discrepancies between internally generated predictions and signals from sensory inputs ( Bickhard, 2016 , p. 264). In this sense, it is difficult to explain how and why an organism seeks value or avoids harm. It can be said that it does so for reasons of evolution or training, but this can easily be countered with the objection of the Dark Room Problem ( Friston et al., 2012b ; Sims, 2017 ; Klein, 2018 ). Friston et al. (2009) claims that highest level expectations are “built-in” to the organization of the whole organism. However, the adoption of such a hypothesis does not make it possible to finally explain the “normative” difference between successful action and some kind of error or “mistake,” because, from the point of view of the organization of the system, all such processes are just casual and factual.

In PP approach predictions and expectations are in some sense normative because of their key role in minimizing prediction errors. However, as Bickhard emphasizes, they only involve actual and causal processes. The key issue, therefore, is to differentiate relations between predictions and actions that are not only causal but also normative. Following Bickhard, it must be stated that to explain the normativity of functions we must demonstrate how this normativity emerges from the natural organization of the organism. By this I mean that it is necessary to refer not so much to the structure of a given system as to its actual interactions with the environment. Therefore, the normativity of prediction is less determined by its functional role in the generative model and the selection and management of actions than by its reference to relevant properties of the environment which, according to some researchers (e.g., Bruineberg and Rietveld, 2014 ; Bruineberg, 2017 ; Piekarski and Wachowski, 2018 ), is already structured. Due to the fact that the world is already “pre-structured,” it may present to the organism certain values of reward or punishment which cannot be reduced to log-evidence or negative surprise ( Friston et al., 2012a ).

Based on the hypothesis it has formulated, the cognitive system takes relevant action which is supposed to interfere with the causal structure of the world in a way that will make the hypothesis or prediction probable or true ( Clark, 2016 , p. 116). In this sense, a relevant prediction serves a specific normative function which should be understood in two ways: as primary normativity; and as normativity of mechanism.

The research conducted here hinges upon primary normativity. A pair of “prediction—active inference (action)” can be treated as a kind of conditional of the form “z If ‘prediction' (condition) then ‘action' (result).” The relationship between prediction and action, however, is not a typical causal relationship that we can write symbolically as “ If A, then B,” but the motivational relation “ If A, then B, C or D, but not E, F or G.” This still raises the following question: “why is dependence on normative predictions normative (functional) but not causal?” The full answer to this question will only be possible if we bear in mind that this dependence is constitutive for the interaction between an organism and its environment, which means that, on the one hand, it cannot be reduced to the structure of the organism or a cognitive system “armed” with a generative model and simple mechanisms of reinforcement or unsupervised learning ( Friston et al., 2009 ; Korbak, in preparation), and on the other hand, more importantly, it allows to make an error that will be significant from the point of view of the organism and not only the external observer assessing it ( Bickhard, 2016 , p. 263). In other words, predictions are normative because they refer not only to the need to minimize prediction errors or uncertainty, but also to the individual beliefs 3 or motivations that arise in the face of specific possibilities for action (affordances) that the environment offers to an individual organism. From this perspective, a possible error or wrong representation is of normative importance to the organism and not merely a potential result of specific causal processes. Normative involvement of predictions is also constituted by how they shape the causal transitions between contentful states and structured environment [in such a way that they accord to a normative Bayesian rule ( Shams et al., 2005 ; Kiefer, 2017 )].

For example: if I predict it will rain, then this prediction obliges me ( Friston, 2010 , p. 233) to take some action (which is not entirely arbitrary but determined by the nature of the prediction): I can stay at home, order a taxi or take an umbrella, but the prediction does not necessarily determine activities such as going to bed or watching TV (i.e., it might be difficult to justify these actions by referring to the prediction that it will rain as their reason What I do depends also on my beliefs, desires, or goals, which are relativized and conditioned by the specific properties of the world. In this sense, predictions should be considered as normative. It means that actions are selected based on some conditional potentiality and relations. “Such conditional relationships can branch—a single interaction outcome can function to indicate multiple further interactive potentialities—and they can iterate—completion of interaction A may indicate the potentiality of B , which, if completed, would indicate the potentiality of C , and so on” ( Bickhard, 2009 , p. 78) 4 .

It is important to add that the cognitive system still predicts the form of sensory signals via active inferences (actions). Those depend on normative predictions which are at the same time verified by active inference. The dependence is not causal but functional (or normative, in my terms). How effective active inference is in minimizing prediction errors hangs on the selection of predictions and internal parameters of the model. The adaptive and cognitive success of an organism is the product of normative predictive mechanisms related to some aspects and features of the environment.

The normativity of prediction can be additionally justified as the normativity of a mechanism: a given mechanism is normative because it fulfills the conditions that must be met in order for a given action (cognitive or non-cognitive) to be affected. In other words, the statement that a given mechanism is normative simply means that it is possible for a given system X to be a mechanism for activity Y even though (e.g., at a given moment) X cannot perform Y ( Garson, 2013 ). This means that predictions are primarily normative as well as embodied in a mechanism that is itself normative.

In my opinion, the PP approach offers a brand-new framework for investigations into the problem of normativity. This possibility has been ignored in the current literature, but it is a legitimate object of further investigation. Further theoretical research is, therefore, warranted to determine the extent and nature of the interaction between predictive mechanisms and their normative functions.

Author Contributions

MP reviewed the literature, developed the theoretical stance, wrote the manuscript and prepared to publication.

Work on this paper was financed by the Polish National Science Center (Narodowe Centrum Nauki) MINIATURA Grant, under the decision DEC-2017/01/X/HS1/00165.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Joanna Rączaszek-Leonardi and two reviewers for all helpful comments.

1. ^ In these considerations I take the perspective of those researchers who claim that Friston's analyses are to some extent complementary with the PP approach ( Bruineberg and Rietveld, 2014 ; Hohwy, 2015 ; Seth, 2015 ; Bickhard, 2016 ; Kirchhoff et al., 2018 ).

2. ^ Technically, the minimization of uncertainty corresponds to minimizing expected free energy through action or policy selection. In terms of information theory, uncertainty is the divergence between the predicted and preferred (sensory) outcomes ( Friston et al., 2015 ).

3. ^ I use the notions of belief in the Bayesian manner as a probability distribution over some unknown state or attribute of the world. In this sense belief is a systemic prior with a high degree of abstraction, i.e. a high-level prediction concerning general knowledge about the world.

4. ^ It is important to refer here to the already mentioned concept of counterfactual hypotheses. The choice between these hypotheses is directly related to Bayesian inference to the best explanation and is crucially important for social cognition ( Palmer et al., 2015 ).

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Keywords: predictive processing, normativity, active inference, uncertainty, mechanism, environment, content, casuality

Citation: Piekarski M (2019) Normativity of Predictions: A New Research Perspective. Front. Psychol. 10:1710. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01710

Received: 25 February 2019; Accepted: 09 July 2019; Published: 23 July 2019.

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*Correspondence: Michał Piekarski, m.a.piekarski@gmail.com

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