Generalizing Kant's Distinction between Perfect and Imperfect Duties to Trust in Different Situations

Abstract

ABSTRACT Based on previous research that violations of perfect duties cause stronger correspondent inferences than violations of imperfect ones, the authors performed four experiments to generalize this effect to trust. In Experiment 1, abstract violations of perfect duties resulted in less trust than violations of imperfect ones for specific trust scenarios. In Experiments 2 and 3, the authors experimented with different levels of abstractness of the duty violations and obtained similar effects. Experiment 4 was concerned with generalizing further—from duty violations in one situation to trust in a different situation. Although mostly consistent with the findings from Experiments 1–3, the data also demonstrated partial generalization for violations of both perfect and imperfect duties.