Abstract
Can commitments be generated without promises or gestures conventionally interpreted as such? We hypothesized that people believe that commitments are in place when one agent has led a recipient to rely on her to do something, even without a commissive speech act or any action conventionalized as such, and this is mutual knowledge. To probe this, we presented participants with online vignettes describing everyday situations in which a recipient's expectations were frustrated by one's behavior. Our results show that moral judgments differed significantly according to whether the recipient's reliance was mutually known, irrespective of whether this was verbally acknowledged.
Highlights
Imagine that you and your friend Kate are planning to meet at the gym to work out together at 6 p.m
4 | STUDY 3 In Studies 1 and 2 mutual knowledge resulted from a technological device
We designed Study 3 to probe whether commitment can arise when minimal cues of mutual knowledge are present, such as when it results from a joint attentional process
Summary
Imagine that you and your friend Kate are planning to meet at the gym to work out together at 6 p.m. At 5.30 p.m. you discover that some other friends are meeting at the very same time for drinks, and you would prefer to join them, but you feel you cannot let your friend Kate down. At 5.30 p.m. you discover that some other friends are meeting at the very same time for drinks, and you would prefer to join them, but you feel you cannot let your friend Kate down We are often confronted with such choices in everyday life, and our decisions typically involve the feeling that we are committed.
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