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Judgments of Morality in War: Commentary on Watkins (2020)

Watkins (2020) proposed an ambitious research program that aims to produce a descriptive map of the norms that govern behavior during war by studying laypeople’s judgments of right and wrong. Supposedly, laypeople’s moral judgments of conduct in war inform public policy and the laws of war (Watkins, 2020, pp. 233, 244) and can help determine how to hold people accountable for their actions in war (p. 244). To carry out this program, Watkins recommends researchers do three things: (a) base research questions on the just-war theory ( JWT) framework (Walzer, 2015); (b) treat peacetime scenarios and wartime scenarios as distinctly different moral contexts (Watkins, 2020, p. 242); and (c) study the perspective of so-called uninvolved third-party observers (Watkins, 2020, p. 232). Watkins offers a thoughtful overview of JWT-related psychological research and interesting directions for future research on this theory. However, as we attempt to explain here, a descriptive map of people’s judgments of conduct in war will not succeed if it is tethered to one particular normative theory of war such as JWT. A normative theory details specific standards and values (i.e., norms) and identifies what should and should not be done, in moral terms. JWT, like other normative theories, describes what moral judgments should guide war decision-making but not how people make moral judgments. Moral psychological researchers warn that research designs that rely on comparisons to normative standards are problematic for understanding moral judgments (Bartels et al., 2016). This is because there is no consensus about which normative theory provides the “right” answer or guidance on what the correct action in a scenario would be. In other words, there is no solid rational or empirical basis for selecting a normative theory as the primary basis of comparison. We agree that studying war can enrich our understanding of morality and moral judgments. Thus, we offer what we hope are constructive comments on psychological research on the morality of war. Contextual Differences Between War and Peace