Onurcan Yılmaz

Kadir Has University | KHU · Department of Psychology

Two central debates within Moral Foundations Theory concern (1) which moral foundations are core and (2) how conflict between ideological camps stemming from valuing different moral foundations can be resolved. Previous studies have attempted to answer the first question by imposing cognitive load on participants to direct them toward intuitive and...

Motivated by the dual-process model of the mind, recent research has tested the relationship between cognitive variables and sociopolitical attitudes. There are reasons to believe that religiosity and conservatism may be differentially predicted by analytic cognitive style (ACS) and cognitive ability (CA), respectively. We collected data with three...

Previous research revealed that inducing an intuitive thinking style led people to adopt more conservative social and economic attitudes. No prior study, however, has shown a causal effect of analytic cognitive style (ACS) on political conservatism. It is also not clear whether these cognitive-style manipulations influence stable or contextualized...

People’s large-scale cooperation with genetically unrelated people is widely assumed to lie beyond the scope of standard evolutionary mechanisms like kin selection and reciprocal altruism and to require mechanisms specific to human sociality. The emergence of the idea of being monitored by supernatural agents who can punish social norm violations h...

The relation between religious and moral thought has been difficult to unravel because of the multifaceted nature of both religion and morality. We chose to study the belief dimension of religion and the meta-ethics dimension of morality and investigated the relation between God-related thoughts and objectivist/subjectivist morality in three studie...

The study of moral judgements often centres on moral dilemmas in which options consistent with deontological perspectives (that is, emphasizing rules, individual rights and duties) are in conflict with options consistent with utilitarian judgements (that is, following the greater good based on consequences). Greene et al. (2009) showed that psychol...

Experiments comparing intuitive and reflective decisions provide insights into the cognitive foundations of human behavior. However, the relative strengths and weaknesses of the frequently used experimental techniques for activating intuition and reflection remain unknown. In a large-scale preregistered online experiment (N = 3,667), we compared th...

Actively Open-Minded Thinking (AOT) is a set of standards for rational thinking. Because the thinking of citizens and officials affects political decisions, good thinking is a moral virtue, like honesty. AOT standards have two functions: people try to follow their own standards; and they apply these standards to the evaluation of the thinking of ot...

Bu makalenin amacı, günümüzde bilişsel bilimlerin farklı alt disiplinlerinde sıklıkla çalışılan ahlak psikolojisi alanına kısa bir giriş sunmaktır. Bu amaçla, makalede ilk olarak ahlak psikolojisi alanının ne olduğu ve ahlakın bilişsel ve evrimsel kökenleri anlatılacaktır. Ardından alandaki güncel kuramsal tartışmalar özetlenecektir. Genel olarak m...

Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and str...

Previous research suggests that conservatives (right-wingers) tend to show more negativity bias than liberals (left-wingers) in several tasks. However, the majority of these studies are based on correlational findings and do not provide information on the cognitive underpinnings of this tendency. The current research investigated whether intuition...

COVID-19 pandemic has led to popular conspiracy theories regarding its origins and widespread concern over the level of compliance with preventive measures. In the current preregistered research, we recruited 1088 Turkish participants and investigated (a) individual differences associated with COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs; (b) whether such conspirac...

I discuss recent research suggesting that individual differences in cognitive style give rise to and explain religious and related supernatural and paranormal beliefs. To do so, I illustrate intuitive cognitive biases (e.g., anthropomorphism) underlying these beliefs and then review the accumulated evidence indicating that non-believers are more op...

We used composite face images perceived to have different levels of Dark Triad personality traits (narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) and asked participants to predict these target individuals' religious and political identities. In Study 1 (N = 550), Turkish participants rated faces with higher levels of perceived Dark Triad traits as...

Sonuçları tüm insanları ve çevreyi etkilemesine rağmen bilimsel olarak gerçekliği tespit edilmiş küresel ısınma gibi sorunların varlığı insanların bir kısmı tarafından reddedilmektedir. Bu konudaki alanyazına göre bilimsel sorunların varlığını reddetme ideolojik değerlendirmelerin etkisiyle şekillenebilmektedir. Cambpell ve Kay (2014) tarafından ge...

Religions promote cooperation, but they can also be divisive. Is religious cooperation intuitively parochial against atheists? Evidence supporting the social heuristics hypothesis (SHH) suggests that cooperation is intuitive, independent of religious group identity. We tested this prediction in a one-shot prisoner’s dilemma game, where 1,280 practi...

How can we maximize what is learned from a replication study? In the creative destruction approach to replication, the original hypothesis is compared not only to the null hypothesis, but also to predictions derived from multiple alternative theoretical accounts of the phenomenon. To this end, new populations and measures are included in the design...

How can we maximize what is learned from a replication study? In the creative destruction approach to replication, the original hypothesis is compared not only to the null hypothesis, but also to predictions derived from multiple alternative theoretical accounts of the phenomenon. To this end, new populations and measures are included in the design...

Drawing on the concept of a gale of creative destruction in a capitalistic economy, we argue that initiatives to assess the robustness of findings in the organizational literature should aim to simultaneously test competing ideas operating in the same theoretical space. In other words, replication efforts should seek not just to support or question...

The theory of morality as cooperation (MAC) argues that there are seven distinct and evolved universal moral foundations. Curry, Chesters, and Van Lissa (2019) developed a scale to test this theoretical approach and showed that the Relevance subscale of the MAC questionnaire (MAC-Q) fits data well, unlike the Judgment and full-form. However, an ind...

To follow trends in Turkish public opinion regarding past and current events as well as future expectations. Survey conducted with 1000 people, 18 years and older, in 26 provinces (İstanbul, Ankara, Konya, Bursa, Kocaeli, İzmir, Aydın, Manisa, Tekirdağ, Balıkesir, Adana, Antalya, Hatay, Zonguldak, Samsun, Kastamonu, Kayseri, Kırıkkale, Trabzon, Gaz...

Some of the recent studies suggested that people can make accurate inferences about the level of the Big Five and the Dark Triad personality traits in strangers by only looking at their faces. However, later findings provided only partial support and the evidence is mixed regarding which traits can be accurately inferred from faces. In the current...

Two opposing views define the debate on the moral principles underlying human behavior. One side argues a central role for five moral foundations (care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity), while the other argues that two of these (care, fairness) capture the essence of human moral concerns. In an experiment comparing these two views, Wright an...

The theory of morality as cooperation (MAC) argues that there are seven distinct and evolved universal moral foundations. Curry, Chesters, and van Lissa (2018) developed a scale to test this theoretical approach and showed that the Relevance subscale of the MAC questionnaire (MAC- Q) fits data well, unlike the Judgment and full form. However, an in...

Recent correlational and experimental studies demonstrate that differences in people’s thinking styles have an impact on their political attitudes. Whereas the dual process model of mind relates social conservative attitudes to intuitive (vs. analytical) thinking style, construal level theory links abstract (i.e., concrete) thinking style to politi...

COVID-19 pandemic has led to popular conspiracy theories regarding its origins and widespread concern over the level of compliance with preventive measures. In the current preregistered research, we recruited 1,088 Turkish participants and investigated (a) individual differences associated with COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs; (2) whether such conspira...

Previous studies consistently showed that analytic cognitive style (ACS) is negatively correlated with social conservatism, but there are mixed findings concerning its relation with economic conservatism. Most tests have relied on a unidimensional (liberal-conservative) operationalization of political orientation. Libertarians tend not only to iden...

Some of the recent studies suggested that people can make accurate inferences about the level of the Big Five and the Dark Triad personality traits in strangers by only looking at their faces. However, later findings provided only partial support and the evidence is mixed regarding which traits can be accurately inferred from faces. In the current...

Although the effect of religious belief on morally relevant behavior is well demonstrated, the reverse influence is less known. In this research, we examined the influence of morality on religious belief. In the first study, we used two samples from Turkey and the United States, and specifically tested the hypothesis that intergroup tolerance predi...

In the first half of the twentieth century, Wittgenstein claimed that philosophy is ended in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and that he found the solution to all questions previously asked in philosophy. He later traveled the world and changed his mind in the early stages of his work, especially after reading Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Psycholo...

The dual-process model of the mind predicts that religious belief will be stronger for intuitive decisions, whereas reflective thinking will lead to religious disbelief (i.e., the intuitive religious belief hypothesis). While early research found intuition to promote and reflection to weaken belief in God, more recent attempts found no evidence for...

We analyzed the content of “Friday Khutbas” delivered in Turkish mosques between January 2001 and December 2018 to test the prediction of moral foundations theory (MFT) literature that threat salience would lead to an increased endorsement of binding moral foundations. As societal‐level indicators of threat, we examined (1) historical data on the n...

Although numerous models attempted to explain the nature of moral judgment, moral foundations theory (MFT) led to a paradigmatic change in this field by proposing pluralist "moralities" (care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity). The five-factor structure of MFT is thought to be universal and rooted in the evolutionary past but the evidence is...

Recent research suggests that experimentally inducing an abstract (vs. a concrete) mind-set enhances political sophistication by increasing the consistency in political attitudes; it also enhances individualizing moral foundations and decreases binding moral foundations. However, the evidence is mixed regarding whether abstract mind-set increases o...

Much research on moral judgment is centered on moral dilemmas in which deontological perspectives (i.e., emphasizing rules, individual rights and duties) are in conflict with utilitarian judgements (i.e., following the greater good defined through consequences). A central finding of this field Greene et al. showed that psychological and situational...

Claims of universality for Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) require extensive cross-cultural validation. The present study aims to (1) develop Turkish versions of three instruments used to research MFT (MFQ, MFQL, MSQ); (2) assess the psychometric properties of the Turkish instruments; (3) test the assumptions of the theory against findings from the...

While previous studies reveal mixed findings on the relationship between analytic cognitive style (ACS) and right-wing (conservative) political orientation, the correlation is generally negative. However, most of these studies are based on Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies, and it is not clear whether this re...

There has been extensive research on how the Big Five personality traits are related to political orientation and endorsement of moral foundations. However, recent findings suggest that these relationships may not be cross-culturally stable. We argue that how much a culture is WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) could mo...

We analyzed the content of “Friday Khutbas” delivered in Turkish mosques between January 2001 and June 2018 to test the prediction of Moral Foundations Theory literature that threat salience would lead to increased endorsement of binding moral foundations. As societal-level indicators of threat, we examined (1) historical data on the number of terr...

Recent research suggests that experimentally inducing an abstract (vs. a concrete) mindset enhances political sophistication by increasing the consistency in political attitudes; it also enhances individualizing moral foundations and decreases binding moral foundations. However, the evidence is mixed regarding whether abstract mindset increases or...

Most studies on mate selection criteria have focused on women and rely on Western samples. In the present study, we tested both women's and men's mate preferences from evolutionary and cultural perspectives in a large, mostly Muslim sample (N = 1114). Results showed that (1) the relation between women's families’ income level and the income level t...

Although religiosity fosters some antisocial behaviors (e.g., support for suicide attacks), it is well-known that it also enhances in-group cooperation and prosociality (e.g., donating to charity). Supernatural punishment hypothesis suggests that the fear of punishment from an invisible, potent, and powerful supernatural agent can keep everyone in...

Toplum, kimlik ve siyasete sosyal psikolojik yakla- şımlar özel sayısının devamı niteliğinde olan bu sayı da ilki gibi Türkiye temelli görgül çalışmalardan oluşmak- tadır. Bu sayıda etnik ve ulusal kimlikler, vatandaşlık, kolektif eylem, değer yönelimleri, göçmenlere karşı tu- tumlar, sosyal temsiller ve AB’ye yönelik tutumlar gibi konularda görgül...

Moral foundations theory (MFT), while inspiring much empirical work, has been the target of both methodological and theoretical criticism. One important criticism of MFT is that, in its attempt to explain variability in political ideology, it only repackages the core motives (resistance to change and opposition to equality) and does not actually pr...

We aimed to understand which kind of arguments can play an important role for moral decision making. Specifically, first of all, we tested arguments of Kahane and Greene. In this way, we have examined whether utilitarianism is related to psychopathic tendencies or analytical thinking. Additionally, we also investigated whether people make moral dec...

Although lay notions in normative ethics have previously been investigated within the framework of the dual-process interpretation of the terror management theory (TMT), meta-ethical beliefs (subjective vs. objective morality) have not been previously investigated within the same framework. In the present research, we primed mortality salience, sho...

Religiosity has been found to be positively associated with belief in free will (FW) in the Western world. In the Muslim world, however, religiosity exhibits several characteristics that set it apart from the Western world, including an overemphasis on fate or divine predestination. We, therefore, investigated FW/determinism beliefs and different t...

As a possible Hilbert question in the scientific study of religion, this article tries to explicate one specific relation between religion and morality, viz., whether religion is necessary for morality. More specifically: How does the introduction of religion transform morality? The article operationalizes morality as normative and meta-ethical jud...

Analytic cognitive style (ACS) has usually been found to be negatively correlated with religiosity. Several recent studies, however, challenged this finding claiming, for example, that the presumed association is an artifact of the order of presentation of the ACS and religiosity measures or that ACS might be differently related to different types...

In recent years, there has been increasing research attention to cognitive style differences between liberals and conservatives. While some studies have found a negative relation between conservatism and analytic thinking tendency, others have not observed such a relation. None of these studies has measured the core motives underlying conservative...

The “conservatism as motivated social cognition” approach posits two core ideological motives underlying political conservatism across cultures. However, there is a scarcity of tests from non‐Western cultures, and much research has failed to distinguish between social and economic conservatism. Using a relatively large undergraduate sample from a n...

The psychological correlates of utilitarian choices in sacrificial moral dilemmas are contentious. In the literature, some research (Greene, et al., 2001) suggested that utilitarianism requires analytic thinking while other research (Kahane et al., 2015) showed that utilitarianism is correlated with psychopathy. In the present research, we looked a...

ABSTRACT In the Western literature, political ideology has recently been conceptualized with the help of two, presumably culture-free dimensions labeled “opposition to equality” and “resistance to change.” In the present research, we investigated whether these two dimensions can be used to construct a valid and reliable measure of political ideolog...

The psychological correlates of utilitarian choices in sacrificial moral dilemmas are contentious. In the literature, some research (Greene, et al., 2001) suggested that utilitarianism requires analytic thinking while other research (Kahane et al., 2015) showed that utilitarianism is correlated with psychopathy. In the present research, we looked a...

The present research investigated the reason for mixed evidence concerning the relationship between analytic cognitive style (ACS) and political orientation in previous research. Most past research operationalized ACS with the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), which has been criticized as relying heavily on numeracy skills, and operationalized polit...

Although Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) is claimed to be universally applicable, the data brought to bear in its support come from a self-selected population with mostly English-speaking participants. To the best of our knowledge, the theory has not been hitherto tested in a predominantly Muslim country with non-western moral and religious sensibil...

Political ideology is often characterized along a liberal–conservative continuum in the United States and the left–right continuum in Europe. However, no study has examined what this characterization means to young Turkish voters or whether it predicts their approach to morality. In Study 1, we investigated in two separate samples the relation betw...

Ahlak yüzyıllar boyunca felsefeciler tarafından derinlemesine tartışılıp incelenen bir kavram olmasına rağmen, günümüzde evrimsel yaklaşımların gelişmesiyle ampirik düzeyde açıklanabilir bir hale bürünmüştür. Bu yazıda özel olarak ahlakın ve genel olarak insan sosyalliğinin evrimsel sürecin bir ürünü olduğunu savunacağım.

Previous studies relating low-effort or intuitive thinking to political conservatism are limited to Western cultures. Using Turkish and predominantly Muslim samples, Study 1 found that analytic cognitive style (ACS) is negatively correlated with political conservatism. Study 2 found that ACS correlates negatively with political orientation and with...

Dual-process models of the mind, as well as the relation between analytic thinking and religious belief, have aroused interest in recent years. However, few studies have examined this relation experimentally. We predicted that religious belief might be one of the causes of prejudice while analytic thinking reduces both. The first experiment replica...

Scientific and religious thinking compete with each other on several levels. For example, activating one generally weakens the other. Since priming religion is known to increase moral behaviour and moral sensitivity, priming science might be expected to have the opposite effect. However, it was recently demonstrated that, on the contrary, science p...

This presentation was verbally presented in the National Congress of Students of Psychology in Turkey (in Turkish).

Dual-process models of the mind as well as the relation between analytic thinking and religion have aroused interest in recent years. However, few experimental studies emphasized the causes and consequences of this dual process in experimental settings. We present a three factor model in which analytic thinking might be one of the causes of religio...

The poster is about examining Turkish value categories’ relation with sociodemographic variables of Turkish sample.