Increasingly, some products do not merely automate some piece of our lives but act as autonomous agents. When these technologies are not yet perfected, what are their risks? Here we explore the case of AI companion apps. Although these apps are designed for companionship rather than therapy, we...

Human drivers routinely make implicit tradeoffs between their selfish interests and the safety of passengers, as when they perform a rolling stop in order to reach their destination faster. Here I explore whether they are comfortable with autonomous vehicles (AVs) that encode similar selfish...

Consumers are exposed to a range of provocative moral transgressions online, as when consuming viral videos on social media or morally charged advertisements. Given limits on time and attention, consumers increasingly make moral evaluations in a few seconds or less, leading social media...

Firms change over time. Which changes are so damaging that consumers believe the firm’s very identity ceases to exist? We explored this question using Twitter data and eight experiments involving nearly 3,000 subjects. Consumers judged that moral deteriorations were particularly disruptive to...

Organizations face growing pressure from their consumers and stakeholders to take public stances on sociopolitical issues. However, many are hesitant to do so lest they make missteps, promises they cannot keep, appear inauthentic, or alienate consumers, employees, or other stakeholders. Here we...

We often make decisions with incomplete knowledge of their consequences. Might people nonetheless expect others to make optimal choices, despite this ignorance? Here, we show that people are sensitive to moral optimality: that people hold moral agents accountable depending on whether they make...