Experimental Political Philosophy : Justice Judgments in the Hypothetical Society Paradigm

In this draft of a chapter forthcoming in a book on political psychology, we advocate blending thought experiments with laboratory experiments via a technique we call "the hypothetical society paradigm," which is designed to bring out the inferential advantages of both approaches while minimizing their disadvantages. We discuss the primary benefits of this technique and survey the principal empirical findings thus far obtained using this technique. We also discuss two categories of fruitful future applications of this and related techniques: (a) isolating sources of support and resistance to particular policy proposals with potentially profound societal implications; (b) helping to clarify boundary conditions for the applicability of competing and complementary psychological theories of justice