Robert McNamara, drawing hard-won lessons from a career in high-level decision-making, observed, “Rationality alone will not save us” (Morris, Reference Morris2003). To promote human flourishing, rational judgment needs to be tempered by reasonableness. This is an insight recognized both by social contract theorists (e.g., Rawls, Reference Rawls1971, 1996; Scanlon, Reference Scanlon2000) and many laypeople (Grossmann Reference Grossmann and Eibach2024 & Eibach, Reference Grossmann and Eibach2021; Grossmann et al., Reference Grossmann, Eibach, Koyama and Sahi2020). Indeed, across a variety of cultural settings, laypeople recognize that rational judgment on its own would tend to prioritize self-interested goal maximization and neglect to consider the common good (Grossmann et al., Reference Grossmann, Eibach, Koyama and Sahi2020). Laypeople recognize reasonableness as a standard of sound judgment, distinct from rationality, in which judgment is regulated by moral norms and principles that are integral to contractualist ethics (Grossmann et al., Reference Grossmann, Eibach, Koyama and Sahi2020). Previous theory and research in the field of judgment and decision-making emphasized social-cognitive mechanisms that people use to approximate the rational standard of good judgment in everyday situations despite informational and cognitive constraints. Until now, there has been little systematic research investigating the social-cognitive mechanisms that people use to approximate the reasonableness standard. In the target article, Levine and colleagues address this gap in the literature by proposing a unifying computational framework that applies insights from social contract theory to develop an integrated model of social-cognitive mechanisms that enable people to make reasonable decisions in everyday situations of interdependent choice. Levine et al.’s framework provides a valuable, thought-provoking contribution to understanding some of the mechanisms of reasonable social cognition. However, we believe that a fuller account of reasonable social cognition may be developed by incorporating insights from other lines of research, in particular work on self-distanced reflection and inner dialogue.

Levine and colleagues note that from a contractualist perspective, the ideal approach to achieve reasonable outcomes in situations of interdependent choice involves some process of negotiation between the parties who have interests at stake in the interaction. However, such negotiations are not feasible in many everyday situations. To approximate this ideal, Levine et al. hypothesize that people may mentally simulate a negotiation process, imagining what they and the other parties would need to reach a mutually satisfactory outcome, or they generalize from their own stored knowledge of past relevant precedents where mutually satisfying outcomes were reached in similar circumstances. In these mental simulations people rely on cognitive shortcuts – heuristics that use consequentialist (utility-based) and deontological (rule-based) reasoning – to identify arrangements that would be satisfactory for themselves and the other parties who have something at stake. Importantly, this framework emphasizes that our moral rules are not static; they are flexible and subject to revision as new circumstances arise, reflecting a dynamic process of renegotiation under resource constraints.

Levine and colleagues thus provide useful insights into the social cognitive tools that enable people to approximate the reasonableness standard in situations where one’s own and others’ interests conflict. However, we believe the authors don’t go far enough. We posit that avoiding the temptation to prioritize self-interest over others’ interests could be considered a special case of a more general problem of preventing one value from dominating other values when they come into conflict in a given situation (Sibley, Reference Sibley1953). Indeed, a person may be considered unreasonable not just when they pursue self-interest at others’ expense, but also when they exhibit a fanatical commitment to certain values over others – e.g., the workaholic who sacrifices their own physical health and leisure in pursuit of career advancement. To approximate the standards of reasonableness in other situations with clashing values, people may need social cognitive tools beyond just the ability to mentally simulate negotiations. We propose that the simulation of negotiations could be considered a specific example of a more general set of mental tools for engaging in self-distanced reflection (Dorfman et al. Reference Dorfman, Oakes, Santos and Grossmann2021; Grossmann & Kross, Reference Grossmann and Kross2010; Kross & Grossmann, Reference Kross and Grossmann2012; Kross & Ayduk, Reference Kross and Ayduk2017).

In self-distanced reflection a person tries to look at the situation from the vantage point of a distanced observer. Such reflection may involve imagining how someone who is not involved in the situation would view the decision options that one is considering or imagining how those choices would be seen by one’s future self (e.g., asking “Can I live with this?”). Indeed, the process of thinking has often been represented as an internal “soundless dialogue” (Arendt, Reference Arendt1971, p. 185) in which one presents arguments for and against various positions to some kind of imagined audience (Billig, Reference Billig1996). When people make decisions, they often anticipate the need to justify their decisions and they engage in internal argumentation to construct a position that can be reasonably justified to others (Mercier & Sperber, 2011; Reference Mercier and Sperber2017). Such internal deliberation may create a kind of reflective distance from the immediate situation, which allows people to achieve a more balanced consideration of the relevant values at stake. It may force people to consider whether the choices that they are considering would be deemed “reasonable” by other members of their moral community, similar to Mead’s “generalized other” (1934/Reference Mead2015). Consistent with this analysis, when individuals are experimentally induced to talk to themselves about a personal dilemma this self-talk enables them to reason in the kind of wise, balanced ways that could be considered reasonable (Grossmann & Kross, Reference Grossmann and Kross2014; Grossmann, Oakes, & Santos, Reference Grossmann, Oakes and Santos2019; Grossmann et al., Reference Grossmann, Dorfman, Oakes, Santos, Vohs and Scholer2021).

In conclusion, we propose that the reflective distance achieved by simulating internal dialogue functions not merely to identify mutually beneficial solutions in contexts of interdependent choice. Rather, it functions more generally, to ensure that the decisions one makes in a variety of everyday contexts will bear up under the scrutiny of public reason.