The puzzle of wrongless injustice: Reflections on Kürthy and Sousa

The Database of Exemplars (DOE) account of moral cognition emerged in part to explain how wrongless harms could arise (Royzman & Borislow, 2022; henceforth, RB) in spite of being denied by most traditional models (Schein & Gray, 2018; Turiel, 1983; Shweder, 1997; Haidt, 2012). Herein, we defend this account against a set of results that have been claimed to disprove it (Kurthy & Sousa, this issue; henceforth, KS). We argue that DOE is in line with all the findings KS perceive as uniquely supportive of their own account (appraising an act as unjust engenders a judgment of wrong) while RB's findings (Royzman & Borislow, 2022, Studies 2 and 3) do challenge KS under varied conceptions of what it would take for an agent to be or appear unjust in his or her treatment of others, affirming that wrongless injustice is an empirical fact that one must strive to explain and that DOE helps us explain.