The MEVIR 2 Framework: A Virtue-Informed Moral-Epistemic Model of Human Trust Decisions

TL;DR

The MEVIR 2 framework offers a comprehensive model of human trust decisions, integrating procedural evidence processing, virtue ethics, and moral intuitions to explain polarization and inform trust-building strategies.

Contribution

It introduces 'Truth Tribes' with coherent trust lattices and distinguishes between truth bearers and truth makers, advancing understanding of epistemic diversity and polarization.

Findings

Case studies on vaccination and climate policy illustrate diverse moral trust configurations.

Framework explains polarization through trust lattices and moral epistemic profiles.

Provides normative guidance for designing systems to bridge epistemic divides.

Abstract

The MEVIR 2 framework innovates and improves how we understand trust decisions in our polarized information landscape. Unlike classical models assuming ideal rationality, MEVIR 2 recognizes that human trust emerges from three interacting foundations: how we process evidence procedurally, our character as epistemic agents virtue theory, and our moral intuitions shaped by both evolutionary cooperation MAC model and cultural values Extended Moral Foundations Theory. This explains why different people find different authorities, facts, and tradeoffs compelling. MEVIR 2's key innovation introduces "Truth Tribes" TTs-stable communities sharing aligned procedural, virtue, and moral epistemic profiles. These arent mere ideological groups but emergent clusters with internally coherent "trust lattices" that remain mutually unintelligible across tribal boundaries. The framework incorporates distinctions between Truth Bearers and Truth Makers, showing disagreements often stem from fundamentally different views about what aspects of reality can make propositions true. Case studies on vaccination mandates and climate policy demonstrate how different moral configurations lead people to select different authorities, evidential standards, and trust anchors-constructing separate moral epistemic worlds. The framework reinterprets cognitive biases as failures of epistemic virtue and provides foundations for designing decision support systems that could enhance metacognition, make trust processes transparent, and foster more conscientious reasoning across divided communities. MEVIR 2 thus offers both descriptive power for understanding polarization and normative guidance for bridging epistemic divides.