Evidence map›Paper›PMID 41185417›Full record

ArticleTopics in cognitive science2026

Visual Moral Inference and Communication.

Warren Zhu, Aida Ramezani, Yang Xu

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Topics in cognitive science, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Warren ZhuDepartment of Computer Science, University of Toronto.
Aida RamezaniDepartment of Computer Science, University of Toronto.
Yang XuDepartment of Computer Science, Cognitive Science Program, University of Toronto.ORCID 0000-0002-8825-7497

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Humans can make moral inferences from multiple sources of input. In contrast, computational moral inference in artificial intelligence typically relies on language models with textual input. However, morality is conveyed through modalities beyond language. We present a computational framework that supports moral inference from natural images, demonstrated in two related tasks: (1) inferring human moral judgment toward visual images and (2) analyzing patterns in moral content communicated via images from public news. We find that models based on text alone cannot capture the fine-grained human moral judgment toward visual stimuli, but language-vision fusion models offer better precision in visual moral inference. Furthermore, applications of our framework to news data reveal implicit biases in news categories and geopolitical discussions. Our work creates avenues for automating visual moral inference and discovering patterns of visual moral communication in public media.

Indexed as

CommunicationJudgmentMoralsVisual PerceptionArtificial IntelligenceHumansArtificial intelligenceComputational moral inferenceComputer visionLanguage modelMultimodal fusion

Identifiers

PMID41185417
PMCPMC13102280

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.