A recent article in the journal "Social Justice Research" takes on the age old question of whether or not a refrigerator is evil. More specifically, the article covers the moral weight placed on objects.

Izzat Jarudi, Tamar Kreps, and Paul Bloom tackle this challenging task of differentiating between the moral significance of everyday objects, posessions, and idolized symbols. Their findings point to the fact that often our minds assing morality to people and events but not so quickly to objects. The authors examine why then does the American flag carry with it such terms as "dessecration" while a slip of paper is simply "thrown away."

Their study produced a few interesting findings. While the symbols of a nation or any other idolized object was somewhat assumed to carry a moral status--they found that more mundane objects like a refrigerator were seen to be morally positive. They also found that items correlated with an "evil" person such as Hitler's sweater would be seen as morally tainted or negative. In the second part of the study the authors found a positive link between age and political conservatism and the moral evaluation of such objects.

So is a refrigerator morally good? Is it evil? Is it simply, as a major question in the course asks--in the eyes of the beholder?

References:
http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/jumpstart.jhtml?recid=0bc05f7a67b1790e1445a09bddf429db8bdce9c3bf32d4e8c6f46ac33ff510af852f806ca2c1454d&fmt=C
Is a Refrigerator Good or Evil? The Moral Evaluation of Everyday Objects. Social Justice Research v. 21 no. 4 (December 2008) p. 457-69