The United Nations condemns discrimination under the following definition: “Discrimination is any unfair treatment or arbitrary distinction based on a person’s race, sex, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability, age, language, social origin or other status.” Discrimination, so understood, is considered morally wrong. Many scholars argue that calling an act discriminatory communicates, by conceptual necessity, its wrongfulness. According to this view, DISCRIMINATION is a thick concept. In contrast, Descriptive View claims that DISCRIMINATION signifies a specific type of differential treatment. Proponents of the Descriptive View argue that related terms can be used in both a moralized and a descriptive sense.

Based on converging empirical evidence from four empirical studies, we argue that the folk concept of “discrimination” is a thick concept with an inseparable evaluative component. Two corpus analyses reveal a historical shift, with “discrimination” evolving from a neutral to an evaluative term. A cancelability test shows that denying the evaluative aspect of “discriminatory” leads to contradictions, indicating the communication of moral judgment by default. In a vignette study, cases often cited as examples of descriptive discrimination were judged either non-discriminatory or as morally wrongful. These results clearly support the Moralized View and propose “discrimination” as a thick concept.