Teaching Morality in a Plural Society

1998 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Mendus
Keyword(s):  
Moral Values ◽  
High Price ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Plural Society

THE QUESTION OF WHETHER MORAL VALUES CAN OR SHOULD BE taught has caused controversy and divided opinion almost since the beginning of time, and certainly since the very earliest days of philosophy. As is well-known, Socrates was condemned to death on charges of impiety and of corrupting the minds of the Athenian youth. Although the latter accusation was never fully spelled out, it was certainly connected with the perceived moral subversiveness of his philosophy and, in particular, with his denial that those who purported to teach moral values were qualified to do any such thing. This denial was construed by many as dangerous and as an attack on the moral foundations of Athenian society for which, famously, Socrates paid a high price.

scholarly journals Analyzing the Perceived Utility of Covid-19 Countermeasures: The Role of Pronominalization, Moral Foundations, Moral Disengagement, Fake News Embracing, and Health Anxiety

2021 ◽  
pp. 003329412110278
Author(s):  
Alessandro Ansani ◽  
Marco Marini ◽  
Christian Cecconi ◽  
Daniele Dragoni ◽  
Elena Rinallo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Structural Equation ◽  
Moral Disengagement ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Health Anxiety ◽  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Equation Model ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Perceived Utility

An online survey (N = 210) is presented on how the perceived utility of correct and exaggerated countermeasures against Covid-19 is affected by different pronominalization strategies (impersonal form, you, we). In evaluating the pronominalization effect, we have statistically controlled for the roles of several personal characteristics: Moral Disengagement, Moral Foundations, Health Anxiety, and Embracing of Fake News. Results indicate that, net of personal proclivities, the you form decreases the perceived utility of exaggerated countermeasures, possibly due to simulation processes. As a second point, through a Structural Equation Model, we show that binding moral values (Authority, Ingroup, and Purity) positively predict both fake news embracing and perceived utility of exaggerated countermeasures, while individualizing moral values (Harm and Fairness) negatively predict fake news embracing and positively predict the perceived utility of correct countermeasures. Lastly, fake news embracing showed a doubly bad effect: not only does it lead people to judge exaggerated countermeasures as more useful; but, more dangerously, it brings them to consider correct countermeasures as less useful in the struggle against the pandemic.

scholarly journals Politics at the Mall: The Moral Foundations of Boycotts

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 494-513 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Fernandes
Keyword(s):  
Positive Attitude ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Unfair Treatment ◽  
Corporate Activity ◽  
Political Actions ◽  
Do So

This article examines the motivations of liberals and conservatives to boycott and buycott. Nine studies demonstrate that although both liberals and conservatives engage in consumer political actions, they do so for different reasons influenced by their unique moral concerns: Liberals engage in boycotts and buycotts that are associated with the protection of harm and fairness moral values (individualizing moral values), whereas conservatives engage in boycotts and buycotts that are associated with the protection of authority, loyalty, and purity moral values (binding moral values). In addition, the individualizing moral values lead to a generally more positive attitude toward boycotts, which explains why liberals are more likely to boycott and buycott. Liberals’ greater concern for the suffering of others and unfair treatment makes them more likely to engage in consumer political actions. Conservatives, in turn, engage in consumer political actions in relatively rarer cases in which their binding moral values are affected by corporate activity.

scholarly journals How Moral Foundations Shape Public Approval of Nuclear, Chemical, and Conventional Strikes: New Evidence from Experimental Surveys

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michal Smetana ◽  
Marek Albert Vranka
Keyword(s):  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Chemical Weapons ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Military Force ◽  
The Public ◽  
Experimental Treatments ◽  
New Evidence

We present the results of two survey experiments on public support for nuclear, chemical, and conventional strikes. We examined how moral values of individuals interact with the approval of different kinds of strikes and with the effects of information about the ingroup and out-group fatalities. Our results show that while the public is more averse to the employment of chemical weapons than to the conduct of nuclear or conventional strikes, the overall relationship between strike approval and the individuals’ moral values does not differ across the three experimental treatments. In addition, we found that individuals’ scores in so-called “binding” moral values affect the sensitivity of the public for in-group fatalities. Findings of our paper contribute to the broader debates in the field about the strength and nature of the norms against the use of nuclear and chemical weapons, and about the role of morality in the public attitudes to the use of military force.

scholarly journals Edgcumbe. 2019 - The relationship between cognitive reflection and morality judgments are mediated by thinking dispositions.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Edgcumbe
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Cognitive Reflection Test ◽  
Thinking Dispositions ◽  
Intuitive Thinking ◽  
Cognitive Reflection ◽  
Experiential Thinking ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract:Performance on Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) is thought to predict moral judgments concerning the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ). This relationship is hypothesised to be mediated by the tendency toward thinking dispositions such as actively open-minded thinking (AOT), rational (REI-R) and experiential thinking (REI-E), and religiosity. The relationship between cognitive reflection, intuitive thinking and moral judgments with thinking dispositions are examined. As the MFQ measures five types of moral judgments which include ‘individualising values’ – harm and fairness, and ‘binding values’ - loyalty, authority and purity it was hypothesised that performance on these moral foundations would be influenced by thinking dispositions and cognitive reflection. Results indicate that the relationship between cognitive reflection and moral judgments were mediated differently by thinking dispositions. Religious participants and intuitive thinkers alike scored highly on binding moral values. Analytic thinkers and non-religious participants scored highly on individualising moral values. The data is consistent with religiosity and intuition being inherently linked and suggests that moral values are influenced by individual differences in thinking dispositions and cognitive style.

scholarly journals Your Face Mirrors Your Deepest Beliefs—Predicting Personality and Morals through Facial Emotion Recognition

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Peter A. Gloor ◽  
Andrea Fronzetti Colladon ◽  
Erkin Altuntas ◽  
Cengiz Cetinkaya ◽  
Maximilian F. Kaiser ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Emotional Response ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Learning System ◽  
Personality Characteristics ◽  
Facial Emotion Recognition ◽  
Facial Emotion ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
The Mind

Can we really “read the mind in the eyes”? Moreover, can AI assist us in this task? This paper answers these two questions by introducing a machine learning system that predicts personality characteristics of individuals on the basis of their face. It does so by tracking the emotional response of the individual’s face through facial emotion recognition (FER) while watching a series of 15 short videos of different genres. To calibrate the system, we invited 85 people to watch the videos, while their emotional responses were analyzed through their facial expression. At the same time, these individuals also took four well-validated surveys of personality characteristics and moral values: the revised NEO FFI personality inventory, the Haidt moral foundations test, the Schwartz personal value system, and the domain-specific risk-taking scale (DOSPERT). We found that personality characteristics and moral values of an individual can be predicted through their emotional response to the videos as shown in their face, with an accuracy of up to 86% using gradient-boosted trees. We also found that different personality characteristics are better predicted by different videos, in other words, there is no single video that will provide accurate predictions for all personality characteristics, but it is the response to the mix of different videos that allows for accurate prediction.

scholarly journals Designing for Engaging with News using Moral Framing towards Bridging Ideological Divides

2022 ◽  
Vol 6 (GROUP) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Jessica Z. Wang ◽  
Amy X. Zhang ◽  
David R. Karger
Keyword(s):  
Field Evaluation ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
Design Considerations ◽  
Design Iteration ◽  
Building Systems ◽  
Ideological Polarization ◽  
Collaborative Annotation ◽  
Moral Framing

Society is showing signs of strong ideological polarization. When pushed to seek perspectives different from their own, people often reject diverse ideas or find them unfathomable. Work has shown that framing controversial issues using the values of the audience can improve understanding of opposing views. In this paper, we present our work designing systems for addressing ideological division through educating U.S. news consumers to engage using a framework of fundamental human values known as Moral Foundations. We design and implement a series of new features that encourage users to challenge their understanding of opposing views, including annotation of moral frames in news articles, discussion of those frames via inline comments, and recommendations based on relevant moral frames. We describe two versions of features---the first covering a suite of ways to interact with moral framing in news, and the second tailored towards collaborative annotation and discussion. We conduct a field evaluation of each design iteration with 71 participants in total over a period of 6-8 days, finding evidence suggesting users learned to re-frame their discourse in moral values of the opposing side. Our work provides several design considerations for building systems to engage with moral framing.

scholarly journals The Ideal Romantic Partner Morality

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryo Oda ◽  
Kanako Hayashi
Keyword(s):  
Assortative Mating ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Mate Preferences ◽  
Romantic Partner ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Group Breeding ◽  
The Ideal

Assortative mating must be important for maintaining morality in a population, as moral principles are shared by most people in a group. Breeding by a pair with similar morals results in genetic and cultural transmission of these morals to the next generation, which maintains the moral norms of the group. In this study, we investigated absolute and relative mate preferences in relation to particular moral foundations, as represented by five general moral values. In both sexes, correlations between ratings for self and an ideal romantic partner on these factors were rather high (.67  ≤ r ≤ .84). Differences between self-ratings and ratings for the ideal romantic partner did not deviate significantly from zero for any of these factors.

Sentencing Policy and Social Justice

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Henham
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Social Utility ◽  
Financial Crime ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Irregular Migrants ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sentencing Policy ◽  
Public Disorder

The book argues that the promotion of social justice should become a key objective of sentencing policy. It rejects the idea that current forms of justice delivery can respond adequately to the social realities of social exclusion, discrimination, and poverty and their impact on criminality and victimization. Rather, it argues that a deeper understanding of the moral values that underpin punishment by the state is necessary, one that engages more convincingly with the justice needs and expectations of citizens and communities. It concludes that meaningful normative change is only possible where the moral foundations that underpin penal ideology and inform the sentencing policies and practices of the courts reflect a ‘real’ sharing of values about the social utility of sentencing and its outcomes. This aspiration is not portrayed as some kind of vague utopian notion, but as a fundamental necessity for the future legitimacy of penal governance. The book explores how sentencing might contribute more effectively to the achievement of social justice by engaging with some controversial and difficult problems, such as the sentencing of irregular migrants, offences of serious public disorder, sentencing for financial crime, and the sentencing of women. It concludes by proposing some practical reforms to sentencing in England and Wales based on the arguments developed in the earlier chapters, including an expanded role for the Sentencing Council in the development of a more regional and community-focused sentencing policy.

“They should have followed the rules”: Trade-offs Between Fairness and Authority Values Predict Judgments of Social Justice Protests

2020 ◽  
pp. 194855062092385
Author(s):  
Andrew E. Monroe ◽  
James B. Wyngaarden ◽  
E. Ashby Plant
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
National Anthem ◽  
Football Game ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Subsequent Behavior

In 2017, Colin Kaepernick drew global attention by kneeling during the national anthem before a football game. The protest divided the country into two groups: those who supported Kaepernick’s stand against inequality and those who believed it was disrespectful. The current study investigates whether differences in moral values (i.e., fairness vs. respect for authority) predict an individual’s opinion of the protestors and whether priming one of those values influences opinions on social justice protests more broadly. Our data support the moral trade-off hypothesis by demonstrating that when values are in conflict, the degree to which individuals value fairness versus authority predicts their opinions of the protesters. These differences in fairness versus authority also extended to judgments of other kinds of social justice protests. These findings support the moral foundations theory as a useful tool for investigating the influence of moral values on perceptions of social issues and subsequent behavior.

scholarly journals Foundations of Morality in Iran

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Atari ◽  
Jesse Graham ◽  
Morteza Dehghani
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Methods Research ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Romantic Partners ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory ◽  
Moral Foundation ◽  
The Us

Most moral psychology research has been conducted in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. As such, moral judgment, as a psychological phenomenon, might be known to researchers only by its WEIRD manifestations. Here, we start with evaluating Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) using the Moral Foundations Questionnaire, and follow up by building a bottom-up model of moral values, in Iran, a non-WEIRD, Muslim-majority, understudied cultural setting. In six studies (N = 1,945) we examine the structural validity of the Persian translation of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire, compare moral foundations between Iran and the US, conduct qualitative interviews regarding moral values, expand the nomological network of “Qeirat” as a culture-specific set of moral values, and investigate the pragmatic validity of “Qeirat” in Iranian culture. Our findings suggest an additional moral foundation in Iran, above and beyond the five foundations identified by MFT. Specifically, qualitative studies highlighted the role of “Qeirat” values in Iranian culture, which are comprised of guarding and protectiveness of female kin, romantic partners, broader family, and country. Significant cultural differences in moral values are argued in this work to follow from the psychological systems that, when brought to interact with particular socio-ecological environments, produce different moral structures. This evolutionarily-informed, cross-cultural, mixed-methods research sheds light on moral concerns and their cultural, demographic, and individual-difference correlates in Iran.

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