Do People Believe That They Are More Deontological Than Others?

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (8) ◽  
pp. 1308-1320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ming-Hui Li ◽  
Li-Lin Rao
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Social Exchange ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Construal Level Theory ◽  
The Self ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Protective Mechanism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Protected Values

The question of how we decide that someone else has done something wrong is at the heart of moral psychology. Little work has been done to investigate whether people believe that others’ moral judgment differs from their own in moral dilemmas. We conducted four experiments using various measures and diverse samples to demonstrate the self–other discrepancy in moral judgment. We found that (a) people were more deontological when they made moral judgments themselves than when they judged a stranger (Studies 1-4) and (b) a protected values (PVs) account outperformed an emotion account and a construal-level theory account in explaining this self–other discrepancy (Studies 3 and 4). We argued that the self–other discrepancy in moral judgment may serve as a protective mechanism co-evolving alongside the social exchange mechanism and may contribute to better understanding the obstacles preventing people from cooperation.

scholarly journals Harming Kin to Save Strangers: Further Evidence for Abnormally Utilitarian Moral Judgments after Ventromedial Prefrontal Damage

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (9) ◽  
pp. 2186-2196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley C. Thomas ◽  
Katie E. Croft ◽  
Daniel Tranel
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
The Self ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Dual Process ◽  
Social Emotional ◽  
The Social ◽  
High Conflict ◽  
Harm To Others

The ventromedial PFC (vmPFC) has been implicated as a critical neural substrate mediating the influence of emotion on moral reasoning. It has been shown that the vmPFC is especially important for making moral judgments about “high-conflict” moral dilemmas involving direct personal actions, that is, scenarios that pit compelling utilitarian considerations of aggregate welfare against the highly emotionally aversive act of directly causing harm to others [Koenigs, M., Young, L., Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Cushman, F., Hauser, M., et al. Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgments. Nature, 446, 908–911, 2007]. The current study was designed to elucidate further the role of the vmPFC in high-conflict moral judgments, including those that involve indirect personal actions, such as indirectly causing harm to one's kin to save a group of strangers. We found that patients with vmPFC lesions were more likely than brain-damaged and healthy comparison participants to endorse utilitarian outcomes on high-conflict dilemmas regardless of whether the dilemmas (1) entailed direct versus indirect personal harms and (2) were presented from the Self versus Other perspective. In addition, all groups were more likely to endorse utilitarian outcomes in the Other perspective as compared with the Self perspective. These results provide important extensions of previous work, and the findings align with the proposal that the vmPFC is critical for reasoning about moral dilemmas in which anticipating the social-emotional consequences of an action (e.g., guilt or remorse) is crucial for normal moral judgments [Greene, J. D. Why are VMPFC patients more utilitarian?: A dual-process theory of moral judgment explains. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 322–323, 2007; Koenigs, M., Young, L., Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Cushman, F., Hauser, M., et al. Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgments. Nature, 446, 908–911, 2007].

scholarly journals Do Emotions Play an Essential Role in Moral Judgments?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H.B. McAuliffe
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
The Self ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Psychology Research ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
Core Concepts

The past few decades of moral psychology research have yielded empirical anomalies forrationalist theories of moral judgments. An increasing number of psychologists and philosophersargue that these anomalies are explained well by sentimentalism, the thesis that the presence ofan emotion is necessary for the formation of a sincere moral judgment. The present reviewreveals that while emotions and moral judgments indeed often co-occur, there is scant evidencethat emotions directly cause or constitute moral judgments. Research on disgust, anger,sympathy, and guilt indicates that people only reliably experience emotions when judgingconduct that is relevant to the welfare of the self and valued others. Moreover, many recentstudies have either failed to replicate or exposed crucial confounds in the most cited evidence insupport of sentimentalism. Moral psychologists should jettison sentimentalism, and focus insteadon how considerations of harm and welfare—the core concepts of rationalist theories— interactwith empirical beliefs to shape moral judgments.

scholarly journals Priming intuition disfavors instrumental harm but not impartial beneficence

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerio Capraro ◽  
Jim Albert Charlton Everett ◽  
Brian D. Earp
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Dimensional Model ◽  
Total N ◽  
Two Dimensional Model ◽  
Do So

Understanding the cognitive underpinnings of moral judgment is one of most pressing problems in psychological science. Some highly-cited studies suggest that reliance on intuition decreases utilitarian (expected welfare maximizing) judgments in sacrificial moral dilemmas in which one has to decide whether to instrumentally harm (IH) one person to save a greater number of people. However, recent work suggests that such dilemmas are limited in that they fail to capture the positive, defining core of utilitarianism: commitment to impartial beneficence (IB). Accordingly, a new two-dimensional model of utilitarian judgment has been proposed that distinguishes IH and IB components. The role of intuition on this new model has not been studied. Does relying on intuition disfavor utilitarian choices only along the dimension of instrumental harm or does it also do so along the dimension of impartial beneficence? To answer this question, we conducted three studies (total N = 970, two preregistered) using conceptual priming of intuition versus deliberation on moral judgments. Our evidence converges on an interaction effect, with intuition decreasing utilitarian judgments in IH—as suggested by previous work—but failing to do so in IB. These findings bolster the recently proposed two-dimensional model of utilitarian moral judgment, and point to new avenues for future research.

A Psychophysiological Investigation of Moral Judgment after Ventromedial Prefrontal Damage

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. 1888-1899 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanna Moretto ◽  
Elisabetta Làdavas ◽  
Flavia Mattioli ◽  
Giuseppe di Pellegrino
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Emotion Processing ◽  
Affective State ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Direct Support ◽  
Psychophysiological Investigation ◽  
And Control ◽  
Somatic Index ◽  
Normal Controls

Converging evidence suggests that emotion processing mediated by ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is necessary to prevent personal moral violations. In moral dilemmas, for example, patients with lesions in vmPFC are more willing than normal controls to approve harmful actions that maximize good consequences (e.g., utilitarian moral judgments). Yet, none of the existing studies has measured subjects' emotional responses while they considered moral dilemmas. Therefore, a direct link between emotion processing and moral judgment is still lacking. Here, vmPFC patients and control participants considered moral dilemmas while skin conductance response (SCR) was measured as a somatic index of affective state. Replicating previous evidence, vmPFC patients approved more personal moral violations than did controls. Critically, we found that, unlike control participants, vmPFC patients failed to generate SCRs before endorsing personal moral violations. In addition, such anticipatory SCRs correlated negatively with the frequency of utilitarian judgments in normal participants. These findings provide direct support to the hypothesis that the vmPFC promotes moral behavior by mediating the anticipation of the emotional consequences of personal moral violations.

scholarly journals A Commentary Reflection of Moral Psychology Based on Embodied Cognition

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-68
Author(s):  
Shaogang Yang
Keyword(s):  
Character Education ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Evolutionary Psychology ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Cognitive Domain ◽  
Theoretical Interpretation ◽  
The Social

 The rise of embodied cognition in recent ten years has brought about significant influence on the research of moral psychology. On the one hand, the development of neuro-cognitive science has facilitated the research of morality deeply into the mirror neurons of brain, no longer being limited simply on the philosophical speculation; and on the other hand the experimental research of embodied cognition has provided new evidence for some traditional and philosophical moral issues and even made some new recognition of the issues which are different from the traditional interpretations. Tracing back to the research of the Western moral psychology, we find that cognitive rationality and virtual ethics are the two main research lines for moral psychology.（1）J. Piaget and L. Kohlberg opened a way for the research of cognitive development of morality, and their successors have formed new Kohlbergian School, such as the moral judgment theory based on DIT proposed by J. Rest and his colleagues, G. Lind’s dual-aspect theory based on his MCT and KMDD®; the social cognitive domain theory proposed by E. Turiel and his colleagues; the feminine caring ethics advocated by C. Gilligan and N. Noddings; the Social Intuitionist Theory proposed by J. Haidt based on evolutionary psychology, cultural psychology and neuro-cognitive science and so on. (2) The traditional moral philosophy and ethics have opened another way to the research of character education and virtues, such as the American movement of character education facilitated by W, Bennett and T. Lickona and others; the argument between J. Rawls and R. Nozick on moral problems; A. C. MacIntyre’s moral critique to the Western societies and his virtue ethics and so on. Since 21st century the research of embodied cognition has broken through the limitation of the traditional research on moral psychology, attempting to realize the new synthesis of intellect, human body and its environment, and therefore started the embodied research of moral judgment which is unfolded around the three dimensions of physical cleanliness, disgust, body temperature and body movements. I has also assimilated Piaget and Vygotsky’s ideas of psychological development, the theory of conceptual metaphor in cognitive semantics and the theory of evolutionary psychology, and made its theoretical interpretation and exploration for the embodied effect of moral judgment. Since the variable of physical body could have its influence on individual moral judgment by means of one’s emotion and cognitive elements, the moral judgment based on embodied cognition should be integrated with the theories of moral judgment, especially with moral competencies that are the core of moral judgment, and meanwhile the relationship between the embodied cognition and moral intuition should be deeply explored, and the issues such as chronergy, that is, time efficiency, and dynamics taken place when there is the embodied effect should be further examined, the regulated variables of embodied effects while making moral judgment and the individual differences should also be found out through detailed research. And finally we should check out the embodied effects of moral judgment through the cross-cultural comparison.

scholarly journals Do High Psychopaths Care More about Moral Consequences than Low Psychopaths in Chinese Culture? An Exploration Using the CNI Model

Healthcare ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 505
Author(s):  
Shenglan Li ◽  
Daoqun Ding ◽  
Zhihui Wu ◽  
Liangliang Yi ◽  
Ji Lai ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Action Model ◽  
Psychological Mechanism ◽  
General Preference ◽  
Chinese Subjects

Purpose: Fewer studies are about the influence of psychopath traits on moral judgment and the underlying psychological mechanism in Chinese cultural background. In this paper, we use the creative CNI (Consequences, Norms, Inaction versus action) model to quantify the subject’s reaction to moral dilemmas. Method: In this research, the Chinese version of the Levenson Psychopathic Scale, CNI model materials, and a multinomial model to further analyze the associations among the psychopathy characteristics and utilitarian moral judgment are applied. The CNI model is proposed by Gawronski et al., which can quantify the subjects’ sensitivity to moral consequence, sensitivity to moral norms, and the general preference for inaction or action in moral dilemmas. Result: This study finds that there were significant differences in the utilitarian moral judgment between the groups, t (360) = 3.24, p = 0.001, and Cohen’s d = 0.36. The analysis results of the CNI model show that the high psychopathy group on the N parameter was significantly lower than the group of low psychopathy, ΔG2 (2) = 79.70, p = 0.001. In terms of the C parameter, we found no significant distinctions between the two groups, ΔG2 (2) = 1.356, p = 0.244. For the I parameter, the two groups also have no significant differences, ΔG2 (2) = 0.093, p = 0.76. Conclusion: Persons with high psychopathy traits prefer to make more utilitarian moral judgments and have a weak sensitivity to moral norms (N). The sensitivity to consequences (C) of the two groups is no significant difference. The general preference for inaction versus action (I) also has no significant differences between those two groups. Moreover, the CNI model fits well in Chinese subjects.

Teaching Cyberethics

2013 ◽  
pp. 56-69
Author(s):  
Peter Holtz
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Value Orientations ◽  
Moral Competence ◽  
Final Exam ◽  
The Social ◽  
Materialistic Values ◽  
High Degree

The discussion of moral dilemmas is often proposed as one way to teach ethics. But can ethics be taught to everyone? Do participants’ value orientations predict the acquisition of moral competence in an educational context? This study presents data from an evaluation of a course on the social consequences of information technology (IT). IT-related dilemma discussions were used extensively in the course. The participants answered questionnaires at the beginning of the course and before their final exam at the end of term. Moral competence was measured with the Moral Judgment Test (MJT). A questionnaire on individual reflexive values was used for the assessment of value orientations. Although the participants’ average level of moral competence did not change significantly, there was evidence that participants with a high degree of materialistic values were less likely to acquire moral competence during the course.

Self-appropriation vs. self-constitution: Social philosophical reflections on the self-relation

Human Affairs ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt C. M. Mertel
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Social Ontology ◽  
Methodological Individualism ◽  
The Self ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
The Social ◽  
Important Progress

AbstractIt is widely held that reflexivity is the defining feature of selfhood: the ability of the self to stand in a certain relation to itself. The question of how exactly to theorize this self-relation, however, has been the source of ongoing debate. In recent years, Kantian and post-Kantian approaches such as Christine Korsgaard’s constitutivism and Richard Moran’s commitment view, have attempted to establish the priority of the agential over the epistemic self-relation, thereby re-orientating the debate away from metaphysics and epistemology towards ethics and moral psychology. Despite the important progress they make towards a de-alienated and reified understanding of the self-relation, however, I argue that the Kantian paradigm is ultimately inadequate because its methodological individualism makes it incapable of accounting for the irreducibly social dimension of the self-relation and, therefore, of successfully making the transition from ethics to social and political philosophy. In other words, an adequate ontology of the self-relation is possible only as a social ontology. In order to motivate this thesis, I appeal to two examples that expose the “social deficit” of the Kantian approach: Frantz Fanon’s phenomenology of race/racism in “The Lived Experience of the Black” and the phenomenon of cultural collapse in Jonathan Lear’s

Philosophical Anthropology and the Interpersonal Theory of the Affect of Shame

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Stewart Rukgaber
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
Affective Response ◽  
The Self ◽  
Interpersonal Theory ◽  
Negative Judgment ◽  
The Social ◽  
Helmuth Plessner ◽  
Basic Need

Abstract This article argues that shame is fundamentally interpersonal. It is opposed to the leading interpretation of shame in the field of moral psychology, which is the cognitivist, morally rationally, autonomous view of shame as a negative judgment about the self. That view of shame abandons the social and interpersonal essence of shame. I will advance the idea, as developed by the tradition of philosophical anthropology and, in particular, in the works of Helmuth Plessner, Erwin Straus, F. J. J. Buytendijk, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, that shame is a heteronomous affective response that is caused by a breakdown in our fundamental interpersonal connection with others. It is a feeling that comes from the denial of our basic need to live with others in a state of trusting acceptance.

Moral Judgment in Middle and Late Adulthood: The Effects of Age-Appropriate Moral Dilemmas and Spontaneous Role Taking

1986 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 161-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet Blum Chap
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Dilemma ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Age Difference ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Role Taking ◽  
Age Appropriate

This was a cross-sectional study of the effects of age, sex, and moral dilemma content on adult moral reasoning. Hypothetical dilemmas were presented to sixty men and women, thirty of whom were elderly and thirty in early middle age. With education controlled there were no age or sex differences in moral maturity. Dilemma content had a significant effect on moral judgment, with a tendency for each age group to use a higher level of judgment when the situation described was age-appropriate, i.e., relevant to that group's stage of life. There was a significant age difference on a measure of spontaneous role taking: old persons made more definitive moral judgments than the younger adults, who attempted to reconcile the various points of view represented in a dilemma.

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