On Disease and Deontology: Multiple Tests of the Influence of Disease Threat on Moral Vigilance

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damian R. Murray ◽  
Nicholas Kerry ◽  
Will M. Gervais
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Multiple Tests ◽  
Moral Domains

Threat has been linked to certain facets of moral cognition, but the specific implications of disease threat for moral judgment remain poorly understood. Across three studies, we investigated the role of perceived disease threat in shaping moral judgment and hypothesized that perceived disease threat would cause people to be more sensitive to moral violations (or more “morally vigilant”). All three studies found a positive relationship between dispositional worry about disease transmission and moral vigilance. Additional analyses suggested that this worry was more strongly related to vigilance toward binding moral foundations. Study 3 demonstrated that moral vigilance was higher in individuals for whom the threat of disease was experimentally made salient, relative to individuals in both a neutral and a nondisease threat condition. Taken together, these results suggest that perceived disease threat may influence people’s moral vigilance across moral domains.

Commentaries and Rejoinder on

2014 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 327-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Han Gong ◽  
Douglas L. Medin ◽  
Tal Eyal ◽  
Nira Liberman ◽  
Yaacov Trope ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Psychological Distance ◽  
Temporal Distance ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Cultural Systems ◽  
Moral Condemnation ◽  
Construal Levels

In the hope to resolve the two sets of opposing results concerning the effects of psychological distance and construal levels on moral judgment, Žeželj and Jokić (2014) conducted a series of four direct replications, which yielded divergent patterns of results. In our commentary, we first revisit the consistent findings that lower-level construals induced by How/Why manipulation lead to harsher moral condemnation than higher-level construals. We then speculate on the puzzling patterns of results regarding the role of temporal distance in shaping moral judgment. And we conclude by discussing the complexity of morality and propose that it may be important to incorporate cultural systems into the study of moral cognition.

scholarly journals Moral judgment of disparagement humor

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 619-641 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karolina Koszałkowska ◽  
Monika Wróbel
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory ◽  
Mediating Role ◽  
Disparagement Humor

Abstract The aim of the present study was to analyze the link between the five moral codes proposed in the Moral Foundations Theory and moral judgment of disparagement humor. We presented racist, sexist, homophobic, religion-disparaging and neutral jokes to a group of 108 participants, asking them whether they found laughing at a particular joke moral or immoral. Additionally, participants rated the level of amusement and disgust evoked by each joke. We also measured participants’ moral foundations profiles (Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity). The results confirmed that Care and Fairness were significantly linked to moral judgment of racist, sexist and homophobic jokes, whereas Loyalty, Authority and Sanctity were associated with moral judgment of religion-disparaging jokes. Moreover, these relationships were mediated by emotional responses of amusement and disgust (except for racist jokes, for which we observed no mediating role of amusement).

neurobiology supports virtue theory on the role of heuristics in moral cognition

2005 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 547-548 ◽  
Author(s):  
william d. casebeer
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Virtue Theory ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Wide Reflective Equilibrium

sunstein is right that poorly informed heuristics can influence moral judgment. his case could be strengthened by tightening neurobiologically plausible working definitions regarding what a heuristic is, considering a background moral theory that has more strength in wide reflective equilibrium than “weak consequentialism,” and systematically examining what naturalized virtue theory has to say about the role of heuristics in moral reasoning.

Moral foundations are not moral propositions

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Haas
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Moral Foundations

Abstract Joshua May responds to skepticism about moral knowledge via appeal to empirical work on moral foundations. I demonstrate that the moral foundations literature is not able to do the work May needs. It demonstrates shared moral cognition, not shared moral judgment, and therefore, May's attempt to defeat general skepticism fails.

Moral Judgments of COVID-19 Social Distancing Violations: The Roles of Perceived Harm and Impurity

2021 ◽  
pp. 014616722110254
Author(s):  
Daniel L. Rosenfeld ◽  
A. Janet Tomiyama
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Total N ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Competing Hypotheses ◽  
Moral Condemnation ◽  
Perceived Harm

Can perceptions of impurity uniquely explain moral judgment? Or is moral judgment reducible to perceptions of harm? Whereas some perspectives posit that purity violations may drive moral judgment distinctly from harm violations, other perspectives contend that perceived harm is an essential precursor of moral condemnation. We tested these competing hypotheses through five preregistered experiments (total N = 2,944) investigating U.S. adults’ perceptions of social distancing violations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Perceived harm was more strongly related to moral judgment than was perceived impurity. Nevertheless, over and above perceived harm, perceived impurity reliably explained unique variance in moral judgment. Effects of perceived harm and impurity were significant among both liberal and conservative participants but were larger among liberals. Results suggest that appraisals of both harm and impurity provide valuable insights into moral cognition. We discuss implications of these findings for dyadic morality, moral foundations, act versus character judgments, and political ideology.

What sentimentalists should say about emotion

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlie Kurth
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Multilevel Structure

Abstract Recent work by emotion researchers indicates that emotions have a multilevel structure. Sophisticated sentimentalists should take note of this work – for it better enables them to defend a substantive role for emotion in moral cognition. Contra May's rationalist criticisms, emotions are not only able to carry morally relevant information, but can also substantially influence moral judgment and reasoning.

Actions Speak Louder than Outcomes in Judgments of Prosocial Behavior

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Yudkin ◽  
Annayah Miranda Beatrice Prosser ◽  
Molly Crockett
Keyword(s):  
Prosocial Behavior ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Action Value ◽  
Good Deeds

Recently proposed models of moral cognition suggest that people’s judgments of harmful acts are influenced by their consideration both of those acts’ consequences (“outcome value”), and of the feeling associated with their enactment (“action value”). Here we apply this framework to judgments of prosocial behavior, suggesting that people’s judgments of the praiseworthiness of good deeds are determined both by the benefit those deeds confer to others and by how good they would feel to perform. Three experiments confirm this prediction. After developing a new measure to assess the extent to which praiseworthiness is influenced by action and outcome values, we show how these factors make significant and independent contributions to praiseworthiness. We also find that people are consistently more sensitive to action than to outcome value in judging the praiseworthiness of good deeds, but not harmful deeds. This observation echoes the finding that people are often insensitive to outcomes in their giving behavior. Overall, this research tests and validates a novel framework for understanding moral judgment, with implications for the motivations that underlie human altruism.

Is Empathy Required for Making Moral Judgments?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Deigh
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Psychopathic Personality ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Psychological Profile ◽  
Main Thesis ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Additional Support

This essay is a study of the nature of moral judgment. Its main thesis is that moral judgment is a type of judgment defined by its content and not its psychological profile. The essay arrives at this thesis through a critical examination of Hume’s sentimentalism and the role of empathy in its account of moral judgment. The main objection to Hume’s account is its exclusion of people whom one can describe as making moral judgments though they have no motivation to act on them. Consideration of such people, particularly those with a psychopathic personality, argues for a distinction between different types of moral judgment in keeping with the essay’s main thesis. Additional support for the main thesis is then drawn from Piaget’s theory of moral judgment in children.

The Limits of Emotion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua May
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Frontotemporal Dementia ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Emotional Processing ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Moral Concepts ◽  
Integral Role ◽  
The Brain

Empirical research apparently suggests that emotions play an integral role in moral judgment. The evidence for sentimentalism is diverse, but it is rather weak and has generally been overblown. There is no evidence that our moral concepts themselves are partly composed of or necessarily dependent on emotions. While the moral/conventional distinction may partly characterize the essence of moral judgment, moral norms needn’t be backed by affect in order to transcend convention. Priming people with incidental emotions like disgust doesn’t make them moralize actions. Finally, moral judgment can only be somewhat impaired by damage to areas of the brain that are generally associated with emotional processing (as in acquired sociopathy and frontotemporal dementia). While psychopaths exhibit both emotional and rational deficits, the latter alone can explain any minor defects in moral cognition.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document