scholarly journals The Influence of War on Moral Judgments about Harm

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanne M Watkins
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
General Rule ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Affective Processes ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One ◽  
Peace And War ◽  
Trolley Problems

How does war influence moral judgments about harm? While the general rule is “thou shalt not kill,” war appears to provide an exception to the moral prohibition on intentional harm. In three studies (N = 263, N = 557, N = 793), we quantify the difference in moral judgments across peace and war contexts, and explore two possible explanations for the difference. The findings demonstrate that people judge a trade-off of one life for five as more morally acceptable in war than in peace, especially if the one person is from an outgroup of the person making the trade-off. In addition, the robust difference in moral judgments across “switch” and “footbridge” trolley problems is attenuated in war compared to in peace. The present studies have implications for moral psychology researchers who use war-based scenarios to study broader cognitive or affective processes. If the war context changes judgments of moral scenarios by triggering group-based reasoning or altering the perceived structure of the moral event, using such scenarios to make decontextualized claims about moral judgment may not be warranted.

scholarly journals Should you save the more useful? The effect of generality on moral judgments about rescue and indirect effects

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucius Caviola ◽  
Stefan Schubert ◽  
Andreas Mogensen
Keyword(s):  
Indirect Effects ◽  
General Rule ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Social Utility ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
General Phenomenon ◽  
Unemployed People ◽  
General Rules ◽  
The One

Across eight experiments (N = 2,310), we studied whether people would prioritize rescuing individuals who may be thought to contribute more to society. We found that participants were generally dismissive of general rules that prioritize more socially beneficial individuals, such as doctors instead of unemployed people. By contrast, participants were more supportive of one-off decisions to save the life of a more socially beneficial individual, even when such cases were the same as those covered by the rule. This generality effect occurred robustly even when controlling for various factors. It occurred when the decision-maker was the same in both cases, when the pairs of people differing in the extent of their indirect social utility was varied, when the scenarios were varied, when the participant samples came from different countries, and when the general rule only covered cases that are exactly the same as the situation described in the one-off condition. The effect occurred even when the general rule was introduced via a concrete precedent case. Participants’ tendency to be more supportive of the one-off proposal than the general rule was significantly reduced when they evaluated the two proposals jointly as opposed to separately. Finally, the effect also occurred in sacrificial moral dilemmas, suggesting it is a more general phenomenon in certain moral contexts. We discuss possible explanations of the effect, including concerns about negative consequences of the rule and a deontological aversion against making difficult trade-off decisions unless they are absolutelynecessary.

scholarly journals The psychology and rationality of moral judgment

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Wiegmann ◽  
Hanno Sauer
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Learning Theory ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Intuitions ◽  
Recent Advances

The field of moral psychology has become increasingly popular in recent years. In this chapter, we focus on two interrelated questions. First, how do peoplemake moral judgments? We address this question by reviewing the most prominent theories in moral psychology that aim to characterize, explain and predict people’s moral judgments. Second, how should people’s moral judgments be evaluated in terms of their rationality? This question is approached by reviewing the debate on the rationality of moral judgments and moral intuitions, which has been strongly influenced by findings in moral psychology but also by recent advances in learning theory. To appear in: Knauff, M. & Spohn, W. (in press). The Handbook of Rationality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

scholarly journals Moral Dynamics: Grounding Moral Judgment in Intuitive Physics and Intuitive Psychology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Sosa ◽  
Tomer David Ullman ◽  
Joshua Tenenbaum ◽  
Samuel J. Gershman ◽  
Tobias Gerstenberg
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Visual Stimuli ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Visual Features ◽  
Dynamic Interactions ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Intuitive Physics ◽  
Intuitive Theory

When holding others morally responsible, we care about what they did, and what they thought. Traditionally, research in moral psychology has relied on vignette studies, in which a protagonist's actions and thoughts are explicitly communicated. While this research has revealed what variables are important for moral judgment, such as actions and intentions, it is limited in providing a more detailed understanding of exactly how these variables affect moral judgment. Using dynamic visual stimuli that allow for a more fine-grained experimental control, recent studies have proposed a direct mapping from visual features to moral judgments. We embrace the use of visual stimuli in moral psychology, but question the plausibility of a feature-based theory of moral judgment. We propose that the connection from visual features to moral judgments is mediated by an inference about what the observed action reveals about the agent's mental states, and what causal role the agent's action played in bringing about the outcome. We present a computational model that formalizes moral judgments of agents in visual scenes as computations over an intuitive theory of physics combined with an intuitive theory of mind. We test the model's quantitative predictions in three experiments across a wide variety of dynamic interactions between agent and patient.

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 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 ON THE SUBJECT MATTER OF MORAL PSYCHOLOGY

Reflexio ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-140
Author(s):  
I. V. Badiev
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Individual Variability ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Behavioral Component ◽  
Moral Functioning ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual

The article deals with the study of human moral functioning in the framework of neurobiological and psychological research. Presents the views of John. Green and John. Haidt about the nature of moral judgments. Studies of the neurobiological mechanism of moral judgment do not explain their individual variability. This question relates to the subject of psychological research. The psychological concepts of morality of L. Kohlberg and D. Forsythe are compared. It is argued that the concept of ethical positions of Foresight has an advantage, since it considers the individual variability of moral judgments from metaethical positions. The analysis of neurobiological and psychological approaches to morality concluded that they did not represent the behavioral component of moral functioning.

scholarly journals Moral Hindsight

2017 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 110-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadine Fleischhut ◽  
Björn Meder ◽  
Gerd Gigerenzer
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Moral Evaluation ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Negative Side ◽  
Probability Estimates ◽  
Negative Side Effects

Abstract. How are judgments in moral dilemmas affected by uncertainty, as opposed to certainty? We tested the predictions of a consequentialist and deontological account using a hindsight paradigm. The key result is a hindsight effect in moral judgment. Participants in foresight, for whom the occurrence of negative side effects was uncertain, judged actions to be morally more permissible than participants in hindsight, who knew that negative side effects occurred. Conversely, when hindsight participants knew that no negative side effects occurred, they judged actions to be more permissible than participants in foresight. The second finding was a classical hindsight effect in probability estimates and a systematic relation between moral judgments and probability estimates. Importantly, while the hindsight effect in probability estimates was always present, a corresponding hindsight effect in moral judgments was only observed among “consequentialist” participants who indicated a cost-benefit trade-off as most important for their moral evaluation.

Why People With High Alexithymia Make More Utilitarian Judgments

2020 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-30
Author(s):  
Xiangyi Zhang ◽  
Zhihui Wu ◽  
Shenglan Li ◽  
Ji Lai ◽  
Meng Han ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Empathic Concern ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Affective Processing ◽  
Process Dissociation ◽  
The Difference

Abstract. Although recent studies have investigated the effect of alexithymia on moral judgments, such an effect remains elusive. Furthermore, moral judgments have been conflated with the moral inclinations underlying those judgments in previous studies. Using a process dissociation approach to independently quantify the strength of utilitarian and deontological inclinations, the present study investigated the effect of alexithymia on moral judgments. We found that deontological inclinations were significantly lower in the high alexithymia group than in the low alexithymia group, whereas the difference in the utilitarian inclinations between the two groups was nonsignificant. Furthermore, empathic concern and deontological inclinations mediated the association between alexithymia and conventional relative judgments (i.e., more utilitarian judgments over deontological judgments), showing that people with high alexithymia have low empathic concern, which, in turn, decreases deontological inclinations and contributes to conventional relative judgments. These findings underscore the importance of empathy and deontological inclinations in moral judgments and indicate that individuals with high alexithymia make more utilitarian judgments over deontological judgments possibly due to a deficit in affective processing.

Emotion regulation and the difference between liberal and conservative moral judgment

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Feinberg ◽  
Olga Antonenko ◽  
E. J. Horberg ◽  
Robb Willer ◽  
Dacher Keltner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
The Difference

Use of a Lyophilized Reference Plasma to Compare Coagulation Test Procedures

1975 ◽  
Vol 34 (02) ◽  
pp. 426-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
J Kahan ◽  
I Nohén
Keyword(s):  
Oral Anticoagulant Therapy ◽  
Repeated Measurements ◽  
Test Procedures ◽  
Coagulation Activity ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Measured Activity ◽  
Test Materials ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The One

SummaryIn 4 collaborative trials, involving a varying number of hospital laboratories in the Stockholm area, the coagulation activity of different test materials was estimated with the one-stage prothrombin tests routinely used in the laboratories, viz. Normotest, Simplastin-A and Thrombotest. The test materials included different batches of a lyophilized reference plasma, deep-frozen specimens of diluted and undiluted normal plasmas, and fresh and deep-frozen specimens from patients on long-term oral anticoagulant therapy.Although a close relationship was found between different methods, Simplastin-A gave consistently lower values than Normotest, the difference being proportional to the estimated activity. The discrepancy was of about the same magnitude on all the test materials, and was probably due to a divergence between the manufacturers’ procedures used to set “normal percentage activity”, as well as to a varying ratio of measured activity to plasma concentration. The extent of discrepancy may vary with the batch-to-batch variation of thromboplastin reagents.The close agreement between results obtained on different test materials suggests that the investigated reference plasma could be used to calibrate the examined thromboplastin reagents, and to compare the degree of hypocoagulability estimated by the examined PIVKA-insensitive thromboplastin reagents.The assigned coagulation activity of different batches of the reference plasma agreed closely with experimentally obtained values. The stability of supplied batches was satisfactory as judged from the reproducibility of repeated measurements. The variability of test procedures was approximately the same on different test materials.

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