scholarly journals Who cares about the outgroup? Political ideology, empathy, and moral decision-making

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arathy Puthillam ◽  
Hansika Kapoor
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Moral Dilemma ◽  
Hierarchical Structures ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Reactivity Index ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Group Setting ◽  
Moral Decisions

Conservatives are known to display smaller moral circles, have less empathy, and make utilitarian decisions. The present study aimed to understand the relationships between political ideology and empathetic concern (n = 513), and between ideology and moral decision-making (n = 210) in an inter-group setting, using an Indian sample. We measured trait empathetic concern and empathetic concern for the ingroup (i.e., their own religion) and outgroup (i.e., Muslims) using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, and measured moral decision-making for a non-denominational group and in- and out-group using modified moral dilemmas. We found that right-leaning individuals, in terms of greater adherence to cultural norms, displayed higher levels of trait empathetic concern, as well as that for in- and outgroups; they were also more willing to sacrifice the outgroup to save multiple ingroup members in moral dilemma tasks, and thus made utilitarian moral decisions when sacrificing outgroup lives were concerned. Additionally, those leaning left, in terms of lower adherence to hierarchical structures, showed higher levels of empathetic concern for the outgroup. Implications and future avenues are discussed.

Fear Deciding Fate: How Fear Influences Moral Decision-Making

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sophia Strojny
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Thinking Styles ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Moral Choice ◽  
Moral Decisions ◽  
Moral Choices ◽  
The Impact

<p>Moral dilemmas require individuals to make a life-altering choice. Due to the severity of the choice, we argue that there is a degree of fear in moral decision-making. We aimed to see how prevailing fears in each individual predicts moral decision-making habits. We looked into the emotional and physical divisions of fear to deem which dimension of fear is more dominant in each participant. Then analysed these results against reported deontological or utilitarian moral inclinations to see if higher reports of fear impact moral decision-making. Additionally, we included two secondary variables that are most prevalent in fear research (gender and thinking styles) as well as the impact of burden on moral choice. We found that our research was supported; fear tendencies are linked to individual behaviours and burden of moral decisions was influenced by what we fear and affected moral choices.</p>

scholarly journals Political Dogma Stroll’s non political moral decision making

2013 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 33-44
Author(s):  
Ibrahim Noorani ◽  
Khurram Shakir ◽  
Muddasir Hussain
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Affective Responses ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Moral Decisions

Ethical enigma kernelling concerns about actions against concerns about consequences have been dealt by philosophers and psychologists to measure “universal” moral intuitions. Although these enigmas contain no evident political content, we decipher that liberals are more likely than conservatives to be concerned about consequences, whereas conservatives are more likely than liberals to be concerned about actions. This denouement is exhibited in two large, heterogeneous samples and across several different moral dilemmas. In addition, manipulations of dilemma averseness and order of presentation suggest that this political difference is due in part to different sensitivities to emotional reactions in moral decision-making: Conservatives are very much inclined to “go with the gut” and let affective responses guide moral judgments, while liberals are more likely to deliberate about optimal consequences. In this article, extracting a sample from Western Europe, we report evidence that political differences can be found in moral decisions about issues that have no evident political content. In particular, we find that conservatives are more likely than liberals to attend to the action itself when deciding whether something is right or wrong, whereas liberals are more likely than conservatives to attend to the consequences of the action. Further, we report preliminary evidence that this is partly explained by the kernel of truth from the parodies – conservatives are more likely than liberals to “go with the gut” by using their affective responses to guide moral judgment.

scholarly journals MORAL DECISION-MAKING DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC

2020 ◽  
pp. 22-43
Author(s):  
Sergey N. Enikolopov ◽  
Tatina I. Medvedeva ◽  
Olga M. Boyko ◽  
Oksana Yu. Vorontsova ◽  
Olga Yu. Kazmina
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Psychopathological Symptoms ◽  
Moral Decisions ◽  
Moral Choices ◽  
High Level

Relevance. The COVID-19 pandemic reveals the problem of moral choices for a large number of people: who should be treated first; who can be considered as a subject for urgent vaccines and drugs testing; choice between personal convenience and observation of restrictions for the sake of the “common good.” The objective of the study was to evaluate whether the stress experienced by people during the COVID-19 pandemic can change moral decision making. Materials and methods. The data of an online survey conducted from March 30 to May 31 (311 people) were analyzed. The survey included sociodemographic questions, questions about assessing one’s current condition, the Simptom Check List-90-Revised (SCL-90-R), and the Moral Dilemmas Test, consisting of 30 dilemmas. The relationship of a number of utilitarian choices in personal moral dilemmas with sociodemographic characteristics, respondents’ assessments of their state and psychopathological characteristics was analyzed. Solving personal moral dilemmas was considered within subgroups of respondents with a high level of somatization and a high level of psychopathological symptoms and it was reviewed separately. Results. The results showed a high level of distress throughout the survey and an increase of utilitarian choices in personal moral dilemmas by the end of the survey. The number of choices in personal dilemmas was lower among older respondents, higher among men, and positively correlated with psychopathological symptoms. In the subgroup with a high level of somatization, personal choices slightly decreased by the end of the survey. On the contrary, in the subgroup with high levels of psychopathological symptoms, the number of personal choices significantly increased. Conclusions. Against the background of quarantine, assessments of moral standards change. The level of stress ambiguously affects moral decisions. A high level of somatization leads to a decrease in utilitarian personal choices, and a higher level of psychopathological symptoms leads to an increase in utilitarianш choices. Utilitarian personal choices are more often made by men and younger people

Paradoxical Effects of Power on Moral Thinking: Why Power Both Increases and Decreases Deontological and Utilitarian Moral Decisions

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Fleischmann ◽  
Joris Lammers ◽  
Paul Conway ◽  
Adam D. Galinsky
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Dilemma ◽  
Thinking Styles ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Moral Orientation ◽  
Moral Thinking ◽  
Moral Decisions ◽  
Systematic Effects ◽  
Orientation Scale

The current research explores the role of power in moral decision-making. Some work suggests that power increases utilitarianism; other work suggests power increases deontological judgments. Conversely, we propose that power can both increase and decrease both deontological and utilitarian decisions by building on two recent insights in moral psychology. First, we utilize the moral orientation scale to assess four thinking styles that jointly predict moral dilemma decisions. Second, we employ process dissociation to assess deontological and utilitarian judgments as orthogonal rather than opposite constructs. We conducted two preregistered confirmatory studies that replicated exploratory findings. In Study 1, power increased three moral thinking styles: integration, deliberation, and rule orientation. In Study 2, these decision-making styles simultaneously mediated the effects of power on utilitarian and deontological responses in opposing ways, leading to null effects overall. These results reconcile previous findings and demonstrate the complex yet systematic effects power has on moral decision-making.

Fear Deciding Fate: How Fear Influences Moral Decision-Making

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sophia Strojny
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Thinking Styles ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Moral Choice ◽  
Moral Decisions ◽  
Moral Choices ◽  
The Impact

<p>Moral dilemmas require individuals to make a life-altering choice. Due to the severity of the choice, we argue that there is a degree of fear in moral decision-making. We aimed to see how prevailing fears in each individual predicts moral decision-making habits. We looked into the emotional and physical divisions of fear to deem which dimension of fear is more dominant in each participant. Then analysed these results against reported deontological or utilitarian moral inclinations to see if higher reports of fear impact moral decision-making. Additionally, we included two secondary variables that are most prevalent in fear research (gender and thinking styles) as well as the impact of burden on moral choice. We found that our research was supported; fear tendencies are linked to individual behaviours and burden of moral decisions was influenced by what we fear and affected moral choices.</p>

scholarly journals Somatic Marker Production Deficits Do Not Explain the Relationship between Psychopathic Traits and Utilitarian Moral Decision Making

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 303
Author(s):  
Shawn E. Fagan ◽  
Liat Kofler ◽  
Sarah Riccio ◽  
Yu Gao
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Dilemma ◽  
Skin Conductance Level ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Psychopathic Traits ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Somatic Marker ◽  
College Population ◽  
The Relationship

In moral dilemma tasks, high levels of psychopathic traits often predict increased utilitarian responding—specifically, endorsing sacrificing one person to save many. Research suggests that increased arousal (i.e., somatic marker production) underlies lower rates of utilitarian responding during moral dilemmas. Though deficient somatic marker production is characteristic of psychopathy, how this deficit affects the psychopathy–utilitarian connection remains unknown. We assessed psychopathic traits in undergraduates, as well as behavioral performance and skin conductance level reactivity (SCL-R; a measure of somatic marker production) during a moral dilemma task. High psychopathic traits and low SCL-R were associated with increased utilitarian decisions in dilemmas involving direct personal harm. Psychopathic traits were unrelated to SCL-R, nor did SCL-R mediate the relationship between psychopathy and utilitarianism. The present study did not find evidence that somatic marker production explains the connection between utilitarianism and psychopathy in a college population. Further research is necessary to identify the neural mechanisms relating psychopathy and moral decision-making in nonclinical samples.

Framing Morality: How Antecedent-Focused Strategies Can Shape Moral Judgments

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Kappes ◽  
Jay Joseph Van Bavel
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Process Dissociation ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
First Response ◽  
High Conflict

From moral philosophy to programming driverless cars, scholars have long been interested in how to shape moral decision-making. We examine how framing can impact moral judgments either by shaping which emotional reactions are evoked in a situation (antecedent-focused) or by changing how people respond to their emotional reactions (response-focused). In three experiments, we manipulated the framing of a moral decision-making task before participants judged a series of moral dilemmas. Participants encouraged to go “with their first” response beforehand favored emotion-driven judgments on high-conflict moral dilemmas. In contrast, participants who were instructed to give a “thoughtful” response beforehand or who did not receive instructions on how to approach the dilemmas favored reason-driven judgments. There was no difference in response-focused control during moral judgements. Process-dissociation confirmed that people instructed to go with their first response had stronger emotion-driven intuitions than other conditions. Our results suggest that task framing can alter moral intuitions.

Temporal correlates of intuition and cognitive control in moral decision, making in different social contexts

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (S1) ◽  
pp. S140-S140
Author(s):  
F. Keshvari ◽  
Z. Rezvani ◽  
F. Ghassemi ◽  
H. Pouretemad
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Right Hemisphere ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Repeated Measure ◽  
Social Response ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
High Conflict

In the stream of flurry of publications grappling different paradigms to tackle underlying mechanisms of moral decision-making, EVENT RELATED POTENtial (ERP) studies is beginning to explore psychophysiological components in the moral domain, focused on observing various moral behaviors in the experimental situations. This research was aimed at providing a new method of study investigating neural correlates of subjective moral decision-making in which we hypothesize that the social congruent or in-congruent context, could emerge a salience brain response in intuitive or cognitive control related responses toward moral dilemmas. Electrophysiological data were recorded from the scalp a 32-channel recording system complying with the international 10–20 system. The average N2 (175–300 ms) and LPP (300–600 ms) amplitude and latency were measured after the onset of putative counterpart response. Repeated measure ANOVA revealed that there was a difference between congruent versus in-congruent social response to high conflict scenarios in LPP amplitude in right lateral and frontal electrodes F(4, 174) = 5.812, P < 0.001 (Fig. 1). The findings also, suggest that N2 latency in less conflict moral scenarios may appear earlier compared with high conflict moral scenarios during in congruent social response in frontal electrodes especially left area F(3, 174) = 3.013, P < 0.05 (Fig. 2, figures are not available for this abstract). In conclusion, these results were either extend previous neurophysiological findings on classic moral scenarios and consistent with the notion that right hemisphere would be much more representative of cognitive control process during high conflict moral decision-making, while left frontal electrodes engaged in early intuitive process.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

scholarly journals Human decision-making biases in the moral dilemmas of autonomous vehicles

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Darius-Aurel Frank ◽  
Polymeros Chrysochou ◽  
Panagiotis Mitkidis ◽  
Dan Ariely
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Autonomous Vehicles ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Situational Factors ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Personal Perspective ◽  
Moral Code ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Moral Decisions ◽  
Human Decision

Abstract The development of artificial intelligence has led researchers to study the ethical principles that should guide machine behavior. The challenge in building machine morality based on people’s moral decisions, however, is accounting for the biases in human moral decision-making. In seven studies, this paper investigates how people’s personal perspectives and decision-making modes affect their decisions in the moral dilemmas faced by autonomous vehicles. Moreover, it determines the variations in people’s moral decisions that can be attributed to the situational factors of the dilemmas. The reported studies demonstrate that people’s moral decisions, regardless of the presented dilemma, are biased by their decision-making mode and personal perspective. Under intuitive moral decisions, participants shift more towards a deontological doctrine by sacrificing the passenger instead of the pedestrian. In addition, once the personal perspective is made salient participants preserve the lives of that perspective, i.e. the passenger shifts towards sacrificing the pedestrian, and vice versa. These biases in people’s moral decisions underline the social challenge in the design of a universal moral code for autonomous vehicles. We discuss the implications of our findings and provide directions for future research.

scholarly journals Virtue ethics: an approach to moral dilemmas in nursing

Curationis ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
E Arries
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Agent ◽  
Moral Dilemma ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Whistle Blowing ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
The One

Nurses are increasingly confronted with situations of moral difficulty, such as not to feed terminally ill patients, whistle blowing, or participation in termination of pregnancy. Most of these moral dilemmas are often analyzed using the principle-based approach which applies the four moral principles of justice, autonomy, beneficence, and nonmalificence. In some instances, consequentialism is considered, but these frameworks have their limitations. Their limitations has to do with a consideration for the interpersonal nature of clinical nursing practice on the one hand, and is not always clear on how to judge which consequences are best on the other hand. When principles are in conflict it is not always easy to decide which principle should dominate. Furthermore, these frameworks do not take into account the importance of the interpersonal and emotional element of human experience. On the contrary, decision making about moral issues in healthcare demands that nurses exercise rational control over emotions. This clearly focuses the attention on the nurse as moral agent and in particular their character. In this article I argue that virtue ethics as an approach, which focus of the character of a person, might provide a more holistic analysis of moral dilemmas in nursing and might facilitate more flexible and creative solutions when combined with other theories of moral decision-making. Advancing this argument, firstly, I provide the central features of virtue ethics. Secondly I describe a story in which a moral dilemma is evident. Lastly I apply virtue ethics as an approach to this moral dilemma and in particular focusing on the virtues inherent in the nurse as moral agent in the story.

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