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 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.

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.

“Community Interests” and the Role of International Law in the Creation of a Global Market for Agricultural Land

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jochen von Bernstorff
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
Land Grab ◽  
Large Scale Land ◽  
The One

The chapter explores the notion of “community interests” with regard to the global “land-grab” phenomenon. Over the last decade, a dramatic increase of foreign investment in agricultural land could be observed. Bilateral investment treaties protect around 75 per cent of these large-scale land acquisitions, many of which came with associated social problems, such as displaced local populations and negative consequences for food security in Third World countries receiving these large-scale foreign investments. Hence, two potentially conflicting areas of international law are relevant in this context: Economic, social, and cultural rights and the principles of permanent sovereignty over natural resources and “food sovereignty” challenging large-scale investments on the one hand, and specific norms of international economic law stabilizing them on the other. The contribution discusses the usefulness of the concept of “community interests” in cases where the two colliding sets of norms are both considered to protect such interests.

scholarly journals Synthetic Hexanucleotides as a Tool to Overcome Excessive Neutrophil Activation Caused by CpG-Containing Oligonucleotides

Pathogens ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 530
Author(s):  
Ekaterina A. Golenkina ◽  
Svetlana I. Galkina ◽  
Nina G. Dolinnaya ◽  
Evgenii A. Arifulin ◽  
Yulia M. Romanova ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Neutrophil Activation ◽  
Immunomodulatory Activity ◽  
Neutrophilic Granulocytes ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Prooxidant Effect ◽  
Bacterial Dna ◽  
Cpg Odns ◽  
Tissue Damages ◽  
The One ◽  
Tissue Origin

Mimicking bacterial DNA, synthetic CpG-containing oligodeoxyribonucleotides (CpG-ODNs) have a powerful immunomodulatory potential. Their practical application is mainly associated with the production of vaccines, where they are used as adjuvants, as well as in local antimicrobial therapy. CpG-ODNs act on a wide variety of immune cells, including neutrophilic granulocytes. On the one hand, the stimulatory effect provides both the direct implementation of their antimicrobial and fungicidal mechanisms, and an avalanche-like strengthening of the immune signal due to interaction with other participants in the immune process. On the other hand, hyperactivation of neutrophilic granulocytes can have negative consequences. In particular, the formation of unreasonably high amounts of reactive oxygen species leads to tissue damages and, as a consequence, a spontaneous aggravation and prolongation of the inflammatory process. Under physiological conditions, a large number of DNA fragments are present in inflammation foci: both of microbial and self-tissue origin. We investigated effects of several short modified hexanucleotides on the main indicators of neutrophil activation, as well as their influence on the immunomodulatory activity of known synthetic CpG-ODNs. The results obtained show that short oligonucleotides partially inhibit the prooxidant effect of synthetic CpG-ODNs without significantly affecting the ability of the latter to overcome bacteria-induced pro-survival effects on neutrophilic granulocytes.

Definiteness and Voice in the Interpretation of Active and Passive Sentences

1975 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Hupet ◽  
Brigitte Le Bouedec
Keyword(s):  
General Rule ◽  
Grammatical Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
The Voice

In Experiment I, subjects were given active and passive sentences where the definiteness of nominals is varied and about which uncertainty was expressed, e.g. “I thought that the policeman had been injured by a gangster, but I was mistaken, in fact.”. Their task was to decide what was the target of the mistake by completing freely the sentence in such a way that the account would be corrected. When the nominals are differentially determined (a-the, the-a), the pattern of responses indicates that, for both active and passive, subjects were more likely to conclude that it was the non-definitely marked nominal that had been involved in the mistake rather than the definitely marked one. When both nominals are similarly determined (a-a, the-the), subjects were more likely to indicate the event itself as having been involved in the mistake. This supports the hypothesis that subjects are able to utilize definiteness to determine the relation between presupposed and assertional information. In Experiment II, subjects were given paired active and passive sentences with differentially determined nominals and were required to choose between the two syntactic forms of each pair the one they would prefer to use. The pattern of responses clearly shows that subjects were more likely to choose the voice allowing the hypothesized preferential order “Definitely marked grammatical subject-non-definitely marked grammatical object”. Passive transformational rule is thus interpreted as a particular case of a more general rule specifying the ways in which what is made known (comment) is nested on to what is already assumed to be the case (topic).

scholarly journals Reciprocal innervation and symmetrical muscles

1913 ◽  
Vol 86 (587) ◽  
pp. 219-232 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Skeletal Muscles ◽  
Knee Extensor ◽  
General Rule ◽  
The Body ◽  
Ordinary Sense ◽  
Excitatory Effect ◽  
Biological Meaning ◽  
Vasomotor Reflexes ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right

If we attempt to decipher the biological meaning of reciprocal innervation its various instances when marshalled together say plainly that one of the functional problems which it meets and solves is mechanical antagonism. Where two muscles have directly opposed effect on the same lever, “reciprocal innervation” is the general rule observed by the nervous system in dealing with them, and this holds whether the reciprocal innervation is peripheral as with the antagonists of the arthropod claw, or is central as with vertebrate skeletal muscles. Also where one and the same muscle is governed by two nerves influencing it oppositely, reciprocal innervation seems again the principle followed in the co-ordination of the two opponent centres, as has been shown by Bayliss in his observations on vasomotor reflexes. But the distribution and occurrence of reciprocal innervation extend beyond cases of mere mechanical antagonism. The reflex influence exerted by the limb-afferents on symmetrical muscle-pairs such as right knee-extensor and left is reciprocal. Thus right peroneal nerve excites the motoneurones of left vastocrureus, and concomitantly inhibits those of the right. The reflex inhibition of the one is concurrent with, increases with increase, and decreases with decrease of, the excitatory effect on the other. Here the muscles are not in any ordinary sense antagonistic; not only do they not operate on the same lever, but they are not even members of the same limb, nor do they belong even to the same half of the body. They are, however, actuated conversely in the most usual modes of progression—the walking and the running step—though not always in galloping.

scholarly journals Prosocialaus elgesio formavimasis universiteto liberalaus ugdymo procese

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (11) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Enrika Kromerova
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Education ◽  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Prosocial Behaviour ◽  
Conceptual Level ◽  
Educational Approach ◽  
Theory Of Education ◽  
The One ◽  
Educational Paradigms ◽  
Education Process

Research background. Today prosociality is an indisputably integral part of the prosperity of society. Analysing the complex and sophisticated issues of lifelong learning of a person, a holistic and high conceptual level theory of education is needed, which is based not only on the one-fold examination of the phenomenon of education, but also on a system of philosophy-based educational paradigms. Thus, liberal education is regarded as one of the essential and fundamental opportunities for the realization of higher education, thinking about the future of society. The above-mentioned aspects make the problematic question possible to be raised: how is prosocial behaviour formed in the liberal education process at university? The article analyses the concept and essence of prosocial behaviour and examines the value basis of liberal education in order to reveal the possibilities of liberal education that determines prosocial behaviour at university. R. Barnett’s (1990) liberal educational approach and conservative and radical concepts are used in this research. The aim was to reveal the formation of prosocial behaviour in the process of university liberal education. Method. The method of scientific literature analysis was used in the research in order to reveal the formation of prosocial behaviour during the liberal education process at university. Results and conclusions. The elements of the formation of prosocial behaviour are encoded in R. Barnett's (1990) liberal educational concepts that cannot exist separately, because the components of both concepts (development of critical thinking, freedom to make decisions, student self-expression, the ability to deal with moral dilemmas) actively and purposefully formulate human prosocial reasoning and behaviour .

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.

Determinants of economic growth in Iraq: a standard study for the period (1970-2016)

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 176-187
Author(s):  
Hayder Talib Mousa ◽  
Karim Salem Hussein
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Development Economic ◽  
Main Concern ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
General Phenomenon ◽  
Economic Growth And Development ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Determinants Of Economic Growth

The subject of economic growth and development has taken a great space of importance in recent decades, level in terms of economic theory, scientific and academic research or the level of international institutions, and the level of countries and their economic orientations. Economic growth as a general phenomenon is a means of achieving various purposes. Growth rate or at least improve it by introducing all the conditions imposed by economic development. Economic growth remains the main concern of the various systems on the one hand and individuals on the other. It is at the top of the objectives of economic policies as it represents the material conclusion of economic and non-economic efforts in society

Responses to Moral Dilemmas Involving Self versus Others

1984 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Rybash ◽  
William J. Hoyer ◽  
Paul A. Roodin
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Young Adults ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Defining Issues Test ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Affective Factors ◽  
Reasoning Abilities ◽  
Children And Young Adults ◽  
Other Orientation

Forty older adults were administered the standard version (i.e. Other-orientation) of Rest et al.'s Defining Issues Test (DIT) and a modified version (i.e., Self-orientation) of the same instrument on two separate occasions. Contrary to the results of previous studies with children and young adults, the self/other manipulation in the present study failed to influence significantly older adults' moral judgments. The role of cognitive/perspective-taking and personal/affective factors in the moral reasoning abilities of the elderly, as well as those of children and young adults, are discussed.

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