scholarly journals Moral Paragons, but Crummy Friends: The Case of Snitching

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zachariah Berry ◽  
Ike Silver ◽  
Alex Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Character ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Leadership Potential ◽  
Moral Person ◽  
Employee Relationships ◽  
Moral Transgressions ◽  
Practical Implications

Loyalty to one’s co-workers and friends is an important moral value that benefits and strengthens employee relationships. Yet, an employee’s loyalty-based obligations may be tested when they witness a friend engage in wrongdoing that could negatively impact their organization. Across five pre-registered studies (N = 1,089), we examine how relationship-based loyalty obligations impact how people evaluate an employee who decides to snitch or not snitch after witnessing another employee’s transgressions. We consistently find that a witness who snitches (vs. doesn’t snitch) is seen as more moral, more hirable, and as having higher leadership potential (Studies 1-4b) and that this effect is insensitive to relationship-based loyalty obligations (i.e., whether the transgressor and witness are friends; Studies 2 and 3). We also demonstrate that snitches are not seen as more moral when snitching on non-moral transgressions (Study 3) and that the benefits of snitching for perceived moral character are moderated if the witness somehow benefits from turning in the wrongdoer, suggesting that their behavior is selfishly motivated (Study 4a–4b). Of course, snitching is not costless: in all of our studies, snitching on friends makes one appear disloyal and a bad potential friend. These results highlight important instances where fulfilling loyalty-obligations is not a part of what it means to be a moral person. We discuss implications for loyalty, moral psychology, and whistleblowing, as well as the practical implications for organizations.

Attention

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Bommarito
Keyword(s):  
Mental Disorders ◽  
Attention Deficit ◽  
Attention Deficit Disorder ◽  
Moral Character ◽  
Moral Concern ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
The Relationship

After a brief overview of the nature of attention, I argue that attention (and inattention) can be morally virtuous or vicious independently of associated overt actions. This is not, as others have claimed, because attention itself has moral value, but because attention can manifest underlying moral concern. After discussing the relationship between attention and concern, I discuss problematic cases related to mental disorders, in particular attention-deficit disorder and scrupulosity. I then apply the account to particular virtues associated with attention: modesty and gratitude. Gratitude, I argue, involves attention to our benefits and their sources, while modesty involves special patterns of attention away from our own good qualities. This account best explains how attention can be relevant to moral character.

Liberal Neutrality

Dialogue ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 711-719
Author(s):  
Lawrence Haworth
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Single Source ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Liberal Neutrality ◽  
Social Lives ◽  
Moral Person ◽  
Personal Ideal

In Patterns of Moral Complexity, Charles Larmore describes three related ways in which moral and political theory are more complex than is often allowed. He objects to three parallel simplifications: that moral decision making largely consists in the application of rules to particular situations; that the ideals by which we are guided in our personal (private, social) lives should also do service as political ideals, a simplification which he calls “expressivism”; and that there is but a single source of moral value (that we must be either consequentialists, or deontologists, or endorse the “principle of partiality”). Against these simplifications he argues in a sort of Aristotelian way for (1) the centrality of judgment in moral reasoning; (2) for the liberal principle that the state should not strive to express our highest personal ideal; and (3) for the, I suppose eclectic, view that partiality, deontological reasons, and consequentialist reasons all have a place in moral reasoning and that therefore the moral person may well be caught in conflicts that present him or her with tragic choices. These are the three “patterns of moral complexity” that the title of the book refers to.

scholarly journals A person-centered approach to punishment: Reprimand and avoidance are differentially directed towards adult and child transgressors

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cindel White ◽  
Mark Schaller ◽  
Elizabeth G. Abraham ◽  
Josh Rottman
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Moral Character ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Different Ages ◽  
Moral Transgressions ◽  
Person Centered Approach

Three studies (N = 867) investigated how adults’ and children’s punitive responses to moral transgressions differ depending on whether transgressors are adults or children. Adults judged the transgressions of fellow adults as substantially more wrong, and as more worthy of avoidance and punishment, than identical actions performed by children. This difference was partially mediated by the perception that adults’ actions are considered to be more wrong, more harmful, and stranger than children’s identical actions, and by greater anxiety about the negative consequences of confronting adults about their bad behavior. Despite viewing children’s actions as less wrong, adults were more likely to reprimand children than adults who engaged in identical behavior, and this difference became more pronounced when statistically controlling for the wrongness and strangeness of actions. Adults’ nurturant tendencies towards children, as well as their perceptions of children’s moral character as more changeable, also predicted relatively greater reprimand and less avoidance of child transgressors. These differences between reprimand and avoidance of child and adult transgressors was robust to the type of transgression (including harm- and purity-related norms), several individual differences, and a global pandemic. In contrast, 4- to 9-year-old children were equally likely to avoid and reprimand adult and child transgressors, suggesting that different processes are engaged when adults judge children compared to when children evaluate their own peers. Together, these findings indicate how diverse responses to moral transgressions are differentially adapted for norm violators of different ages.

scholarly journals What is good is beautiful (and what isn’t, isn’t): How moral character affects perceived facial attractiveness

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dexian He ◽  
Clifford Ian Workman ◽  
Xianyou He ◽  
Anjan Chatterjee
Keyword(s):  
Significant Interaction ◽  
Facial Attractiveness ◽  
Moral Character ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Opposite Pattern ◽  
Moral Goodness ◽  
The Face ◽  
Moral Transgressions ◽  
Face Stimuli ◽  
Physically Attractive

A well-documented “beauty-is-good” stereotype is expressed in the expectation that physically attractive people have more positive characteristics. Recent evidence also finds that unattractive faces are associated with negative character inferences. Is what is good (bad) also beautiful (ugly)? Whether this conflation of aesthetic and moral values is bidirectional is not known. This study tested the hypothesis that complementary “good-is-beautiful” and “bad-is-ugly” stereotypes bias aesthetic judgments. Using highly controlled face stimuli, this pre-registered study examined whether moral character influences perceptions of attractiveness for different ages and sexes of faces. Compared to faces paired with non-moral vignettes, those paired with prosocial vignettes were rated significantly more attractive, confident, and friendlier. The opposite pattern characterized faces paired with antisocial vignettes. A significant interaction between vignette type and the age of the face was detected for attractiveness. Moral transgressions affected attractiveness more negatively for younger than older faces. Sex-related differences were not detected. These results suggest information about moral character affects our judgments about facial attractiveness. Better people are considered more attractive. These findings suggest that beliefs about moral goodness and physical beauty influence each other bidirectionally.

Honesty in projects

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 590-600 ◽  
Author(s):  
Øyvind Kvalnes
Keyword(s):  
Project Management ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Practical Challenge ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Moral Neutralization ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how the concept of honesty can shed light on misreporting issues in projects. Research on honesty can be useful for practitioners and researchers in project management, in order to understand and counter the withholding and distortion of relevant information from projects. In moral psychology, dishonesty is often explained as a result of moral neutralization. The paper provides an account of how neutralization can lead to dishonesty in projects. Design/methodology/approach – The current study is based on a literature review of research on misreporting and dishonesty in projects, and of relevant generic studies of honesty. Findings – The author concludes that the phenomenon of moral neutralization can explain dishonesty and misreporting in projects. Honesty can be encouraged by identifying attempts at moral neutralization, and rendering them unacceptable. At the core of this position is the view that the level of honesty amongst project members is most adequately understood and explained from a circumstance rather than a character approach. Research limitations/implications – The paper is based on a literature review, and needs to be supported by further empirical studies within project management. Practical implications – The suggested primacy of a circumstance approach to honesty implies that project practitioners should be aware of the phenomenon of moral neutralization. Even people of good moral character can become involved in neutralization, in order to render misreporting acceptable. The central practical challenge can thus be to recognize tendencies of neutralization in one's own and other people's moral reasoning. Originality/value – The main contribution of this paper is to introduce the concept of honesty in general, and the concept of moral neutralization in particular, to project management research and practice. The paper also suggests concrete ways to redirect attention from character to circumstances, based on more general research findings in social and moral psychology.

Moral Conservatism

1987 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Public Deliberation ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Public Communication ◽  
Extended Form ◽  
Moral Conservatism ◽  
Common Future ◽  
Practical Implications

The study of ethics has recently become influenced by a form of moral conservatism—a critique of “modernity” with a bias towards Aristotle. It stresses the integrity of communities and their customs, a pluralistic and particularistic respect for the diversity of human groups, the poverty of utopianism and Marxism, and the inevitability of moral and political conflict. Each stress raises major issues: the priority of social goods over human rights; hermeneutical problems of understanding between communities; difficulties for societies' shaping a common future in accordance with their moral understanding; the balance between consensus and conflict in political life. These problems are addressed in an extended form of moral conservatism which defines a number of correspondences with progressive conceptions of humanity. Referring to central facts of moral psychology and possible institutions of public communication, the discussion identifies universal human purposes whose practical implications are consistent with a postmodern society in which the course of development is settled by public deliberation.

scholarly journals Principles of Moral Accounting: How our Intuitive Moral Sense Balances Rights and Wrongs

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Gregory Blane Johnson ◽  
Jaye Jungmin Ahn
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Person Perception ◽  
Temporal Order ◽  
Moral Character ◽  
Moral Rights ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Do So

We are all saints and sinners: Some of our actions benefit other people, while other actions harm people. How do people balance moral rights against moral wrongs when evaluating others’ actions? Across 9 studies, we contrast the predictions of three conceptions of intuitive morality—outcome- based (utilitarian), act-based (deontologist), and person-based (virtue ethics) approaches. Although good acts can partly offset bad acts—consistent with utilitarianism—they do so incompletely and in a manner relatively insensitive to magnitude, but sensitive to temporal order and the match between who is helped and harmed. Inferences about personal moral character best predicted blame judgments, explaining variance across items and across participants. However, there was modest evidence for both deontological and utilitarian processes too. These findings contribute to conversations about moral psychology and person perception, and may have policy implications.

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