scholarly journals The Role of Temperature in Moral Decision-Making: Limited Reproducibility

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryunosuke Sudo ◽  
Satoshi F. Nakashima ◽  
Masatoshi Ukezono ◽  
Yuji Takano ◽  
Johan Lauwereyns

Temperature is one of the major environmental factors that people are exposed to on a daily basis, often in conditions that do not afford control. It is known that heat and cold can influence a person’s productivity and performance in simple tasks. With respect to social cognition, it has also been suggested that temperature impacts on relatively high-level forms of decision-making. For instance, previous research demonstrated that cold temperature promotes utilitarian judgment in a moral dilemma task. This effect could be due to psychological processing, when a cool temperature primes a set of internal representations (associated with “coldness”). Alternatively, the promotion of utilitarian judgment in cold conditions could be due to physiological interference from temperature, impeding on social cognition. Refuting both explanations of psychological or physiological processing, however, it has been suggested that there may be problems of reproducibility in the literature on temperature modulating complex or abstract information processing. To examine the role of temperature in moral decision-making, we conducted a series of experiments using ambient and haptic temperature with careful manipulation checks and modified task methodology. Experiment 1 manipulated room temperature with cool (21°C), control (24°C) and hot (27°C) conditions and found only a cool temperature effect, promoting utilitarian judgment as in the previous study. Experiment 2 manipulated the intensity of haptic temperature but failed to obtain the cool temperature effect. Experiments 3 and 4 examined the generalizability of the cool ambient temperature effect with another moral judgment task and with manipulation of exposure duration. However, again there were no cool temperature effects, suggesting a lack of reproducibility. Despite successful manipulations of temperature in all four experiments, as measured in body temperature and the participants’ self-reported perception, we found no systematic influence of temperature on moral decision-making. A Bayesian meta-analysis of the four experiments showed that the overall data tended to provide strong support in favor of the null hypothesis. We propose that, at least in the range of temperatures from 21 to 27°C, the cool temperature effect in moral decision-making is not a robust phenomenon.

2018 ◽  
Vol 87 ◽  
pp. 171-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katja Koelkebeck ◽  
Lisa Kuegler ◽  
Waldemar Kohl ◽  
Alva Engell ◽  
Rebekka Lencer

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Behnke ◽  
Anja Strobel ◽  
Diana Armbruster

Killing people is universally considered reprehensible and evokes in observers a need to punish perpetrators. To investigate how observers’ personality influences their cognitive, emotional, and punishing reactions towards perpetrators, we analyzed data from 1,004 participants who responded to three scenarios describing deliberate killings from a third-party perspective. Utilitarian motive of killing and inevitability of harm varied systematically between scenarios. Participants’ moral appropriateness judgments, emotions towards perpetrators, and assigned punishments revealed complex scenario-personality interactions. Trait psychopathy led to more understanding emotions but harsher punishments in all scenarios. Regarding utilitarian killings, need for cognition led to milder punishments, whereas intuitive/authority-obedient thinking led to stronger negative emotions and harsher punishments. Other-oriented empathy, trait anxiety, and justice sensitivity did not account for differences in third-party punishments. Our findings highlight the importance of interindividual differences on moral decision making and sense of justice.


Author(s):  
Roger Crisp

Moral particularism is a broad set of views which play down the role of general moral principles in moral philosophy and practice. Particularists stress the role of examples in moral education and of moral sensitivity or judgment in moral decision-making, as well as criticizing moral theories which advocate or rest upon general principles. It has not yet been demonstrated that particularism constitutes an importantly controversial position in moral philosophy.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Isabella Polito

What role does empathy play in moral decision-making? The present study examined the relationship between several empathy measures and empathy's role in a person's justice sensitivity.


2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Scott Timcke

This paper attends to the moral thought of Robert Brandom as it appears in his 1994 magnum opus Making It Explicit. Insofar that it is necessarily to outline Brandom’s thought the presentation will refer to the conception of deontic commitments as providing a basis for inference and entitlements for the purposes of meaning making. Accepting these remarks as sound enough, the paper directs attention at the role of inference in moral-decision making. Finally, it offers an appraisal of Brandom’s moral thought system.


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