Moral psychology, empirical work in

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua May
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Empirical Methods ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Additional Tool ◽  
The Social ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study

How do we form our moral judgments, and how do they influence behaviour? What ultimately motivates kind versus malicious action? Moral psychology is the interdisciplinary study of such questions about the mental lives of moral agents, including moral thought, feeling, reasoning and motivation. While these questions can be studied solely from the armchair or using only empirical tools, researchers in various disciplines, from biology to neuroscience to philosophy, can address them in tandem. Some key topics in this respect revolve around moral cognition and motivation, such as moral responsibility, altruism, the structure of moral motivation, weakness of will, and moral intuitions. Of course there are other important topics as well, including emotions, character, moral development, self-deception, addiction, and the evolution of moral capacities. Some of the primary objects of study in moral psychology are the processes driving moral action. For example, we often think of ourselves as possessing free will, which undergirds our being responsible for what we do; we often believe we can be ultimately concerned for the welfare of another; and so on. Yet these claims can be tested by empirical methods to some extent in at least two ways. First, we can determine what in fact our ordinary thinking is. While many philosophers investigate this through rigorous reflection on concepts, the empirical methods of the social sciences are at least an additional tool to bring to bear on the issue. Second, we can investigate empirically whether our ordinary thinking is correct. This typically involves checking the empirical adequacy of philosophical theories, assessing directly any claims made about moral cognition, motivation, and so forth. Understanding the psychology of moral individuals is certainly interesting in its own right, but it also often has direct implications for other areas of ethics, such as metaethics and normative ethics. For instance, determining the role of reason versus sentiment in moral judgment and motivation can shed light on whether moral judgments are cognitive, and perhaps whether morality itself is in some sense objective. Similarly, moral theories, such as deontology and utilitarianism, often rely on intuitive judgments about what one ought to do in various hypothetical cases. Empirical research can again serve as an additional tool to determine what exactly the intuitions are and which psychological processes generate them.

Moral psychology, empirical work in

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua May
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Empirical Methods ◽  
Moral Intuitions ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study

How do we form our moral judgments, and how do they influence behaviour? What ultimately motivates kind versus malicious action? Moral psychology is the interdisciplinary study of such questions about the mental lives of moral agents, including moral thought, feeling, reasoning and motivation. While these questions can be studied solely from the armchair or using only empirical tools, researchers in various disciplines, from biology to neuroscience to philosophy, can address them in tandem. Some key topics in this respect revolve around moral cognition and motivation, such as moral responsibility, altruism, the structure of moral motivation, weakness of will, and moral intuitions. Of course there are other important topics as well, including emotions, character, moral development, self-deception, addiction, well-being, and the evolution of moral capacities. Some of the primary objects of study in moral psychology are the processes driving moral action. For example, we think of ourselves as possessing free will, as being responsible for what we do; as capable of self-control; and as capable of genuine concern for the welfare of others. Such claims can be tested by empirical methods to some extent in at least two ways. First, we can determine what in fact our ordinary thinking is. While many philosophers investigate this through rigorous reflection on concepts, we can also use the empirical methods of the social sciences. Second, we can investigate empirically whether our ordinary thinking is correct or illusory. For example, we can check the empirical adequacy of philosophical theories, assessing directly any claims made about how we think, feel, and behave Understanding the psychology of moral individuals is certainly interesting in its own right, but it also often has direct implications for other areas of ethics, such as metaethics and normative ethics. For instance, determining the role of reason versus sentiment in moral judgment and motivation can shed light on whether moral judgments are cognitive, and perhaps whether morality itself is in some sense objective. Similarly, evaluating moral theories, such as deontology and utilitarianism, often relies on intuitive judgments about what one ought to do in various hypothetical cases. Empirical research can again serve as an additional tool to determine what exactly our intuitions are and which psychological processes generate them, contributing to a rigorous evaluation of the warrant of moral intuitions.

scholarly journals Précis of Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua May
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Psychological Mechanisms ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Commonsense Morality

Abstract Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind argues that a careful examination of the scientific literature reveals a foundational role for reasoning in moral thought and action. Grounding moral psychology in reason then paves the way for a defense of moral knowledge and virtue against a variety of empirical challenges, such as debunking arguments and situationist critiques. The book attempts to provide a corrective to current trends in moral psychology, which celebrate emotion over reason and generate pessimism about the psychological mechanisms underlying commonsense morality. Ultimately, there is rationality in ethics not just despite but in virtue of the neurobiological and evolutionary materials that shape moral cognition and motivation.

scholarly journals The Normative Significance of Empirical Moral Psychology

Diametros ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (64) ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Tomasz Żuradzki
Keyword(s):  
Brain Imaging ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Statistical Significance ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Behavioral Data ◽  
Psychological Processes ◽  
Empirical Methods ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Normative Significance

Many psychologists have tried to reveal the formation and processing of moral judgments by using a variety of empirical methods: behavioral data, tests of statistical significance, and brain imaging. Meanwhile, some scholars maintain that the new empirical findings of the ways we make moral judgments question the trustworthiness and authority of many intuitive ethical responses. The aim of this special issue is to encourage scholars to rethink how, if at all, it is possible to draw any normative conclusions by discovering the psychological processes underlying moral judgments.

The Evolution of Moral Progress

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Buchanan ◽  
Russell Powell
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Cultural Construction ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
First Time

The idea of moral progress played a central role in liberal political thought from the Enlightenment through the nineteenth century but is rarely encountered in moral and political philosophical discourse today. One reason for this is that traditional liberal theorists of moral progress, like their conservative detractors, tended to rely on underevidenced assumptions about human psychology and society. For the first time in history, we are developing robust scientific knowledge about human nature, especially through empirical psychological theories of morality and culture that are informed by evolutionary theory. In addition, the social sciences now provide better information about which social arrangements are feasible and sustainable and about how social norms arise, change, and come to shape moral thought and behavior. Accordingly, it is time to revisit the question of moral progress. On the surface, evolutionary accounts of morality paint a pessimistic picture, suggesting that certain types of moral progress are unrealistic or inappropriate for beings like us. In brief, humans are said to be “hard-wired” for rather limited moral capacities. However, such a view overlooks the great plasticity of human morality as evidenced by our history of social and political moral achievements. To account for these changes while giving evolved moral psychology its due, we develop a dynamic, biocultural theory of moral progress that highlights the interaction between adaptive components of moral psychology and the cultural construction of moral norms and beliefs; and we explore how this interaction can advance, impede, and reverse moral progress.

scholarly journals Précis of Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua May
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Psychological Mechanisms ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Commonsense Morality

Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind argues that a careful examination of the scientific literature reveals a foundational role for reasoning in moral thought and action. Grounding moral psychology in reason then paves the way for a defense of moral knowledge and virtue against a variety of empirical challenges, such as debunking arguments and situationist critiques. The book attempts to provide a corrective to current trends in moral psychology, which celebrate emotion over reason and generate pessimism about the psychological mechanisms underlying commonsense morality. Ultimately, there is rationality in ethics not just despite but in virtue of the neurobiological and evolutionary materials that shape moral cognition and motivation.

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 Reading Fictional Narratives to Improve Social and Moral Cognition: The Influence of Narrative Perspective, Transportation, and Identification

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lena Wimmer ◽  
Stacie Friend ◽  
Gregory Currie ◽  
Heather J. Ferguson
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Cognitive Effects ◽  
Narrative Perspective ◽  
The Social ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Textual Features ◽  
The Third Person

There is a long tradition in philosophy and literary criticism of belief in the social and moral benefits of exposure to fiction, and recent empirical work has examined some of these claims. However, little of this research has addressed the textual features responsible for the hypothesized cognitive effects. We present two experiments examining whether readers’ social and moral cognition are influenced by theperspectivefrom which a narrative is told (voice and focalization), and whether potential effects of perspective are mediated by transportation into the story or by identification with the protagonist. Both experiments employed a between-subjects design in which participants read a short story, either in the first-person voice using internal focalization, third-person voice using internal focalization, or third-person voice using external focalization. Social and moral cognition was assessed using a battery of tasks. Experiment 1 (N= 258) failed to detect any effects of perspective or any mediating roles of transportation or identification. Implementing a more rigorous adaptation of the third-person story using external focalization, Experiment 2 (N= 262) largely replicated this pattern. Taken together, the evidence reported here suggests that perspective does not have a significant impact on the extent to which narratives modulate social and moral cognition, either directly or indirectly via transportation and identification.

Moral margins concerning the use of coercion in psychiatry

2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 304-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elleke GM Landeweer ◽  
Tineke A Abma ◽  
Guy AM Widdershoven
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Case Deliberation ◽  
Moral Decisions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Moral Case ◽  
Social Intuitionist Model ◽  
Practical Tool

In the closed wards of mental health institutions, moral decisions are made concerning the use of forced seclusion. In this article we focus on how these moral decisions are made and can be improved. We present a case study concerning moral deliberations on the use of seclusion and its prevention among nurses of a closed mental health ward. Moral psychology provides an explanation of how moral judgments are developed through processes of interaction. We will make use of the Social Intuitionist Model of Jonathan Haidt that emphasizes the role of emotions, intuitions and the social context in moral judgments and reasoning. We argue that this model can help to explain social dynamics in the context of enforced seclusion. In the discussion we explore how moral psychology can be complemented with the normative perspective of dialogical ethics to develop strategies for improving psychiatric practices. We conclude that social processes play an important role in moral deliberations and that moral development can be fostered by bringing in new perspectives in the dialogue. Moral case deliberation provides a practical tool to systematically organize moral reflections among nurses on the work floor.

scholarly journals Naïve Normativity: The Social Foundation of Moral Cognition

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
KRISTIN ANDREWS
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Social Learning ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Folk Psychology ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Great Apes ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
The Social

AbstractTo answer tantalizing questions such as whether animals are moral or how morality evolved, I propose starting with a somewhat less fraught question: do animals have normative cognition? Recent psychological research suggests that normative thinking, or ought-thought, begins early in human development. Recent philosophical research suggests that folk psychology is grounded in normative thought. Recent primatology research finds evidence of sophisticated cultural and social learning capacities in great apes. Drawing on these three literatures, I argue that the human variety of social cognition and moral cognition encompass the same cognitive capacities and that the nonhuman great apes may also be normative beings. To make this argument, I develop an account of animal social norms that shares key properties with Cristina Bicchieri's account of social norms but which lowers the cognitive requirements for having a social norm. I propose a set of four early developing prerequisites implicated in social cognition that make up what I call naïve normativity: (1) the ability to identify agents, (2) sensitivity to in-group/out-group differences, (3) the capacity for social learning of group traditions, and (4) responsiveness to appropriateness. I review the ape cognition literature and present preliminary empirical evidence supporting the existence of social norms and naïve normativity in great apes. While there is more empirical work to be done, I hope to have offered a framework for studying normativity in other species, and I conclude that we should be open to the possibility that normative cognition is yet another ancient cognitive endowment that is not human-unique.

Moral Psychology And Artificial Agents (Part 1): Ontologically Categorizing Bio-Cultural Humans

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Laakasuo ◽  
Anton Berg ◽  
Jukka Sundvall ◽  
Marianna Drosinou ◽  
Volo Herzon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Psychology ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Artificial Agents ◽  
Mind Perception ◽  
Ontological Categories

In this chapter, we will provide theoretical background of discussion on issues related to AIs. Some of the main topics, theories and frameworks are mind perception and moral cognition, moral psychology, evolutionary psychology, trans-humanism and ontological categories shaped by evolution.

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