Distanced self-talk increases rational self-interest

Does stepping back to evaluate a situation from a distanced perspective lead us to be selfish or fair? This question has been of philosophical interest for centuries, and, more recently, the focus of extensive empirical inquiry. Yet, extant research reveals a puzzle: some studies suggest that adopting a distanced perspective will produce more rationally self-interested behavior, whereas others suggest that it will produce more impartial behavior. Here we adjudicate between these perspectives by testing the effects of adopting a third-person perspective on decision making in a task that pits rational self-interest against impartiality: the dictator game. Aggregating across three experiments (N = 774), participants who used third-person (i.e., distanced) vs. first-person (i.e., immersed) self-talk during the dictator game kept more money for themselves. We discuss these results in light of prior research showing that psychological distance can promote cooperation and fairmindedness and how the effect of psychological distance on moral decision-making may be sensitive to social context.

Narrative in Buddhist Ethics

This chapter explores the central role of narratives in the articulation of Buddhist ethics. Discussion includes casuistic narratives, and the way that they aid in moral decision making, including providing rationales and examples, both clear cut and not, illuminating the impact of interconnected human relationships and circumstances, and creating greater psychological impact through analysis of specific cases. Also discussed are the way that stories yield moral insight through their focus on developing deeper ways of seeing. Several narratives are addressed in detail, including that of Kisagotami, Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana, and a collection of stories from the Mahāvagga and the Avadānaśataka.

Moral Judgement along the Academic Training

Moral reasoning and consequent decision making are central in the everyday life of all people, independent of their profession. It is undoubtedly crucial in the so-called “helping professions”, when the professional through his/her decisions can support or not support others. Our study aimed to investigate whether academic training can play an essential role in influencing moral reasoning. We used three different conditions: 20 moral personal, 20 moral impersonal, and 20 nonmoral dilemmas to assessed differences in moral judgement between students of Economics, Medicine, and Psychology at their first year and at the end of university training. We observed a difference between school and year of course: psychology students showing more time when asked to read and answer the proposed questions. Moreover, medical students showed a significant increase in sensitiveness to moral issues as a function of academic ageing, whereas such a moral sense regressed from the first to the fifth year of academic training in other students. Gender was also relevant, with women showing an increased response and reading times compared to than men when asked to cope with moral decisions. This study shows that the main factor driving moral decision making is the faculty to which one is enrolled, significantly modulated by sex and academic seniority.

Moral Development

One traditionally important part of education, broadly conceived, is to foster moral development. Drawing on the long history of moral life, and using examples of moral progress, the chapter elaborates an approach to moral decision-making. It argues that the method used must be collective. No individual, whether sage, priest, prophet, philosopher, or professional ethicist, has the final authoritative word. Rather, moral reform should emerge from the style of deliberation identified in Chapter 4. This perspective is used to suggest ways of helping the moral growth of children, adolescents, and adults. Chapters 3–5 thus combine in a synthetic picture of how two of the main goals of education—personal fulfillment and morally responsible citizenship—might be achieved together.

Moral Minds in Gaming

Games including meaningful narratives and moral decisions have become increasingly popular. This case study examines (a) the prevalence of morality and moral foundations, (b) player decisions when encountering moral options, and (c) the influence of contextual factors (i.e., time pressure, played avatar, and humanness of nonplayable characters) on moral decision-making in the popular video game Detroit: Become Human. Based on extensive coding of available world statistics we identified 73.21% morally relevant (vs. morally irrelevant) decisions in the game with a high prevalence for harm- and authority-related situations. Although players had an overall tendency to engage in moral behavior, they were more likely to act “good” when under time pressure and if nonhuman characters were involved. Our findings are discussed with regard to common theories of morality. Results support the notion that prior theoretical assumptions may be successfully mapped onto top-selling video games.

Fear Deciding Fate: How Fear Influences Moral Decision-Making

<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>

Fear Deciding Fate: How Fear Influences Moral Decision-Making

<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>

Virtue, habit and neuroscience

Neuroscience has much to offer to our understanding of human action, including its ethical dimensions. However, while neuroscience has been applied to questions of personal identity, emotion and moral decision-making, its implications for the classical notion of virtue have hardly been considered. This likely has much to do with the way in which the classical notion of virtue, together with closely related concepts of nature and habit, has been forgotten or distorted within the context of modern thought. As a consequence, the standard neuroscientific concept of habit as automatic and routine behavior is fundamentally opposed to teleological activity and thus cannot be reconciled with the classical concept of habit that is essential to virtue. The recovery of the classical notion of virtue in contemporary philosophy invites us to rethink the neuroscientific concept of habit in light of a different view of human behavior for which plasticity is not just indeterminacy but rather openness to freedom and growth.

Moral Emotion and Intuition in Organizations

While traditional approaches have described ethical decision-making in organizations mainly as being the result of rational deliberative thought, a steadily growing body of research indicates that moral decision-making is strongly influenced by moral intuitions and emotions. The moral intuition approach typically has two aspects: the process through which moral intuitions emerge and their content. With regard to the process, moral intuitions represent fast, automatic, evaluative reactions that are emotionally charged. An important tenet of moral intuition research refers to the primacy of intuition—the notion that moral intuitions generally drive moral decision-making. Accordingly, moral intuitions are described as starting points for rational reflection processes that follow later. On this basis, it has also been argued that the interplay of moral intuition and deliberation is malleable. Specifically, the well-formed moral intuitions of experts are thought to differ from the naive moral intuitions of novices. With increasing experience and reflection about the moral issues in one’s experiences, deliberation increasingly enables individuals to shift between intuitions and reasoning and to monitor, test, weigh, and reject both intuitions and reasons. The content of moral intuition refers to the foundations of morality, which are the underlying moral domain, specifying what individuals view as morally right or wrong. The most commonly referenced account in this field, Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), argues that moral intuitions are a function of evolutionarily developed, innate predispositions to master multiple social problems that interact with social and cultural influences. These predispositions, or moral foundations, include care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and sanctity. While empirical work on the role of moral intuition in organizations is still at an early stage, several areas have been identified that may particularly benefit from integrating moral intuition process and content. For instance, the moral intuition perspective can aid the understanding and prevention of processes through which unethical behaviors and practices, such as corruption, may be justified and normalized in organizations. Furthermore, the moral intuition perspective is increasingly used to study the moral leadership process, most notably the link between leader moral foundations and moral leader behaviors, as well as the role of (mis)fit between leader and follower moral foundations. Moral emotions are an inherent element of the moral intuition process and refer to the welfare of others and the promotion of a functioning society. It is thought that individuals experience moral emotions when they or others have violated moral standards. These emotions build the motivational force for moral action and are often placed in five clusters: other‐praising (e.g., gratitude), other‐suffering (e.g., sympathy), other‐condemning (e.g., contempt), self‐condemning (e.g., guilt), and self-approving (e.g., moral pride) moral emotions.

Investigation of Empathy Skills and Moral Decision-Making Attitudes in Athlete Students in Terms of Some Variables

It is observed that the appearance of aggression and violent anti-social behavior in sports contradicts the Olimpia culture inherent in sports. Therefore, this research was conducted in order to reveal the causes and consequences of negative behaviors observed in sports, to examine the empathy skills and moral decision-making attitudes of athletes in terms of different variables. The research was arranged by the screening survey model. A total of 319 athletes, 180 men, and 139 women, engaged in individual and team sports in the city where the research was conducted, voluntarily participated in this research. Personal information form, “Prediction in Sports and Empathy in Sports” and “Attitudes to Moral Decision-making in Youth Sport Questionnaire” were applied to the participants. In the analysis of the data, the Manova test and the LSD test were used to determine the source of the difference. As a result of the research, while a significant difference was found in favor of men in terms of gender in empathy skills(p < .05); there was not found a significant difference in terms of sports branch and sports year(p > .05). In terms of the sports year variable, the moral decision-making attitude scores of individuals who have just started sports (0-2 years) compared to individuals who have been doing sports for a long time(9+ years) were found to be higher and this result was found to indicate a statistically significant difference(p < .05). There was not found a significant difference in moral decision-making attitudes scores in terms of sports year and gender.