Global ethics and human responsibility: challenges for the theory and the discipline

The aim of this article is to identify the main challenges for global ethics as an academic discipline. This article assesses the moral and practical justifications for common global principles. Individual and institutional responsibility on the supranational level is connected with the standard of human rights and the relational aspects of the globalised world. It also points out two separate problems which global ethics should aim to solve. The first is metatheoretical and methodological and concerns the discipline's lack of self-reflexiveness. The second is essential and concerns the clash of values (human rights and sovereignty). Regarding the second problem, the main future challenge of global ethics is to construct a measurement to bring political decisions closer to morality and more strongly connect rights with responsibilities.     

PRiME: Integrating professional responsibility into the engineering curriculum

Engineering educators have long discussed the need to teach professional responsibility and the social context of engineering without adding to overcrowded curricula. One difficulty we face is the lack of appropriate teaching materials that can fit into existing courses. The PRiME (Professional Responsibility Modules for Engineering) Project (http://www.engr.utexas.edu/ethics/primeModules.cfm) described in this paper was initiated at the University of Texas, Austin to provide web-based modules that could be integrated into any undergraduate engineering class. Using HPL (How People Learn) theory, PRiME developed and piloted four modules during the academic year 2004–2005. This article introduces the modules and the pilot, outlines the assessment process, analyzes the results, and describes how the modules are being revised in light of the initial assessment. In its first year of development and testing, PRiME made significant progress towards meeting its objectives. The PRiME Project can strengthen engineering education by providing faculty with an effective system for engaging students in learning about professional responsibility. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2005 conference, Ethics and Social Responsibility in Engineering and Technology, Linking Workplace Ethics and Education, co-hosted by Gonzaga University and Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 9–10 June 2005.     

A Preface to Ethics:

This essay outlines a new preface for ethics demanded by the massive developments of the global age. It does so in and through the comparative use of “myths” to explicate the lived structure of experience. The essay begins by isolating main features of global dynamics, including proximity, the compression of the world and the expansion of consciousness, and also global, cultural reflexivity. In the second step of the “preface,” it is argued that globality itself is a moral space in which peoples must orient their lives. It is a moral space defined by the massive extension of human power in the modern world. In light of the challenge that global dynamics and the extension of human power now pose, the essay then isolates, methodologically, options for developing a global ethics, and advocates a distinctly hermeneutical approach. This approach is practiced in the last section of the “preface” by engaging ethically the biblical “myth” of creation and its reinterpretation in an epitome of Jesus's Torah teaching. The intention is to show how current religious thought can speak to massive challenges in a distinctive way. It is, again, to offer a preface to ethics.     

员工对企业社会责任的差异化反应:基于归因理论的阐释

企业社会责任归因是指个体对企业践行社会责任背后的动机进行主观推理和判断的过程与结果, 也是影响企业社会责任发挥积极作用的关键因素。通过梳理以往研究, 从个体、领导及组织三个层面总结了影响员工企业社会责任归因的因素, 同时从社会交换和组织认同视角深入剖析企业社会责任归因对员工态度和行为的影响及作用机理。未来研究可以进一步明晰不同企业社会责任归因的独特影响因素与作用效果, 基于归因理论探索企业社会责任归因的形成机制, 同时研究多种因素对企业社会责任归因的影响, 考察归因对企业社会责任公平启发机制的影响, 并基于中国情境开展本土化研究。     

Theory to social action: A university‐based strategy targeting prejudice against Aboriginal Australians

The level of racism in Australia against Aboriginal Australians is well documented. This has an extremely detrimental effect on the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal Australians. One part of the solution may be anti‐prejudice strategies, but to date few strategies that include a pre‐test and a post‐test assessment have been conducted in Australia. The present study describes the interventional qualities of a cultural psychology unit at an Australian university. Results indicated that after a 6‐week period, students reported a significant reduction in prejudice, acceptance of false beliefs about Aboriginal Australians, and the perception that Aboriginal Australians unfairly receive preferential or special treatment. The article concludes that cultural psychology units have the potential to be an effective way of developing acceptance of cross‐cultural differences.     

A new look at the attribution of moral responsibility: The underestimated relevance of social roles

What are the main features that influence our attribution of moral responsibility? It is widely accepted that there are various factors which strongly influence our moral judgments, such as the agent’s intentions, the consequences of the action, the causal involvement of the agent, and the agent’s freedom and ability to do otherwise. In this paper, we argue that this picture is incomplete: We argue that social roles are an additional key factor that is radically underestimated in the extant literature. We will present an experiment to support this claim.     

Gender and contextual differences in social responsibility in Thai schools: a multi-study person versus situation analysis

Social responsibility has been linked to the moral development of students, but little prior research has examined how personal and situational variables influence students’ willingness to show care and concern for social issues that reflect higher levels of moral development. We theorised and tested the hypotheses that females would endorse social responsibility to a greater extent than males, and that school/programme context would moderate this relationship. In Study 1, levels of social responsibility were greater for girls than boys and in academic versus vocational high schools, and school type moderated levels of social responsibility for boys. Study 2 replicated the male–female difference in social responsibility, and demonstrated greater differences in social responsibility across university academic programmes for female than male students. These studies expand the understanding of personal versus situational influences on social responsibility and their implications for moral education in schools.     

Human moral responsibility is moral responsibility enough: A reply to F. Allan Hanson

Hanson claims that moral responsibility should be distributed among both the humans and artifacts comprising complex wholes that produce morally relevant outcomes in the world. I argue that this claim is not sufficiently supported. In particular, adopting a consequentialist understanding of morality does not by itself support the view that the existence of a causally necessary object in such a complex whole is sufficient for assigning moral responsibility to that object. Moreover, there are good reasons, both evolutionary and contemporary, for not adopting this stance.     

责任共担促进新手的互动决策获益：超扫描研究

采用基于近红外脑成像的超扫描技术, 考察了责任共担(即共同承担决策结果)对个体(专家和新手)的互动决策获益(即互动决策后个体的能力提升)的影响及脑机制。结果显示, 相比于非责任共担, 责任共担条件下新手的互动决策获益更高, 其与互动同伴在额极区域存在增强的脑间活动同步性; 并且, 额极的脑间活动同步性可预测新手的互动决策获益。综上, 责任共担可以有效促进新手的互动决策获益, 额极脑间活动同步性可能是潜在的脑机制。     

Towards Gratitude to Nature: Global Environmental Ethics for China and the World

This paper asks what should be the basis of a global environmental ethics.As Gao Shan has argued,the environmental ethics of Western philosophers such as Holmes Rolston and Paul Taylor is based on extending the notion of intrinsic value to that of objects of nature,and as such it is not very compatible with Chinese ethics.This is related to Gao's rejection of most—if not all—Western "rationalist" environmental ethics,a stance that I grant her for pragmatic reasons (though I remain neutral about it theoretically).Gao argues that the Daoist notion of living in harmony with nature can instead become the basis of a Chinese environmental ethics.However,the involved Daoist conception of living in harmony with nature is,in my view,based on an aesthetic property.The paper argues that despite the appeal of the Daoist view for a Chinese environmental ethics,an aesthetic property cannot provide the basis for a global environmental ethics.The paper also considers another version of Daoist environmental ethics,which does not rely on an aesthetic notion,but I argue that it too fails as such a candidate.As an alternative,the paper considers and applies contemporary Western thinkers on gratitude (such as Robert Emmons and Elizabeth Loder),proposing that gratitude to nature (environmental gratitude)can indeed provide the needed basis.     

International Registry of Counsellor Education Programs: CACREP's Contribution to the Development of Counseling as a Global Profession

This article addresses the issues and challenges involved in the development of the counseling profession internationally and the role that quality assurance plays in its development. It chronicles the development of the International Registry for Counsellor Education Programs and its contributions, a critical analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of current developments, and hopes for the future of international counselling.     

ASPIRing to Mitigate Climate Change: Superordinate Identity in Global Climate Negotiations

The issues surrounding rising levels of atmospheric CO₂ and climate change have become part of the collective conscious and the vernacular of world leaders, media, and the public alike. Despite the widespread concern and attention, attempts to achieve a global commitment to mitigate climate change are failing. In this article, we suggest that the Actualizing Social and Personal Identity Resources model (ASPIRe; Haslam, Eggins, & Reynolds, 2003 ), developed to help organizations become more sustainable and productive, can promote more efficient negotiations in matters of global environmental concern. Using this model as a framework, the dynamics of the United Nations (UN) meeting in Copenhagen are scrutinized along with suggestions for how to structure future negotiations. Building on an understanding of existing UN‐type committee structures, it is argued that as the interests of individual nations and those of like‐minded other nations (subgroup interests) become the real basis for decision making on the issue of climate change the more likely it is that a higher‐order superordinate identity will emerge, which promotes aligned action. To date, the psychological aspects of social and behavioral change have been neglected, which could be a factor in explaining the lack of coordinated action on climate change.     

Risk perception,illusory superiority and personal responsibility during COVID-19: An experimental study of attitudes to staying home

Little is known about how different government communication strategies may systematically affect people’s attitudes to staying home or going out during the COVID-19 pandemic, nor how people perceive and process the risk of viral transmission in different scenarios. In this study, we report results from two experiments that examine the degree to which people’s attitudes regarding the permissibility of leaving one’s home are (1) sensitive to different levels of risk of viral transmission in specific scenarios, (2) sensitive to communication framings that are either imperative or that emphasize personal responsibility, or (3) creating ‘loopholes’ for themselves, enabling a more permissive approach to their own compliance. We find that the level of risk influences attitudes to going out, and that participants report less permissive attitudes to going out when prompted with messages framed in imperative terms, rather than messages emphasizing personal responsibility; for self-loopholes, we find no evidence that participants’ attitudes towards going out in specific scenarios are more permissive for themselves than for others. However, participants report they are more rigorous in staying home than others, which may cause moral licensing. Additionally, we find that age is negatively associated with permissive attitudes, and that male participants are more permissive to going out. Thus, during phases where it is important to promote staying home for all scenarios, including those perceived to be low-risk, imperative communication may be best suited to increase compliance.     

The other side of rumination: reflective pondering as a strategy for regulating emotions in social situations

Recent studies have questioned the idea of rumination as a unitary dysfunctional process and identified an adaptive subcomponent: reflective pondering. We tested whether reflective pondering could represent an adaptive strategy of regulating emotions, and contrasted it with reappraisal and acceptance, strategies linked to major psychotherapeutic approaches. Participants (103 students) received training in one of these and were exposed to a negative mood induction consisting of social scenarios, both in the presence and in the absence of the specific emotion regulation instruction. Acceptance was more useful than reflective pondering in impacting negative emotions and anxiety. Reappraisal was more efficient than pondering for anxiety. However, moderation analysis showed that social anxiety (SA) levels influenced the comparative efficiency of reappraisal and acceptance as contrasted to reflective pondering for negative emotions and anxiety. Participants low in SA made equal use of all strategies, while for those high in SA reappraisal and acceptance were more efficient than pondering. Our results provide preliminary evidence that reflective pondering can, in some circumstances, be an adaptive regulation strategy.     

对抗偏见:作为偏见消减策略的社会行为

对抗偏见是偏见对象或旁观者对偏见持有者表示不满的社会行为,能够降低偏见持有者的偏见水平,并有助于形成反偏见的社会规范,是一种有效的偏见消减策略。对抗偏见领域的研究可分为对抗偏见效果研究与对抗偏见行为研究。前者主要采用材料型和实验型研究范式,关注对抗偏见的作用机制、具体效果及对抗偏见效果的影响因素;后者主要采用回顾型、实时记录型和前瞻型研究范式,关注对抗偏见行为的发生机制和影响因素。将来这一领域需注重研究范式的综合使用及生态效度的提高,以促进对抗偏见效果研究与对抗偏见行为研究的有机结合;并在对抗偏见的神经机制和有效策略方面进一步深入探索。     

Communication,reflexivity and harm principle: what might an ideal speech situation look like in responsibility to protect?

ABSTRACT

Previous accounts of International Relations research have extensively focused on deontological ethics in analysing Responsibility to Protect (R2P). At the same time, discourse ethics – along with Jürgen Habermas’ theory of ideal speech situation – has been overlooked. This article argues that the R2P process has gradually moved toward the Habermasian ideal speech situation. The Habermasian approach also provides a useful theoretical framework to understand the new, more inclusive and critical, forums of communication and initiatives set in motion by emerging non-Western norm-entrepreneurs in the R2P process, notably the Responsibility while Protecting (RwP) initiated by Brazil in 2011. From the perspective of discourse ethics, RwP could be understood as a cosmopolitan harm principle designed to manage the potentially harmful side-effects of the application of R2P. The article further argues that, despite the current paradigm shift of norm-entrepreneurship on R2P from deontological ethics to discourse ethics, it has thus far only partially fulfilled the criteria of an ideal speech situation.     

Introduction: symposium on Brooke Ackerly’s Just Responsibility: A Human Rights Theory of Global Justice

ABSTRACT

This symposium brings together normative and empirical scholars in dialogue on Brooke Ackerly’s innovative and compelling recent monograph, Just Responsibility. Contributors discuss the book’s distinctive grounded normative theory methodology, its arguments for how individuals can take appropriate responsibility for global structural injustices, and its potential for practical impact.     

Why and how to use virtual reality to study human social interaction: The challenges of exploring a new research landscape

As virtual reality (VR) technology and systems become more commercially available and accessible, more and more psychologists are starting to integrate VR as part of their methods. This approach offers major advantages in experimental control, reproducibility, and ecological validity, but also has limitations and hidden pitfalls which may distract the novice user. This study aimed to guide the psychologist into the novel world of VR, reviewing available instrumentation and mapping the landscape of possible systems. We use examples of state-of-the-art research to describe challenges which research is now solving, including embodiment, uncanny valley, simulation sickness, presence, ethics, and experimental design. Finally, we propose that the biggest challenge for the field would be to build a fully interactive virtual human who can pass a VR Turing test – and that this could only be achieved if psychologists, VR technologists, and AI researchers work together.