Rational Choice and Moral Decision Making in Research

University psychology and sociology researchers rated the likelihood they would engage in misconduct as described in 9 research scenarios, while also making moral judgments and rating the likelihood of discovery and sanctions. Multiple regression revealed significant effects across various scenarios for moral judgment as well as shame and embarrassment on reducing misconduct. The effects on misconduct of the perceived probability of sanctions were conditioned on moral judgments in some scenarios. The results have implications for how universities address the prevention, detection, and sanctioning of research misconduct.     

Honor and Moral Revolution

Western philosophers have generally neglected honor as a moral phenomenon worthy of serious study. Appiah’s recent work on honor in moral revolutions is an important exception, but even he is careful to separate honor from morality, regarding it as only “an ally” of morality. In this paper we take Appiah to be right about the psychological, social, and historical role honor has played in three notable moral revolutions, but wrong about the moral nature of honor. We defend two new theses: First, honor is an emotional and moral form of recognition respect that can hinder or aid moral progress. Second, honor, so conceived, can play a rational role in progressive moral change, as it did among the working class in the British abolition of slave trade, when the pressure of moral consistency moved them to protest American slavery as an affront to their honor without change in their moral belief that slavery is wrong.     

Moral Orientation as a Component of Ethical Decision Making

Morals are foundational to professional and ethical counseling practice. Moral orientation may play an integral role in ethical decision making. The authors review the literature regarding moral orientation and discuss the connection to ethical decision making. Implications for counselor preparation and practice are addressed.     

Dimensions of Moral Intensity and Ethical Decision Making: An Empirical Study

Moral intensity is a construct that relates to issues in terms of their perceived moral significance. Individuals' perceptions of moral intensity should impact their recognition of issues as posing moral dilemmas and should also affect ethical judgments and behavioral intentions regarding issues. This study examined the relationship between 4 dimensions of moral intensity and the ethical decision-making process. Two work-related actions were presented to respondents, who then completed measures of the 4 dimensions of moral intensity, whether the actions posed an ethical issue, ethical judgments regarding the actions, and the likelihood that they would engage in the actions. Results indicate that moral intensity dimensions were associated with individuals' ethical decisions. Social consensus and seriousness of consequences were particularly important influences on the ethical decision-making process.     

道德荣誉感及其培育

荣誉感具有重要的道德意义,它对于道德自我具有持存意义,对于道德品质具有养成意义,对于道德情感具有提升意义,对于道德行为具有动力意义;荣誉的基础是道德,道德荣誉会赋予其他荣誉以精神底蕴,道德荣誉感是一种更具本体意义的荣誉感;构建合理的社会荣誉奖惩机制,是培育道德荣誉感的最重要环节之一.     

决策行为和道德判断过程的外语效应:现状与展望

最近研究者发现,人们对决策任务的加工随表述的语言形式(母语/外语)的不同而发生改变,即出现外语效应,并基于双加工模型提出了直觉(即情绪)加工被弱化和审慎(即认知)加工被增强两种理论解释,且均获得部分研究结果的支持。本文概述了外语效应及其心理机制的主要研究文献,并指出由于既往研究范式无法分离情绪与认知加工两个子过程的效力,未来研究应利用加工分离程序以及负性情绪与认知加工阻断技术,深入考察外语对直觉加工和审慎加工的影响,以阐明外语效应的形成机制。     

Reappraising the Moral Nature of Emotions in Decision Making: The Case of Shame and Guilt

Emotions play a crucial role in moral behavior. The present paper does not contest this point but argues that qualifications of certain feelings such as shame and guilt as moral emotions should not exclusively be based on a proximal analysis of their function. A proximal analysis details how moral emotions produce moral behavior. Emotions are qualified as moral when they are elicited by concerns for others rather than the self and produce prosocial action tendencies. Although researchers have acknowledged that moral emotions may also have an ultimate function that details why it is in the individual interest that these moral effects occur, they have neglected to translate such ideas into testable hypotheses. Using guilt and shame as an example, we show how an analysis of ultimate functions accommodates recent findings, which contest the view that guilt is more moral than shame and provides new insights as to when and why moral emotions will produce moral effects.     

行为决策研究的新取向——基于经验的决策

基于经验的决策是指,在统计概率情境中,个体通过重复选择与反馈获得选项的收益分布信息后进行的决策.基于经验的决策的研究范式主要包括探索-利用范式和探索→利用范式.其暗含的决策人假设是朴素直觉统计学家.其研究关注的主要内容是描述-经验的差异及其原因,以及基于经验的决策内部过程.未来的研究主要从描述-经验差异的原因、描述性决策范式下的结论的重新检验、基于经验的决策的解释模型及其应用研究等方面进行探讨.     

Social Closeness and Decision Making: Moral, Attributive and Emotional Reactions to Third Party Transgressions

Decisions involving moral vectors are inherently social. This paper investigates social closeness to others as one of the important factors that mediate our evaluations of moral infractions. The influence of social closeness on participants?? third-party evaluations of moral transgressions was measured across development. Participants?? intentional attributions, punitive sentiments, moral judgments, and emotional reactions were measured using responses to hypothetical vignettes that describe socio-moral transgressions involving theft. Participants?? attribution judgments, punitive decisions, and emotional reactions differed when their social relationship with the perpetrator (Study One), and alternatively with the victim (Study Two), of the transgression was varied. Evidence is provided for the supposition that morality is a construct of social cooperative exchange and that social closeness influences socio-moral evaluations and judgments.     

Moral Desirability and Rational Decision

Being a formal and general as well as the most widely accepted approach to practical rationality, rational decision theory should be crucial for justifying rational morals. In particular, acting morally should also (nearly always) be rational in decision theoretic terms. After defending this thesis, in the critical part of the paper two strategies to develop morals following this insight are criticized: game theoretical ethics of cooperation and ethical intuitionism. The central structural objections to ethics of cooperation are that they too directly aim at the rationality of moral action and that they to do not encompass moral values or a moral desirability function. The constructive half of the paper takes up these criticisms by developing a two-part strategy to bring rationality and morals in line. The first part is to define ‘moral desirability’. This is done, using multi-attribute utility theory, by equating several adequate components of an individual’s comprehensive (rational) utility function with the moral desirability function. The second part is to introduce mechanisms, institutions, in particular socially valid moral norms, that provide further motivation for acting in accordance with morals.     

Religion and Political Decision Making

Influential political theorists suggest that religious differences in political life may be overcome through shared commitment to political processes. In this article, I subject the underlying assumptions of this proposition to empirical inquiry. When faced with substantive conflict over policy outcomes, do religious persons defer to a political process for resolution? And if so, to which political process do they defer? Through a novel interview exercise with 61 respondents from a variety of religious backgrounds, I find a general willingness to defer to a legitimate political process, even if it results in an undesirable outcome that violates religious (or other) political preferences. However, I also find that a political process need not be democratic to be seen as legitimate, and that process preferences do not map onto religious differences.     

移情在道德强度对企业道德决策影响中的作用

摘 要 本研究将一种重要的道德情绪--移情引入问题权变模型中,以探讨移情因素在道德强度对企业道德决策影响中的作用。本研究基于情景研究法,随机选取256名MBA学生为被试,要求被试基于所提供情景中假想参与者的行为,回答随后测量道德决策(道德识别、道德判断和道德意图)、移情反应、主观道德强度及移情特质的问题。结果发现,1）移情反应在道德强度对企业道德决策的影响中具有中介作用;2）移情关怀特质会通过影响主观道德强度和移情反应而作用于企业道德决策;3)结果大小、社会舆论和效应可能性对道德判断和道德意图的影响机制各有特点。