Competing Conceptions of Justice: Faculty Moral Reasoning About Affirmative Action

College faculty (N = 115) were recruited to investigate the influence of moral reasoning on hiring decisions about affirmative action dilemmas. Participants completed the Defining Issues Test (DIT), a standard test of moral reasoning, a measure that presented two hypothetical moral dilemmas about affirmative action that manipulated candidates' race and moral issues, and a scale evaluating the use of external norms versus self-chosen principles. Results indicated that moral issue but not race of a minority candidate affected hiring decisions. Faculty used greater percentages of principled reasoning when solving the more salient affirmative action dilemmas than when solving the hypothetical dilemmas of the DIT. Higher scores on the DIT were related to the use of principles rather than norms when making hiring decisions. Findings suggest that faculty decisions about hiring a hypothetical affirmative action candidate are more influenced by moral reasoning level and competing conceptions of justice than racial bias or ambivalence.     

Theory of mind and emotion understanding predict moral development in early childhood

The current study utilized longitudinal data to investigate how theory of mind (ToM) and emotion understanding (EU) concurrently and prospectively predicted young children's moral reasoning and decision making. One hundred twenty‐eight children were assessed on measures of ToM and EU at 3.5 and 5.5 years of age. At 5.5 years, children were also assessed on the quality of moral reasoning and decision making they used to negotiate prosocial moral dilemmas, in which the needs of a story protagonist conflict with the needs of another story character. More sophisticated EU predicted greater use of physical‐ and material‐needs reasoning, and a more advanced ToM predicted greater use of psychological‐needs reasoning. Most intriguing, ToM and EU jointly predicted greater use of higher‐level acceptance‐authority reasoning, which is likely a product of children's increasing appreciation for the knowledge held by trusted adults and children's desire to behave in accordance with social expectations.     

What does principled versus conventional moral reasoning convey to others about the politics and psychology of the reasoner?

The well‐documented relationship between political orientation and moral reasoning has most often been interpreted in terms of the influence of level of moral development (cf. Kohlberg, 1984) upon an individual's political inclinations: those who have reached the conventional level (or stage 4) in Kohlberg's terms will as a result tend to favour the political right, whereas those who progress to the principled level (stage 5) shift their political preferences to the left. An alternative, ‘social communication’ view is that these different forms of moral reasoning are expressions of contrasting political identities, and differ in ideological content rather than developmental level. We compared the inferences that American and British students (n=211) drew about the political, moral and cognitive attributes of a target who, in response to moral dilemmas, used either stage 4A, stage 4B or stage 5 moral arguments as defined by Kohlberg. Perception of the target's political attributes varied consistently and significantly as a function of the target's moral reasoning, but there were no corresponding effects on perception of moral or cognitive attributes. The results are interpreted as supporting a social communication view of moral reasoning and its relation to political orientation, and at the same time questioning the claim that conventional (stage 4) and principled (stage 5) moral reasoning are distinct levels of socio‐cognitive development. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Empathy and values as predictors of care development

Juujärvi, S., Myyry, L. & Pesso, K. (2012). Empathy and values as predictors of care development. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 53, 413–420. This study investigates values and affective empathy as predictors for care‐based moral development. Fifty‐three students from a university of applied sciences were interviewed with Skoe’s Ethic of Care Interview at the beginning of their studies and two years later. Value priorities were measured by Schwartz et al.’s Portrait Value Questionnaire, empathy variables by Davis’ Interpersonal Reactivity Index, and feelings of sympathy were rated using a real‐life moral conflict. The results showed that students in care‐oriented fields progressed in care reasoning. Real‐life sympathy and the value of self‐direction positively predicted development in care reasoning, whereas personal distress was a negative predictor. The results indicate that care‐based moral development is more closely connected with affective empathy than personal values. Individuals who feel empathy for others, and who prefer independent thinking and action, achieve the greatest gains in care development. In conclusion, educators should encourage students’ empathy and moral reasoning in authentic moral conflicts.     

Conceptual and Moral Development of Substance Abuse Counselors: Implications for Training

The relationship among substance abuse counselors' education, experience, recovery status, and cognitive development (conceptual complexity and moral reasoning levels) was examined in a simultaneous multiple regression. Significant relationships were found between counselors' level of conceptual complexity and moral reasoning and their education. Implications for counselor training are presented.     

Beyond physical harm: how preference for consequentialism and primary psychopathy relate to decisions on a monetary trolley dilemma

When is it appropriate to harm a single person to help multiple others? Psychologists have investigated this question through the study of hypothetical “trolley” dilemmas involving extreme physical harm life-or-death situations that contrast outcome-focussed, consequentialist moral reasoning with principle-focussed, deontological moral reasoning. The present studies investigate whether participants’ preference for consequentialism generalises across domains. We administered traditional physical harm dilemmas as well as a trolley-type dilemma involving monetary harm. Across four studies (N?=?809), an internal meta-analysis demonstrated that participants’ responses to the traditional dilemmas predicted their responses to the monetary dilemma. Additionally, previous research has uncovered that primary psychopathy predicts consequentialist responses on physical harm dilemmas. The current work uncovers that this association does not generalise to monetary harm dilemmas, suggesting that the association between primary psychopathy and consequentialist reasoning is not related to consequentialist reasoning per se, but to the idiosyncrasies of traditional harm-centric trolley dilemmas instead.     

Substance Abuse Counselors and Ethical Dilemmas: The Influence of Recovery and Education Level

The authors examined the impact of substance abuse counselor (SAC) recovery status and education level on (a) SACS' sensitivity to ethical dilemmas and (b) extent to which training might help resolve dilemmas. Results revealed a significant difference between SACS with a graduate degree and SACS with an associate's degree/high school diploma regarding sensitivity to ethical dilemmas, with the latter being more sensitive. This study could be used to develop educational materials to improve SAC competency in resolving ethical dilemmas.     

A Study of Real Dilemmas in Adulthood

The aim of this work is to study real contextualised dilemmas and relevant events of the biographies offered by a group of adult men and women, in order to analyse the contextual and personal factors that influence moral reasoning during this stage of the life cycle. To this end, we interviewed 60 adults who were asked to recount real contextualised dilemmas. The themes of the real dilemmas were later categorised in relation to the stage of moral reasoning reached and then linked to the ecological contexts in which they took place. The results show that the themes related to proximal processes and contexts (family, parenthood) are the most frequent and are related to the conventional level of moral reasoning. However, in relation to social themes and coherence, the reasoning level obtained is more mature. Finally, there are contextual differences regarding the contents of the real dilemmas related to local conflicts or socio-political concern for one??s own community.     

Ethical psychiatry in an uncertain world: conversations and parallel truths

Psychiatric practice is often faced with complex situations that seem to pose serious moral dilemmas for practitioners. Methods for solving these dilemmas have included the development of more objective rules to guide the practitioner such as utilitarianism and deontology. A more modern variant on this objective model has been 'Principlism' where 4 mid level rules are used to help solve these complex problems. In opposition to this, there has recently been a focus on more subjective criteria for resolving complex moral dilemmas. In particular, virtue ethics has been posited as a more sensitive method for helping doctors to reason their way through difficult ethical issues. Here the focus is on the character traits of the practitioner. Bloch and Green advocated another way whereby more objective methods such as Principlism and virtue ethics are combined to produce what they considered sound moral reasoning in psychiatrists. This paper points out some difficulties with this approach and instead suggests that a better model of ethical judgment could be developed through the use of narratives or stories. This idea puts equal prima facie value on the patient's and the psychiatrist's version of the dilemma they are faced with. It has the potential to lead to a more genuine empathy and reflective decision-making.     

Religion and Substance Abuse Treatment: Individual and Program Effects

The relationship between personal religiousness and substance abuse treatment outcomes has emerged as an important issue in the public health arena. Using the “moral community” perspective, a conceptual framework developed by Stark, Kent, and Doyle (1982) to analyze the contextual effects of religion, we explore the degree to which religion influences two drug treatment outcome measures—critical retention and commitment to treatment. The data are derived from the Drug Abuse Treatment Outcome Studies (DATOS), a national study of 10,010 clients enrolled in 70 drug treatment programs. Three research questions were addressed: (1) What is the relationship between an individual's level of religiosity and retention in treatment and commitment to treatment? (2) How does the ecological context of treatment programs shape the individual‐level relationships? (3) To what extent are program practices and characteristics directly linked to outcome level? The findings are supportive of the literature that shows a weak to moderate relationship between religiosity and treatment outcomes. However, the findings did not show strong support for the “moral community” hypothesis. Although there was a wide variation in the size of the individual‐level religiosity–treatment correlations, the variation could not be conclusively attributed to the overall religious emphasis of the programs. The findings suggest that further research is needed in order to understand fully the role of religion in substance abuse treatment.     

Attitudes,values and moral reasoning as predictors of delinquency

Attitudes to institutional authority, strength of support for moral values and maturity of socio‐moral reasoning have all been identified as potential predictors of adolescent delinquency. In a sample of 12–15‐year‐old boys (N = 789), after checking for effects of age, IQ, social background and ethnicity, self‐reported delinquency was significantly and independently predicted by attitudes to authority (r = ?.47) and moral values (r = ?.27), but not by a structural measure of moral reasoning level (r = ?.04). The findings argue for closer attention to the developmental determinants of attitudes to institutional authority and strength of moral value commitments than these have received hitherto. On the other hand, lack of an association between moral reasoning level and delinquent conduct does leave unanswered questions about the consequences of this kind of moral competence.     

Young Humeans: the role of emotions in children's evaluation of moral reasoning abilities

Three experiments investigated whether children in grades K, 2, and 4 (n = 144) view emotional comprehension as important in solving moral dilemmas. The experiments asked whether a human or an artificially intelligent machine would be best at solving different types of problems, ranging from moral and emotional to nonmoral and pragmatic. In Experiment 1, children in all age groups indicated that a human would be superior to a computer not only at comprehending emotions, but also at solving moral dilemmas. In Experiment 2, older children also indicated that a human could solve moral dilemmas better than a 'robot' with human-like perceptual and physical abilities. Experiment 3 further demonstrated that these effects were not solely due to a bias towards humans. Thus, children as young as age 5 view emotional understanding as an important element for moral, but not for nonmoral, reasoning, suggesting that the basis for Humean intuitions emerges early in life.     

Risk taking and personality

Comparisons were made of the personality and social orientations of antisocial risk takers, defined as residents in a long-term drug-treatment facility (N = 24); adventurous risk takers, defined as rock climbers (N = 18); and prosocial risk takers, or heroes, defined as policemen and firemen decorated for bravery (N = 21). Measures included substance abuse proclivity, emotional arousability, conformity, moral reasoning, empathy, psychopathy, and sensation seeking. Discriminant analysis identified two functions that correctly classified 98.18% of the sample. Drug-unit residents had high scores on an Antisocial function, characterized by emotionality, depression, psychopathy, substance abuse proclivity, and lower scores on moral reasoning. Rock climbers had high scores on an Antistructural function, characterized by sensation seeking and moral reasoning, the latter reflecting the higher education level of the rock climbers. Neither discriminant function characterized the heroes. Thus, drug-unit residents, rock climbers, and heroes appear to represent both different psychological types and different forms of risk taking.     

Moral reasoning,moral decision-making,and empathy in Korsakoff’s syndrome

Korsakoff’s syndrome (KS) is a neuropsychiatric disorder, caused by a vitamin B1 deficiency. Although it is known that patients with KS display diminished theory of mind functioning and frequently exhibit marked antisocial interactions little attention has so far focused on the integrity of moral decision-making abilities, moral reasoning, and empathy. In an experimental cross-sectional design, 20 patients diagnosed with KS, and twenty age-, education-, and gender-equivalent healthy participants performed tests assessing moral decision-making, moral reasoning maturity, empathy, and executive functioning. Participants were administered the Moral Behaviour Inventory (MBI) for everyday moral dilemmas, and ten cartoons of abstract moral dilemmas. Responses were scored according to the Kohlberg stages of moral reasoning. Empathy and executive functioning were assessed with the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) and the Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB). In contrast to frontal traumatic brain injury patients, KS patients did not display a utilitarian bias, suggesting preserved moral decision-making abilities. Of interest, KS patients had significantly lower levels of moral reasoning maturity on everyday moral dilemmas, and abstract moral dilemmas. In patients, empathy was moderately related to the level of moral maturity on both tasks, while executive functioning was not. In conclusion, KS patients have preserved moral decision-making abilities, but their moral reasoning abilities are poorer in everyday and abstract situations. Lower moral reasoning abilities and lower levels of empathy together may be responsible for adverse social functioning in KS.     

Teaching moral reasoning through gesture

Stem‐cell research. Euthanasia. Personhood. Marriage equality. School shootings. Gun control. Death penalty. Ethical dilemmas regularly spark fierce debate about the underlying moral fabric of societies. How do we prepare today's children to be fully informed and thoughtful citizens, capable of moral and ethical decisions? Current approaches to moral education are controversial, requiring adults to serve as either direct (‘top‐down’) or indirect (‘bottom‐up’) conduits of information about morality. A common thread weaving throughout these two educational initiatives is the ability to take multiple perspectives – increases in perspective taking ability have been found to precede advances in moral reasoning. We propose gesture as a behavior uniquely situated to augment perspective taking ability. Requiring gesture during spatial tasks has been shown to catalyze the production of more sophisticated problem‐solving strategies, allowing children to profit from instruction. Our data demonstrate that requiring gesture during moral reasoning tasks has similar effects, resulting in increased perspective taking ability subsequent to instruction. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v/gAcRIClU_GY     

Moral judgement in adolescents: Age differences in applying and justifying three principles of harm

This study investigated the application and justification of three principles of harm in a cross-sectional sample of adolescents in order to test recent theories concerning the source of intuitive moral judgements. Participants were 46 early (M _age = 14.8 years) and 40 late adolescents (M _age = 17.8 years). Participants rated the permissibility of various ethical dilemmas, and provided justifications for their judgements. Results indicated participants aligned their judgements with the three principles of harm, but had difficulty explaining their reasoning. Furthermore, although age groups were consistent in the application of the principles of harm, age differences emerged in their justifications. These differences were partly explained by differences in language ability. Additionally, participants who used emotional language in their justifications demonstrated a characteristically deontological pattern of moral judgement on certain dilemmas. We conclude adolescents in this age range apply the principles of harm but that the ability to explain their judgements is still developing.     

Intuitive Probabilities and the Limitation of Moral Imagination

There is a vast literature that seeks to uncover features underlying moral judgment by eliciting reactions to hypothetical scenarios such as trolley problems. These thought experiments assume that participants accept the outcomes stipulated in the scenarios. Across seven studies (N = 968), we demonstrate that intuition overrides stipulated outcomes even when participants are explicitly told that an action will result in a particular outcome. Participants instead substitute their own estimates of the probability of outcomes for stipulated outcomes, and these probability estimates in turn influence moral judgments. Our findings demonstrate that intuitive likelihoods are one critical factor in moral judgment, one that is not suspended even in moral dilemmas that explicitly stipulate outcomes. Features thought to underlie moral reasoning, such as intention, may operate, in part, by affecting the intuitive likelihood of outcomes, and, problematically, moral differences between scenarios may be confounded with non‐moral intuitive probabilities.     

Expressivism and Moral Dilemmas: A Response to Marino

Simon Blackburn’s expressivist logic of attitudes aims to explain how we can use non-assertoric moral judgements in logically valid arguments. Patricia Marino has recently argued that Blackburn’s logic faces a dilemma: either it cannot account for the place of moral dilemmas in moral reasoning or, if it can, it makes an illicit distinction between two different kinds of moral dilemma. Her target is the logic’s definition of validity as satisfiability, according to which validity requires an avoidance of attitudinal inconsistency. Against Marino’s arguments, I contend that expressivists following Blackburn are able to show how we appreciate the validity of arguments found in dilemma-contexts, and that Marino’s argument concerning the distinction between contingent moral dilemmas and logical moral dilemmas rests on a mistake concerning the logical representation of a contingent dilemma.     

Possible Environmental Causes of Stages in Moral Reasoning

Both children (6-, 10-, and 14-year-olds) and their mothers were interviewed. The children's responses to moral dilemmas were classified into Kohlberg's three main categories—preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. The mothers were presented with a variety of hypothetical situations—e.g., they had just found out that their child had stolen something, and were asked to tell what they would say or do to their child in each situation. The mothers' hypothetical responses to such situations were divided into either the preconventional, conventional, or postconventional category depending on the level or moral reasoning such responses would imply to their children. The results indicated that as the age of the children increased, both the level of moral reasoning used by the children and the level of moral reasoning implied by the mothers' treatment of the children increased. Even with age partialed out, there was a significant positive relationship between the mothers' implied level of moral reasoning and the children's level of moral reasoning. Thus, although causality cannot be established, the results indicate that there is at least the possibility that environmental changes—i.e., changes in the way the mother treats the child—may be responsible for the appearance of stages in the child's development of moral reasoning.     

Care and Justice in Real-Life Moral Reasoning

Moral reasoning of 57 (Time 1) and 59 (Time 2) nursing, social-work and law-enforcement students was investigated in terms of care and justice reasoning about hypothetical and real-life dilemmas. The analysis methods were the Ethic of Care Interview, the Moral Judgment Interview, Lyons' Moral Orientation Scheme and Wark and Krebs' classification of real-life dilemmas. The type of dilemma predicted moral orientation usage. Prosocial dilemmas pulled for care and antisocial dilemmas for justice orientation. Level of justice reasoning varied according to the type of dilemma. Real-life care reasoning was consistent with participants' competence, with the exception of transgression-type dilemmas at Time 2. Levels of care and justice reasoning were highly correlated with each other. These results underscore the importance of the dilemma type and suggest that care reasoning is a significant part of real life morality. The study recommends the ECI as a new model to account for real-life care reasoning.