Moral Dilemmas in Military Situations: Proportionality Principle,Religiosity, Political Attitudes,and Authoritarian Personality

The current study focuses on a moral dilemma in military situations: the amount of force to be used in order to neutralize a “most wanted” terrorist. This study examines the association between this moral dilemma with 4 independent variables: agreement with the proportionality principle (mediating variable), level of religiosity, authoritarian personality, and political attitudes. Three equal groups of participants (together, N = 357) were included: Israeli regular army combat soldiers, Israeli reserve combat soldiers, and Israeli students. In accordance with the study hypotheses, the 4 independent variables significantly correlated with each other and with moral decisions. Structural equation modeling indicated that agreement with the proportionality principle is the best predictor of moral decision, and mediated the association between level of religiosity and political attitudes and moral decisions.     

Moral Judgment in Extreme Social Contexts: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight and Physicians Who Strike?1

This paper compares two examples of moral action within extreme social contexts: the refusal of Israeli reserve soldiers to perform their military service during the war in Lebanon (1982–1983), and the refusal of Israeli physicians to provide medical care during a “labor war”, that is a strike. This paper examines the cognitive developmental premise that with an increase in the actors' stage of moral development there will be a greater consistency between hypothetical and actual moral reasoning (Kohlberg, 1984). Blasi's (1983) concept of personal integrity, that is, the consistency between the actors' judgment concerning the morality of an action and the action that was actually performed, is examined as well. The findings show that the “refusing” soldiers manifested stage consistency in their action, whereas the physicians failed to justify their action in line with their moral competence. Whereas the soldiers viewed their action as highly moral, the physicians viewed their strike action as unfortunate but necessary. The motivation of the two groups of actors to act in line with their behavioral choices is discussed.     

The Moral Foundations of Human Rights Attitudes

Human rights are claimed to be innate and based on moral principles. Human rights attitudes have been shown to be related to political ideology, but there have been few studies investigating their relationship with morality. Using moral foundations theory, we examine whether morals can predict human rights attitudes across two studies. The first study used questionnaires to show that human rights are based exclusively on individualizing moral foundations; however, increases in individualizing and decreases in binding foundations predict increases in human rights endorsement. Moral foundations also mediated the relationship between political identification and human rights. Both individualizing and binding foundations performed a role in explaining the lower endorsement of human rights by conservatives as compared to liberals. The second study used textual analysis of newspaper articles to show that human-rights-related articles contained more moral language than other articles, in particular for the individualizing foundations. Conservative newspapers had a greater use of binding foundations in human rights articles than liberal newspapers.     

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.     

Experiences that motivate moral development: The role of cognitive dissonance

It has been found in previous research concerning Kohlberg's stages of moral development that engagement in a “real-life” moral dilemma sometimes leads to an advance in an individual's level of moral thought. It is argued in this study that such moral growth is often motivated by the need to reduce cognitive dissonance, which, it is suggested, frequently accompanies choice and commitment in moral contexts. Subjects in the present study delivered counterattitudinal messages that contained arguments that were either 1 stage higher or 1 stage lower than their characteristic level of moral reasoning. Half of the subjects freely chose to deliver these messages, and half did not. Afterwards, subjects' attitudes toward the issues discussed in their messages and their tendency to conceptualize moral issues in terms of the higher or lower levels of reasoning contained in their messages were assessed. The subjects who (a) had freely chosen to deliver the message, and (b) had delivered the message containing higher level arguments used significantly more advanced moral reasoning after their counterattitudinal advocacy than they had before it. These subjects showed greater change in their attitudes regarding the topic discussed in their message than other subject groups. These results suggest that moral behavior will be likely to promote moral growth (a) if it occurs under circumstances that promote cognitive dissonance (e.g., free choice) and (b) if advanced moral ideas are made salient during the dissonance reduction process.     

The what,how, and why of moralization: A review of current definitions,methods, and evidence in moralization research

Moralization has major social and political implications. Although there is a depth of research on the nature and implications of moral attitudes and moral convictions, there has been less of a focus on the psychological processes by which actions, attitudes, or entities become moralized, or move from lesser to greater moral significance, and the research that does exist is highly fragmented. In the present paper, we provide a two‐factor structure for understanding the current state of research on moralization, categorizing extant moralization research by (1) whether it examines judgments of actions, attitudes, or entities and (2) whether it captures moral recognition (the shift from neutral to moral), or moral amplification. Using this framework, we then consider the various routes through which moralization may occur, discuss emerging research on the influence that social norms can have on this process, and address future areas of research. Overall, we hope to provide some initial steps toward developing a more integrated framework for understanding moralization.     

WHETHER SPIES TOO CAN BE SAVED

Spies, like soldiers, do a job and employ tactics that need justifying. I offer an argument for how Christian ethics may handle the moral problems of spying and do so by looking at the morally troubling tactics used by spies through the eyes of those who played an important role in shaping Christian theology and philosophy and have become normative in Christian moral thinking on the use of force. I argue that spying may be justifiable when we conceive the profession as a kind of use of force that is governed by the just war criteria. Spying is a particular kind of use of force that takes its moral character from those who authorize it, with what justification, to what ends, and with what methods. Particular attention is given to the tactics of disregarding the rules of war, the telling and living of lies, running covert operations, and assassinating military and political leaders.     

Deployment trauma and seeking treatment for PTSD in US soldiers

Many service members in need of mental health treatment do not seek such treatment. This study investigated the frequency of Army soldiers’ exposure to specific types of deployment stressors and whether different event-types were associated with willingness to seek and actual receipt of treatment. Male soldiers who were married (n = 600) completed online surveys that assessed posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), willingness to seek treatment for PTSD, actual receipt of PTSD treatment, and the frequency of exposure to 4 types of potentially traumatizing warzone experiences: committing a moral injury, observing a moral injury, threats to life, and traumatic loss. Soldiers who reported greater exposure to moral injury experiences (committed or observed) were less likely to be willing to seek treatment, regardless of PTSD symptom severity. Although exposure to moral injury did not differentiate actual treatment receipt, soldiers who endorsed loss were more likely to have received treatment, regardless of PTSD symptom severity. These results suggest that the types of trauma experienced during deployment may be a factor in postdeployment treatment-seeking attitudes and behaviors.     

Hard to decide? The effect of imagery perspective and construal level on decision difficulty

This research designed three experiments to investigate the mechanism of how imagery perspective influences decision difficulty, which increases consumers' willingness to postpone making choices based on the construal level. Studies 1, 2, and 3 demonstrated that imagining from the actor's perspective lowers one's construal level, and thus leads to greater decision difficulty and willingness to postpone making choices. In comparison, those taking the observer perspective represent things at higher construal levels and have less difficulty making decisions or willingness to postpone making choices. Moreover, the derived results showed the need for cognition to moderate the relationship between imagery perspective and construal level. The findings herein extended the physical buying situation to online consumption, providing implications for marketers to further explore consumer behavior.     

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.     

From left to right: how the personality system allows basic traits to influence politics via characteristic moral adaptations

Research on the association of personality to political orientation has suggested that direct influences are modest. Here we used a personality system model in which direct influences on political behaviour flow from moral values, with personality mostly acting on these characteristic moral adaptations, rather than directly affecting political attitudes. Study 1 in 447 subjects supported this model, with significant effects on political orientation flowing from four of the five-factor model personality domains, but largely mediated through moral values concerning the importance of group order and individual rights. This personality system model was replicated in an independent study (n= 476) using a US sample and including a different measure of politics. Both studies support predictions that personality has significant effects on political attitudes, but that these are exerted largely via moral values. These findings help to explain inconsistencies in previous studies attempting to link personality to political orientation that have not included the intermediary level of values.     

Impact of a social influence intervention on condom use and sexually transmitted infections among establishment-based female sex workers in the Philippines: a multilevel analysis.

The authors assessed the relative impact of structural and social influence interventions on reducing sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV risk behavior among female sex workers in the Philippines (N = 897). Four conditions included manager influence, peer influence, combined manager-peer influence, and control. Intervention effects were assessed at the establishment level in multilevel models because of statistical dependencies among women employed within the same establishments. Control group membership predicted greater perceived risk, less condom use, less HIV/AIDS knowledge, and more negative condom attitudes. Combination participants reported more positive condom attitudes, more establishment policies favoring condom use, and fewer STIs. Manager-only participants reported fewer STIs, lower condom attitudes, less knowledge, and higher perceived risk than peer-only participants. Because interventions were implemented at the city level, baseline and follow-up city differences were analyzed to rule out intervention effects due to preexisting differences.     

Gut Reactions: Moral Conviction, Religiosity, and Trust in Authority

ABSTRACT— Theory and research point to different ways moral conviction and religiosity connect to trust in political authorities to decide controversial issues of the day. Specifically, we predicted that stronger moral convictions would be associated with greater distrust in authorities such as the U.S. Supreme Court making the "right" decisions regarding controversial issues. Conversely, we predicted that stronger religiosity would be associated with greater trust in authorities. We tested these hypotheses using a survey of a nationally representative sample of Americans (N = 727) that assessed the degree to which people trusted the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the legal status of physician-assisted suicide. Results indicated that greater religiosity was associated with greater trust in the U.S. Supreme Court to decide this issue, and that stronger moral convictions about physician-assisted suicide were associated with greater distrust in the U.S. Supreme Court to decide this issue. Also, the processes underlying religious trust and distrust based on moral convictions were more quick and visceral than slow and carefully considered.     

Moral conviction: another contributor to attitude strength or something more?

Attitudes held with strong moral conviction (moral mandates) were predicted to have different interpersonal consequences than strong but nonmoral attitudes. After controlling for indices of attitude strength, the authors explored the unique effect of moral conviction on the degree that people preferred greater social (Studies 1 and 2) and physical (Study 3) distance from attitudinally dissimilar others and the effects of moral conviction on group interaction and decision making in attitudinally homogeneous versus heterogeneous groups (Study 4). Results supported the moral mandate hypothesis: Stronger moral conviction led to (a) greater preferred social and physical distance from attitudinally dissimilar others, (b) intolerance of attitudinally dissimilar others in both intimate (e.g., friend) and distant relationships (e.g., owner of a store one frequents), (c) lower levels of good will and cooperativeness in attitudinally heterogeneous groups, and (d) a greater inability to generate procedural solutions to resolve disagreements.     

The Army National Guard in OIF/OEF: Relationships among combat exposure,postdeployment stressors,social support,and risk behaviors

With the continued operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, studies of the prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder and related symptoms are now common. However, lacking is how these symptoms relate to precipitating conditions and the mitigating effects of social support on these symptoms. This is particularly relevant for reserve military personnel, who have been shown to be greater at-risk for postdeployment problems. The present study examined questionnaire data obtained from Army National Guard (ARNG) units immediately after their return from deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan during 2010 (N = 4329 soldiers in 50 units). Findings showed few soldiers displayed risk behaviors (i.e., daily alcohol use, use of illicit drugs, suicide thoughts, and physically threatening others) during and after deployment. Those most likely to have more postdeployment risk behaviors were also those who showed more risk behaviors during deployment. A substantial percentage of soldiers reported combat exposure, postdeployment negative emotions, and postdeployment loss of a personal relationship. These reported outcomes were all related to increased risk behaviors after deployment. The buffering effect of social support on postdeployment risk behaviors was equally evident when data were examined individually and when grouped by unit memberships. Implications of findings for future research, practice, and policies are discussed.     

The uncertainty of certainty in clinical ethics

Physicians accept fallibility in technical matters as a condition of medical practice. When it comes to moral considerations, physicians are often loathe to act without a good deal more certitude and seem less willing to accept error. This article argues that ethics is intrinsic to medical decision making, that error is the inevitable risk of any action and that inaction (clearly action by default) carries even greater risk of error. Whether in the moral or the technical sphere, error must be accepted by physicians as part of the learning process which informs and enriches future decisions. Moral virtue, it is concluded, resides more in the making of a decision and in the agony of making it than it does in the potentially fallible decision itself.     

The Role of Political Practices in Moral Injury: A Study of Afghanistan Veterans

While much research has been conducted on military trauma, conceptualizations of deployment‐related suffering have been predominantly approached through a medical, individual‐focused lens. Since the military is an instrument of the state, it is crucial to expand the conceptual scope to include political processes, particularly for the fast‐growing literature on “moral injury,” which refers to the emotional impact of perpetrating, witnessing, or falling victim to perceived wrongdoing. This article examines the role of political practices in the onset of moral injury as well as the micropolitical responses of morally injured veterans. A study of the Dutch mission in Uruzgan, Afghanistan, shows that decisions and frames at the political level helped create distressing quandaries on the ground and that in all the ways the political leadership acknowledged the problems that veterans subsequently developed, it also maintained a silence on its direct contribution to these problems, as such perpetuating them. Consequently, veterans tried to make the political leadership take a material and symbolic share in their burden. Clearly, moral conflict may exist both in the veteran and between the veteran and the political domain, and therefore, experiences of institutional betrayal and a resultant search for reparations should be included in theory on moral injury.     

Analytic Confidence and Political Decision‐Making: Theoretical Principles and Experimental Evidence From National Security Professionals

When making decisions under uncertainty, it is important to distinguish between the probability that a judgment is true and the confidence analysts possess in drawing their conclusions. Yet analysts and decision‐makers often struggle to define “confidence” in this context, and many ways that scholars use this term do not necessarily facilitate decision‐making under uncertainty. To help resolve this confusion, we argue for disaggregating analytic confidence along three dimensions: reliability of available evidence, range of reasonable opinion, and responsiveness to new information. After explaining how these attributes hold different implications for decision‐making in principle, we present survey experiments examining how analysts and decision‐makers employ these ideas in practice. Our first experiment found that each conception of confidence distinctively influenced national security professionals' evaluations of high‐stakes decisions. Our second experiment showed that inexperienced assessors of uncertainty could consistently discriminate among our conceptions of confidence when making political forecasts. We focus on national security, where debates about defining “confidence levels” have clear practical implications. But our theoretical framework generalizes to nearly any area of political decision‐making, and our empirical results provide encouraging evidence that analysts and decision‐makers can grasp these abstract elements of uncertainty.     

Reducing uncertainty to promote appropriate decisions when facing hazardous phenomena at an active volcano

This study investigated a new direction for improving the decision making of populations at risk in the context of uncertain environmental events, such as volcanic hazards. According to the risk as feelings theory and dual process models, situations with certain outcomes do not necessarily require the use of affect heuristics (e.g., experienced feelings, anticipated emotions) as valid information in the decision‐making process. In the case of difficult decisions with moral dilemmas, certainty could even improve decisions. Thus, using an ecological design with various scenarios depicting upcoming volcanic hazards, we examined whether reducing the uncertainty of lethal threat by conveying certainty in an information campaign could influence decision making and promote a better quality of choice (correct application of the recommendations from the competent authorities). We focused specifically on two populations composed of local people living in the vicinity of an active volcano (Tungurahua volcano, Ecuador) and local scientists. We also examined whether a difficult decision involving a moral dilemma (e.g., leaving people behind so as not to jeopardize one's own life) potentiated this effect, compared to a less difficult situation without a dilemma. We demonstrated that, for local people facing a moral dilemma (difficult decision), the reduction of uncertainty of lethal threat involved a better application of the actual recommendations. These outcomes provided perspectives on improving the applications of the recommendations among local populations at risk in the context of a real risk exposure.