Dirty work, clean hands: The moral psychology of indirect agency

When powerful people cause harm, they often do so indirectly through other people. Are harmful actions carried out through others evaluated less negatively than harmful actions carried out directly? Four experiments examine the moral psychology of indirect agency. Experiments 1A, 1B, and 1C reveal effects of indirect agency under conditions favoring intuitive judgment, but not reflective judgment, using a joint/separate evaluation paradigm. Experiment 2A demonstrates that effects of indirect agency cannot be fully explained by perceived lack of foreknowledge or control on the part of the primary agent. Experiment 2B indicates that reflective moral judgment is sensitive to indirect agency, but only to the extent that indirectness signals reduced foreknowledge and/or control. Experiment 3 indicates that effects of indirect agency result from a failure to automatically consider the potentially dubious motives of agents who cause harm indirectly. Experiment 4 demonstrates an effect of indirect agency on purchase intentions.     

The dual moral self: moral centrality and internal moral motivation

In this study, the relationship between two aspects of the moral self, moral centrality and internal moral motivation, was analyzed. It is argued that these 2 aspects are conceptually distinct but nonetheless empirically related. Based on a cross-sectional study of 205 adolescents (M age = 14.83 years, SD = 2.21 years) it was found that moral centrality and internal moral motivation, even though substantially correlated, interacted in predicting moral emotion expectancies. Even though moral centrality was unrelated to adolescents' age it predicted a longitudinal increase in internal moral motivation over a 1-year interval. Overall, the findings call for a differentiation of moral centrality and internal moral motivation as 2 distinct but interrelated aspects of moral self-development that follow different developmental trajectories and are differentially related to age. At the same time, the study points out that adolescence may be less important for the development of the moral self than commonly assumed.     

The essential moral self

It has often been suggested that the mind is central to personal identity. But do all parts of the mind contribute equally? Across five experiments, we demonstrate that moral traits—more than any other mental faculty—are considered the most essential part of identity, the self, and the soul. Memory, especially emotional and autobiographical memory, is also fairly important. Lower-level cognition and perception have the most tenuous connection to identity, rivaling that of purely physical traits. These findings suggest that folk notions of personal identity are largely informed by the mental faculties affecting social relationships, with a particularly keen focus on moral traits.     

Identity as institution: power,agency, and the self

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - This paper addresses issues of agency and self-identity on the basis of a phenomenology of embodiment. It considers a tension in accounts of embodiment...     

The unconscious in pastoral psychology: a rabbinic perspective

The present essay reviews the rabbinic theology of person as it has been outlined within the corpus of talmudic and rabbinic literature. Concepts such as libido, id, and superego are located in the rabbinic notions ofyezer harah andyezer tov (evil impulse and good impulse). Sexuality, as a paradigm of the Divine-human encounter, is explored in rabbinic and kabbalistic literature, and a model of transference is analyzed. Furthermore, a comparison is examined between rabbinic exegesis and psychoanalytic interpretation. It is suggested that the pastoral counselor may develop a theologically more authentic orientation to pastoral therapy by reflecting upon its origins in rabbinic thought.     

The cultural psychology of Kohut's self psychology

Contrary to criticism, Heinz Kohut's self psychology does not support an absorption into self nor a morally neutral response to society. Kohut's psychology of the self and narcissism aims toward an analysis of contemporary Western culture that will restore it. In the process of assisting individuals and culture to recover from the vicissitudes of narcissism, Kohut has introduced a new type of cultural psychology, a culture of empathy.     

Amae,intimacy, and the early moral self

I believe the universal aspects of Doi's concept of amae have a dual origin in the biologically based motives of infancy and in the expectable adpative experiences of the caregiving relationship. Our theory, arising from recent research, is that the necessary intimacy of this relationship and the exercise of these motives leads to early relationship motives and early moral motives. These in turn find representational coherence in the 3-year-old's narrative self that contains a continual internal dialogue with one or more significant others who are comforting, encouraging, watchful, and critical. The narrative self may also contain an “executive sense of we,” giving the child more of a sense of obligation and power. Many emotionally engaging experiences in infancy are stored as procedural knowledge and are influential later as an “affective core of self” without being accessible to consciousness. Amae also seems based on procedural knowledge. Future research in Japan and the United States will benefit from operationalizing concepts related to amae and to emotional availability. Effects of gender, temperament, and conflicts within and across generations can then be examined.     

Hiding in plain sight: Jung,astrology, and the psychology of the unconscious

Astrology was a lifelong interest for C.G. Jung and an important aid in his formulation of psyche and psychic process. Archetypally configured, astrology provided Jung an objective means to a fuller understanding of the analysand's true nature and unique individuation journey. Jung credits astrology with helping to unlock the mystery of alchemy and in so doing providing the symbol language necessary for deciphering the historically remote cosmology of Gnosticism. Astrology also aided Jung's work on synchronicity. Despite astrology's worth to Jung's development of analytical psychology, its fundamental role in guiding his discoveries is all but absent from historical notice. The astrological natal chart seems rarely used clinically, and many clinicians seem unaware of its value as a dynamic diagram of the personality and the potentialities within which nature and nurture foster and/or discourage for individual growth and development over the lifespan. This paper charts Jung's interest in astrology and suggests why his great regard for it and other paranormal or occult practices remains largely neglected and unknown.     

Paradox explored: Climate shame,moral agency,the church,and the birds

This article explores shame and moral agency in relationship to the climate catastrophe, and the moral situation of the world's relatively high-consuming people who are implicated in greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. The author complexifies that situation in the conundrums of climate colonialism, climate racism, structural sin, and the moral ambiguities they raise, including such questions as: “What are the moral demands of climate sin grounded in historically rooted economic systems that one did not create but upon which the material conditions of one's life depend? To what extent, if any, is the individual morally accountable for the social structures of which one is a part and from which one benefits?” From there, the essay moves to its central question. It is whether shame theory might help to enable moral agency for what is desperately needed now by people of climate privilege and economic privilege in the North Atlantic world—wise and courageous action to address climate change and climate injustice. The article probes shame theory for clues to what disables moral agency and what catalyzes it. The author finds in shame theory pathways for transforming shame-based moral inertia into moral agency. Those pathways suggest vital roles for the church.     

Endogenous versus exogenous change: Change detection,self and agency

The goal of this study is to characterize observers’ abilities to discriminate between endogenous (i.e., self-produced) and exogenous changes. To do so, we developed a new experimental paradigm. On each trial, participants were shown a dot pattern on the screen. Next, the pattern disappeared and participants were to reproduce it. Changes were surreptuously introduced in the stimulus, either by presenting participants anew with the dot pattern they had themselves produced on the previous trial (endogenous change) or by presenting participants with a slightly different dot pattern (exogenous changes). We analyzed awareness of the changes and behavioral adaptation to them in a dynamical manner. We observe (1) signal attenuation in the presence of endogenous change, (2) dissociation between self-attribution reports and behavioral effect of agency. We discuss the source of this sensitive attenuation as well as the relation between a minimal or core self and an extended, narrative or autobiographical self.     

Rationality and moral autonomy: An essay in moral psychology

Although there are many variations on the theme, so much is made of the good of moral autonomy that it is difficult not to suppose that there is everything to be said for being morally autonomous and nothing at all to be said for being morally nonautonomous. However, this view of moral autonomy cannot be made to square with the well-received fact that most people are morally nonautonomous — not, at any rate, unless one is prepared to maintain that most people are irrational in this respect. I am not. Thus, I reject what I take to be the prevailing view of moral autonomy. I argue that it is false that (1) moral autonomy is such that it is rational for every person to prefer being morally autonomous to being morally nonautonomous, but true that (2) moral autonomy is such that if anyone is morally autonomous, then it is rational for him to prefer being morally autonomous to being morally nonautonomous.