Moral realism as moral motivation: The impact of meta-ethics on everyday decision-making

People disagree about whether “moral facts” are objective facts like mathematical truths (moral realism) or simply products of the human mind (moral antirealism). What is the impact of different meta-ethical views on actual behavior? In Experiment 1, a street canvasser, soliciting donations for a charitable organization dedicated to helping impoverished children, primed passersby with realism or antirealism. Participants primed with realism were twice as likely to be donors, compared to control participants and participants primed with antirealism. In Experiment 2, online participants primed with realism as opposed to antirealism reported being willing to donate more money to a charity of their choice. Considering the existence of non-negotiable moral facts may have raised the stakes and motivated participants to behave better. These results therefore reveal the impact of meta-ethics on everyday decision-making: priming a belief in moral realism improved moral behavior.     

Dishonest deed, clear conscience: when cheating leads to moral disengagement and motivated forgetting

People routinely engage in dishonest acts without feeling guilty about their behavior. When and why does this occur? Across four studies, people justified their dishonest deeds through moral disengagement and exhibited motivated forgetting of information that might otherwise limit their dishonesty. Using hypothetical scenarios (Studies 1 and 2) and real tasks involving the opportunity to cheat (Studies 3 and 4), the authors find that one's own dishonest behavior increased moral disengagement and motivated forgetting of moral rules. Such changes did not occur in the case of honest behavior or consideration of the dishonest behavior of others. In addition, increasing moral saliency by having participants read or sign an honor code significantly reduced unethical behavior and prevented subsequent moral disengagement. Although dishonest behavior motivated moral leniency and led to forgetting of moral rules, honest behavior motivated moral stringency and diligent recollection of moral rules.     

The voices in children's literature: The impact of gender on the moral decisions of storybook characters

The study examined the moral and self orientations of 212 male and female characters in 50 works of fiction for school-aged children. A modified version of Lyons' coding scheme was used for differentiating between Justice and Care moral orientations, and Separate/Objective and Connected self orientations. It was hypothesized that male characters would demonstrate Justice morality and a Separate/Objective self, whereas female characters would demonstrate Care morality and a Connected self, regardless of sex of author. The results confirmed the hypotheses. The importance of literature in providing symbolic models of moral decisioning and the need to expand children's moral orientations beyond gender-linked stereotypes was discussed.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, April 1988, New Orleans, Louisiana.     

The hidden impact of conspiracy theories: perceived and actual influence of theories surrounding the death of Princess Diana

The authors examined the perceived and actual impact of exposure to conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997. One group of undergraduate students rated their agreement and their classmates' perceived agreement with several statements about Diana's death. A second group of students from the same undergraduate population read material containing popular conspiracy theories about Diana's death before rating their own and others' agreement with the same statements and perceived retrospective attitudes (i.e., what they thought their own and others' attitudes were before reading the material). Results revealed that whereas participants in the second group accurately estimated others' attitude changes, they underestimated the extent to which their own attitudes were influenced.     

The effects of moral judgment and moral identity on moral behavior: an empirical examination of the moral individual

Recognizing limitations in classic cognitive moral development theory, several scholars have drawn from theories of identity to suggest that moral behavior results from both moral judgments and moral identity. The authors conducted 2 survey-based studies with more than 500 students and managers to test this argument. Results demonstrated that moral identity and moral judgments both independently influenced moral behavior. In addition, in situations in which social consensus regarding the moral behavior was not high, moral judgments and moral identity interacted to shape moral behavior. This interaction effect indicated that those who viewed themselves as moral individuals pursued the most extreme alternatives (e.g., never cheating, regularly cheating)--a finding that affirms the motivational power of a moral identity. The authors conclude by considering the implications of this research for both theory and practice.     

Honorable intentions versus praiseworthy accomplishments: The impact of motives and outcomes on the moral self

A centuries-old philosophical issue—Do honorable intentions make an action praiseworthy or is the best action one that generates the greatest good for the greatest number?—was examined by telling subjects who were working to earn money for themselves or a charity that they succeeded or failed at the task. Confirming predictions derived from personal moral philosophy theory, idealistic individuals who stress the importance of fundamental moral principles (absolutists) felt the most positive about their own morality when they were working for a charity, irrespective of the consequences of their actions. Principled individuals who were not idealistic (exceptionists), however, reported feeling distressed when laboring for a charity rather than themselves and the most morally virtuous when they performed badly when working for personal gain. Relativistic subjects (situationists and subjectivists) did not rate themselves as positively when working for a charity. These findings indicate that, at the psychological level, individuals consider both intentions and consequences when evaluating their own moral successes and failures, but they differ in the weight that they assign to these two factors. This research was supported by the Grants-In-Aid Program for Faculty of Virginia Commonwealth University.     

Honorable intentions versus praiseworthy accomplishments: The impact of motives and outcomes on the moral self

A centuries-old philosophical issue—Do honorable intentions make an action praiseworthy or is the best action one that generates the greatest good for the greatest number?—was examined by telling subjects who were working to earn money for themselves or a charity that they succeeded or failed at the task. Confirming predictions derived from personal moral philosophy theory, idealistic individuals who stress the importance of fundamental moral principles (absolutists) felt the most positive about their own morality when they were working for a charity, irrespective of the consequences of their actions. Principled individuals who were not idealistic (exceptionists), however, reported feeling distressed when laboring for a charity rather than themselves and the most morally virtuous when they performed badly when working for personal gain. Relativistic subjects (situationists and subjectivists) did not rate themselves as positively when working for a charity. These findings indicate that, at the psychological level, individuals consider both intentions and consequences when evaluating their own moral successes and failures, but they differ in the weight that they assign to these two factors.     

The relationship between cheating behavior and sensation-seeking

Academic dishonesty is a problem in academia and cheating is a problem in society at large. Sensation-seeking was proposed as a personality trait that is positively related to one’s likelihood to cheat. A sample of 105 undergraduates participated in a research activity for course credit where cheating on a trivia game to win a cash prize by taking answers from a sealed folder was an option. As anticipated, sensation-seeking predicted cheating. Consistent with previous research, males were also more likely to cheat than females. Targeted interventions are suggested as a possible remedy.     

The impact of Roman Catholic moral theology on end-of-life care under the Texas Advance Directives Act.

This essay reviews the Roman Catholic moral tradition surrounding treatments at the end of life together with the challenges presented to that tradition by the Texas Advance Directives Act. The impact on Catholic health care facilities and physicians, and the way in which the moral tradition should be applied under this statute, particularly with reference to the provision dealing with conflicts over end-of-life treatments, will be critically assessed. I will argue, based on the traditional treatment of end-of-life issues, that Catholic physicians and institutions should appeal to the conflict resolution process of the Advance Directives Act only under a limited number of circumstances. The implications, under the Texas statute, of varied interpretations of Pope John Paul II's recent allocution on artificial feeding and hydration in the persistent vegetative state will also be considered.     

A theory of cheating

The theory of motivated cheating postulates that test takers may cheat when they do not know an answer. With probabilityk, an “observer” is unsure of an answer and will copy from a nearby “target” with probabilityc. The corresponding parameters for the target may be entirely unrelated to those of the observer. Thus, the undesirable feature of bidirectionality of parameters found in correlational techniques is not an inherent feature of this theory of cheating. Predictions are derived, and estimates ofk andc are proposed. Statistically large values of c suggest that an observer was copying from a target. High values ofc for both the observer and the target suggest collusion. The theory is applied to a 40-item five-choice test taken by students in an introductory psychology section. From the full paired comparison matrix of target × observer parameter estimates, the method identifies 2 students who were probably in collusion.     

The role of moral commitments in moral judgment

Traditional approaches to moral psychology assumed that moral judgments resulted from the application of explicit commitments, such as those embodied in consequentialist or deontological philosophies. In contrast, recent work suggests that moral judgments often result from unconscious or emotional processes, with explicit commitments generated post hoc. This paper explores the intermediate position that moral commitments mediate moral judgments, but not through their explicit and consistent application in the course of judgment. An experiment with 336 participants finds that individuals vary in the extent to which their moral commitments are consequentialist or deontological, and that this variation is systematically but imperfectly related to the moral judgments elicited by trolley car problems. Consequentialist participants find action in trolley car scenarios more permissible than do deontologists, and only consequentialists moderate their judgments when scenarios that typically elicit different intuitions are presented side by side. The findings emphasize the need for a theory of moral reasoning that can accommodate both the associations and dissociations between moral commitments and moral judgments.     

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.