The psychology of meta-ethics: exploring objectivism

How do lay individuals think about the objectivity of their ethical beliefs? Do they regard them as factual and objective, or as more subjective and opinion-based, and what might predict such differences? In three experiments, we set out a methodology for assessing the perceived objectivity of ethical beliefs, and use it to document several novel findings. Experiment 1 showed that individuals tend to regard ethical statements as clearly more objective than social conventions and tastes, and almost as objective as scientific facts. Yet, there was considerable variation in objectivism, both across different ethical statements, and across individuals. The extent to which individuals treat ethical beliefs as objective was predicted by the way they grounded their ethical systems. Groundings which emphasize the religious, pragmatic, and self-identity underpinnings of ethical belief each independently predicted greater ethical objectivity. Experiment 2 replicated and extended these findings with a refined measure of ethical objectivism. Experiment 3 demonstrated the robustness of the religious grounding of ethics, and differentiates it from mere religious belief and from political orientation. The results shed light on the nature of ethical belief, and have implications for the resolution of ethical disputes.     

Are lies more wrong than errors? Accuracy judgments of inaccurate statements

People are often mistaken when estimating and predicting quantities, and sometimes they report values that they know are false: they lie. There exists, however, little research devoted to how such deviations are being perceived. In four vignette studies, participants were asked to rate the accuracy of inaccurate statements about quantities (prices, numbers and amounts). The results indicate that overstatements are generally judged to be more inaccurate than understatements of the same magnitude; self-favorable (optimistic) statements are considered more inaccurate than unfavorable (pessimistic) statements, and false reports (lies) are perceived to be more inaccurate than equally mistaken estimates. Lies about the future did not differ from lies about the past, but own lies were perceived as larger than the same lies attributed to another person. It is suggested that estimates are judged according to how close they come to the true values (close estimates are more correct than estimates that are less close), whereas lies are judged as deviant from truth, with less importance attached to the magnitude of the deviation.     

Two Accounts of Moral Objectivity: from Attitude-Independence to Standpoint-Invariance

How should we understand the notion of moral objectivity? Metaethical positions that vindicate morality’s objective appearance are often associated with moral realism. On a realist construal, moral objectivity is understood in terms of mind-, stance-, or attitude-independence. But realism is not the only game in town for moral objectivists. On an antirealist construal, morality’s objective features are understood in virtue of our attitudes. In this paper I aim to develop this antirealist construal of moral objectivity in further detail, and to make its metaphysical commitments explicit. I do so by building on Sharon Street’s version of “Humean Constructivism”. Instead of the realist notion of attitude-independence, the antirealist account of moral objectivity that I articulate centres on the notion of standpoint-invariance. While constructivists have been criticized for compromising on the issue of moral objectivity, I make a preliminary case for the thesis that, armed with the notion of standpoint-invariance, constructivists have resources to vindicate an account of objectivity with just the right strength, given the commitments of ordinary moral thought and practice. In support of this thesis I highlight recent experimental findings about folk moral objectivism. Empirical observations about the nature of moral discourse have traditionally been taken to give prima facie support to moral realism. I argue, by contrast, that from what we can tell from our current experimental understanding, antirealists can capture the commitments of ordinary discourse at least as well as realists can.     

Does it take one to know one? Endorsement of conspiracy theories is influenced by personal willingness to conspire

We advance a new account of why people endorse conspiracy theories, arguing that individuals use the social-cognitive tool of projection when making social judgements about others. In two studies, we found that individuals were more likely to endorse conspiracy theories if they thought they would be willing, personally, to participate in the alleged conspiracies. Study 1 established an association between conspiracy beliefs and personal willingness to conspire, which fully mediated a relationship between Machiavellianism and conspiracy beliefs. In Study 2, participants primed with their own morality were less inclined than controls to endorse conspiracy theories - a finding fully mediated by personal willingness to conspire. These results suggest that some people think 'they conspired' because they think 'I would conspire'.     

The ups and downs of attributional ambiguity: stereotype vulnerability and the academic self-knowledge of African American college students

This research examined whether stereotype vulnerability-the tendency to expect, perceive, and be influenced by negative stereotypes about one's social category-is associated with uncertainty about one's academic self-knowledge in two important ways. We predicted that stereotype-vulnerable African American students would (a) know less about how much they know than less vulnerable students do and (b) have unstable academic efficacy. In Study 1, Black and White participants took a verbal test and indicated the probability that each of their answers was correct. As expected, stereotype-vulnerable Black participants were more miscalibrated than other participants. In Study 2, participants completed measures of self-efficacy twice daily for 8 days. Also as expected, the academic efficacy of stereotype-vulnerable Blacks fluctuated more-and more extremely-than that of other participants. The results suggest that, in addition to undermining intellectual performance, stigma interferes with academic self-knowledge.     

Trait anxiety, trait depression, worry, and memory

A study is reported which investigated the proposal that high trait anxiety is associated with a memory bias for worry themes. Forty-five participants were categorised as being high or low trait anxious on the basis of scores on the (Spielberger et al., 1983) (Manual for the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Form Y) (1983)). The participants were requested to rate a number of worry and non-worry statements for how much they generally thought about the issues represented by them. Analysis of the ratings given by the participants showed that low trait anxiety individuals thought about the non-worry items significantly more than worry items. The high trait anxiety participants, however, showed little or no difference in the amount of time spent thinking about worry and non-worry themes. In a subsequent free recall task of the statements it was observed that the low trait anxiety group recalled significantly more non-worry than worry items, whereas there was no such difference for the high trait group. It was also found that the degree of memory bias was related to both positive affectivity and trait anxiety. The implications of such findings are discussed.     

Effects of Perceived Consensus on Selective Reinforcement of Other People's Stated Opinions

Three studies tested whether perceived consensus affects selective reinforcement of other people's stated opinions on important social issues. Participants who perceived relatively high consensus for their opinions were more likely than participants who perceived low consensus to reward another person's agreeing statements more than the person's disagreeing statements about gun control (Study 1) and to prolong interrogating another student about abortion (Study 2). In Study 3, participants who were told they were in a two-thirds majority regarding gay scout troop leaders were more likely than participants who were told they were in a one-third minority to practice selective reinforcement. The results have implications for settings in which interrogators believe they can exercise power over the person who is being questioned.     

More than 50% or Less than 70% Chance: Pragmatic Implications of Single‐Bound Probability Estimates

Probability estimates can be given as ranges or uncertainty intervals, where often only one of the interval bounds (lower or upper) is specified. For instance, a climate forecast can describe La Niña as having “more than 70% chance” or “less than 90% chance” of occurring. In three experiments, we studied how research participants perceived climate‐related forecasts expressed with lower‐bound (“over X% chance”) or upper‐bound (“under Y% chance”) probability statements. Results indicate that such single‐bound statements give pragmatic information in addition to the numeric probabilities they convey. First, the studies show that these statements are directional, leading the listeners' attention in opposite directions. “Over” statements guide attention towards the possible occurrence of the event and are explained by reasons for why it might happen, while “under” statements direct attention to its possible non‐occurrence and are more often explained by reasons for why the target event might not appear, corresponding to positive (it is possible) versus negative (it is uncertain) verbal probabilities. Second, boundaries were found to reveal the forecaster's beliefs and could be perceived as indicative of an increasing or a decreasing trend. Single‐bound probability estimates are therefore not neutral communications of probability level but might “leak” information about the speaker's expectations and about past and future developments of the forecast. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

东西方文化的人性观差异及其对道德认知的影响

人性观,即认为人性究竟是本善的还是本恶的,不仅是哲学思辨的焦点,也是日常生活中形成的一种常人理论(lay theory)。对于东西方文化传统的检视表明,西方文化占主导地位的是性恶论人性观,东方文化占主导地位的则是性善论人性观。研究通过实证数据支持了这一结论,发现中国被试相对于美国被试,对于人性的主观评定更倾向于性善的一端(研究1)。这种人性观差异导致中国被试在道德方面,尤其是规范性道德(行善)方面,对人提出了更高的要求(研究1),并且这种因果关系得到了启动实验的支持(研究2)。这些研究结果有助于人们更好地理解文化如何塑造了人们对于人性和道德的看法。     

Chinese working in groups: Effort dispensability versus normative influence

Chinese participants were found less likely to social loaf when working in groups than did North Americans. This result was attributed mainly to the collectivism and individualism characterizing Chinese and North Americans, respectively. However, this explanation does not address how Chinese people's social loafing tendency may vary across situations. If Chinese participants are concerned about their relations with coworkers, they should be more likely to conform to the performance level of their coworkers. This prediction is in opposition to effort dispensability, which is usually found among North Americans, whereby individuals adjust their effort in reverse to that of their coworkers. Consistent with our prediction, findings from three studies revealed that Chinese participants tended to conform to the performance level of their coworkers when their performance is made public ( vs kept anonymous) and when they have high ( vs low) relational concerns. These findings have implications for unpacking nuanced cultural influences on behaviours.     

Pleasure principle and perfect happiness: morality in Jacques Lacan and Zhuangzi

Jacques Lacan studied Chinese classics and received much inspiration from Zhuangzi. This paper concentrates on the comparative study of morality in those two thinkers from three connecting levels, namely, nature as the source of ethical codes, reason as the means to arrive at the ethical state, and pleasure as the ultimate purpose of morality. The investigation into the topic is enlightening for posthuman morality. Zhuangzi’s idea of the poetics of oneness inspires the Lacanian concept of the Real and ushers us into a new territory to rethink animal rights.     

Ethics and Science: Is Plausibility in the Eye of the Beholder?

This paper argues that morality is objective in a specific sense that accords with a broadly expressivist stance in metaethics. The paper also explains that although there is a kind of subjectivity in moral inquiry, the same holds for other kinds of normative inquiry, including epistemic and even scientific inquiry, and moreover that this kind of subjectivity is no threat to morality’s objectivity. The argument for the objectivity of morality draws strong parallels between ethics, epistemology, and science, but does not depend on equally strong parallels between ethics and mathematics. I argue that there is more to learn from a comparison between ethics and mathematics than I used to think, but the difference between the issues that come up in thinking about objectivity in ethics and those that come up in thinking about objectivity in mathematics is substantial, and we cannot carry over results from the philosophy of mathematics to the case of morality.     

Religious Coping Methods of Taiwanese Folk Religion

The purpose of this study was to explore religious coping methods employed by Taiwanese folk religious believers. This study applied qualitative research methods in data collection and data analysis by conducting semi-structured interviews with participants and analyzing the interview contents. We have identified fourteen coping methods that can be categorized into five different religious dimensions: belief, ritual, ethical, emotional and material. The findings not only expanded our knowledge about how believers of Taiwanese folk religion employ the religion to cope with difficulties but also discovered that some coping methods employed by them are also reported in Western countries, only in different forms.     

SHOULD WE DE‐MORALIZE ETHICAL THEORY?

Some philosophers, such as Roger Crisp and Alastair Norcross, have recently argued that the traditional moral categories of wrongness, permissibility and obligation should be avoided when doing ethical theory. I argue that even if morality does not itself provide reasons for action, the moral categories nevertheless have a central role to play in ethical theory: they allow us to make crucial judgements about how to feel about, and react to, agents who behave in anti‐social ways, and they help motivate us to act altruistically.     

道德推理与道德行为关系的元分析

目前道德心理学中存在对道德推理作用的质疑, 这一质疑源自哲学领域的著名争论。从经典道德心理学理论来说, 道德推理应该是道德行为的重要决定因素, 但新近的观点则否定这一重要作用。本研究采用元分析技术探讨道德推理与道德行为的关系。通过文献搜索与检查, 获得了50项研究和83个独立效应量, 共包含16738名被试。检验表明发表偏差不会影响元分析的结果, 选择随机效应模型是准确的。通过随机效应模型的元分析表明, 道德推理与道德的行为有显著的正相关, 与不道德的行为有显著的负相关。调节效应分析表明, 道德推理测量工具的类型会影响道德推理与道德行为的关系, 被试年龄阶段会影响道德推理与不道德行为的关系。这些结果肯定了道德推理的作用, 也强调了研究过程中要关注测量工具的类型, 指出了需要开发更全面的道德推理测量工具。     

Identifying the processes underpinning anticipation and decision-making in a dynamic time-constrained task

A novel, representative task was used to examine skill-based differences in the perceptual and cognitive processes underlying performance on a dynamic, externally paced task. Skilled and less skilled soccer players were required to move and interact with life-size, action sequences involving 11 versus 11 soccer situations filmed from the perspective of a central defender in soccer. The ability of participants to anticipate the intentions of their opponents and to make decisions about how they should respond was measured across two separate experiments. In Experiment 1, visual search behaviors were examined using an eye-movement registration system. In Experiment 2, retrospective verbal reports of thinking were gathered from a new sample of skilled and less skilled participants. Skilled participants were more accurate than less skilled participants at anticipating the intentions of opponents and in deciding on an appropriate course of action. The skilled players employed a search strategy involving more fixations of shorter duration in a different sequential order and toward more disparate and informative locations in the display when compared with the less skilled counterparts. The skilled players generated a greater number of verbal report statements with a higher proportion of evaluation, prediction, and planning statements than the less skilled players, suggesting they employed more complex domain-specific memory representations to solve the task. Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications are discussed.