Applying Cases to Solve Ethical Problems: The Significance of Positive and Process-Oriented Reflection

This study examined the role of reflection on personal cases for making ethical decisions with regard to new ethical problems. Participants assumed the position of a business manager in a hypothetical organization and solved ethical problems that might be encountered. Prior to making a decision for the business problems, participants reflected on a relevant ethical experience. The findings revealed that application of material garnered from reflection on a personal experience was associated with decisions of higher ethicality. However, whether the case was viewed as positive or negative, and whether the outcomes, processes, or outcomes and processes embedded in the experience were examined, influenced the application of case material to the new problem. As expected, examining positive experiences and the processes involved in those positive experiences resulted in greater application of case material to new problems. Future directions and implications for understanding ethical decision making are discussed.     

Group Ethical Decision Making Process in Chinese Business: Analysis From Social Decision Scheme and Cultural Perspectives

Literature concerning group ethical decision making in a business setting has traditionally focused on directly comparing group versus individual decisions and then investigating differences. Analysis of the interactive process of group ethical decision making appears sparse. This study addresses the gap by investigating group decision making from a social decision scheme (SDS) perspective in a Chinese cultural setting. A cohort of Chinese accountancy students evaluated ethical business scenarios individually and then in a group context. Group responses could be explained in terms of both the SDS and the Chinese cultural perspective (zhongyong). Specifically, groups did not select the most ethical choice but rather the most moderate of all choices advocated by the majority (zhongyong). These results show the application of SDS theory in a culturally specific (Chinese) environment and note the impact of culturally specific factors (zhongyong) on business decision making. The implications are significant for business. If ethical decisions are entrusted to groups, the impact of culturally specific factors must be fully appreciated in evaluating the final decision.     

Self-reported reasons for moral decisions

Many investigations of moral decision-making employ hypothetical scenarios in which each participant has to choose between two options. One option is usually deemed “utilitarian” and the other either “non-utilitarian” or “deontological”. Very little has been done to establish the validity of such measures. It is unclear what they measure, let alone how well they do so. In this exploratory study, participants were asked about the reasons for their decisions in six hypothetical scenarios. Various concerns contributed to each decision. Action decisions occurred when utilitarian concerns dominated. Bystanding decisions resulted from different concerns or combinations of concerns dominating in different situations, with utilitarianism usually among participants’ concerns. None of the labels usually used for either decision therefore seems entirely appropriate. Five concerns were identified as necessary and sufficient to predict over 85% of participants’ decisions. This suggests great promise for future research, particularly in investigation of real-world moral decisions.     

Should We Be Talking About Ethics or About Morals?

This article seeks to revisit the distinction between the words ethics and morals. First, we understand the word ethics to be focused on the way we seek to live our own life, and hence to connote a relativistic and essentially subjective perspective, whereas we understand the word morals to be focused on the way we should live our lives together, especially through sensitivity to viewpoints other than our own. Second, we perceive a usefulness in such a differentiation when the ethical values of those in a dilemmatic situation are conflicted in order to prioritize moral decision making in contemporary society. We argue that in our current era, characterized by a multiplicity of faiths and by pronounced value pluralism, a philosophical basis for moral decision making needs to be clearly attuned with intersubjectivity and interconnectivity among people. It should be able to determine principles of conduct toward others, no matter how one’s own ethical values, conceptions of the good, or life choices might differ from those of others. To do this, we relocate ethical decision making away from an essentially monological reflection on our own values and purposes into a social space wherein we have an inclusive, noncoercive, and reflective dialogue.     

Ethical? Toward whom?

Comments on the original article, "Nonrational processes in ethical decision making" by M. D. Rogerson et al (see record 2011-19198-001). Among the many insightful points made by Rogerson, Gottlieb, Handelsman, Knapp, and Younggren (October 2011) regarding nonrational processes in ethical decision making, one deserves further explication: Many of psychologists' ethical decisions lead to actions done to someone. Unfortunately, frameworks and models of ethical decision making frequently neglect this fact by implying that the decisions happen in the abstract, but in truth, these decisions often affect a specific recipient. Importantly, the characteristics of that specific recipient, especially as perceived by the psychologist, can have a powerful impact on the process of ethical decision making (Caughron et al., 2011). It would be wise to add such a hypothetical to the list of specific questions that Rogerson et al recommended psychologists ask themselves: Would I make the same ethical decision if the person(s) toward whom the decision is directed had different characteristics?     

Probabilistic Inferences Under Emotional Stress: How Arousal Affects Decision Processes

Many models of decision making neglect emotional states that could affect individuals' cognitive processes. The present work explores the effect of emotional stress on people's cognitive processes when making probabilistic inferences. Two contrasting hypotheses are tested against one another: the uncertainty‐reduction and attention‐narrowing hypotheses of how emotional stress affects decision making. In the experimental study, emotional stress was induced through the use of highly aversive pictures immediately before each decision. Emotional state was assessed by both subjective (state anxiety, arousal, and pleasantness ratings) and objective (skin conductance) measures. The results show that emotional stress impacts decision making; in particular, emotionally aroused participants seem to have focused on the most important information and selected simpler decision strategies relative to participants in a control condition. The results are in line with the attention‐narrowing hypothesis and suggest that emotional stress can impact decision making through limited predecisional information search and the selection of simpler decision strategies. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Forecasting and Ethical Decision Making: What Matters?

This study examined how the number and types of consequences considered are related to forecasting and ethical decision making. Undergraduate participants took on the role of the key actor in several ethical problems and were asked to forecast potential outcomes and make a decision about each problem. Performance pressure was manipulated by ostensibly making rewards contingent on good problem-solving performance. The results indicated that forecast quality was associated with decision ethicality, and the identification of the critical consequences of the problem and consequences for others were associated with both higher quality forecasts and more ethical decisions. In addition, the identification of a larger number of consequences was negatively associated with ethical decision making. Performance pressure did not impact forecast quality or ethicality of decisions. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Students' Ethical Decision‐Making When Considering Boundary Crossings With Counselor Educators

Counselor education students (N = 224) rated 16 boundary‐crossing scenarios involving counselor educators. They viewed boundary crossings as unethical and were aware of power differentials between the 2 groups. Next, they rated the scenarios again, after reviewing 1 of 4 ethical informational resources: relevant standards in the ACA Code of Ethics (American Counseling Association, 2014), 2 different boundary‐crossing decision‐making models, and a placebo. Although participants rated all resources except the placebo as moderately helpful, these resources had little to no influence on their ethical decision‐making. Only 47% of students in the 2 ethical decision‐making model groups reported they would use the model they were exposed to in the future when contemplating boundary crossings     

It was intuitive,and it felt good: a daily diary study on how people feel when making decisions

ABSTRACT

In daily life, people make plenty of decisions, either intuitively or based on analysis. So far, research has examined when decision-making leads to correct or biased outcomes. In the present study, we adopted a different perspective and explored how decision-making is associated with how people feel. In an observational study, 134 healthy participants retrospectively reported on six evenings which decisions they had made during that day (total N?=?3,850 decisions). They were also asked to indicate how they had felt before/after each decision. Multilevel regression analyses revealed that (a) people reported having felt better prior to intuitive as compared to analytical decisions, (b) people reported having felt better after as compared to before the decision, and (c) this increase in positive feeling was more pronounced for intuitive decisions. The latter two associations were robust to statistically controlling for the life domain in which the decisions occurred, the decisions’ importance and ease, and daily mood. The retrospective design and the single-item measure of mood are among the limitations of this study. Altogether, the results are in line with the idea that making everyday life decisions intuitively makes people feel good.     

Obsessive compulsive features predict cautious decision strategies

Introduction: Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is occasionally characterized by decision-making deficits. Compared to the isolated analysis of the choice and response times, characterizing decision outputs at the level of latent processes can be a more powerful approach in revealing differences, even in subclinical cases. We hypothesized that participants with higher obsessive compulsive (OC) features would set their decision thresholds higher and thus make more cautious decisions. Method: We used a perceptual two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) task (dot motion discrimination) to test this hypothesis in a non-clinical sample (N?=?74). We fitted the data with the diffusion model and evaluated the optimality of decision outputs. We also conducted exploratory analyses to reveal which subscales best predicted the differences at the level of latent decision processes. Results: Higher OC total scores in Maudsley and Padua scales significantly predicted higher threshold settings (cautiousness). The follow-up exploratory analyses with subscale scores showed that checking and rumination tendencies predicted higher threshold settings whereas washing tendency predicted faster non-decision times. Conclusions: Our primary results showed that participants with higher degrees of OC features exhibit more cautious decision making. Our exploratory analyses also revealed distinctions based on different types of OC features in both controlled (cautiousness in decision making) and automatic (faster non-decision times) elements of the decision process.     

Integrating emotion and other nonrational factors into ethics education and training in professional psychology

ABSTRACT

Any professional or scientific discipline has a responsibility to do what it can to ensure ethical behavior on the part of its members. In this context, this paper outlines and explores the criticism that to date the emphasis in ethics training in professional psychology, as with other disciplines, has been on the rational elements of ethical decision making, with insufficient attention to the role of emotions and other nonrational elements. After a brief outline of some of the historical background to the development and understanding of ethical decision making, relevant theoretical and empirical literature on the influence of emotional and other nonrational factors on our ethical decisions is reviewed. The implications of this literature for ethics education and training are outlined, particularly with respect to the use of case studies. An integrative approach is proposed, and conclusions and recommendations are offered with respect to such an approach.     

Framing decisions: Hypothetical and real

This paper addresses the general issue of whether the practice of investigating human decision making in hypothetical choice situations is at all warranted, or under what conditions. A particularly relevant factor that affects the match between real decisions and hypothetical decisions is the importance of a decision’s consequences. In the literature experimental gambles tend to confound the reality of the decision situation with the size of the payoffs: hypothetical decisions tend to offer large payoffs, and real decisions tend to offer only small payoffs. Using the well-known framing effect (a tendency of risk-aversion for gains and of risk-seeking for losses) we find that the framing effect depends on payoff size but hypothetical choices match real choices for small as well as large payoffs. These results appear paradoxical unless size of incentive is clearly distinguished from the reality status of decision (real versus hypothetical). Since the field lacks a general theory of when hypothetical decisions match real decisions, the discussion presents an outline for developing such a theory.     

Attributions in the Evaluation of Alternative Solutions to Social Problems

Abstract

The influence of causal attributions in decision making was studied in two samples (one of grade- and high-school teachers and one of first-year university students in Santiago, Chile) who answered a two-part questionnaire about the relative importance of eight different causes of alcohol problems and the potential value of eight possible solutions to the problem. The evaluation of the probable effectiveness of each solution was used as the criterion variable in a multiple regression analysis that included, as regressors, the evaluation of the importance of the different causes and sex of the respondent. Results showed that the importance attributed to the cause it eliminated was always the best predictor of the value given to any solution in the student sample and most frequently among the members of the teacher sample, although the importance of other causes and sex of respondent also influenced it in most cases.     

Risking Everything in Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder: An Analogue Decision-Making Study

An experiment examined decision-making processes among nonclinical participants with low or high levels of OCD symptomatology (N?=?303). To better simulate the decision environments that are most likely to be problematic for clients with OCD, we employed decision tasks that incorporated “black swan” options that have a very low probability but involve substantial loss. When faced with a choice between a safer option that involved no risk of loss or a riskier alternative with a very low probability of substantial loss, most participants chose the safer option regardless of OCD symptom level. However, when faced with choices between options that had similar expected values to the previous choices, but where each option had some low risk of a substantial loss, there was a significant shift towards riskier decisions. These effects were stronger when the task involved a contamination based, health-relevant decision task as compared to one with financial outcomes. The results suggest that both low and high symptom OC participants approach decisions involving risk-free options and decisions involving risky alternatives in qualitatively different ways. There was some evidence that measures of impulsivity were better predictors of the shift to risky decision making than OCD symptomatology.

     

Swayed by the music: sampling bias towards musical preference distinguishes like from dislike decisions

This study investigated the interaction between sampling behavior and preference formation underlying subjective decision making for like and dislike decisions. Two-alternative forced-choice tasks were used with closely-matched musical excerpts and the participants were free to listen and re-listen, i.e. to sample and resample each excerpt, until they reached a decision. We predicted that for decisions involving resampling, a sampling bias would be observed before the moment of conscious decision for the like decision only. The results indeed showed a gradually increasing sampling bias favouring the choice (73%) before the moment of overt response for like decisions. Such a bias was absent for dislike decisions. Furthermore, the participants reported stronger relative preferences for like decisions as compared to dislike decisions. This study demonstrated distinct differences in preference formation between like and dislike decisions, both in the implicit orienting/sampling processes prior to the conscious decision and in the subjective evaluation afterwards.     

Does young adults’ preferred role in decision making about health,money, and career depend on their advisors’ leadership skills?

Few empirical data exist on how decision making about health differs from that in other crucial life domains with less threatening consequences. To shed light on this issue we conducted a study with 175 young adults (average age 19 years). We presented the participants with scenarios involving advisors who provided assistance in making decisions about health, money, and career. For each scenario, participants were asked to what extent they wanted the advisor to exhibit several leadership styles and competencies and what role (active, collaborative, or passive) they preferred to play when making decisions. Results show that decision making about health is distinct from that in the other domains in three ways. First, most of the participants preferred to delegate decision making about their health to their physician, whereas they were willing to collaborate or play an active role in decision making about their career or money. Second, the competencies and leadership style preferred for the physician differed substantially from those desired for advisors in the other two domains: Participants expected physicians to show more transformational leadership—the style that is most effective in a wide range of environments—than those who provide advice about financial investments or career. Finally, participants’ willingness to share medical decision making with their physician was tied to how strongly they preferred that the physician shows an effective leadership style. In contrast, motivation to participate in decision making in the other domains was not related to preferences regarding advisors’ leadership style or competencies. Our results have implications for medical practice as they suggest that physicians are expected to have superior leadership skills compared to those who provide assistance in other important areas of life.     

Accepting or Rejecting Medical Treatment: A Comparison of Decisions Made for Self Versus Those Made for a Significant Other1

College students (N= 52) made sets of hypothetical decisions concerning whether to accept or withhold medical treatment for oneself as well as for a significant other. Two sets of decisions were made for the significant other: a set representing what the significant other would want for himself or herself, and a set representing what the potential surrogate would want for the significant other. Results revealed consistent sets of decisions within each decision frame, considerable individual differences in mean judgments, an emphasis on the levels of mental and physical functioning, self‐reported decision weights that differed across the decision frames, and considerable self‐insight into the decision policy used when deciding for oneself.     

Conceptions of Research Methods Learning Among Psychology Undergraduates: A Q Methodology Study*

Abstract

A range of conceptions held about research methods learning have previously been identified. This study aimed to examine in-depth shared conceptions among undergraduate psychology students. Utilizing Q methodology, which links both quantitative and qualitative methodologies to uncover the subjective viewpoints that a group of individuals hold toward a particular domain, participants ranked statements reflecting different conceptions of research methods learning. Ranks were then factor analyzed and four distinct profiles of student conceptions were identified, labelled, and described in qualitative detail: research methods as integral to psychology, research methods as a digression from psychology, research methods as disconnected from psychology, and research methods as beneficial to psychology. Some of the perspectives displayed a clear understanding about the reasons for undertaking research and learning about research methods in psychology, whereas other standpoints saw research as being something that was difficult to relate to the practice of psychology. Findings are considered in terms of how some conceptions appear to be more beneficial or problematic to hold than others and recommendations are made to educators about how they could support students to change their views.     

What a Feeling: The Role of Immediate and Anticipated Emotions in Risky Decisions

The risk‐as‐feelings hypothesis argues that many risky decisions are not only predicted by anticipated emotions, as most consequentialistic decision making theories would presume, but also by immediate emotions. Immediate emotions refer to the “hot” visceral feelings people feel as they contemplate a specific decision option at the cusp of making a decision, whereas anticipated emotions are those emotions that people forecast that they will feel once they experience possible consequences of that decision. Four studies focused on the role of both types of emotions in decisions under risk and uncertainty. Decisions were substantively predicted by immediate emotional states beyond anticipated emotions or the subjective probability attached to outcomes. Thus, risky choices may be prompted, in part, by how people feel about the “riskless” portion of the decision—specifically, the various decision options they are contemplating—rather than the potential outcomes those options may produce. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.