Spitefulness and moral values

The relationship between spitefulness and an individual’s sense of morality or lack thereof has been neglected in studies of personality. It seems probable that individuals with higher levels of spitefulness exhibit fewer moral concerns relative to those with lower levels of spite. To examine associations between spitefulness and moral concerns, 436 community participants completed self-report measures concerning their spitefulness, basic personality dimensions, and moral concerns. Spitefulness was negatively associated with individualizing values (i.e., sensitivity to harm and fairness) such that spiteful individuals were less concerned about issues related to avoiding harm or injustice to others when making moral judgments. However, spitefulness was not simply associated with a general reduction in moral concerns as it was not significantly associated with binding values (i.e., concerns about ingroup loyalty, authority, and purity).     

Psychoanalysis and moral values

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Children in clinical research: a conflict of moral values

This paper examines the culture, the dynamics and the financial underpinnings that determine how medical research is being conducted on children in the United States. Children have increasingly become the subject of experiments that offer them no potential direct benefit but expose them to risks of harm and pain. A wide range of such experiments will be examined, including a lethal heartburn drug test, the experimental insertion of a pacemaker, an invasive insulin infusion experiment, and a fenfluramine "violence prediction" experiment. Emphasis, however, is given to psychoactive drug tests because of the inherent ethical and diagnostic problems involved in the absence of any objective, verifiable diagnostic tool. Effort is made to provide readers comprehensive reference sources to evidence-based reports about the serious risks these drugs pose for adults and children so that the reader may judge whether the benefits (if any) outweigh the risks for children.     

Motives, values and moral judgments

This study examined McClelland's (1981) hypothesis that operant and respondent measures of personality are orthogonal and assess different dimensions of personality structure. An operant measure of motives, a sentence completion test, and two respondent measures of cognitive schema variables, the Rokeach Value Survey and the Defining issues Test, were administered to 311 subjects. As predicted and in support of McClelland's hypothesis, 69% of the correlations between the respondent measures were significant at the alpha .05 level of probability versus 14% of the correlations between the operant and respondent measures. Further, within the domain of cognitive schema variables, it was theoretically possible to predict which values would correlate with different levels of moral judgment. The findings were discussed in terms. of their implications for person x situation models of social interaction and the prediction of criterion variables from typologies of personality.     

Sex differences in moral internalization and values.

The subjects were fifth- and seventh-grade white middle-class children and their parents. The major moral internalization indices pertain to internal moral judgment, guilt intensity, and fear of punishment. The findings support the prevalent view that consideration for others is more salient in females. They also suggest, with considerable consistency (especially in adults) that moral transgressions are more likely to be associated with guilt in females and fear in males. No sex differences in internal moral judgment were obtained. Evidence was presented suggesting that the differences in children may be due partly to different discipline and affection patterns. It was also suggested that the results for adults as well as children might be explained by differential sex-role socialization as well as by increasing pressures on males over the life cycle to achieve and succeed, which may often conflict with concerns about the welfare of others.     

Change in values and moral reasoning during higher education

The aim of this study was to examine whether personal value priorities, measured by Schwartz et al.'s method, change during higher education, whether moral reasoning measured by the DIT develops and whether values predict gain in moral development. Moreover, we explored the simultaneous changes in value priorities and moral reasoning. Our sample consisted of 132 students from a university of applied sciences who filled out the value measure and the DIT both at the beginning and at the end of their studies. The results revealed that universalism and security values became more important whereas achievement decreased in importance during the three-year period. We also found significant gain in moral development and that universalism and hedonism values predicted this gain significantly. Significant correlated change was found between moral reasoning and stimulation, conformity and security values. The meaning of the results is discussed in terms of the theories of Schwartz and Kohlberg.     

The role of analytic thinking in moral judgements and values

While individual differences in the willingness and ability to engage analytic processing have long informed research in reasoning and decision making, the implications of such differences have not yet had a strong influence in other domains of psychological research. We claim that analytic thinking is not limited to problems that have a normative basis and, as an extension of this, predict that individual differences in analytic thinking will be influential in determining beliefs and values. Along with assessments of cognitive ability and style, religious beliefs, and moral values, participants judged the wrongness of acts considered disgusting and conventionally immoral, but that do not violate care- or fairness-based moral principles. Differences in willingness to engage analytic thinking predicted reduced judgements of wrongness, independent of demographics, political ideology, religiosity, and moral values. Further, we show that those who were higher in cognitive ability were less likely to indicate that purity, patriotism, and respect for traditions and authority are important to their moral thinking. These findings are consistent with a “Reflectionist” view that assumes a role for analytic thought in determining substantive, deeply-held human beliefs and values.     

Attitudes,values and moral reasoning as predictors of delinquency

Attitudes to institutional authority, strength of support for moral values and maturity of socio‐moral reasoning have all been identified as potential predictors of adolescent delinquency. In a sample of 12–15‐year‐old boys (N = 789), after checking for effects of age, IQ, social background and ethnicity, self‐reported delinquency was significantly and independently predicted by attitudes to authority (r = ?.47) and moral values (r = ?.27), but not by a structural measure of moral reasoning level (r = ?.04). The findings argue for closer attention to the developmental determinants of attitudes to institutional authority and strength of moral value commitments than these have received hitherto. On the other hand, lack of an association between moral reasoning level and delinquent conduct does leave unanswered questions about the consequences of this kind of moral competence.     

Sex differences in the moral values of college students and their parents

A values survey eliciting judgments of the morality of 50 behaviors was administered to 93 college students and both of their parents. Among students, who were generally more lenient in their judgments than their parents were, sex differences were virtually nonexistent. By contrast, mothers were more severe in their judgments than fathers across a wide range of behavior. Students' subscale and total severity scores were generally positively, though modestly, related to the corresponding scores of both their parents, with mother-child correlations being somewhat higher than father-child correlations, and with strengths of relationships varying as a function of domain of judgment and sex of student.     

Defending psychopathy: an argument from values and moral responsibility

How psychopaths and their capacity for moral action are viewed is not only philosophically interesting but is also important and relevant for policy. The philosophical discussion of psychopathy has focussed upon the psychological faculties that are prerequisites for moral responsibility and empirical findings regarding psychopathy that are relevant to philosophical accounts of moral understanding and motivation. However, there are legitimate worries about whether psychopathy is a robust scientific construct, and there are risks attached to reifying psychopathy or other psychiatric constructs. We defend the concept of psychopathy by pointing out the relevance of empirical studies about it for our ordinary practices of ascribing moral responsibility and folk psychological accounts of moral understanding and motivation.     

道德困境研究的范式沿革及其理论价值

通过评述道德困境研究范式的发展过程, 系统阐释了经典两难法、加工分离法、CNI模型法和CAN算法的优缺点和理论价值。后来的研究范式均在一定程度上克服了之前研究范式的局限。加工分离法克服了经典两难法的加工纯粹性假设等局限, CNI模型法在加工分离法基础上进一步分离了道德困境决策的多种心理过程, CAN算法则修正了CNI模型法的序列加工的不恰当预设。研究范式的沿革启示研究者综合应用新方法来解决研究争议和重新审视以往道德理论, 合理应用新方法来探索其他具有潜在冲突性的研究议题。总之, 本文为道德困境及相关研究提供了方法学参考。