Psychopathy increases perceived moral permissibility of accidents

Psychopaths are notorious for their antisocial and immoral behavior, yet experimental studies have typically failed to identify deficits in their capacities for explicit moral judgment. We tested 20 criminal psychopaths and 25 criminal nonpsychopaths on a moral judgment task featuring hypothetical scenarios that systematically varied an actor's intention and the action's outcome. Participants were instructed to evaluate four classes of actions: accidental harms, attempted harms, intentional harms, and neutral acts. Psychopaths showed a selective difference, compared with nonpsychopaths, in judging accidents, where one person harmed another unintentionally. Specifically, psychopaths judged these actions to be more morally permissible. We suggest that this pattern reflects psychopaths' failure to appreciate the emotional aspect of the victim's experience of harm. These findings provide direct evidence of abnormal moral judgment in psychopathy.     

The omission strategy

People are more willing to bring about morally objectionable outcomes by omission than by commission. Similarly, people condemn others less harshly when a moral offense occurs by omission rather than by commission, even when intentions are controlled. We propose that these two phenomena are related, and that the reduced moral condemnation of omissions causes people to choose omissions in their own behavior to avoid punishment. We report two experiments using an economic game in which one participant (the taker) could take money from another participant (the owner) either by omission or by commission. We manipulated whether or not a third party had the opportunity to punish the taker by reducing the taker's payment. Our results indicated that the frequency of omission increases when punishment is possible. We conclude that people choose omissions to avoid condemnation and that the omission effect is best understood not as a bias, but as a strategy.     

Killing, letting die, and simple conflicts

Proponents of the moral equivalence of killing and letting die argue that in cases of simple conflict, where one agent must either perform a positive act and kill one person, or not perform that act and allow another person to die, the agent's alternatives are clearly morally equivalent. Malm rejects this view in a three part essay. He argues that in cases of simple conflict, the acts of killing and letting die are morally different, and that killing is not in itself worse than letting die. Malm considers and rejects the suggestion that the agent should decide randomly between the two alternatives. He concludes that while simple conflict cases require us to recognize a morally significant difference between killing and letting die, they do not require us to recognize a morally significant difference between acting and refraining.     

Biases in children's and adults' moral judgments

Two experiments examined biases in children's (5/6- and 7/8-year-olds) and adults' moral judgments. Participants at all ages judged that it was worse to produce harm when harm occurred (a) through action rather than inaction (omission bias), (b) when physical contact with the victim was involved (physical contact principle), and (c) when the harm was produced as a direct means to an end rather than as an unintended but foreseeable side effect of the action (intention principle). The youngest participants, however, did not incorporate benefit when making judgments about situations in which harm to one individual resulted in benefit to five individuals. Older participants showed some preference for benefit resulting from action (commission) as opposed to inaction (omission). The findings are discussed in the context of the theory that moral judgments result, in part, from the operation of an inherent, intuitive moral faculty compared with the theory that moral judgments require development of necessary cognitive abilities.     

行为决策中的忽略偏差：心理机制与影响因素

忽略偏差是指在由忽略所导致的损失与由行为所导致的同等的或者更少的损失之间, 个体更容易接受忽略所导致的损失。个体在日常行为决策的各种领域, 特别是在公共政策制定中均会出现忽略偏差。目前忽略偏差的心理机制主要有损失规避和标准理论两种。忽略偏差的影响因素主要包括保护性价值观、选择结果的信息知悉度、负性情绪、社会角色和文化价值观念等。未来的研究则需要从忽略偏差的产生根源, 与决策规避中其他偏差的关系, 群体决策中忽略偏差的影响以及忽略偏差的应用研究领域, 特别是公共管理与公共政策领域等方面进行深入的研究。     

Children's moral judgments of commission and omission based on their understanding of second‐order mental states1

Abstract: Children's moral judgments about acts of commission and omission with negative outcomes were studied based on their understanding of mental states. Children (N = 142) in the first, third, and fifth grades made judgments about four tasks composed of two levels of mental states (first‐order or second‐order) and two types of acts (commission or omission). The results showed that the 7‐year‐olds responded considering only first‐order mental states, but the 9‐ and 11‐year‐olds also used second‐order mental states in their judgments. Whether the acts were commission or omission did not make a difference. These results indicate that children can make moral judgments regarding acts of commission and omission based on an understanding of second‐order mental states by approximately the age of 9 years.     

Using Prolonged Exposure and Cognitive Processing Therapy to Treat Veterans With Moral Injury-Based PTSD: Two Case Examples

Moral injury refers to acts of commission or omission that violate individuals’ moral or ethical standards. Morally injurious events are often synonymous with psychological trauma, especially in combat situations—thus, morally injurious events are often implicated in the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for military service members and veterans. Although prolonged exposure (PE) and cognitive processing therapy (CPT) have been well established as effective treatments for veterans who are struggling with PTSD, it has been suggested that these two evidence-based therapies may not be sufficient for treating veterans whose PTSD resulted from morally injurious events. The purpose of this paper is to detail how the underlying theories of PE and CPT can account for moral injury-based PTSD and to describe two case examples of veterans with PTSD stemming from morally injurious events who were successfully treated with PE and CPT. The paper concludes with a summary of challenges that clinicians may face when treating veterans with PTSD resulting from moral injury using either PE or CPT.     

Scalar Properties, Binary Judgments

In the moral realm, our deontic judgments are usually (always?) binary. An act (or omission) is either morally forbidden or morally permissible. ¹ 1 I realize that I appear to be omitting the category of ‘morally required’ here. But that category does not affect my analysis in part because we can always substitute for a morally required act a morally forbidden omission to act. The question would then be whether the omission to act is permissible or forbidden. In any event, my focus is on deontic boundaries, and it is immaterial how many there are. Thus, I shall continue to speak of acts being morally forbidden or permissible.
Yet the determination of an act's deontic status frequently turns on the existence of properties that are matters of degree. In what follows I shall give several examples of binary moral judgments that turn on scalar properties, and I shall claim that these examples should puzzle us. How can the existence of a property to a specific degree demarcate a boundary between an act's being morally forbidden and its not being morally forbidden? Why aren't our moral judgments of acts scalar in the way that the properties on which those judgments are based are scalar, so that acts, like states of affairs, can be morally better or worse rather than right or wrong? I conceive of this inquiry as operating primarily within the realm of normative theory. Presumably it will give aid and comfort to consequentialists, who have no trouble mapping their binary categories onto scalar properties. For example, a straightforward act utilitarian, for whom one act out of all possible acts is morally required (and hence permissible) and all others morally forbidden, can, in theory at least, provide an answer to every one of the puzzles I raise. And, in theory, so can all other types of act and rule consequentialists. They will find nothing of interest here beyond embarrassment for their deontological adversaries. The deontologists, however, must meet the challenges of these puzzles. And for them, the puzzles may raise not just normative questions, but questions of moral epistemology and moral ontology. Just how do we know that the act consequentialist's way of, say, trading off lives against lives is wrong? For example, do we merely intuit that taking one innocent, uninvolved person's life to save two others is wrong? Can our method of reflective equilibrium work if we have no theory by which to rationalize our intuitions? And what things in the world make it true, if it is true, that one may not make the act consequentialist's tradeoff? I do not provide any answers to these questions any more than I provide answers to the normative ones. But they surely lurk in the background.     

Automation bias: decision making and performance in high-tech cockpits

Automated aids and decision support tools are rapidly becoming indispensable tools in high-technology cockpits and are assuming increasing control of"cognitive" flight tasks, such as calculating fuel-efficient routes, navigating, or detecting and diagnosing system malfunctions and abnormalities. This study was designed to investigate automation bias, a recently documented factor in the use of automated aids and decision support systems. The term refers to omission and commission errors resulting from the use of automated cues as a heuristic replacement for vigilant information seeking and processing. Glass-cockpit pilots flew flight scenarios involving automation events or opportunities for automation-related omission and commission errors. Although experimentally manipulated accountability demands did not significantly impact performance, post hoc analyses revealed that those pilots who reported an internalized perception of "accountability" for their performance and strategies of interaction with the automation were significantly more likely to double-check automated functioning against other cues and less likely to commit errors than those who did not share this perception. Pilots were also lilkely to erroneously "remember" the presence of expected cues when describing their decision-making processes.     

Outcome Knowledge,Regret, and Omission Bias

Subjects made or evaluated decisions in hypothetical scenarios. We manipulated knowledge about the outcome and act vs omission in four cases. In case 1 (production processes), acts (changing the process) were considered better than omissions when the decision maker did not know the outcome or knew that it was better than the status quo. Acts were considered worse than omissions once the decision maker learned that the foregone option would have led to an even better outcome. In case 2 (medical treatment), act vs omission again interacted with gain vs loss (relative to the status quo) unless the outcome of the foregone option was known, in which case act vs omission interacted with better vs worse (of the two options). In case 3 (fetal testing), subjects tolerated less risk of miscarriage when a potential for regret was present (because the test with the risk of miscarriage, although better, might miss disorders that another test would detect). This effect was greater for actions than omissions. In case 4 (vaccination), subjects showed less tolerance of vaccine risk when the decision maker would know about the outcome of vaccination or nonvaccination. Thus, the bias toward omission (not vaccinating) is greater when potential regret is present, and potential regret is greater when knowledge of outcomes is expected.     

Reference Points and Omission Bias

Subjects were asked to evaluate the choice of options leading to known outcomes, or to say how they would feel about a chance outcome, in hypothetical decisions. We independently manipulated the value of the status quo and the assignment of the better or worse outcome to an act or an omission. Acts leading to the worse outcome were always considered worse than omissions leading to the worse outcome. This act-omission difference was reduced or reversed for the better outcome. Most experiments showed an overall bias toward omissions (combining better and worse). Little evidence was found for greater omission bias for losses relative to the status quo than for gains. A bias toward maintaining the status quo itself was found, however, independently of omission bias. Most of the results can be explained by norm theory and by loss aversion, but other possible accounts are inconsistent with the results.     

Young children's moral judgments of commission and omission related to the understanding of Knowledge or Ignorance

This study examined developmental change in young children's moral judgments of commission and omission related to mental states, especially knowledge or ignorance. 4–5 and 5‐ to 6‐year‐olds (n=67) made moral judgments about the tasks related to the understanding of knowledge or ignorance. The tasks were also composed of two types of acts: commission or omission. The results showed that the both age groups understood knowledge and ignorance, but that the older group made moral judgments based on this understanding more similar to adults compared to the younger group. There was not an age difference concerning whether the acts were of commission or omission. These findings indicate that there is no difference for young children in the difficulty in moral judgments of acts of commission and omission related to mental states, whereas there is a developmental difference in using the understanding of knowledge or ignorance for making moral judgments. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Autonomy and moral deference

The idea that a person might have a duty to defer to the moral judgments of others is typically something that arouses our suspicion, in ways that other kinds of deference do not. One explanation for this is the value of autonomy. According to this explanation, people have a duty to be autonomous, and any act of deferring to another person’s moral judgement is not an autonomous action. Call this “the Autonomy Argument” against moral deference. In this article, I criticise the Autonomy Argument. I argue that, even if we accept that an act of moral deference can never be autonomous, those who believe that people have a duty to be autonomous must accept that acts of moral deference are morally necessary. This is because some people are incapable of becoming autonomous by themselves, and deferring to a moral expert is the only way they might ever become autonomous.     

Intention and Responsibility in Double Effect Cases

I argue that the moral distinction in double effect cases rests on a difference not in intention as traditionally stated in the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE), but in desire. The traditional DDE has difficulty ensuring that an agent intends the bad effect just in those cases where what he does is morally objectionable. I show firstly that the mental state of a rational agent who is certain that a side-effect will occur satisfies Bratman's criteria for intending that effect. I then clarify the nature of the moral distinction in double effect cases and how it can be used to evaluate the moral blameworthiness of agents rather than the moral status of acts. The agent's blameworthiness is reduced not by his lack of intention but by his desire not to bring about the side-effect, and the 'counterfactual test' can be used to determine whether he desires the effect in acting. In my version, the DDE has its rationale in virtue ethics; it is not liable to abuse as the traditional version is; and it makes more plausible distinctions when applied to standard examples.     

道德困境决策中的忽略偏差:现象与测量

道德困境决策中的忽略偏差效应是指在道德困境中,当作为和不作为都会造成消极结果的情况下,个体认为作为导致的消极结果比不作为导致的消极结果更不道德,从而使人们在道德决策时更倾向于不作为的现象。由于传统道德决策研究范式存在义务论决策倾向性和一般性不作为反应倾向相混淆的局限,道德困境决策中的忽略偏差效应尚未做进一步探索。本文梳理了道德困境决策中忽略偏差效应的表现,通过CNI模型提出甄别和测量道德困境决策中忽略偏差效应的策略:创设研究情景; 分离不作为倾向性和忽略偏差效应; 综合探索忽略偏差效应的群体和个体特征。针对CNI模型的局限性,结合CAN算法和漂移扩散模型对未来的研究方向进行了展望。     

Social Perceptions of Termination of Medical Treatment: Suicide or Rational Decision?

In two studies, college students read about a critically ill patient who died after CPR attempts failed, CPR was not attempted pursuant to a "Do-Not-Resuscitate" (DNR) order, he terminated all medical treatment, or he self-administered a lethal injection. Death resulting from treatment termination was perceived as significantly more unconventional than were death by CPR failure or DNR order. Ending treatment and lethal injection were perceived as equivalent acts of suicide, and resulted in the patient's being seen as less rational and less capable of making health care decisions. Timing of the patient's decisions regarding treatment, as indicated by the presence or absence of Living Will information, did not alter these perceptions. Results are discussed in light of opposing hypotheses regarding views of "naive" social perceivers toward actions with identical outcomes: that acts of commission are perceived as causal and rated more negatively than acts of omission (Spranca, Minsk, & Baron, 1991), and that acts seen as abnormal are attributed greater causal impact (Hilton & Slugoski, 1986).     

Negative emotional outcomes impair older adults’ reversal learning

In a typical reversal-learning experiment, one learns stimulus–outcome contingencies that then switch without warning. For instance, participants might have to repeatedly choose between two faces, one of which yields points whereas the other does not, with a reversal at some point in which face yields points. The current study examined age differences in the effects of outcome type on reversal learning. In the first experiment, the participants’ task was either to select the person who would be in a better mood or to select the person who would yield more points. Reversals in which face was the correct option occurred several times. Older adults did worse in blocks in which the correct response was to select the person who would not be angry than in blocks in which the correct response was to select the person who would smile. Younger adults did not show a difference by emotional valence. In the second study, the negative condition was switched to have the same format as the positive condition (to select who will be angry). Again, older adults did worse with negative than positive outcomes, whereas younger adults did not show a difference by emotional valence. A third experiment replicated the lack of valence effects in younger adults with a harder probabilistic reversal-learning task. In the first two experiments, older adults performed about as well as younger adults in the positive conditions but performed worse in the negative conditions. These findings suggest that negative emotional outcomes selectively impair older adults’ reversal learning.     

Negative emotional outcomes impair older adults' reversal learning

In a typical reversal-learning experiment, one learns stimulus-outcome contingencies that then switch without warning. For instance, participants might have to repeatedly choose between two faces, one of which yields points whereas the other does not, with a reversal at some point in which face yields points. The current study examined age differences in the effects of outcome type on reversal learning. In the first experiment, the participants' task was either to select the person who would be in a better mood or to select the person who would yield more points. Reversals in which face was the correct option occurred several times. Older adults did worse in blocks in which the correct response was to select the person who would not be angry than in blocks in which the correct response was to select the person who would smile. Younger adults did not show a difference by emotional valence. In the second study, the negative condition was switched to have the same format as the positive condition (to select who will be angry). Again, older adults did worse with negative than positive outcomes, whereas younger adults did not show a difference by emotional valence. A third experiment replicated the lack of valence effects in younger adults with a harder probabilistic reversal-learning task. In the first two experiments, older adults performed about as well as younger adults in the positive conditions but performed worse in the negative conditions. These findings suggest that negative emotional outcomes selectively impair older adults' reversal learning.     

Responsibility and the shallow self

Contemporary philosophers of moral responsibility are in widespread agreement that we can only be blamed for actions that express, reflect, or disclose something about us or the quality of our wills. In this paper I reject that thesis and argue that self disclosure is not a necessary condition on moral responsibility and blameworthiness: reactive responses ranging from aretaic appraisals all the way to outbursts of anger and resentment can be morally justified even when the blamed agent’s action expresses or discloses nothing significant about his or her “deep self,” judgments and cares, or the quality of his or her will. I argue that the self-disclosure requirement on responsibility overestimates the extent to which our blaming practices and responsibility judgments are responsive to agents as opposed to actions, and that this mistake has the potential to distort both our reactive responses and our understanding of blamed agents’ characters.     

Legitimate lies: The relationship between omission,commission, and cheating

Across four experiments, we show that when people can serve their self‐interest, they are more likely to refrain from reporting the truth (lie of omission) than actively lie (lie of commission). We developed a novel online “Heads or Tails” task in which participants can lie to win a monetary prize. During the task, they are informed that the software is not always accurate, and it might provide incorrect feedback about their outcome. In Experiment 1, those in the omission condition received incorrect feedback informing them that they had won the game. Participants in commission condition were correctly informed that they had lost. Results indicated that when asked to report any errors in the detection of their payoff, participants in the omission condition cheated significantly more than those in the commission condition. Experiment 2 showed that this pattern of results is robust even when controlling for the perceived probability of the software error. Experiments 3 and 4 suggest that receiving incorrect feedback makes individuals feel more legitimate in withholding the truth, which, in turn, increases cheating.