Multiplicity of Emotions in Moral Judgment and Motivation

Multiple moral emotions were examined from a dynamic motivational framework through two hypothetical dilemmas that originate from the cognitive-developmental research program in morality. A questionnaire based on recognition task measurement of moral motivation and emotions was administered to 546 college students. As part of the dynamic complexity of moral motivation, intrapersonal operation of multiple emotions were expected and found toward each emotion target in each judgment context. Compassion and distress were among the most important moral emotions. Relatively strong degrees of anger and hate were reported toward the victimizers in ways that distinguished judgment choices. Participants distinguished a variety of positive emotions from anger and hate through differential associations with judgment choices. The study revealed orderly patterns of variability in the multiplicity of moral emotional experience based on relations with specific emotion targets, judgment choices, and developmental quality of moral motivation. The overall developmental quality of moral motivation was negatively associated with hate and positively associated with anger toward the victimizers. Emotional awareness was also found to be positively related to the developmental quality of moral motivation. Exploring the intrapersonal multiplicity of moral emotional experience has important implications for understanding the complexity of moral decision making and motivation.     

Moral motivation of college students through multiple developmental structures: Evidence of intrapersonal variability in a complex dynamic system

This study is based on a broad conception of moral motivation by applying self-determination theory and dynamic systems perspectives. Accordingly, not only moral action, but also moral judgment is motivated. We carried out a detailed exploration of intrapersonal variability as a central aspect of moral motivation. Kohlberg’s six stages of moral development are reconceptualized as dynamic process structures of motivation that operate together within person simultaneously in different degrees. A total of 546 college students responded to a new instrument to assess moral motivation using a recognition task. Findings provided support for the notion that individuals use multiple motivational structures in different degrees as they make moral judgments. The majority of correlations between within-person operation degrees of motivational structures were significant. Variations in these correlations are explained to a large extent by developmental proximity of stage pairs. Results revealed both variability and developmental order in moral motivation. Implications of a dynamic developmental perspective are discussed in terms of understanding the complexity of moral motivation in ways that are sensitive to both intrapersonal and contextual variability.     

20/20: A Vision for the Future of Counseling: The New Consensus Definition of Counseling

With the promulgation of the 20/20: A Vision for the Future of Counseling consensus definition of counseling, there is finally profession‐wide clarity as to what it means to engage in professional counseling. This article describes the development and discusses the implications of the definition: “Counseling is a professional relationship that empowers diverse individuals, families, and groups to accomplish mental health, wellness, education, and career goals.” This consensus definition has been endorsed by 29 major counseling organizations.     

Temporal framing and the hidden‐zero effect: rate‐dependent outcomes on delay discounting

Recent research suggests that presenting time intervals as units (e.g., days) or as specific dates, can modulate the degree to which humans discount delayed outcomes. Another framing effect involves explicitly stating that choosing a smaller–sooner reward is mutually exclusive to receiving a larger–later reward, thus presenting choices as an extended sequence. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 201) recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk completed the Monetary Choice Questionnaire in a 2 (delay framing) by 2 (zero framing) design. Regression suggested a main effect of delay, but not zero, framing after accounting for other demographic variables and manipulations. We observed a rate‐dependent effect for the date‐framing group, such that those with initially steep discounting exhibited greater sensitivity to the manipulation than those with initially shallow discounting. Subsequent analyses suggest these effects cannot be explained by regression to the mean. Experiment 2 addressed the possibility that the null effect of zero framing was due to within‐subject exposure to the hidden‐ and explicit‐zero conditions. A new Amazon Mechanical Turk sample completed the Monetary Choice Questionnaire in either hidden‐ or explicit‐zero formats. Analyses revealed a main effect of reward magnitude, but not zero framing, suggesting potential limitations to the generality of the hidden‐zero effect.     

Building Blocks to Portability: Culmination of the 20/20 Initiative

The profession of counseling has now endorsed a consensus licensure title and scope of practice for all U.S. states and jurisdictions. This article describes the development of the title and scope of practice through the Building Blocks to Portability Project of the 20/20: A Vision for the Future of Counseling initiative. Outcomes and implications of this final stage of the 20/20 project intended to ease interstate licensure portability are presented.     

Habitual starvation and provocative behaviors: Two potential routes to extreme suicidal behavior in anorexia nervosa

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is perhaps the most lethal mental disorder, in part due to starvation-related health problems, but especially because of high suicide rates. One potential reason for high suicide rates in AN may be that those affected face pain and provocation on many fronts, which may in turn reduce their fear of pain and thereby increase risk for death by suicide. The purpose of the following studies was to explore whether repetitive exposure to painful and destructive behaviors such as vomiting, laxative use, and non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) was a mechanism that linked AN-binge-purging (ANBP) subtype, as opposed to AN-restricting subtype (ANR), to extreme suicidal behavior. Study 1 utilized a sample of 787 individuals diagnosed with one or the other subtype of AN, and structural equation modeling results supported provocative behaviors as a mechanism linking ANBP to suicidal behavior. A second, unexpected mechanism emerged linking ANR to suicidal behavior via restricting. Study 2, which used a sample of 249 AN patients, replicated these findings, including the second mechanism linking ANR to suicide attempts. Two potential routes to suicidal behavior in AN appear to have been identified: one route through repetitive experience with provocative behaviors for ANBP, and a second for exposure to pain through the starvation of restricting in ANR.     

Applying mixed‐effects modeling to single‐subject designs: An introduction

Behavior analysis and statistical inference have shared a conflicted relationship for over fifty years. However, a significant portion of this conflict is directed toward statistical tests (e.g., t‐tests, ANOVA) that aggregate group and/or temporal variability into means and standard deviations and as a result remove much of the data important to behavior analysts. Mixed‐effects modeling, a more recently developed statistical test, addresses many of the limitations of more basic tests by incorporating random effects. Random effects quantify individual subject variability without eliminating it from the model, hence producing a model that can predict both group and individual behavior. We present the results of a generalized linear mixed‐effects model applied to single‐subject data taken from Ackerlund Brandt, Dozier, Juanico, Laudont, & Mick, 2015, in which children chose from one of three reinforcers for completing a task. Results of the mixed‐effects modeling are consistent with visual analyses and importantly provide a statistical framework to predict individual behavior without requiring aggregation. We conclude by discussing the implications of these results and provide recommendations for further integration of mixed‐effects models in the analyses of single‐subject designs.     

Chisholm's Grand Move

Abstract: Roderick Chisholm famously held that our knowledge of the world is supported entirely by a foundation of self‐justifying statements, none of which logically implies the existence of any physical object in that world. The only contingent statements to be found in the foundation, he maintained, are those that are “about our own psychological states and the ways we are ‘appeared to’.” It is a view that, as Chisholm was well aware, tallies poorly with our ordinary practice of justifying statements. We are typically happy to justify statements by ultimate appeal to what we have seen or heard; that is, by ultimate appeal to statements that logically imply that certain things in the world are as we take them to be. This essay examines how Chisholm sought to explain away this apparent disconfirmation of foundationalism by ordinary practice—in effect, how Chisholm responded to one of the chief criticisms of foundationalism launched by J. L. Austin. My suggestion will be that, when the dust clears, it is Austin who comes out ahead.