Try it, you'll like it: the influence of expectation, consumption, and revelation on preferences for beer

Patrons of a pub evaluated regular beer and "MIT brew" (regular beer plus a few drops of balsamic vinegar) in one of three conditions. One group tasted the samples blind (the secret ingredient was never disclosed). A second group was informed of the contents before tasting. A third group learned of the secret ingredient immediately after tasting, but prior to indicating their preference. Not surprisingly, preference for the MIT brew was higher in the blind condition than in either of the two disclosure conditions. However, the timing of the information mattered substantially. Disclosure of the secret ingredient significantly reduced preference only when the disclosure preceded tasting, suggesting that disclosure affected preferences by influencing the experience itself, rather than by acting as an independent negative input or by modifying retrospective interpretation of the experience.     

Exposure to Unethical Career Events: Effects on Decision Making,Climate, and Socialization

An implicit goal of many interventions intended to enhance integrity is to minimize peoples' exposure to unethical events. The intent of the present effort was to examine if exposure to unethical practices in the course of one's work is related to ethical decision making. Accordingly, 248 doctoral students in the biological, health, and social sciences were asked to complete a field appropriate measure of ethical decision making. In addition, they were asked to complete measures examining the perceived acceptability of unethical events and a measure examining perceptions of ethical climate. When these criterion measures were correlated with a measure examining the frequency with which they had been exposed to unethical events in their day-to-day work, it was found that event exposure was strongly related to ethical decision making but less strongly related to climate perceptions and perceptions of event acceptability. However, these relationships were moderated by level of experience. The implications of these findings for practices intended to improve ethics are discussed.     

Environmental Influences on Ethical Decision Making: Climate and Environmental Predictors of Research Integrity

It is commonly held that early career experiences influence ethical behavior. One way early career experiences might operate is to influence the decisions people make when presented with problems that raise ethical concerns. To test this proposition, 102 first-year doctoral students were asked to complete a series of measures examining ethical decision making along with a series of measures examining environmental experiences and climate perceptions. Factoring of the environmental measure yielded five dimensions: professional leadership, poor coping, lack of rewards, limited competitive pressure, and poor career direction. Factoring of the climate inventory yielded four dimensions: equity, interpersonal conflict, occupational engagement, and work commitment. When these dimensions were used to predict performance on the ethical decision-making task, it was found that the environmental dimensions were better predictors than the climate dimensions. The implications of these findings for research on ethical conduct are discussed.     

A Sensemaking Approach to Ethics Training for Scientists: Preliminary Evidence of Training Effectiveness

In recent years, we have seen a new concern with ethics training for research and development professionals. Although ethics training has become more common, the effectiveness of the training being provided is open to question. In the present effort, a new ethics training course was developed that stresses the importance of the strategies people apply to make sense of ethical problems. The effectiveness of this training was assessed in a sample of 59 doctoral students working in the biological and social sciences using a pre–post design with follow-up and a series of ethical decision-making measures serving as the outcome variable. Results showed not only that this training led to sizable gains in ethical decision making but also that these gains were maintained over time. The implications of these findings for ethics training in the sciences are discussed.     

Threats to Moral Identity: Testing the Effects of Incentives and Consequences of One's Actions on Moral Cleansing

Individuals engage in moral cleansing, a compensatory process to reaffirm one's moral identity, when one's moral self-concept is threatened. However, too much moral cleansing can license individuals to engage in future unethical acts. This study examined the effects of incentives and consequences of one's actions on cheating behavior and moral cleansing. Results found that incentives and consequences interacted such that unethical thoughts were especially threatening, resulting in more moral cleansing, when large incentives to cheat were present and cheating explicitly harmed others. Implications are discussed in terms of ethics training, using incentives as motivators, and the depersonalized norms of science.     

The Effects of Note-Taking and Review on Sensemaking and Ethical Decision Making

The effectiveness of case-based learning in ethics education varies widely regarding how cases are presented. Case process instruction may impact case-based ethics education to promote sensemaking processes, ethical sensemaking strategy use, and ethical decision making (EDM) quality. This study examined two teaching techniques, notes and review, and participants completed note-taking and review activities examining a case-based scenario during an ethics education course. Results suggest that providing case notes in outline form improves sensemaking processes, strategy use, and EDM quality. In addition, combining processes of provided notes and passive review results in incremental, additive performance via certain ethical sensemaking strategies and EDM quality.     

The Influence of Temporal Orientation and Affective Frame on Use of Ethical Decision-Making Strategies

This study examined the role of temporal orientation and affective frame in the execution of ethical decision-making strategies. In reflecting on a past experience or imagining a future experience, participants thought about experiences that they considered either positive or negative. The participants recorded their thinking about that experience by responding to several questions, and their responses were content-analyzed for the use of ethical decision-making strategies. The findings indicated that a future temporal orientation was associated with greater strategy use. Likewise, a positive affective frame was associated with greater strategy use. Future orientation may permit better strategy execution than a past orientation because it facilitates more objective, balanced contemplation of the reflected-upon situation and minimizes potential self-threat associated with past behavior. A positive affective frame likely improves strategy execution because it facilitates active analysis of the experience. Future directions and implications of these findings are discussed.     

When Prayers Go Unanswered

Many Americans believe God answers prayers, but scholars know little about how individuals handle situations in which they perceive that prayers have gone unanswered. Using data from an in‐depth interview project with current and former victims of intimate partner violence, I argue that perceived unanswered prayers cause challenges to belief systems that elicit attribution processes—or cognitive processes through which individuals try to explain the causes of actors’ behavior—whose outcomes are explanations for why God did not answer their prayers. I find that the outcomes of these attribution processes are God‐serving justifications, or attributions of God's perceived unanticipated or problematic behavior that define this behavior as appropriate to the situation. God‐serving justifications for unanswered prayers fall into three types: (1) appeal to higher loyalties, (2) affirmation of benefits, and (3) denial of the pray‐er. I conclude with a discussion of the implications and limitations of the analysis.     

Interference suppression vs. response inhibition: An explanation for the absence of a bilingual advantage in preschoolers’ Stroop task performance

The well-documented advantage that bilingual speakers demonstrate across the lifespan on measures of controlled attention is not observed in preschoolers’ performance on Stroop task variations. We examined the role of task demands in explaining this discrepancy. Whereas the Color/Word Stroop used with adult participants requires interference suppression, the Stroop task typically used with preschoolers requires only response inhibition. We developed an age-appropriate conflict task that measures interference suppression. Fifty-one preschool children (26 bilinguals) completed this new Bivalent Shape Task and the Day/Night task used in previous research. Bilingual in comparison to monolingual children performed better on incongruent trials of the Bivalent Shape Task, but did not differ on other measures. The results indicate that the discrepancy between preschoolers and older individuals in performance on Stroop task adaptations results from characteristics of the task rather than developmental differences. Further, the findings provide additional support for the importance of interference suppression as a mechanism underlying the bilingual advantage.