The role of moral commitments in moral judgment

Traditional approaches to moral psychology assumed that moral judgments resulted from the application of explicit commitments, such as those embodied in consequentialist or deontological philosophies. In contrast, recent work suggests that moral judgments often result from unconscious or emotional processes, with explicit commitments generated post hoc. This paper explores the intermediate position that moral commitments mediate moral judgments, but not through their explicit and consistent application in the course of judgment. An experiment with 336 participants finds that individuals vary in the extent to which their moral commitments are consequentialist or deontological, and that this variation is systematically but imperfectly related to the moral judgments elicited by trolley car problems. Consequentialist participants find action in trolley car scenarios more permissible than do deontologists, and only consequentialists moderate their judgments when scenarios that typically elicit different intuitions are presented side by side. The findings emphasize the need for a theory of moral reasoning that can accommodate both the associations and dissociations between moral commitments and moral judgments.     

Paying for sanctions in social dilemmas: The effects of endowment asymmetry and accountability

The present research examines whether or not endowment asymmetry leads those with many endowments to contribute more than those with few endowments towards the public good (i.e., a first-order dilemma), but also towards the implementation of a sanctioning system (i.e., a second-order dilemma). In Experiment 1, we found that those with many endowments contributed more than those with few endowments in a public good dilemma without a sanctioning system present, whereas those with many endowments did not contribute more than those with few endowments toward the implementation of a sanctioning system. The latter effect, however, was eliminated when participants were accountable (i.e., when expectations that they would have to justify their decisions to others in the group were high). Experiment 2 showed that when participants were accountable, the contributions of those with many endowments (and not those with few endowments) toward the sanctioning system increased, but only when they perceived the group to be more self-evaluative in terms of morality (i.e., high-evaluation expectancy). Experiment 3 showed that this effect of evaluation expectancy only emerged when participants were accountable to the whole group rather than to only one group member.     

Contextualized self: when the self runs into social dilemmas

Research on the construction of self and of others has indicated that the way that individuals construe themselves and others exerts an important influence on their cognition, emotion, and even behavior. The present study extends this line of research to mixed-motive situations in which short-term individual and long-term collective interests are at odds. In addition, this study associates the importance of context interdependence, and specifically its interaction with independent self-construal, with an individual's cooperative behavior. We used a priming task to manipulate the level of self-construal and also manipulated the degree of interdependent context by giving participants a chance to assign rewards either to their group members or to themselves alone. The results showed that when participants received interdependent (as opposed to independent) self-construal priming, they consistently contributed highly, regardless of context manipulation. In contrast, those primed with an independent self-construal contributed less in the investment game, but only when placed in a context where group members were encouraged to think about their individual (versus mutual) fate. In this situation they contributed the least to the group in the game. These findings indicate that independent self-construal in a low interdependence context produces the most competitive behavior. The results also showed that how participants felt about their interaction with other group members mediated the effect of context interdependence on cooperative behavior, and possibly that was especially the case for independent self-construal. The results demonstrate that the self can be contextualized and embedded in the social contexts and symbolic systems within which people live.     

Responses of School Psychologists and Special Education Teachers to Administrative Pressures to Practice Unethically

Abstract

Responses of school psychologists (N = 141) and special educators (N = 130) to ethical dilemmas involving conflicts between administrative directives and ethical obligations were examined. Respondents completed a survey asking them to predict their own and others' responses to four ethical dilemmas. The majority of respondents predicted that they, immediate colleagues, and professional peers would make the choices judged as ethical in all situations. Predictions of ethical response were highest for self prediction and varied across the four dilemmas. Respondents who viewed their immediate colleagues as supportive of autonomous decision making were more likely to predict ethical choices than those who viewed their colleagues as supporting deference to administrative authority. No differences in predictions related to gender, degree level, job security, preservice training in or knowledge of professional ethics or special education law were found.     

An Exploratory Study: Perceptions of Ethical Behaviors Among Psychologists Practicing in the Caribbean

A sample of 44 psychologists who practice in the Caribbean completed a web-based survey containing 73 behavioral items related to ethical issues in professional practice. The aim of this exploratory study was to learn about perceptions regarding ethical behaviors that create ethical dilemmas and the level of agreement to their responses and to identify how demographic variables influenced their perceptions of ethical behaviors. Findings suggest that there was approximately an equal level of agreement on behaviors such as being an advocate for your client and being sexually involved with a current client rated as ethical and unethical, respectively. Several demographic variables and ethical behaviors such as level of degree and confidentiality issues were statistically significant. Finally, psychologists prefer the presence of a professional psychological association with an ethics committee.     

Application of Child Protective Services in Korea

Abstract

Because childrearing is a very culturally oriented practice, cultural sensitivity in Child Protective Services (CPS) is a very important factor for effective services. Korea has recently begun social intervention in cases of child abuse, but faces many difficulties resulting from cultural dilemmas. In particular, Korean society has the value of corporal punishment and negative attitudes toward social intervention into family issues. These cultural characteristics result in strong resistance to intervention by CPS. In the future, the success of child abuse intervention in Korean society will depend on how these cultural dilemmas are resolved. The development of a CPS model based on Korean culture can be an alternative to reduce conflicts in the application of CPS.     

Methodological concerns in moral judgement research: Severity of harm shapes moral decisions

Research on moral judgement traditionally deals with scenarios involving trade-offs between saving lives and causing harm or death. In the field of moral psychology and philosophy, these specific scenarios are regularly used jointly, regardless of the severity of harm. We predicted that the confounding between distinct phrasings involving different degrees of harm will have an impact on the frequency of utilitarian judgements regardless of the mere moral value of the action (as usually investigated in the moral judgement field). In line with this prediction, a first experiment showed that utilitarian responses were less frequent for conflicting moral scenarios that involved death, as compared to scenarios that involved non-lethal harm. A second experiment showed that participants' utilitarian responses decreased as the severity of harm increased. Experimental studies on moral reasoning should take greater care to avoid potential confounds associated with this content factor.     

The compatibility heuristic in non-categorical hypothetical reasoning: Inferences between conditionals and disjunctions

A new theory explains how people make hypothetical inferences from a premise consistent with several alternatives to a conclusion consistent with several alternatives. The key proposal is that people rely on a heuristic that identifies compatible possibilities. It is tested in 7 experiments that examine inferences between conditionals and disjunctions. Participants accepted inferences between conditionals and inclusive disjunctions when a compatible possibility was immediately available, in their binary judgments that a conclusion followed or not (Experiment 1a) and ternary judgments that included it was not possible to know (Experiment 1b). The compatibility effect was amplified when compatible possibilities were more readily available, e.g., for ‘A only if B’ conditionals (Experiment 2). It was eliminated when compatible possibilities were not available, e.g., for ‘if and only if A B’ bi-conditionals and exclusive disjunctions (Experiment 3). The compatibility heuristic occurs even for inferences based on implicit negation e.g., ‘A or B, therefore if C D’ (Experiment 4), and between universals ‘All A’s are B’s’ and disjunctions (Experiment 5a) and universals and conditionals (Experiment 5b). The implications of the results for alternative theories of the cognitive processes underlying hypothetical deductions are discussed.     

Dual processes of emotion and reason in judgments about moral dilemmas

We report the results of two experiments that show that participants rely on both emotion and reason in moral judgments. Experiment 1 showed that when participants were primed to communicate feelings, they provided emotive justifications not only for personal dilemmas, e.g., pushing a man from a bridge that will result in his death but save the lives of five others, but also for impersonal dilemmas, e.g., hitting a switch on a runaway train that will result in the death of one man but save the lives of five others; when they were primed to communicate thoughts, they provided non-emotive justifications for both personal and impersonal dilemmas. Experiment 2 showed that participants read about a protagonist's emotions more quickly when the protagonist was faced with a personal dilemma than an impersonal one, but they read about the protagonist's decision to act or not act equally quickly for personal and impersonal dilemmas.     

British Citizenship and the ‘Other’: An Analysis of the Earned Citizenship Discourse

This paper presents an analysis of interviews conducted with citizenship officers in London, working within the field of British naturalisation. We draw from a rhetorical psychology perspective to study the dilemmatic tensions that exist in the participants' discourse about naturalisation applicants who are constructed as ‘good’ and ‘bad’, as both ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ of British citizenship. In line with a rhetorical approach, we argue that these different constructions of the migrant are strategic and are associated with different constructions of Britain as humanitarian and tolerant, on the one hand, and as being under threat by the influx of immigration, on the other hand. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of this ambivalence for processes of inclusion and exclusion. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.