Dual-process morality and the personal/impersonal distinction: A reply to McGuire, Langdon, Coltheart, and Mackenzie

A substantial body of research supports a dual-process theory of moral judgment, according to which characteristically deontological judgments are driven by automatic emotional responses, while characteristically utilitarian judgments are driven by controlled cognitive processes. This theory was initially supported by neuroimaging and reaction time (RT) data. McGuire et al. have reanalyzed these initial RT data and claim that, in light of their findings, the dual-process theory of moral judgment and the personal/impersonal distinction now lack support. While McGuire and colleagues have convincingly overturned Greene et al.’s interpretation of their original RT data, their claim that the dual-process theory now lacks support overstates the implications of their findings. McGuire and colleagues ignore the results of several more recent behavioral studies, including the study that bears most directly on their critique. They dismiss without adequate justification the results of a more recent neuroimaging study, three more recent patient studies, and an emotion-induction study. Their broader critique is based largely on their conflation of the dual-process theory with the personal/impersonal distinction, which are independent.     

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.     

Disparities in the moral intuitions of criminal offenders: The role of psychopathy

The present study examined whether and in what ways psychopathy is associated with abnormal moral intuitions among criminal offenders. Using Haidt et al.’s Moral Foundations Questionnaire, 222 adult male offenders assessed for clinical psychopathy reported their degree of support for five moral domains: Harm Prevention, Fairness, Respect for Authority, Ingroup Loyalty, and Purity/Sanctity. As predicted, psychopathy total score explained a substantial proportion of the variance in reduced support for Harm Prevention and Fairness, but not the other domains. These results confirm that psychopathy entails a discrete set of moral abnormalities and suggest that these abnormalities could potentially help to explain the characteristic antisocial behavior of individuals with psychopathy.     

Personhood: An activist project of historical becoming through collaborative pursuits of social transformation

The goal of this paper is to contribute to recent scholarship that pursues radical revision of prevalent models of personhood mired in outdated notions of human development and its foundational principles. To achieve this goal, I revisit and expand Vygotsky's project of cultural historical psychology to offer a dialectical framework that encompasses but is not limited to relational ontology. Premised on the notion of collaborative transformative practice as the grounding for human Being and Becoming,¹ my proposal is that at the core of human nature and development lies an ineluctably activist stance vis-à-vis the world; it is the realization of this stance through answerable deeds composing one unified life project that forms the path to personhood. The ethical dimension appears as foundational to Being and Becoming because it is integral to actions through which we become who we are while changing the world in collaborative pursuits of social transformation. From an activist transformative stance persons are agents not only for whom “things matter” but who themselves matter in history, culture, and society and, moreover, who come into Being as unique individuals through and to the extent that they matter in these processes and make a contribution to them.     

Encounter with Gerard Chrzanowski

Gerard Chrzanowski was a prominent representative of psychoanalysis. However, he was not a friend of strict delimitations between the different psychoanalytic schools and the struggles between them. Having grown up in Poland, having lived a few years in Switzerland and the rest of his life in USA he had a multi-cultural background. He was with that well prepared to exert an integrative role between the different psychoanalytic movements and especially in the International Federation of Psychoanalysis, of which he was one of the founders and honourable members.     

Moral motivation in defending classmates victimized by bullying

The study addresses factors that relate to defending of classmates victimized by bullying in early adolescence. Specifically, it examines whether moral motivation—measured as a combination of emotion attributions and their justifications in response to a hypothetical transgression—predicts defending in context of gender, social preference, perceived popularity and teacher support. We gathered single-time-point data on a sample of 512 sixth-graders (aged 11–13 years). A three-step hierarchical regression analysis showed that defending was positively predicted by: (1) moral motivation, when gender, social preference, perceived popularity and teacher support were accounted for; (2) interaction between moral motivation and social preference, when all other independent variables were accounted for. Simple slopes indicated that increased social preference strengthened the link between moral motivation and defending. The full model explained 40.5% of the variance in defending. The findings underscore the relevance of morality and its interplay with social preference in understanding defending.     

On the Psychoanalytic Treatment of the Depressive Personality

In order to discuss the depressive personality we have first to distinguish between this clinical entity and other types of depressive psychopathology that might also be chronic. The character traits and psychodynamics of the depressive personality confirm that there is a special group of patients, who belong to a depressive disorder continuum. The particular technical problems that depressive personality present are: (1) the inability to enjoy anything and the consequences of this on the therapist's experience and interventions, and (2) the negative therapeutic reaction which threatens the analytic process and the therapist's competence. If we combine transference/extratransference interpretations with an "empathetic understanding" approach to systematic confrontation and interpretation, we can therefore justify the need for a slightly modified psychoanalytic technique in the treatment of the depressive personality.     

"是-应该"问题及其解答

休谟提出如何从“是”推出“应该”,亦即如何从事实判断推出价值判断的问题。本文以该问题为线索,评述和澄清休谟道德哲学的主要观点,并对与此问题密切相关的“囚徒困境”作了探讨。在此基础上,提出一种新的解答,即：“是一应该”问题是不能彻底解决的,在这个意义上,休谟的“是一应该”论题是正确的。但是,在另一种意义上,“是一应该”问题是可以解决的,即对于那些已经把长远利益作为追求目标的人而言是如此。因为对他们来说,追求长远利益已经是一个事实,因而必须考虑与他人或社会的合作,这使他们原有的同情心得到加强,从而产生名誉感和自尊心,进而达到正义和仁慈的德行。这样便从追求长远利益的“是”得出正义和仁慈的“应该”。     

Are children moral objectivists? Children's judgments about moral and response-dependent properties

Researchers working on children's moral understanding maintain that the child's capacity to distinguish morality from convention shows that children regard moral violations as objectively wrong (e.g. Nucci, L. (2001). Education in the moral domain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). However, one traditional way to cast the issue of objectivism is to focus not on conventionality, but on whether moral properties depend on our responses, as with properties like icky and fun. This paper argues that the moral/conventional task is inadequate for assessing whether children regard moral properties as response-dependent. Unfortunately, children's understanding of response-dependent properties has been neglected in recent research. Two experiments are reported showing that children are more likely to treat properties like fun and icky as response-dependent than moral properties like good and bad. Hence, this helps support the claim that children are moral objectivists.