Utilitarian and emotion-related components of moral judgement: Gender and age effects and the relationship with prosocial and hostile roles in bullying

This study investigated the utilitarian and emotion-related components of morality, both as a function of gender and age and in relation to hostile vs. pro-social behaviors in bullying. We presented 45 primary and 62 middle school students with different types of moral and control dilemmas to assess their acceptance of utilitarian behaviors that did or did not violate moral norms (with high or low emotional involvement) in relation to their propensity to assume hostile and/or pro-social roles. We found greater acceptance of utilitarian solutions to dilemmas in boys, older children and those inclined to take on hostile roles. An inverse association was found between utilitarian styles and pro-social roles, particularly when utilitarian thinking violated a moral norm with high emotional involvement. We discuss these results in terms of different functioning styles in typically developing children.     

Viral videos and virtue: Moral elevation inductions shift affect and interpersonal goals in daily life

Laboratory studies suggest that witnessing virtuous acts triggers moral elevation, an emotion characterized by feeling uplifted and increased prosocial motives. However, it remains unknown whether regular inductions can increase elevation and prosocial motives in daily life without being vulnerable to habituation or adaptation effects. Participants (total N = 181) were randomly assigned to elevating vs. neutral or amusing inductions (video or recall tasks) for seven days (Study 1), ten days (Study 2), or 12 days over one month (Study 3). Multilevel growth models showed that relative to comparison conditions, elevation inductions increased daily elevation, positive affect, and prosocial outcomes (compassionate goals and affiliation), and decreased self-protective motives (self-image goals). Adaptation effects occurred for immediate responses when exercises occurred daily, but not when spaced out over time, and not for outcomes measured later each day. Results suggest benefits of brief, regular elevation experiences and have implications for interventions targeting specific emotions.     

Experience of agency and sense of responsibility

The experience of agency refers to the feeling that we control our own actions, and through them the outside world. In many contexts, sense of agency has strong implications for moral responsibility. For example, a sense of agency may allow people to choose between right and wrong actions, either immediately, or on subsequent occasions through learning about the moral consequences of their actions. In this study we investigate the relation between the experience of operant action, and responsibility for action outcomes using the intentional binding effect (Haggard, Clark, & Kalogeras, 2002) as an implicit, quantitative measure related to sense of agency. We studied the time at which people perceived simple manual actions and their effects, when these actions were embedded in scenarios where their actions had unpredictable consequences that could be either moral or merely economic. We found an enhanced binding of effects back towards the actions that caused them, implying an enhanced sense of agency, in moral compared to non-moral contexts. We also found stronger binding for effects with severely negative, compared to moderately negative, values. A tight temporal association between action and effect may be a low-level phenomenal marker of the sense of responsibility.     

从道德本位到权利本位的转换——梁启超《新民说》审视

梁启超《新民说》是对以《大学》为代表的中国传统“新民”思想的改造和发展。他以民权、独立、自由的资产阶级“公德”代替以伦理道德为核心的封建主义的“私德” ,用中西文化中的优秀道德传统构建新国民 ,实现了从以伦理道德为本位的旧道德向以权利为本位的新道德的转换 ,“旧国民”向“新国民”的转换。     

Assuming a Position: Women and Men as Moral Critics in Their Own War Zone

In their search for an authentic moral self, women and men may at some time in their lives assume a position of resistance. Men are most likely to assume this position in the sphere of war. It is not clear, however, where or when women would be expected to assume such a position or what the nature of that position might be, and how far it could be likened to that of the resisting man. This paper explores the idea that choosing to be a single mother can be a position by and from which women can voice their moral criticism. Such position is comparable to the (known and well-studied) position taken by men who show their moral criticism by refusing to participate in a specific battle during a morally controversial war. The paper begins with an examination of the philosophical and psychological concepts of separate and connected moral positions available to resisting men and women in the spheres of war and family. The conclusions are based on data from two samples of resisters in the spheres of war and the family: 36 soldiers (30 years old on average) who decided to take a stand as selective conscientious objectors (SCOs) during a morally controversial war and 50 (biologically) mature single women (over age 30) who chose to become pregnant and to remain unwed mothers. The conceptual and methodological questions regarding this comparison are discussed.     

Limits of morality: A sociological approach to higher moral stages

Grounded in the wider framework of Kohlberg's (1984) stage theory of moral development and Habermas' (1981; Habermas &; Luhmann, 1971) theory of discourse, this article addresses the question: Is a moral stage 6 society possible? Toward answering this question, a sociological approach to moral stage 6 is employed that complements the usual psychological approach to moral development. The article posits that a moral stage 6 society is impossible. Therefore, lower-stage institutions cannot be abolished; they have to be controlled and supervised. This calls for a new and structurally different type of discourse, the metadiscourse. The article postulates that such metadiscourse has the property of moral stage 7 according to the general stage model (Commons &; Richards, 1984a, 1984b). Finally, several strategies for controlling lower-stage institutions are considered, with bureaucracy serving as example of a lower-stage institution.     

道德之一元论与多元论：缘起、内涵与论争

一元论与多元论之争是道德心理学领域近些年最为活跃的理论交锋之一。道德一元论认为所有外在的道德现象与内在的道德结构都可以用一种因素来解释。道德多元论则认为道德不能只用单一因素来解释,而是存在多个不同质的道德维度,且具有文化敏感性。对应道德理论和道德基础理论是这场争议的典型代表。双方就伤害的解释力、道德失声现象、模块化道德与洁净维度独立性等方面展开论争。未来研究应从三个具体方面进一步探索道德之一元论与多元论难题,进而保持道德心理学领域的理论活力。     

The asymmetric effect of regulatory fit on moral judgments of other-oriented lies

We examined whether regulatory fit effects are asymmetric—namely, whether they occur only among individuals with a promotion focus or a prevention focus. We adopted a task where individuals make moral judgments of other-oriented lies and conducted three studies. The results indicated that prevention-focused individuals judged other-oriented lies based on a vigilant strategy as more moral than lies based on an eager strategy (Studies 1 and 2). Meanwhile for promotion-focused individuals, there were no differences between eager and vigilant strategies on moral judgments of other-oriented lies. Additionally, the results suggested that the feeling of rightness is an underlying mechanism of the regulatory fit effects of prevention focus (Study 3).     

Do liberals and conservatives use different moral languages? Two replications and six extensions of Graham,Haidt, and Nosek’s (2009) moral text analysis

Do liberals and conservatives tend to use different moral languages? The Moral Foundations Hypothesis states that liberals rely more on foundations of care/harm and fairness/cheating whereas conservatives rely more on loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and purity/degradation in their moral functioning. In support, Graham, Haidt, and Nosek (2009; Study 4) showed that sermons delivered by liberal and conservative pastors differed as predicted in their moral word usage, except for the loyalty foundation. I present two high-powered replication studies in religious contexts and six extension studies in politics, the media, and organizations to test ideological differences in moral language usage. On average, replication success rate was 30% and effect sizes were 38 times smaller than those in the original study. A meta-analysis (N = 303,680) found that compared to liberals, conservatives used more authority r = 0.05, 95% confidence interval = [0.02, 0.09] and purity words, r = 0.14 [0.09, 0.19], fewer loyalty words, r = −0.08 [−0.10, −0.05], and no more or less harm, r = 0.00 [−0.02, 0.02], or fairness words, r = −0.03 [−0.06, 0.01].     

Moral dilemmas and moral rules

Recent work shows an important asymmetry in lay intuitions about moral dilemmas. Most people think it is permissible to divert a train so that it will kill one innocent person instead of five, but most people think that it is not permissible to push a stranger in front of a train to save five innocents. We argue that recent emotion-based explanations of this asymmetry have neglected the contribution that rules make to reasoning about moral dilemmas. In two experiments, we find that participants show a parallel asymmetry about versions of the dilemmas that have minimized emotional force. In a third experiment, we find that people distinguish between whether an action violates a moral rule and whether it is, all things considered, wrong. We propose that judgments of whether an action is wrong, all things considered, implicate a complex set of psychological processes, including representations of rules, emotional responses, and assessments of costs and benefits.