A closer look at moral dilemmas: Latent dimensions of morality and the difference between trolley and footbridge dilemmas

Although a distinction between moral-personal and moral-impersonal dilemmas (Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001 Greene, J. D., Sommerville, R. B., Nystrom, L. E., Darley, J. M. and Cohen, J. D. 2001. An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgement. Science, 293: 2105–2108. doi:10.1126/science.1062872.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) has been widely accepted as an explanation for a difference between the trolley and footbridge dilemmas (Thomson, 1985 Thomson, J. J. 1985. “The trolley problem”. In Ethics: Problems and principles, Edited by: Fischer, J. M. and Ravizza, M. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.  [Google Scholar]), its psychometric properties remain a mystery. In this study 219 participants completed 62 moral dilemma tasks used in Greene et al. (2001 Greene, J. D., Sommerville, R. B., Nystrom, L. E., Darley, J. M. and Cohen, J. D. 2001. An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgement. Science, 293: 2105–2108. doi:10.1126/science.1062872.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), and the correlation structure among the dilemmas was analysed through factor analysis and structural equation modelling. Findings suggest that, first, moral-personal dilemmas are composed of one factor, indicating that the assumption in Greene et al. (2001 Greene, J. D., Sommerville, R. B., Nystrom, L. E., Darley, J. M. and Cohen, J. D. 2001. An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgement. Science, 293: 2105–2108. doi:10.1126/science.1062872.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) was supported. Second, moral-impersonal dilemmas are explained by two factors that reflect procedural and consequential aspects of decision making. Third, the trolley and footbridge dilemmas fall under the same factor category; therefore the difference between the two dilemmas cannot be attributed to emotional involvement. Additionally, the results of the structural equation modelling suggest that they differ in the engagement of rational processing.     

Explanations of interindividual – intergroup discontinuity: A review of the evidence

The authors review and evaluate various explanations for the tendency of intergroup relations to be more competitive, or less cooperative, than interindividual relations (the discontinuity effect). They distinguish between two general perspectives, each comprising a set of explanations for the discontinuity effect. The fear and greed perspective assumes that intergroup relations are characterised by greater fear and greed than are interindividual relations. The group decision-making perspective assumes a crucial role for group discussion in facilitating rational comprehension of mixed-motive situations. In general, explanations from the fear and greed perspective were found to be more consistent with the empirical record than explanations from the group decision-making perspective. The authors propose that a complete understanding of the discontinuity effect is yet to be achieved.     

Are Thoughtful People More Utilitarian? CRT as a Unique Predictor of Moral Minimalism in the Dilemmatic Context

Recent theorizing about the cognitive underpinnings of dilemmatic moral judgment has equated slow, deliberative thinking with the utilitarian disposition and fast, automatic thinking with the deontological disposition. However, evidence for the reflective utilitarian hypothesis—the hypothesized link between utilitarian judgment and individual differences in the capacity for rational reflection (gauged here by the Cognitive Reflection Test [CRT; Frederick, 2005]) has been inconsistent and difficult to interpret in light of several design flaws. In two studies aimed at addressing some of the flaws, we found robust evidence for a reflective minimalist hypothesis—high CRT performers’ tendency to regard utility‐optimizing acts as largely a matter of personal prerogative, permissible both to perform and to leave undone. This relationship between CRT and the “minimalist” orientation remained intact after controlling for age, sex, trait affect, social desirability, and educational attainment. No significant association was found between CRT and the strict utilitarian response pattern or CRT and the strict deontological response pattern, nor did we find any significant association between CRT and willingness to act in the utility‐optimizing manner. However, we found an inverse association between empathic concern and a willingness to act in the utility‐optimizing manner, but there was no comparable association between empathic concern and the deontological judgment pattern. Theoretical, methodological, and normative implications of the findings are discussed.     

财富越多，责任越大：资金数量和来源对公共物品困境中第三方惩罚的影响

本研究探讨了公共物品困境中,初始资金的数量和来源如何影响第三方对成员贡献值的评价及惩罚。行为结果发现了“贵族责任效应”,即在同等贡献值条件下,相比于获得较少初始资金的成员,第三方会更重地惩罚获得较多初始资金的成员。当初始资金是随机分配而非通过个人努力获得时,该效应更强。在神经层面上,发现初始资金的数量和来源调节了第三方评估贡献值时所诱发的FRN和P3成分。其中FRN波幅与惩罚力度显著相关。本研究揭示了初始资金数量和来源如何调节第三方对成员贡献的评估及相关惩罚决策。     

When clients want to pay more for psychotherapy: ethical issues and implications

One ethical issue that commonly comes up in clinical practice is the negotiation of fees with clients. Although the APA Ethics Code provides standards regarding clients who are unable to or do not pay (Standard 6.04), little guidance is given pertaining to fee limits for clients who want to pay more. This issue is explored using a real case example, including the relevant ethical codes to be considered. The necessary “gray” areas of ethical decision-making are demonstrated through my own decision process. Implications for future scenarios are discussed.     

Knowledge Justice: An Opportunity for Counter-expertise in Security vs. Science Debates

ABSTRACT

Knowledge justice provides a conceptual framework to apply principles of social justice in environments of competing interests regarding science. Both knowledge and its making can be seen as a good to be distributed, including all voices for whom the science will matter. In this framework, knowledge production is shared among a broader constituency of knowers representing both local and cosmopolitan voices. The problem of knowledge injustice can be seen in the U.S. government’s recent attempt to secure scientific knowledge about H5N1 or avian bird flu virus. The censorship produced a global debate between scientists and policy-makers over how to balance the nation-state’s desire for security with the life science’s tradition of open and shared research. This conundrum, known as the dual-use dilemma, obscures larger questions that lie outside of expert-centered domains—namely the concerns of many communities in the Global South struggling with the impact of the virus in their daily lives. An example of such counter-expertise is that of the backyard poultry farmer whose ways of knowing are foreign to science and policy experts who frame the ways in which knowledge about H5N1 should be developed, controlled, and used. While the H5N1 debate illuminated competing positions regarding knowledge production between powerful elites, it ignored the social justice inequities produced by the dual-use dilemma. The concept of knowledge justice provides a way of thinking about science that can include locally situated counter-expertise, disrupting the dual-use dilemma produced by competing dominant priorities of security and public health.     

Driving on familiar roads: Automaticity and inattention blindness

This paper describes our research into the processes that govern driver attention and behavior in familiar, well-practiced situations. The experiment examined the effects of extended practice on inattention blindness and detection of changes to the driving environment in a high-fidelity driving simulator. Participants were paid to drive a simulated road regularly over 3 months of testing. A range of measures, including detection task performance and driving performance, were collected over the course of 20 sessions. Performance from a yoked Control Group who experienced the same road scenarios in a single session was also measured. The data showed changes in what drivers reported noticing indicative of inattention blindness, and declining ratings of mental demand suggesting that many participants were “driving without awareness”. Extended practice also resulted in increased sensitivity for detecting changes to road features associated with vehicle guidance and improved performance on an embedded vehicle detection task (detection of a specific vehicle type). The data provide new light on a “tandem model” of driver behavior that includes both explicit and implicit processes involved in driving performance. The findings also suggest reasons drivers are most likely to crash at locations very near their homes.     

Stockpiling during the COVID-19 pandemic as a real-life social dilemma: A person-situation perspective

Prior research using economic games has shown that personality drives cooperation in social dilemmas. In this study, we tested the generalizability of these findings in a real-life social dilemma during the COVID-19 pandemic, namely stockpiling in the presence of low versus high resource scarcity. Honesty-Humility was negatively related to stockpiling intentions and justifiability of stockpiling. Moreover, we found a positive albeit weaker effect of Emotionality on stockpiling intentions. Victim Sensitivity was mostly positively associated with stockpiling intentions. None of the personality traits interacted with resource scarcity to predict stockpiling. Our findings replicate established associations between personality and cooperation in a real-life social dilemma, and suggest that the characteristics of interdependent situations during a pandemic additionally afford the expression of Emotionality.