Value Dissonance and Ethics Failure in Academia: A Causal Connection?

Ethics failure in academia is not new, yet its prevalence, causes, and methods to prevent it remain a matter of debate. The author’s premise is that value dissonance underlies most of the reasons ethics failure occurs. Vignettes are used to illustrate value dissonance at the individual and institutional levels. Suggestions are offered for ways academic institutions can assume greater responsibility as a moral agency to prevent the occurrence of ethics failure.

Money,moral transgressions,and blame

Two experiments tested participants' attributions for others' immoral behaviors when conducted for more versus less money. We hypothesized and found that observers would blame wrongdoers more when seeing a transgression enacted for little rather than a lot of money, and that this would be evident in observers' hand-washing behavior. Experiment 1 used a cognitive dissonance paradigm. Participants (N = 160) observed a confederate lie in exchange for either a relatively large or a small monetary payment. Participants blamed the liar more in the small (versus large) money condition. Participants (N = 184) in Experiment 2 saw images of someone knocking over another to obtain a small, medium, or large monetary sum. In the small (versus large) money condition, participants blamed the perpetrator (money) more. Hence, participants assigned less blame to moral wrong-doers, if the latter enacted their deed to obtain relatively large sums of money. Small amounts of money accentuate the immorality of others' transgressions.     

Uncertainty, entitativity, and group identification

Two studies examined the effects of self-uncertainty and ingroup entitativity on group identification. From uncertainty reduction theory (Hogg, 2000), it was hypothesized that people would identify most strongly with their group if they felt self-conceptually uncertain and the group was highly entitative. Study 1 was a field experiment (N = 114) in which the perceived entitativity of participants’ political party was measured, and self-uncertainty was primed (high vs. low). Study 2 was a laboratory experiment (N = 89) with ad hoc non-interactive groups. Uncertainty was primed as in Study 1, but perceived entitativity was manipulated. In both cases the dependent variable was a multi-item measure of group identification. The hypothesis was fully supported in both studies—participants identified more strongly when they were uncertain and the group was highly entitative. Implications of this research for the role of uncertainty and social identity in extremism, orthodoxy, and ideological belief systems are discussed.     

道德虚伪：一种机会主义的适应策略

道德虚伪在个体层面是指人们言行不一, 在人际层面是指人们持有双重标准。心理学家通常从道德动机、认知失调以及精神分析的角度考察道德虚伪。诱发道德虚伪通常会促使个体做出跟他们公开承诺相一致的行为。作为一种机会主义的适应策略, 道德虚伪可能起源于群体适应情境下的自我谋利需要, 带有欺骗他人和自欺的特点。除了情绪、权力等因素之外, 未来研究需要考察自恋、羞耻、社会操纵能力、情商、文化因素对道德虚伪的影响。     

The Effects of Personal Agency on Regret

In this paper, we examine the role of personal agency as a key antecedent of regret that individuals experience when the outcome of their decision is unfavorable. In contrast to previous research that documents its exacerbating role, we find that personal agency mitigates regret under certain circumstances. A series of experimental studies show that personal responsibility for the decision may attenuate subjective perceptions of the extent of failure and mitigate regret. However, when the superior outcome of the foregone option is known and the failure of the chosen option is irreversible, personal agency may amplify regret. We also find that subjective failure perceptions mediate the relationship between personal agency and regret levels. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Causal uncertainty during initial interactions

Causal uncertainty (CU) refers to persistent doubts people have about their ability to understand causes of social events. Although such confusion about social dynamics should affect social exchanges, previous research has been limited to the realm of social cognition (i.e., computer‐based studies exploring perceptions of hypothetical others). In three studies, we explored CU effects during real‐time social interactions with unacquainted conversational partners. We found that high CU participants perceived their conversations and conversational partners more negatively than did low CU participants and that these negative social perceptions stemmed from an inability to sufficiently reduce their cognitive uncertainty. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Psychopathic personality traits and cognitive dissonance: Individual differences in attitude change

In a study using a classic cognitive dissonance paradigm, 164 undergraduate participants were induced to deceive a fellow student; half were directly instructed to lie whereas the other half were politely requested but not instructed to lie. Participants were assessed for psychopathic traits using the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised: Short Form and the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale, and for Machiavellianism using the MACH-IV. As predicted, participants low in psychopathic traits exhibited classic cognitive dissonance effects following their lie whereas participants high in psychopathic traits did not. Results for Machiavellianism were nonsignificant. These results indicate that cognitive dissonance effects in an induced compliance paradigm are reduced or eliminated among individuals with high levels of psychopathic traits.     

Guiding drivers towards safer driving speed: Exploiting visual dominance in speed adaptation

Inappropriate speed is a main cause of accidents. Drivers are often unaware of potential risks due to inadequate speed. To prevent dangerous situations, we need to understand perceptual factors influencing human speed perception. Due to the prominent role of vision in driving, we examined the effect of visuo-spatial stimuli on speed based on the optic flow. While developing an adaptive infrastructure measure to reduce speed, we conducted two consecutive studies, a driving simulator study and a field test to investigate findings further. In both studies, we placed lights on two sides of a highway exit and either illuminated them statically or activated them in a way that they appeared to be moving towards the driver. We expected drivers to slow down more when seeing static light stimuli compared to a baseline without lights. We also expected drivers to decrease speed more in conditions with oncoming lights compared to a baseline, and to static lights, due to distorted speed perception. The first study in a static driving simulator revealed no difference between conditions. In the field test, both static lights and lights moving towards the driver led to a speed reduction compared to a baseline but did not differ from one another. Lights in general led to lower driving speed, potentially due to their warning character, but we found no difference between the light conditions, suggesting that the effect might not be based on the optic flow. Future research should investigate the relationship between driven and perceived speed more closely.     

Multimodal travel behaviour,attitudes, and cognitive dissonance

Multimodal travel behaviour, also termed multimodality, refers to as the phenomenon of an individual using more than one mode of transport in a given period. Studies indicate that encouraging multimodality may provide a solution to induce modal shifts towards sustainable transport. In this research, we investigate the distribution of mode-specific attitudes and attitude-mode use incompatibilities across clusters and levels of multimodality using the Netherlands Mobility Panel. We find that the most positive attitude does not necessarily correspond to the mode with the highest level of use. Attitudes towards car use are most positive, independent of the cluster membership and levels of multimodality. We also find that multimodal public transport users (compared with car-dominant users) and those with a higher level of multimodality are more likely to be attitudinally incompatible with frequently-used modes and the composition of their existing mode sets of travelling. This suggests that multimodal individuals may tend to experience cognitive dissonance with their mode use. Our findings also help uncover the psychological mechanism underlying a recent important finding that multimodal individuals are inclined to change their mode use patterns over time.     

Word informativity influences acoustic duration: Effects of contextual predictability on lexical representation

Language-users reduce words in predictable contexts. Previous research indicates that reduction may be stored in lexical representation if a word is often reduced. Because representation influences production regardless of context, production should be biased by how often each word has been reduced in the speaker’s prior experience. This study investigates whether speakers have a context-independent bias to reduce low-informativity words, which are usually predictable and therefore usually reduced. Content word durations were extracted from the Buckeye and Switchboard speech corpora, and analyzed for probabilistic reduction effects using a language model based on spontaneous speech in the Fisher corpus. The analysis supported the hypothesis: low-informativity words have shorter durations, even when the effects of local contextual predictability, frequency, speech rate, and several other variables are controlled for. Additional models that compared word types against only other words of the same segmental length further supported this conclusion. Words that usually appear in predictable contexts are reduced in all contexts, even those in which they are unpredictable. The result supports representational models in which reduction is stored, and where sufficiently frequent reduction biases later production. The finding provides new evidence that probabilistic reduction interacts with lexical representation.