道德判断中的情绪因素——从认知神经科学的角度进行探讨

道德判断中的情绪与认知因素是社会认知神经科学研究的重要议题。本文对近年来社会认知神经科学领域中有关情绪影响道德判断的研究发现和相关理论进行了回顾和总结。介绍了外源性情绪影响道德判断的行为研究证据,大脑情绪功能障碍者在道德判断中的异常表现以及道德两难任务所对应的大脑激活模式,着重探讨了情绪因素影响道德判断的神经机制和道德判断中情绪加工与认知加工相互作用的过程。揭示了情绪是道德判断的必要因素,道德判断是情绪加工和认知加工协同作用的结果,并在此基础上提出了该领域未来发展的设想。     

类推理的发展序列与年龄特点

类推理主要涉及类别层级包含关系的理解和判断。使用修订的类包含、替代包含和二元律任务,以162名二至五年级儿童为被试,利用Raseh模型分析方法,旨在揭示儿童逻辑包含能力的发展序列。此外,探讨了儿童类推理发展的年龄特点。结果表明：1）类推理发展中儿童最先掌握类包含推理,其次是替代包含,最后是二元律推理;2）三、四、五年级儿童已能解决多数类包含任务,其成绩显著优于二年级儿童。四、五年级儿童能解决多数替代包含任务,其成绩均显著优于二年级儿童;3）二元律任务对二至五年级儿童来讲均比较困难。     

Motivated reasoning and verbal vs. numerical probability assessment: Evidence from an accounting context

A perplexing yet persistent empirical finding is that individuals assess probabilities in words and in numbers nearly equivalently, and theorists have called for future research to search for factors that cause differences. This study uses an accounting context in which individuals are commonly motivated to reach preferred (rather than accurate) conclusions. Within this context, I predict new differences between verbal and numerical probability assessments, as follows: first, individuals will justify an optimistic verbal assessment (e.g., somewhat possible) by retaining the option of re-defining it, in case of negative outcomes, as though the phrase really means something different, and, for that matter, means more things. This re-definition will maintain some connection to the original meaning of the phrase, but de-emphasized relative to the new meaning. Second, based on this behavior, I also predict individuals’ verbal probability assessments to be (1) more biased and yet (2) perceived as more justifiable than their numerical assessments. I find supportive evidence in an experiment designed to test the hypotheses. This study contributes to motivated reasoning and probability assessment theories (1) with new evidence of how individuals can word-smith in multiple attributes of a phrase to justify reaching a preferred conclusion, and (2) with new, reliable differences between verbal and numerical probability assessments. This study has important theoretical and practical implications relevant to organizational contexts in which people assess the likelihoods of uncertainties in words or numbers, and with motivations to reach a preferred conclusion.     

Information Distortion and Voting Choices: The Origins and Effects of Factual Beliefs in Initiative Elections

To account for voter decision making in initiative elections, we integrate theory and research on public opinion, misinformation, and motivated reasoning. Heuristic and motivated reasoning literatures suggest that voters' preexisting values interact with political sophistication such that politically knowledgeable voters develop systematically distorted empirical beliefs relevant to the initiatives on their ballots. These beliefs, in turn, can predict voting preferences even after controlling for underlying values, regardless of one's political sophistication. These hypotheses were tested using a 2003 voter survey conducted prior to a statewide initiative election that repealed a workplace safety regulation. Results showed that only those voters knowledgeable of key endorsements had initiative-specific beliefs that lined up with their underlying antiregulation values. Also, voters' empirical beliefs had an effect on initiative support even after controlling for prior values, and political sophistication did not moderate this effect.     

Children do not follow the rule "ignorance means getting it wrong"

Two experiments tested whether 4- and 5-year-olds follow the rule “ignorance means you get it wrong.” Following this rule should lead children to infer that a character who is ignorant about some situation will also have a false belief about it. This rule should sometimes lead children into error because ignorance does not imply false belief. In Experiment 1, children and adults were told about a girl who is looking for her dog but does not know which of two boxes it is under. Most children predicted that the girl would look in the box with the dog and not in the empty box; adults chose both boxes equally. Experiment 2 used a similar story but varied whether the girl wants to approach or avoid her dog. Again, most children predicted that the girl would succeed. These findings suggest that children do not follow the rule “ignorance means you get it wrong.”     

The morality of harm

In this article, we discuss the range of concerns people weigh when evaluating the acceptability of harmful actions and propose a new perspective on the relationship between harm and morality. With this aim, we examine Kelly, Stich, Haley, Eng and Fessler’s [Kelly, D., Stich, S., Haley, K., Eng, S., & Fessler, D. (2007). Harm, affect, and the moral/conventional distinction. Mind and Language, 22, 117-131] recent claim that, contrary to Turiel and associates, people do not judge harm to be authority independent and general in scope in the context of complex harmful scenarios (e.g., prisoner interrogation, military training). In a modified replication of their study, we examined participants’ judgments of harmful actions in these contexts by taking into account their explanations for their judgments. We claim that both in terms of participants’ judgments and rationales, the results largely confirm our hypothesis that actions involving harm andinjustice or rights violation are judged to be authority independent and general in scope, which is a modification of Turiel’s traditional hypothesis.     

The effects of interpersonal relationship and character gender on adolescents' resolutions of moral dilemmas

An experimental study using two forms of the Defining Issues Test [Rest, J. R. (1979). Revised manual for the Defining Issues Test. Minneapolis: Moral Research Project, University of Minnesota.], modified to present either a high degree of relationship among characters or a low degree of relationship among characters, was conducted with 114 college students. The gender of the characters in the dilemmas was also systematically varied. Both male and female students evidenced principled (Stages 5 and 6) reasoning more often when dilemma characters were male than when story characters were female. Participant gender and relationship condition were significant factors in the frequency of Stage 4 reasoning. Male students in the low-relationship condition evidenced Stage 4 (“Law and order”) reasoning most often when story characters were male, while male students, like female students in all conditions, showed Stage 4 reasoning more often when female characters were presented in the high-relationship condition. The degree to which moral decisions were supportive of an affected character revealed more support when story characters were female than when they were male. Results indicate that even in hypothetical situations, moral judgments vary with the gender of the person being judged and to some degree with the relationships among those involved in the dilemma. These findings are consistent with a view that multiple, equally valid approaches to moral judgment might exist and affect the development of male and female students differently.     

Mereotopological Connection

The paper outlines a model-theoretic framework for investigating and comparing a variety of mereotopological theories. In the first part we consider different ways of characterizing a mereotopology with respect to (i) the intended interpretation of the connection primitive, and (ii) the composition of the admissible domains of quantification (e.g., whether or not they include boundary elements). The second part extends this study by considering two further dimensions along which different patterns of topological connection can be classified – the strength of the connection and its multiplicity.