Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care
Wednesday, June 15, 2022
A Constructionist Review of Morality and Emotions: No Evidence for Specific Links Between Moral Content and Discrete Emotions
Tuesday, April 12, 2022
The Affective Harm Account (AHA) of Moral Judgment: Reconciling Cognition and Affect, Dyadic Morality and Disgust, Harm and Purity
Sunday, October 11, 2020
Psychotherapy With Suicidal Patients Part 2: An Alliance Based Intervention for Suicide
Abstract
This column, which is the second in a 2-part series on the challenge of treating patients struggling with suicide, reviews one psychodynamic approach to working with suicidal patients that is consistent with the elements shared across evidence-based approaches to treating suicidal patients that were the focus of the first column in this series. Alliance Based Intervention for Suicide is an approach to treating suicidal patients developed at the Austen Riggs Center that is not manualized or a stand-alone treatment, but rather it is a way of establishing and maintaining an alliance with suicidal patients that engages the issue of suicide and allows the rest of psychodynamic therapy to unfold.
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From the Conclusion
There is no magic in ABIS (Alliance Based Intervention for Suicide), and it will not work in all cases, but these principles are effective in making suicide an interpersonal issue with meaning in the relationship. This allows direct engagement of the issue of suicide in the therapeutic relationship and direct discussion of the central question of whether the patient can and will commit to the work. ABIS supports the therapist in efforts to assess whether the therapist has the will and the wherewithal to meet the patient’s anger and hate, as manifested by suicide, as fully as the therapist is prepared to meet the patient’s love and attachment. Neither side of the transference alone is adequate in work with suicidal patients.
There are no randomized trials of ABIS, but it is a way of working that has evolved at Austen Riggs over the course of a hundred years. In a study of previously suicidal patients at Riggs, at an average of 7 years after admission, 75% were free of suicidal behavior as an issue in their lives.6 These patients were considered “recovered” rather than “in remission,” using the same slope-intercept mathematical modeling as in cancer research. These findings offer encouraging support for the value of ABIS as an intervention to add to psychodynamic psychotherapy as a way to establish and maintain a viable therapeutic alliance with suicidal patients.
Friday, December 28, 2018
The Theory of Dyadic Morality: Reinventing Moral Judgment by Redefining Harm
Personality and Social Psychology Review
Volume: 22 issue: 1, page(s): 32-70
Article first published online: May 14, 2017; Issue published: February 1, 2018
Abstract
The nature of harm—and therefore moral judgment—may be misunderstood. Rather than an objective matter of reason, we argue that harm should be redefined as an intuitively perceived continuum. This redefinition provides a new understanding of moral content and mechanism—the constructionist Theory of Dyadic Morality (TDM). TDM suggests that acts are condemned proportional to three elements: norm violations, negative affect, and—importantly—perceived harm. This harm is dyadic, involving an intentional agent causing damage to a vulnerable patient (A→P). TDM predicts causal links both from harm to immorality (dyadic comparison) and from immorality to harm (dyadic completion). Together, these two processes make the “dyadic loop,” explaining moral acquisition and polarization. TDM argues against intuitive harmless wrongs and modular “foundations,” but embraces moral pluralism through varieties of values and the flexibility of perceived harm. Dyadic morality impacts understandings of moral character, moral emotion, and political/cultural differences, and provides research guidelines for moral psychology.
The review is here.
Thursday, September 7, 2017
Are morally good actions ever free?
SSRN Electronic Journal, August 2017
Abstract
A large body of work has demonstrated that people ascribe more responsibility to morally bad actions than both morally good and morally neutral ones, creating the impression that people do not attribute responsibility to morally good actions. The present work demonstrates that this is not so: People attributed more free will to morally good actions than morally neutral ones (Studies 1a-1b). Studies 2a-2b distinguished the underlying motives for ascribing responsibility to morally good and bad actions. Free will ascriptions for morally bad actions were driven predominantly by affective punitive responses. Free will judgments for morally good actions were similarly driven by affective reward responses, but also less affectively-charged and more pragmatic considerations (the perceived utility of reward, normativity of the action, and willpower required to perform the action). Responsibility ascriptions to morally good actions may be more carefully considered, leading to generally weaker, but more contextually-sensitive free will judgments.
The research is here.
Friday, July 21, 2017
Judgment Before Emotion: People Access Moral Evaluations Faster than Affective States
Abstract
Theories about the role of emotions in moral cognition make different predictions about the relative speed of moral and affective judgments: those that argue that felt emotions are causal inputs to moral judgments predict that recognition of affective states should precede moral judgments; theories that posit emotional states as the output of moral judgment predict the opposite. Across four studies, using a speeded reaction time task, we found that self-reports of felt emotion were delayed relative to reports of event-directed moral judgments (e.g. badness) and were no faster than person directed moral judgments (e.g. blame). These results pose a challenge to prominent theories arguing that moral judgments are made on the basis of reflecting on affective states.
The article is here.
Friday, February 17, 2017
Uncertainty Increases the Reliance on Affect in Decisions
J Consum Res (2017) ucw073.
Published: 23 January 2017
Abstract
How do psychological states of uncertainty influence the way people make decisions? We propose that such states increase the reliance on affective inputs in judgments and decisions. In accord with this proposition, results from six studies show that the priming of uncertainty (vs. certainty) consistently increases the effects of a variety of affective inputs on consumers’ judgments and decisions. Primed uncertainty is shown to amplify the effects of the pleasantness of a musical soundtrack (study 1), the attractiveness of a picture (study 2), the appeal of affective attributes (studies 3 and 4), incidental mood states (study 6), and even incidental states of disgust (study 5). Moreover, both negative and positive uncertainty increase the influence of affect in decisions (study 4). The results additionally show that the increased reliance on affective inputs under uncertainty does not necessarily come at the expense of a reliance on descriptive attribute information (studies 2 and 5), and that the increased reliance on affect under uncertainty is distinct from a general reliance on heuristic or peripheral cues (study 6). The phenomenon may be due to uncertainty threatening the self, thereby encouraging a reliance on inputs that are closer to the self and have high subjective validity.
The article is here.
Monday, October 17, 2016
Affective nudging
Digressions and Impressions blog
Originally published September 30, 2016
Here is an excerpt:
Nudging is paternalist. But by making exit easy and avoidance cheap nudges are thought to avoid the worst moral and political problems of paternalism and (other) manipulative practices. (What counts as a significant change of economic incentives is, of course, very contestable, but we leave that aside here.) Nudges may, in fact, sometimes enhance autonomy and freedom, but the way Sunstein & Thaler define 'nudge' one may nudge also for immoral ends. Social engineering does not question the ends.
The modern administrative state is, however, not just a rule-following Weberian bureaucracy where the interaction between state and citizen is governed by the exchange of forms, information, and money. Many civil servants, including ones with very distinct expertise (physicians, psychologists, lawyers, engineers, social service workers, therapists, teachers, correction officers, etc.) enter quite intimately into the lives of lots of citizens. Increasingly (within the context of new public management), government professionals and hired consultants are given broad autonomy to meet certain targets (quotas, budget or volume numbers, etc.) within constrained parameters. (So, for example, a physician is not just a care provider, but also somebody who can control costs.) Bureaucratic management and the political class are agnostic about how the desired outcomes are met, as long as it is legal, efficient and does not generate bad media or adverse political push-back.
The blog post is here.
Friday, June 5, 2015
The thought father: Psychologist Daniel Kahneman on luck
The London Evening Standard
Originally published March 18, 2014
Here are two excerpt:
Through a series of zany experiments involving roulette wheels and loaded dice, Tversky and Kahneman showed just how easily we can be led into making irrational decisions — even judges sentencing criminals were influenced by being shown completely random numbers. They also showed the sinister effects of priming (how, when people are “primed” with images of money, they behave in a more selfish way). Many such mental illusions still have an effect when subjects are explicitly warned to look out for them. “If it feels right, we go along with it,” as Kahneman says. It is usually afterwards that we engage our System 2s if at all, to provide reasons for acting as we did after the fact.
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Do teach yourself to think long-term. The “focusing illusion” makes the here and now appear the most pressing concern but that can lead to skewed results.
Do be fair. Research shows that employers who are unjust are punished by reduced productivity, and unfair prices lead to a loss in sales.
Do co-operate. What Kahneman calls “bias blindness” means it’s easier to recognise the errors of others than our own so ask for constructive criticism and be prepared to call out others on what they could improve.
The entire article is here.
Sunday, May 10, 2015
How Does Reasoning (Fail to) Contribute to Moral Judgment? Dumbfounding and Disengagement
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice
April 2015, Volume 18, Issue 2, pp 237-250
Abstract
Recent experiments in moral psychology have been taken to imply that moral reasoning only serves to reaffirm prior moral intuitions. More specifically, Jonathan Haidt concludes from his moral dumbfounding experiments, in which people condemn other people’s behavior, that moral reasoning is biased and ineffective, as it rarely makes people change their mind. I present complementary evidence pertaining to self-directed reasoning about what to do. More specifically, Albert Bandura’s experiments concerning moral disengagement reveal that moral reasoning often does contribute effectively to the formation of moral judgments. And such reasoning need not be biased. Once this evidence is taken into account, it becomes clear that both cognition and affect can play a destructive as well as a constructive role in the formation of moral judgments.
The entire paper is here.
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Moral Responsibility and Free Will: A Meta-Analysis
Academia.edu
Abstract
Fundamental beliefs about free will and moral responsibility are often thought to shape our ability to have healthy relationships with others and ourselves. Emotional reactions have also been shown to have an important and pervasive impact on judgments and behaviors. Recent research suggests that emotional reactions play a prominent role in judgments about free will, influencing judgments about determinism’s relation to free will and moral responsibility. However, the extent to which affect influences these judgments is unclear. We conducted a meta-analysis to estimate the impact of affect. Our meta-analysis indicates that beliefs in free will are largely robust to emotional reactions.
The entire meta-analysis is here.
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
The Deep roots of Our Political Divide
Originally aired December 4, 2013
Matt Miller interviews Jonathan Haidt on politics, perspective, morality, and justice.
The entire podcast is here.
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Morality, Disgust, and Countertransference in Psychotherapy
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
You Can't Learn about Morality from Brain Scans
New Republic
Originally posted November 1, 2013
This story includes information from Joshua Green's book: Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them
Here is an excerpt:
Morality evolved to enable cooperation, but this conclusion comes with an important caveat. Biologically speaking, humans were designed for cooperation, but only with some people. Our moral brains evolved for cooperation within groups, and perhaps only within the context of personal relationships. Our moral brains did not evolve for cooperation between groups (at least not all groups).... As with the evolution of faster carnivores, competition is essential for the evolution of cooperation.
The tragedy of commonsense morality is conceived by analogy with the familiar tragedy of the commons, to which commonsense morality does provide a solution. In the tragedy of the commons, the pursuit of private self-interest leads a collection of individuals to a result that is contrary to the interest of all of them (like over-grazing the commons or over-fishing the ocean). If they learn to limit their individual self-interest by agreeing to follow certain rules and sticking to them, the commons will not be destroyed and they will all do well.
The entire article is here.
Monday, November 11, 2013
Getting In Touch With Your Inner Sexual Deviant
Jesse Bering, Perv: The Sexual Deviant in all of Us
Forbes
Originally posted on October 24, 2013
Here is an excerpt:
Q: One of the themes that comes through is that we feel so sure about the origins and motivations of various sexual behaviors, and for a good many of them there’s no scientific basis for feeling this way – indeed, in many cases science is far from reaching a conclusion. Why do you think we’re so prone to staunchly believing that how we feel about a sexual behavior is automatically true?
A: It’s certainly one of those areas where everyone has an opinion. But if there’s one thing I discovered while working on this book, it’s that the strength of one’s moral convictions about sex usually reflects the depths of one’s ignorance about the science of sex. The more one learns in this area, paradoxically, the more uncertain one becomes.
Human beings are “stomach philosophers”—we allow our gut feelings to make decisions about other people’s sex lives on the basis of whether or not we’re personally disgusted or uncomfortable with their erotic desires or behaviors. I draw the line at harm, but defining harm can be a slippery matter, too. Since we would be harmed, we presume that others must be harmed as well, even when that’s far from apparent. I joke in the book about how I’d be irreparably damaged if Kate Upton were to pin me to my chair and do a slow strip tease on my lap. Lovely as she is, I’m gay, and not only would I not enjoy that experience, I’d be made deeply uncomfortable by it. My straight brother or my lesbian cousin, by contrast, would process this identical Upton event very differently.
The entire interview/article is here.
Friday, November 1, 2013
Why Are Hundreds of Harvard Students Studying Ancient Chinese Philosophy?
The Atlantic
Originally published October, 8 2013
Here is an excerpt:
Why are so many undergraduates spending a semester poring over abstruse Chinese philosophy by scholars who lived thousands of years ago? For one thing, the class fulfills one of Harvard's more challenging core requirements, Ethical Reasoning. It's clear, though, that students are also lured in by Puett's bold promise: “This course will change your life.”
His students tell me it is true: that Puett uses Chinese philosophy as a way to give undergraduates concrete, counter-intuitive, and even revolutionary ideas, which teach them how to live a better life.
The entire article is here.
Friday, September 20, 2013
The Cheater's High: The Unexpected Affective Benefits of Unethical Behavior
Abstract
Many theories of moral behavior share the assumption that unethical behavior triggers negative affect. In this paper, we challenge this assumption and demonstrate that unethical behavior can trigger positive affect, which we term a “cheater’s high.” Across six studies, we find that even though individuals predict they will feel guilty and have increased levels of negative affect after engaging in unethical behavior (Studies 1a and 1b), individuals who cheat on different problem-solving tasks consistently experience more positive affect than those who do not (Studies 2-5). We find that this heightened positive affect is not due to the accrual of undeserved financial incentives (Study 3) and does not depend on self-selection (Study 4). Cheating is associated with feelings of self-satisfaction, and the boost in positive affect from cheating persists even when cheaters acknowledge that their self-reported performance is unreliable (Study 5). Thus, even when prospects for self-deception about unethical behavior have been reduced, the high cheaters experience from “getting away with it” overwhelms the negative affective consequences that people mistakenly predict they will experience after engaging in unethical behavior. Our results have important implications for models of ethical decision making, moral behavior, and self-regulatory theory.
The entire paper is here.