Moral labels increase cooperation and costly punishment in a Prisoner’s Dilemma game with punishment option

Mieth, L., Buchner, A. & Bell, R.

Sci Rep 11, 10221 (2021). 

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-89675-6

Abstract

To determine the role of moral norms in cooperation and punishment, we examined the effects of a moral-framing manipulation in a Prisoner’s Dilemma game with a costly punishment option. In each round of the game, participants decided whether to cooperate or to defect. The Prisoner’s Dilemma game was identical for all participants with the exception that the behavioral options were paired with moral labels (“I cooperate” and “I cheat”) in the moral-framing condition and with neutral labels (“A” and “B”) in the neutral-framing condition. After each round of the Prisoner’s Dilemma game, participants had the opportunity to invest some of their money to punish their partners. In two experiments, moral framing increased moral and hypocritical punishment: participants were more likely to punish partners for defection when moral labels were used than when neutral labels were used. When the participants’ cooperation was enforced by their partners’ moral punishment, moral framing did not only increase moral and hypocritical punishment but also cooperation. The results suggest that moral framing activates a cooperative norm that specifically increases moral and hypocritical punishment. Furthermore, the experience of moral punishment by the partners may increase the importance of social norms for cooperation, which may explain why moral framing effects on cooperation were found only when participants were subject to moral punishment.

General discussion

In human social life, a large variety of behaviors are regulated by social norms that set standards on how individuals should behave. One of these norms is the norm of cooperation. In many situations, people are expected to set aside their egoistic interests to achieve the collective best outcome. Within economic research, cooperation is often studied in social dilemma games. In these games, the complexities of human social interactions are reduced to their incentive structures. However, human behavior is not only determined by monetary incentives. There are many other important determinants of behavior among which social norms are especially powerful. The participants’ decisions in social dilemma situations are thus affected by their interpretation of whether a certain behavior is socially appropriate or inappropriate. Moral labels can help to reduce the ambiguity of the social dilemma game by creating associations to real-life cooperation norms. Thereby, the moral framing may support a moral interpretation of the social dilemma situation, resulting in the moral rejection of egoistic behaviors. Often, social norms are enforced by punishment. It has been argued “that the maintenance of social norms typically requires a punishment threat, as there are almost always some individuals whose self-interest tempts them to violate the norm” [p. 185]. 

The research is here.

Binding moral values gain importance in the presence of close others

Yudkin, D.A., Gantman, A.P., Hofmann, W. et al. 

Nat Commun 12, 2718 (2021). 

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22566-6

Abstract

A key function of morality is to regulate social behavior. Research suggests moral values may be divided into two types: binding values, which govern behavior in groups, and individualizing values, which promote personal rights and freedoms. Because people tend to mentally activate concepts in situations in which they may prove useful, the importance they afford moral values may vary according to whom they are with in the moment. In particular, because binding values help regulate communal behavior, people may afford these values more importance when in the presence of close (versus distant) others. Five studies test and support this hypothesis. First, we use a custom smartphone application to repeatedly record participants’ (n = 1166) current social context and the importance they afforded moral values. Results show people rate moral values as more important when in the presence of close others, and this effect is stronger for binding than individualizing values—an effect that replicates in a large preregistered online sample (n = 2016). A lab study (n = 390) and two preregistered online experiments (n = 580 and n = 752) provide convergent evidence that people afford binding, but not individualizing, values more importance when in the real or imagined presence of close others. Our results suggest people selectively activate different moral values according to the demands of the situation, and show how the mere presence of others can affect moral thinking.

From the Discussion

Our findings converge with work highlighting the practical contexts where binding values are pitted against individualizing ones. Research on the psychology of whistleblowing, for example, suggests that the decision over whether to report unethical behavior in one’s own organization reflects a tradeoff between loyalty (to one’s community) and fairness (to society in general). Other research has found that increasing or decreasing people’s “psychological distance” from a situation affects the degree to which they apply binding versus individualizing principles. For example, research shows that prompting people to take a detached (versus immersed) perspective on their own actions renders them more likely to apply impartial principles in punishing close others for moral transgressions. By contrast, inducing feelings of empathy toward others (which could be construed as increasing feelings of psychological closeness) increases people’s likelihood of showing favoritism toward them in violation of general fairness norms. Our work highlights a psychological process that might help to explain these patterns of behavior: people are more prone to act according to binding values when they are with close others precisely because that relational context activates those values in the mind.

The research is here.

Learning moral values: Another's desire to punish enhances one's own punitive behavior

FeldmanHall O, Otto AR, Phelps EA.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2018 Jun 7. doi: 10.1037/xge0000405.

Abstract

There is little consensus about how moral values are learned. Using a novel social learning task, we examine whether vicarious learning impacts moral values-specifically fairness preferences-during decisions to restore justice. In both laboratory and Internet-based experimental settings, we employ a dyadic justice game where participants receive unfair splits of money from another player and respond resoundingly to the fairness violations by exhibiting robust nonpunitive, compensatory behavior (baseline behavior). In a subsequent learning phase, participants are tasked with responding to fairness violations on behalf of another participant (a receiver) and are given explicit trial-by-trial feedback about the receiver's fairness preferences (e.g., whether they prefer punishment as a means of restoring justice). This allows participants to update their decisions in accordance with the receiver's feedback (learning behavior). In a final test phase, participants again directly experience fairness violations. After learning about a receiver who prefers highly punitive measures, participants significantly enhance their own endorsement of punishment during the test phase compared with baseline. Computational learning models illustrate the acquisition of these moral values is governed by a reinforcement mechanism, revealing it takes as little as being exposed to the preferences of a single individual to shift one's own desire for punishment when responding to fairness violations. Together this suggests that even in the absence of explicit social pressure, fairness preferences are highly labile.

The research is here.

DeepMind launches new research team to investigate AI ethics

James Vincent
The Verge
Originally posted October 4, 2017

Google’s AI subsidiary DeepMind is getting serious about ethics. The UK-based company, which Google bought in 2014, today announced the formation of a new research group dedicated to the thorniest issues in artificial intelligence. These include the problems of managing AI bias; the coming economic impact of automation; and the need to ensure that any intelligent systems we develop share our ethical and moral values.

DeepMind Ethics & Society (or DMES, as the new team has been christened) will publish research on these topics and others starting early 2018. The group has eight full-time staffers at the moment, but DeepMind wants to grow this to around 25 in a year’s time. The team has six unpaid external “fellows” (including Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom, who literally wrote the book on AI existential risk) and will partner with academic groups conducting similar research, including The AI Now Institute at NYU, and the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence.

The article is here.

Resisting Temptation for the Good of the Group: Binding Moral Values and the Moralization of Self-Control

Mooijman, Marlon; Meindl, Peter; Oyserman, Daphna; Monterosso, John; Dehghani, Morteza; Doris, John M.; Graham, Jesse
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Jun 12 , 2017.

Abstract

When do people see self-control as a moral issue? We hypothesize that the group-focused “binding” moral values of Loyalty/betrayal, Authority/subversion, and Purity/degradation play a particularly important role in this moralization process. Nine studies provide support for this prediction. First, moralization of self-control goals (e.g., losing weight, saving money) is more strongly associated with endorsing binding moral values than with endorsing individualizing moral values (Care/harm, Fairness/cheating). Second, binding moral values mediate the effect of other group-focused predictors of self-control moralization, including conservatism, religiosity, and collectivism. Third, guiding participants to consider morality as centrally about binding moral values increases moralization of self-control more than guiding participants to consider morality as centrally about individualizing moral values. Fourth, we replicate our core finding that moralization of self-control is associated with binding moral values across studies differing in measures and design—whether we measure the relationship between moral and self-control language across time, the perceived moral relevance of self-control behaviors, or the moral condemnation of self-control failures. Taken together, our findings suggest that self-control moralization is primarily group-oriented and is sensitive to group-oriented cues.

The article is here.

Embedding Ethical Principles in Collective Decision Support Systems

Joshua Greene, Francesca Rossi, John Tasioulas, Kristen Brent Venable, & Brian Williams
Proceedings of the Thirtieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-16)

Abstract

The future will see autonomous machines acting in the same environment as humans, in areas as diverse as driving, assistive technology, and health care. Think of self-driving cars, companion robots, and medical diagnosis support systems.  We also believe that humans and machines will often need to work together and agree on common decisions. Thus hybrid collective decision making systems will be in great need.  In this scenario, both machines and collective decision making systems should follow some form of moral values and ethical principles (appropriate to where they will act but always aligned to humans’), as well as safety constraints. In fact, humans would accept and trust more machines that behave as ethically as other humans in the same environment. Also, these principles would make it easier for machines to determine their actions and explain their behavior in terms understandable by humans. Moreover, often machines and humans will need to make decisions together, either through consensus or by reaching a compromise. This would be facilitated by shared moral values and ethical principles.

The article is here.

Superhero Comics as Moral Pornography

By David Pizarro and Roy Baumeister
Superhero Comics as Moral Pornography.
In R. Rosenberg (Ed.) Our Superheroes, Ourselves. Oxford University Press.

Here is an excerpt:

Modern superhero comics (and the films they’ve inspired) are moral tales on steroids.  While they present variations on the theme of good versus evil, these stories describe individuals who commit moral deeds of global (and often cosmic) significance on a weekly basis. In this chapter we will argue that superhero comics, like other moralistic tales, are popular in part because they satisfy a basic human motivation: the motivation to divide the social world into good people and bad, and to morally praise and condemn them accordingly. In their modern superhero comic incarnation, however, these tales depict an exaggerated morality that has been stripped of its real-world subtlety. In tales of superhero versus supervillain, moral good and moral bad are always the actions of easily identifiable moral agents with unambiguous intentions and actions. And it is these very qualities that make these stories so enjoyable. Much like the appeal of the exaggerated, caricatured sexuality found in pornography, superhero comics offer the appeal of an exaggerated and caricatured morality that satisfies the natural human inclination toward moralization. In short, the modern superhero comic is a form of “moral pornography”— built to satisfy our moralistic urges, but ultimately unrealistic and, in the end, potentially misleading.

The entire chapter is here.

Why Evolutionary Science Is The Key To Moral Progress

By Michael E. Price

This View of Life

Originally published July 16, 2013

Here is an excerpt:

Morality is centrally important to human affairs, for two main reasons. First, cross-culturally, the well-being of individuals is strongly affected by their moral standing: an individual held in high moral regard may be praised, rewarded, or celebrated as a hero, whereas one held in low regard may be admonished, ostracized, or put to death. Second, a society’s ability to compete with other societies may depend heavily on the content of its moral system: a moral system that successfully promotes values associated with economic and political competitiveness, for example, can be hugely advantageous to the society that hosts it. Our moral beliefs, then, have a critical impact on the fates of both the individuals we judge, and the societies to which we belong. 

The entire blog post is here.

Bioethicists must not allow themselves to become a 'priestly caste'

The increasing use of expert bioethicists has profound anti-democratic implications

By Nathan Emmerich
The Guardian - Political Science Blog
Originally published May 18, 2013

In a secular age it might seem that the time for moral authorities has passed. However, research in the life sciences and biomedicine has produced a range of moral concerns and prompted the emergence of bioethics; an area of study that specialises in the ethical analysis of these issues. The result has been the emergence of what we might call expert bioethicists, a cadre of professionals who, while logical and friendly, have, nevertheless, been ordained as secular priests.

This suggestion – that there are expert bioethicists – might appear to have profoundly anti-democratic implications. Indeed handling expertise, including scientific expertise, is a central difficulty for democratic societies and its extension into the realm of moral values seems, on the face of it, to compound the problem. Nevertheless the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has constantly made use of expert bioethicists and two members of the recently convened Emerging Science and Bioethics Advisory Committee (ESBAC) are listed as "bioethics specialists".

If we are to govern the biosciences and medical practice effectively there seems to be increasing need for expert bioethicists. Nevertheless, there is a different dynamic to the politics of bioethical expertise precisely because the opinions of bioethical experts cannot be used to obviate those of other moral agents.

This might seem like an odd claim. If there are expert bioethicists surely we should prefer their opinions to those of non-experts? However this is to assume bioethical expertise is modelled on scientific expertise. The idea of the scientist as expert is so strong we often forget that there are other forms of expertise.

The entire post is here.

The Ethics of Care: An Interview with Virginia Held

3:AM Magazine
Interview by Richard Marshall

Here are some excerpts:

3:AM: You’ve developed an ethical theory around ‘care.’ You see this as an alternative to the dominant ethical theories of the last couple of centuries. It’s important to you that it isn’t an ethics to be added on to Kantianism or utilitarianism or virtue ethics. Can you say something about why it is so important that a care ethics is not an adjunct but is a fresh start? The Kantian Christine Korsgaard has placed reciprocity and human relations at the heart of Kantianism. Onora O’Neill has argued that justice and care are not opposed. In the light of these views, would you still defend the break, or would you be happier to see it as a continuation?

VH: I don’t find it satisfactory merely to add some considerations of care to the traditional moral theories for reasons similar to why it is not enough to simply insert women into the traditional structures of society and politics built on gender domination. Feminists should understand that the structures themselves have to change. The history of ethics shows it to be a very biased enterprise. Very roughly, what men have done in public life has been deemed important and relevant to moral theory, and what women have done in the household has been considered irrelevant. I think it plausible to see Kantian ethics and utilitarianism as expansions to the whole of morality of what can be thought appropriate for law and for public policy.

I have come to see, in contrast, caring relations as the wider network, and the ethics of care as the comprehensive morality, within which we should develop legal and political institutions. Caring relations should be guided by the ethics of care, which we can best understand and which is most applicable in contexts of families and friendship. But we can and should also have weaker forms of caring relations with all persons, and within these, the more limited institutions of law should be guided, roughly, by Kantian norms, and the more limited political institutions by utilitarian ones. Yes I see the legal and political as importantly different, and both as significantly different from the contexts of family and friendship. This is a very oversimplified statement of a complex position but I try to clarify and delineate these matters in my written work.

3:AM: So ‘care’ is at the heart of this new ethic but it isn’t to replace justice. So how do you get from care to justice in your system? Do we end up losing the common use of ‘care’ for a more term of art, technical use, as is the wont with philosophers? And isn’t that a cheat?

VH: Yes, various Kantians are trying to acknowledge the concerns of care, and various philosophers interested in the ethics of care are trying to combine it with Kantian ethics. I think the ethics of care has the resources to be an alternative moral theory that can include persuasive aspects of Kantian ethics and also of utilitarianism and virtue theory. It’s nevertheless a feminist ethics that includes the goal of overcoming gender domination, in our thinking as well as our institutions. And I see it as the more comprehensive view. Korsgaard and O’Neill are still Kantians, though more persuasive ones than some traditional Kantians. I think ethics should start with a vast amount of experience (the experience of caring and being cared for) overlooked by traditional moral theories, and see how the many important and valid concerns of other moral theories can be brought into care ethics. I think it is a strength of care ethics that it is based on experience. It is experience which everyone has had: no one would have survived without enormous amounts of care, in childhood at least. Most women, and increasingly men, have also had a great deal of experience providing care, especially for children.

The entire interview is here.

Virginia Held has written: Feminist Morality: Transforming Culture, Society, and Politics, Justice and Care: Essential Reading in Feminist Ethics, and The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political and Global.

The Boundaries of the Moral (and Legal) Community

By Brian Leiter
The Expanding Moral Community
Alabama Law Review, Vol. 64(3), 511-531.

Let me invite you to step back from the parochial political disputes that dominate public life in America and most other modern democracies, as well as from the internecine academic quarrels characteristic of so much professionalized scholarship in the modern academy, and reflect, instead, on the broader sweep of moral and political thought, in both the philosophical and practical realm, over the past two or three hundred years.  What must immediately strike any observer of this period is the remarkable expansion it has witnessed of what I will henceforth call “the moral community,” that is, the community of creatures that are thought entitled to equal moral consideration, whatever the precise details of what such consideration involves—that is, whether it is a matter of showing “respect,” recognizing the “dignity” of each, or “maximizing the utility or well-being” of each, or some other formulation.  I am speaking here about our official ideologies and discourse, not necessarily all our actual practices and laws, though they gradually follow suit over the course of a century or so. But at the level of ideology, reflected in both ordinary moral opinion and in the work of philosophers, we in the West—ignorance of the relevant philosophical and legal traditions requires me to remain agnostic on the proverbial “East,” though the trends seem to be similar—have largely abandoned the ideas that gender, race, ethnicity, religion, class, and now even sexual orientation are morally relevant attributes in the sense that they are attributes that determine the basic moral consideration to which one is entitled. To be sure, in particular contexts, these characteristics may matter because of the context. So, for example, I take it most would still think it morally unproblematic to consider race in casting the lead role in Shakespeare’s Othello, and most of us would still think it morally unproblematic that a man contemplating marriage gives some consideration to the gender or religion of his potential mate. 

The entire article is here.

D'Souza Resigns From King's College

Inside Higher Ed
Originally published October 19, 2012

Dinesh D'Souza, president of the King's College, a Christian college in New York City, has resigned after reports that he shared a hotel room with a woman to whom he was not married before filing for divorce from his wife. In a statement posted on the college's website Thursday, the president of the Board of Trustees said that D'Souza had resigned, effective immediately, to "allow him to attend to his personal and family needs."

The entire story is here.

Franciscan U. Ends Student Health Insurance

By Libby A. Nelson
The Chronicale of Higher Education
Originally published May 16, 2012

A Roman Catholic college in Ohio announced Tuesday that it will discontinue its student health-insurance plan in the upcoming academic year rather than offer students a plan that would soon include free birth control. The college said the decision was driven by both financial and moral concerns, but it appears likely to become another point of contention in the ongoing debate about contraception, health insurance and religious institutions.

Students at Franciscan University of Steubenville will have to find other insurance coverage next year, the college said in a statement on its website. Coverage for employees will not change. About 200 of the university's 2,100 students currently rely on the college health plan.

The entire story is here.

Health Care Issues Intensify U.S. Debate Over Conscience in the Workplace

By Stephanie Simon

Reuters

Originally published February 22, 2012

Can a state require a pharmacy to stock and dispense emergency contraception -- even when the owner considers the drug immoral?

That's the question at the heart of a long-running legal battle in Washington state, expected to be decided Wednesday with a ruling from the U.S. District Court in Seattle.

It's the latest twist in a contentious national debate over the role of conscience in the workplace.

In recent weeks, the debate has been dominated by religious groups fighting to overturn a federal mandate that most health insurance plans provide free birth control. But the battle extends far beyond insurance regulations.

Asserting conscientious objections, nurses in New Jersey have said they would not check the vital signs of patients recovering from abortions. Infertility specialists in California would not perform artificial insemination on a lesbian. An ambulance driver in Illinois declined to transport a patient to an abortion clinic.

In the Washington case, a family-owned pharmacy in Olympia declined to stock emergency contraception, which can prevent pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex. Co-owner Kevin Stormans says he considers the drug equivalent to an abortion, because it can prevent implantation of a fertilized egg. His two pharmacists agree.

Their decision to keep the drug off their shelves came under fire in 2007, when the state Board of Pharmacy enacted a rule requiring pharmacies to stock and dispense all time-sensitive medications in demand in their community. In the case of the Olympia pharmacy, that includes emergency contraception, said Tim Church, a state Department of Health spokesman. The pharmacy's owner and employees filed suit to block the mandate.

All our family wants ... is to serve our customers in keeping with our deepest values," Stormans said in a statement issued by his attorneys.

The state argues that it has a compelling interest in protecting the right of patients to legal medication.

The conscience debate has implications for a vast number of patients. A 2007 New England Journal of Medicine study found that 14% of doctors do not believe they are obligated to tell patients about possible treatments that they personally consider morally objectionable. Nearly 30% of physicians said they had no obligation to refer patients to another provider for treatments they wouldn't offer themselves. A more recent study, published last week in the Journal of Medical Ethics, echoed the finding on referrals.

And abortion and contraception aren't the only medical services at issue. Physicians also may object to following directives from terminally ill patients to remove feeding tubes or ventilators, said Kathryn Tucker, director of legal affairs for Compassion & Choices, an advocacy group that backs physician-assisted suicide.

Entire story is here.

Standing Their Ground

by Libby Nelson

Inside Higher Ed

Originally published February 3, 2012

WASHINGTON -- At a panel discussion at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities’ annual meeting of presidents today, the presenters made one thing clear: American culture may have changed, but their institutions’ interpretation of the Bible -- which views homosexuality as immoral -- will not.

So the discussion, as described by the panelists and members of the audience, dealt not with whether colleges should change their attitudes toward gay students, but how to deal with the controversy that breaks out when students or alumni pressure a college to change.

But the fact that the session, which was closed to reporters, was held at all is an acknowledgment that CCCU colleges -- which all require professors to sign “statements of faith” in Christian doctrine, and many of which have behavioral requirements for their student body, including on sexuality -- most likely have gay students on campus and will confront difficult situations when an increasingly accepting culture clashes with the colleges’ theological beliefs.

“It’s a conversation that’s here to stay, and we want the conversation to be both honest and fair,” said Gayle Beebe, president of Westmont College.

Last year, a group of 31 gay and lesbian Westmont alumni wrote a letter to the college, saying they had lived in an environment of “doubt, loneliness and fear” while enrolled there. More than 100 additional alumni signed on in support, and more than 50 faculty members signed a letter in response, asking forgiveness for causing the students pain.

A few months later, an openly gay student at Messiah College, in Pennsylvania, told the Harrisburg Patriot-News that he planned to transfer after two semesters of bullying. Students had excluded him, he said, a professor had called him an “abomination,” he received death threats on Facebook, and his wallet, keys and student ID were stolen, among other incidents, he said.

“It was a very difficult situation,” said Kim Phipps, Messiah’s president, another member of the panel, in part because the college could not counter accusations without revealing private information about the student himself.

The entire story is here.

The Contribution of Philosophy and Psychology in the Ethical Decision Making Process

Ethical D Making

This article can be found in the public domain here.