Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Culture. Show all posts

Friday, February 23, 2024

How Did Polyamory Become So Popular?

Jennifer Wilson
The New Yorker
Originally posted 25 Dec 23

Here is an excerpt:

What are all these open couples, throuples, and polycules suddenly doing in the culture, besides one another? To some extent, art is catching up with life. Fifty-one per cent of adults younger than thirty told Pew Research, in 2023, that open marriage was “acceptable,” and twenty per cent of all Americans report experimenting with some form of non-monogamy. The extramarital “entanglements” of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith have been tabloid fodder for the past two years. (Pinkett Smith once clarified that their marriage is not “open”; rather, it is a “relationship of transparency.”) In 2020, the reality show “House Hunters,” on HGTV, saw a throuple trying to find their dream home—one with a triple-sink vanity. The same year, the city of Somerville, Massachusetts, allowed domestic partnerships to be made up of “two or more” people.

Some, like the sex therapist (and author of “Open Monogamy, A Guide to Co-Creating Your Ideal Relationship Agreement,” 2021), Tammy Nelson, have attributed the acceptance of a greater number of partners to pandemic-born domestic ennui; after being stuck with one person all day every day, the thinking goes, couples are ready to open up more than their pods. Nelson is part of a cohort of therapists, counsellors, and advice writers, including Esther Perel and the “Savage Love” columnist Dan Savage, who are encouraging married couples to think more flexibly about monogamy. Their advice has found an eager audience among the well-heeled attendees of the “ideas festival” circuit, featured in talks at Google, SXSW, and the Aspen Institute.

The new monogamy skepticism of the moneyed gets some screen time in the pandemic-era breakout hit “The White Lotus.” The show mocks the leisure class as they mope around five-star resorts in Hawaii and Sicily, stewing over love, money, and the impossibility, for people in their tax bracket, of separating the two. In the latest season, Ethan (Will Sharpe) and Harper (Aubrey Plaza) are an attractive young couple stuck in a sexless marriage—until, that is, they go on vacation with the monogamish Cameron (Theo James) and Daphne (Meghann Fahy). After Cameron and Harper have some unaccounted-for time together in a hotel room, Ethan tracks down an unbothered Daphne, lounging on the beach, to share his suspicion that something has happened between their spouses. Some momentary concern on Daphne’s face quickly morphs—in a devastatingly subtle performance by Fahy—into a sly smile. “A little mystery? It’s kinda sexy,” she assures Ethan, before luring him into a seaside cove. That night Ethan and Harper have sex, the wounds of their marriage having been healed by a little something on the side.


Here is my summary:

The article discusses the increasing portrayal and acceptance of non-monogamous relationships in contemporary culture, particularly in literature, cinema, and television. It notes that open relationships, throuples, and polyamorous arrangements are gaining prominence, reflecting changing societal attitudes. The author cites statistics and cultural examples, including a Gucci perfume ad and a plot twist in the TV series "Riverdale." The rise of non-monogamy is linked to a broader shift in societal norms, with some attributing it to pandemic-related ennui and a desire for more flexibility in relationships. The text also delves into the historical roots of polyamory, mentioning the Kerista movement and its adaptation to conservative times in the 1980s. The author concludes by expressing a desire for a more inclusive and equitable representation of polyamory, critiquing the limited perspective presented in a specific memoir discussed in the text.

Thursday, February 15, 2024

The motivating effect of monetary over psychological incentives is stronger in WEIRD cultures

Medvedev, D., Davenport, D.et al.
Nat Hum Behav (2024).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01769-5

Abstract

Motivating effortful behaviour is a problem employers, governments and nonprofits face globally. However, most studies on motivation are done in Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (WEIRD) cultures. We compared how hard people in six countries worked in response to monetary incentives versus psychological motivators, such as competing with or helping others. The advantage money had over psychological interventions was larger in the United States and the United Kingdom than in China, India, Mexico and South Africa (N = 8,133). In our last study, we randomly assigned cultural frames through language in bilingual Facebook users in India (N = 2,065). Money increased effort over a psychological treatment by 27% in Hindi and 52% in English. These findings contradict the standard economic intuition that people from poorer countries should be more driven by money. Instead, they suggest that the market mentality of exchanging time and effort for material benefits is most prominent in WEIRD cultures.


The article challenges the assumption that money universally motivates people more than other incentives. It finds that:
  • Monetary incentives were more effective than psychological interventions in WEIRD cultures (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic), like the US and UK. People in these cultures exerted more effort for money compared to social pressure or helping others.
  • In contrast, non-WEIRD cultures like China, India, Mexico, and South Africa showed a smaller advantage for money. In some cases, even social interventions like promoting cooperation were more effective than financial rewards.
  • Language can also influence the perceived value of money. In a study with bilingual Indians, those interacting in English (associated with WEIRD cultures) showed a stronger preference for money than those using Hindi.
  • These findings suggest that cultural differences play a significant role in how people respond to various motivational tools. Assuming money as the universal motivator, often based on studies conducted in WEIRD cultures, might be inaccurate and less effective in diverse settings.

Tuesday, October 31, 2023

Which Humans?

Atari, M., Xue, M. J.et al.
(2023, September 22).
https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/5b26t

Abstract

Large language models (LLMs) have recently made vast advances in both generating and analyzing textual data. Technical reports often compare LLMs’ outputs with “human” performance on various tests. Here, we ask, “Which humans?” Much of the existing literature largely ignores the fact that humans are a cultural species with substantial psychological diversity around the globe that is not fully captured by the textual data on which current LLMs have been trained. We show that LLMs’ responses to psychological measures are an outlier compared with large-scale cross-cultural data, and that their performance on cognitive psychological tasks most resembles that of people from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies but declines rapidly as we move away from these populations (r = -.70). Ignoring cross-cultural diversity in both human and machine psychology raises numerous scientific and ethical issues. We close by discussing ways to mitigate the WEIRD bias in future generations of generative language models.

My summary:

The authors argue that much of the existing literature on LLMs largely ignores the fact that humans are a cultural species with substantial psychological diversity around the globe. This diversity is not fully captured by the textual data on which current LLMs have been trained.

For example, LLMs are often evaluated on their ability to complete tasks such as answering trivia questions, generating creative text formats, and translating languages. However, these tasks are all biased towards the cultural context of the data on which the LLMs were trained. This means that LLMs may perform well on these tasks for people from certain cultures, but poorly for people from other cultures.

Atari and his co-authors argue that it is important to be aware of this bias when interpreting the results of LLM evaluations. They also call for more research on the performance of LLMs across different cultures and demographics.

One specific example they give is the use of LLMs to generate creative text formats, such as poems and code. They argue that LLMs that are trained on a dataset of text from English-speaking countries are likely to generate creative text that is more culturally relevant to those countries. This could lead to bias and discrimination against people from other cultures.

Atari and his co-authors conclude by calling for more research on the following questions:
  • How do LLMs perform on different tasks across different cultures and demographics?
  • How can we develop LLMs that are less biased towards the cultural context of their training data?
  • How can we ensure that LLMs are used in a way that is fair and equitable for all people?

Thursday, October 5, 2023

Morality beyond the WEIRD: How the nomological network of morality varies across cultures

Atari, M., Haidt, J., et al. (2023).
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Advance online publication.

Abstract

Moral foundations theory has been a generative framework in moral psychology in the last 2 decades. Here, we revisit the theory and develop a new measurement tool, the Moral Foundations Questionnaire–2 (MFQ-2), based on data from 25 populations. We demonstrate empirically that equality and proportionality are distinct moral foundations while retaining the other four existing foundations of care, loyalty, authority, and purity. Three studies were conducted to develop the MFQ-2 and to examine how the nomological network of moral foundations varies across 25 populations. Study 1 (N = 3,360, five populations) specified a refined top-down approach for measurement of moral foundations. Study 2 (N = 3,902, 19 populations) used a variety of methods (e.g., factor analysis, exploratory structural equations model, network psychometrics, alignment measurement equivalence) to provide evidence that the MFQ-2 fares well in terms of reliability and validity across cultural contexts. We also examined population-level, religious, ideological, and gender differences using the new measure. Study 3 (N = 1,410, three populations) provided evidence for convergent validity of the MFQ-2 scores, expanded the nomological network of the six moral foundations, and demonstrated the improved predictive power of the measure compared with the original MFQ. Importantly, our results showed how the nomological network of moral foundations varied across cultural contexts: consistent with a pluralistic view of morality, different foundations were influential in the network of moral foundations depending on cultural context. These studies sharpen the theoretical and methodological resolution of moral foundations theory and provide the field of moral psychology a more accurate instrument for investigating the many ways that moral conflicts and divisions are shaping the modern world.


Here's my summary:

The article examines how the moral foundations theory (MFT) of morality applies to cultures outside of the Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) world. MFT proposes that there are six universal moral foundations: care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation, and liberty/oppression. However, previous research has shown that the relative importance of these foundations can vary across cultures.

The authors of the article conducted three studies to examine the nomological network of morality (i.e., the relationships between different moral foundations) in 25 populations. They found that the nomological network of morality varied significantly across cultures. For example, in some cultures, the foundation of care was more strongly related to the foundation of fairness, while in other cultures, the foundation of loyalty was more strongly related to the foundation of authority.

The authors argue that these findings suggest that MFT needs to be revised to take into account cultural variation. They propose that the nomological network of morality is shaped by a combination of universal moral principles and local cultural norms. This means that there is no single "correct" way to think about morality, and that what is considered moral in one culture may not be considered moral in another.

The article's findings have important implications for our understanding of morality and for cross-cultural research. They suggest that we need to be careful about making assumptions about the moral beliefs of people from other cultures. We also need to be aware of the ways in which culture can influence our own moral judgments.

Monday, October 2, 2023

Research: How One Bad Employee Can Corrupt a Whole Team

Stephen Dimmock & William Gerken
Harvard Business Review
Originally posted 5 March 2018

Here is an excerpt:

In our research, we wanted to understand just how contagious bad behavior is. To do so, we examined peer effects in misconduct by financial advisors, focusing on mergers between financial advisory firms that each have multiple branches. In these mergers, financial advisors meet new co-workers from one of the branches of the other firm, exposing them to new ideas and behaviors.

We collected an extensive data set using the detailed regulatory filings available for financial advisors. We defined misconduct as customer complaints for which the financial advisor either paid a settlement of at least $10,000 or lost an arbitration decision. We observed when complaints occurred for each financial advisor, as well as for the advisor’s co-workers.

We found that financial advisors are 37% more likely to commit misconduct if they encounter a new co-worker with a history of misconduct. This result implies that misconduct has a social multiplier of 1.59 — meaning that, on average, each case of misconduct results in an additional 0.59 cases of misconduct through peer effects.

However, observing similar behavior among co-workers does not explain why this similarity occurs. Co-workers could behave similarly because of peer effects – in which workers learn behaviors or social norms from each other — but similar behavior could arise because co-workers face the same incentives or because individuals prone to making similar choices naturally choose to work together.

In our research, we wanted to understand how peer effects contribute to the spread of misconduct. We compared financial advisors across different branches of the same firm, because this allowed us to control for the effect of the incentive structure faced by all advisors in the firm. We also focused on changes in co-workers caused by mergers, because this allowed us to remove the effect of advisors choosing their co-workers. As a result, we were able to isolate peer effects.


Here is my summary: 

The article discusses a study that found that even the most honest employees are more likely to commit misconduct if they work alongside a dishonest individual. The study, which was conducted by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that financial advisors were 37% more likely to commit misconduct if they encountered a new co-worker with a history of misconduct.

The researchers believe that this is because people are more likely to learn bad behavior than good behavior. When we see someone else getting away with misconduct, it can make us think that it's okay to do the same thing. Additionally, when we're surrounded by people who are behaving badly, it can create a culture of acceptance for misconduct.

Friday, December 16, 2022

How Bullying Manifests at Work — and How to Stop It

Ludmila N. Praslova, Ron Carucci, & Caroline Stokes
Harvard Business Review
Originally posted 4 NOV 22

While the organizational costs of incivility and toxicity are well documented, bullying at work is still a problem. An estimated 48.6 million Americans, or about 30% of the workforce, are bullied at work. In India, that percentage is reported to be as high as 46% or even 55%. In Germany, it’s a lower but non-negligible 17%. Yet bullying often receives little attention or effective action.

To maximize workplace health and well-being, it’s critical to create workplaces where all employees — regardless of their position — are safe. Systemic, organizational-level approaches can help prevent the harms associated with different types of bullying.

The term workplace bullying describes a wide range of behaviors, and this complexity makes addressing it difficult and often ineffective. Here, we’ll discuss the different types of bullying, the myths that prevent leaders from addressing it, and how organizations can effectively intervene and create a safer workplace.

The Different Types of Bullying

To develop more comprehensive systems of bullying prevention and support employees’ psychological well-being, leaders first need to be aware of the different types of bullying and how they show up. We’ve identified 15 different features of bullying, based on standard typologies of aggression, data from the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI), and Ludmila’s 25+ years of research and practice focused on addressing workplace aggression, discrimination, and incivility to create healthy organizational cultures.

These 15 features can be mapped to some of the common archetypes of bullies. Take the “Screamer,” who is associated with yelling and fist-banging or the quieter but equally dangerous “Schemer” who uses Machiavellian plotting, gaslighting, and smear campaigns to strip others of resources or push them out. The Schemer doesn’t necessarily have a position of legitimate power and can present as a smiling and eager-to-help colleague or even an innocent-looking intern. While hostile motivation and overt tactics align with the Screamer bully archetype and instrumental, indirect, and covert bullying is typical of the Schemer, a bully can have multiple motives and use multiple tactics — consciously or unconsciously.

Caroline mediated a situation that illustrates both conscious and unconscious dynamics. At the reception to celebrate Ewa’s* national-level achievement award, Harper, her coworker, spent most of the time talking about her own accomplishments, then took the stage to congratulate herself on mentoring Ewa and letting her take “ownership” of their collective work. But there had been no mentorship or collective work. After overtly and directly putting Ewa down and (perhaps unconsciously) attempting to elevate herself, Harper didn’t stop. She “accidentally” removed Ewa from crucial information distribution lists — an act of indirect, covert sabotage.  

In another example, Ludmila encountered a mixed-motive, mixed-tactic situation. Charles, a manager with a strong xenophobic sentiment, regularly berated Noor, a work visa holder, behind closed doors — an act of hostile and direct bullying. Motivated by a desire to take over the high-stakes, high-visibility projects Noor had built, Charles also engaged in indirect, covert bullying by falsifying performance records to make a case for her dismissal.

Sunday, November 13, 2022

Cross-cultural variation in cooperation: A meta-analysis

Spadaro, G., Graf, C., et al.
JPSP, 123(5), 1024–1088.

Abstract

Impersonal cooperation among strangers enables societies to create valuable public goods, such as infrastructure, public services, and democracy. Several factors have been proposed to explain variation in impersonal cooperation across societies, referring to institutions (e.g., rule of law), religion (e.g., belief in God as a third-party punisher), cultural beliefs (e.g., trust) and values (e.g., collectivism), and ecology (e.g., relational mobility). We tested 17 preregistered hypotheses in a meta-analysis of 1,506 studies of impersonal cooperation in social dilemmas (e.g., the Public Goods Game) conducted across 70 societies (k = 2,271), where people make costly decisions to cooperate among strangers. After controlling for 10 study characteristics that can affect the outcome of studies, we found very little cross-societal variation in impersonal cooperation. Categorizing societies into cultural groups explained no variance in cooperation. Similarly, cultural, ancestral, and linguistic distance between societies explained little variance in cooperation. None of the cross-societal factors hypothesized to relate to impersonal cooperation explained variance in cooperation across societies. We replicated these conclusions when meta-analyzing 514 studies across 41 states and nine regions in the United States (k = 783). Thus, we observed that impersonal cooperation occurred in all societies-and to a similar degree across societies-suggesting that prior research may have overemphasized the magnitude of differences between modern societies in impersonal cooperation. We discuss the discrepancy between theory, past empirical research and the meta-analysis, address a limitation of experimental research on cooperation to study culture, and raise possible directions for future research. 

Discussion

Humans cooperate within multiple domains in daily life, such as sharing common pool resources and producing large-scale public goods. Cooperation can be expressed in many ways, including strategies to favor kin (Hamilton, 1964), allies and coalitional members (Balliet et al., 2014; Yamagishi et al., 1999), and it can even occur in interactions among strangers with no known future interactions (Delton et al., 2011; Macy & Skvoretz, 1998).  Here, we focused on this later kind of impersonal cooperation, in which people interact for the first time, they have no knowledge of their partner’s reputation, and no known possibilities of future interaction outside the experiment. Impersonal cooperation can enable societies to  develop, expand, and compete, impacting wealth and prosperity. Although impersonal cooperation occurs in all modern, industrialized, market-based societies, prior research has documented cross-societal variation in impersonal cooperation (Henrich, Ensminger, et al., 2010; Hermann et al., 2008; Romano et al., 2021). To date, several perspectives have been advanced to explain why and how impersonal cooperation varies across societies. 

Wednesday, October 19, 2022

Technology and moral change: the transformation of truth and trust

Danaher, J., Sætra, H.S. 
Ethics Inf Technol 24, 35 (2022).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-022-09661-y

Abstract

Technologies can have profound effects on social moral systems. Is there any way to systematically investigate and anticipate these potential effects? This paper aims to contribute to this emerging field on inquiry through a case study method. It focuses on two core human values—truth and trust—describes their structural properties and conceptualisations, and then considers various mechanisms through which technology is changing and can change our perspective on those values. In brief, the paper argues that technology is transforming these values by changing the costs/benefits of accessing them; allowing us to substitute those values for other, closely-related ones; increasing their perceived scarcity/abundance; and disrupting traditional value-gatekeepers. This has implications for how we study other, technologically-mediated, value changes.

(cut)

Conclusion: lessons learned

Having examined our two case studies, it remains to consider whether or not there are similarities in how technology affects trust and truth, and if there are general lessons to be learned here about how technology may impact values in the future.

The two values we have considered are structurally similar and interrelated. They are both intrinsically and instrumentally valuable. They are both epistemic and practical in nature: we value truth and trust (at least in part) because they give us access to knowledge and help us to resolve the decision problems we face on a daily basis. We also see, in both case studies, similar mechanisms of value change at work. The most interesting, to our minds, are the following:
  • Technology changes the costs associated with accessing certain values, making them less or more important as a result Digital disinformation technology increases the cost of finding out the truth, but reduces the cost of finding and reinforcing a shared identity community; reliable AI and robotics gives us an (often cheaper and more efficient) substitute for trust in humans, while still giving us access to useful cognitive, emotional and physical assistance.
  • Technology makes it easier, or more attractive to trade off or substitute some values against others Digital disinformation technology allows us to obviate the need for finding out the truth and focus on other values instead; reliable machines allow us to substitute the value of reliability for the value of trust. This is a function of the plural nature of values, their scarcity, and the changing cost structure of values caused by technology.
  • Technology can make some values seem more scarce (rare, difficult to obtain), thereby increasing their perceived intrinsic value Digital disinformation makes truth more elusive, thereby increasing its perceived value which, in turn, encourages some moral communities to increase their fixation on it; robots and AI make trust in humans less instrumentally necessary, thereby increasing the expressive value of trust in others.
  • Technology can disrupt power networks, thereby altering the social gatekeepers to value to the extent that we still care about truth, digital disinformation increases the power of the epistemic elites that can help us to access the truth; trust-free or trust-alternative technologies can disrupt the power of traditional trusted third parties (professionals, experts etc.) and redistribute power onto technology or a technological elite.

Friday, October 7, 2022

Have American jails become the inferior replacement for mental hospitals?

Matthew Rozsa
Salon.com
Originally posted 5 SEPT 22

Here is an excerpt:

"We've known for some time that this country's chief response to serious mental illness is incarceration, a fact that stands out because prisons are so clearly unsuited to treating mental illness," Wanda Bertram, Communications Strategist at Prison Policy Initiative, told Salon by email. "Our organization recently found that even though 43% of people in state prisons have been diagnosed with a mental disorder, only 26% have received some form of mental health treatment, and only 6% are currently receiving treatment."

Bertram added, "The readiness with which our justice system fast-tracks people with mental illnesses into prison, despite knowing that jail and prison settings won't make that person any better, speaks volumes about the system's ability to deliver justice."

Dr. Craig Haney, a psychologist who has studied the psychological effects of incarceration for decades and a psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, offered some insight into why America tends to incarcerate rather than help people with mental illnesses.

"The structural origins start with the history of two simultaneous trends that began in the early 1970s," Haney wrote to Salon. The first was the widespread closing of publicly-funded mental hospitals "in part on the promise that they would be replaced by more humane community-based treatment, a promise that was never kept" and the second was "the beginning of a decades-long 'tough-on-crime' era in which politicians competed with each other on who could criminalize the most things and impose the longest sentences. So we shrunk our mental health system and increased the size of our prison system."

Bertram also attributed the trend to imprison people who are mentally ill to ideological choices.

"I think the major problem is an ideology that says that if you have some kind of illness, including mental illness, you ought to be the primary person responsible for your own care," Bertram explained. "That's the ideology that props up our healthcare system, where sick people bear extraordinary costs and crushing debts. And it keeps us from asking why mental health services like therapy, psychiatry, and long-term care are not only expensive, but difficult to access." Pointing out that their report revealed roughly half of people in state prisons lacked any kind of health insurance prior to their arrest, Bertram concluded that "we continue to send people with mental disorders to prison, because there seems to be nowhere else for them to go."

Tuesday, August 2, 2022

How to end cancel culture

Jennifer Stefano
Philadelphia Inquirer
Originally posted 25 JUL 22

Here is an excerpt:

Radical politics requires radical generosity toward those with whom we disagree — if we are to remain a free and civil society that does not descend into violence. Are we not a people defined by the willingness to spend our lives fighting against what another has said, but give our lives to defend her right to say it? Instead of being hypersensitive fragilistas, perhaps we could give that good old-fashioned American paradox a try again.

But how? Start by engaging in the democratic process by first defending people’s right to be awful. Then use that right to point out just how awful someone’s words or deeds are. Accept that you have freedom of speech, not freedom from offense. A free society best holds people accountable in the arena of ideas. When we trade debate for the dehumanizing act of cancellation, we head down a dangerous path — even if the person who would be canceled has behaved in a dehumanizing way toward others.

Canceling those with opinions most people deem morally wrong and socially unacceptable (racism, misogyny) leads to a permissiveness in simply labeling speech we do not like as those very things without any reason or recourse. Worse, cancel culture is creating a society where dissenting or unpopular opinions become a risk. Canceling isn’t about debate but dehumanizing.

Speech is free. The consequences are not. Actress Constance Wu attempted suicide after she was canceled in 2019 for publicly tweeting she didn’t love her job on a hit TV show. Her words harmed no one, but she was publicly excoriated for them. Private DMs from her fellow Asian actresses telling her she was a “blight” on the Asian American community made her believe she didn’t deserve to live. Wu didn’t lose her job for her words, but she nearly lost her life.

Cancel culture does more than make the sinner pay a penance. It offers none of the healing redemption necessary for a free and civil society. In America, we have always believed in second chances. It is the basis for the bipartisan work on issues like criminal justice reform. Our achievements here have been a bright spot.

We as a civil society want to give the formerly incarcerated a second chance. How about doing the same for each other?

Friday, June 24, 2022

Leaders with Multicultural Experiences Communicate and Lead More Effectively, Especially in Multinational Teams

J. G. Lu, R. I. Swaab, A. D. Galinsky
Organization Science
Published Online: 22 Jul 2021

Abstract

In an era of globalization, it is commonly assumed that multicultural experiences foster leadership effectiveness. However, little research has systematically tested this assumption. We develop a theoretical perspective that articulates how and when multicultural experiences increase leadership effectiveness. We hypothesize that broad multicultural experiences increase individuals’ leadership effectiveness by developing their communication competence. Because communication competence is particularly important for leading teams that are more multinational, we further hypothesize that individuals with broader multicultural experiences are particularly effective when leading more versus less multinational teams. Four studies test our theory using mixed methods (field survey, archival panel, field experiments) and diverse populations (corporate managers, soccer managers, hackathon leaders) in different countries (Australia, Britain, China, America). In Study 1, corporate managers with broader multicultural experiences were rated as more effective leaders, an effect mediated by communication competence. Analyzing a 25-year archival panel of English Premier League soccer managers, Study 2 replicates the positive effect of broad multicultural experiences using a team performance measure of leadership effectiveness. Importantly, this effect was moderated by team national diversity: soccer managers with broader multicultural experiences were particularly effective when leading teams with greater national diversity. Study 3 (digital health hackathon) and Study 4 (COVID-19 policy hackathon) replicate these effects in two field experiments, in which individuals with varying levels of multicultural experiences were randomly assigned to lead hackathon teams that naturally varied in national diversity. Overall, our research suggests that broad multicultural experiences help leaders communicate more competently and lead more effectively, especially when leading multinational teams.

From the Discussion

Practical Implications

Because of the rise of globalization, individuals and organizations increasingly value and invest in multicultural experiences. However, multicultural experiences are expensive. The present research lends support to the common belief that multicultural experiences foster leadership effectiveness (Karabell 2016, Pelos 2017). Notably, our studies consistently found that the breadth (but not the depth) of multicultural experiences predicted leadership effectiveness via communication competence. This finding suggests that organizations should ensure that expatriates are exposed to a broad set of experiences. For example, when structuring international assignments, organizations should consider exposing their employees to a range of foreign postings (e.g., global rotation programs) rather than one lengthy foreign posting (Suutari and Makel ¨ a¨ 2007). Similarly, individuals may consider pursuing multinational educational programs (e.g., global MBA) that allow them to engage with different cultures.

Just as individuals’ multicultural experiences are increasingly prevalent, so are multinational teams. The
present research examined three multinational team contexts with high ecological validity and real-world
consequences. Across these contexts, we provide evidence that multinational teams perform better when
led by leaders with broad multicultural experiences.

Saturday, May 21, 2022

Cross-Cultural Variation in Cooperation: A Meta-Analysis

Spadaro, G., Graf, C., et al. (2022). 
Journal of personality and social psychology.
Advance online publication. 
https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000389

Abstract

Impersonal cooperation among strangers enables societies to create valuable public goods, such as infrastructure, public services, and democracy. Several factors have been proposed to explain variation in impersonal cooperation across societies, referring to institutions (e.g., rule of law), religion (e.g., belief in God as a third-party punisher), cultural beliefs (e.g., trust) and values (e.g., collectivism), and ecology (e.g., relational mobility). We tested 17 pre-registered hypotheses in a meta-analysis of 1,506 studies of impersonal cooperation in social dilemmas (e.g., the Public Goods Game) conducted across 70 societies (k = 2,271), where people make costly decisions to cooperate among strangers. After controlling for 10 study characteristics that can affect the outcome of studies, we found very little cross-societal variation in impersonal cooperation. Categorizing societies into cultural groups explained no variance in cooperation. Similarly, cultural, ancestral, and linguistic distance between societies explained little variance in cooperation. None of the cross-societal factors hypothesized to relate to impersonal cooperation explained variance in cooperation across societies. We replicated these conclusions when meta-analyzing 514 studies across 41 states and nine regions in the United States (k = 783). Thus, we observed that impersonal cooperation occurred in all societies – and to a similar degree across societies – suggesting that prior research may have overemphasized the magnitude of differences between modern societies in impersonal cooperation. We discuss the discrepancy between theory, past empirical research and the meta-analysis, address a limitation of experimental research on cooperation to study culture, and raise possible directions for future research.

From the Discussion

In the present meta-analysis, we found little variation in impersonal cooperation across 70 societies and 8 cultural groups. In fact, we found no significant differences in cooperation between cultural groups, which suggests there is little variation both within and between cultures. Moreover, linguistic and cultural distance between each pair of societies were only weakly related to differences in cooperation between societies, and genetic distance was not significantly associated with cooperation. If there existed substantial, systematic differences between societies in impersonal cooperation, we would expect a strong association between cultural distance and cooperation. Furthermore, we gathered all the societal indicators that have been hypothesized to explain cross-societal variation in impersonal cooperation and found that none of these were associated with cooperation. We also analyzed variation in cooperation across U.S. states and regions and found mixed evidence for variation in cooperation across the US. Contrary to what we observed within the global data, we found some variation in cooperation across U.S. regions, but only in one out of eight comparisons (i.e., South Atlantic region vs. East North Central region). That said, we did not find evidence for any between-state variation in cooperation.

Tuesday, February 22, 2022

Copy the In-group: Group Membership Trumps Perceived Reliability, Warmth, and Competence in a Social-Learning Task

Montrey, M., & Shultz, T. R. (2022). 
Psychological Science, 33(1), 165–174. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976211032224

Abstract

Surprisingly little is known about how social groups influence social learning. Although several studies have shown that people prefer to copy in-group members, these studies have failed to resolve whether group membership genuinely affects who is copied or whether group membership merely correlates with other known factors, such as similarity and familiarity. Using the minimal-group paradigm, we disentangled these effects in an online social-learning game. In a sample of 540 adults, we found a robust in-group-copying bias that (a) was bolstered by a preference for observing in-group members; (b) overrode perceived reliability, warmth, and competence; (c) grew stronger when social information was scarce; and (d) even caused cultural divergence between intermixed groups. These results suggest that people genuinely employ a copy-the-in-group social-learning strategy, which could help explain how inefficient behaviors spread through social learning and how humans maintain the cultural diversity needed for cumulative cultural evolution.

From the Discussion

In fact, if people are predisposed to copy in-group members, perhaps even when their perceived competence is low, this could help explain the spread of inefficient or even deleterious behaviors. For example, opposition to vaccination is often disseminated through highly clustered and enclosed online communities (Yuan & Crooks, 2018) who use in-group-focused language (Mitra et al., 2016). Likewise, fake news tends to spread among politically aligned individuals (Grinberg et al., 2019), and the most effective puppet accounts prefer to portray themselves as in-group members rather than as knowledgeable experts (Xia et al., 2019). Our research also sheds light on why social media platforms seem especially prone to spreading misinformation. By offering such fine-grained control over whom users observe, these platforms may spur the creation of homogeneous social networks, in which individuals are more inclined to copy others because they belong to the same social group.

Saturday, January 29, 2022

Are some cultures more mind-minded in their moral judgements than others?

Barrett H. Clark and Saxe Rebecca R.
2021. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B3762020028820200288

Abstract

Cross-cultural research on moral reasoning has brought to the fore the question of whether moral judgements always turn on inferences about the mental states of others. Formal legal systems for assigning blame and punishment typically make fine-grained distinctions about mental states, as illustrated by the concept of mens rea, and experimental studies in the USA and elsewhere suggest everyday moral judgements also make use of such distinctions. On the other hand, anthropologists have suggested that some societies have a morality that is disregarding of mental states, and have marshalled ethnographic and experimental evidence in support of this claim. Here, we argue against the claim that some societies are simply less ‘mind-minded’ than others about morality. In place of this cultural main effects hypothesis about the role of mindreading in morality, we propose a contextual variability view in which the role of mental states in moral judgement depends on the context and the reasons for judgement. On this view, which mental states are or are not relevant for a judgement is context-specific, and what appear to be cultural main effects are better explained by culture-by-context interactions.

(cut)

Summing up: Mind-mindedness in context

Our critique of cultural main effects theories, we think, is likely to apply to many domains, not just moral judgement. Dimensions of cultural difference such as the “collectivist / individualist” dimension [50]may capture some small main effects of cultural difference, but we suspect that collectivism / individualism is a parameter than can be flipped contextually within societies to a much greater degree than it varies as a main effect across societies. We may be collectivist within families, for example, but individualist at work. Similarly, we suggest that everywhere there are contexts in which one’s mental states may be deemed morally irrelevant, and others where they aren’t. Such judgements vary not just across contexts, but across individuals and time. What we argue against, then, is thinking of mindreading as a resource that is scarce in some places and plentiful in others. Instead, we should think about it as a resource that is available everywhere, and whose use in moral judgement depends on a multiplicity of factors, including social norms but also, importantly, the reasons for which people are making judgements. Cognitive resources such as theory of mind might best be seen as ingredients that can be combined in different ways across people, places, and situations. On this view, the space of moral judgements represents a mosaic of variously combined ingredients.

Tuesday, January 11, 2022

Are some cultures more mind-minded in their moral judgements than others?

Barrett HC, Saxe RR. (2021)
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 376: 20200288.

Abstract

Cross-cultural research on moral reasoning has brought to the fore the question of whether moral judgements always turn on inferences about the mental states of others. Formal legal systems for assigning blame and punishment typically make fine-grained distinctions about mental states, as illustrated by the concept of mens rea, and experimental studies in the USA and elsewhere suggest everyday moral judgements also make use of such distinctions. On the other hand, anthropologists have suggested that some societies have a morality that is disregarding of mental states, and have marshalled ethnographic and experimental evidence in support of this claim. Here, we argue against the claim that some societies are simply less ‘mind-minded’ than others about morality. In place of this cultural main effects hypothesis about the role of mindreading in morality, we propose a contextual variability view in which the role of mental states in moral judgement depends on the context and the reasons for judgement. On this view, which mental states are or are not relevant for a judgement is context-specific, and what appear to be cultural main effects are better explained by culture-by-context interactions.

From the Summing Up section

Our critique of CME theories, we think, is likely to apply to many domains, not just moral judgement. Dimensions of cultural difference such as the ‘collectivist/individualist’ dimension may capture some small main effects of cultural difference, but we suspect that collectivism/individualism is a parameter that can be flipped contextually within societies to a much greater degree than it varies as a main effect across societies. We may be collectivists within families, for example, but individualists at work. Similarly, we suggest that everywhere there are contexts in which one’s mental states may be deemed morally irrelevant and others where they are not. Such judgements vary not just across contexts, but across individuals and time.

What we argue against, then, is thinking of mindreading as a resource that is scarce in some places and plentiful in others. Instead, we should think about it as a resource that is available everywhere, and whose use in moral judgement depends on a multiplicity of factors, including social norms but also, importantly, the reasons for which people are making judgements.

Thursday, November 18, 2021

Ethics Pays: Summary for Businesses

Ethicalsystems.org
September 2021

Is good ethics good for business? Crime and sleazy behavior sometimes pay off handsomely. People would not do such things if they didn’t think they were more profitable than the alternatives.

But let us make two distinctions right up front. First, let us contrast individual employees with companies. Of course, it can benefit individual employees to lie, cheat, and steal when they can get away with it. But these benefits usually come at the expense of the firm and its shareholders, so leaders and managers should work very hard to design ethical systems that will discourage such self-serving behavior (known as the “principal-agent problem”).

The harder question is whether ethical violations committed by the firm or for the firm’s benefit are profitable. Cheating customers, avoiding taxes, circumventing costly regulations, and undermining competitors can all directly increase shareholder value.

And here we must make the second distinction: short-term vs. long-term. Of course, bad ethics can be extremely profitable in the short run. Business is a complex web of relationships, and it is easy to increase revenues or decrease costs by exploiting some of those relationships. But what happens in the long run?

Customers are happy and confident in knowing they’re dealing with an honest company. Ethical companies retain the bulk of their employees for the long-term, which reduces costs associated with turnover. Investors have peace of mind when they invest in companies that display good ethics because they feel assured that their funds are protected. Good ethics keep share prices high and protect businesses from takeovers.

Culture has a tremendous influence on ethics and its application in a business setting. A corporation’s ability to deliver ethical value is dependent on the state of its culture. The culture of a company influences the moral judgment of employees and stakeholders. Companies that work to create a strong ethical culture motivate everyone to speak and act with honesty and integrity. Companies that portray strong ethics attract customers to their products and services, and are far more likely to manage their negative environmental and social externalities well.

Friday, September 10, 2021

Why social liberals are not moral relativists

Thomas Hurka
The New Statesman
Originally published 3 March 21

Here is an excerpt:

We tend to think of morality as issuing commands and prohibitions – Moses didn’t give his people the Ten Permissions – but morality also allows things. Trivially, it lets you choose your hairstyle; there’s nothing morally wrong about having a mullet. More seriously, if you could save two strangers’ lives by sacrificing your own, morality permits you to do that, but it also permits you not to. In cases like this morality allows you to care more about your own life and so again frees you to make either of two choices. A progressive private morality simply grants more of these permissions.

And a progressive morality can perfectly well ground public duties, though of a distinctively liberal kind. It can say that whenever someone is permitted to make a choice, others are forbidden to interfere with that choice or prevent them from making it.

Thus rape is wrong in part because it prevents the other person from deciding, as they’re morally permitted to, not to have sex with someone. By the same token, though, if a state criminalises gay sex, that too prevents people from doing something morally permitted and is wrong – hence liberals’ opposition to such laws.

For liberals, everyone has the right to make certain choices in their private lives, and others are required, as a matter of public morality, to respect that right. It’s wrong to force someone to do what they’re permitted not to do. In the liberal view, just as in the conservative view, a universal public duty rests on a universal truth about private morality. But this truth is now one that permits rather than forbids things.

*   *   *   

If all this is true, why do some progressives say relativist-sounding things that invite a charge like Barr’s? They may be making, in a slightly misleading way, several claims that aren’t relativist but can sound as though they are.

By “values are relative”, for example, liberals may mean only to emphasise that people’s beliefs about morality differ, both between cultures and within a single one, and that we should take account of this in our moral thinking. Recognising this plurality can make us less prone to assume, dogmatically, that our particular moral convictions capture the whole of universal moral truth. Maybe some other culture or person has insights we lack; maybe the most adequate moral view combines some elements from ours with some from theirs.

Sometimes the differences between cultures are simply a matter of the conventional ways they express a shared moral value. In one culture people show respect for each other by taking off their hats, while in another they do so by keeping their heads covered. Here it may be true that the “right” thing to do with headgear differs between these cultures, but that’s not a relativist claim because it concerns only the arbitrary specification of a universal value of respect.

Tuesday, August 31, 2021

What Causes Unethical Behavior? A Meta-Analysis to Set an Agenda for Public Administration Research

Nicola Belle & Paola Cantarelli
(2017)
Public Administration Review,
Vol. 77, Iss. 3, pp. 327–339

Abstract

This article uses meta-analysis to synthesize 137 experiments in 73 articles on the causes of unethical behavior. Results show that exposure to in-group members who misbehave or to others who benefit from unethical actions, greed, egocentrism, self-justification, exposure to incremental dishonesty, loss aversion, challenging performance goals, or time pressure increase unethical behavior. In contrast, monitoring of employees, moral reminders, and individuals’ willingness to maintain a positive self-view decrease unethical conduct. Findings on the effect of self-control depletion on unethical behavior are mixed. Results also present subgroup analyses and several measures of study heterogeneity and likelihood of publication bias. The implications are of interest to both scholars and practitioners. The article concludes by discussing which of the factors analyzed should gain prominence in public administration research and uncovering several unexplored causes of unethical behavior.

From the Discussion

Among the factors that our meta-analyses identified as determinants of unethical behavior, the following may be elevated to prominence for public administration research and practice. First, results from the meta-analyses on social influences suggest that being exposed to corrupted colleagues may enhance the likelihood that one engages in unethical conduct. These findings are particularly relevant because “[c]orruption in the public sector hampers the efficiency of public services, undermines confidence in public institutions and increases the cost of public transactions” (OECD 2015 ). Moreover, corruption “may distort government ’ s public resource allocations” (Liu and Mikesell 2014 , 346). 

Sunday, May 9, 2021

For Whom Does Determinism Undermine Moral Responsibility? Surveying the Conditions for Free Will Across Cultures

I. Hannikainen, et. al.
Front. Psychol., 05 November 2019
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02428

Abstract

Philosophers have long debated whether, if determinism is true, we should hold people morally responsible for their actions since in a deterministic universe, people are arguably not the ultimate source of their actions nor could they have done otherwise if initial conditions and the laws of nature are held fixed. To reveal how non-philosophers ordinarily reason about the conditions for free will, we conducted a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic survey (N = 5,268) spanning twenty countries and sixteen languages. Overall, participants tended to ascribe moral responsibility whether the perpetrator lacked sourcehood or alternate possibilities. However, for American, European, and Middle Eastern participants, being the ultimate source of one’s actions promoted perceptions of free will and control as well as ascriptions of blame and punishment. By contrast, being the source of one’s actions was not particularly salient to Asian participants. Finally, across cultures, participants exhibiting greater cognitive reflection were more likely to view free will as incompatible with causal determinism. We discuss these findings in light of documented cultural differences in the tendency toward dispositional versus situational attributions.

Discussion

At the aggregate level, we found that participants blamed and punished agents whether they only lacked alternate possibilities (Miller and Feltz, 2011) or whether they also lacked sourcehood (Nahmias et al., 2005; Nichols and Knobe, 2007). Thus, echoing early findings, laypeople did not take alternate possibilities or sourcehood as necessary conditions for free will and moral responsibility.

Yet, our study also revealed a dramatic cultural difference: Throughout the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East, participants viewed the perpetrator with sourcehood (in the CI scenario) as freer and more morally responsible than the perpetrator without sourcehood (in the AS scenario). Meanwhile, South and East Asian participants evaluated both perpetrators in a strikingly similar way. We interpreted these results in light of cultural variation in dispositional versus situational attributions (Miller, 1984; Morris and Peng, 1994; Choi et al., 1999; Chiu et al., 2000). From a dispositionist perspective, participants may be especially attuned to the absence of sourcehood: When an agent is the source of their action, people may naturally conjure dispositionist explanations that refer to her goals, desires (e.g., because “she wanted a new life”) or character (e.g., because “she is ruthless”). In contrast, when actions result from a causal chain originating at the beginning of the universe, explanations of this sort – implying sourcehood – seem particularly unsatisfactory and incomplete. In contrast, from a situationist perspective, whether the agent could be seen as the source of her action may be largely irrelevant: Instead, a situationist may think of others’ behavior as the product of extrinsic pressures – from momentary upheaval, to the way they were raised, social norms or fate – and thus perceive both agents, in the CI and AS cases, as similar in matters of free will and moral responsibility.

Friday, December 25, 2020

Want to be Happy, Be Grateful

David Steindl-Rast
Ted Talk
Originally presented June 2013

The one thing all humans have in common is that each of us wants to be happy, says Brother David Steindl-Rast, a monk and interfaith scholar. And happiness, he suggests, is born from gratitude. An inspiring lesson in slowing down, looking where you're going, and above all, being grateful.