How do you punish a criminal robot?

Christopher Markou
The Independent
Originally posted on April 20, 2017

Here is an excerpt:

Among the many things that must now be considered is what role and function the law will play. Expert opinions differ wildly on the likelihood and imminence of a future where sufficiently advanced robots walk among us, but we must confront the fact that autonomous technology with the capacity to cause harm is already around. Whether it’s a military drone with a full payload, a law enforcement robot exploding to kill a dangerous suspect or something altogether more innocent that causes harm through accident, error, oversight, or good ol’ fashioned stupidity.

There’s a cynical saying in law that “wheres there’s blame, there’s a claim”. But who do we blame when a robot does wrong? This proposition can easily be dismissed as something too abstract to worry about. But let’s not forget that a robot was arrested (and released without charge) for buying drugs; and Tesla Motors was absolved of responsibility by the American National Highway Traffic Safety Administration when a driver was killed in a crash after his Tesla was in autopilot.

While problems like this are certainly peculiar, history has a lot to teach us. For instance, little thought was given to who owned the sky before the Wright Brothers took the Kitty Hawk for a joyride. Time and time again, the law is presented with these novel challenges. And despite initial overreaction, it got there in the end. Simply put: law evolves.

The article is here.

Moral injury in U.S. combat veterans: Results from the national health and resilience in veterans study

Blair E. Wisco Ph.D., Brian P. Marx Ph.D., Casey L. May B.S., Brenda Martini M.A., and others
Depression and Anxiety

Abstract

Background

Combat exposure is associated with increased risk of mental disorders and suicidality. Moral injury, or persistent effects of perpetrating or witnessing acts that violate one's moral code, may contribute to mental health problems following military service. The pervasiveness of potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs) among U.S. combat veterans, and what factors are associated with PMIEs in this population remains unknown.
Methods

Data were analyzed from the National Health and Resilience in Veterans Study (NHRVS), a contemporary and nationally representative survey of a population-based sample of U.S. veterans, including 564 combat veterans, collected September–October 2013. Types of PMIEs (transgressions by self, transgressions by others, and betrayal) were assessed using the Moral Injury Events Scale. Psychiatric and functional outcomes were assessed using established measures.
Results

A total of 10.8% of combat veterans acknowledged transgressions by self, 25.5% endorsed transgressions by others, and 25.5% endorsed betrayal. PMIEs were moderately positively associated with combat severity (β = .23, P < .001) and negatively associated with white race, college education, and higher income (βs = .11–.16, Ps < .05). Transgressions by self were associated with current mental disorders (OR = 1.65, P < .001) and suicidal ideation (OR = 1.67, P < .001); betrayal was associated with postdeployment suicide attempts (OR = 1.99, P < .05), even after conservative adjustment for covariates, including combat severity.
Conclusions

A significant minority of U.S combat veterans report PMIEs related to their military service. PMIEs are associated with risk for mental disorders and suicidality, even after adjustment for sociodemographic variables, trauma and combat exposure histories, and past psychiatric disorders.

The article is here.

A cleansing fire: Moral outrage alleviates guilt and buffers threats to one’s moral identity

Rothschild, Z.K. & Keefer, L.A.
Motiv Emot (2017). doi:10.1007/s11031-017-9601-2

Abstract

Why do people express moral outrage? While this sentiment often stems from a perceived violation of some moral principle, we test the counter-intuitive possibility that moral outrage at third-party transgressions is sometimes a means of reducing guilt over one’s own moral failings and restoring a moral identity. We tested this guilt-driven account of outrage in five studies examining outrage at corporate labor exploitation and environmental destruction. Study 1 showed that personal guilt uniquely predicted moral outrage at corporate harm-doing and support for retributive punishment. Ingroup (vs. outgroup) wrongdoing elicited outrage at corporations through increased guilt, while the opportunity to express outrage reduced guilt (Study 2) and restored perceived personal morality (Study 3). Study 4 tested whether effects were due merely to downward social comparison and Study 5 showed that guilt-driven outrage was attenuated by an affirmation of moral identity in an unrelated context.

The article is here.

The phenomenon of “unethical amnesia”

Francesca Gino and Maryam Kouchaki
Quartz
Originally published December 29, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

In fact, psychological research on morality shows that we hold an overly optimistic view of our capacity to adhere to ethical standards. We believe that we are intrinsically more moral than others, that we will behave more ethically than others in the future, and that transgressions committed by others are morally worse than our own.

So, how do these beliefs of our moral selves play out in our day-to-day actions? As researchers who frequently study how people who care about morality often behave dishonestly, we decided to find out.

Unethical amnesia

One key result of our research is that people engage in unethical behavior repeatedly over time because their memory of their dishonest actions gets obfuscated over time. In fact, our research shows that people are more likely to forget the details of their own unethical acts compared with other incidents, including neutral, negative, or positive events, as well as the unethical actions of others.

The article is here.

The Interrogation Decision-Making Model: A General Theoretical Framework for Confessions.

Yang, Yueran; Guyll, Max; Madon, Stephanie
Law and Human Behavior, Oct 20 , 2016.

This article presents a new model of confessions referred to as the interrogation decision-making model. This model provides a theoretical umbrella with which to understand and analyze suspects’ decisions to deny or confess guilt in the context of a custodial interrogation. The model draws upon expected utility theory to propose a mathematical account of the psychological mechanisms that not only underlie suspects’ decisions to deny or confess guilt at any specific point during an interrogation, but also how confession decisions can change over time. Findings from the extant literature pertaining to confessions are considered to demonstrate how the model offers a comprehensive and integrative framework for organizing a range of effects within a limited set of model parameters.

The article is here.

Clean eating and dirty burgers: how food became a matter of morals

Julian Baggini
The Guardian
Originally published July 17, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

Perhaps the clearest proof that the way we talk about food is saturated with moralism is the ubiquity of the term “guilt”. Marketing departments have seen the power of this and promoted “guilt-free” snacks and treats. This promises an escape from self-recrimination but simply reinforces it by suggesting that eating the “wrong” kinds of foods does and should make you feel guilty. Hence Madeleine Shaw’s Ready Steady Glow contains a section on “self-love” which includes “forgiveness”, begging the question as to why exactly we need to forgive.

These ways of talking are so embedded in our culture that it is tempting to think they are natural and harmless. But they are neither. The writer Bee Wilson has examined the way we learn to eat from birth. “The moralising language around food encourages us to eat in ways which are both less pleasurable,” she told me, “and also actually less healthy.”

The article is here.

War Wounds That Time Alone Can't Heal

by Jane E. Brody
The New York Times
Originally published June 6, 2016

Here are two excerpts:
Therapists both within and outside the Department of Veterans Affairs increasingly recognize moral injury as the reason so many returning vets are self-destructive and are not helped, or only partly helped, by established treatments for PTSD.

Moral injury has some of the symptoms of PTSD, especially anger, depression, anxiety, nightmares, insomnia and self-medication with drugs or alcohol. And it may benefit from some of the same treatments. But moral injury has an added burden of guilt, grief, shame, regret, sorrow and alienation that requires a very different approach to reach the core of a sufferer’s psyche.

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Therapists who study and treat moral injury have found that no amount of medication can relieve the pain of trying to live with an unbearable moral burden. They say those suffering from moral injury contribute significantly to the horrific toll of suicide among returning vets — estimated as high as 18 to 22 a day in the United States, more than the number lost in combat.

The article is here.

A cultural look at moral purity: wiping the face clean

Lee SWS, Tang H, Wan J, Mai X and Liu C
Front. Psychol. (2015) 6:577.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00577

Abstract

Morality is associated with bodily purity in the custom of many societies. Does that imply moral purity is a universal psychological phenomenon? Empirically, it has never been examined, as all prior experimental data came from Western samples. Theoretically, we suggest the answer is not so straightforward—it depends on the kind of universality under consideration. Combining perspectives from cultural psychology and embodiment, we predict a culture-specific form of moral purification. Specifically, given East Asians' emphasis on the face as a representation of public self-image, we hypothesize that facial purification should have particularly potent moral effects in a face culture. Data show that face-cleaning (but not hands-cleaning) reduces guilt and regret most effectively against a salient East Asian cultural background. It frees East Asians from guilt-driven prosocial behavior. In the wake of their immorality, they find a face-cleaning product especially appealing and spontaneously choose to wipe their face clean. These patterns highlight both culturally variable and universal aspects of moral purification. They further suggest an organizing principle that informs the vigorous debate between embodied and amodal perspectives.

The article is here.

Moral Emotions: Reclaiming the Evidence of the Heart

Book reviewed by John J. Drummond, Fordham University

Anthony J. Steinbock, Moral Emotions: Reclaiming the Evidence of the Heart, Northwestern University Press, 2014, 339pp., $34.95 (pbk), ISBN 9780810129566.

Here is an excerpt:

In this context, the other emotions of self-givenness -- shame and guilt -- function both as self-critique and as challenges to pride. Shame and guilt are diremptive experiences that clearly reveal the interpersonality of one's personhood. In shame "I am not only given as exposed before another, but as receiving myself from another" (76). Shame self-critically apprehends a loss of self-value, but, more importantly, shame reorients the self toward its positive value insofar as it motivates one to modify one's self-understanding of who one is. This self-revelation is what enables shame to serve as a critique of the prideful self, and its futurity points to a Myself as what I ought to be and can be. Shame thereby annuls pride and orients us toward an interpersonal (even if only myself and Myself) normativity. Guilt similarly involves a diremption, but guilt focuses not on what I am but what I did. I stand before you accused by you and responsible to you for what I have done and will do.

The entire book review is here.

Tipping the scales: Conciliatory behavior and the morality of self-forgiveness

By Thomas Carpenter, Robert Carlisle, and Jo-Ann Tsang
The Journal of Positive Psychology
Volume 9, Issue 5, 2014

Abstract

Two studies examined whether conciliatory behavior aids self-forgiveness and whether it does so in part by making it seem more morally appropriate. Participants in Study 1 (n = 269) completed an offense-recall procedure; participants in Study 2 (n = 208) imagined a social transgression under conciliatory behavior (yes, no) and receipt of forgiveness (no, ambiguous, yes) conditions. Conciliatory behavior predicted (Study 1) and caused (Study 2) elevated self-forgiveness and increased perceptions of the moral appropriateness of self-forgiveness. Perceived morality consistently mediated the effect of conciliatory behavior on self-forgiveness. Received forgiveness and guilt were considered as additional mechanisms, but received mixed support. Results suggest that conciliatory behavior may influence self-forgiveness in part by satisfying moral prerequisites for self-forgiveness.

The article is here, behind a paywall.

If Trauma Victims Forget, What Is Lost to Society?

A pill to dampen memories stirs hope and worry.

By Emily Anthes
Nautilus
Originally posted July 17, 2014

Here is an excerpt:

However, promising studies have also stirred controversy, with some bioethicists warning that memory-dulling drugs could have profound, unintended consequences for our psyches and our society. The debate is raising tricky questions about what—and who—memory is for. The European Union’s highest court recently ruled that, at least when it comes to the Internet, we all have the “right to be forgotten” for things no longer relevant. Do we also have the right to forget?

The entire article is here.

'Bad' video game behavior increases players' moral sensitivity

By Pat Donovan
Medical Xpress
Originally published June 27, 2014

New evidence suggests heinous behavior played out in a virtual environment can lead to players' increased sensitivity toward the moral codes they violated.

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"Rather than leading players to become less moral," Grizzard says, "this research suggests that violent video-game play may actually lead to increased moral sensitivity. This may, as it does in real life, provoke players to engage in voluntary behavior that benefits others."

The entire article is here.

Irresponsible brains? The role of consciousness in guilt

By Neil Levy
The Conversation
Originally posted June 5, 2014

Can human beings still be held responsible in the age of neuroscience?

Some people say no: they say once we understand how the brain processes information and thereby causes behaviour, there’s nothing left over for the person to do.

This argument has not impressed philosophers, who say there doesn’t need to be anything left for the person to do in order to be responsible. People are not anything over and above the causal systems involved in information processing, we are our brains (plus some other, equally physical stuff).

The entire article is here.

Doctors shame women more than men about their bodies and behavior

By Rachel Feltman
Quartz
Originally published January 16, 2014

Here is an excerpt:

Both studies found that women were significantly more likely to experience these incidents than men were: In the first cohort, which was made up of university students, 26% of women reported being “shamed” by a physician, while only 15% of the men surveyed said the same. The most common topics of this shaming were sex, dental hygiene, and weight. The second study, which included a much broader age and demographic range, showed similar results: While only 38% of men reported feeling guilt or shame because of something their physician said, 53% of women could recall such behavior.

The entire article is here.

Guilt and Moral Character

Academic Minute

Inside Higher Ed

Originally published January 4, 2012

In today’s Academic Minute, Carnegie Mellon University's Taya Cohen analyzes why our moral nature may depend on our response to guilt. Cohen is an assistant professor of organizational behavior and theory in the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon. Find out more about her here.

Guilt Proneness and Moral Character

By Taya R. Cohen, A. T. Panter and Nazli Turan
Current Directions in Psychological Science 
October 2012 21: 355-359

Abstract

Guilt proneness is a personality trait indicative of a predisposition to experience negative feelings about personal wrongdoing, even when the wrongdoing is private. It is characterized by the anticipation of feeling bad about committing transgressions rather than by guilty feelings in a particular moment or generalized guilty feelings that occur without an eliciting event. Our research has revealed that guilt proneness is an important character trait because knowing a person’s level of guilt proneness helps us to predict the likelihood that person will behave unethically. Web-based studies of adults across the United States have shown that people who score high on measures of guilt proneness (compared to low scorers) make fewer unethical business decisions, commit fewer delinquent behaviors, and behave more honestly when making economic decisions. In the workplace, guilt-prone employees are less likely to engage in counterproductive behaviors that harm their organization.

The entire article is here.

A review of the research article is here.