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 Self-Interest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Self-Interest. Show all posts

Friday, October 20, 2023

Competition and moral behavior: A meta-analysis of forty-five crowd-sourced experimental designs

Huber, C., Dreber, A., et al. (2023).
PNAS of the United States of America, 120(23).

Abstract

Does competition affect moral behavior? This fundamental question has been debated among leading scholars for centuries, and more recently, it has been tested in experimental studies yielding a body of rather inconclusive empirical evidence. A potential source of ambivalent empirical results on the same hypothesis is design heterogeneity—variation in true effect sizes across various reasonable experimental research protocols. To provide further evidence on whether competition affects moral behavior and to examine whether the generalizability of a single experimental study is jeopardized by design heterogeneity, we invited independent research teams to contribute experimental designs to a crowd-sourced project. In a large-scale online data collection, 18,123 experimental participants were randomly allocated to 45 randomly selected experimental designs out of 95 submitted designs. We find a small adverse effect of competition on moral behavior in a meta-analysis of the pooled data. The crowd-sourced design of our study allows for a clean identification and estimation of the variation in effect sizes above and beyond what could be expected due to sampling variance. We find substantial design heterogeneity—estimated to be about 1.6 times as large as the average standard error of effect size estimates of the 45 research designs—indicating that the informativeness and generalizability of results based on a single experimental design are limited. Drawing strong conclusions about the underlying hypotheses in the presence of substantive design heterogeneity requires moving toward much larger data collections on various experimental designs testing the same hypothesis.

Significance

Using experiments involves leeway in choosing one out of many possible experimental designs. This choice constitutes a source of uncertainty in estimating the underlying effect size which is not incorporated into common research practices. This study presents the results of a crowd-sourced project in which 45 independent teams implemented research designs to address the same research question: Does competition affect moral behavior? We find a small adverse effect of competition on moral behavior in a meta-analysis involving 18,123 experimental participants. Importantly, however, the variation in effect size estimates across the 45 designs is substantially larger than the variation expected due to sampling errors. This “design heterogeneity” highlights that the generalizability and informativeness of individual experimental designs are limited.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the research:
  • Competition can have a small, but significant, negative effect on moral behavior.
  • This effect is likely due to the fact that competition can lead to people being more self-interested and less concerned about the well-being of others.
  • The findings of this research have important implications for our understanding of how competition affects moral behavior.

Thursday, September 14, 2023

Who supports redistribution? Replicating and refining effects of compassion, malicious envy, and self-interest

Lin, C.A., & Bates, T.C.
(2023). Evolution and Human Behavior

Abstract

Debate over wealth redistribution plays a prominent role in society, but the causes of differences in support for redistribution remain contested. A recent three-person two-situation model suggests these differences are shaped by evolved motivational systems of self-interest, compassion, and dispositional envy. We conducted a close replication testing this prediction, all subjects were British, recruited from an online subject pool. Study 1 (N = 206) confirmed the roles of self-interest (β = 0.20) and compassion for others (β = 0.37), as well as a predicted null effect of procedural fairness. Dispositional envy was non-significant (β = 0.06). In study 2 (N = 304), we tested whether it was better to conceptualize envy as being two separate emotions, benign envy and malicious envy. A significant effect of malicious envy was found (β = 0.13) and no significant effect of benign envy (β = −0.06). Study 3 (N = 501) closely replicated this improved model, confirming significant effects of compassion (β = 0.40), self-interest (β = 0.21), and malicious envy (β = 0.15), accounting for one third of variance in support for redistribution. These results support the role of evolved motivational systems to explain and improve important aspects of contemporary economic redistribution.


The authors conducted three studies to test their hypotheses. In Study 1, they replicated the findings of a previous study that found that compassion, malicious envy, and self-interest all predict support for redistribution. In Study 2, they developed a new measure of envy and found that this measure also predicted support for redistribution. In Study 3, they found that left-political support was associated with higher support for redistribution.

The authors conclude that their findings support the hypothesis that compassion, malicious envy, and self-interest all play a role in shaping people's support for wealth redistribution. They suggest that future research should examine the relative importance of these three motivational systems in different contexts.

Here are some additional key points from the article:
  • The authors propose a model of wealth redistribution that is based on three motivational systems: compassion, malicious envy, and self-interest.
  • They conducted three studies to test their hypotheses.
  • The findings of the studies support the hypothesis that compassion, malicious envy, and self-interest all play a role in shaping people's support for wealth redistribution.
  • The authors suggest that future research should examine the relative importance of these three motivational systems in different contexts.

Tuesday, September 12, 2023

Market Cognition: How Exchange Norms Alter Social Experience

Zaki, J., Neumann, E., & Baltiansky, D. (2021).
Current Directions in Psychological Science, 
30(3), 236–241.

Abstract

Market exchange and the ideologies that accompany it pervade human social interaction. How does this affect people’s beliefs about themselves, each other, and human nature? Here we describe market cognition as social inferences and behaviors that are intensified by market contexts. We focus on prosociality and two countervailing ways in which market cognition can affect it. On the one hand, marketplaces incentivize individuals to behave prosocially in order to be chosen as exchange partners—thereby generalizing cooperation and trust beyond group boundaries. On the other hand, markets encourage a view of people as self-interested and can thus taint people’s interpretation of prosocial actions and erode more communal forms of cooperation. We close by considering how market cognition can become self-fulfilling, altering relationships, communities, and cultural norms.


Background: Market exchange is a ubiquitous feature of modern life, and it has been argued that this can have a profound impact on our social cognition.

Research question: The authors of this article investigated how market norms and beliefs can alter our social inferences and behaviors.

Conclusions: The authors concluded that market cognition can have a self-fulfilling prophecy effect. When we believe that others are self-interested, we are more likely to act selfishly ourselves. This can then lead others to believe that we are self-interested, and so on.

Monday, May 1, 2023

Take your ethics and shove it! Narcissists' angry responses to ethical leadership

Fox, F. R., Smith, M. B., & Webster, B. D. (2023). 
Personality and Individual Differences, 204, 112032.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2022.112032

Abstract

Evoking the agentic model of narcissism, the present study contributes to understanding the nuanced responses to ethical leadership that result from the non-normative, dark personality trait of narcissism. We draw from affective events theory to understand why narcissists respond to ethical leadership with feelings of anger, which then results in withdrawal behaviors. We establish internal validity by testing our model via an experimental design. Next, we establish external validity by testing our theoretical model in a field study of university employees. Together, results from the studies suggest anger mediates the positive relationship between narcissism and withdrawal under conditions of high ethical leadership. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.

From the Introduction:

Ethical leaders model socially acceptable behavior that is prosocial in nature while matching an individual moral-compass with the good of the group (Brown et al., 2005). Ethical leadership is defined as exalting the moral person (i.e., being an ethical example, fair treatment) and the moral manager (i.e., encourage normative behavior, discourage unethical behavior), and has been shown to be related to several beneficial organizational outcomes (Den Hartog, 2015; Mayer et al., 2012). The construct of ethical leadership is not only based on moral/ethical principles, but overtly promoting normative communally beneficial ideals and establishing guidelines for acceptable behavior (Bedi et al., 2016; Brown et al., 2005). Ethical leaders cultivate a reputation founded upon doing the right thing, treating others fairly, and thinking about the common good.

As a contextual factor, ethical leadership presents a situation where employees are presented with expectations and clear standards for normative behavior. Indeed, ethical leaders, by their behavior, convey what behavior is expected, rewarded, and punished (Brown et al., 2005). In other words, ethical leaders set the standard for behavior in the organization and are effective at establishing fair and transparent processes for rewarding performance. Consequently, ethical leadership has been shown to be positively related to task performance and citizenship behavior and negatively related to deviant behaviors (Peng & Kim, 2020).


This research examines how narcissistic individuals respond to ethical leadership, which is characterized by fairness, transparency, and concern for the well-being of employees. The study found that narcissistic individuals are more likely to respond with anger and hostility to ethical leadership compared to non-narcissistic individuals. The researchers suggest that this may be due to the fact that narcissists prioritize their own self-interests and are less concerned with the well-being of others. Ethical leadership, which promotes the well-being of employees, may therefore be perceived as a threat to their self-interests, leading to a negative response.

The study also found that when narcissists were in a leadership position, they were less likely to engage in ethical leadership behaviors themselves. This suggests that narcissistic individuals may not only be resistant to ethical leadership but may also be less likely to exhibit these behaviors themselves. The findings of this research have important implications for organizations and their leaders, as they highlight the challenges of promoting ethical leadership in the presence of narcissistic individuals.

Sunday, November 27, 2022

Towards a Social Psychology of Cynicism

Neumann, E., & Zaki, j. (2022, September 13).
https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/gjm8c

Abstract

Cynicism is the attitude that people are primarily motivated by self-interest. It tracks numerous negative outcomes, and yet many people are cynical. To understand this “cynicism paradox,” we review and call for more social psychological work on how cynicism spreads, with implications for how we might slow it down.

The Cynicism Paradox

Out of almost 8,000 respondents from 41 countries, many agree that “powerful people tend to exploit others” or that “kind-hearted people usually suffer losses”. This indicates widespread cynicism, the attitude that people are primarily motivated by self-interest, often accompanied by emotions such as contempt, anger, and distress, and antagonistic interactions with others. What explains such cynicism? Perhaps it reflects a realistic perception of the suffering caused by human self-interest. But workin social psychology regularly demonstrates that attitudes are not always perfect  mirrors of reality.  We will argue  that  people  often  overestimate self-interest,  create  it through their expectations, or overstate their own to not appear naïve. Cynicism rises when people witness self-interest, but social psychology –so far relatively quiet on the topic –can explain why they get trapped in this worldview even when it stops tracking reality.

Cynicism is related, but not reducible to, a lack of trust. Trust is often defined as accepting vulnerability based on positive expectations of others. Generalized trust implies a general tendency to  have  positive  expectations  of  others,  and  shares  with  cynicism  the  tendency  to  judge  the character of a whole group of people. But cynicism is more than reduced positive expectations.It entails a strongly negative view of human nature. The intensity of cynicism’s hostility further differentiates it from mere generalized distrust. Finally, while people can trust and distrust others’ competence,  integrity,  and  predictability,  cynicism  usually  focuses  on  judgments  of  moral character.  This  differentiates  cynicism  from  mere  pessimism,  which  encompasses  any  negative beliefs about the future, moral or non-moral alike. 


Direct applications to psychotherapy.

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Morality has been stripped from public life. Here’s a four-step plan to revive it

Boris Johnson and Donald TrumpRoger Paxton
TheGuardian.com
Originally posted 13 Sept 20

Here is an excerpt:

From the top down, public morality is corroded. If morality, not to mention competence, were valued by the electorate, the approval ratings of Boris Johnson (and Donald Trump) would surely have plummeted, but they haven’t. As others have noted, for many people truth has become unimportant. Selfishness is assumed and encouraged, and opponents, dissenters and people seen as “other” are denigrated and worse. The most important thing is one’s own short-term interest.

What can be done about the crisis? Of course a new government is needed, but even if a Labour government is elected, the divisions and the damage done to public morality will need to be repaired. Just as there is a need to promote physical and mental wellbeing, so morality could be promoted by means of the concept of moral wellbeing.

For physical wellbeing, we have the dietary advice of five-a-day; for mental wellbeing the New Economics Foundation’s five ways to wellbeing, as used by the NHS. For moral wellbeing there is a similar framework that could be useful: the psychological model developed by James Rest, outlining the four components of moral reasoning.

This is a framework for improving thoughtfulness and clarity about moral matters. The first stage is moral sensitivity – recognising when an issue is one of morality, rather than a personal preference or practicality. The second component is moral reasoning. Having identified that a question is one of right and wrong, you then decide what the right thing to do would be. Third comes moral motivation – acknowledging other interests and motives that influence your thinking about the issue, and then weighing up the conflicting motives. The fourth and final stage is moral implementation, which means bringing moral reasoning and moral motivation together to make and act on a decision.

The information is here.

Saturday, June 6, 2020

Motivated misremembering of selfish decisions

Carlson, R.W., Maréchal, M.A., Oud, B. et al.
Nature Communications 11, 2100 (2020).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-15602-4

Abstract

People often prioritize their own interests, but also like to see themselves as moral. How do individuals resolve this tension? One way to both pursue personal gain and preserve a moral self-image is to misremember the extent of one’s selfishness. Here, we test this possibility. Across five experiments (N = 3190), we find that people tend to recall being more generous in the past than they actually were, even when they are incentivized to recall their decisions accurately. Crucially, this motivated misremembering effect occurs chiefly for individuals whose choices violate their own fairness standards, irrespective of how high or low those standards are. Moreover, this effect disappears under conditions where people no longer perceive themselves as responsible for their fairness violations. Together, these findings suggest that when people’s actions fall short of their personal standards, they may misremember the extent of their selfishness, thereby potentially warding off threats to their moral self-image.

From the Discussion

Specifically, these findings suggest that those who violate (as opposed to uphold) their personal standards misremember the extent of their selfishness. Moreover, they highlight the key motivational role of perceived responsibility for norm violations—consistent with classic accounts from social psychology, and recent evidence from experimental economics. However, since we focused specifically on those who reported no responsibility, it is also conceivable that other factors might have differed between the participants who felt responsible and those who did not.

We interpret these results as evidence of motivated memory distortion, however, an alternative account would hold that these individuals were aware of their true level of generosity at recall, yet were willing to pay a cost to claim having been more generous. While this account is not inconsistent with prior work, it should be less likely in a context which is anonymous, involves no future interaction with any partners, and requires memories to be verified by an experimenter. Accordingly, we found little to no effect of trait social desirability on peoples’ reported memories. Together, these points suggest that people were actually misremembering their choices, rather than consciously lying about them.

The research is here.

Thursday, April 2, 2020

Social Distancing as a Moral Dilemma

E. Litvack
U. A. News
Originally posted 31 March 20

Here is an excerpt:

Q: At this point, is social distancing a moral imperative?

This is an interesting philosophical question. A moral imperative is a command to act in a certain way, which everyone should follow, and, in order to invoke one, we need to explain what makes a particular action right or morally good.

A: In the context of the current health crisis, we can plausibly make the claim that it is a morally good state of affairs if we save the greatest number of lives possible. Not everyone would agree with that claim, but I'll leave that argument aside for now and return to it later. For now, let's assume that promoting health and saving lives is a morally good goal for society. Given that premise – if we also accept the empirical evidence, which suggests that social distancing is a means to halt the spread of the virus – it's easy to see how one would defend their judgment that it is morally wrong not to practice social distancing.

Q: How might someone argue that saving lives isn't a moral imperative?

A: Some people might argue that there is a naturalistic and evolutionary reason to let the virus take its course. It would reduce human population, which, in the long run, could be a good thing in terms of having more resources for fewer people. Notice one thing this view entails, though: The person who holds it must be willing to accept that they or their loved ones might be among those who contribute to the population reduction.

Likewise, some might argue that certain people have more value than others and therefore deserve to live while others do not. This would require a set of criteria by which to judge the value of a life, and unless someone – or some entity – creates that criteria by fiat, then to define "a valuable life" requires us to circle right back around to our original premise.

The info is here.

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Profit Versus Prejudice: Harnessing Self-Interest to Reduce In-Group Bias

Stagnaro, M. N., Dunham, Y., & Rand, D. G. (2018).
Social Psychological and Personality Science, 9(1), 50–58.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550617699254

Abstract

We examine the possibility that self-interest, typically thought to undermine social welfare, might reduce in-group bias. We compared the dictator game (DG), where participants unilaterally divide money between themselves and a recipient, and the ultimatum game (UG), where the recipient can reject these offers. Unlike the DG, there is a self-interested motive for UG giving: If participants expect the rejection of unfair offers, they have a monetary incentive to be fair even to out-group members. Thus, we predicted substantial bias in the DG but little bias in the UG. We tested this hypothesis in two studies (N = 3,546) employing a 2 (in-group/out-group, based on abortion position) × 2 (DG/UG) design. We observed the predicted significant group by game interaction, such that the substantial in-group favoritism observed in the DG was almost entirely eliminated in the UG: Giving the recipient bargaining power reduced the premium offered to in-group members by 77.5%.

Discussion
Here we have provided evidence that self-interest has the potential to override in-group bias based on a salient and highly charged real-world grouping (abortion stance). In the DG, where participants had the power to offer whatever they liked, we saw clear evidence of behavior favoring in-group members. In the UG, where the recipient could reject the offer, acting on such biases had the potential to severely reduce earnings. Participants anticipated this, as shown by their expectations of partner behavior, and made fair offers to both in-group and out-group participants.

Traditionally, self-interest is considered a negative force in intergroup relations. For example, an individual might give free reign to a preference for interacting with similar others, and even be willing to pay a cost to satisfy those preferences, resulting in what has been called “taste-based” discrimination (Becker, 1957). Although we do not deny that such discrimination can (and often does) occur, we suggest that in the right context, the costs it can impose serve as a disincentive. In particular, when strategic concerns are heightened, as they are in multilateral interactions where the parties must come to an agreement and failing to do so is both salient and costly (such as the UG), self-interest has the opportunity to mitigate biased behavior. Here, we provide one example of such a situation: We find that participants successfully withheld bias in the UG, making equally fair offers to both in-group and out-group recipients.

Thursday, July 11, 2019

Civic honesty around the globe

Alain Cohn, Michel André Maréchal, David Tannenbaum, & Christian Lukas Zünd
Science  20 Jun 2019:
DOI: 10.1126/science.aau8712

Abstract

Civic honesty is essential to social capital and economic development, but is often in conflict with material self-interest. We examine the trade-off between honesty and self-interest using field experiments in 355 cities spanning 40 countries around the globe. We turned in over 17,000 lost wallets with varying amounts of money at public and private institutions, and measured whether recipients contacted the owner to return the wallets. In virtually all countries citizens were more likely to return wallets that contained more money. Both non-experts and professional economists were unable to predict this result. Additional data suggest our main findings can be explained by a combination of altruistic concerns and an aversion to viewing oneself as a thief, which increase with the material benefits of dishonesty.

Here is the conclusion:

Our findings also represent a unique data set for examining cross-country differences in civic honesty. Honesty is a key component of social capital, and here we provide an objective measure to supplement the large body of work that has traditionally examined social capital using subjective survey measures. Using average response rates across countries, we find substantial variation in rates of civic honesty, ranging from 14% to 76%. This variation largely persists even when controlling for a country’s gross domestic product, suggesting that other factors besides country wealth are also at play. In the supplementary materials, we provide an analysis suggesting that economically favorable geographic conditions, inclusive political institutions, national education, and cultural values that emphasize moral norms extending beyond one’s in-group are also positively associated with rates of civic honesty. Future research is needed to identify how these and other factors may contribute to societal differences in honest behavior.

The research is here.

Saturday, June 22, 2019

Morality and Self-Control: How They are Intertwined, and Where They Differ

Wilhelm Hofmann, Peter Meindl, Marlon Mooijman, & Jesse Graham
PsyArXiv Preprints
Last edited November 18, 2018

Abstract

Despite sharing conceptual overlap, morality and self-control research have led largely separate lives. In this article, we highlight neglected connections between these major areas of psychology. To this end, we first note their conceptual similarities and differences. We then show how morality research, typically emphasizing aspects of moral cognition and emotion, may benefit from incorporating motivational concepts from self-control research. Similarly, self-control research may benefit from a better understanding of the moral nature of many self-control domains. We place special focus on various components of self-control and on the ways in which self-control goals may be moralized.

(cut)

Here is the Conclusion:

How do we resist temptation, prioritizing our future well-being over our present pleasure? And how do we resist acting selfishly, prioritizing the needs of others over our own self-interest? These two questions highlight the links between understanding self-control and understanding morality. We hope we have shown that morality and self-control share considerable conceptual overlap with regard to the way people regulate behavior in line with higher-order values and standards. As the psychological study of both areas becomes increasingly collaborative and integrated, insights from each subfield can better enable research and interventions to increase human health and flourishing.

The info is here.

Wednesday, June 5, 2019

Ethics questions about President Trump's transportation secretary surface for second week in a row

Matthew Rozsa
www.salon.com
Originally posted June 3, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

After ethics questions were referred to officials in the State and Treasury Departments, and media outlets like Times began to look into Chao's unusual travel requests, the trip was cancelled.

"She had these relatives who were fairly wealthy and connected to the shipping industry. Their business interests were potentially affected by meetings," a State Department official, who was involved in deliberations pertaining to the meetings, told the Times. Another State Department official, David Rank, told the Times the requests were "alarmingly inappropriate."

Chao's family runs an American shipping company, the Foremost Group, which is connected to China's political and economic ruling class, since it conducts most of its business there. As a result, allowing family members to participate in sensitive meetings — especially considering that Chao's actions as transportation secretary could directly impact America's shipping industry, and goes to the heart of the U.S.-China trade policies being handled by the Trump administration — poses a major conflict of interest.

The info is here.

Monday, June 3, 2019

Regulation of AI as a Means to Power

Daniel Faggella
emerj.com
Last updated May 5, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

The most fundamental principle of power and artificial intelligence is data dominance: Whoever controls the most valuable data within a space or sector will be able to make a better product or solve a better problem. Whoever solves the problem best will win business and win revenue, and whoever wins customers wins more data.

That cycle continues and you have the tech giants of today (a topic for a later AI Power essay).

No companies are likely to get more general search queries than Google, and so people will not likely use any search engine other than Google – and so Google gets more searches (data) to train with, and gets an even better search product. Eventually: Search monopoly.

No companies are likely to generate more general eCommerce purchases than Amazon, and so people will not likely use any online store other than Amazon – and so Amazon gets more purchases and customers (data) to train with, and gets an even better eCommerce product. Eventually: eCommerce monopoly.

There are 3-4 other well-known examples (Facebook, to some extent Netflix, Uber, etc), but I’ll leave it at two. AI may change to become less reliant on data collection, and data dominance may eventually be eclipsed by some other power dynamic, but today it’s the way the game is won.

I’m not aiming to oversimplify the business models of these complex companies, nor and I disparaging these companies as being “bad”. Companies like Google are no more filled with “bad” people than churches, law firms, or AI ethics committees.

The info is here.

Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Professional ethics takes a team approach

Richard Kyte
Lacrosse Tribune
Originally posted February 24, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

Why do some professions enjoy consistently high levels of trust while other professions rate low year after year?

Part of the answer may lie in the motivations of individuals within the professions. When I ask nursing students why they want to go into nursing, they invariably respond by saying they want to help others. Business students, by contrast, are more likely to be motivated by self-interest.

But motivation does not fully explain the reputational difference among professions. Most young people who go into ministry or politics also embark upon their careers with pro-social motivations. And my own experience of lawyers, bankers, real estate agents and car salespeople suggests that the individuals in those professions are just as trustworthy as anybody else.

If that is true, then what earns a profession a positive or negative reputation is not just the people in the profession but the way the profession is practiced. Especially important is the way different professions handle ethically problematic cases and circumstances.

The info is here.

Thursday, November 22, 2018

The Importance of Making the Moral Case for Immigration

Ilya Somin
reason.com
Originally posted on October 23, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

The parallels between racial discrimination and hostility to immigration were in fact noted by such nineteenth century opponents of slavery as Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. These similarities suggest that moral appeals similar to those made by the antislavery and civil rights movements can also play a key role in the debate over immigration.

Moral appeals were in fact central to the two issues on which public opinion has been most supportive of immigrants in recent years: DACA and family separation. Overwhelming majorities supporting letting undocumented immigrants who were brought to America as children stay in the US, oppose the forcible separation of children from their parents at the border. In both cases, public opinion seems driven by considerations of justice and morality, not narrow self-interest (although letting DACA recipients stay would indeed benefit the US economy). Admittedly, these are relatively "easy" cases because both involve harming children for the alleged sins of their parents. But they nonetheless show the potency of moral considerations in the immigration debate. And most other immigration restrictions are only superficially different: instead of punishing children for their parents' illegal border-crossing, they victimize adults and children alike because their parents gave birth to them in the wrong place.

The key role of moral principles in struggles for liberty and equality should not be surprising. Contrary to popular belief, voters' political views on most issues are not determined by narrow self-interest. Public attitudes are instead generally driven by a combination of moral principles and perceived benefits to society as a whole. Immigration is not an exception to that tendency.

This is not to say that voters weigh the interests of all people equally. Throughout history, they have often ignored or downgraded those of groups seen as inferior, or otherwise undeserving of consideration. Slavery and segregation persisted in large part because, as Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney notoriously put it, many whites believed that blacks "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." Similarly, the subordination of women was not seriously questioned for many centuries, because most people believed that it was a natural part of life, and that men were entitled to rule over the opposite sex. In much the same way, today most people assume that natives are entitled to keep out immigrants either to preserve their culture against supposedly inferior ways or because they analogize a nation to a house or club from which the "owners" can exclude newcomers for almost any reason they want.

The info is here.

Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Motivated misremembering: Selfish decisions are more generous in hindsight

Ryan Carlson, Michel Marechal, Bastiaan Oud, Ernst Fehr, and Molly Crockett
Created on: July 22, 2018 | Last edited: July 22, 2018

Abstract

People often prioritize their own interests, but also like to see themselves as moral. How do individuals resolve this tension? One way to both maximize self-interest and maintain a moral self-image is to misremember the extent of one’s selfishness. Here, we tested this possibility. Across three experiments, participants decided how to split money with anonymous partners, and were later asked to recall their decisions. Participants systematically recalled being more generous in the past than they actually were, even when they were incentivized to recall accurately. Crucially, this effect was driven by individuals who gave less than what they personally believed was fair, independent of how objectively selfish they were. Our findings suggest that when people’s actions fall short of their own personal standards, they may misremember the extent of their selfishness, thereby warding off negative emotions and threats to their moral self-image.

The research is here.

Sunday, March 4, 2018

Increasing honesty in humans with noninvasive brain stimulation

Michel André Maréchal, Alain Cohn, Giuseppe Ugazio and Christian C. Ruff
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
April, 114(17), 4360-4364

Abstract

Honesty plays a key role in social and economic interactions and is crucial for societal functioning. However, breaches of honesty are pervasive and cause significant societal and economic problems that can affect entire nations. Despite its importance, remarkably little is known about the neurobiological mechanisms supporting honest behavior. We demonstrate that honesty can be increased in humans with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Participants (n = 145) completed a die-rolling task where they could misreport their outcomes to increase their earnings, thereby pitting honest behavior against personal financial gain. Cheating was substantial in a control condition but decreased dramatically when neural excitability was enhanced with tDCS. This increase in honesty could not be explained by changes in material self-interest or moral beliefs and was dissociated from participants’ impulsivity, willingness to take risks, and mood. A follow-up experiment (n = 156) showed that tDCS only reduced cheating when dishonest behavior benefited the participants themselves rather than another person, suggesting that the stimulated neural process specifically resolves conflicts between honesty and material self-interest. Our results demonstrate that honesty can be strengthened by noninvasive interventions and concur with theories proposing that the human brain has evolved mechanisms dedicated to control complex social behaviors.

The article is here.

Saturday, October 28, 2017

Post-conventional moral reasoning is associated with increased ventral striatal activity at rest and during task

Zhuo Fang, Wi Hoon Jung, Marc Korczykowski, Lijuan Luo, and others
Scientific Reports 7, Article number: 7105 (2017)

Abstract

People vary considerably in moral reasoning. According to Kohlberg’s theory, individuals who reach the highest level of post-conventional moral reasoning judge moral issues based on deeper principles and shared ideals rather than self-interest or adherence to laws and rules. Recent research has suggested the involvement of the brain’s frontostriatal reward system in moral judgments and prosocial behaviors. However, it remains unknown whether moral reasoning level is associated with differences in reward system function. Here, we combined arterial spin labeling perfusion and blood oxygen level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging and measured frontostriatal reward system activity both at rest and during a sequential risky decision making task in a sample of 64 participants at different levels of moral reasoning. Compared to individuals at the pre-conventional and conventional level of moral reasoning, post-conventional individuals showed increased resting cerebral blood flow in the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Cerebral blood flow in these brain regions correlated with the degree of post-conventional thinking across groups. Post-conventional individuals also showed greater task-induced activation in the ventral striatum during risky decision making. These findings suggest that high-level post-conventional moral reasoning is associated with increased activity in the brain’s frontostriatal system, regardless of task-dependent or task-independent states.

The article is here.

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

When Doing Some Good Is Evaluated as Worse Than Doing No Good at All

George E. Newman and Daylian M. Cain
Psychological Science published online 8 January 2014

Abstract

In four experiments, we found that the presence of self-interest in the charitable domain was seen as tainting: People evaluated efforts that realized both charitable and personal benefits as worse than analogous behaviors that produced no charitable benefit. This tainted-altruism effect was observed in a variety of contexts and extended to both moral evaluations of other agents and participants’ own behavioral intentions (e.g., reported willingness to hire someone or purchase a company’s products). This effect did not seem to be driven by expectations that profits would be realized at the direct cost of charitable benefits, or the explicit use of charity as a means to an end. Rather, we found that it was related to the accessibility of different counterfactuals: When someone was charitable for self-interested reasons, people considered his or her behavior in the absence of self-interest, ultimately concluding that the person did not behave as altruistically as he or she could have. However, when someone was only selfish, people did not spontaneously consider whether the person could have been more altruistic.

The article is here.

Sunday, October 15, 2017

Official sends memo to agency leaders about ethical conduct

Avery Anapol
The Hill
Originally published October 10, 2017

The head of the Office of Government Ethics is calling on the leaders of government agencies to promote an “ethical culture.”

David Apol, acting director of the ethics office, sent a memo to agency heads titled, “The Role of Agency Leaders in Promoting an Ethical Culture.” The letter was sent to more than 100 agency heads, CNN reported.

“It is essential to the success of our republic that citizens can trust that your decisions and the decisions made by your agency are motivated by the public good and not by personal interests,” the memo reads.

Several government officials are under investigation for their use of chartered planes for government business.

One Cabinet official, former Health secretary Tom Price, resigned over his use of private jets. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is also under scrutiny for his travels.

“I am deeply concerned that the actions of some in Government leadership have harmed perceptions about the importance of ethics and what conduct is, and is not, permissible,” Apol wrote.

The memo includes seven suggested actions that Apol says leaders should take to strengthen the ethical culture in their agencies. The suggestions include putting ethics officials in senior leadership meetings, and “modeling a ‘Should I do it?’ mentality versus a ‘Can I do it?’ mentality.”

The article is here.