Understanding Responses to Moral Dilemmas

Deontological Inclinations, Utilitarian Inclinations, and General Action Tendencies

Bertram Gawronski, Paul Conway, Joel B. Armstrong, Rebecca Friesdorf, and Mandy Hütter
In: J. P. Forgas, L. Jussim, & P. A. M. Van Lange (Eds.). (2016). Social psychology of morality. New York, NY: Psychology Press.

Introduction

For  centuries,  societies  have  wrestled  with  the  question  of  how  to  balance  the  rights of the individual versus the greater good (see Forgas, Jussim, & Van Lange, this volume); is it acceptable to ignore a person’s rights in order to increase the overall well-being of a larger number of people? The contentious nature of this issue is reflected in many contemporary examples, including debates about whether it is legitimate to cause harm in order to protect societies against threats (e.g., shooting an abducted passenger plane to prevent a terrorist attack) and whether it is acceptable to refuse life-saving support for some people in order to protect the well-being  of  many  others  (e.g.,  refusing  the  return  of  American  citizens  who  became infected with Ebola in Africa for treatment in the US). These issues have captured the attention of social scientists, politicians, philosophers, lawmakers, and citizens alike, partly because they involve a conflict between two moral principles.

The  first  principle,  often  associated  with  the  moral  philosophy  of  Immanuel  Kant, emphasizes the irrevocable universality of rights and duties. According to the principle of deontology, the moral status of an action is derived from its consistency with context-independent norms (norm-based morality). From this perspective, violations of moral norms are unacceptable irrespective of the anticipated outcomes (e.g.,  shooting  an  abducted  passenger  plane  is  always  immoral  because it violates  the moral norm not to kill others). The second principle, often associated with the moral philosophy of John Stuart Mill, emphasizes the greater good. According to the principle of utilitarianism, the moral status of an action depends on its outcomes, more  specifically  its consequences  for  overall  well-being  (outcome-based  morality).

The book chapter is here.

Empathy can be learned by sharing positive experiences

Yahoo News
Originally published December 28, 2015

A study by researchers at the University of Zurich indicates that empathy towards strangers can be learned and that positive experiences with others influence empathic brain responses.

According to a recent Swiss study, we are all capable of feeling empathy towards strangers. By repeating positive experiences with strangers, our brain learns and develops empathic responses.

The article is here.

What Make Us Cheat? Experiment 3

by Simon Oxenham
BigThink
Originally published January 13, 2016

Dan Ariely, the psychologist who popularised behavioral economics, has made a fascinating documentary exploring what makes us dishonest. I’ve just finished watching it and it’s something of a masterpiece of psychological storytelling, delving deep into contemporary tales of dishonesty, and supporting its narrative with cunningly designed experiments that have been neatly reconstructed for the film camera.

Social Norms

Whether or not we cheat has less to do with the probability of being caught, than whether or not we feel cheating is socially acceptable within our social circle.



The article is here.

Note: There is more research to show that those who witness unethical behavior in the workplace are more likely to engage in that unethical behavior if there are no consequences.

Should we Prohibit Breast Implants?

Collective Moral Obligations in the Context of Harmful and Discriminatory Social Norms

By Jessica Laimann
Journal of Practical Ethics
Volume 3 Issue 2. December 2015

ABSTRACT

In liberal moral theory, interfering with someone’s deliberate engagement in a self-harming practice in order to promote their own good is often considered wrongfully paternalistic. But what if self-harming decisions are the product of an oppressive social context that imposes harmful norms on certain individuals, such as, arguably, in the case of cosmetic breast surgery? Clare Chambers suggests that such scenarios can mandate state interference in the form of prohibition. I argue that, unlike conventional measures, Chambers’ proposal recognises that harmful, discriminatory norms entail a twofold collective moral obligation: to eliminate the harmful norm in the long run, but also to address unjust harm that is inflicted in the meantime. I show that these two obligations tend to pull in opposite directions, thus generating a serious tension in Chambers’ proposal which eventually leads to an undue compromising of the second obligation in favour of the first. Based on this discussion, I develop an alternative proposal which, instead of prohibiting breast implant surgery, offers compensation for the disadvantages suffered by individuals who decide not to have surgery.

The paper is here.

Unleash the badness! Why the art world needs more sleaze and less morality

By Jonathan Jones
The Guardian
Originally published December 29, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

Art is always at its most dangerous and liberating when it frees us from conventional morality and piety. That is why bohemian manners and the avant garde go together. It was not just artistic licence that upset people when Manet painted Olympia. It was not mere artistic fashion that drew Picasso to the garrets and brothels of Paris. Modern art was a rebellion against bourgeois normality. All the great artists who created modernism took huge risks in the way they lived. Their art is an incitement to do the same.

The article is here.

Social trust is one of the most important measures that most people have never heard of

David Halpern
Behavioral Insights Team
November 12, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

Levels of social trust, averaged across a country, predict national economic growth as powerfully as financial and physical capital, and more powerfully than skill levels – over which every government in the world worries about incessantly. It is also associated with many other non-economic outcomes, such as life satisfaction (positively) and suicide (negatively). In short, it’s not much fun living in a place where you don’t think most other people can be trusted. Low trust implies a society where you have to keep an eye over your shoulder; where deals need lawyers instead of hand-shakes; where you don’t see the point of paying your tax or recycling your rubbish (since you doubt your neighbour will do so); and where you employ your cousin or your brother-in-law to work for you rather than a stranger who would probably be much better at the job.

The entire article is here.

'Fallout 4' tackles morality in an interesting way

By Antonio Villa-Boas
Business Insider
Originally published November 19, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

But the companions that accompany you throughout the game have unique perks that give you useful advantages in certain situations. The thing is, you need to gain their respect with specific behaviours and actions if you want access to those perks.

You can check which behaviours each companion prefers, but overall, they prefer that you are not a “bad” person.

Don’t murder innocent people, don’t use drugs, don’t pick locks to places or things that don’t belong to you, don’t pickpocket, and don’t steal. While you can do all those things in the game, you won’t win over most of your companions and you’ll make it harder to access their perks.

The companions turn out to be “Fallout 4’s” moral arbiters!

The entire article is here.

Q: Is privacy dead? Of course not

By Evan Selinger
Aeon Magazine - Ideas

Here is an excerpt:

But if we’re talking about informational privacy, it isn’t a thing. Informational privacy is a series of decisions individuals and groups make. Some crucial decisions are about social and ethical norms. This means we’ve got to decide which norms to value, determine when it’s appropriate for norms to be enforced and when norm violations should be allowed to slide, and figure out which sanctions are befitting of proper norm policing. In a pluralistic society, these ends are furthered by fraught and ongoing negotiation. Such negotiation is further complicated by disruptive innovation changing how people consume and share information.

The entire article is here.

How foreign language shapes moral judgment

By J. Geipel, C. Hadjichristidis, and L. Surian
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Volume 59, July 2015, Pages 8–17

Abstract

We investigated whether and how processing information in a foreign language as opposed to the native language affects moral judgments. Participants judged the moral wrongness of several private actions, such as consensual incest, that were depicted as harmless and presented in either the native or a foreign language. The use of a foreign language promoted less severe moral judgments and less confidence in them. Harmful and harmless social norm violations, such as saying a white lie to get a reduced fare, were also judged more leniently. The results do not support explanations based on facilitated deliberation, misunderstanding, or the adoption of a universalistic stance. We propose that the influence of foreign language is best explained by a reduced activation of social and moral norms when making moral judgments.

Highlights

• We investigated whether and how foreign language influences moral judgment.
• Foreign language prompted more lenient judgments for moral transgressions.
• Foreign language reduced confidence in people's moral evaluations.
• Violations of everyday norms were judged less harshly in a foreign language.
• Foreign language might act through a reduced activation of social and moral norms.

The entire article is here.

Online processing of moral transgressions: ERP evidence for spontaneous evaluation

Hartmut Leuthold, Angelika Kunkel, Ian G. Mackenzie and Ruth Filik
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci (2015)
doi: 10.1093/scan/nsu151

Abstract

Experimental studies using fictional moral dilemmas indicate that both automatic emotional processes and controlled cognitive processes contribute to moral judgments. However, not much is known about how people process socio-normative violations that are more common to their everyday life nor the time-course of these processes. Thus, we recorded participants’ electrical brain activity while they were reading vignettes that either contained morally acceptable vs unacceptable information or text materials that contained information which was either consistent or inconsistent with their general world knowledge. A first event-related brain potential (ERP) positivity peaking at ∼200 ms after critical word onset (P200) was larger when this word involved a socio-normative or knowledge-based violation. Subsequently, knowledge-inconsistent words triggered a larger centroparietal ERP negativity at ∼320 ms (N400), indicating an influence on meaning construction. In contrast, a larger ERP positivity (larger late positivity), which also started at ∼320 ms after critical word onset, was elicited by morally unacceptable compared with acceptable words. We take this ERP positivity to reflect an implicit evaluative (good–bad) categorization process that is engaged during the online processing of moral transgressions.

The article is here.

The Value of Vengeance and the Demand for Deterrence.

Molly J. Crockett, Yagiz Özdemir, and Ernst Fehr
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Online First Publication, October 6, 2014

Abstract

Humans will incur costs to punish others who violate social norms. Theories of justice highlight 2 motives for punishment: a forward-looking deterrence of future norm violations and a backward-looking retributive desire to harm. Previous studies of costly punishment have not isolated how much people are willing to pay for retribution alone, because typically punishment both inflicts damage (satisfying the retributive motive) and communicates a norm violation (satisfying the deterrence motive). Here, we isolated retributive motives by examining how much people will invest in punishment when the punished individual will never learn about the punishment. Such “hidden” punishment cannot deter future norm violations but was nevertheless frequently used by both 2nd-party victims and 3rd-party observers of norm violations, indicating that retributive motives drive punishment decisions independently from deterrence goals. While self-reports of deterrence motives correlated with deterrence-related punishment behavior, self-reports of retributive motives did not correlate with retributive punishment behavior. Our findings reveal a preference for pure retribution that can lead to punishment without any social benefits.

The entire article is here, behind a paywall.

Three Myths of Behavior Change

Published on Mar 20, 2013

Jeni Cross is a sociology professor at Colorado State University. She has spoken about community development and sustainability to audiences across the country, from business leaders and government officials to community activists. As a professor and consultant she has helped dozens of schools and government agencies implement and evaluate successful programs to improve community well-being. In this talk, she discusses her work around changing behaviors.

Ideology Is Heritable Yet Societies Can Change Their Views Quickly

By Jonathan Haidt
Social Evolution Forum
Originally published December 16, 2013

Here is an excerpt:

From my perspective as a social psychologist, who studies morality from an evolutionary perspective, rapid attitude change is not hard to explain. I am impressed by the consistent data on heritability, showing that some very important parts of our moral and political views are innate. But innate does not mean hard-wired or unmalleable; it  means “structured in advance of experience, and experience can edit and alter that first draft.” (That’s a paraphrase from Gary Marcus). So even if one is born predisposed to questioning authority and seeking out diversity, life experiences can still alter one’s habitual reactions. Becoming a parent, especially of girls, seems to make people more conservative (they perceive more threats in the world).

The entire article is here.

Inside the Cheater's Mind

By Maria Konnikova
The New Yorker
Originally published October 31, 2013

A few years ago, acting on a tip, school administrators at Great Neck North High School, a prominent, academically competitive public school in Long Island, took a closer look at students’ standardized test scores. Some of them seemed suspiciously high. What’s more, some of the high scorers had registered to take the test well outside their home district. When the Educational Testing Service conducted a handwriting analysis on the suspect exams, they concluded that the same person had taken multiple tests, registering each time under a different name. In November, 2011, twenty students from schools in Nassau County were arrested and accused of cheating. The arrests, combined with the social prominence of the school and its students, made the case one of the most prominent cheating scandals in recent history.

When a student sits down at a test, he knows how to cheat, in principle. But how does he decide whether or not he’ll actually do it? Is it logic? An impulse? A subconscious reaction to the adrenaline in his blood and the dopamine in his brain? People cheat all the time. But why, exactly, do they decide to do it in the first place?

The entire story is here.