Moral signals, public outrage, and immaterial harms

David Tannenbaum, Eric Luis Uhlmann, & Daniel Diermeier
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 47 (2011) 1249–1254

Abstract

Public outrage is often triggered by “immaterially” harmful acts (i.e., acts with relatively negligible consequences). A well-known example involves corporate salaries and perks: they generate public outrage yet their financial cost is relatively minor. The present research explains this paradox by appealing to a person-centered approach to moral judgment. Strong moral reactions can occur when relatively harmless acts provide highly diagnostic information about moral character. Studies 1a and 1bfirst demonstrate dissociation between moral evaluations of persons and their actions—although violence toward a human was viewed as a more blameworthy act than violence toward an animal, the latter was viewed as more revealing of bad moral character. Study 2 then shows that person-centered cues directly influence moral judgments—participants preferred to hire a more expensive CEO when the alternative candidate requested a frivolous perk as part of his compensation package, an effect mediated by the informativeness of his request.

The entire article is here.

Initial Session Price Tag—$150? Or Free?

Will that be cash or credit?

By Sharon Anderson and Mitchell Handelsman
The Ethical Therapist
Originally published on August 14, 2013

The initial meeting between potential clients and psychotherapist is of critical importance [Anderson & Handelsman, in press]. Shopping for the right therapist is an important investment in time and money. Before making a commitment to the relationship, the potential client needs some answers to important questions. In prior blog posts, where we talked about shopping for a psychotherapist and what to look for, we suggested questions potential clients can ask therapists to help make good decisions and ultimately answer the question, “Is this therapist the right therapist for me?” In this entry we tackle the issue of the ethics of charging money for the first session.

The entire post is here.

Bamboozled by Bad Science

The first myth about "evidence-based" therapy

Published on October 31, 2013 by Jonathan Shedler, PhD in Psychologically Minded

Media coverage of psychotherapy often advises people to seek "evidence-based therapy."
Few outside the mental health professions realize the term “evidence-based therapy” is a form of branding. It refers to therapies conducted by following instruction manuals, originally developed to create standardized treatments for research trials. These "manualized" therapies are typically brief, highly structured, and almost exclusively identified with cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT.

Academic researchers routinely extoll the “evidence-based” therapies studied in research laboratories and denigrate psychotherapy as it is actually practiced by most clinicians in the real world. Their comments range from the hysteric (“The disconnect between what clinicians do and what science has discovered is an unconscionable embarrassment.”–Professor Walter Mischel, quoted in Newsweek) to the seemingly cautious and sober (“Evidence-based therapies work a little faster, a little better, and for more problematic situations, more powerfully.”–Professor Steven Hollon, quoted in the Los Angeles Times).

The entire blog post is here.

Are We Just a Bunch of Busybodies? (A Dialogue)

By Tamler Sommers
Flickers of Freedom Blog
Originally posted on November 9, 2013

Here is an excerpt:

Busybody [biz-ee-bod-ee] noun: a person who pries into or meddles in the affairs of others.

In the last two posts I described some cases that are hard for most existing theories of moral responsibility to handle.  What I want to suggest in this post is that any attempt to develop a systematic condition-based theory of responsibility is both philosophically and morally problematic.   Why morally?  Because it turns philosophers into meddlesome busybodies who stick their noses in the private affairs of others and don't know when to mind their own business.

So here's the set-up:  Sarah is at a party and has a few too many glasses of wine on a relatively empty stomach.  She overhears her colleague Emma talking about her in another conversation.  She’s drunk and she misinterprets the meaning of Emma’s remarks and gets angry.  Without thinking, Sarah confronts Emma and lets off some biting insults about her performance at work.  Emma is bewildered and humiliated in front of her friends and co-workers.  Soon, the initial misunderstanding is cleared up and Sarah, mortified, realizes she was way out of line. She offers a bunch of drunken apologies, but the damage is done.  Emma is furious and resentful and Sarah feels terrible overwhelming guilt what happened.

The entire blog post is here.

Note: This philosophical discussion of morality has direct implications for both individual and couples therapy.

Vantage Points and The Trolley Problem

By Thomas Nadelhoffer
Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog
Originally posted November 10, 2013

Here is an excerpt:

The standard debates about scenarios like BAS (Bystander at the Switch) typically focus on what it is permissible for the bystander to do given the rights of the few who have to be sacrificed involuntarily in order to save the many. In a paper I have been working on in fits and starts for too damn long now, I try to shift the vantage point from which we view cases like BAS and I suggest doing so yields some interesting results.  Rather than looking at BAS from the perspective of the bystanders—and what it is permissible (or impermissible) for them to do—I examine BAS instead from the point of view of the individuals whose lives hang in the balance. This change of vantage points highlights some possible tensions that may exist in our ever shifting intuitions.

For instance, let’s reexamine BAS from the point of view of the five people who will be killed if the bystander perhaps understandably cannot bring herself to hit the switch. Imagine that one of the five workmen has a gun and it becomes clear that the bystander is not going to be able to bring herself to divert the trolley.  Would it be permissible for the workman with the gun to shoot and kill the bystander if doing so was the only way of getting her to fall onto the switch?

The entire blog post is here.

The Moral Responsibility of Volunteer Soldiers

Should they say no to fighting in an unjust war?

Jeff McMahan
The Boston Review
Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Here is an excerpt:

Traditional Just War Theory

The idea that voluntary enlistment in the military can be morally problematic derives from a neglected tradition of just war thinking. This approach to the ethics of war informed the work of some of the classical just war theorists, such as the 16th century Spanish philosophers Francisco de Vitoria and Francisco Suárez. It was, however, gradually abandoned by thinkers whose views together constitute what I call “traditional just war theory.” The traditional theory has been ascendant since at least the 18th century, but the older approach has recently been resurrected by a group of “revisionists.” The best way to understand revisionist just war theory is to contrast it with the traditional theory, which has had a profound influence in shaping common sense thinking about the ethics of war, in part because it was developed in tandem with the international law of armed conflict.

According to traditional just war theory, a soldier does no wrong by fighting in an unjust war, provided that he or she obeys the rules regulating the conduct of war. This theoretical idea finds powerful expression in public sentiments. For centuries it has been regarded as not merely permissible but conspicuously noble and admirable for a soldier to go to war without any concern for whether the war’s cause was just.

The entire article is here.

Swastikas, Slurs and Torment in Town’s Schools

By Benjamin Weiser
The New York Times
Originally published November 7, 2013

Here is an excerpt:

“There are anti-Semitic incidents that have occurred that we need to address,” John Boyle, Crispell Middle School’s principal, said in a deposition in April.

In 2011, when one parent complained about continued harassment of her daughter and another Jewish girl, Pine Bush’s superintendent from 2008 to 2013, Philip G. Steinberg, wrote in an email, “I have said I will meet with your daughters and I will, but your expectations for changing inbred prejudice may be a bit unrealistic.”

Mr. Steinberg, who, along with two other administrators named as defendants, is Jewish, described the lawsuit in recent interviews as a “money grab.” He contended that the plaintiffs had “embellished” some allegations.

The entire story is here.

The Morning Morality Effect: The Influence of Time of Day on Unethical Behavior.

By M. Kouchaki & I.H. Smith
Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University
Psychol Sci. 2013 Oct 28

Abstract

Are people more moral in the morning than in the afternoon? We propose that the normal, unremarkable experiences associated with everyday living can deplete one's capacity to resist moral temptations. In a series of four experiments, both undergraduate students and a sample of U.S. adults engaged in less unethical behavior (e.g., less lying and cheating) on tasks performed in the morning than on the same tasks performed in the afternoon. This morning morality effect was mediated by decreases in moral awareness and self-control in the afternoon. Furthermore, the effect of time of day on unethical behavior was found to be stronger for people with a lower propensity to morally disengage. These findings highlight a simple yet pervasive factor (i.e., the time of day) that has important implications for moral behavior.

The entire story is here, hiding behind a paywall.

‘Don’t Tell Coach’: Playing Through Concussions

By Jan Hoffman
The New York Times - Well
Originally published November 5, 2013

Here is an excerpt:

An extensive report about sports-related concussions in young people, released last week by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council, made recommendations that included bolstering research, collecting data, examining injury protocols and educating the public. But the report identified one particularly stubborn challenge: the “culture of resistance” among high school and college athletes, who may be inclined to shrug off the invisible injuries and return immediately to the field.

“There is still a culture among athletes,” the report said, “that resists both the self-reporting of concussions and compliance with appropriate concussion management plans.”

The entire story is here.