Making it moral: Merely labeling an attitude as moral increases its strength

Andrew Luttrella, Richard E. Pettya, Pablo Briñolb, & Benjamin C. Wagner
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Available online 27 April 2016

Abstract

Prior research has shown that self-reported moral bases of people's attitudes predict a range of important consequences, including attitude-relevant behavior and resistance in the face of social influence. Although previous studies typically rely on self-report measures of such bases, the present research tests the possibility that people can be induced to view their own attitudes as grounded in moral bases. This perception alone leads to outcomes associated with strong attitudes. In three experiments, participants were led to view their attitudes as grounded in moral or non-moral bases. Merely perceiving a moral (vs. non-moral) basis to one's attitudes led them to show greater correspondence with relevant behavioral intentions (Experiment 1) and become less susceptible to change following a persuasive message (Experiments 2 and 3). Moreover, these effects were independent of any other established indicators of attitude strength.

Highlights

• Mere perceptions of moral (vs. non-moral) attitude bases were manipulated.
• Perceiving a moral basis increased attitude–intention consistency.
• Perceiving a moral basis also led to greater resistance to persuasion.
• These effects were not mediated by other established attitude strength indicators.

The article is here.

Sleep Deprivation and Advice Taking

Jan Alexander Häusser, Johannes Leder, Charlene Ketturat, Martin Dresler & Nadira Sophie Faber
Scientific Reports 6, Article number: 24386 (2016)
doi:10.1038/srep24386

Abstract

Judgements and decisions in many political, economic or medical contexts are often made while sleep deprived. Furthermore, in such contexts individuals are required to integrate information provided by – more or less qualified – advisors. We asked if sleep deprivation affects advice taking. We conducted a 2 (sleep deprivation: yes vs. no) ×2 (competency of advisor: medium vs. high) experimental study to examine the effects of sleep deprivation on advice taking in an estimation task. We compared participants with one night of total sleep deprivation to participants with a night of regular sleep. Competency of advisor was manipulated within subjects. We found that sleep deprived participants show increased advice taking. An interaction of condition and competency of advisor and further post-hoc analyses revealed that this effect was more pronounced for the medium competency advisor compared to the high competency advisor. Furthermore, sleep deprived participants benefited more from an advisor of high competency in terms of stronger improvement in judgmental accuracy than well-rested participants.

The article is here.

Anticipating artificial intelligence

Editorial Board
Nature
Originally posted April 26, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

So, what are the risks? Machines and robots that outperform humans across the board could self-improve beyond our control — and their interests might not align with ours. This extreme scenario, which cannot be discounted, is what captures most popular attention. But it is misleading to dismiss all concerns as worried about this.

There are more immediate risks, even with narrow aspects of AI that can already perform some tasks better than humans can. Few foresaw that the Internet and other technologies would open the way for mass, and often indiscriminate, surveillance by intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, threatening principles of privacy and the right to dissent. AI could make such surveillance more widespread and more powerful.

Then there are cybersecurity threats to smart cities, infrastructure and industries that become overdependent on AI — and the all too clear threat that drones and other autonomous offensive weapons systems will allow machines to make lethal decisions alone.

The article is here.

FDA Reconsiders Training Requirement for Painkillers

BY Matthew Perrone
AP HEALTH WRITER
Originally published April 29, 2016

The Food and Drug Administration is reconsidering whether doctors who prescribe painkillers like OxyContin should be required to take safety training courses, according to federal documents.

The review comes as regulators disclosed that the number of doctors who completed voluntary training programs is less than half that targeted by the agency.

A panel of FDA advisers meets next week to review risk-management plans put in place nearly four years ago to reduce misuse and abuse of long-acting painkillers, powerful opioid drugs at the center of a national wave of abuse and death.

The article is here.

Biological determinism and its enemies

Radosław Zyzik
Philosophy in Neuroscience, eds. Jerzy Stelmach, Bartosz Brożek, Łukasz Kurek, Copernicus Center Press 2012.

Here is an excerpt:

Little research (if any) has addressed the problem of determinism from more than one perspective at the same time. On the one hand, one can read about the neuroscience of free will and the renaissance
of determinism due to the work of neuroscientists. On the other, a new face of genetic determinism is discussed as a result of the progress made in genetics. Moreover, today we can also learn about the impact of biological factors on the development of model organisms in neurogenetics. With this in mind, we have tried to investigate how determinism is understood in neuroscience, behavioural genetics and in a new discipline which combines knowledge from many disciplines – neurogenetics.

We believe that only such a broad perspective will eventually allow an understanding of determinism in biology with all of its shortcomings. Therefore, the aim of our study is to evaluate the philosophical interpretations of neuroscientific, genetic and neurogenetic experiments that can be seen to be in line with the thesis of biological determinism. The paper re-examines the tacit philosophical assumptions, applied methodology and interpretation of the results of the experiments.

The book chapter is here.

Will These 2 Court Cases Finally Hold Our Torturers Accountable?

By David Cole
The Nation
Originally posted May 9, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

Torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, by contrast, are not committed to the political branches’ discretion. As the district court in Washington recognized, the very fact that Congress has made torture a crime and, under the Torture Victim Protection Act, grounds for a civil action for damages, refutes the notion that it is an inappropriate subject for courts. The fact that at the margins it may be difficult to decide whether particular actions constitute torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment does not make them “political questions.” Courts every day must decide whether particular conduct meets statutory definitions; that is what they do.

The district court in the CACI case ruled that because the military supervised the contractors at Abu Ghraib, the case must be dismissed as political because it would necessitate judicial intrusion on sensitive military judgments. But in doing so, it relied on cases that alleged only negligent action by contractors engaged in otherwise lawful and authorized military operations.

The article is here.

America’s Suicide Epidemic Is a National Security Crisis

Fredrik Deboer
Foreign Policy
Originally published April

Here is an excerpt:

Too many in our culture, meanwhile, still place the blame for suicide on its victims. It’s common, after high-profile suicides like that of actor and comedian Robin Williams, for some to argue that suicide is “the coward’s way out,” that taking one’s own life is somehow a cowardly act. Such attitudes are a flagrant failure of empathy, as well as a misunderstanding about the relationship between suicide and mental illness and addiction, both of which are strongly associated with suicide risk. Like many social problems, suicide does not have single and obvious causes but rather a concert of contributing factors working together. To blame suicide on a lack of personal character demonstrates ignorance about the nature of the problem. But such thinking contributes to the country’s persistent and deep inability to grapple with suicide in an open and healthy way.

The article is here.

Later Career Remedial Supervision - The Practice Event Audit

Jon Amundson
The Practitioner Scholar: Journal of Counseling and Professional Psychology 32 
Volume 5, 2016

Abstract

Clinical supervision has for the most part focused upon early career preparation and training. Fundamental to this process is emphasis upon emerging competency. However, supervision can also be required in relation to enduring competency. Where lapses in professional practice are of a subtle or non-egregious nature, supervision may arise as a remedial route. Through hearing, tribunal mandate or negotiation, arising from Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), remedial supervision may be the outcome. In this article mandated or negotiated remedial supervision is discussed with a specific description of a means for such – the Practice Event Audit. Issues related to ethics, conduct and competency, remedial supervision and the Professional Event Audit are discussed in light of a case example.

The paper is here.

Embedding Ethical Principles in Collective Decision Support Systems

Joshua Greene, Francesca Rossi, John Tasioulas, Kristen Brent Venable, & Brian Williams
Proceedings of the Thirtieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-16)

Abstract

The future will see autonomous machines acting in the same environment as humans, in areas as diverse as driving, assistive technology, and health care. Think of self-driving cars, companion robots, and medical diagnosis support systems.  We also believe that humans and machines will often need to work together and agree on common decisions. Thus hybrid collective decision making systems will be in great need.  In this scenario, both machines and collective decision making systems should follow some form of moral values and ethical principles (appropriate to where they will act but always aligned to humans’), as well as safety constraints. In fact, humans would accept and trust more machines that behave as ethically as other humans in the same environment. Also, these principles would make it easier for machines to determine their actions and explain their behavior in terms understandable by humans. Moreover, often machines and humans will need to make decisions together, either through consensus or by reaching a compromise. This would be facilitated by shared moral values and ethical principles.

The article is here.