Is it okay to sacrifice one person to save many? How you answer depends on where you’re from.

Sigal Samuel
vox.com
Originally posted 24 Jan 20

Here is an excerpt:

It turns out that people across the board, regardless of their cultural context, give the same response when they’re asked to rank the moral acceptability of acting in each case. They say Switch is most acceptable, then Loop, then Footbridge.

That’s probably because in Switch, the death of the worker is an unfortunate side effect of the action that saves the five, whereas in Footbridge, the death of the large man is not a side effect but a means to an end — and it requires the use of personal force against him.

It turns out that people across the board, regardless of their cultural context, give the same response when they’re asked to rank the moral acceptability of acting in each case. They say Switch is most acceptable, then Loop, then Footbridge.

That’s probably because in Switch, the death of the worker is an unfortunate side effect of the action that saves the five, whereas in Footbridge, the death of the large man is not a side effect but a means to an end — and it requires the use of personal force against him.

The info is here.

Can an Evidence-Based Approach Improve the Patient-Physician Relationship?

A. S. Cifu, A. Lembo, & A. M. Davis
JAMA. 2020;323(1):31-32.
doi:10.1001/jama.2019.19427

Here is an excerpt:

Through these steps, the research team identified potentially useful clinical approaches that were perceived to contribute to physician “presence,” defined by the authors as a purposeful practice of “awareness, focus, and attention with the intent to understand and connect with patients.”

These practices were rated by patients and clinicians on their likely effects and feasibility in practice. A Delphi process was used to condense 13 preliminary practices into 5 final recommendations, which were (1) prepare with intention, (2) listen intently and completely, (3) agree on what matters most, (4) connect with the patient’s story, and (5) explore emotional cues. Each of these practices is complex, and the authors provide detailed explanations, including narrative examples and links to outcomes, that are summarized in the article and included in more detail in the online supplemental material.

If implemented in practice, these 5 practices suggested by Zulman and colleagues are likely to enhance patient-physician relationships, which ideally could help improve physician satisfaction and well-being, reduce physician frustration, improve clinical outcomes, and reduce health care costs.

Importantly, the authors also call for system-level interventions to create an environment for the implementation of these practices.

Although the patient-physician interaction is at the core of most physicians’ activities and has led to an entire genre of literature and television programs, very little is actually known about what makes for an effective relationship.

The info is here.

Religion’s Impact on Conceptions of the Moral Domain

S. Levine, and others
PsyArXiv Preprints
Last edited 2 Jan 20

Abstract

How does religious affiliation impact conceptions of the moral domain? Putting aside the question of whether people from different religions agree about how to answer moral questions, here we investigate a more fundamental question: How much disagreement is there across religions about which issues count as moral in the first place? That is, do people from different religions conceptualize the scope of morality differently? Using a new methodology to map out how individuals conceive of the moral domain, we find dramatic differences among adherents of different religions. Mormons and Muslims moralize their religious norms, while Jews do not. Hindus do not seem to make a moral/non-moral distinction at all. These results suggest that religious affiliation has a profound effect on conceptions of the scope of morality.

From the General Discussion:

The results of Study 3 and 3a are predicted by neither Social Domain Theory nor Moral Foundations Theory: It is neither true that secular people and religious people share a common conception of the moral domain (as Social Domain Theory argues), nor that religious morality is expanded beyond secular morality in a uniform manner (as Moral Foundations Theory suggests).When participants in a group did make a moral/non-moral distinction, there was broad agreement that norms related to harm, justice, and rights count as moral norms. However, some religious individuals (such as the Mormon and Muslim participants) also moralized norms from their own religion that are not related to these themes. Meanwhile, others (such as the Jewish participants) acknowledged the special status of their own norms but did not moralize them. Yet others (such as the Hindu participants) made no distinction between the moral and the non-moral. 

The research is here.

BlackRock’s New Morality Marks the End for Coal

Nathaniel Bullard
Bloomberg News
Originally posted 17 Jan 20

Here is an excerpt:

In the U.S., the move away from coal was well underway before the $7 trillion asset manager announced its restrictions. Companies have been shutting down coal-fired power plants and setting “transformative responsible energy plans” removing coal from the mix completely, even in the absence of robust federal policies. 

U.S. coal consumption in power generation fell below 600 million tons last year. This year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration expects it to fall much further still, below 500 million tons. That’s not only down by more than 50% since 2007, but it would also put coal consumption back to 1978 levels.

That decline is thanks to a massive number of plant retirements, now totaling more than 300 since 2010. The U.S. coal fleet has not had any net capacity additions since 2011. 2015 is the most significant year for coal retirements to date, as a suite of Obama-era air quality standards took effect. 2018 wasn’t far behind, however, and 2019 wasn’t far behind 2018.

The base effect of a smaller number of operational coal plants also means that consumption is declining at an accelerating rate. Using the EIA’s projection for 2020 coal burn in the power sector, year-on-year consumption will decline nearly 15%, the most since at least 1950.

Coal’s decline doesn’t exist in isolation. Most coal in the U.S. travels from mine to plant by rail, so there’s a predictable impact on rail cargoes. A decade ago, U.S. rail carriers shipped nearly 7 million carloads of coal. Last year, that figure was barely 4 million.

The info is here.

Fast optimism, slow realism? Causal evidence for a two-step model of future thinking

Hallgeir Sjåstad and Roy F. Baumeister
PsyArXiv
Originally posted 6 Jan 20

Abstract

Future optimism is a widespread phenomenon, often attributed to the psychology of intuition. However, causal evidence for this explanation is lacking, and sometimes cautious realism is found. One resolution is that thoughts about the future have two steps: A first step imagining the desired outcome, and then a sobering reflection on how to get there. Four pre-registered experiments supported this two-step model, showing that fast predictions are more optimistic than slow predictions. The total sample consisted of 2,116 participants from USA and Norway, providing 9,036 predictions. In Study 1, participants in the fast-response condition thought positive events were more likely to happen and that negative events were less likely, as compared to participants in the slow-response condition. Although the predictions were optimistically biased in both conditions, future optimism was significantly stronger among fast responders. Participants in the fast-response condition also relied more on intuitive heuristics (CRT). Studies 2 and 3 focused on future health problems (e.g., getting a heart attack or diabetes), in which participants in the fast-response condition thought they were at lower risk. Study 4 provided a direct replication, with the additional finding that fast predictions were more optimistic only for the self (vs. the average person). The results suggest that when people think about their personal future, the first response is optimistic, which only later may be followed by a second step of reflective realism. Current health, income, trait optimism, perceived control and happiness were negatively correlated with health-risk predictions, but did not moderate the fast-optimism effect.

From the Discussion section:

Four studies found that people made more optimistic predictions when they relied on fast intuition rather than slow reflection. Apparently, a delay of 15 seconds is sufficient to enable second thoughts and a drop in future optimism. The slower responses were still "unrealistically optimistic"(Weinstein, 1980; Shepperd et al., 2013), but to a much lesser extent than the fast responses. We found this fast-optimism effect on relative comparison to the average person and isolated judgments of one's own likelihood, in two different languages across two different countries, and in one direct replication.All four experiments were pre-registered, and the total sample consisted of about 2,000 participants making more than 9,000 predictions.

Influencing the physiology and decisions of groups: Physiological linkage during group decision-making

Thorson, K. R., and others.
(2020). Group Processes & Intergroup Relations. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430219890909

Abstract

Many of the most important decisions in our society are made within groups, yet we know little about how the physiological responses of group members predict the decisions that groups make. In the current work, we examine whether physiological linkage from “senders” to “receivers”—which occurs when a sender’s physiological response predicts a receiver’s physiological response—is associated with senders’ success at persuading the group to make a decision in their favor. We also examine whether experimentally manipulated status—an important predictor of social behavior—is associated with physiological linkage. In groups of 5, we randomly assigned 1 person to be high status, 1 low status, and 3 middle status. Groups completed a collaborative decision-making task that required them to come to a consensus on a decision to hire 1 of 5 firms. Unbeknownst to the 3 middle-status members, high- and low-status members surreptitiously were told to each argue for different firms. We measured cardiac interbeat intervals of all group members throughout the decision-making process to assess physiological linkage. We found that the more receivers were physiologically linked to senders, the more likely groups were to make a decision in favor of the senders. We did not find that people were physiologically linked to their group members as a function of their fellow group members’ status. This work identifies physiological linkage as a novel correlate of persuasion and highlights the need to understand the relationship between group members’ physiological responses during group decision-making.

The Moral Self and Moral Duties

J. Everett, J. Skorburg, and J. Savulescu
PsyArXiv
Created on 6 Jan 20

Abstract

Recent research has begun treating the perennial philosophical question, “what makes a person the same over time?” as an empirical question. A long tradition in philosophy holds that psychological continuity and connectedness of memories are at the heart of personal identity. More recent experimental work, following Strohminger & Nichols (2014), has suggested that persistence of moral character, more than memories, is perceived as essential for personal identity. While there is a growing body of evidence supporting these findings, a critique by Starmans & Bloom (2018) suggests that this research program conflates personal identity with mere similarity. To address this criticism, we explore how loss of someone’s morality or memories influence perceptions of identity change, and perceptions of moral duties towards the target of the change. We present participants with a classic ‘body switch’ thought experiment and after assessing perceptions of identity persistence, we present a moral dilemma, asking participants to imagine that one of the patients must die (Study 1) or be left alone in a care home for the rest of their life (Study 2). Our results highlight the importance of the continuity of moral character, suggesting lay intuitions are tracking (something like) personal identity, not just mere similarity.

The research is here.

Judgment and Decision Making

Baruch Fischhoff and Stephen B. Broomell
Annual Review of Psychology 
2020 71:1, 331-355

Abstract

The science of judgment and decision making involves three interrelated forms of research: analysis of the decisions people face, description of their natural responses, and interventions meant to help them do better. After briefly introducing the field's intellectual foundations, we review recent basic research into the three core elements of decision making: judgment, or how people predict the outcomes that will follow possible choices; preference, or how people weigh those outcomes; and choice, or how people combine judgments and preferences to reach a decision. We then review research into two potential sources of behavioral heterogeneity: individual differences in decision-making competence and developmental changes across the life span. Next, we illustrate applications intended to improve individual and organizational decision making in health, public policy, intelligence analysis, and risk management. We emphasize the potential value of coupling analytical and behavioral research and having basic and applied research inform one another.

The paper can be downloaded here.

Groundbreaking Court Ruling Against Insurer Offers Hope in 2020

Katherine G. Kennedy
Psychiatric News
Originally posted 9 Jan 20

Here is an excerpt:

In his 106-page opinion, Judge Spero criticized UBH for using flawed, internally developed, and overly restrictive medical necessity guidelines that favored protecting the financial interests of UBH over medical treatment of its members.

“By a preponderance of the evidence,” Judge Spero wrote, “in each version of the Guidelines at issue in this case the defect is pervasive and results in a significantly narrower scope of coverage than is consistent with generally accepted standards of care.” His full decision can be accessed here.

As of this writing, we are still awaiting Judge Spero’s remedies order (a court-ordered directive that requires specific actions, such as reparations) against UBH. Following that determination, we will know what UBH will be required to do to compensate class members who suffered damages (that is, protracted illness or death) or their beneficiaries as a result of UBH’s denial of their coverage claims.

But waiting for the remedies order does not prevent us from looking for answers to critical questions like these:

• Will Wit. v. UBH impact the insurance industry enough to catalyze widespread reforms in how utilization review guidelines are determined and used?

• How will the 50 offices of state insurance commissioners respond? Will these regulators mandate the use of clinical coverage guidelines that reflect the findings in Wit. v. UBH? Will they tighten their oversight with updated regulations and enforcement actions?

The info is here.