Previous research has demonstrated that mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) improves psychological functioning in multiple domains. However, to date, no studies have examined the effects of ...MBSR on moral reasoning and decision making. This single group design study examined the effect of MBSR on moral reasoning and ethical decision making, mindfulness, emotion, and well-being. Additionally, we investigated whether there was an association between the amount of meditation practice during MBSR and changes in moral reasoning and ethical decision making, emotions, mindfulness, and well-being. Results indicated that MBSR was associated with improvements in mindful attention, emotion and well-being. Further, amount of meditation practice was associated with greater improvement in mindful attention. Two-month follow-up results showed that, MBSR resulted in improvements in moral reasoning and ethical decision making, mindful attention, emotion, and well-being. This study provides preliminary evidence that MBSR may potentially facilitate moral reasoning and decision making in adults.
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32.
Measuring vacillations in reasoning Shivnekar, Revati Vijay; Srivastava, Nisheeth
Judgment and decision making,
01/2024, Volume:
19
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Abstract Our experience of reasoning is replete with conflict. People phenomenologically vacillate between options when confronted with challenging decisions. Existing experimental designs typically ...measure a summary of the experience of the conflict experienced throughout the choice process for any individual choice or even between multiple observers for a choice. We propose a new method for measuring vacillations in reasoning during the time-course of individual choices, utilizing them as a fine-grained indicator of cognitive conflict. Our experimental paradigm allows participants to report the alternative they were considering while deliberating. Through 3 experiments, we demonstrate that our measure correlates with existing summary judgments of conflict and confidence in moral and logical reasoning problems. The pattern of deliberation revealed by these vacillations produces new constraints for theoretical models of moral and syllogistic reasoning.
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To psychologists Adler (1927/1954) and Maslow (1954), fully mature individuals care deeply for all humanity, not just for their own ingroups. This paper reports a series of studies with a new measure ...of that caring, the Identification With All Humanity Scale (IWAH). These studies together show that identification with all humanity is more than an absence of ethnocentrism and its correlates and more than the presence of dispositional empathy, moral reasoning, moral identity, and the value of universalism. Across these studies, the IWAH predicted concern for global human rights and humanitarian needs (Studies 1 and 2), was temporally stable (Study 3), and correlated with how close others see one as being (Study 4). The IWAH strongly distinguished members of 2 known groups from a general adult sample (Study 5). It predicted valuing the lives of ingroup and outgroup members equally (Study 7), knowledge of global humanitarian concerns (Study 8) and choosing to learn about these concerns (Study 9), and a willingness to contribute to international humanitarian relief (Study 10). In regression analyses, it predicted these results beyond related constructs. Although psychologists have focused extensively upon negative qualities such as ethnocentrism and its roots, we suggest that the positive quality of identification with all humanity also merits extensive study.
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Academic cheating, a common and consequential form of dishonesty, has puzzled moral psychologists and educators for decades. The present research examined a new theoretical approach to the ...perceptions, evaluations, and motivations that shape students' decisions to cheat. We tested key predictions of this approach by systematically examining students' accounts of their own cheating. In two studies, we interviewed undergraduates in psychology (n = 68) and engineering (n = 123) classes about their past experiences with plagiarism or other cheating. Interviews assessed students' perceptions of whether they were cheating, their evaluations of whether their actions were okay, and their motivations for doing what they did. Most students did not initially recognize their acts as cheating. While students generally thought cheating was wrong, they often judged the exceptional cases in which they cheated to be acceptable, citing concerns such as assignment goals and task feasibility. The findings suggest that perceptions, evaluations, and competing motivations play a key role in students' decisions to cheat.
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A developmental intergroup approach was taken to examine the development of prosocial bystander intentions among children and adolescents. Participants as bystanders (N = 260) aged 8–10 and ...13–15 years were presented with scenarios of direct aggression between individuals from different social groups (i.e., intergroup verbal aggression). These situations involved either an ingroup aggressor and an outgroup victim or an outgroup aggressor and an ingroup victim. This study focussed on the role of intergroup factors (group membership, ingroup identification, group norms, and social–moral reasoning) in the development of prosocial bystander intentions. Findings showed that prosocial bystander intentions declined with age. This effect was partially mediated by the ingroup norm to intervene and perceived severity of the verbal aggression. However, a moderated mediation analysis showed that only when the victim was an ingroup member and the aggressor an outgroup member did participants become more likely with age to report prosocial bystander intentions due to increased ingroup identification. Results also showed that younger children focussed on moral concerns and adolescents focussed more on psychological concerns when reasoning about their bystander intention. These novel findings help explain the developmental decline in prosocial bystander intentions from middle childhood into early adolescence when observing direct intergroup aggression.
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Value Judgments and the True Self Newman, George E.; Bloom, Paul; Knobe, Joshua
Personality & social psychology bulletin,
02/2014, Volume:
40, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The belief that individuals have a “true self” plays an important role in many areas of psychology as well as everyday life. The present studies demonstrate that people have a general tendency to ...conclude that the true self is fundamentally good—that is, that deep inside every individual, there is something motivating him or her to behave in ways that are virtuous. Study 1 finds that observers are more likely to see a person’s true self reflected in behaviors they deem to be morally good than in behaviors they deem to be bad. Study 2 replicates this effect and demonstrates observers’ own moral values influence what they judge to be another person’s true self. Finally, Study 3 finds that this normative view of the true self is independent of the particular type of mental state (beliefs vs. feelings) that is seen as responsible for an agent’s behavior.
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Past research has identified a number of asymmetries based on moral judgments. Beliefs about (a) what a person values, (b) whether a person is happy, (c) whether a person has shown weakness of will, ...and (d) whether a person deserves praise or blame seem to depend critically on whether participants themselves find the agent's behavior to be morally good or bad. To date, however, the origins of these asymmetries remain unknown. The present studies examine whether beliefs about an agent's “true self” explain these observed asymmetries based on moral judgment. Using the identical materials from previous studies in this area, a series of five experiments indicate that people show a general tendency to conclude that deep inside every individual there is a “true self” calling him or her to behave in ways that are morally virtuous. In turn, this belief causes people to hold different intuitions about what the agent values, whether the agent is happy, whether he or she has shown weakness of will, and whether he or she deserves praise or blame. These results not only help to answer important questions about how people attribute various mental states to others; they also contribute to important theoretical debates regarding how moral values may shape our beliefs about phenomena that, on the surface, appear to be decidedly non‐moral in nature.
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While a product return guarantee plays an important role in reducing perceived risk, a liberal product return policy may generate a moral crisis in consumers and induce unethical post-consumption ...behaviors. Situational questionnaires with two return policies, liberal and rigorous, are used to investigate how such policies influence consumers' moral reasoning and fraudulent return activities. This study finds that a return policy with different attributes results in differing consumer moral recognition, moral judgment, moral intensity, and intentions toward fraudulent return. Among these constructs, evidence of a strong correlation between moral judgment and unethical returning behaviors was found. Social consensus has a greater impact on moral recognition, moral judgment, and fraudulent return intention than on the magnitude of consequences and probability of effect. These findings from consumers' moral perspectives address gaps in the literature in which most studies take the retailer point of view in examining the effects of return policy. Understanding consumers’ moral decision-making is helpful for retailers who seek to avoid consumer abuse of return policies.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
According to the spontaneity view of the role of the passions in moral deliberation, Aquinas holds that virtuous passions play an active role in moral deliberation, prior to the formation of moral ...judgement and choice. This article offers a qualified defense of this view. Qualified, because critics of this view are right to point out that Aquinas is generally suspicious of the passions, and he is careful to delimit the role that they can plan in processes of moral deliberation and choice. A defense, nonetheless, because Aquinas does give a positive role to virtuous passions in the early stages of moral discernment and deliberation, prior to judgement. Furthermore, Aquinas has strong reasons to defend something like the spontaneity view, given his overall view of the virtues as perfections of the powers they inform. That in itself does not necessarily mean that he does defend the spontaneity view, but it does suggest that we can develop such a defense out of what he does say, in such a way as to extend and clarify central elements of his moral theory.
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