Adherence to certain religious beliefs is often cited as both an efficient deterrent to immoral behavior and as an effective trigger of morally praiseworthy actions. I assume the truth of the ...externalist theory of motivation, emphasizing emotions as the most important non-cognitive elements that causally contribute to behavioral choices. While religious convictions may foster an array of complex emotions in a believer, three emotive states are singled out for a closer analysis: fear, guilt and gratitude. The results of recent empirical studies are examined to evaluate the relative motivational efficiency of all three emotions, as well as the likely negative psychological side-effects of these affective states, such as aggression and depression. While an action motivated by fear of punishment can be seen as a merely prudential strategy, the reparatory incentive of a guilty subject and a desire to reciprocate of the one blessed by undeserved favors are more plausible candidates for the class of genuine moral reactions. The available evidence, however, does not warrant a conclusion that a sense of guilt before God or as a sense of gratefulness to wards God, may produce a statistically significant increase in the frequency of prosocial actions aimed at other humans.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
What is moral progress? Are we striving for moral progress when we seek to "make the world a better place"? What connects the different ways in which moral agents, their actions, and the world can ...become morally better? This book proposes an explication of the abstract concept of moral progress and explores its relation to our moral lives.
We present evidence from a pre-registered experiment indicating that a philosophical argument – a type of rational appeal – can persuade people to make charitable donations. The rational appeal we ...used follows Singer’s “shallow pond” argument (1972), while incorporating an evolutionary debunking argument (Paxton, Ungar and Greene, 2012) against favoring nearby victims over distant ones. The effectiveness of this rational appeal did not differ significantly from that of a well-tested emotional appeal involving an image of a single child in need (Small, Loewenstein and Slovic, 2007). This is a surprising result, given evidence that emotions are the primary drivers of moral action, a view that has been very influential in the work of development organizations. We found no support for our hypothesis that combining our rational and emotional appeals would have a stronger effect than either appeal in isolation. However, our finding that both kinds of appeal can increase charitable donations is cause for optimism, especially concerning the potential efficacy of well-designed rational appeals. We consider the significance of these findings for moral psychology, ethics, and the work of organizations aiming to alleviate severe poverty.
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CEKLJ, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The purposes of this study were to conceptualize moral identity as moral ideal self, to develop a measure of this construct, to test for age and gender differences, to examine links between moral ...ideal self and adolescent outcomes, and to assess purpose and social responsibility as mediators of the relations between moral ideal self and outcomes. Data came from a local school sample (Data Set 1: N = 510 adolescents; 10-18 years of age) and a national online sample (Data Set 2: N = 383 adolescents; 15-18 years of age) of adolescents and their parents. All outcome measures were parent-report (Data Set 1: altruism, moral personality, aggression, and cheating; Data Set 2: environmentalism, school engagement, internalizing, and externalizing), whereas other variables were adolescent-report. The 20-item Moral Ideal Self Scale showed good reliability, factor structure, and validity. Structural equation models demonstrated that, even after accounting for moral identity internalization, in Data Set 1 moral ideal self positively predicted altruism and moral personality and negatively predicted aggression, whereas in Data Set 2 moral ideal self positively predicted environmentalism and negatively predicted internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Further, purpose and social responsibility mediated most relations between moral ideal self and the outcomes in Data Set 2. Moral ideal self was unrelated to age but differentially predicted some outcomes across age. Girls had higher levels of moral ideal self than boys, although moral identity did not differentially predict outcomes between genders. Thus, moral ideal self is a salient element of moral identity and may play a role in morally relevant adolescent outcomes.
Love, Friendship, and Moral Motivation Isern-Mas, Carme; Gomila, Antoni
Journal of theoretical and philosophical psychology,
05/2022, Letnik:
42, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The love that we feel for our friends plays an essential role in both our moral motivation to act towards them; and in our moral obligations towards them, that is, in our special duties. We ...articulate our proposal as a reply to Stephen Darwall's second-person proposal, which we take to be a contemporary representative of the Kantian view. According to this view, love does not have a necessary role neither in moral motivation, nor in moral obligation; just a complementary one. Yet this proposal faces three difficulties: a psychological problem, a practical problem, and a theoretical problem. In contrast, we argue that both moral motivation, and moral obligations emerge from our interpersonal relations with particular others. We further argue that obligations in the context of friendship are moral because they come with a feeling of obligation and have been internalized. Thus, the three problems raised to the Kantian position are clarified, and the role of love is emphasized in both our moral motivation, and our moral obligations towards friends.
Public Significance Statement
Contrary to the Kantian approach, which strongly separates love from morality, we defend that the love that we feel for our friends plays a crucial role in morality. We feel motivated to act towards our friends differently than we do towards strangers; and we have moral obligations towards them which are different than moral obligations as traditionally described.
Moral identity research to date has largely failed to provide evidence for developmental trends in moral identity, presumably because of restrictions in the age range of studies and the use of moral ...identity measures that are insensitive to age-related change. The present study investigated moral identity motivation across a broad age range (14-65 years, M = 33.48; N = 252) using a modified version of the Good Self-Assessment Interview. Individuals' moral identity motivation was coded and categorized as external, internal, or relationship-oriented. It was found that with age, external moral identity motivation decreased, whereas internal moral identity motivation increased. Effects of age were stronger in adolescence and emerging adulthood than in young adulthood and middle age. Findings underscore the developmental nature of the moral identity construct and suggest that moral motivation becomes more self-integrated with age.
Corporate social responsibility can improve firms’ ability to recruit highly motivated employees. This can secure socially responsible firms’ survival even in a highly competitive environment. We ...show that if both socially responsible (green) and non-responsible (brown) firms exist in equilibrium, workers with high moral motivation, who shirk less than others, will self-select into the green firms. If unobservable effort is sufficiently important for firm productivity, this can drive every brown firm out of business—even in the case where many workers have no moral motivation whatsoever.
This article analyses strategies of communication to motivate ordinary individuals to act in accord with cosmopolitan ethics. The central argument of the article is that research on cosmopolitan ...motivation needs to engage much more actively with research in psychology and communications, which provide significant insights on the effectiveness of strategies that moral philosophers have proposed to motivate cosmopolitan action. The article critically analyses ‘thick cosmopolitan’ motivation strategies, which highlight the collective culpability of affluent individuals in the global North for the poverty in the global South as a means to motivate cosmopolitan action. Drawing on research in psychology, the article argues that the emphasis on culpability can have adverse impacts at odds with cosmopolitan ethics. The article then proposes alternative communication strategies for cosmopolitan motivation, drawing again on research in psychology and communications.
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Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Proponents of “the affective appeal” (e.g. Dancy in Ethics 124(4):787–812, 2014; Zagzebski in Philos Phenomenol Res 66(1):104–124, 2003) argue that we can make progress in the longstanding debate ...about the nature of moral motivation by appealing to the affective dimension of affective episodes such as emotions, which allegedly play either a causal or constitutive role in moral judgements. Specifically, they claim that appealing to affect vindicates a version of Motivational Internalism—roughly, the view that there is a necessary connection between moral judgment and motivation—that is both more empirically respectable and less theoretically controversial than non-affective versions. We here argue that the affective appeal fails: versions of Internalism which appeal to affect are neither more empirically supported, nor clearly less controversial, than versions of Internalism which make no such appeal. Although affect doubtless has an important role to play in explaining moral motivation, we are sceptical that establishing any such role advances the debate.
This paper addresses three basic questions about moral motivation. Concerning the nature of moral motivation, it argues that it involves responsiveness to both reasons of morality and the value of ...persons and everything else of value. Moral motivation is thus identified as reason-responsive appropriate valuing. Regarding whether it is possible for people to be morally motivated, the paper relies on Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to show how moral motivation is a likely product of education that is need-supportive in modeling appropriate valuing and engaging students in the kinds of reasoning that are essential to moral motivation. Virtuous motivation that inclines people to engage in morally motivated acts is equated with being morally self-determining or achieving the right kind of integrated motivation. SDT shows how people come to be morally motivated, and the paper concludes that an identified aspiration to be virtuous may play a significant role.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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