Moral Evaluation Research Articles

The Intergenerational Transmission of Pro-Environmental Behaviours: The Role of Moral Judgment in Primary School-Age Children

The environmental crisis poses a critical issue for current and future generations, driving research to investigate the key factors and psychological characteristics that motivate individuals to engage in pro-environmental behaviours (PEBs) from an early age. In this context, intergenerational transmission—which refers to how parents influence their children’s behaviour—plays a crucial role in initiating and promoting eco-friendly practices. From a children-centred perspective, the current study focused on the intergenerational transmission of PEBs, addressing the moderating role of children’s moral judgment. This latter was evaluated considering general moral judgment (i.e., moral transgressions, social-conventional transgressions, and non-harmful personal choices) and domain-specific environmental moral judgment (i.e., harmful actions with no specific victim, harmful actions to animals, and harmful actions to plants/trees). This study was carried out with 229 triads of Italian children (Mage = 8.54 years; SDage = 1.46 years; rangeage 6–11 years, 130 girls and 99 boys), fathers (Mage = 45.73 years; SDage = 5.07 years; rangeage 29–64 years), and mothers (Mage = 42.56 years; SDage = 4.67 years; rangeage 28–57 years). Results revealed that only the moral evaluations on harmful actions directed at animals (B = 0.32, SE = 0.15, t = 2.18, CI 95% = [0.030, 0.612]) and those towards plants/trees (B = 0.19, SE = 0.08, t = 2.49, CI 95% = [0.369, 0.342]) moderated the association between parents’ PEBs and children’s PEBs, boosting the intergenerational transmission of PEBs. Overall, this research yielded novel evidence on the main factors affecting the intergenerational transmission of PEBs, suggesting moral judgment as a critical mechanism in nurturing pro-environmental practices in school-age children. Implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed.

On the intrinsic value of diversity

ABSTRACT Diversity is an important ethical concept, but it is almost exclusively studied within two domains: biodiversity and diversity of sociological attributes such as race and gender. We provide a general study of the intrinsic value of diversity. We survey prior literature on the intrinsic value of biodiversity and sociological diversity in search of insights relevant to the intrinsic value of all types of diversity. We then present three thought experiments designed to clarify intuitions about the intrinsic value of small amounts of diversity, large amounts of diversity, and diversity as compared to other intrinsic values. We find that many types of diversity are intrinsically valuable at both small and large amounts, but that diversity may be a weak intrinsic value in comparison to others. Noting that diversity can be defined in many ways, we propose that, for purposes of moral evaluation, diversity should be defined to include both a diversity of individual elements within a group and a diversity of the overall patterns or structures of the group. Some of our findings about the intrinsic value of diversity are tentative, indicating that moral intuitions about diversity are sometimes ambiguous and would benefit from further study.

Exploring the influence of user characteristics on verbal aggression towards social chatbots

ABSTRACT Chatbots possess great potential benefits, yet concerns persist regarding users adopting inappropriate, offensive language. This research delved into the influence of user characteristics on verbally aggressive behaviours towards social chatbots. Employing a mixed-method study, we examined individual characteristics such as personal dispositions, offensive language patterns, academic majors, and prior experiences with conversational agents. Findings from a ten-day field experiment involving 33 participants using a real-world Telegram-based chatbot app unveiled that users' anthropomorphism, computer-related major, and gender significantly impact their moral emotions and evaluations of the chatbot's capabilities. Moreover, employing offensive language towards the chatbot detrimentally impacted users' perceptions of its abilities, helpfulness, and likability. The research findings advocate for ongoing monitoring and effective resolution of users' behaviours regarding the use of offensive language in their interactions with a chatbot. Additionally, the results underscore the importance of incorporating diverse perspectives into chatbot design to address biases and offensive utterances.

Ambivalent Stereotypes

AbstractPeople often discriminate based on negative or positive stereotypes about others. Important examples of this are highlighted by the theory of ambivalent sexism. This theory distinguishes sexist stereotypes that are negative (hostile sexism) from those that are positive (benevolent sexism). While both forms of sexism are considered wrong toward women, hostile sexism seems intuitively worse than benevolent sexism. In this article, we ask whether the difference between discriminating based on positive vs. negative stereotypes in itself makes a morally relevant difference. We suggest that it does not. By examining a number of prominent accounts of what makes discrimination wrong, we defend the Moral Irrelevance View according to which stereotype valence is irrelevant to the moral evaluation of discrimination, all else equal.

Exploring Stylistic analysis of lexical layer: An In-depth Study of Abdul Qayum Qawim's Poetry

The 'multi-layered stylistics' approach is a contemporary method for examining and evaluating the lexical, phonetic, syntactic, rhetorical, and ideological aspects within a text. Through the application of multi-layer stylistics, it is possible to discern the distinctive characteristics of an individual's style, thoughts, and ideologies that shape a poet or writer's written compositions. The aim of this study is to analyze and assess the lexical characteristics of a poem compilation written by Abdul Qayum Qawim. The objective is to determine the degree to which a thorough analysis and study of complex notions, such as sensuous, abstract, wonderful, slangy, and others, has been conducted at the level of language. The research employed a descriptive-analytical strategy by utilizing the library technique. This work meticulously analyzes the lexical layer of Abdul Qayum Qawim's poetry using a comprehensive stylistic analysis approach. The research is structured into two primary sections: initially, a comprehensive analysis of the poem's lexical layer is undertaken, followed by a meticulous examination of the poem's theoretical aspects. This study explores the concepts of ideology and investigates several themes like moral evaluation, societal dissatisfaction, pessimism, the passage of time, lack of mutual comprehension, concern towards instability, and the avoidance of hypocrisy. Its aim is to enlighten the general public through the use of uncomplicated poetry that highlights the abundance and vitality of spring. The research indicates that the poet exhibited a profound comprehension and extensive knowledge of contemporary affairs by skillfully portraying diverse social realities through the significance of his verses. Furthermore, the poet's method demonstrated a keen focus on the underlying meanings inside the text, highlighting the convergence of time, conceptual ideas, and human experiences, alongside the utilization of descriptive language that appeals to the senses.

“It Was Really Sick:” Managing Moral Evaluations during Personality Disorder Interviews

Moral aspects are closely related to psychiatric assessment. Personality disorders, especially, form a morally loaded category, as the diagnostic process involves questioning behaviors that go against social norms. Consequently, being interviewed about these matters may be face‐threatening for the patients. However, the study of the role of morality in psychiatric face‐to‐face interactions has been scarce. This paper explores how the patients and nurses orient themselves to moral matters during personality disorder interviews in two Finnish psychiatric outpatient clinics. This article uses Erving Goffman's frame theory to differentiate how different orientations come into play during the interviews. Conversation analysis forms the methodological basis for the work. In personality disorder interviews, it is possible to observe information‐gathering, moral, and everyday interaction frames. The nurses have different approaches in receiving the patients' moral considerations. They may maintain a rather neutral approach, but there are also cases of both challenging tones and more supportive and affiliating responses. Making visible how moral themes are discussed in real life enables a nuanced evaluation of psychiatric practices.

Attributions toward artificial agents in a modified Moral Turing Test

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) raise important questions about whether people view moral evaluations by AI systems similarly to human-generated moral evaluations. We conducted a modified Moral Turing Test (m-MTT), inspired by Allen et al. (Exp Theor Artif Intell 352:24–28, 2004) proposal, by asking people to distinguish real human moral evaluations from those made by a popular advanced AI language model: GPT-4. A representative sample of 299 U.S. adults first rated the quality of moral evaluations when blinded to their source. Remarkably, they rated the AI’s moral reasoning as superior in quality to humans’ along almost all dimensions, including virtuousness, intelligence, and trustworthiness, consistent with passing what Allen and colleagues call the comparative MTT. Next, when tasked with identifying the source of each evaluation (human or computer), people performed significantly above chance levels. Although the AI did not pass this test, this was not because of its inferior moral reasoning but, potentially, its perceived superiority, among other possible explanations. The emergence of language models capable of producing moral responses perceived as superior in quality to humans’ raises concerns that people may uncritically accept potentially harmful moral guidance from AI. This possibility highlights the need for safeguards around generative language models in matters of morality.

Target Happiness Attenuates Perceivers' Moral Condemnation of Prejudiced People.

Five experiments (combined N = 4,915) tested the prediction that the moral boost of happiness would persist for social targets with moral failings. In Studies 1 and 2, White and Black participants, respectively, judged happy (versus unhappy) racist targets more morally good. In Study 3, happy (versus unhappy) racist targets were judged more morally good and less (more) likely to engage in racist (good) behavior. Behavioral expectations explained the link between happiness and moral evaluations. Study 4 replicated Studies 1 to 3 in the context of sexism. In Study 5, happy (versus unhappy) targets who engaged in racially biased behavior were evaluated as more morally good, and this effect was explained by behavioral forecasts. Happiness boosts attributions of moral goodness for prejudiced people and does so via expectations for future behavior. Future directions are discussed.

Perceived Power Polarizes Moral Evaluations.

We show an interactive effect of perceiver-target similarity in ideological beliefs and target power on impressions of target morality. Consistent with prior research, perceivers rated targets with dissimilar ideologies as less moral than targets with similar ideologies, but this difference in ratings was magnified for powerful targets relative to less powerful targets. We argue that these results emerged because perceivers expected similar-ideology, powerful (vs. powerless) targets to help the self more, and expected dissimilar-ideology, powerful (vs. powerless) targets to hurt the self more. We establish this effect when people evaluate politicians (Study 1), groups, and individuals (Studies 2a-2b); demonstrate its predictive power over other kinds of interpersonal similarity; and show that it affects morality judgments uniquely when compared with other consequential dimensions of social evaluation. Finally, we manipulated power experimentally and showed the interaction when the difference between high- and low-power manipulations was controlled over just $1 (Studies 3-4).

Legal behavior and human identity in the debate paradigm of the philosophy of law

This article analyzes the peculiarities of the reflection of a person’s legal behavior in the light of various philosophical and legal scientific discourses. In general, the analysis of a person’s legal behavior in the debatable paradigm of the philosophy of law in the context of studying the problem of establishing legal cooperation illuminates the deep aspects of the interaction between the individual and the legal system. Philosophical concepts help to consider this topic on a metaphysical level, revealing the fundamental principles and moral aspects of legal behavior.
 It was established that the primary springboard for considering behavior in the context of legal reality is its consideration through the ideological paradigm of human rights, since the concept recognizes the inalienability and inalienability of the rights of each person, justifying their fundamentality due to the presence of dignity inherent to each person. The main idea is that these rights are not only legal norms, but also a key element that forms personal dignity and freedom and express the personal identity of a person, and in evaluating human behavior, the role of the state and society in ensuring and protecting rights as an unconditional axiological determinants.
 It is proved that a valid paradigm of reflection is the need to analyze behavior in the prism of a social contract, since the mutual agreement of people involves the exchange of a part of individual freedom for common order and security, ensured by the adoption of rules and obligations, which forms the basis for the creation of the state and the legal order. Thus, a person’s behavior is evaluated for its compliance with established rules and the ability to interact with other members of society in peace and mutual understanding.
 It is motivated that the philosophical analysis of ethical-philosophical concepts in the context of human behavior defines two key areas - deontology and consequentology. Deontology, focusing on duties and rules, determines the morality of actions regardless of their consequences, indicating the obligation of ethical norms, and consequentology focuses on the consequences of actions as the main criterion for their moral evaluation, emphasizing the importance of positive results.

Through the eyes of non-vegans: using photovoice to explore the stigmatisation of vegans

PurposeThis study aims to examine how veganism is “seen” by young adult non-vegan consumers and how prevailing attitudes reinforce or challenge stigmas around veganism.Design/methodology/approachPhotovoice methodology was used to explore young non-vegan consumers’ attitudes and beliefs towards veganism. Data was collected from students studying advertising at a major university in Australia, who produced images and narratives reflective of their own attitudes towards veganism. Polytextual thematic analysis of the resulting visual data was then undertaken to reveal the dominant themes underpinning participants’ attitudes. Participant narratives were then reviewed to confirm whether the ascribed meaning aligned with participants’ intended meaning.FindingsParticipant images were reflective of first, how they saw their world and their place within it, which showed the interplay and interconnectedness between humans, animals and nature, and second, how they saw vegans within this world, with both positive and negative attitudes expressed. Interestingly, vegans were simultaneously admired and condemned. By situating these attitudes along a spectrum of moral evaluation, bounded by stigmatisation and moral legitimacy, participants saw vegans as being either Radicals, Pretenders, Virtuous or Pragmatists. For veganism to become more widely accepted by non-vegans, there is an important role to be played by each vegan type.Originality/valueThis study offers a more nuanced understanding of how and why dissociative groups, such as vegans, become stigmatised, which has implications for messaging and marketing practices around veganism and associated products/services. Future research could use a similar methodology to understand why other minority groups in society are stereotyped and stigmatised, which has broader social implications.

Montaigne, Lukrecjusz i Nowy Świat

In this article, my aim is to interpret Michel de Montaigne’s essay On Coaches, firstly, as consistent, and secondly, as deeply marked by Lucretian ideas. I analyze three contexts in which the titular ‘coaches’ are present: luxury, war, and fear of death. Furthermore, I argue that they constitute mutually interacting ‘force fields’ that should be considered in relation to each other.Following this scheme, I reconstruct the relationship between this essay and De rerum natura on three levels: 1) a discussion involving the Lucretian idea of the finite and young world; 2) a specific repetition of Lucretius’ gesture: moral evaluation imposed on a basically neutral recognition of historical change and movement; 3) the connection of vehicles as symbols of luxury with the problem of the fear of death, or the lack of courage, as a source of moral degeneration.

A Moral Evaluation of LBOs

A Moral Evaluation of LBOs

Children’s Moral Evaluations of Inclusion and Exclusion during Play in Regard to Ethnic Background

The aim of this study was to determine the likelihood of children including a child of a different ethnic origin in their games. In focusing on 359 children aged six, eight, and twelve, the research sought to understand how the children categorized their views on this subject and whether the decision to include or exclude would change at the behest of peers, teachers, or parents. The study was inspired by the work presented by Walker et al. (2019), and five questions related to this topic were used as data collection tools. As a result of the deductive and inductive analyses, it was determined that most of the children believed that those from different ethnic origins should be included in play time. When the reasons for including children in games were examined, the answers given were generally connected the category of "Moral Justifications". For the children more prone to excluding peers of a different ethnicity, responses tended to find themselves in the "Cultural stereotypes/Personal characteristics" sub-category.

Perceived mental illness is associated with judgments of less agency, yet more moral wrongness

For a set of 10 conditions (e.g. homosexuality, obesity, drug addiction), we explored associations between moral judgments, agency evaluations, and perceptions that a condition is a mental illness. In a preregistered study ( n = 1,249 U.S. adults), we found that perceptions of lower agency were associated with decreased moral wrongness judgments, as well as increased perceptions of mental illness, yet perceived moral wrongness was the most robust predictor of perceived mental illness. In other words, although perceived mental illness was associated with evaluations that tend to be morally exonerating (such as less control and greater difficulty changing), we observed positive associations between wrongness judgments and perceived mental illness. We also found that—at least within our set of conditions—political conservatives tended to evaluate conditions as more controllable, more morally wrong, and more of a mental illness, yet on the whole, ideology was not a reliable predictor of perceived mental illness. Instead, liberals and conservatives with similar wrongness evaluations tended to similarly ascribe mental illness. These findings raise questions about potential causal relationships between mental illness perceptions and moral evaluations and the possibility that perceived moral wrongness might sometimes contribute to perceptions that a condition ought to be considered a mental illness.

Metaphtonymy and semio-cognitive de-legitimation of Donald Trump in the meme discourse of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (January 2016–December 2019)

Abstract The current research endeavor extends scholarship on political satire and digital memes proposing a more nuanced semio-cognitive analytical framework for the innovative political image macro memes pertinent to The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (January 2016–December 2019). Premised on Martynyuk and Melescchenko’s (2021) conceptualization of metaphtonymy and van Leeuwen’s (2007) (de)-legitimation strategies, a corpus of 159 image macro meme instances from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah’s (January 2016 to December 2019) has been examined to show how the semio-cognitive de-legitimation of Donald Trump and his administration is materialized through creative meme-inherent metaphtonymies. Key findings include the dominance of four meme-specific metaphtonymic patterns. In tandem, the overlapping semio-discursive de-legitimation strategies of authorization, moral evaluation, rationalization, and mythopoeisis are metaphtonymically encoded in the image macro memes of the show’s monologue to: (a) function as highly medium-specific expressions that respond to challenging events based on thematic and structural templates, and (b) provide a timely (and even reactionary) response to political debates, creating a negative view of Donald Trump to reduce his legitimacy as the US president.

Sustainable marketing dilemmas: moral, ethical, and practical in business communication perspectives

Abstract In recent years, corporations' sustainable marketing practices have gone beyond just selling mere products or services and present significant challenges. This study examines the moral, ethical, and practical challenges encountered by sustainable marketing, specifically from the standpoint of business communication. This research explains the notion of sustainable marketing and discerns its ethical dilemmas by examining the current body of scholarly literature. The discussion focuses on stakeholder theory, ethical consumerism, and communication theories. The study employs a qualitative research methodology, gathering data through comprehensive interviews and case analysis. The participants comprise marketing professionals, consumers, and companies that place sustainability as a top priority. The findings illustrate that organisations face many moral and ethical challenges while creating and executing sustainable marketing strategies. For example, challenges arise when trying to balance the desire for genuineness and openness and the success of marketing communications, as well as conflicts between moral evaluations and business goals. These challenges substantially impact the company's communication strategy, as they are directly connected to consumer trust and brand image. This study offers valuable insights for companies creating and implementing sustainable marketing strategies. It highlights the crucial role of managing moral and ethical factors to achieve long-term success. Moreover, the discoveries can aid policymakers and regulatory agencies formulate criteria and recommendations to foster sustainable corporate practices.

Children's moral evaluations of and behaviors toward people who are curious about religion and science.

Although children exhibit curiosity regarding science, questions remain regarding how children evaluate others' curiosity and whether evaluations differ across domains that prioritize faith (e.g., religion) versus those that value questioning (e.g., science). In Study 1 (n = 115 5- to 8-year-olds; 49% female; 66% White), children evaluated actors who were curious, ignorant and non-curious, or knowledgeable about religion or science; curiosity elicited relatively favorable moral evaluations (ds > .40). Study 2 (n = 62 7- to 8-year-olds; 48% female; 63% White) found that these evaluations generalized to behaviors, as children acted more pro-socially and less punitively toward curious, versus not curious, individuals ( = .37). These findings (data collected 2020-2022) demonstrate children's positive moral evaluations of curiosity and contribute to debates regarding overlap between scientific and religious cognition.

Blindness of intentions and metacognitive deficits during moral judgements in schizophrenia.

Previous research has shown that moral judgments are affected by social cognitive abilities, such as theory of mind (ToM). This study examines how information about an actor's beliefs and the consequences of their actions affect the moral evaluation of the character's behavior in social events. Our research builds upon previous studies, which have shown that these factors contribute differently to moral judgments made by both adults and young children. This study aimed to explore how participants with schizophrenia and healthy controls read stories about social situations in the context of moral judgments. The study used the research procedure that included 4 variants of 16 scenarios describing social situations, and thus comprising 64 stories. After each story, participants evaluated their confidence level on a 4-point scale. To assess delusional beliefs, the Polish adaptation of the Peters Delusion Inventory (PDI) questionnaire and the Paranoia Checklist (PCh) were used. Respondents completed these questionnaires after completing the scenario test procedure. In social situations, patients with paranoid schizophrenia were found to evaluate actions of protagonists who attempted to harm another person more leniently than when it was an accident. Conversely, healthy individuals judged those actors who expressed intentions to hurt another person significantly more harshly than in an accident situation. Metacognition measures show that paranoid schizophrenia patients make moral judgments with high confidence, despite being based on an incorrect reading of the other person's intentions. The study indicates that ToM has a significant impact on the moral judgment of others. Decreased moral cognition can result from both positive and negative symptoms. Deficits related to metacognition can also sustain such cognitive distortions.

Leibniz as a virtue ethicist

AbstractIn this paper I argue that Leibniz's ethics is a kind of virtue ethics where virtues of the agent are explanatorily primary. I first examine how Leibniz obtained his conception of justice as a kind of love in an early text, Elements of Natural Law. I show that in this text Leibniz's goal was to find a satisfactory definition of justice that could reconcile egoism with altruism, and that this was achieved through the Aristotelian virtue of friendship where friends treat each other as “other selves.” Following this decisive moment, Leibniz adopted an Aristotle‐inspired ethical framework where the virtuous agent is central for moral evaluations. I then show that, despite certain developments, Leibniz's ethics retained this essential feature throughout his career. In Leibniz's later writings, God constitutes the foundation of the moral realm, and the fundamental moral endeavor of human beings consists in the imitation of God.