Moral Convictions Research Articles

Will Moralization of Science Lead to “Better” Science?

In the fall of 2018, The US National Science Foundation (NSF) implemented a new policy on sexual harassment. A few months later, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), took a further step in the fight against harassment by announcing that researchers accused of harassment, but not yet found guilty, could nonetheless be excluded from the lists of potential reviewers of submitted projects. We also observe a recent tendency to call for the retraction of published peer-reviewed results on the basis that their conclusions are considered to go against the moral convictions of some social groups, though the lack of validity of the results has not been proven. It is certainly a legitimate question to ask whether these kinds of policies and moral critiques, which directly link the practice of science to the moral behavior of the scientists in the larger society, do not initiate a profound transformation in the relations between science and society by adding to the usually implicit norms governing the scientific community a new form of moralization of the scientists themselves. We analyze these recent events in terms of a new process of moralization of science and ask whether these new rules of conduct may lead to doing better or more robust science.

Biology students’ convictions and moral disengagement toward bioethical issues: a path analysis

Advances in science and technology has led to the rise of different issues in relation to human life and security as well as the environment. These issues also paved the way for the field of Bioethics with its principles aiming to uphold moral standards on these issues. This study aimed to test and modify the theoretical models of the factors influencing the conviction schemas of BS Biology Bioethics students of a state university toward bioethical issues. One hundred ten (110) undergraduate students were pre-tested and post-tested for comprehension of Bioethics principles, moral disengagement, and convictions toward bioethical issues. Identified personal factors were also retrieved for testing. Results showed that the Bioethics course has increased the participants’ comprehension of Bioethics principles, moral disengagement, and convictions. Stepwise multiple regression results revealed that anxiety, extraversion, exposure to media, and moral disengagement can predict pre-convictions. On the other hand, only moral disengagement was found to predict post-convictions. Furthermore, moral disengagement can be predicted by convictions before the course while anxiety, openness to change, and convictions were the predictors after the course. The proposed theoretical model was for tested goodness of fit using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and acceptance was based on the model fit criteria. Since the proposed model was not found to fit the data, this was revised based on the results of multiple regression and correlation among exogenous variables. Three models were constructed and found to fit the data adequately. These models show the direct and indirect effects of personal factors and moral disengagement on convictions. The mediating effects of moral disengagement and convictions to each other were also shown. Findings further imply that the ability to understand the principles does not influence convictions, but rather moral disengagement has a greater influence on the said factor. Improving moral education by integrating Bioethics to the curriculum is recommended to further strengthen the moral judgement and reasoning of students.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40889-022-00149-3.

Negotiated harms in moralized policies: The case of Duterte’s war on drugs

Viewing a policy as harmful can lead to its moral condemnation. However, this harmfulness can be constructed and negotiated to lead to different moral positions by building upon available, accessible, and relevant discourses. This study examined how individuals constructed and negotiated harm in moral reasoning about a contentious policy, Philippine President Duterte’s war on drugs, locally known as tokhang. We conducted thematic analysis with attention to discourse to analyze interviews with 12 Filipino young adults, using the Theory of Dyadic Morality as a starting point to make sense of constructions of harm. Reasoning about tokhang showed different constructions of intentional agents and vulnerable victims serving as the basis for moral positions. Moral condemnation of the war on drugs emphasized the vulnerability of its victims and the intentionality of the government and police as agents. On the other hand, moral justification of the policy constructed drug war victims as agentic and guilty of crimes, the police as potentially vulnerable victims acting according to protocol to defend themselves, and rogue agents acting independently of the policy. Ambiguous positions were also made possible when the causality of harm is unclear. These constructions and negotiations were built upon broader discourses deployed in the sociopolitical context of urban young adults, with individual contexts and characteristics contributing to variations in the accessibility and relevance of certain discourses and resulting moral positions.

Losing Culture: Nostalgia, Heritage, and Our Accelerated Times

Losing Culture: Nostalgia, Heritage, and Our Accelerated Times

Личностные детерминанты селфизма у юношей и девушек

Modern young people live in the dynamically changing world, in conditions of constant changes in the sphere of public life and, especially in personal terms and the sharp change of habitual stereotypes. The specificity of age aspects and psychological characteristics in adolescence contributes to the expansion of the number of addicts. It is the desire to assert oneself, to know oneself more, the formation of worldview and moral convictions that sometimes contribute to the loss of a sense of security, the emergence of fear of reality, and the distortion of ideas about the image of the “selfness”. Selfie craze among young people has become a "global catastrophe". Today it is hard to find young people who would not take pictures of themselves and would not post photos on various social networks, chats. And it is crucial for a young person to receive feedback from their friends who have seen the post. In this regard, the issues of studying the psychological characteristics of persons suffering from various forms of addictive disorders are gaining relevance in science, since the presence of addiction is due to the personality characteristics and the accompanying negative emotions (irresponsibility, uncertainty, anxiety), its environment and interaction with people. At the same time, there are almost no scientific papers on the study of personality characteristics prone to selfie addiction; most of the works are only of indirect, fragmentary nature. The authors of the current paper analyzed various approaches, etiology, mechanisms, symptoms of development and risk factors for the formation of selfie addiction in high school students, and presented the results of a study of the personal determinants of high-school boys’ and girls’ selfie addiction. The purpose of the research is to study the personal characteristics of children’s prone to selfie addiction. Research methods: theoretical methods, including theoretical analysis of psychological and pedagogical literature, comparison and generalization of experience; empirical methods (experiment, testing, questioning and diagnostic methods, observation); data processing methods (quantitative and qualitative analysis). The diagnostic tools were chosen taking into account the components of the structure of the anti-addictive attitude to the emergence of selfie addiction, which determine the personal determinants of the manifestation of selfie addiction. The study involved 172 students (aged 16-18) of secondary schools of the Republic of Tatarstan (Russia), of which 93 were girls and 79 were boys. As a result of the study, it was revealed that 37.2% of respondents have signs of selfie addiction, while girls are most prone to addictive behavior. Gender differences in potential addicts in the manifestation of a tendency to selfie addiction were found in the assessment of the meaningfulness of life, satisfaction with their personal characteristics, self-esteem, and the level of knowledge about self-dependence. The results of the study, the author's methods for identifying the level of formation of selfie addiction and the selection of diagnostic tools for studying the anti-addictive attitude to the emergence of selfie addiction can be successfully used in the practice of correctional and preventive work of teachers and psychologists of educational and social institutions.

Respect for conscientious judgement in health care.

Respect for conscientious judgement in health care.

Disentangling norms, morality, and principles: the September 2019 Brexit rebellion

Despite morality’s important role in international relations, we still lack a compelling way to study it. Some scholars define norms as moral in nature but fail to define morality or conceptualize it too narrowly. We address this problem by defining morality subjectively, allowing us to differentiate it from norms and study its impact on decisions of international significance. To do so, we adapt the moral convictions concept developed by psychologists to qualitative, elite-focused political research. Actors with moral convictions rely upon their individually held beliefs about fundamental right and wrong, whereas norm-followers look outward to community expectations. Morality requires sincere belief and weakens social influences. The September 2019 Brexit rebellion is an ideal case because it endangered rebels’ careers, rendering material self-interest an unlikely motive. This allows us to investigate the role of norms and moral principles. Based on interviews with British Members of Parliament (MPs) and text analysis, we find that community norms and personal moral principles interact: when existing norms give unclear guidance and identification with their in-group weakens, actors are likely to rely on their own principles to interpret norms. Morality can affect which norms matter but does not negate their influence altogether: pre-existing norms channel and constrain morality and its consequences. Many MPs moralized existing norms related to democratic decision-making, which mitigated some consequences of moralization, such as intolerance toward those with opposing views. This new conceptual and methodological approach thus helps to disentangle ideational factors and understand their influence on decisions of international significance.

Politicized Refuge: Chicago and the Transformation of the Sanctuary Movement

Politicized RefugeChicago and the Transformation of the Sanctuary Movement Nathan Ellstrand (bio) "We are writing to inform you that today our congregation voted to declare our church as a sanctuary for undocumented refugees from El Salvador. On Saturday, July 24, we will openly receive a refugee family into the care and protection of the church. We realize in so doing that we will be in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act Section 274(A)."1 In a letter to United States Attorney General William French Smith dated July 18, 1982, leadership at Chicago's Wellington Avenue United Church of Christ took a public stand on the rampant violence in El Salvador. It was the first place of worship in the Midwest to declare sanctuary, acting in clear defiance of the federal government and its intervention in Central America during the Cold War of the 1980s. The literature on the sanctuary movement concentrates on U.S.-Mexico border region organizers who provided refuge in Tucson and across southeastern Arizona, highlighting the actions of the Manzo Area Council, Jim Corbett, and the Reverend John Fife in declaring public sanctuary through the Tucson Ecumenical Council (TEC) in 1982. Lawyers, journalists, and anthropologists have focused on these individuals, emphasizing their religious and moral convictions.2 Since the 1980s, historical scholarship on the sanctuary movement has evolved from hagiographic accounts of leaders to works that place the movement in a broader context of transnational and borderlands history. Only one work examines the sanctuary movement in Chicago rather than Arizona; it emphasizes the internal organizational structure and gender dimensions of the movement instead of historicizing its politicized origins in the city a decade before.3 Although the initial movement to provide sanctuary—in the form of shelter, aid, and consultation—to Central American refugees emerged out [End Page 25] of the southwestern U.S., the push for expanding sanctuary came from political, solidarity-based organizing centered in the Midwest in Chicago between 1980 and 1983. Chicago sanctuary activists built on both the Central American solidarity movement and sanctuary in Tucson. They moved away from Tucson's localized, defensive approach of providing refuge on the border. Instead, Chicago organizers were steeped in the Central American solidarity movement, creating an interfaith coalition to proactively reject the Cold War priorities of the U.S. government abroad. Chicago activists politically weaponized sanctuary, using it not only to protect refugees, but to turn Central Americans' lived experiences into a sharp critique of U.S. foreign policy. This resulted in more than three hundred sanctuaries created nationwide by 1986, an example still widely invoked by immigrant and refugee advocates today. The Situation in Central America and Sanctuary in Tucson U.S. political involvement in Central America dates back to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. However, starting in the 1960s, Central America became a regional battleground of the Cold War. The U.S. and Soviet Union competed globally for hearts and minds, and a range of "hot wars" occurred within many Central American nations. The U.S. government actively sought to prevent the spread of communism and, ultimately, leftism. Guatemala's civil war between the state and left-wing organizations extended from 1960 to 1996. Ethnicity as well as ideology divided individuals of Spanish descent from the country's Indigenous poor and mixed-race people. The civil war in El Salvador occurred from 1980 to 1991 between the military government and a coalition of leftist organizations known as the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front. Nicaragua suffered its own prolonged period of revolutionary conflict from 1961–1990, starting with the overthrow of the Somoza family by the Sandinista National Liberation Front. Later, the Sandinistas fought the Contras, a coalition of right-wing paramilitary organizations. During the 1980s, Honduras served as a U.S. training ground for the Salvadoran military and for the Nicaraguan Contras; moreover, the Honduran state combatted its own leftist guerrillas.4 The U.S. intervened in all of these political conflicts, aiming to prevent the rise of leftist regimes in the region during the Cold War. The election of President Ronald Reagan in 1980 heralded U.S. government expansion of intervention in Central America, as the president [End Page...

Методологическая культура и мировоззрение преподавателя: гносеологические аспекты актуализации

The purpose of the study is to substantiate the need for a logical-epistemological construction of a conceptual model of the relationship between methodological culture and the worldview of a university teacher. The novelty of the work lies in identifying the typological and epistemological construct as the basis of the understanding thinking of the teacher, actively influencing the essence of his educational activity. As a result of the study, the psychological and pedagogical intentionality of the construct is specified in the dialectic of methodological form and worldview content. It is proved that in the intellectual discourse of thought-activity practice, the teacher's professional competence is expressed by the educational alloy of his methodological knowledge and ideological and moral conviction.

Public Moralities, Citizen Voices, and Disparate Fears

This article examines the contours of “the public’s morality(ies)”, either as an aggregate of individuals’ public hopes and fears or (in the plural) as particular mixes of hopes and fears stemming from individual (or coalitional) moral convictions. Our theoretical understanding of one aggregate “public morality” relies upon Derek Edyvane’s presentation of a civic virtue premised upon an austerity whereby citizens value a collective sense of protection as highly as the realization of their individual public aspirations. We scrutinize Edyvane’s theoretical construct in reference to a collection of citizen letters responding to Gerald Ford’s 1974 pardon of Richard Nixon made available by the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library. These letters illustrate a conceptual typology of public morality that reflects various combinations of the public hopes and fears Edyvane delineates; this typology accommodates most of the available letters. Psychological studies pertaining to prosocial behavior, individual moral convictions, and conspiracy beliefs are reviewed to understand sectarian fears that animate current political discourse. In this regard, we offer examples of political utterances appearing to fall outside Edyvane’s treatment of public fears. A final discussion considers how citizen fears arising from disparate moral convictions affect administrative decision-making. It also directs attention to behavioral public administration that offers a micro-level perspective on individual behavior that impacts governance.

Moral parochialism and causal appraisal of transgressive harm in Seoul and Los Angeles

The evolutionary fitness payoffs of moral condemnation are greatest within an individual’s immediate social milieu. Accordingly, insofar as human moral intuitions have been shaped by adaptive design, we can expect transgressive harms to be perceived as more wrong when transpiring in the here and now than when occurring at a distance, or with the approval of local authority figures. This moral parochialism hypothesis has been supported by research conducted in diverse societies, but has yet to be tested in an East Asian society, despite prior research indicating that East Asians appraise transgressive acts as being caused by situational and contextual factors to a greater extent than do Westerners, who tend to emphasize dispositional factors (i.e., the transgressor’s personal nature). Here, in a quasi-experiment using field samples recruited in Seoul and Los Angeles, we tested (i) the moral parochialism hypothesis regarding the perceived wrongness of transgressions, as well as (ii) the extent to which these wrongness judgments might be influenced by cross-cultural differences in causal appraisals. Despite notably large differences across the two societies in situational versus dispositional appraisals of the causes of the transgressions, replicating previous findings elsewhere, in both societies we found that transgressions were deemed less wrong when occurring at spatial or temporal remove or with the consent of authorities. These findings add to the understanding of morality as universally focused on local affairs, notwithstanding cultural variation in perceptions of the situational versus dispositional causes of (im)moral acts.

Regulatory Role of Apoptotic and Inflammasome Related Proteins and Their Possible Functional Aspect in Thiram Associated Tibial Dyschondroplasia of Poultry.

Simple SummaryTibial dyschondroplasia (TD) is a metabolic disorder that impairs bony and cartilage processes. It is common in broilers due to the consumption of thiram, especially in the industrial and agriculture zones. During the condition, cartilage does not only seem to develop ossification during its occurrence but also causes lameness, mortality, and moral convictions in commercial poultry. Moreover, it has been characterized as an economically significant condition since it causes carcass damage due to the involvement of different biological pathways that lead to a particular change in the chondrocytes. These entire cellular pathways are interconnected through various cellular inputs, including anti-apoptotic, pro-apoptotic, and executioner caspases that modulate the other essential chondrogenic proteins (collagen and aggrecan), extracellular metalloproteinases, and NLRP3 base inflammasome.Tibial dyschondroplasia debilities apoptotic and inflammasomal conditions that can further destroy chondrocytes. Inflammasomes are specialized protein complexes that process pro-inflammatory cytokines, e.g., interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and IL-18. Moreover, there is mounting evidence that many of the signaling molecules that govern programmed cell death also affect inflammasome activation in a cell-intrinsic way. During the last decade, apoptotic functions have been described for signaling molecules involving inflammatory responses and cell death pathways. Considering these exceptional developments in the knowledge of processes, this review gives a glimpse of the significance of these two pathways and their connected proteins in tibial dyschondroplasia. The current review deeply elaborates on the elevated level of signaling mediators of mitochondrial-mediated apoptosis and the inflammasome. Although investigating these pathways’ mechanisms has made significant progress, this review identifies areas where more study is especially required. It might lead to developing innovative therapeutics for tibial dyschondroplasia and other associated bone disorders, e.g., osteoporosis and osteoarthritis, where apoptosis and inflammasome are the significant pathways.

Explaining immigrant threat perceptions and pro‐immigrant collective action intentions through issue‐specific moral conviction and general need for closure: The case of the US–Mexico border wall

AbstractThis research aimed at explaining immigrant threat perceptions and pro‐immigrant collective action intentions through moral conviction regarding the construction of the US–Mexico border wall and general need for closure (NFC). Among independent samples of Democrats and Republicans, we found that NFC (measured in Study 1, manipulated in Study 2) was negatively related to pro‐immigrant collective action intentions through enhanced immigrant threat perceptions when moral conviction was low. Instead, when moral conviction was high, Democrats were more motivated to act collectively to support immigrants through reduced immigrant threat perceptions, independent of NFC, whereas Republicans were less motivated to act collectively to support immigrants through enhanced immigrant threat perceptions, independent of NFC. These results suggest that moral conviction offers a powerful moral and issue‐specific motivation that can psychologically buffer against the negative influences of general NFC. We discuss how these results complement and advance the literature and open up new research avenues.

The Problem of Legitimacy of the Political Elite.

The object of this study is the problem of the legitimacy of the political elite. The subject of the study is the views of a number of Western and domestic researchers of the political elite. The aim of the study is to generalize the views of theorists from different countries, different periods of time regarding the qualities of the political elite as a legitimizing foundation. The dialectical method, which was used in the analysis of the categories of "political elite" and "legitimacy", their essence and interrelation, played a decisive role in achieving the goal of this study. This method has become a key one in understanding the texts of the works under study. The method of system-structural analysis allowed us to explore the views of the philosophers in question holistically - when the positions of the authors complement each other and create a general picture of the understanding of the legitimacy of the political elite. The conclusion of the study is as follows: in the modern world, the main method of legitimizing the political elite is a democratic election procedure, but the choice of citizens should be based on a clear idea of the qualities of a political leader, confidence that the candidate has serious professional competencies, as well as deep moral convictions and moral principles. This will help to avoid falling into the power of amateurs who put their incompetence and lack of values, stability and security in society at risk. The result of the study of the ideas of domestic and Western philosophers is the confirmation of the judgment that the legitimate political elite should be considered persons with high moral and spiritual values acquired or consolidated as a result of traditional upbringing, classical education, military service, long-term work experience in the social and political sphere.

Moral Outrage and Public Shaming on Social Media: Role of Organizational Affiliation and Identification

With increasing public shaming incidents on social media that involve organizations and their members, its mechanisms in association with organizations are still not well known. We draw research attention to this phenomenon by spotlighting the role of the transgressor’s organizational affiliation and organizational members’ own organizational identification. Across two experimental studies, we first investigate an important mediation mechanism through which moral convictions triggered by social media posts lead to moral outrage and ensuing public shaming intentions. Using intergroup emotions theory as a theoretical guide, we further examine the role of organizational affiliation and identification. Specifically, we found that when the inter-organizational relationship is salient, organizational members with higher identification are likely to experience more outrage toward a transgressor from a different organization rather than their own organization. Moreover, we found that organizational members demonstrate less outrage when comments on the post are primarily made by those from a rival organization. We discuss the contributions of these findings to management theory and practice.

Correlation of Christian ethics and developments in artificial intelligence

ABSTRACT In the traditional understanding, Christian ethics touches upon issues of morality and the general structure of a human as a person. At the same time, Christian ethics does not touch upon questions and does not impose restrictions on the development of scientific principles and methodological structures of knowledge of the surrounding world. That is, Christian ethics allows and encourages the exploration of created space. The novelty of the study is fact that the understanding of the importance of artificial intelligence is based primarily on the belief that there is a need to develop boundaries where artificial intelligence is capable of making a decision that will not be approved by humans. The authors show that the creation of such a technology runs counter to the values of a religious nature and Christianity, in particular, due to the representation of freedom of technology, which has moral convictions not based on the principles of humanism. The study compares and develops the main criteria for correlating the sufficiency of ethical norms and the requirements of technological advancement. A promising question for further discussion is the question of the artificial intelligence's deliberate lack of attachment to a particular morality, including extreme or aggressive worldviews.

The Relation of Sexual Attitudes to Hypersexuality and Problematic Pornography Use.

Previous studies have shown that specific attitudes related to moral convictions can have an important role in the development and maintenance of problematic sexual behavior symptoms. However, although other types of attitudes, like sexual attitudes, are potentially highly relevant, they have not yet been studied in this role. We investigated how four dimensions of sexual attitudes: Permissiveness, Birth Control, Communion and Instrumentality, contribute to problematic pornography use (PPU) and hypersexual disorder (HD) symptoms, controlling for religiosity, sex, age and relationship status. The study was administered through an online questionnaire and based on a representative sample of n = 1036 (Mage = 43.28, SD = 14.21; 50.3% women) Polish adult citizens. When adjusting for other variables, higher sexual Permissiveness positively predicted HD and PPU among both men (HD: β = .26, p < .001; PPU: β = .22, p < .001) and women (HD: β = .44, p < .001; PPU: β = .26; p < .001). Sexual Instrumentality positively, although weakly, contributed to HD severity among men (β = .11, p < .05). Attitudes reflecting higher support for responsible sexuality (Birth Control subscale) negatively and weakly predicted HD among women (β = – .11, p < .05). Permissiveness was also the only sexual attitude dimension that consistently predicted a higher frequency of sexual activity among men and women. Based on the cutoff criteria proposed by the authors of the used screening instruments (≥ 53 points for the Hypersexual Behavior Inventory and ≥ 4 points for the Brief Pornography Screen), the prevalence of being at risk for HD was 10.0% (men: 11.4%, women: 8.7%) and for PPU was 17.8% (men: 26.8%, women: 9.1%). Our results point to a significant contribution of sexual attitudes to problematic sexual behavior symptoms, which was not encapsulated by the previously studied influence of religious beliefs, although most of the obtained relationships were relatively weak. Particularly, a consistent link between permissive attitudes and both HD and PPU among men and women may indicate that permissive attitudes can potentially contribute to the development and maintenance of problematic sexual behavior. The prevalence of being at risk for PPU (and to some degree HD) in the current representative sample was high. Such results raise questions about the appropriateness of the proposed cutoff criteria and the risk of overpathologizing normative sexual activity, if the cutoff thresholds are not tailored adequately. The results have implications for the assessment, diagnosis and theory of problematic sexual behavior.

To Be a Holy People: Jewish Tradition and Ethical Values

To Be a Holy People: Jewish Tradition and Ethical Values

The fourth era of political communication in Mexico: structural and contextual aspects

Democratic transitions provide additional insight into how media systems, journalism, government communication, and digital platforms combine into what the authors call the B‑side of political communication studies. By that, they assume different structural and historic characteristics that guide the objectives and theoretical perspectives from which political communication is typically examined. Thus, this paper makes a distinction between mainstream political communication studies based on the global North and less popular or normalized political communication ecosystems like Mexico. In an effort to build a coherent narrative for the evolution of Mexico’s political communication system from 1960 onwards, this paper introduces four different eras through which regulation, political inclusion, and technological changes can be analyzed. A first era (1960–1994) in which an authoritarian state mostly controlled the flow of information. A second era (1995–2006) in which television networks flipped the script and became dominant in an increasingly competitive electoral market. A third era (2007–2018) of media legitimacy crisis and digital disruption. Finally, a fourth era (2018–to date) is marked by news audience atomization, systemic violence against journalism, and state disinformation. The authors conclude by presenting a list of trends that will shape the future of political communication in the region. These include institutionalized post-truth, asymmetric consumer logic, and the use of moral convictions for political purposes.

Ethical conflict: Conceptualization, measurement, and an examination of consequences.

Previous research on workplace conflict has focused on disagreements about work tasks, processes, and personal relationships. However, conflicts often involve matters of right and wrong; yet, ethical conflict is notably absent from the literature. Informed by moral convictions theory, we introduce the construct of ethical conflict, create and validate a measure of it, and explore its unique effects on workplace outcomes. Ultimately, we find that ethical conflict is a double-edged sword: It is negatively associated with team dynamics (i.e., decreased satisfaction with group, group viability, group cohesion, group psychological safety; increased negative emotions; and perceived goal difficulty) as well as group performance on a non-ethics-related task, but positively related to moral cognition (i.e., moral awareness and moral identity accessibility) and elaboration of information and perspectives during group ethical decision making. Overall, our studies provide a conceptual and empirical foundation for the future research on ethical conflict. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).