Moral Decision-making Process Research Articles

Investigation of ethical dilemmas of school principals: comparing Turkish and Canadian principals

Increasingly complex working environments of school principals inevitably led them to face moral dilemmas in daily life. The aim of this research is to reveal which kinds of moral dilemmas principals fall into mostly, how principals follow the road to making decisions in the moral dilemmas, and if the nature of management affects the decision-making process of their moral dilemmas or not. For data collection process snowball sampling was used. Semi-structured interviews and vignettes which were designed by researchers were used for data collection. According to results, principals in Turkey have experienced moral dilemmas based on self-interests instead of ethic of critique which is experienced by Canadian principals. Moreover, taking into consideration the decision-making process, although principals in Canada follow the same procedure as the Turkish principals, they have two extra steps: “considering the students’ benefit” and “considering teachers’ and parents’ needs.” Lastly, it is seen that the Turkish and Canadian principals’ natures which affect the moral dilemma decision-making process are totally different. The possible reasons for these differences and suggestions were discussed within this context.

The Role of Culture and Religion on the Dimensions of Consumers’ Ethical Beliefs with the Mediatory Role of Morality: Evidence from Pakistan

Consumer’s ethical predisposition is a complex and highly subjective phenomenon. Individual differences may determine why one consumer recognizes an issue as a moral issue, whereas another does not. Some have argued that although many acts unethically because they intend to, others simply do not recognize the moral aspects of the situations in which they are involved and thus do not initiate the moral decision-making process. These Ethical Beliefs can be influenced by external factors such as Religion and culture, as well as individual moral identity. We proposed a theoretical framework explaining how Consumer’s ethical predisposition are shaped linking religious and cultural factors. These factors affect ethical beliefs through the internalization of moral identity. For that, we modified (Huang & Lu, 2015) model of consumer ethics and combine it with (J. Vitell, et al., 2015) model to include moral identity. To measure consumer ethics, we applied (Vitell & Muncy, 1992) scale consisting of following dimensions (a) actively benefiting from illegal activities; (b) passively benefiting from questionable activities; (c) actively benefiting from deceptive legal activities; and (d) engaging in no harm and no foul activities. To empirically establish its validity, we apply this model to a sample size of 209 Pakistani consumers by means of a close-ended questionnaire. The data was later analyzed using structural equation modeling and confirmatory factor analysis. The results suggested that Religion/spirituality has found to be positively and significantly affecting all four dimensions of consumer ethics. Moreover, the internalization of moral identity seems to affect all consumer ethics except No harm dimension. Similarly, Collectivism has a significant impact on all consumer ethics except with Actively Benefiting and no harm dimension. Hence this implies that Consumers of Pakistan, who have high internalization of moral identity, Religion/spirituality beliefs, and collective culture are generally more ethical consumers.

AXIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF MORAL AND LEGAL DECISION-MAKING

Purpose. The study seeks to clarify the preconditions for moral and legal decision-making based on the identification of axiological foundations that correlate with the moral perceptions of good and evil and psychological phenomena such as emotions. Theoretical basis of the study is to apply comparative, axiological, systemic methods. This methodological approach allows us to analyze and disclose the essence of the process of moral and legal decision-making on the basis of certain axiological prerequisites and enables to substantiate the connection between the axiological and psychological aspects of taking moral and legal decisions. Originality of the work is to broaden the perceptions of the processes and mechanisms for making moral and legal decisions, which are based on the axiological dimension, in particular on the system of reference individual and social values. The study shows that every necessary moral and legal decision taken by a person is futurologically balanced in the emotional sense, rationally reasoned and morally perceptible in the context of man’s beliefs about good and evil, and realized with necessity in the personal system of reference values that determines the style and manner of individual and social behaviour in the context of material and spiritual values and is an axiological foundation for making all types of moral and legal decisions. Conclusions. Moral and legal decision-making is a social process that is connected with such a social essence of a person as rationality, which gives an opportunity to act axiologically. A person makes moral and legal decisions in a complex way, based on the unity of the moral, axiological and psychological aspects of his worldview, which are grounded on the system of reference values.

Exploring Ethical Assumptions and Bias in Medical Ethics Teaching

This paper is a reflection on an experiment undertaken during a Medical Ethics lecture delivered to a group of medical students in the UK as part of a project for a programme in Higher Education Practice. The aim of the project, following Paulo Freire’s idea of ‘liberating education,’ was to identify students’ ethical assumptions and biases in relation to a problem of resource allocation in healthcare, and their role in decision-making. The experiment showed the importance placed by medical students on disputed values such as free will, desert, social worth and body image, and highlighted the difficulty and importance of bringing students’ process of moral decision-making to awareness in ethics teaching, in order to a) decrease the role of implicit bias in students’ decision making and b) allow students to decide whether they in fact agree with assumed values and ethical frameworks that influence their thinking.

Military Ethical Decision Making: The Effects of Option Choice and Perspective Taking on Moral Decision-Making Processes and Intentions

We investigated the ethical decision-making processes and intentions of 151 military personnel responding to 1 of 2 ethical scenarios drawn from the deployment experiences of military commanders. For each scenario, option choice and perspective affected decision-making processes. Differences were also found between the 2 scenarios. Results add to the emerging literature concerning operational ethical conflicts and highlight the complexity and challenge that often accompanies operational ethics.

Economic and Social Political Ideology and Homophobia: The Mediating Role of Binding and Individualizing Moral Foundations.

Previous research has linked conservative political ideology with homophobia. Political ideology has also been linked to differences in moral decision-making, with research suggesting that conservatives and liberals may use different values in their moral decision-making processes. Moral foundations theory is a model of moral decision-making that proposes that individuals emphasize different domains in moral decision-making. Conservatives tend to emphasize binding foundations, while liberals tend to emphasize individualizing foundations. Utilizing large, ethnically diverse college samples, the purpose of these two cross-sectional studies (Study 1N=492; Study 2N=861) was to explore whether moral foundations mediate the relationship between political ideology and homophobia. These studies explored economic and social political ideology separately and utilized a two-factor model of moral foundations theory (individualizing and binding foundations). Results of both studies found that conservative economic and social political ideology was positively associated with homophobia. Study 1 found that both conservative economic and social political ideology had an indirect effect on homophobia through binding foundations. Study 2 found that both economic and social political ideology had an indirect effect on homophobia through both binding and individualizing foundations. Overall, the results were consistent with the notion that moral foundations may explain the relationship between political ideology and homophobia.

Salience network engagement with the detection of morally laden information.

Moral cognition is associated with activation of the default network, regions implicated in mentalizing about one’s own actions or the intentions of others. Yet little is known about the initial detection of moral information. We examined the neural correlates of moral processing during a narrative completion task, which included an implicit moral salience manipulation. During fMRI scanning, participants read a brief vignette and selected the most semantically congruent sentence from two options to complete the narrative. The options were immoral, moral or neutral statements. RT was fastest for the selection of neutral statements and slowest for immoral statements. Neuroimaging analyses revealed that responses involving morally laden content engaged default and executive control network brain regions including medial and rostral prefrontal cortex, and core regions of the salience network, including anterior insula and dorsal anterior cingulate. Immoral vs moral conditions additionally engaged the salience network. These results implicate the salience network in the detection of moral information, which may modulate downstream default and frontal control network interactions in the service of complex moral reasoning and decision-making processes. These findings suggest that moral cognition involves both bottom-up and top-down attentional processes, mediated by discrete large-scale brain networks and their interactions.

Distributed Cognition and Distributed Morality: Agency, Artifacts and Systems.

There are various philosophical approaches and theories describing the intimate relation people have to artifacts. In this paper, I explore the relation between two such theories, namely distributed cognition and distributed morality theory. I point out a number of similarities and differences in these views regarding the ontological status they attribute to artifacts and the larger systems they are part of. Having evaluated and compared these views, I continue by focussing on the way cognitive artifacts are used in moral practice. I specifically conceptualise how such artifacts (a) scaffold and extend moral reasoning and decision-making processes, (b) have a certain moral status which is contingent on their cognitive status, and (c) whether responsibility can be attributed to distributed systems. This paper is primarily written for those interested in the intersection of cognitive and moral theory as it relates to artifacts, but also for those independently interested in philosophical debates in extended and distributed cognition and ethics of (cognitive) technology.

A Content Analysis of Four Explanatory Models of the Moral Development

Abstract Numerous studies have focused on identifying the stages of ethical decision process and the factors that can influence it, aiming to provide tools for educators’ struggle of improving the moral profile of the students. The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the four explanatory theoretical models of moral development, in order to notice the relationship between the rational and the emotional components of personality during the moral decision-making process and to highlight their impact on educational process. It is resumed a qualitative research that was developed using the Atlas.ti software. The results sustain the empirical observation that educators change the focus of the moral explanation, moral story and moral conversation towards the more interactive methods, like moral case study and moral exercise.

TV genres’ moral value: The moral reflection of segmented TV audiences

This study aims for a deeper understanding of the TV audience's exposure to TV's moral content and the reception of this content through an innovative methodological design. We combine content analysis data on the moral contents of TV genres and survey data on the moral reflection on moral elements offered by these genres among a representative sample of the Dutch TV audience. TV audiences are segmented via latent class analysis into three clusters: information seekers, fiction and entertainment viewers and paucivores. Results show that distinct audience groups differ significantly in moral exposure and moral reflection. The way audiences reflection on moral issues, forms of moral reasoning and insight in human character – is explained through different mechanisms. Particularly the differences between information seekers and fiction and entertainment readers add to our understanding of moral decision-making processes in relation to TV watching.

On Measuring the Moral Value of Action

Deontology and consequentialism are two prominent, disparate tenets of normative ethics concerned with prescribing norms for ethical action in order to advance human flourishing. While consequentialism in its purest form is practical and realistic, its precepts do not intrinsically consider justice and human rights, which are salient canons of deontology. Contrariwise, though plenary deontology categorically focuses on duty or rule-based ethics, its prescripts overlook the consequences of moral action, which results in indeterminate and conceivably dramatic implications for societal eudemonia and human flourishing. Traditionally, consequentialists have sought to quantify the moral value of action by formulating creative expressions. Attempts have also been made to combine ideologies in order to resolve moral conflicts that arise in both normative ethical positions. This article fuses these approaches, creating a single formulation to measure the moral value of action. Used as a guideline in the moral decision-making process, this formulation enjoins individuals to consider the consequences of action beyond the self, to ruminate beyond the immediacy of an act under consideration, and to regard unqualified societal and global norms for justice and human rights as a baseline for all moral action.

When Friends' and Society's Expectations Collide: A Longitudinal Study of Moral Decision-Making and Personality across College.

Early adulthood is a developmentally important time period, with many novel life events needing to be traversed for the first time. Despite this important transition period, few studies examine the development of moral decision-making processes during this critical life stage. In the present study, college students completed moral decision-making measures during their freshman and senior years of college. Results indicate that, across four years, moral decision-making demonstrates considerable rank-order stability as well as change, such that people become more likely to help a friend relative to following societal rules. To help understand the mechanisms driving changes in moral decision-making processes, we examined their joint development with personality traits, a known correlate that changes during early adulthood in the direction of greater maturity. We found little evidence that personality and moral decision-making developmental processes are related. In sum, findings indicate that while moral decision-making processes are relatively stable across a four-year period, changes do occur which are likely independent of developmental processes driving personality trait change.

The moral decision-making process of unauthorised downloading

The moral decision-making process of unauthorised downloading

The moral decision-making process of unauthorised downloading

Unauthorised downloading has become an established behaviour in today's digital society, but the stages of individuals' decision-making processes guiding unauthorised downloading have been examined only fragmentarily. Comparing the different decision processes of intended downloaders and non-downloaders highlights aspects of the processes that can be modified for the benefit of digital society. The issue-contingent model of ethical decision-making in organisations (Jones, 1991) is applied to compare the decision-making process for the unauthorised downloading of digital leisure goods. Additionally, the impact of subfactors of moral intensity on the decision process is compared. Respondent groups differ in the effect of social consensus on the decision-making process. Additionally, the entire issue-contingent model is important in internet piracy research. From a practical view and based on social consensus results, it is essential for companies to establish sentiments that unauthorised downloading is an unacceptable behaviour within a specific social group that is highly relevant to downloaders.

Moral Intensity Revisited: Measuring the Benefit of Accounting Ethics Interventions

The purpose of this study was to determine whether accounting students’ perception of moral intensity could be enhanced through a limited ethics intervention in an Advanced Accounting course. Ethical decisions are heavily influenced by the intensity of the moral problem: the more egregious the act, the more the people view it as unethical. This controlled experiment measures the change in perceptions of moral intensity with the pre- and post-test instruments using five accounting specific vignettes containing moral dilemmas which are progressively more intense. While other studies have shown that perceived moral intensity directly influences a persons’ moral decision-making process, as far as we are aware, this is the first study that assesses and tests whether the coverage of specific ethics content integrated into an accounting class can positively influence the students’ perception of moral intensity, moral sensitivity/awareness, moral judgment, and moral intentions. Positively influencing students’ moral sensitivity/awareness, moral judgment, and moral intentions is a critical first step to ensuring that our courses and curricula provide the learning environment in which students can develop knowledge and competencies required to become the ethical leaders of tomorrow.

Questioning intuition through reflective engagement

Current literature on ethics and moral development focuses on discussion concerning the impact of intuition on moral decision-making. Through the use of student journal reflections over the course of one semester, this study utilized a grounded theory approach in order to explore and understand participant levels of awareness and understanding of intuition in this regard. The findings suggest that reflective engagement enables these participants to become more aware of and therefore access and govern intuitions so that they can be more equally integrated during a moral decision-making process. This study emphasizes the student’s understanding of the impact of intuition on moral decision-making and therefore offers additional insight into the current discussion in the literature.

Be Sensible: Emotions in Social Work Ethics and Education

Link naar full text voor HU medewerkers This article argues that emotions are relevant for moral decision-making and therefore social work ethics training and education should pay attention to emotions. The article starts with a short review of recent research on moral decision-making. This research indicates that emotions influence moral decision-making. The usefulness of emotions is then discussed, illustrating that emotions can be beneficial for moral decision-making. Although emotions are supposed to be partial, and not under the control of the moral agent, a variety of authors argue that emotions can also be informative and may act as a moral marker and motivator. Therefore, emotions are relevant to the process of moral decision-making, and social workers should reflect on the moral significance of their emotions. The article finally explicates two ways to address emotions in social work ethics and education: first, social workers should reflect on their moral identity and perform emotion work. This can be supported by in-depth learning, but also by using moral reflection tools or conversation models. Thus, second, several suggestions are offered to integrate reflection on emotions into these tools and models

From Intrapsychic Moral Awareness to the Role of Social Disruptions, Labeling, and Actions in the Emergence of Moral Issues

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate and extend a sensemaking view of how ethics issues emerge in and around organizations. Current research in ethical decision making relies predominantly on a definition of ethics that distinguishes moral decision-making processes from amoral or non-moral decision-making processes through the intrapsychic use of explicit moral concepts. I recognize the strengths and weaknesses of the current approach and propose a model which builds on previous empirical work to explain how morality emerges in organizations through social interaction. This sensemaking model illustrates the role of disruptions, labeling, and action in the emergence of moral issues, and recasts the emergence of ethical issues, not as the individual recognition of objective moral content, but as more or less reliable interrelating. The model developed in this paper contributes to theory about ethical decision making by: (1) moving beyond the categorization of construals as moral or amoral to examining the similarities and differences across construals and the effects of this overlap for joint action; (2) reinstating the role of action and its interpretation in the story of how moral issues emerge; (3) redescribing ethics as more or less reliable interrelating, which broadens the toolkit for improving organizational conduct; and finally, (4) highlighting how every decision frame has the potential to create a moral issue in interaction.

Neural correlates of cultural differences in moral decision making

Cultures affect human social behaviors including moral decision making. However, the brain mechanism underlying cross-cultural moral decision making is still unclear. In the current study, the neural correlates of cultural differences in moral decision making between Chinese and westerners were investigated by combining the event-related potential technique with standardized Low-Resolution brain Electromagnetic Tomography (sLORETA) analyses. Behavioral results showed that participants made a smaller proportion of utilitarian judgments and had longer reaction times in response to personal than impersonal dilemmas, with no obvious differences between westerners and Chinese. However, the event-related potential components were significantly different between the two cultural groups. Smaller P3 amplitudes were evoked by personal than impersonal dilemmas for westerners, while for Chinese, smaller P260 deflections were elicited by personal compared with impersonal dilemmas. The current source density analysis with sLORETA revealed significantly different brain activities for P2, P3, and P260 components elicited by personal and impersonal dilemmas. Different from the sources of P2 and P3 components, which mainly localized in cingulate gyrus and medial frontal areas, the P260 component mainly activated areas in the posterior cingulate, parahippocampal gyrus, and cuneus and precuneus cortices. These findings suggest a relatively earlier initiation of the moral decision-making process for westerners and a relatively integrated processing during the solution of moral decision making for Chinese.

Cognitive Process of Moral Decision-Making for Autonomous Agents

There are a great variety of theoretical models of cognition whose main purpose is to explain the inner workings of the human brain. Researchers from areas such as neuroscience, psychology, and physiology have proposed these models. Nevertheless, most of these models are based on empirical studies and on experiments with humans, primates, and rodents. In fields such as cognitive informatics and artificial intelligence, these cognitive models may be translated into computational implementations and incorporated into the architectures of intelligent autonomous agents (AAs). Thus, the main assumption in this work is that knowledge in those fields can be used as a design approach contributing to the development of intelligent systems capable of displaying very believable and human-like behaviors. Decision-Making (DM) is one of the most investigated and computationally implemented functions. The literature reports several computational models that enable AAs to make decisions that help achieve their personal goals and needs. However, most models disregard crucial aspects of human decision-making such as other agents' needs, ethical values, and social norms. In this paper, the authors present a set of criteria and mechanisms proposed to develop a biologically inspired computational model of Moral Decision-Making (MDM). To achieve a process of moral decision-making believable, the authors propose a cognitive function to determine the importance of each criterion based on the mood and emotional state of AAs, the main objective the model is to enable AAs to make decisions based on ethical and moral judgment.