Moral Emotions Research Articles

The effectiveness of animal welfare-, environmental-, and health-focused video appeals on implicit and explicit wanting of meat and intentions to reduce meat consumption

ABSTRACT The production of meat and its consumption are associated with negative consequences for the environment, the animals raised and slaughtered for food, and the health of those who consume animal-based foods. We investigated whether video appeals that addressed these topics affected participants’ wanting of meat and intentions to reduce meat relative to a control video. Results indicated only the environmental video led to increased intentions to reduce meat relative to controls. Nevertheless, implicit wanting of meat was lower in all three experimental conditions compared to the control condition. Additionally, moral emotions and agreement with the video’s message mediated the relationships between condition and implicit wanting and intentions for the animal welfare and environment conditions. For the health condition, only agreement with the message served as a mediator. These results suggest that although animal welfare-, environmental-, and health-focused video appeals may be effective at shifting immediate desire to consume meat, environmental video appeals may be the most effective for increasing intentions to change future meat intake.

The Effect of Evocative Frames on Strategic Decisions

We employ the frame perspective and data from a natural experiment conducted over a period of 22 years to investigate framing effects and how they can influence strategic decision-making in a total of 205 teams of participants in an organization theory course. We find that frames can have substantial effects on strategic decisions, through evoking implicit storylines which invite moral considerations and emotions into the decision process. The finding that frames can implicitly impact decisions through their selectivity, salience and emotive effects extends our understanding of strategic decision making as well as of how frames shape decisions. We contribute to understanding of frames and framing effects by highlighting the pervasive role of emotion; and offer an expanded perspective that goes beyond frames as interpretive schemes, to view them as situated symbolic actions. We conclude by discussing practical implications for executives and organizations.

Shame and psychopathology. Its role in the genesis and perpetuation of different disorders

IntroductionShame is a profound negative emotion that can sometimes be cover up by guilt and remain undiagnosed. Shame and guilt have been described as self-conscious and moral emotions as they both involve self-evaluation and lay a role in facilitating moral conduct. They derive from the notion of responsibility, but some authors suggest that while guilt focuses only on the act at hand shame focuses on the one executing it. The self is the object.ObjectivesTo review the literature on shame and its role in different disorders both as a causing agent and as a perpetuating agentMethodsNon-systematic review of the literature with selection of scientific articles published in the past 20 years; by searching Pubmed and Medscape databases using the combination of MeSH descriptors. The following MeSH terms were used: “shame”, “psychopathology.ResultsSince shame globally decreases self-esteem and is an awareness of personal flaws it can lead to the feelings of helplessness and the development or worsening of mental disorders. As such it is no wonder to find shame being studied in many different forms, more and less structured with important connections being made with social anxiety, eating disorders, dysmorphic disorders, personality disorders and bereavement.ConclusionsShame’s role, independently from guilt can have an impact on both the genesis and perpetuation of mental disorders. Its study can uncover missing links between different types of experiences and the pathological reactions that may subsequently follow.DisclosureNo significant relationships.

Relationships Among Maternal Interactive Behaviors, Preschoolers’ Hot and Cool Executive Function, and Conscience

Objectives: Preschoolers’ conscience refers to a concept revolving around moral emotion, cognition and behavior. This study investigates the relationships among preschoolers’ conscience, hot and cool executive function, and maternal interactive behaviors. Furthermore, it examines the mediating role of preschoolers’ executive function in the relationship between maternal interactive behaviors and preschoolers’ conscience.Methods: Participants comprised 220 mothers and teachers engaging with preschoolers. Data were collected during the COVID-19 period. Therefore, a research process, which suited the changing operations of day-care centers and kindergartens due to social distancing, was adopted. The mothers answered questionnaires on preschoolers’ conscience and maternal interactive behaviors, and the teachers on hot and cool executive function. Obtained data were analyzed using correlations, multiple regression, hierarchical regression, and bootstrapping.Results: Results revealed that the preschoolers’ conscience was significantly related to maternal interactive behaviors and preschoolers’ hot and cool executive function. The preschoolers’ executive function mediated the effect of maternal interactive behaviors on their conscience. Specifically, the plannning and organizing of the executive function fully mediated the relationship between maternal efficient interactive behaviors and preschoolers’ internalized conduct. The bootstrapping result suggested that the indirect effect is statistically significant.Conclusion: This study explored an area of morality that is less researched and incorporated the importance of executive function into it. Additionally, the results confirmed the mediating effect of preschoolers’ executive function on their conscience. The results obtained are expected to help organize activities for developing morality.

“Feeling fat,” disgust, guilt, and shame: Preliminary evaluation of a mediation model of binge-eating in adults with higher-weight bodies

“Feeling fat” is a subjective state that theoretically contributes to the maintenance of binge eating (BE). However, feeling fat, and its relation to BE among individuals with higher-weight bodies, has been infrequently studied. This study proposes a momentary-level model in which negative moral emotion states (disgust, guilt, shame) mediate the association between feeling fat and binge eating. In this study, 50 adults with higher-weight bodies (MBMI=40.3 ± 8.5 kg/m2; 84% female) completed a two-week ecological momentary assessment protocol, which measured experiences of feeling fat, emotion states, and binge-eating behavior. Univariate generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) evaluated the momentary associations among levels of feeling fat at Time 1, emotion states at Time 2, and binge eating at Time 2, controlling for Time 1 emotion states. GLMM results suggest that increases in each emotion from Time 1 to Time 2 mediated the association between Time 1 feeling fat and Time 2 binge eating. When modeled simultaneously within one multivariate multilevel structured equation model, disgust appeared to drive the relation between feeling fat and binge eating, over and above guilt and shame. Although preliminary, findings suggest increases in negative moral emotions, particularly disgust, mediate the feeling fat-binge eating association in adults with higher-weight bodies.

Employees’ Emotional and Behavioral Reactions to Corporate Social Irresponsibility

While the body of literature on employees’ reactions to their employer's corporate social responsibility (CSR) has grown rapidly over the last decade, little is known regarding employees’ reactions to corporate social irresponsibility (CSiR). Applying deonance theory, we conceptualize CSiR as a moral judgment that a specific action of the organization is intentional, violates a moral standard, and causes harm. Using a multimethod, multisample design (two experiments and one field study), we provide evidence that moral emotions—specifically anger, sympathy, and, to some extent, guilt—are important mechanisms explaining employees’ reactions to CSiR toward other stakeholders, which can take the form of punishing, as often discussed in organization-centric research, as well as the form of compensating the victim of the CSiR, a behavior rarely studied in the management literature. Regarding the role of pride, a well-studied emotion in the micro-CSR literature, in explaining employees’ responses to CSiR, we obtain mixed results. In addition to contributing to the micro-CSR field, we contribute to deonance theory by extending its scope to sympathy and guilt and to the literature on CSiR by offering a conceptualization and a measure of CSiR grounded in deonance theory.

PSYCHOLOGICAL PECULIARITIES OF THE MORAL SPHERE DEVELOPMENT IN PRESCHOOL CHILDHOOD

The article actualizes the problem of the moral sphere development in preschool childhood. The aim of the article is to reveal the psychological peculiarities and pedagogical conditions of the moral sphere development of preschool children. The analysis of approaches to defining the “moral sphere” concept has been carried out. The views of foreign and domestic scientists on the moral development of the preschooler’s personality have been highlighted. The article reveals the moral sphere structure of preschoolers: information (cognitive) component – the ideas about personal moral qualities; assimilation of moral concepts, standards, norms, and rules; emotional and motivational (affective) component – moral feelings, social and moral emotions, moral motives, moral evaluation and self-evaluation; behavioral (practical) component – moral actions, habits and actions, i.e., the actual implementation of moral norms and requirements. The content of the moral sphere components has been clarified. The author highlights the requirements of the Basic component of preschool education regarding the preschoolers’ personal competence: emotional and value attitude, formation of knowledge and skills within the educational program “Child’s personality”. Psychological peculiarities and signs of the development levels of the preschool children’s moral sphere have been outlined. The criteria (moral consciousness, moral attitudes, moral behavior, and moral experiences) and the indicators of the children’s moral development have been offered. The author determines psychological and pedagogical conditions of the moral sphere formation of preschoolers: raising the culture of teachers and parents within the moral sphere as the surrounding microenvironment of preschoolers in the family and preschool education institution; activation of a child in the moral experience assimilation; providing psychological and pedagogical support for the moral sphere development of the preschooler’s personality.
 Keywords: moral sphere; moral development; Basic component of preschool education; moral consciousness; moral attitudes; moral behaviour; criteria and indicators of the children’s moral development; psychological and pedagogical conditions of the moral sphere development of preschool children.

The size of shame and pride

Abstract We investigate the figurative size (big or small) that more naturally fits the conceptual representation of the moral emotion concepts pride and shame. We hypothesize the pairings pride-big and shame-small to be more natural than their counterparts, because of the emotions’ expressive profile: pride’s expanded body posture makes us look big, while shame’s shrunk body posture makes us look small. These effects are part of the folk model of pride and shame observed in language and the mapping can be best described as metonymic. An Implicit Association Test is used to investigate the existence of these conceptual pairings in Spanish. Faster reaction times and fewer errors were observed for metonymy-congruent compared to incongruent pairs. These results provide the first empirical evidence of a cognitive association coherent with our hypothesized metonymic link and constitute an empirical psycholinguistic contribution to the study of conceptual metonymy.

A Puzzle Concerning Gratitude and Accountability

P.F. Strawson’s account of moral responsibility in “Freedom and Resentment” has been widely influential. In both that paper and in the contemporary literature, much attention has been paid to Strawson’s account of blame in terms of reactive attitudes like resentment and indignation. The Strawsonian view of praise in terms of gratitude has received comparatively little attention. Some, however, have noticed something puzzling about gratitude and accountability. We typically understand accountability in terms of moral demands and expectations. Yet gratitude does not express or enforce moral demands or expectations. So, how is it a way to hold an agent accountable? In a more general manner, we might ask if there is even sense to be made of the idea that agents can be accountable—i.e., “on the hook”—in a positive way. In this paper, I clarify the relationship between gratitude and moral accountability. I suggest that accountability is a matter of engaging with others in a way that is basically concerned with their feelings and attitudes rather than solely a matter of moral demands. Expressions of gratitude are a paradigmatic form of this concerned engagement. I conclude by defending my view from the objection that it leads to an overly generous conception of holding accountable and suggest in reply that moral responsibility skeptics may not help themselves to as many moral emotions as they might have thought.

Self-Serving Dishonesty Partially Substitutes Fairness in Motivating Cooperation When People Are Treated Fairly.

Fairness is a key expectation in social interactions. Its violation leads to adverse reactions, including non-cooperation and dishonesty. The present study aimed to examine how (1) fair (unfair) treatment may drive cooperation (defection) and honesty (self-serving dishonesty), (2) dishonesty primes further moral disengagement and reduced cooperation, and (3) dishonesty weakens (substitutes) the effect of fairness on cooperation. The prisoner’s dilemma (Experiment 1 and 2) and die-rolling task (Experiment 2) were employed for capturing cooperation and dishonest behaviors, respectively. To manipulate perceived unfairness, participants were randomly assigned to play the prisoner’s dilemma game, where players either choose more cooperation (fair condition) or defection (unfair condition). Results of Experiment 1 (n = 102) suggested that participants perceive higher unfairness and behave less cooperatively when the other player primarily chooses defection. Results of Exp. 2 (n = 240) (a) confirmed Exp. 1 results, (b) showed that players in the unfair condition also show more self-serving dishonest behavior, and (c) that dishonest behavior weakens the effect of fairness on cooperation. Together, these results extended previous work by highlighting the self-serving lies when the opponent is fair trigger higher cooperation, presumably as a means to alleviate self-reflective moral emotions or restore justice.

Improvement of moral competence in university students: An intervention through moral emotions

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of an intervention to improve moral competence in university students. The intervention was carried out through deliberation on emotional dilemmas, perception, and communication of moral emotions by participants. The research design was quasi-experimental, adopting a pretest-posttest design. The control and experimental groups were made up of 26 students. The moral competence of all participants was evaluated using the emotional moral competence index (EMCI). The participants in both groups were chosen based on a very low level of moral competence, an average value (EMCI = 20) below population mean (EMCI Mean = 31.8; EMCISD = 11.8). The effectiveness of the intervention was assessed using the difference between the means and the univariate linear regression analysis of the two groups. The results of the experimental group showed significant values and important effects in the increase of moral competence after the intervention.

Editor’s Introduction

Editor’s Introduction

The Relationship between Personal Variables and Perceived Appropriateness of Coping Strategies against Cybervictimisation among Pre-Service Teachers

Cyberbullying behaviours begin at primary school, so the actions taken by pre-teachers will play a key role in achieving the goals in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. More specifically, active coping strategies are essential in reducing victimisation. The aim of this study was to identify the coping strategies considered effective by pre-service teachers and to analyse the perceived appropriateness of active and passive strategies in relation to personal variables. The participants were 1122 students on the Bachelor’s Degree in Education at the University of Castile-La Mancha in Spain. The study measured the perceived appropriateness of five active coping strategies and four passive coping strategies, moral disengagement, experiences of bullying and cyberbullying, emotions in response to bullying and gender stereotypes. The results show that more than 25% of pre-service teachers are not prepared to manage cyberbullying effectively. Prior experiences of victimisation, personal masculinity in men and moral emotions in women are related to active strategies, while moral disengagement, and pleasant emotions in women, are related to passive strategies. Universities must implement initiatives to ensure that pre-service teachers receive training on effective coping strategies and reflect on the personal factors influencing their decisions.

A meta-analytic investigation of the antecedents, theoretical correlates, and consequences of moral disengagement at work.

Moral disengagement refers to a set of cognitive tactics people employ to sidestep moral self-regulatory processes that normally prevent wrongdoing. In this study, we present a comprehensive meta-analytic review of the nomological network of moral disengagement at work. First, we test its dispositional and contextual antecedents, theoretical correlates, and consequences, including ethics (workplace misconduct and organizational citizenship behaviors [OCBs]) and non-ethics outcomes (turnover intentions and task performance). Second, we examine Bandura's postulation that moral disengagement fosters misconduct by diminishing moral cognitions (moral awareness and moral judgment) and anticipatory moral self-condemning emotions (guilt). We also test a contrarian view that moral disengagement is limited in its capacity to effectively curtail moral emotions after wrongdoing. The results show that Honesty-Humility, guilt proneness, moral identity, trait empathy, conscientiousness, idealism, and relativism are key individual antecedents. Further, abusive supervision and perceived organizational politics are strong contextual enablers of moral disengagement, while ethical leadership and organizational justice are relatively weak deterrents. We also found that narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and psychological entitlement are key theoretical correlates, although moral disengagement shows incremental validity over these "dark" traits. Next, moral disengagement was positively associated with workplace misconduct and turnover intentions, and negatively related to OCBs and task performance. Its positive impact on misconduct was mediated by lower moral awareness, moral judgment, and anticipated guilt. Interestingly, however, moral disengagement was positively related to guilt and shame post-misconduct. In sum, we find strong cumulative evidence for the pertinence of moral disengagement in the workplace. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Moral emotions, good moral panics, social regulation, and online public shaming

This paper aims to provide a better understanding of online public shaming (OPS). OPS has been the subject of interdisciplinary, insightful research. With few exceptions, this research has taken a theoretical, macro approach (Cheong and Gong, 2010; Lazarus, 2017). Digital discourse analysis and netnographic approaches can illuminate OPS further by helping us get “into the mob” and allowing us to tackle OPS's realizations at the micro level. Hence six recent cases of OPS in the US, all exposing perceived incidents of racism against visible minorities - here understood as breaches of the Harm/Care moral foundation (Haidt, 2012) - were analyzed along with a sizeable amount of related user-generated comments. Crucially, the analysis connected OPS to extant models of responses to impoliteness (Culpeper et al., 2003; Bousfield, 2007) by understanding involvement in OPS as digilantes' choice to respond to perceived offense with further aggression and by relating this choice to the diverse types of functionalities associated with impoliteness (Culpeper, 2011). Results additionally showed that conceptualizing OPS along the lines of moral indignation/outrage, good moral panics, and social regulation can help us better understand digilantes' ostensive motivations and goals.

The Sustainability Mindset Principles: A Guide to Developing a Mindset for a Better World

The Sustainability Mindset Principles: A Guide to Developing a Mindset for a Better World

Соотношение права и нравственности в концепции Л. И. Петражицкого

The article is devoted to the problem of the correlation of law and morality in the legal doctrine of L. I. Petrazhitsky (1867—1931) — the founder of the psychological school of legal thinking. The scientific novelty of L. I. Petrazhitsky manifested itself in the denial of all known concepts of law: positivist, sociological, natural law. Petrazhitsky considered law and morality to be homogeneous in their mental nature. However, legal emotions have an imperative-attributive nature, which presupposes the presence of subjects of rights and subjects of obligations, while moral emotions are only imperative (one-sidedly obligatory). The originality of Petrazhitsky’s emotional theory by no means testifies to its proof. In the works of the scientist, there is no answer to the question: where do legal emotions come from?

Dealing with guilt and shame in international politics

State and non-state actors often try to provoke moral emotions like guilt and shame to mobilize political change. However, tactics such as `naming and shaming’ are often ineffective, suggesting that policy makers engage in norm violations in ways that minimize moral emotions. We argue that when violating norms, decision makers deal with guilt and shame through coping mechanisms that allow them to pursue policies that contradict their moral standards. We conceptualize guilt and shame as two separate phenomena that provoke distinct reactions. Shame is more likely to provoke immature defenses like denial and distortion, while guilt provokes a more mature and reparative reaction. We provide empirical evidence for this theory by examining two crucial issues on the state of Israel’s political agenda during the first decade of its existence. We analyze political debates over the return of the Palestinian refugees and the reparation agreement between Israel and West Germany, using a series of primary sources from three different political forums.

Adolescent bystanders’ moral emotions in cyberbullying

The purpose of the current study was to extensively investigate not only bystander roles but also individual bystanders’ moral emotional responses in the context of cyberbullying based on the perpetrator's perceived popularity and the message type. Data from 566 adolescents in grade 7 attending six middle schools in South Korea were used to identify their bystander behavior and moral emotions in response to vignettes about cyber scenarios. Using latent profile analysis, the current study identified five types of bystanders: limited bystanders, pro-bullies, outsiders, defenders, and inconsistent bystanders. Moreover, multinomial logistic regressions were performed to determine the predictive power of the moral emotions of each bystander type. The findings indicated the importance of understanding bystanders’ roles for designing effective intervention strategies regarding moral emotions, leading to adolescents’ improved moral sensitivity.

Need for distinction moderates customer responses to preferential treatment

PurposeThis paper aims to examine how individuals’ need for distinction moderates the effect of perceived harm to others as a result of preferential treatment on customers’ attitudes towards the service provider.Design/methodology/approachTwo experiments test the hypothesis that when a customer receives preferential treatment, the effect of perceived harm to others on the customer’s attitudes towards the service provider is moderated by their need for distinction and mediated by negative moral emotions, such that mediation occurs for customers with a lower (but not higher) need for distinction.FindingsWhen customers have a lower need for distinction, they scan the environment to seek information about others when judging their own experience. In contrast, customers with a higher need for distinction tend to disregard others’ opinions and feelings, focusing solely on the benefits they receive from the service provider and avoiding moral emotions. Our results show that customers with a higher need for distinction tend to evaluate the service provider more favourably than those with a lower need for distinction in scenarios where the benefit given to an advantage customer imposes a disadvantage on other customers.Originality/valueTo the best of author’s knowledge, this research is the first to examine the interaction between perceived harm to others and one’s need for distinction as drivers of customers’ response to preferential treatment. The authors are the first to show that negative moral emotions may arise for customers with a lower need for distinction but not for those with a higher need for distinction.