Moral Engagement Research Articles

An aged life has less value: A qualitative analysis of moral disengagement and care failures evident in Royal Commission oral testimony

To identify common themes about care failures in residential aged care as described from the perspectives of older people and their families in transcripts from hearings and submission to the Australian Royal Commission. These failures are explored through the lens of moral disengagement. Previous inquiries into care failures have highlighted widespread harm from inhumane care, caused by staff carelessness, indifference and callousness. In health care, limited consideration has been given to the moral engagement or disengagement of staff and the relationship of moral engagement with care failures. Qualitative latent content analysis of 22 transcripts from the Royal Commission between March 2020-August 2020. Methods are reported using the SRQR. This paper presents one theme, Dehumanisation of the care process: An aged life has less value, from a larger study. Care failures relating to morally disengaged staff were found to be widespread and influenced by the environments created by organisations. This study highlights the need for further research to identify indicators of moral disengagement among staff and explore strategies to reduce or prevent moral disengagement within organisations trusted with providing care to older people. Caregiving is necessarily associated with, and shaped by, moral dimensions. The erosion or disengagement of these moral dimensions among care staff reveals important aspects of residential aged care's lived experience. Studying dynamics within aged care facilities can provide a useful analytic lens for illuminating ways that residents and their family or those close to them, experience or are impacted by moral dimensions and behaviours.

ERP Study of Liberals’ and Conservatives’ Moral Reasoning Processes: Evidence from South Korea

Do liberals’ and conservatives’ brain processes differ in moral reasoning? This research explains these groups’ dissimilar moral stances when they face ethical transgressions in business. Research that explores the effects of ideological asymmetry on moral reasoning processes through moral foundations (i.e., fairness and authority) has been limited. We hypothesize two different moral reasoning processes and test them in the South Korean culture. Study 1 uses the neuroscientific method of event-related potentials (ERP) to explore the dissociable neural mechanisms that underlie Korean liberals’ and conservatives’ moral reasoning processes in business ethical transgressions. Liberals’ early frontal negative-going (EFN) brain waves showed that they are quick to pass negative judgment by intuitively detecting violations of fairness (i.e., moral engagement), while conservatives’ temporoparietal positive-going (TPP) brain waves showed that they have a higher motivation to respect authority (i.e., moral rationalization). Both liberals’ and conservatives’ ERP components occur within the first second of the decision-making phase, suggesting the rapid and intuitive nature of moral reasoning processes. Study 2 tests a mediating process and confirms that Korean liberals (conservatives) exhibit the moral engagement (rationalization) strategy, through the fairness (authority) foundation. These findings from our interdisciplinary research deepen the knowledge of the complexity of human morality in business ethics research.

Link Between Cyberbullying Victimization and Perpetration Among Undergraduates: Mediating Effects of Trait Anger and Moral Disengagement.

PurposeBased on the general strain theory and moral engagement theory, this study aimed to explore the prediction of cyberbullying victimization on cyberbullying perpetration among college students and the mediating effect of trait anger and moral disengagement.Materials and MethodsData collected from 1183 college students (M = 20.62, SD = 1.21) from a university in Liaoning Province (China) were analyzed using the Cyberbullying Victimization Scale, Trait Anger Scale, Moral Disengagement Scale, and the Cyberbullying Questionnaire.ResultsThere was a significant positive correlation between cyberbullying victimization, trait anger, moral disengagement, and cyberbullying perpetration. Cyberbullying victimization also predicted college students cyberbullying perpetration through the mediating effects of trait anger and moral disengagement. The mediating effects included two paths, which were the separate mediating effect of moral disengagement and the chain mediating effect of trait anger-moral disengagement. The total mediating effect is 6.15%.ConclusionTrait anger and moral disengagement play a mediating role in the relationship between cyberbullying victimization and cyberbullying perpetration among college students.

Me and Others Around: The Roles of Personal and Social Norms in Chinese Adolescent Bystanders' Responses Toward Cyberbullying.

Researchers have expanded the aggressor-victim dyad by showing that bystanders play pivotal roles in the process of cyberbullying. Bystanders' responses entail moral engagement and are guided by personal and social norms. Most research on normative influences on bystanders' responses to cyberbullying has focused on personal or social norms but has ignored how they jointly affect bystanders' responses. Inspiring by the modified Theory of Planned Behavior, a cross-sectional study of Chinese high-school students (N = 333) examined how cyberbullying-related personal and social norms affect adolescent bystanders' responses to cyberbullying. We collected information on personal norms, social norms, and bystanders' responses to cyberbullying. Boys reported stronger intentions than girls to reinforce the bully, but intentions to help the victim were equivalent among boys and girls. Regression analysis revealed that pro-cyberbullying personal and social norms combined could negatively predict intentions to help the victim. However, personal and social norms interacted to influence behavioral intentions to reinforce the bully. Specifically, when pro-cyberbullying social norms were at a high level, a higher level of pro-cyberbullying personal norms was correlated with higher intentions to reinforce the bully. Conversely, when pro-cyberbullying social norms were at a low level, the effect of personal norms disappeared. The findings contribute to understanding the process by which adolescents adapt themselves to norms and provide guidance for educational advice on intervening in cyberbullying.

Chrono-Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: Temporal Balancing and Moralities of Time in Contemporary Urban China.

This article addresses the management and control of time in contemporary urban China. It traces how competing claims to, and experiences of, time as a limited resource shape the terms of moral engagement among middle-class women, their families, their employers, and their friends. Drawing upon two distinct periods of fieldwork among middle-class families in urban China between 2007 and 2017, I show how Chinese subjects balance private, public, and interpersonal claims on time, creating hybrid approaches to time management that I refer to as chrono-socialism with Chinese characteristics. This balancing act is gendered: women, and especially mothers, are charged with protecting the moral status of their families and their children through effective temporal balancing. Paying attention to moments of discordant expectations, in the form of expressions of impatience, can illuminate the logics of temporal balancing in the domains of work, play, and rest. [time, morality, impatience, socialism with Chinese characteristics, China].

The influence of moral disengagement on responses to climate change

Notions of moral responsibility and ethical obligation pervade social and political discourse about climate change in Australia. However, comparatively little is known about the importance of moral considerations in people’s mitigative and adaptive behaviours. Here, we draw on Bandura’s concept of moral disengagement to explore this issue. We conducted two nationally representative online surveys, 12 months apart. Participants were 5,030 Australian residents, of whom 1,355 participated in both surveys. We found that levels of moral engagement mediate between (a) opinions about the causes of climate change and pro‐environmental behaviour, (b) individual response efficacy and pro‐environmental behaviour, and (c) responsibility for causing climate change and pro‐environmental behaviour. Moreover, people placed more responsibility on groups and organisations, and less on individuals, for both causing and responding to climate change, regardless of their opinion on the causes of climate change. Longitudinal analyses showed that those who became more sceptical about anthropogenic climate change also became less morally engaged. Relatedly, those who became less morally engaged reported feeling less guilty about climate change, though there was evidence suggesting that this relationship is bidirectional. We suggest that moral disengagement is a key mechanism through which reductions in both effortful behaviour and guilt are achieved.

Adolescent Proactive Bystanding Versus Passive Bystanding Responses to School Bullying: the Role of Peer and Moral Predictors

Bystanders to bullying perpetration are considered an extremely important group to engage in bullying prevention and intervention. It is important to understand the key differences between students who are proactive bystanders, who try to stop the bullying and those bystanders who observe but take no action to help the student being bullied. Of 1,231 secondary students (aged 11 to 15 years) surveyed in 12 Australian schools, only 26.9% (509) reported they had not witnessed any bullying. The actions taken by student witnesses were grouped into proactive bystanding (786, 41.5%) and passive bystanding (445, 23.5%) responses. Age, gender, victimisation, being connected to school, perceived peer support and moral engagement were examined. The strongest predictor for proactive bystander responses was previous experience of bullying victimisation. Feeling connected to school, having higher levels of peer support and being morally engaged also predicted proactive bystander behaviour. Age and gender were not associated with being a proactive bystander or a passive bystander. Implications for school policy and practices to prevent and reduce peer bullying behaviour are discussed.

Nurses' Moral Experiences of Ethically Meaningful End-of-Life Care: Distress, Resilience, Responsibility, and Care.

Moral distress, the phenomenon in which an agent is constrained in acting on their ethical choice, is a reoccurring theme in the literature on nurses' experiences of end-of-life care (EOLC). Understanding moral engagement solely through a lens of moral distress can be limiting-as such, we sought to explore the diverse experiences nurses consider ethically meaningful in their palliative and EOLC practice. This article presents an exploration and analysis of stories told to us, within an interpretive description study, by five nurses practicing in EOLC in diverse settings across Canada. Although these stories were told to us in a research context, the purpose of this theory article is to explore what these stories demonstrate about the moral engagement of nurses caring for dying patients. Our analysis suggests that while moral distress is a feature of nursing stories, so too are many other dimensions of moral experience, including resilience, responsibility, and care. Expanding how we understand nurses' moral engagement in the care of dying patients has implications for how we account for the many responsibilities that nurses shoulder in striving to provide "good" care to people at the end of life.

“It is Those People”: Religious Scripts Organizing for Compassion

Drawing from an ethnographic and longitudinal qualitative case study in a faith-based institution, this paper analyzes how religious scripts encode and enact organizational compassion. The organizational script is often described as acquired through institutional orders, practice or observation. However, how religious behavior is triggered not only by cognitive schemata but also by emotions, values and personal experiences, are less described. In this article, a process of acknowledging the religious history, noticing pain and living ethical spirituality is identified as forming compassionate behavior. The experience of pain, suffering and inequality can be a pervasive aspect of organizational spiritual life and frame organizational activities to reproduces and replicate organizational religious scripts and moral engagement of reaching out to sick and marginalized.

Critical perspectivism: Educating for a moral response to media

ABSTRACT Social media is a key player in contemporary political, cultural and ethical debates. Given much of online engagement is characterised by impulsive and emotive responses, and social media platforms encourage a form of sensationalism that promotes epistemic vices, this paper explores whether there is space online for moral responses. This paper defends the need for moral engagement with online information and others, using an attitude entitled ‘critical perspectivism’. Critical perspectivism sees a moral agent adopt a critical eye, supplemented by a caring disposition, when engaging with interactive digital media and the stories of others that are technologically mediated. Such an ethical attitude is required given our globally connected, technological world features new versions of recognisable challenges to democracy and the reasonableness of citizens. There is a vital role for educationalists to play in teaching and making space and time for students to practice being critically perspectival.

Do state governments have the right to kill civilians to defeat international terrorism? Views from US, Israel and South Africa

PurposeThis study aim to examine the themes of moral disengagement (MD) and engagement in reasoning regarding a putative governmental right to kill innocent civilians when fighting terrorism.Design/methodology/approachIn total, 147 participants from Israel, 101 from the USA and 80 from South Africa provided quantitative rating scale responses and qualitative explanations about such a putative right. Qualitative responses were coded for presence or absence of indices of MD and engagement.FindingsIn ANOVAs by gender and country, men scored higher than women on rating scale scores indicating support for the right; there were no significant national differences on these scores. Chi-square analyses with the coded qualitative responses indicated more men than women gave morally disengaged responses, proportionately more South Africans than Israelis provided morally disengaged responses and proportionately more South Africans and Americans than Israelis provided morally engaged responses. Pearson correlation analyses indicated that MD was positively correlated with rating scale scores and moral engagement was negatively related to rating scale scores in all three countries.Research limitations/implicationsRegarding limitations, it is difficult to know how the omission of qualitative explanations of rating scale responses by many participants influenced the statistical findings – or how to interpret the more restricted level of qualitative responses in Israel and South Africa as compared to the USA.Social implicationsPrograms designed to counteract MD have the potential for helping reduce support for war and its inhumanities across diverse nations.Originality/valueThis is the first study on MD to compare American, Israeli and South African perspectives on the justifiability of human rights violations in the war on terror. The findings go beyond earlier studies in finding gender differences in MD that occurred across three very different nations in three very different parts of the world.

The effects of moral/social identity threats and affirmations on psychological defensiveness following wrongdoing.

Defensive responses to transgressions can have a negative impact on decision-making within government and organizations, on relationships, and even an individual's well-being. Transgressors who are defensive are less likely to acknowledge or appreciate the extent of harm caused, and their responsibility in having contributed to it or in helping to repair it. It is therefore important to understand what situational factors increase or reduce defensiveness and, thus, offer solutions for those trying to foster responsibility-taking by individuals in relationships, organizations, and society. This paper presents two studies exploring what underpins defensive responses in the context of transgressions. In Study 1 (N=202), participants recalled an interpersonal transgression, and in Study 2 (N=143), omnivorous participants watched a guilt-eliciting documentary about meat production practices. Both studies demonstrate that defensiveness increases in response to social/moral threat. Further, Study 2 demonstrates that this defensiveness can be reduced by addressing the underlying threat to social/moral identity via value affirmation, encouraging moral engagement, and repair.

An Examination of Bullying Roles and Moral Disengagement Using Latent Analysis

ABSTRACT Bullying persists as a concern in schools, including the question of why some children bully. One idea differentiating bullying roles (e.g., bully, victim, bully-victim) is that some individuals are morally disengaged, or able to disconnect their moral understanding and behavior. The present study examined types of bullying involvement and moral disengagement. To address the methodological debate within the bullying literature, the present study used latent analysis. The findings revealed that bullying and victimization behaviors vary by degree of involvement. The present study found that moral disengagement was related to students’ degree of participation in bullying; students in the bully-victim class had the highest levels of moral disengagement, followed by students in the victim class, social victim class, and outsider class. Further research should explore moral engagement as a strategy to enhance anti-bullying efforts.

Street homelessness in South Africa: A perspective from the Methodist Church of Southern Africa

Homelessness and its various forms of manifestation are a complex phenomenon. Street homelessness, which is the subject of this study, continues to be a challenge for the South African people and government. Different research studies have been undertaken on street homelessness. Various frameworks have been used in an attempt to understand and respond to street homelessness. Churches continue as key role-players in responses to street homelessness. There is a need, however, for churches to continually evaluate the various approaches to street homelessness, with a view to sharpening those approaches to better understand and respond to the challenge. Churches need frameworks that can help them to theologically understand and adequately respond to street homelessness. Gustafson’s framework of moral engagement is explored within the context of street homelessness, with a view to suggest ways and means by which the Methodist Church of Southern Africa (MCSA) could better understand and adequately respond to the problem of street homelessness in South Africa.

Commentary 2: Empirical Interviews and Moral Engagement-Commentary on "Interviewers as Intruders? Ethical Explorations of Joint Family Interviews".

This paper discusses a case vignette that captures an ethically challenging situation in qualitative research. The study was about families who had experienced a life-saving bone marrow transplantation between siblings, who were children at the time of transplantation. A difficult situation emerged during a joint family interview that took place a few years after the transplantation. Parents, donor and the recipient were present, both still children. The difficulties included a confrontation of the 10-year old donor child with accusations and pejorative statements from the other family members and his sidelining from the conversation. The interviewers have been acutely aware that their presence in this situation in this moment was an intrusion into family dynamics. The paper argues, on the basis of the vignette, that professional norms of qualitative research need to be reconsidered. Specifically, it is argued that interviewers are obligated to take an engaged moral stance, by taking a position in an exchange of moral arguments.

Sinergi Implementasi Program Pusat Informasi Konseling Remaja (PIK-R)-Hipnotherapy dalam Menangani Triad KRR (HIV-AIDS, Napza, Seksualitas) di Kecamatan Gayam, Kabupaten Bojonegoro

Gayam and Brabowan villages are areas in Gayam sub-district, which are in ring 1 of Exxon Mobil oil and gas exploration. Changes from the agrarian region to the oil industry are shifting in the economic, cultural, and social sectors of society, which are vulnerable to negative influences such as alcoholic drinking, drugs so that adolescents are at risk of being affected by TRIAD KRR (sexuality, HIV-AIDS, drugs). The purpose of this program is teenagers understand and practice healthy lifestyles, morality, resilience, and prepare themselves to become the Indonesian Planning Generation through the synergy of the PIK-R program and hypnotherapy. This program synergizes youth information and counseling programs with hypnotherapy in the PIK-R container, and giving health services, facilitating referral and fostering religious, and moral as well as requiring cross-program and cross-sector collaboration. The results showed that the knowledge and life skills of adolescents, increase in TRIAD KRR (sexuality, HIV AIDS and drugs) by 24.2%. Peer counselor ability has increased by 60%. Youth motivation in developing and managing PIK-R increased by 33.3%. Health checks carried out through HIV AIDS screening in adolescents and 100% free of HIV AIDS. Adolescents are able to detect the symptoms and signs of HIV AIDS that are beneficial to the community. Provision of religious knowledge must be carried out consistently in order to form a noble character to prevent the impact of transcultural culture. Collaboration are created to establish a moral engagement so that the program runs sustainably and a generation of planning is created (GENRE).

Measuring morality in videogames research

There has been a recent surge of research interest in videogames of moral engagement for entertainment, advocacy and education. We have seen a wealth of analysis and several theoretical models proposed, but experimental evaluation has been scarce. One of the difficulties lies in the measurement of moral engagement. How do we meaningfully measure whether players are engaging with and affected by the moral choices in the games they play? In this paper, we survey the various standard psychometric instruments from the moral psychology literature and discuss how they might be applied in the evaluation of games.

State of play: Video games and moral engagement

In this article we examine three recent examples of ‘ethically notable games’ (Zagal 2010) and highlight unusual or innovative design features for facilitating moral engagement. Drawing on the work of Miguel Sicart to frame our analysis, our goal is to highlight current trends in ENG (ethically notable games) design and see how commercial games are moving beyond reductive ‘morality meters’ and treating moral choice with greater nuance, resulting – for the most part – in a more morally engaging experience.

Imagining a different voice: A critical and caring approach to management education

This article discusses the use of the moral philosophy known as the ethics of care to critically engage management students in ways that favour the development and enactment of a critical and responsible mentality towards business. We use this ethics to ground critical thinking in a moral framework in order to create a conversation in which new possibilities for sustainable and ethical practices might be discovered. Specifically, we identify four teaching practices that allow students to experience being both ‘cared for’ and ‘one-caring’ and explore how this creates a deeper and more critical moral engagement with those affected by businesses. We further propose a framework for applying a care-ethical approach for teaching and learning.

Participation, not paternalism: Moral education, normative competence and the child’s entry into the moral community

Compared with children, adults are widely assumed to possess more mature moral understanding thus justifying deference to their moral authority and testimony. This paper examines philosophical discussions regarding this child-adult moral relation and its implications for moral education, particularly accounts suggesting that the moral status of children constitute grounds for treating them paternalistically. I contend that descriptions and justifications of this paternalistic attitude towards children are either unacceptably crude or mistaken. While certain instances justify paternalistic treatment towards children, in the context of moral education the paternalistic attitude is largely irrelevant and even counterproductive. I make a case that children can readily meet minimal standards for moral understanding and engagement. Even when children have no final say, there is still a significant normative difference between deferring paternalistically to the adult's moral testimony and interacting with the child in moral conversation. These considered, I defend a social-contextualist account of moral education that incorporates a participatory (over a paternalistic) pedagogical attitude. Further, instead of portraying moral education in terms of stages (as argued by Kohlberg), moral education should be characterized more as a gradual appreciation of and sensitivity to normative demands that apply in various shared contexts and spheres of human concern.