Moral Framing Research Articles

Investing with Brain or Heart? A Field Experiment on Responsible Investment

Socially responsible investment is increasingly prevalent in financial markets and is characterized by the integration of financial and nonfinancial objectives. This paper investigates the influence of wealth concerns and moral concerns on individual investors’ decisions to invest responsibly. We conduct a unique natural field experiment of investors in an online banking context, wherein we frame responsible investment with regard to either wealth or morality and study investors’ subsequent behavior. We find that wealth framing is more effective than moral framing for both information search and investment behavior. Our study contributes to the literature by providing real-life insight into how prosocial decision making in financial markets can be promoted. This paper was accepted by John List, behavioral economics.

The Disposable Author: How Pharmaceutical Marketing Is Embraced within Medicine's Scholarly Literature.

The best studies on the relationship between pharmaceutical corporations and medicine have recognized that it is an ambiguous one. Yet most scholarship has pursued a simpler, more saleable narrative in which pharma is a scheming villain and medicine its maidenly victim. In this article, I argue that such crude moral framing blunts understanding of the murky realities of medicine's relationship with pharma and, in consequence, holds back reform. My goal is to put matters right in respect to one critical area of scholarly interest, the medical journal publication. Pharma relies on peer advocacy to sell its wares to prescribing doctors. This is an arrangement in which clinicians' qualified colleagues, including "key opinion leaders," are recruited by pharmaceutical corporations and marketing agencies to deliver commercially expedient content to their professional fellows. Precisely how this practice works in the setting of publications is not well understood because ethicists studying the problem have made too much of the narrative of corporate villainy and medical victimhood. Accordingly, criticism of industry publications has been preoccupied with the crudely dishonest practices of ghostwriting, ghost authorship, and "ghost management," vices condemned as "dirty little secrets" perpetrated from "behind the scenes" with the connivance of academic "shills" or "guest authors," in contempt of standards set by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. This account is appealing, and yet it is wrong or, at the very least, seriously incomplete, with only limited relevance to the actualities of contemporary industry practices. In truth, many commercial publications are not developed in secret but fashioned within a culture of open collaboration, where academic authors make substantial, independent contributions; pharmaceutical companies are showcased rather than hidden; and medicine's editorial standards assist rather than impede the workings of commerce.

Morality in sport: The coach's perspective

Literature in the field of sport has noted that coaches can be major contributors to the moral tone held in the sport environment and athletes are receptive to the moral frame provided by the coach. At the same time, coaches' perspectives of morality have been associated with the way coaches face moral issues that arise in the field. Therefore, the present study aimed at extending previous research seeking to illuminate the coach's perspectives of morality by (a) exploring coaches' perspectives of morality; (b) analysing coaches' responses in light of previous evidence; and (c) discussing the theoretical and practical implications of evidence. The present pilot study was designed as a qualitative multiple case study. Participants were six coaches ( Mage = 46.5; SD = 7.6), who had extended sport involvement, underwent required coaching education and were coaching at the time of the interview. Case 1 was represented by three females coaching an artistic individual sport and case 2 was represented by three males coaching an interactive team sport. Thematic data analysis was conducted. Results indicated that coaches found it difficult to articulate a definition of morality; though they did describe it as an ongoing learning process, context-related, that entailed reciprocity, and therefore, required permanent interchange, co-creation, negotiation and adjustment. The coaches also identified two main perspectives of morality: the moral perspective (i.e. being able to differentiate what is right from what is wrong, doing what is right and considering self-related wellbeing) and the social perspective (i.e. sport involvement and team dynamics). Extrapolating the evidence from this study may suggest that coaches could benefit from moral education interventions, which may then translate to a reduction in or prevention of undesired consequences associated with encompassing moral behaviour.

Ordering within moral orders to manage classroom trouble

ABSTRACTThis paper demonstrates how classroom trouble warranting teacher intervention can stem from transgressions in different layers of the complex moral order regulating classroom interactions. The paper builds from Durkheim’s treatment of schooling as the institution responsible for the inculcation of a shared moral order, Bernstein’s distinction between the instructional and regulative discourses in any pedagogic setting and the concept of verticality in the instructional discourse to illuminate how curricular knowledge might apply across different contexts. This paper proposes a similar vertical dimension of moral gravity in the regulative discourse, such that some moral expectations apply across any context, while others are highly contextualized. This paper then applies this frame to data from classroom observations conducted in prevocational pathways for 16 years olds created under Australia’s “earning or learning till 17” policy. This paper describes the variety of moral premises teachers invoked in different teacher/class combinations, according to their level of moral gravity to display the dominant use of highly contextualized moral premises seeking institutional compliance, and minimal use of broader moral frames for these students on the brink of entry to the adult world.

Framing organized crime and entrepreneurs’ reactions in Mexico: variations in the International Press

This paper presents a study on framing theory and entrepreneurs’ strategic responses in a narcoterrorism context. We obtain our results using a sequential explanatory mixed-method research design of international news, which aims to identify and analyze the themes that the international press covers in relation to narcoterrorism and to study entrepreneurs’ strategic responses to narcoterrorism as covered in news reports. Our quantitative content analysis (QCA) results show differences among journalists’ news stories using conflict, economic and morality frames in Mexico, the United States (US) and the European Union (EU). Our thematic analysis results present explanatory accounts for entrepreneurs’ selection of acquiescence, avoidance, defiance and manipulation tactics as strategic responses in a narcoterrorism context. Our contribution comprises explanatory accounts of frame theory’s effects on entrepreneurs and specific examples of their strategic responses to narcoterrorism.

Red, white, and blue enough to be green: Effects of moral framing on climate change attitudes and conservation behaviors

Widespread political polarization on issues related to environmental conservation may be partially explained by the chronic framing of persuasive messages in ideological and moral terms that hold greater appeal for liberals and egalitarians. A series of three experiments examined the extent to which variations in the moral framing of pro-environmental messaging affect liberals' vs. conservatives' conservation intentions, climate change attitudes, and donations to an environmental organization. While liberals did not generally differ across conditions, conservatives shifted substantially in the pro-environmental direction after exposure to a binding moral frame, in which protecting the natural environment was portrayed as a matter of obeying authority, defending the purity of nature, and demonstrating one's patriotism to the United States. This shift was pronounced when conservatives perceived the congruent appeal to be a stronger argument. Evidence of mediated moderation is also presented, in which the attitudinal and behavioral shifts for conservatives were a function of the degree to which the values present in the pro-environmental appeal were perceived as coming from the ingroup. Discussion focuses on future directions for more precisely specifying moral framing effects, and on considering the pros and cons of targeted messaging for the sustainability of environmental attitude change.

Frame Analysis of Egyptian Opinion Leaders Tweets: A Study on a Sample of Contents Relevant to the Democracy Issue

In this study the researcher conducted frame analysis for opinion leaders’ tweets, to explore different types of frames that shaped the democracy debate after the revolution. The research took place in a period of 21 days, in the memory of the second anniversary of the Egyptian revolution, starting from: January 15, 2013 to February 4, 2013, before the revolution date and after. This study proceeded from a quantitative content analysis of 12 members’ messages on Twitter. Over all, it includes 386 tweets from three groups of opinion leaders, 53 from Former presidential candidates, 123 from Islamists leaders, and 210 from Political analysts. The aim of this study was to investigate the dominant frame, and compare which frames each group used. Analysis was conducted according to what type of “topics and issues covered, the tone of tweets (neutral, negative, positive), the key actors (government, politicians, and the public) and 5 frames analysis conflict, human interest, attribution of responsibility, morality and economic consequences according to Semetko and Valkenburg. Comparing which frames each group used results showed that, the attribution of responsibility and human interest frames were the most commonly used by the opinion leaders, followed by the morality frame then conflict frame and finally economic consequences. Attribution of responsibility and Human interest were most visible in the first group, former presidential candidates. Morality frame, Attribution of responsibility and Human interest were most visible in the second group, Islamist leaders. Finally, Attribution of responsibility and Human interest and conflict frame were most visible in the third group, political activists. Economic consequences frame was less visible compared to other frames. So we can conclude the whole analysis as: Responsibility frames are more often utilized by Former presidential candidates and Political activist while Moral frames are more often utilized by Former Islamist leaders.

Communication about maternal-fetal surgery for myelomeningocele and congenital diaphragmatic hernia: preliminary findings with implications for informed consent and shared decision-making.

To examine the style and content of consultations for maternal-fetal surgery and draw conclusions about best practices for informed consent and shared decision-making. Qualitative study of 15 h-long consultations with women diagnosed with fetal myelomeningocele (MMC, n=11) or congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH, n=4) who were potential candidates for maternal-fetal surgery at a large children's hospital in the Southwestern US. Major findings were that physicians tended to discuss the risks of fetal prognosis qualitatively more often than quantitatively (70% compared to 30%) and when mortality was a risk the "positive" (percentage survival) frame was always given rather than the morality frame. On average, families only talked 15% of the time and 45% of all their questions were about diagnostic or surgical procedure clarification. Efforts should be made to minimize qualitative presentation of risk, which can be vague and confusing to patients. Both survival and mortality frames should be used to avoid biased decision-making. Communication and decision support tools that facilitate more shared decision-making between families and physicians are needed.

A qualitative study examining the presence and consequences of moral framings in patients' and mental health workers' experiences of community treatment orders.

BackgroundMental health recovery involves acknowledging the importance of building the person’s capacity for agency. This might be particularly important for patients on community treatment orders (CTOs - which involve enforced treatment for their mental illness), given limited international evidence for their effectiveness and underlying concerns about the use of coercion by workers and systems of care towards this population of people with mental illness.MethodsThis study sought to understand how the meaning of CTOs is constructed and experienced, from the perspective of patients on CTOs and workers directly administering CTOs. Qualitative interviews were conducted with South Australian community mental health patients (n = 8) and mental health workers (n = 10) in 2013–14. During thematic analysis of data, assisted by NVIVO software, the researchers were struck by the language used by both groups of participants and so undertook an examination of the moral framings apparent within the data.ResultsMoral framing was apparent in participants’ constructions and evaluations of the CTO experience as positive, negative or justifiable. Most patient participants appeared to use moral framing to: try to understand why they were placed on a CTO; make sense of the experience of being on a CTO; and convey the lessons they have learnt. Worker participants appeared to use moral framing to justify the imposition of care. Empathy was part of this, as was patients’ positive right to services and treatment, which they believed would only occur for these patients via a CTO. Workers positioned themselves as trying to put themselves in the patients’ shoes as a way of acting virtuously towards them, softening the coercive stick approach. Four themes were identified: explicit moral framing; best interests of the patient; lessons learned by the patient; and, empathy.ConclusionsExperiences of CTOs are multi-layered, and depend critically upon empathy and reflection on the relationship between what is done and how it is done. This includes explicit examination of the moral framing present in everyday interactions between mental health workers and their patients in order to overcome the paradox of the moral grey zone between caring and controlling. It suggests a need for workers to receive ongoing empathy training.

Israeli Technicians and the Post‐Colonial Racial Triangle in Papua New Guinea

AbstractPapua New Guinean imaginings of Israel as a potential development partner draw on Christian renderings of the Bible, but they also reflect an understanding of Israel as a modern, technologically advanced nation. As middle‐class Papua New Guineans reflect on the failures of national development since gaining independence from Australia, they express ambivalence about the appropriateness of Western models of development for the Papua New Guinean context. However, the influx of Asian investment is also seen as lacking, or even threatening; therefore, Asian models of development also fail to offer an appealing hope for the future. In this paper, I argue that these racialised understandings of modernity represent a ‘post‐colonial racial triangle’, a discursive field within which the moral implications of development are understood and debated. Within this triangle, Melanesians are thought to have ‘culture’ and (Christian) ‘morality’ but lack ‘development’. Australians or ‘whitemen’ are thought to have ‘development’ and ‘morality’ but to lack ‘culture’. ‘Asians’ are thought to have ‘development’ and ‘culture’ but to lack (Christian) morality. Taking this moral framing of race into account, Israel emerges as a possible aid donor with the credentials to reconcile these three positions as it is seen to be the possessor of ‘development’, ‘culture’, and ‘morality’.

Discursive Construction of Political Categories and Moral Fields: God Versus Rights and Access in a Reproductive Health Legislative Debate

Using a discursive lens, we argue that politicians rhetorically construct categories, storylines, and moral fields. We further claim that such discursive products are action‐oriented toward gaining popular support in a public sphere that is politically fault lined along similar moral orders. As a case in point, we analyze speeches delivered during congressional voting on a Reproductive Health bill (RH bill). Employing a mixed methods strategy, we first implement a quantitative lexical analysis of frequently used words, followed by a qualitative detection of cohering storylines on both sides of the debate. Results show that oppositionists mark their speeches with a deployment of the word God, while bill supporters use the word access conspicuously. One storyline claims that The RH bill stands against God, while the other purports that The RH bill advocates rights and access. Although both storylines assert moral righteousness, they invoke two different moral orders backed by power blocs and the public at large. The God story appeals to a Catholic discourse and the moral order loudly supported by the politically powerful Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines. The rights/access narrative references a liberal morality frame maintained by social liberals and Philippine President Aquino. We end our paper by introducing the idea of an intrastate discursive lens to analyze moral fields constructed by politicians, oriented toward winning support from the public at large.

Moral Framing and the Development of Political Conflicts: An Analysis of New York Times’ Stories in the Build up to the 2003 Iraqi War

Moral Framing and the Development of Political Conflicts: An Analysis of New York Times’ Stories in the Build up to the 2003 Iraqi War

Altruistic Agencies and Compassionate Consumers

What makes a multimillion-dollar, transnational intimate industry possible when most people see it as exploitative? Using the newly emergent case of commercial surrogacy in India, this article extends the literature on stratified reproduction and intimate industries by examining how surrogacy persists and thrives despite its common portrayal as the “rent-a-womb industry” and “baby factory.” Using interview data with eight infertility specialists, 20 intended parents, and 70 Indian surrogate mothers, as well as blogs and media stories, we demonstrate how market actors justify their pursuits through narrating moral frames of compassion and altruism that are not incidental but systematic to and constitutive of transnational surrogacy. We observed two predominant moral frames: (1) surrogacy liberates and empowers Indian women from patriarchal control; and (2) surrogacy furthers reproductive rights. Within these frames, the market exchange of money for babies is cast as compassion, which allows commissioning clients to sidestep accusations of racism, classism, and sexism. Yet, we reveal that the ability to navigate around these threats relies on racist, classist, and sexist tropes about Third World working-class women. Further, we find that surrogate mothers did not experience significant changes in economic status after surrogacy.

MAKNA BERAGAMA MENURUT IMMANUEL KANT DALAM RELIGION WITHIN THE LIMITS OF REASONALONE

The searching oflmmanuel Kant's thought in this paper will try to explain his ideas concerning to the meaning of religion from his critical philosophical perspective by set up from his work Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. That work, will show later, is one of important Kant's work, especially concerning the relation between reason, religion, and morality. Although Religion could be classified as a work in philosophy of religion's field, however Kant's writing style in this work was not in popular fashion as commonly the work in philosophy of religion's field to be written. Kant's views ofreligion and the meaning ofbeing religious in this work are closely related to the moral frame work that he explained in his other works. The writer underlines some important points of Kant's thoughts: First, Religion has showed Kant's interest to religious problems, especially concerning religious meaning, in relation to morality and rationality. Second, the main discussion in Religion is about religious meaning. Third, Kant's explanation to religious meaning in Religion could be traced in to areas, i.e. individual area and social-community area. Fourth, the core of religious meaning in Religion is situated to Kant's implicit invitation to shift from just as ''having religion" to the ''being religious", or from having religious falsely to being religious authentically. Fifth, being religious or to be religious authentically is a representation of critical religious attitude.

Eugenio L Giusti, The Renaissance Courtesan in Words, Letters and Images: Social Amphibology and Moral Framing (A Diachronic Perspective)

Eugenio L Giusti, <i>The Renaissance Courtesan in Words, Letters and Images: Social Amphibology and Moral Framing (A Diachronic Perspective)</i>

Moral Frames and Climate Change Policy Attitudes*

ObjectiveThis article compares the effects of various climate change issue frames (deontological‐moral, empirical‐scientific, and economic) on support for climate change mitigation policies.MethodsUsing an issue‐framing survey experiment conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk, we assess framing effects on climate change policy support using ordinary least squares regression.ResultsWe find mixed evidence regarding frame effectiveness. Religious moral frames and economic efficiency frames are ineffective, whereas scientific frames, secular moral frames, and economic equity frames are effective at increasing overall policy support. Additionally, the positive science frame and economic equity frame reduce the ideological divide in climate policy support.ConclusionThe effects of issue framing on climate policy support are mixed. Frames that we expected conservatives to be responsive to (religious morality; economic efficiency) fail to change support for climate policy. Frames that emphasize science, secular morality, and economy equity have the potential to increase public support for climate change policies.

The Moral Diversity of Polarization: Examining Intra-Party Philosophical Differences in a Polarized Political System

The polarization between American political parties is often conceptualized as unidimensional. Indeed, the liberal-conservative spectrum has strong empirical support. Since the American party system is federal in nature and the United States is culturally diverse, it is likely, however, that the observation and measurement of polarization hides both inter and intra-party variance. Recent work by social psychologists suggests that there are multiple moral foundations that capture most human judgments about morality. Social scientists have studied this question from the micro-level, but so far there are few studies of how these moral foundations might be altered by a public setting. In an exploratory study, I analyze eight state party platforms (four from each party) and find that party philosophy is articulated (grounded) in easily recognizable moral claims. I also find considerable intra-party diversity as state parties draw on different moral claims in constructing their public platforms. Importantly, the platforms indicate that parties build consensus for position by invoking multiple foundations. Since moral beliefs are both innate and acquired, studying how parties and politicians both reflect and produce the moral frames citizens use in their political evaluations can greatly illuminate the role of morality in partisan polarization.

On the interpretation of bribery in a laboratory corruption game: moral frames and social norms

Past studies on laboratory corruption games have not been able to find consistent evidence that subjects make “immoral” decisions. A possible reason, and also a critique of laboratory corruption games, is that the experiment may fail to trigger the intended immorality frame in the minds of the participants, leading many to question the very raison d’etre of laboratory corruption games. To test this idea, we compare behavior in a harassment bribery game with a strategically identical but neutrally framed ultimatum game. The results show that fewer people, both as briber and bribee, engage in corruption in the bribery frame than in the alternative and the average bribe amount is lesser in the former than in the latter. These suggest that moral costs are indeed at work. A third treatment, which relabels the bribery game in neutral language, indicates that the observed treatment effect arises not from the neutral language of the ultimatum game but from a change in the sense of entitlement between the bribery and ultimatum game frames. To provide further support that the bribery game does measure moral costs, we elicit the shared perceptions of appropriateness of the actions or social norm, under the two frames. We show that the social norm governing the bribery game frame and ultimatum game frame are indeed different and that the perceived sense of social appropriateness plays a crucial role in determining the actual behavior in the two frames. Furthermore, merely relabelling the bribery game in neutral language makes no difference to the social appropriateness norm governing it. This indicates that, just as in the case of actual behavior, the observed difference in social appropriateness norm between bribery game and ultimatum game comes from the difference in entitlement too. Finally, we comment on the external validity of behavior in lab corruption games.

Leaders’ Use of Moral Justifications Increases Policy Support

Leaders must choose how to justify their organization’s actions to stakeholders. We differentiate moral frames, or justifications based on moral values, from pragmatic frames, or justifications based on practical costs and benefits. In Experiments 1a and 1b, we found that moral policy frames elicited more support than pragmatic frames across a variety of scenarios. This effect was mediated by the perception that leaders who offer moral justifications possess relatively greater moral character. In Experiment 2, we found that perceptions of a leader’s private motives had a stronger influence on policy support than did the leader’s public stance. Experiment 3 demonstrated that, irrespective of how a policy was framed, people were most supportive of a policy championed by a leader high in moral character. In Experiment 4, we documented an additional benefit of moral policy frames: They allow leaders to mitigate the moral outrage generated by reneging on a policy.

Working-Class Power and Spirituality

Working-Class Power and Spirituality