Moral Inclusion Research Articles

The Relative Importance of Target and Judge Characteristics in Shaping theMoral Circle.

People's treatment of others (humans, nonhuman animals, or other entities) often depends on whether they think the entity is worthy of moral concern. Recent work has begun to investigate which entities are included in a person's moral circle, examining how certain target characteristics (e.g., species category, perceived intelligence) and judge characteristics (e.g., empathy, political orientation) shape moral inclusion. However, the relative importance of target and judge characteristics in predicting moral inclusion remains unclear. When predicting whether a person will deem an entity worthy of moral consideration, how important is it to know who is making the judgment (i.e., characteristics of the judge), who is being judged (i.e., characteristics of the target), and potential interactions between the two factors? Here, we address this foundational question by conducting a variance component analysis of the moral circle. In two studies with participants from the Netherlands, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia (N = 836), we test how much variance in judgments of moral concern is explained by between-target differences, between-judge differences, and by the interaction between the two factors. We consistently find that all three components explain substantial amounts of variance in judgments of moral concern. Our findings provide two important insights. First, an increased focus on interactions between target and judge characteristics is needed, as these interactions explain as much variance as target and judge characteristics separately. Second, any theoretical account that aims to provide an accurate description of moral inclusion needs to consider target characteristics, judge characteristics, and their interaction.

Dentistry’s social contract and dental students’ moral inclusiveness

BackgroundUnder dentistry’s social contract with the public, dental professionals have a social responsibility to address the oral health needs of the population at large. However, dental education places little emphasis on such moral commitments. By ascertaining dental students’ stance regarding these notions, we may be able to inform changes in dental education. This paper thus explores dental students’ comprehension of dentistry’s social contract using the concepts of moral inclusion, moral community and empathy.MethodsA cross-sectional online survey collected information from undergraduate dental students at the Faculty of Dentistry, University of Toronto (N = 430). Moral inclusion was assessed through the breadth of students’ moral community by computing a “moral inclusion score” (MIS) from Likert scale responses to statements that asked students about their duty of care for different population groups, wherein a higher MIS indicated a broader moral community and in turn greater moral inclusiveness. Empathy was assessed using Likert scale responses to statements that gauged the extent to which students understood the effect of social determinants on people’s health. Association of the MIS with environmental, institutional and student-related factors was also investigated using non-parametric tests and linear regression.ResultsThe survey yielded a response rate of 51.4% (n = 221). Overall, students in this sample were morally inclusive and displayed empathy. Regression results showed that the MIS was most strongly associated with choosing a small town/rural area as a future practice location (β = 4.76, 95% CI: 0.52, 9.01) and viewing patients as consumers (β = -3.71, 95%CI: -7.13, -0.29).ConclusionStudents in this sample made morally inclusive choices, which implied that they had a basic understanding of the obligations under dentistry’s social contract. Improving knowledge and experience with regards to addressing the social and economic determinants of oral health and access to oral health care may positively influence students’ perceptions of their professional duties under the social contract.

“Put a Little Love in Your Heart”: Acceptance of Paternalistic and Ally Political Discourses Both Predict Pro‐Roma Solidarity Intentions Through Moral Inclusion

The way politicians talk about minorities institutes the normative context of intergroup relations. We investigated how endorsement of different political discourses predicts donation and collective action intentions by majority members toward the Roma in five European countries. The survey was conducted online using samples demographically similar to the populations of Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, France, and Ireland (N = 5,054). First, results showed that accepting paternalistic discourse versus discourse promoting allyship were not distinguishable; both promoted higher moral inclusion which in turn predicted higher prosocial intentions. Second, donations (i.e., immediate relief) and collective action (i.e., social change action) were driven by identical factors. Third, acceptance of openly hostile political discourse neither predicted moral exclusion, nor lower prosocial intentions. In summary, our research provides important evidence that when it comes to Roma—non‐Roma relations, the previously established distinction between solidarity intentions that aim to solidify status relations versus bring about social change is completely blurred, presumably because of the social context in which any positive message communicates moral inclusion challenging the hostile status quo.

The humanizing effect of market interaction

The quality and quantity of intergroup contact affects how outgroups are perceived. Positive interaction tends to have a humanizing effect of moral inclusion. Negative interaction instead tends towards dehumanization and moral exclusion. One avenue of intergroup contact that has been empirically underexplored is interaction in a market. Do markets generate moral sympathy, or do they allow us to ignore or deny the moral status of others? We create a measure of moral sentiment that captures the frequency, valence, and type of moral language used about an outgroup. We match our novel sentiment data to dyadic measures of market interaction to test if markets act as a (de)humanizing force. We find a positive relationship between market interaction and the use of (1) moral, (2) virtuous (but not vice), (3) bridging, and (4) bonding language to talk about a contacted outgroup. Our results suggest market interaction has a humanizing effect.

Moral Expansiveness Around the World: The Role of Societal Factors Across 36 Countries

What are the things that we think matter morally, and how do societal factors influence this? To date, research has explored several individual-level and historical factors that influence the size of our ‘moral circles.' There has, however, been less attention focused on which societal factors play a role. We present the first multi-national exploration of moral expansiveness—that is, the size of people’s moral circles across countries. We found low generalized trust, greater perceptions of a breakdown in the social fabric of society, and greater perceived economic inequality were associated with smaller moral circles. Generalized trust also helped explain the effects of perceived inequality on lower levels of moral inclusiveness. Other inequality indicators (i.e., Gini coefficients) were, however, unrelated to moral expansiveness. These findings suggest that societal factors, especially those associated with generalized trust, may influence the size of our moral circles.

The Immanent Infinite

The Immanent Infinite

Cultural Embeddedness and the Mestiza Ethics of Care: a Neo-Humean Response to the Problem of Moral Inclusion

Cultural Embeddedness and the Mestiza Ethics of Care: a Neo-Humean Response to the Problem of Moral Inclusion

How much could your heart embrace? What about your behavior? The Socio‐moral Radar as a behavioral expression of moral regard

Studying the scope and limits of individuals' moral concern is a relevant topic in many disciplines. The construct of Socio-moral Radar that this study introduces focuses on the behavioral expression of people's commitment with existing social problems and tries to reflect the degree of their moral inclusiveness as active citizens. Our main goal is to explore the extent and variations of people's willingness to engage with different social problems, developing an empirical instrument to measure it. Thus, we design the Socio-moral Radar (SmR) Scale to register the intention to perform different forms of social engagement directed at various causes or entities. We test the relationships of the scale with several variables, including the Moral Expansiveness Scale. We empirically differentiate two facets of the SmR based on the types of entities object of socio-moral commitment: humans and nature. Regression analysis is used to test their predictors. We discuss the usefulness of the SmR to explain social participation through the lenses of moral inclusiveness.

Compassion and moral inclusion as cornerstones for conservation education and coexistence

Although coexistence permeates conservation policy and action, increased public awareness has not necessarily translated into action despite concerted conservation education effort. To galvanize and focus prosocial behavior, education that extends compassion to an expansive moral circle of living beings may encourage values of inclusion that are critical for actualizing coexistence. We used a pre-test post-test design to characterize the set of species that mattered to 52 Australian primary school students and to evaluate how a humane education intervention that encourages moral expansiveness and compassion can impact who matters and why. Following the program, the number of species that mattered to students increased and students expanded their moral circles of inclusion as represented by norms of intrinsic value. By successfully promoting greater compassion for non-human animals, interventions like coexistence education programs, and policies that replace negative norms with those that affirm the value of all living beings, the public may develop deeper connections with other living beings and ultimately feel inspired to coexist with and protect earth's biodiversity.

Transitional Justice and Our Moral Fate

In Our Moral Fate, Allen Buchanan defends an account of moral change that is grounded in evolutionary biology. His account offers resources for explaining the possibility of both moral progress and moral regression, where progress and regression are a function of moral inclusion and moral exclusion, respectively. In my commentary, I first offer a brief summary of Buchanan’s argument. I then examine Buchanan’s account from the perspective of transitional justice. Transitional justice provides confirming evidence for some of Buchanan’s substantive claims and challenges the validity of others. I end with a discussion of power and time. Power plays a central role in Buchanan’s account of niche construction, but the locus of power is unspecified. Time scales for moral change are profoundly different for the timeline of transitional justice versus the timeline of evolutionary biology. My discussion of power and time raises questions the nature of the normative guidance Buchanan’s account offers in the short term.

Imagine All the People: Negotiating and Mediating Moral Concern through Intergroup Encounters

AbstractIntergroup encounters can often become difficult conversations in which power relations and disagreements are perpetuated and re‐enacted through the interaction and communication between the participating groups. Thus, especially in asymmetric settings, moral inclusion and moral responsibility toward members of other groups are crucial to dialogue, conflict resolution, and reconciliation. Yet it is exactly the circumstances of asymmetry—involving threat and dehumanization—that pose barriers to the elicitation and sustaining of moral concern. Drawing on and integrating two separate research traditions—the psychology of intergroup conflict, dialogue and peace building, and communication research on “mediated suffering”—this article discusses perceptions, representations, and emotions that underlie recognition of and empathy toward the suffering of others with the aim of increasing our understanding of when and how we can be brought—through mediated and unmediated dialogues and encounters—to care about the suffering of others.

The developmental origins of moral concern: An examination of moral boundary decision making throughout childhood.

Prominent theorists have made the argument that modern humans express moral concern for a greater number of entities than at any other time in our past. Moreover, adults show stable patterns in the degrees of concern they afford certain entities over others, yet it remains unknown when and how these patterns of moral decision-making manifest in development. Children aged 4 to 10 years (N = 151) placed 24 pictures of human, animal, and environmental entities on a stratified circle representing three levels of moral concern. Although younger and older children expressed similar overall levels of moral concern, older children demonstrated a more graded understanding of concern by including more entities within the outer reaches of their moral circles (i.e., they were less likely to view moral inclusion as a simple in vs. out binary decision). With age children extended greater concern to humans than other forms of life, and more concern to vulnerable groups, such as the sick and disabled. Notably, children’s level of concern for human entities predicted their prosocial behavior. The current research provides novel insights into the development of our moral reasoning and its structure within childhood.

Category Reloaded: The Case of Socially Responsible Investment

Drawing on the literatures on morals in market and product categories, we elaborate a (de)moralization framework that accounts for how and why producers of a core economic sector include or not moral attributes in a product category definition. Based on a 9-year field study of the development of socially responsible investment (SRI) funds in France, we describe the conditions that facilitate the transition from moral silence to moral questioning (i.e., transparency and contestation) and from moral questioning to moral inclusion (i.e., threat on market and identity introspection). We deduce the other possible paths of the framework and discuss implications for research on product categories and on morals in markets.

Rethinking Court‐Sanctioned Reintegration Processes: Redemption Rituals as an Alternative to the Drug Court Graduation

AbstractThis research‐based position paper offers critical examination and critique of the drug court (DC) graduation model and outlines an alternative approach. To enhance reconfiguration of the current DC graduation system, we propose a redemption‐oriented framework that we believe is better aligned with the rehabilitation literature and reintegrative shaming theory. These conceptual underpinnings cohere with restorative justice and together represent a useful interpretive perspective for examining current DC practices in the United States. They also align with the goals we believe redemption rituals should elevate. This is based on four main elements of redemption rituals: achievement; co‐ordination of care; status elevation; and moral inclusion. We operationalise these elements by identifying two constituent factors of each. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications for DC practice and recommendations for future research in this area.

Border cosmopolitanism in critical peace education

This paper intends to contribute to recent developments in the theory of critical peace education. The role of cosmopolitanism in critical peace education is examined, particularly in relation to universal moral inclusion, secularism and universalism. It is then recommended that critical peace education draw from post-universalist and dialogical approaches to cosmopolitanism. Walter Mignolo’s border cosmopolitanism is suggested as a decolonising framework for critical peace education. This would entail the theory of critical peace education orienting itself towards the aim of reconsidering cosmopolitanism from the perspective of coloniality. Connections are drawn between border cosmopolitanism and Paulo Freire’s problem-posing education. The result is a vision for critical peace education to empower participants through centring personal and lived experience in critical deconstructions of cosmopolitan discourses.

Construction and Validation of the Moral Inclusion/Exclusion of Other Groups (MIEG) Scale

Moral exclusion is defined as viewing others as lying beyond the boundary within which moral values and rules of justice apply. In contrast, the process of moral inclusion involves the extension of social justice to several social groups. Thus, both moral inclusion and exclusion are a pivotal dimension in the study of social inequalities. Although the concept of moral inclusion/exclusion has a history of more than 20 years, research still lacks accurate instruments for measuring it. In this article, a first version of a scale that measures moral inclusion/exclusion was constructed and validated. The good reliability and correlation indexes found across the samples suggest that MIEG is a good measure for tapping into moral exclusion/inclusion symptoms.

Technika inscenizacji moralnych jako innowacja w stymulowaniu rozwoju samoświadomości moralnej dzieci w wieku przedszkolnym

This article reveals basis of moral education of preschool age children, which is the formation of their moral self-consciousness that provides subsequent level of moral development. Here was suggested the usage of method of integrated gaming moral inclusion (MIGMI) that would stimulate children’s manifestation of moral activity and also enrich their moral experience. Playing content of moral inclusion is outlined through the use of moral dolls-“moral guides”. It is also posted a justification of innovative technique – of moral performance (MPT) – in the context of arsenal of psychological-pedagogical and methodological tools. There were also shown features of moral situation preparation (with dolls-“moral guides”) in moral performance aimed at empathy developing, implementation of self-analysis and autoregulation. The essence of detecting children’s remorse as a self-conscious aware moral emotion that arises in violation of a moral rule is revealed. Here is exposed algorithm of moral framing (interpretation) usage as a compulsory reception (MFR) in technique of moral performance that helps children with implementation of their self-esteem (when analyzing their own actions and consequences for themselves and others). The importance of psychological influence of moral performance technique as required one in the moral education of preschool children is proved.

Are Technologies Innocent?: Part Three: The Passive Instrument Argument [Commentary

In Part One of this series it was suggested that in order to hold technologies to moral account a number of objections must be overcome: the argument that only humans are morally accountable, the “passive instrument” argument, the “dumb instrument” argument, the “free will” argument, and the “dilution of responsibility” argument. In Part Two, the “human exclusivity” argument was refuted, and here in Part Three the “passive instrument” objection is considered. This particular objection to the moral inclusion of technologies asserts that technologies do not act in the world, but are acted upon by humans, or are at most, intermediaries in actions undertaken by humans. The objection is not so much that technologies do not act at all, for this is their very purpose — scissors do cut, cars do move, computers do compute, a shirt does block the sun, a pet-rock does stop the paper from blowing away. In this sense it can be readily admitted by all sides of the argument that non-humans act — they cut, move, compute, block and so on. However, the “passive instrument” objection is not concerned with the literal fact that nonhumans act, but with the mix of human and non-human agency that is associated with the actions of a technology. Is the technology a passive instrument whose actions to cut, move, compute, or block are entirely attributable to human agency, or does the technology act in any significant way in an expression of its own agency?

Concern for close or distant others: The distinction between moral identity and moral inclusion

Research has analyzed the relationship between moral identity—the extent to which people experience their moral character as being central to their self-conception—and the inclusion of other people within one’s own moral circle. These studies underline that the higher the moral identity, the larger the moral circle. However, recent studies have observed that a person with a high moral identity feels morally obliged towards close people and may be intolerant towards distant groups. The aim of the present research was to deepen the differences between moral identity and moral inclusion considering prejudicial attitudes, ethnocentrism, altruism and values. The results indicated that moral identity alone does not imply a reduction in intolerant attitudes. Instead, when moral inclusion is considered, the results even show a positive effect of moral identity internalization on prejudice and ethnocentrism. Moreover, moral identity internalization has an effect on values of benevolence, security, tradition and conformity. Hence, a strong moral identity does not denote an extension of one’s own moral circle. Instead, this variable is related to intolerance towards those groups considered not to be included in one’s own moral community.

Blatant domination and subtle exclusion: The mediation of moral inclusion on the relationship between social dominance orientation and prejudice

In this research, we focus on the effects of the individual's social dominance orientation (SDO) on the expression of prejudicial attitudes. Furthermore, we examine the mediational effect of moral exclusion on this relationship. The literature has shown a strong correlation between SDO and prejudice. However, we hypothesize that the processes of moral exclusion (i.e., covert and institutionalized forms of excluding social groups from the community to which the rules of justice apply) should mediate the effect of SDO on the expression of prejudice, particularly with regard to subtle forms of prejudice. The results from 276 Italian participants support this hypothesis. The effects of SDO are mediated by the inclusive level of the moral community, and this effect is stronger for subtle prejudice than for blatant prejudice. The results suggest that modern prejudice is hidden by subtle forms of moral exclusion.