Moral Judgment Research Articles

Framing Analysis of Iran-Israel’s 2024 Conflict in Kompas.id, Aljazeera.com, and NYTimes.com

This research seeks to explore how the Israel-Iran conflict in April 2024 is framed by the online media Kompas.id, Aljazeera.com, and NYTimes.com. This research aims to investigate how different narratives about the long-standing conflict pertaining to Iran-Israel complex tensions are carried by these media that present distinct geopolitical perspectives. This study uses a qualitative approach employing Robert M. Entman's framing model analysis consisting of four elements: defining the problem, diagnosing causes, making moral judgments, and suggesting solutions. Data was captured from articles written during a specific period in April 2024. Examination may include determining bias, thematic emphases and narrative strategies for each story. It was found that each media outlet had different frames for conflict. Kompas.id tends to take a more neutral approach. Aljazeera.com emphasizes the implications of Middle Eastern geopolitics of the conflict, while NYTmes.com concentrates on the broader international impact as well as the foreign policy interests of America. Such variations are politically and culturally biased according to the diverse media outlets used. This research highlights the biases and priorities reflected in the media report of the geopolitics conflict presented by various media outlets and provides insight into how the conflict is portrayed by the large media.

Framing News of Hamas Attacks: Automated Journalism Practices at NewsGPT.ai

The Hamas militant group's attack on the population of Israel was recorded in the Model Automated Journalism platform, NewsGPT.ai. The platform, led by CEO Alan Levy, claims to be the world's first AI-generated news. This research aimed to reveal the news framework presented by the NewsGPT.ai platform regarding the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Specifically, it investigated the way NewsGPT.ai positions Palestine and Israel in the news coverage. It used a qualitative approach with Robert N. Entman's framing theory. Entman's main concepts include defining problems, diagnosing causes, making moral judgments, and treatment recommendations. Within 10 selected news, an information bias regarding the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, was found. The news produced by NewsGPT.ai is subjective, in terms of the theme, reporting angle, and diction for the news object. Hamas tends to be associated with terrorists. The word terrorist is dominant in the text, referring to the actions of Hamas. Some terms that typically appear are acts of terrorism, terrorist attacks, fighting terrorism, and terrorist organizations. NewsGPT.ai presents information bias regarding this issue with a dominant emphasis on strengthening support for Israel. The use of AI in journalism, especially NewsGPT.ai, still shows bias towards certain groups.

An Overview of Moral Psychology

Moral process has been a complex process since ancient times, and studying and understanding morality is beneficial for us to solve most of the moral dilemmas in our society, therefore, this paper mainly focuses on the introduction of moral emotions as well as the process of moral judgment, and discusses the relevant research and theories of moral psychology.

Doing the right thing

The study explores the legal consciousness of young people in the context of COVID-19 pandemic, concerning the management of personal relationships vis-à-vis the legal regulation enacted by the Italian government. We aim to account for the forms of legality that have granted to sustain, criticize, engage, and resist the law, and to understand the mechanisms that contributed to shaping specific experiences of legality. We refer to a theoretical framework based on legal consciousness, the Neo-Bourdieusian approach to moral judgment and Douglas’s theory of risks. Based on the analysis of 70 narratives, our findings show different ways of experiencing the law by young people. Different recurring narratives can be identified: individual translation, trust in procedure, fatalistic claims, and cooperative criticism. These narratives are not fixed attributes of individuals but recurring repertoires of perceptions and practices that emerge from specific interaction contexts where pre-reflective dispositions and conscious deliberation intersect.

Morality, Social Inclusion, and In-Group Superiority: The Differential Role of Individualizing and Binding Foundations in Perceptions of the Social Identity of In-Group and Out-Group Members.

Research into social identity and morality judgments typically focuses on how the former influences the latter. We approach this theme from the opposite direction, establishing the influence of morality on perceptions of social identity. In three studies, conducted in two cultures, we show that in-group members acting immorally are excluded from the group. Extending this investigation to the overlooked study of out-group-on-out-group behavior, in Studies 2 and 3, we compare perceptions of social inclusion for in-group members following (im)moral behavior toward the in-group with perceptions of out-group members following (im)moral behavior toward the out-group. We show that people treat in-group and out-group members alike with respect to binding morals, which concern preservation and protection of the group, but not individualizing morals, which concern preservation and protection of individual rights. Finally, in Study 3, we confirm the underlying motivating mechanism of reasserting in-group superiority by affirming the positive distinctiveness of one's own group.

Crafting the modern Prometheus: navigating morality and identity in the age of cyborg enhancements

ABSTRACT Across three vignette-based experiments (N = 697) primarily involving young adults from China, our research systematically examines the moral judgments and perceived identity changes associated with technological implants, unveiling “naturalness bias” as a pivotal psychological mechanism influencing these judgments. Study 1 scrutinized the effects of physical enhancements via body implants, revealing a significant link between perceived low naturalness, negative moral judgment, and a reduced intention to adopt such technologies. Moreover, individuals who receive technological implants were perceived as more inclined toward immoral behavior, resulting in a considerable shift in identity perception. Study 2 confirmed these findings and introduced a control group of plastic surgery vignette to refine comparisons and enhance methodological rigor. Study 3 broadened the scope to include both emotional and cognitive enhancements via implants. It found that emotional enhancements were judged more critically regarding morality and naturalness, leading to greater perceived identity changes and higher expectations of immoral behavior compared to cognitive enhancements. Collectively, the current research provides essential insights into the ethical dimensions of transhumanist technologies, highlighting the profound moral considerations and identity implications of adopting such enhancements.

Perceptions of artificial intelligence system's aptitude to judge morality and competence amidst the rise of Chatbots

This paper examines how humans judge the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) to evaluate human attributes, specifically focusing on two key dimensions of human social evaluation: morality and competence. Furthermore, it investigates the impact of exposure to advanced Large Language Models on these perceptions. In three studies (combined N = 200), we tested the hypothesis that people will find it less plausible that AI is capable of judging the morality conveyed by a behavior compared to judging its competence. Participants estimated the plausibility of AI origin for a set of written impressions of positive and negative behaviors related to morality and competence. Studies 1 and 3 supported our hypothesis that people would be more inclined to attribute AI origin to competence-related impressions compared to morality-related ones. In Study 2, we found this effect only for impressions of positive behaviors. Additional exploratory analyses clarified that the differentiation between the AI origin of competence and morality judgments persisted throughout the first half year after the public launch of popular AI chatbot (i.e., ChatGPT) and could not be explained by participants' general attitudes toward AI, or the actual source of the impressions (i.e., AI or human). These findings suggest an enduring belief that AI is less adept at assessing the morality compared to the competence of human behavior, even as AI capabilities continued to advance.

Rejecting an intergroup apology attenuates perceived differences between victim and perpetrator groups in morality and power.

Intergroup crimes are a ubiquitous element of our political reality, as are attempts to redress these crimes through apologies. Six experiments (N = 2,432) demonstrate that the victim group's response to an offered apology has the power to shape uninvolved third parties' impressions of the conflicting groups and influence their willingness to support the victim group. Across a variety of intergroup contexts, a victim group's apology rejection attenuated perceived differences between the victim and perpetrator groups by diminishing the morality but increasing the power of the victim group while simultaneously reducing the power of the perpetrator group in the eyes of third parties (Experiments 1-4). These judgments, particularly the less favorable morality judgments of the victim group, suppressed the allocation of valued goods (Experiment 3a), political support (Experiments 3b-4), and actual donations (Experiment 4) granted to the victim group. Regarding the social costs imposed on the perpetrator group, we found mixed evidence. Taken together, these findings highlight the relevance of victim group responses in navigating posttransgression reactions and offer implications for understanding apologetic interactions from the perspective of uninvolved observers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Social acceptance of people with chronic diseases

The discussion concerns social acceptance of people with chronic diseases, covering the definition of acceptance, its determinants, stereotypes, and groups of diseases that most often face social reluctance. Social acceptance is a key element of healthy social functioning and implies agreement that people with chronic diseases exist, are respected and treated equally with healthy people. It is a process dependent on education, personal experience, social support and culture. Research indicates that people with mental illness, HIV/AIDS, skin diseases and obesity often experience stigma and discrimination. In particular, people with mental illnesses face negative stereotypes, such as being seen as dangerous and unable to function in society. People living with HIV/AIDS are often victims of social ostracism due to fear of infection and moral judgments. Skin diseases such as psoriasis and obesity also lead to social isolation and discrimination. Another group is people with cancer, who often experience social resentment due to fear, ignorance and stereotypes associated with the disease. Social education and psychological and social support are key to reducing stigma and improving the quality of life for these people. Practical measures to increase social acceptance include: educational programs, media campaigns, psychological support, legislative changes, and local and community initiatives. All of these activities can help reduce stigma and discrimination against people with chronic diseases, promoting greater empathy and understanding in society.

Варианты взаимосогласования индивидов со сходными и различающимися психологическими характеристиками

<p>The article considers the problem of coordination of individual experience in the situation when individuals achieve a collective result. In terms of the system-evolutionary approach, such coordination is described as mutual-co-operation. The aim of the study was to evaluate possible variants of individual experience coordination in the conditions of joint solution of textual tasks (in dyads). Analytical logical ("Knights and Liars", "Grid-logic") and holistic ("Anagrams", "Moral Judgements") textual problems were used. Two criteria for distinguishing dyads were tested: 1. "Analytic-Holistic" of individuals and 2. "Groups representing different ways of solving". It was hypothesized that if individuals had different psychological characteristics ("analytic-holistic"), they would be more effective on both analytic and holistic tasks due to inter-individual complementarity, and if they were similar ("analytic-analytic" or "holistic-holistic"), they would be more effective on either analytic or holistic tasks. Although the relationship of performance with complementarity in problem solving according to the criterion "Analytic-Holistic" was found, the relationship with complementarity according to the criterion "Groups representing different ways of solving" turned out to be more pronounced. The belonging of individuals in the dyad to groups similar in the ways of problem solving may contribute to the mentioned performance to a greater extent. Thus, complementarity can be both for different and similar characteristics, which is consistent with the position on the necessity of mutual co-interaction of the degrees of freedom of individuals to achieve a collective result.</p>

Different judgment frameworks for moral compliance and moral violation

In recent decades, the field of moral psychology has focused on moral judgments based on some moral foundations/categories (e.g., harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity). When discussing the moral categories, however, whether a person judges moral compliance or moral violation has been rarely considered. We examined the extent to which moral judgments are influenced by each other across moral categories and explored whether the framework of judgments for moral violation and compliance would be different. For this purpose, we developed the episodes set for moral and affective behaviors. For each episode, participants evaluated valence, arousal, morality, and the degree of relevance to each of the Haidt's 5 moral foundations. The cluster analysis showed that the moral compliance episodes were divided into three clusters, whereas the moral violation episodes were divided into two clusters. Also, the additional experiment indicated that the clusters might not be stable in time. These findings suggest that people have different framework of judgments for moral compliance and moral violation.

Effect of serial night shifts on the cognitive, psychomotor, and moral performance of residents in the department of Emergency Medicine.

The objective was to study the effect of serial night shifts on the cognitive, psychomotor, and moral performance of emergency medicine residents of an academic Emergency Medicine Department. This prospective case-crossover study compared emergency medicine residents' sleep time, subjective sleepiness, cognitive function, moral judgment, and psychomotor skills after 5 consecutive days versus night shifts using sleep diaries, activity monitors, and multiple performance tests. Paired t-tests and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were used to analyze data based on normality. Correlation analysis was done using Spearman's correlation test. Subgroup analysis was also performed to find any difference based on gender and year of residency. Twenty-seven emergency medicine residents participated (13 males, 48.1%). The distribution across residency years was as follows: 44.4% in their first year, 25.9% in their second year, and 29.6% in their third year. Following five consecutive night shifts, total sleep duration decreased significantly from 338.1 ± 67.8 to 307.4 ± 71.0 min (p < 0.001), while subjective sleepiness scores increased from 9.6 ± 3.3 to 13.6 ± 4.6. Psychomotor performance and reaction times did not significantly differ between night and day shifts. However, working memory declined, assessed by self-paced three-back test scores (median [IQR] 517.1 [471.9-546.7] vs. 457.6 [334.4-508.8]; p = 0.034) and interference test scores (445.5 ± 59.9 vs. 407.2 ± 56.8; p < 0.001), along with moral judgment (median [IQR] 19 [18-28] vs. 15 [11-21]; p = 0.010) after serial night shifts. No correlations existed between performance measures nor differences based on gender or residency year. Residents sleep less following night versus day shifts, reporting the highest sleepiness levels after 5 consecutive nights. Despite this, psychomotor performance and reaction times did not significantly differ. However, considerable reductions occurred in moral judgment, working memory, and interference test performance after serial night shifts.

Eliciting guilt in virtual reality games: interplay of self-attribution, presence, and morality.

This study investigates the psychological mechanisms in virtual reality (VR) games, focusing on the interplay between character morality, self-attribution, presence, guilt, and their collective impact on player enjoyment. Based on Affective Disposition Theory, it hypothesizes that players' moral judgments of characters significantly affect their engagement and enjoyment of VR narratives. A post-test between-subjects experiment was conducted with 97 participants to examine the influence of character morality on guilt through the mediation of self-attribution, and how these factors affect players' sense of presence and overall enjoyment in VR games. The findings indicate that self-attribution significantly mediates the relationship between character morality and guilt. Additionally, the sense of presence enhances enjoyment, with a stronger sense of 'being there' amplifying the emotional impact of players' moral decisions. This study highlights the full mediating effect of self-attribution in the context of VR gaming, intensifying players' emotional responses to moral dilemmas. The results suggest that VR game designers should consider the moral implications of game narratives and character actions to create more emotionally engaging and ethically reflective gaming experiences. These insights have significant implications for VR game design and ethics, promoting greater ethical sensitivity among players.

When is it acceptable to break the rules? Knowledge representation of moral judgements based on empirical data

Constraining the actions of AI systems is one promising way to ensure that these systems behave in a way that is morally acceptable to humans. But constraints alone come with drawbacks as in many AI systems, they are not flexible. If these constraints are too rigid, they can preclude actions that are actually acceptable in certain, contextual situations. Humans, on the other hand, can often decide when a simple and seemingly inflexible rule should actually be overridden based on the context. In this paper, we empirically investigate the way humans make these contextual moral judgements, with the goal of building AI systems that understand when to follow and when to override constraints. We propose a novel and general preference-based graphical model that captures a modification of standard dual process theories of moral judgment. We then detail the design, implementation, and results of a study of human participants who judge whether it is acceptable to break a well-established rule: no cutting in line. We then develop an instance of our model and compare its performance to that of standard machine learning approaches on the task of predicting the behavior of human participants in the study, showing that our preference-based approach more accurately captures the judgments of human decision-makers. It also provides a flexible method to model the relationship between variables for moral decision-making tasks that can be generalized to other settings.

Mediated public perceptions of police encampment clearances in Canada and France: a cross-national study

ABSTRACT This qualitative study investigates public perceptions of police encampment clearances in Canada and France. Our focus is on how YouTube users in these two countries judge police conduct in response to videos of police clearing encampments. Research on police public perceptions and police legitimacy typically focuses on public views of the police institution and perceptions stemming from direct interactions with officers. An analysis of YouTube comments on police intervention videos offers important insights into a relatively unexplored intermediate case: the mediated judgements on concrete, specific police action from individuals outside of the perceived police intervention. Further, the scholarship specifically examining social media and public perceptions of policing in cross-national contexts is almost nonexistent. To address these gaps, we ask the following: What do comments on YouTube in response to videos of police encampment clearances reveal about police legitimacy in Canada and France as perceived by social media users? A total of 8,091 user-generated comments across 25 Canadian YouTube videos and 7,086 comments across 29 French YouTube videos were collected, sorted, and examined using qualitative media analysis. Our analysis confirms that the issue of police legitimacy generates dissensus and polarisation. It demonstrates that public perceptions of the legitimacy of the police clearance are strongly tied to the legitimacy of the encampment itself, and more broadly to moral judgements about the groups targeted by the police. Our findings also reveal that French police are more often perceived as violent than their Canadian counterparts.

MyBioethics: How Ed-Tech Enables Discovery-Driven Empirical Bioethics Research

Digital tools have granted new opportunities to engage people with bioethical discussion and rehearsed decision-making. The ongoing development of the MyBioethics mobile application links these together within a digital space designed to encourage deliberation and research participation by inviting users into the process of discovery. Besides educational purposes, this has enabled a unique way to gather real-world observations. A research procedure was designed to harness the functionality of a mobile application. Quantitative data was generated by dilemma scenarios and integrated surveys that measure and inform users about their psychological and epistemic tendencies. The resulting analysis enabled the possible influence of these factors on moral judgment formation to be investigated—leading to the preliminary identification of prospective relationships. The adopted methodology is crowdsourced and explorative. We seek to generate hypotheses as well as facilitate ethical reflection among users. This work is a proof-of-concept. The main finding is the tentative confirmation of the approach. A digital teaching tool can function to advance empirical bioethics research. The gathered data unveiled prospective areas of academic interest and yielded observations that may contain valuable reflective insights for individual end users. Digital bioethics brings along new opportunities to engage a diverse user base in a way that provides educational resources, challenges ethical preconceptions and intuitions, allows inclusion in research efforts, and encourages autonomous decision-making. Ed-tech applications appear suitable for investigating personal tendencies that are influencing our moral judgments. Digital environments could be designed to surface unarticulated factors behind our held positions and challenge unquestioned moral notions.

Inconsistent advice by ChatGPT influences decision making in various areas

The ChatGPT technology is increasingly becoming a part of our daily lives and is starting to be utilized in various decision-making contexts. The current study builds upon prior research, demonstrating that people’s moral decision-making is influenced by ChatGPT across three perspectives, as evidenced by two studies (total n = 1925). The findings suggested that ChatGPT advice impacted decision-making similarly to expert advice, although not all decisions were susceptible to influence, particularly those based on negative emotions. Additionally, ChatGPT advice affected decisions beyond moral judgments, but no effect was observed when the advice recommended immediate low rewards. Moreover, individuals with a higher tendency for personal fear of invalidity were more likely to be influenced by both expert and AI advice, but this was not related to trust in AI.

Moral trade-offs reveal foundational representations that predict unique variance in political attitudes.

Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) explains variation in moral judgements on the basis of multiple innate, intuitive foundations and has been subject to criticism over recent years. Prior research has tended to rely on explicit self-report in the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ). In contrast, we seek to capture intuitive choices between foundations in a novel task - the Moral Foundations Conflict Task (MFCT). Across four studies, responses on this task reflect foundations measured by the MFQ (study 1), are not altered under cognitive load or reduced cognitive control (studies 2a and 2b); and explain unique variance in political orientation and related constructs (study 3). Furthermore, using responses and response times generated on the MFCT, we present a computationally explicit model of foundation-related intuitive judgements and show that these patterns are consistent with the theoretical claims of MFT. These findings show that the MFCT outperforms the MFQ and can contribute to the understanding of moral value conflicts, furthering debate on the nature of moral values.

Does Caring Breed Contempt? Examining the Hypothesis That Activation of a “Parental” Mindset Causes Harsher Moral Judgments

Prior research (most of which is correlational) has suggested that activation of the parental care motivational system may lead people to make harsher moral judgments of social norm violators. We tested this hypothesis in 8 studies (total N = 1790). Seven of the studies were true experiments in which participants made moral judgments after being randomly assigned to either conditions designed to temporarily activate the parental care system or to a control condition. In one of these experiments, participants viewed photographs of either cute animals or furniture and in 6 additional experiments, participants engaged in an autobiographical writing task in which they recalled and wrote about a time they either cared for a child or—in the control conditions that varied across these experiments—had a different experience. In the final non-experimental study, women were recruited in public places and made moral judgments, the harshness of these judgments was compared between those accompanied by a young child versus not accompanied by a young child. The effects (and non-effects) of these procedures on moral judgments were inconsistent across the 8 studies and an internal meta-analysis of the 7 true experiments provided no compelling evidence that the experimental manipulations influenced moral judgments. We hope that these results offer some guidance to future researchers on what methods might—and might not—be effective in activating the parental care system and can support future work on the influence of parental care on moral cognition.

Preschoolers’ moral judgment and punishment attribution: Longitudinal links to theory of mind and emotion understanding

AbstractUnderstanding what others think and feel, an essential ingredient of social functioning, develops early on, allowing children to understand and evaluate other people's actions. To assess whether those actions break or uphold moral rules (moral judgments), children must consider the agent's intentions and whether the action harms or helps others. The present study investigated longitudinally the changes and interrelations between cognitive and affective perspective‐taking and moral evaluations in 3‐ to 5‐year‐old preschoolers (N = 92, 43 girls). We assessed children's first‐order theory of mind and their ability to understand other people's emotions. Next, we presented them with two moral stories which measured how children evaluated the “good” or “bad” nature of the character's intention, and whether the character deserved to be punished. Controlling for inhibitory control—which is thought to help individuals integrate information about intention—and for time across development, our main findings showed that moral judgment was positively associated with theory of mind and that both moral judgment and punishment were positively associated with the ability to understand other people's emotions. There were developmental effects for each of the measured variables, improvements being visible 15 months later, especially in the case of the theory of mind and punishment attributions. We discuss our findings in light of recent models of moral judgment regarding the processes involved in children's moral judgments and put forward future methodological directions.