Moral Lens Research Articles

Biodiversity and cultural diversity are morally valued.

Humanity is facing rapid declines in both biodiversity and cultural diversity. As effective conservation policies often require strong public support, it is critical to understand whether individuals view diversity loss through a moral lens and whether they value diversity for its own sake, independent from instrumental or individual-centric concerns. Across two studies (N = 796), we found that individuals assigned moral value to both biodiversity and cultural diversity. Individuals assigned greater moral value to animals, plants and - to a lesser extent - languages when diversity was threatened, compared to when it was not threatened, despite an equal number of entities at risk, and they were willing to sacrifice a large number of these entities to prevent a loss in diversity. Additionally, we found (N = 12,000) that a general concern for diversity underlies concern for both biodiversity and cultural diversity. These findings suggest that emphasizing the inherent value of diversity may be effective for increasing public support for conservation of diversity.

Crime Knows No Borders: The Necessity of International Police Cooperation

This article delves into the evolution of international police cooperation, examining its origins, challenges, and significance in addressing transnational crime. The study highlights the influence of globalization, technological advancements, and increased international travel on criminal activities, which have necessitated more sophisticated and coordinated policing efforts across borders. The discussion traces the development of police cooperation from the 19th century, where crime was initially viewed through a moral lens, to the present day, where a more scientific and international approach to policing has emerged. The article underscores the complexities of multilateral and bilateral cooperation, each with its advantages and limitations. Multilateral efforts, exemplified by organizations like INTERPOL, promote accountability and transparency but are often hindered by bureaucratic challenges. Conversely, bilateral cooperation offers agility and direct engagement but faces issues of trust and accountability. The study concludes by advocating for the continuous refinement of international policing strategies, emphasizing the importance of tailored approaches to specific operational needs. Through effective collaboration, law enforcement agencies can better combat global crime networks and enhance international security in an increasingly interconnected world.

Moral underpinnings of accounting for nature in the global North

PurposeEnvironmental philosophies have guided cultures throughout history and continue to do so. This paper uses a framework of environmental philosophies drawn from history and the present, to analyse contemporary corporate environmental reporting. The purpose of this paper is to interrogate the philosophical underpinnings of corporate reporting allows for a nuanced understanding of the relationship between corporate activities and nature, and in so doing demonstrates the moral practices of accounting for nature.Design/methodology/approachThree themes are extracted from a historical review of western environmental philosophy: dualism, transcendence and interconnectivity. These themes are applied to a sample of corporate environmental reports through discourse analysis, enabling the illustration of otherwise obscured moral characteristics of the corporate relationship with the natural environment.FindingsThis paper uses environmental philosophies to better understand some of the implicit messaging of corporate environmental reporting. Evidence of each of the three themes is found in a sample of environmental reports, predominantly dualism and interconnectivity.Research limitations/implicationsUnderstanding that accounting is not just a technical, but also a social and moral practice expands the way the authors can interpret the outcomes of accounting. By presenting an exemplar of how accounting practice such as the corporate sustainability report can be analysed through a moral lens, this paper offers new insights intentioned to inform a more meaningful approach to environmental reporting.Originality/valueA novel framework to explore the corporate sector’s relationship with the natural environment is presented. In light of current and predicted environmental changes, much of which has been attributed to the impact of corporate activities, the importance of a detailed explication of this relationship – such as the one proposed here – becomes imperative.

High economic inequality is linked to greater moralization.

Throughout the 21st century, economic inequality is predicted to increase as we face new challenges, from changes in the technological landscape to the growing climate crisis. It is crucial we understand how these changes in inequality may affect how people think and behave. We propose that economic inequality threatens the social fabric of society, in turn increasing moralization-that is, the greater tendency to employ or emphasize morality in everyday life-as an attempt to restore order and control. Using longitudinal data from X, formerly known as Twitter, our first study demonstrates that high economic inequality is associated with greater use of moral language online (e.g. the use of words such as "disgust", "hurt", and "respect'). Study 2 then examined data from 41 regions around the world, generally showing that higher inequality has a small association with harsher moral judgments of people's everyday actions. Together these findings demonstrate that economic inequality is linked to the tendency to see the world through a moral lens.

NewsSlant: Analyzing Political News and Its Influence Through a Moral Lens

NewsSlant: Analyzing Political News and Its Influence Through a Moral Lens

Ascribing consciousness to artificial intelligence: human-AI interaction and its carry-over effects on human-human interaction.

The question of whether artificial intelligence (AI) can be considered conscious and therefore should be evaluated through a moral lens has surfaced in recent years. In this paper, we argue that whether AI is conscious is less of a concern than the fact that AI can be considered conscious by users during human-AI interaction, because this ascription of consciousness can lead to carry-over effects on human-human interaction. When AI is viewed as conscious like a human, then how people treat AI appears to carry over into how they treat other people due to activating schemas that are congruent to those activated during interactions with humans. In light of this potential, we might consider regulating how we treat AI, or how we build AI to evoke certain kinds of treatment from users, but not because AI is inherently sentient. This argument focuses on humanlike, social actor AI such as chatbots, digital voice assistants, and social robots. In the first part of the paper, we provide evidence for carry-over effects between perceptions of AI consciousness and behavior toward humans through literature on human-computer interaction, human-AI interaction, and the psychology of artificial agents. In the second part of the paper, we detail how the mechanism of schema activation can allow us to test consciousness perception as a driver of carry-over effects between human-AI interaction and human-human interaction. In essence, perceiving AI as conscious like a human, thereby activating congruent mind schemas during interaction, is a driver for behaviors and perceptions of AI that can carry over into how we treat humans. Therefore, the fact that people can ascribe humanlike consciousness to AI is worth considering, and moral protection for AI is also worth considering, regardless of AI's inherent conscious or moral status.

Sustainability as an Ethical Aspect of the Theory-Practice Gap in Business Schools

This paper aims to reframe sustainability as an ethical aspect of the theory-practice gap in business and management education for sustainable development, which should be viewed as an integral part of knowledge produced and disseminated in business schools. The paper adopts a narrative approach to review the relevant literature on two streams of research, namely, the theory-practice gap and sustainability in reforming business schools. The synthesis and discussion of the existing literature suggest that while sustainability is frequently viewed with an ethical sentiment, the existing research overlooks its significance in bringing together knowledge and practice in business schools. This paper highlights the potential of sustainability as a theoretical lens in bridging the theory-practice gap in business schools; proposing to rethink the conceptual space that lies in ethics for further theoretical developments. The author urges business and management scholars to engage in burgeoning debates on business school reforms relating to the theory-practice gap and sustainability with an emphasis on ethics. The author contends that the neglected theoretical linkages between the theory-practice gap and sustainability provide fruitful directions for future research. Through a moral lens, business schools can move toward responsible management education for a more sustainable future.

Analysis of the Five-Fold Role of Philosophy in National Development

The role of philosophy in national development raises a big question in the contemporary epoch, given the presumed giant stride of natural science. Ascriptions such as abstract and esoteric discipline, a course engrossed in scandal and at a crossroads, are often the complementary tags attributed to philosophy. Nevertheless, the question remains: Is philosophy as described above, or is it an appellation born out of naivety and prejudice? Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the relevance of philosophy, specifically to national development. Such is necessary to correct the misconceptions and bias above and to accord philosophy its proper domain in national development. Principally, this paper focuses on five areas: philosophy as a rational foundation, roadmap, roof, moral lens, and a national development stimulant. This study considers this as the five-fold role of philosophy in national development. Hence, every other goal of philosophy in national development revolves around these five. The theoretical framework is existentialism, and the method of inquiry is philosophical analysis. The primary data sources are the library and Internet materials. The findings, however, show that philosophy plays a critical role in national development. It constitutes the foundation, runs through the trunk, and materialises in the fruits of national development. To think of national development devoid of philosophy is akin to conceiving a plant without roots. Philosophy constitutes the rational root, rudder, ceiling, ethical/moral compass, and catalyst of national development. This paper, therefore, recommends giving philosophy its pride of place in the academic world, stressing its inevitability in every aspect of national development, and engaging in philosophy-mending to corroborate emergent national development exigencies. Keywords: Philosophy, National Development, Rational Foundation, Moral Lens, Analysis, Role

Dementia and Concurrent Consent to Sexual Relations.

Philosophers have become newly interested in the ethics of sex. One promising feature of this new discussion is that it has been broadening our moral lens to include individuals whose sexual interests have historically been denied or ignored. One such group is the elderly. Contrary to popular belief, many elderly people want to have sex and see it as a regular part of their lives. If society harbors ignorance about or prejudice against elderly sexuality, it harbors stronger views against the sexual expression of elderly people with dementia. People with dementia are often prohibited by nursing-home staff, sometimes in extreme ways, from having sex with their partners. This prohibition is at least partly motivated by the goal of protecting the vulnerable. However, cutting people with dementia off from sex has negative health effects and is a needless restriction of their autonomy. In this article, I argue that the expanding moral lens in sexual ethics should include the sexual expression of elderly individuals with dementia and that their sexual expression should be respected. Specifically, I argue that many people with dementia are competent to consent to sexual activity with their long-term partners.

Living Witnesses and Moral Agency

This chapter focuses on how the life and work of anthropologist, physician, and global health equity activist Paul Farmer provides a model for theologically-informed moral agency that transgresses the roles established by current hierarchies of being, knowledge, and power in order to relieve suffering without reproducing the iniquitous circulation of power and resources. Latin American liberation theology’s “preferential option for the poor” is Farmer’s primary moral lens. The chapter examines how Farmer lives out this commitment in his work as a health care provider alongside communities around the world fighting to survive in the face of grievously iniquitous social and economic conditions; and also as a university professor at one of the world’s wealthiest and most elite institutions of higher education. The analysis engages womanist ethicist Marcia Riggs’ conception of a mediating ethic to characterize Farmer’s moral praxis: it is a move toward justice that generates momentum in the face of a complex moral dilemma. The chapter contends that Farmer’s moral praxis contributes to the field of theological ethics by critically engaging the fraught intersection of positionality and agency, and by framing moral responses to the extremely challenging current social, economic, and political conditions in Haiti, where Farmer’s work began in the 1980s.

Can moral framing drive insurance enrollment in the United States?

AbstractTo encourage health insurance uptake, marketers and policymakers have focused on consumers' economic self‐interest, attempting to show that insurance is a good deal or to sweeten the deal, with subsidies or penalties. Still, some consumers see insurance as a bad deal, either because they rationally exploit private risk information (“adverse selection”), or irrationally misperceive the value due to cognitive biases (e.g., optimism). As a result, about 30 million Americans remain uninsured, including many who could afford it. At the same time, polling suggests that Americans view health insurance through a moral lens, seeking to protect those with pre‐existing conditions especially. In other markets, “green halo” and “noble edge” frames have been shown effective. As part of a broader research agenda on private law solutions to healthcare policy, we test whether moral framing could support insurance uptake. We report four phases of research. First, to understand current health insurance marketing in America, we collected the universe of advertisements from the state and federal exchanges and coded a 10% sample for themes of economic self‐interest versus three moral themes: helping others, helping community, or responsibility. In the 199 ads in which any theme appeared, 191 ads centered on economic self‐interest. Second, we enrolled 344 uninsured Americans in an online, vignette experiment where we offered various insurance plans. Over a baseline where 43.6% were willing to purchase insurance, we found that framing an economically identical plan around generosity yielded an 11.8% higher uptake. Third, we conducted five focus groups with 32 adults, including two groups in Spanish. We explored variations in the frames and probed for resistance, to prepare for the next phase of research. Fourth, using an online advertising platform (Google), we purchased 5.6 million advertising impressions in English and Spanish, targeting higher‐income Americans nationwide during the 2021 open‐enrollment period. Consumers saw advertisements from a control group (highlighting economic self‐interest, with real ads collected from the field) versus three experimental groups (helping others, helping community, or responsibility). We measured whether consumers clicked to “shop now” on the HealthCare.gov website (1.01% click‐through rate [CTR] in English and 1.38% CTR in Spanish at baseline). Helping community ads increased CTR over the control by 14.5% in English and by 33.7% in Spanish. Ads emphasizing responsibility increased CTR by 30.3% in English, though reduced CTR by 14.7% in Spanish. Helping others ads increased CTR by 9.8% in English but decreased CTR by 13.9% in Spanish. All of these results were significant at the 0.01 level and were robust to demographic controls and subgroup analyses, using individual and county‐level covariates. Although the optimal approach varies, the status quo self‐oriented message of economic rationality was not the top‐performing approach for either language group. Scaled up to real‐world advertising budgets, back‐of‐the‐envelope extrapolation suggests that under moral framing, millions of additional Americans could be driven to shop for health insurance.

Factors Influencing Hospitality Employees’ Pro-Environmental Behaviours toward Food Waste

Food waste remains an ongoing problem in hotel operations, and changing employees’ behaviour is key to tackling this issue. Analysing the influences on employees’ working practices can help to drive pro-environmental behaviour changes that reduce food waste, thus supporting the UN’s SDG 12: ensuring responsible consumption and production patterns. This study used the theory of planned behaviour as its theoretical framework and empirical data generated through participant observation, analysis of organisational documents, and semi-structured interviews in luxury hotels to examine waste drivers among employees. The findings suggest that hotel workers adopt a rational rather than moral lens toward food waste. Moreover, attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control strongly influence intentions to perform pro-environmental behaviours. Positive attitudes and strong subjective norms propel employees toward pro-environmental behaviours while a lack of perceived control acts as a constraining force.

A Theology of Voice: VOCAL and the Catholic Clergy Abuse Survivor Movement

Victims of Clergy Abuse Linkup (VOCAL/Linkup) was among the first and most prominent advocacy organizations for American survivors of childhood clergy sexual abuse. Linkup survivors recognized the spiritual dimensions of their abuse, which they called "soul murder," and they sought healing and justice through a systemic and distinctively Catholic discourse about the divine powers of "voice." This article names that discourse "a theology of voice" and analyzes VOCAL's history through its leaders' speeches and writings, including those preserved in its newsletter, The Missing Link. For survivors in VOCAL, "voice" was the foundation for transforming oneself from "victim" to "survivor," the first step toward justice and the moral lens through which ecclesiastical accountability could be judged. Although VOCAL/Linkup no longer exists, its theology of voice predominates American discourse about clergy sexual abuse. Linkup's theology of voice also provides a glimpse at an alternate configuration of the ongoing clergy abuse crisis, one in which victims and bishops might collaborate on spiritual repair and institutional reform.

Economic Inequality Shapes Judgments of Consumption

Economic inequality affects not only individuals’ judgments and behavior in their own lives, but also those individuals’ judgements and behavior toward others—both people and firms. First, the consumption decisions of others are often evaluated through a moral lens, such that lower‐income consumers are held to more negative, restrictive standards of what is acceptable to purchase. Second, firms that perpetuate inequality among their employees or their customers—through unequal pay or unequal services—are viewed negatively. We discuss the implications of economic inequality shaping people’s moral scrutiny of others.

The principle of subsidiarity and COVID-19: how a moral assessment of public policy success can contribute to learning

ABSTRACT Much has been written about the public policy success of measures taken in response to COVID-19 from health, political and economic perspectives. However, considerably less effort has been put into evaluating the coronavirus public policy responses according to moral frameworks. This seems somewhat surprising given that coronavirus responses were principally motivated by moral considerations – especially concern for the vulnerable. The main contribution of this study is to show how the inclusion of a specifically moral lens can contribute to new learning and policy refinement. To do so, I employ the natural law principle of subsidiarity which is chiefly concerned about what is required to balance human dignity against the common good – precisely the values most in tension during the pandemic. I conclude with some observations on the importance of adopting a moral lens as part of a broad multidisciplinary approach to assessing public policy.

Examining Incivility Through a Moral Lens: Coworker Morality Appraisals, Other-Condemning Emotions, and Instigated Incivility

While much is known about the prevalence and impact of incivility in the workplace, relatively less is known about those who instigate workplace incivility. This research aims to investigate incivility instigation through a moral lens by examining the roles of other-condemning moral emotions (contempt, disgust, and anger) and appraisals of coworkers’ morality as predictors of this behavior at work. In Study 1, we used structural equation modeling to analyze two waves of self-report data collected from a sample of 447 full-time United States (U.S.) working adults. Findings from this study indicate that appraising coworkers as low in morality elicited feelings of contempt, disgust, and anger. However, only contempt predicted incivility instigation and mediated the relationship between appraising coworkers as low in morality and instigating incivility. In Study 2, we collected self-report data from a sample of 309 full-time U.S. workers using a critical incident technique. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. Results from Study 2 replicated the association between low morality appraisals and contempt, anger, and disgust found in Study 1. However, anger predicted incivility instigation and mediated the relationship between appraising coworkers as low in morality and instigating incivility. Additionally, contempt and perceived civility norms had an interactive effect on instigated incivility. These studies provide insight into the roles of contempt, disgust, and anger in predicting incivility instigation, suggesting that employees may engage in incivility to condemn others who engage in moral transgressions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Pushkin’s A Feast in Time of Plague and Common Morality. A Rejoinder to Sokuler’s Article “Praise Be to the Plague?

This polemic uses a recent essay (Zinaida Sokuler’s article in Logos) to show some limitations in the growing tendency to view the “phenomenon of humankind” mainly through a moral lens. Views of this kind are usually accompanied by a mis- understanding or rejection of the tragic experience and an attempt to limit the life of a person and society to a single plane. This position is especially destructive for understanding the many works of literature in which these critics find mostly instruction, edification and morality while they also look for artistic maneuvers that demonstrate the falsity of a certain fixed attitude. This objective leads inevitably to a complete misunderstanding of what a poet is saying in his work. One of the most illustrative examples of this would be how Pushkin the poet and Pushkin the man regarded the plague as his thinking comes through in his journals, letters, lyrics and dramas. The author focuses on the interpretation of Alexander Pushkin’s A Feast in Time of Plague and criticizes its interpretation by Zinaida Sokuler. While Sokuler hears the call to “praise the plague” (Walsingham’s hymn to the plague) and its refutation by “artistic means” (the appearance of the priest and the effect of his words on Walsin- gham), the author of the article regards the hymn to the plague as standing rela- tively independent and in fact as Pushkin’s own work, which expressed his inquiries in 1830 into the meaning of life and which he inserted into a transcription of a scene from Wilson’s tragedy,. This hymn has a completely different meaning from what Sokuler sees in it, and this meaning is in no way affected by the subsequent action of the tragedy. Pushkin is not teaching us a useful lesson in personal or public morality. He is offering more — a tragic song with a profundity and pathos to rival the great choruses of the Agamemnon and Antigone.

Ethics of care and selective organisational caregiving by private employers for employees with chronic illness in a middle-income country.

For people with chronic illnesses in low-and-middle-income countries, access to enabling resources that contribute to health, economic and social resilience such as continued employment, often fall outside the health sector's remit or delivery of national structural protection. In the absence of sufficient laws and policies that mitigate discrimination and enhance reasonable work modifications, private employers have a high degree of agency and discretion in how they hire, manage, or terminate employees with chronic illnesses (ECI). There is a scarcity of research on how employers make decisions under these conditions. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, we interviewed and analysed data from 30 human resource (HR) professionals and decision-makers within private organisations in Klang Valley, Malaysia (June 2015-September 2016). In this paper, we use 'ethics of care' as an analytic, and moral lens to present HR's decision-making rationales in caring for and managing ECI. Respondents described the positive influence of international practices, including through parent company policies, as a reference for best practice. While overt bias and discriminatory perceptions were predictably described, participants also discussed care as relational organisational culture, and strategy, albeit selectively. Apart from illness factors such as duration and severity, descriptions of 'selective caregiving' included considerations of an employee's duration in organisations, the perceived value of the employee to employers, organisation size, ethos, resources and capabilities, and how organisations managed the uncertainty of illness futures as a potential risk to organisation outcomes. Selective caregiving can contribute to social, economic and health inequalities in populations with chronic illness. Nevertheless, global health actors can use the problems identified by participants, as entry points to engage more closely with employers and the broader private and commercial sectors in LMICs, to facilitate more inclusive care, and care-based intersectoral work to address the social and economic determinants of health.

Sustainability Mindsets for Strategic Management: Lifting the Yoke of the Neo-Classical Economic Perspective

While sustainability has attracted the attention of managers and academicians for over two decades, the macro-level indicators of sustainability are not moving in the right direction. Climate change continues to be an existential threat for humanity and other indicators of sustainability do not fare much better. The logic of the business case and the associated framing of tension between financial outcomes and sustainability have generated a limited and inadequate response to the existential challenges before humanity today. In this essay, we analyze the evolution of sustainability in the business context and call for a recognition that social and environmental outcomes must supersede economic ones in corporate sustainability thinking. We call for a widening of the spatial, temporal, and moral lenses in the formulation and execution of business strategy to ensure that it is in alignment with the needs of current and future generations of humanity and proportionate to planetary conditions.

Envisioning the Experience of Others: Moral Imagination, Practical Wisdom and the Scope of Empathy

The concept of empathy has gained appeal in many educational initiatives in recent years, notably in the charitable sector, yet conceptual confusions endure and the challenges associated with educating for empathy tend not to receive the attention they deserve. This article strives to help clarify the concept of empathy for educative purposes by examining one such challenge—conceived as "narrow empathetic scope"—drawing on central ideas from neo-Aristotelian virtue theory. The article explores the ways in which moral imagination, as a precursor to empathy, may be uniquely able to assist with the cultivation of practical wisdom in children since it enables them to visualize contexts they have not yet encountered and broaden the moral lens through which they approach and assess their lived experience. The article will also present the Philosophy for Children model as an effective pedagogical method for cultivating the virtue of empathy through morally imaginative dialogue.