Moral Response Research Articles

New mobile advertising formats targeting young audiences: an analysis of advertainment and influencers’ role in perception and understanding

Over the past twenty years, brand communication strategies have evolved, particularly for younger audiences, with formats that blend advertising and entertainment content, often featuring influencers. This style of advertising presents challenges, notably the difficulty minors face in recognizing the commercial intent of messages. This article explores minors’ awareness and understanding of these advertising techniques, along with their moral and evaluative responses. We conducted 35 in-depth online interviews with minors aged 10–14 years in Spain. The findings reveal that recognition and understanding of such advertising increase with age. Although minors are accustomed to these practices, their primary reaction is indifference. The study emphasizes the importance of enhancing minors’ critical capacities to better navigate hybrid messages on social networks.

How to fund unemployment insurance with informality and false claims: Evidence from Senegal

This paper studies the welfare effects from the provision of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits in a context where formal workers represent only a small proportion of the labor market and informal workers can submit fraudulent claims for UI benefits. We model these features and allow for varying degrees of enforcement and different funding sources. We then estimate the model’s key parameters by conducting a custom labor force survey in Senegal. Our findings show that the liquidity gains are large and the moral hazard response to the UI benefits among workers is relatively small: an extra dollar of UI benefits yields a consumption-equivalent gain of 60–90 cents, which exceeds comparable estimates from U.S. calibrations by a factor of three to sixteen. We then show that the welfare gains depend on the program design: UI funded through payroll taxes delivers the greatest welfare gains but becomes infeasible when there are few formal workers and high rates of fraudulent claims. On the other hand, UI funded through consumption taxes delivers lower welfare gains but remains feasible with high informality and false claims.

Being blind (or not) to scenarios used in sacrificial dilemmas: the influence of factual and contextual information on moral responses

IntroductionTraditionally, human morality has been largely studied with classical sacrificial dilemmas. A way to advance current understandings of moral judgment and decision-making may involve testing the impact of contexts that are made available to individuals presented with these archetypal dilemmas. This preliminary study focused on assessing whether the availability of factual and contextual information delivered through classical scenarios would change moral responses.MethodA total of 334 participants were presented with sacrificial dilemmas either with a scenario or without a scenario before performing two moral tasks: one consisted in moral judgment (e.g., is it acceptable to sacrifice one person to save five?) and one was related to choice of action (e.g., would you sacrifice one person to save five?). In the condition with a scenario, participants were presented with a story describing the dilemma, its protagonists, their roles, the location and some background details of the situation, before answering to the two moral tasks. In the condition without a scenario, participants were only asked to perform the two moral tasks without any additional contextual elements usually provided by the scenario. Participants’ emotions were also measured before and after completing the two moral tasks.ResultsThe results indicated that the presence of a scenario did not affect moral judgments. However, the presence of a scenario significantly increased utilitarian action choices (i.e., sacrificing one person in the interest of saving a greater number) and this effect was partially mediated by an increase in the perceived plausibility of the sacrificial action. Regarding emotional reaction to dilemmas, no differences were observed between the two conditions, suggesting that emotions are mainly based on the two moral tasks.DiscussionThese findings underscore the value of carefully considering the role of factual and contextual information provided by the scenarios in moral dilemmas.

Scaffolding Bad Moral Agents

AbstractRecent work on ecological accounts of moral responsibility and agency have argued for the importance of social environments for moral reasons responsiveness. Moral audiences can scaffold individual agents’ sensitivity to moral reasons and their motivation to act on them, but they can also undermine it. In this paper, we look at two case studies of ‘scaffolding bad’, where moral agency is undermined by social environments: street gangs and online incel communities. In discussing these case studies, we draw both on recent situated cognition literature and on scaffolded responsibility theory. We show that the way individuals are embedded into a specific social environment changes the moral considerations they are sensitive to in systematic ways because of the way these environments scaffold affective and cognitive processes, specifically those that concern the perception and treatment of ingroups and outgroups. We argue that gangs undermine reasons responsiveness to a greater extent than incel communities because gang members are more thoroughly immersed in the gang environment.

Bad Guys Finish First? A Moral Emotional Perspective of Job Performance Outcomes for Abusive Supervisors

Do abusive supervisors benefit from their own harmful behaviors, or do they experience the same repercussions as their victims do? This article extends a growing stream of research that aims to understand how bad actors process their own negative actions, when they are most impacted by their adverse behaviors, and how their job performance is influenced as a result. We ground this research in a moral emotions perspective to suggest that enacted abusive supervision elicits prominent moral responses (i.e., shame or guilt), which subsequently influence the supervisor’s own work conduct. Specifically, we suggest that feelings of guilt will prompt an abusive boss to compensate for their negative behaviors by increasing performance efforts, whereas supervisors with feelings of shame will withdraw and exhibit lower work performance. Multiple mediation results from Study 1 revealed that abusive supervisors predominantly experience shame and, in turn, reduced performance. In Study 2, we expand on these findings by considering the moderating role of supervisor core self-evaluations (CSE). We find that the negative relationship between enacted abuse and supervisor performance (through shame) is exacerbated when managers possess a fragile sense of self (i.e., low CSE). Overall, the current article adds to the argument that abusive supervisors do not profit from their own negative behaviors and that they, too, suffer performance setbacks.

Learning from the Experience of COVID-19 Pandemic in Tanzania

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly influenced social, economic, and public health landscapes globally, and Tanzania is no exception. This article examines the moral implications its moral response to the crisis and what the government should do for future pandemics.It explores the multifaceted moral responses elicited by the COVID-19 pandemic in Tanzania, emphasizing the origin, meaning, and significance of human life within the context of both a culture of life and a culture of death. It delves into the stewardship of life, analyzing the moral responsibilities individuals and societies hold in safeguarding health and well-being. The article starkly highlighted the Covid 19 as one of the many causes of deaths in Tanzania and Africa at large, and other causes like those that are manmade like abortion. Hence presenting a complex picture that intertwines healthcare access to pandemics, economic stability, and social cohesion.The impacts of lockdowns are scrutinized, revealing the intricate balance between public health measures and their socioeconomic repercussions, particularly on vulnerable populations in Tanzania. The article also addresses the death tolls, the puzzling nature, effectiveness of vaccine rollouts, and the perceived worth of life amid such crises. Through these discussions, the narrative underscores the fear of death that has paralyzed many, stifling the courage to live fully.Ultimately, this reflection seeks to project a message of hope beyond the grave, urging an understanding of life’s intrinsic value and the importance of resilience in such times of crisis. By learning from the COVID-19 experience, Tanzania and Africa can cultivate a more profound appreciation for life, encouraging proactive measures to preserve health with an African approach and vitality in future crises. This moral examination invokes a collective call to transcend fear and embrace a renewed commitment to life, fostering a culture anchored in hope and human dignity.

Blame as participant anger: extending moral claimant competence to young children and nonhuman animals

ABSTRACT Following the social conception of moral agency, this paper claims that many agents commonly exempted from moral responsibility, like young children, adults with late-stage dementia, and nonhuman animals, may nevertheless qualify as participants in moral responsibility practices. Blame and other moral responsibility responses are understood according to the communicative emotion account of the reactive attitudes. To blame someone means having an emotion episode that acts as a vehicle for conveying a particular moral content. Therefore, moral agency is argued to be manifested in communicative exchanges between a claimant and a defendant. While many human and nonhuman agents are justifiably exempted from ascriptions of moral responsibility, this does not necessarily exclude such agents from the community of moral agents altogether. Toddlers and dogs, for instance, seem capable of other-directed reactive attitudes, like resentment, and could, therefore, qualify as participants in moral responsibility practices with respect to the claimant position. Therefore, we may have reason to adopt a distinct claimant-directed participant stance to some beings, even if they fail to qualify as apt targets of blame. This expanded theoretical room for moral agency is argued to make explicit further normative considerations.

Psychological and Brain Responses to Artificial Intelligence's Violation of Community Ethics.

Human moral reactions to artificial intelligence (AI) agents' behavior constitute an important aspect of modern-day human-AI relationships. Although previous studies have mainly focused on autonomy ethics, this study investigates how individuals judge AI agents' violations of community ethics (including betrayals and subversions) compared with human violations. Participants' behavioral responses, event-related potentials (ERPs), and individual differences were assessed. Behavioral findings reveal that participants rated AI agents' community-violating actions less morally negative than human transgressions, possibly because AI agents are commonly perceived as having less agency than human adults. The ERP N1 component showed the same pattern with moral rating scores, indicating the modulation effect of human-AI differences on initial moral intuitions. Moreover, the level of social withdrawal correlated with a smaller N1 in the human condition but not in the AI condition. The N2 and P2 components were sensitive to the difference between the loyalty/betrayal and authority/subversion domains but not human/AI differences. Individual levels of moral sense and autistic traits also influenced behavioral data, especially on the loyalty/betrayal domain. In our opinion, these findings offer insights for predicting moral responses to AI agents and guiding ethical AI development aligned with human moral values.

THE PROTAGONIST'S PERSONALITY STRUCTURE IN BUDI DARMA'S OREZ SHORT STORY: A FREUDIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS STUDY

The purpose of this research was to describe the personality structure of the character ‘Saya’ in the short story Orez by Budi Darma using Freud’s psychoanalysis approach, especially about the three personality structures that focus on the id, ego, and superego of the character ‘Saya’. This research was a descriptive-qualitative research. The method of data collection was done with the note-taking technique. The analysis method used was by reducing data, presenting data, and drawing conclusions. The findings of this research showed that the ego structure is more dominant in controlling ‘Saya’ in his daily life, seen from the way ‘Saya’ faces internal conflicts between primitive desires and social norms. When the id emerges in the form of desire without considering the social impact, the ego acts as a mediator so that the desire is realised in a logical way. Meanwhile, the superego influences ‘Saya’s moral response to difficult situations. The three personality structures are very influential in shaping the behaviour and decisions of ‘Saya’.

Reclaiming the Border Narrative: Refugee Children as Victim, Witness, and Agent in Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive

Valeria Luiselli’s 2019 novel Lost Children Archive records and reimagines visa-less migrant children’s encounters with hostile borders, while also challenging the logic and legality of border policy, a set of neocolonial practices that allows former colonial powers to continue their control over the mobility of bodies and epistemologies from the Global South. In an interview with The New Yorker about her novel, Luiselli commented on the role of narrative in conceptualizing and achieving justice when the law fails to deliver or denies justice: “Perhaps the only way to grant any justice—were that even possible—is by hearing and recording those stories over and over again so that they come back, always, to haunt and shame us.” 1 Luiselli thus highlights not only the power of storytelling in delivering justice otherwise denied, but also its ability to generate a moral, emotional, and intellectual response in its audience. This paper analyzes how Luiselli employs “factional” 2 narrative to “haunt and shame us,” question existing border policies, and grant authorial and narrative justice in the absence of institutional or legal justice through the extended metaphor of children on the move. I introduce the concept of “tripartite subjectivity” in analyzing how Luiselli’s factional children are, on the one hand, victims of and witnesses to the violence perpetrated by border laws, and, on the other hand, agents who challenge and reinterpret hostile borders, transforming the static border into a site of epistemic rupture. The tripartite subjectivity of Luiselli’s lost children provide a model via which characters who have been deprived of what Thomas Nail calls “socially determined status” (and thereby are rejected border access due to their inability to contribute to the state’s kinopolitical expansion) reclaim both fictional and epistemological borders through a reverse kinopolitics of what I term “bordered expansion by archive.”

Admiration in adolescents’ judgments on situations involving hurting

This article aims to characterize judgments about situations that involve causing harm and investigate whether judgments of situations in which participants' idols differed from judgments made for episodes involving generic characters. The research used two questionnaires: the sociodemographic questionnaire and the questionnaire on the interference of admiration in judgments about causing harm, applied to 63 adolescents aged between 12 and 18 years old. A coding system was developed based on the participants' responses, guided by the principles of Social Domain Theory, going through a rigorous process of dialogical reliability between researchers specialized in the subject. This coding system resulted in the following analysis categories: moral concern (justice, empathy, differences, and moral intervention), conventional concern (social expectation, legislation, religion, parental authority, and conventional intervention), concern with the situation (situational) and in others (it depends, and without justification). Additionally, a quantitative analysis was conducted using the method of dialogical reliability to map the presence of the five criteria of the moral domain: concern for others, adherence to the rule, generalization of the rule, independence from authority, and universalization of the rule, aiming to determine which elements hindered or facilitated the categorization of responses within the moral domain. The comparison between judgments involving generic characters and idols was conducted using the Wilcoxon and Mann-Whitney tests to ascertain the presence of significant differences between the judgments. The results indicated that admiration did not interfere with judgments in three of the four situations (accidental harm, psychological harm, and benefit), suggesting that the majority of adolescents judged situations with justifications that did not consider concern for causing harm to others. Further research needs to be conducted to investigate why there are few moral responses in judgments about different situations involving harm.

Attributions toward artificial agents in a modified Moral Turing Test

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) raise important questions about whether people view moral evaluations by AI systems similarly to human-generated moral evaluations. We conducted a modified Moral Turing Test (m-MTT), inspired by Allen et al. (Exp Theor Artif Intell 352:24–28, 2004) proposal, by asking people to distinguish real human moral evaluations from those made by a popular advanced AI language model: GPT-4. A representative sample of 299 U.S. adults first rated the quality of moral evaluations when blinded to their source. Remarkably, they rated the AI’s moral reasoning as superior in quality to humans’ along almost all dimensions, including virtuousness, intelligence, and trustworthiness, consistent with passing what Allen and colleagues call the comparative MTT. Next, when tasked with identifying the source of each evaluation (human or computer), people performed significantly above chance levels. Although the AI did not pass this test, this was not because of its inferior moral reasoning but, potentially, its perceived superiority, among other possible explanations. The emergence of language models capable of producing moral responses perceived as superior in quality to humans’ raises concerns that people may uncritically accept potentially harmful moral guidance from AI. This possibility highlights the need for safeguards around generative language models in matters of morality.

Role of narcissism and empathy in the relationship between parental attachment and moral response patterns

ABSTRACT Parental attachment promotes moral maturity in adolescents by improving empathy. Narcissism, one of the three dark personalities, affects both empathy and moral development. However, little is known about how narcissism moderates the influence of parental attachment on moral development in adolescents. A total of 1,574 Chinese middle school students were surveyed to determine the role of narcissism and empathy in the influence of parental attachment on adolescent moral response patterns. Results showed that parental attachment significantly predicted more positive moral response patterns, with empathy serving as a mediator. Furthermore, narcissism, primarily vulnerable narcissism (versus grandiose narcissism), diminished the benefits of parental attachment to empathy, and led to a decrease in the indirect prediction of parental attachment to moral response patterns. Our findings offer empirical evidence of the negative effects of narcissism on moral development in adolescents.

Illusory authenticity: Negotiating compassion in animal experimentation discourse

Society’s compassion towards nonhuman animals used in experimentation has grown exponentially. This paper adopts critical discourse analysis to examine how the animal experimentation industry negotiates this societal moral response. To this end, the discourse of the largest animal experimentation interest group in Spain has been studied. Our findings show that the industry, as represented by this interest group, does not negotiate compassion with authenticity but rather creates an illusion of it through opportunistic lexical choices and suppressions, including contradictions and incongruities. We conclude by defining such a discourse as illusory authenticity, a discourse with which the industry conveniently frames itself as altruistic and concerned about animal suffering while at the same time discouraging the public’s cultivation of compassion towards nonhuman animal suffering. This is done by means of perpetuating a logic that frames nonhuman animals as inferior beings whose existence is at the service of humanity.

The origins of moral sensitivities: Probing infants' expectations, evaluations, generalization, and enforcement of moral norms.

Identifying the origins of moral sensitivities, and their elaboration, within infancy and early childhood is a challenging task, given inherent limitations in infants' behavior. Here, I argue for a multi-pronged, multi-method approach that involves cleaving the moral response at its joints. Specifically, I chart the emergence of infants' moral expectations, evaluations, generalization and enforcement, demonstrating that while many moral sensitivities are present in the second year of life, these sensitivities are closely aligned with, and likely driven by, infants' everyday experience. Moreover, qualitative differences exist between the moral responses that are present in infancy and those of later childhood, particularly in terms of enforcement (i.e., a lack of punishment in infancy). These findings set the stage for addressing outstanding critical questions regarding moral development, that include identifying discrete causal inputs to early moral cognition, identifying whether moral cognition is distinct from social cognition early in life, and explaining gaps that exist between moral cognition and moral behavior in development.

Sexual Violence and Two Types of Moral Wrongs

AbstractAlthough the idea that sexual violence is a “structural” problem is not new, the lack of specification as to what that entails blocks effective responses to it. This paper illustrates the concept of sexual violence as structural in the sense of containing a type of moral wrong called “structural wrong” and discusses its practical implications. First, I introduce a distinction between two types of moral wrongs—interactional wrongs and structural wrongs—and I argue that the moral problem of sexual violence includes both types, each of which calls for a different set of moral responses. Second, drawing on Iris Marion Young's social connection model of responsibility, I argue that recognizing the structural-wrong element of sexual violence does not reduce individual perpetrators’ responsibility for it. Instead, it implies that a broader group of agents are required to join collective actions to reform the social structure. I conclude by evaluating some preventive programs against sexual violence through the lens of structural wrongs and providing directions to advance them.

한원진 인간본성론의 현대적 의의: 나바에츠(D. Narvaez)의 관점

The purpose of this study is to discuss the modern significance of Han Won-jin's theory of nature by interpreting it from the perspective of Narvaez. Until now, Han Won-jin's theory of nature has been interpreted as meaning that the nature of humans and animals is different by contrasting with the two. This can also be said to be a meaningful work in the history of philosophy. However, there seems to be little discussion on the implications of the argument that human and animal nature are different in terms of moral education. In particular, although it is a very interesting argument to argue that human nature is not only different from animals, such as Han Won-jin, but that each person has a difference in nature, it is difficult to find a case that reveals the implications or modern significance of the word. Assuming that each person has a different nature, that is, a moral virtue, it can be assumed that each person has a different moral judgment ability or moral response ability [虛靈知覺]. From this, it is possible to explore why moral education is necessary for everyone beyond the class limits of the Joseon Dynasty along with the necessity of moral education. In addition, Narvaez's model of moral experts is a good criterion for making such an attempt. Aristotle's virtue ethics, the philosophical origin of this model, is not only consistent with the nature of Confucianism, but also the series of processes from beginners to experts is in large part consistent with the content of royal lectures and discussions based on Han Won-jin's concept of nature. In addition, this model has great implications for estimating that modern and contemporary intellectuals' struggles to protect nationality and democratic citizenship against the Japanese colonial period and military dictatorship are directly connected to Joseon Confucianism, especially Han Won-jin's theory of nature. Therefore, this study explored the moral educational meaning of Han Won-jin's theory of nature based on Narvaez's model of moral experts.

Measuring moral injury and treatment response in justice-involved veterans: Development and validation of a new Moral Injury Scale.

Measuring moral injury and treatment response in justice-involved veterans: Development and validation of a new Moral Injury Scale.

Neuromodulation and memory: exploring ethical ramifications in memory modification treatment via implantable neurotechnologies.

Invasive implantable neurotechnologies capable of simultaneously altering and recording neural activity are no longer the exclusive province of science fiction but a looming reality that will revolutionize medical practice. These advancements, particularly in their memory-altering capabilities, herald a vast array of opportunities for addressing the complex landscape of neurodegenerative and psychiatric conditions linked to memory impairments. However, the panoply of ethical implications arising from such a novel neurotechnology remains relatively unexplored by the neuroethics literature. This study examines and contrasts the potential ethical implications of memory modification treatment via implantable neurotechnologies. The study contends that undesired side effects resulting from memory modulation can lead to significant identity harms, disrupting the coherence of self-narratives and impinging on our authenticity. To evince the practical impact of this moral argument, the study conducts a practical ethical assessment of how employing implantable neurotechnologies to modulate memory may jeopardize (i) our moral responsiveness to events and core system of values and (ii) the emotional component associated with the altered memory. From a first-person standpoint, changes to the way we reasonably feel and react to past events and future intentions may be deemed ethically problematic as these profound changes can yield significant moral disruptions and negatively impact our personal lives and interpersonal relationships. In addition, the study discusses further ethical conundrums from a third-person perspective as these disruptions can inhibit social activism against structural injustices, thereby hindering societal progress. Thus, taking into account this societal dimension is paramount when evaluating the ethical permissibility of memory modification procedures.

Toward a Philosophy of Melodrama

Abstract This article proposes a philosophy of melodrama, following the example of Noël Carroll in The Philosophy of Horror (1990). Melodrama is defined by a distinctive mode of address in which morality is dramatized through an appeal to our emotions. More narrowly conceived as the “tearjerker,” it is designed to solicit tears through the orchestration of pathos. While melodrama is associated above all with a genre of nineteenth- century theater, it is considered here as a mode that persists from at least the medieval period into the present, encompassing discrete art forms, such as theater, opera, and film. Furthermore, as it evolves historically, it develops more complex idioms. Classical melodrama, or the melodrama of good versus evil, which dwells on the pathos of suffering innocence, is contrasted with romantic melodrama or the melodrama of moral antinomy (Singer), which explores the pathos of sacrifice. A series of distinctions are drawn between sympathy, pathos, empathy, and identification, and the relationship of each to the other and to our moral responses are briefly delineated. The article contests Murray Smith's theory of empathy as central or personal imagination and defends a distinctive concept of identification, based upon its roots in the medieval French “identifier,” to “regard as the same.” It concludes with a brief defense of melodrama against the charge that is emotionally contrived and exploits our moral sentiments for meretricious ends.