Moral Dispositions Research Articles

EXPRESS: Moral virtues inferences: When limited information affects our attribution of virtues.

In everyday life, when we have to formulate judgments, we often end up being influenced by information that is not directly related to the matter at hand. This happens both when we encounter the person in the real-life world, but also in the cyber-world, when for example, we use social networks. In both cases, indeed, based simply on a few images or short stories, we may start to believe fake news or judge someone by generalizing limited information to the overall judgment of that person/situation, as it happens in the halo effect. Even moral assessment can be influenced by limited, non-moral information: However, little is known on how this influence can affect our moral inferences about someone's virtues. We conduct three experiments, in which we assess how aspects non directly connected to moral information, such as looks or fortuitous events, can affect our judgment about someone's morality. The experiments focus on the use of very limited information (e.g., attractiveness and/or short anecdotes), to reproduce the typical information available on a social network (e.g., people post selfies, or brief personal stories about their thoughts and feelings, or brief descriptions of personal events). In all experiments the participants were asked to judge the moral virtues (honesty, courage, wisdom, and hope) of the person in the picture/narrative. Results show that pictures and narratives significantly affect the judgment of virtues. Moreover, the third experiment reveals a combined effect, by enhancing the influence of non-moral aspects on evaluation of someone's moral dispositions.

Literary Incest: Moralism or Morality?

ABSTRACT Why is there an incest taboo? People avoid doing what conventions disapprove of their doing, and conventions are dictated by some sort of innate moral good, a moral inclination compatible with the referent kinship system. Essentially, incest avoidance is founded on deep psychological needs within domestic dynamics. However, far from being an anathema, incestuous behaviors in literary fiction become a natural inclination whose avoidance is to be thought less in moral terms and more as an evolutionary adaptation. Implicit in the argument is the suggestion that inbreeding is not about a rational choice but pure instincts that long precede societal taboos.

Responsibility Gaps and Retributive Dispositions: Evidence from the US, Japan and Germany

Danaher (2016) has argued that increasing robotization can lead to retribution gaps: Situations in which the normative fact that nobody can be justly held responsible for a harmful outcome stands in conflict with our retributivist moral dispositions. In this paper, we report a cross-cultural empirical study based on Sparrow’s (2007) famous example of an autonomous weapon system committing a war crime, which was conducted with participants from the US, Japan and Germany. We find that (1) people manifest a considerable willingness to hold autonomous systems morally responsible, (2) partially exculpate human agents when interacting with such systems, and that more generally (3) the possibility of normative responsibility gaps is indeed at odds with people’s pronounced retributivist inclinations. We discuss what these results mean for potential implications of the retribution gap and other positions in the responsibility gap literature.

On recognizing the real: Beauty and affliction in Simone Weil

AbstractIf the guiding question of ethics is “how should I live?,” then the guiding question of aesthetics might be “what is beauty?” For Simone Weil, these two questions have intertwined answers that turn on a like conceptual apparatus. Focussing on Weil's foremost ethical problem, the plight of the afflicted (malheur), this article offers an account of the philosophical basis to Weil's claim that, when truly recognized, beauty and affliction motivate the same form of experience. I argue that, for Weil, both the aesthetic and moral disposition are grounded in an experience of the real, an experience that both requires and compels the subject to the same attentive state. Finally, I address the charges that might be leveled at Weil for suggesting that our experience of beauty is the same as our experience of affliction, specifically arguing that rather than this experience leading to a form of passive aesthetic arrest, as the experience of beauty has typically been theorized to lead to, Weil understands the experience of beauty and affliction as fundamentally motivational toward the Good.

Scoring Individual Moral Inclination for the CNI Test

Item response theory (IRT) is a modern psychometric framework for estimating respondents’ latent traits (e.g., ability, attitude, and personality) based on their responses to a set of questions in psychological tests. The current study adopted an item response tree (IRTree) method, which combines the tree model with IRT models for handling the sequential process of responding to a test item, to score individual moral inclination for the CNI test—a broadly adopted model for examining humans’ moral decision-making with three parameters generated: sensitivity to moral norms, sensitivity to consequences, and inaction preference. Compared to previous models for the CNI test, the resulting EIRTree-CNI Model is able to generate individual scores without increasing the number of items (thus, less subject fatigue or compromised response quality) or employing a post hoc approach that is deemed statistically suboptimal. The model fits the data well, and the subsequent test also supported the concurrent validity and the predictive validity of the model. Limitations are discussed further.

ABOUT SOME HISTORICAL ASPECTS OF THE ACTIVITIES OF KHANLAR PEDAGOGICAL SCHOOL

The article deals with the historical, social, pedagogical and moral tendencies of the decisive role that the deportation of western Azerbaijanis from Armenia played in the fate of teachers and pupils. Particularly the historical importance of Azerbaijan State Pedagogical Technological School in Irevan that sufferad from the deportation, as well as the training – pedagogical activity of the Khanlar Pedagogical School staffed by the immigrants of the deportation period during 1948-1971 is illucidated.

Applying process dissociation to self-sacrificial moral dilemmas: Extending the dual-process model

There is considerable evidence linking cognitive reflection with utilitarian judgments in dilemmas that involve sacrificing someone else for the greater good. However, the evidence is mixed on the question of whether cognitive reflection is associated with utilitarian judgments in self-sacrificial dilemmas. We employed process dissociation to extract a self-sacrificial utilitarian (SU) parameter, an altruism (A) parameter, an other-sacrificial (OU) utilitarian parameter, and a deontology (D) parameter. In Study 1, the cognitive reflection test (CRT) positively correlated with both SU and OU (replicated in Studies 2 and 4, pre-registered). In Study 2, we found that instructing participants to rely on reason increased SU and OU (replicated in Study 4, pre-registered). In Study 3, we found that SU and OU positively correlated with giving in the single-game version of the public goods game (replicated in Study 4, pre-registered), which provides behavioral validation that they are genuine moral tendencies. Together, these studies constitute strong cumulative evidence that SU and OU are both valid measures that are associated with reliance on cognitive reflection.

Sophie de Grouchy and the Recovery Project: Her Originality and Contribution to Philosophy

Abstract In 1798 Sophie de Grouchy (1764–1822) appended her eight Lettres sur la sympathie to her translation of Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In recent years her Lettres have attracted considerable scholarly attention, but interpretative errors, resulting from considering selections in isolation, have slipped into readings of de Grouchy’s work that undermine her originality and the unity of her views regarding ethical theory. The purpose of this paper is to correct prior readings and to properly recover Sophie de Grouchy’s voice for the philosophical canon. Topics include the origin of sympathy, the significance of pleasure and pain in de Grouchy, sympathy and social relations, the role of reason and sentiments in our moral disposition, and mislabeling de Grouchy’s philosophy. In all, de Grouchy grounds her complex ethics and political philosophy in sympathy, reason, reflection, and human dependency in an overarching vision of humanity that is hopeful and optimistic.

Dispositions, Virtues, and Indian Ethics

ABSTRACTAccording to Arti Dhand, it can be argued that all Indian ethics have been primarily virtue ethics. Many have indeed jumped on the virtue bandwagon, providing prima facie interpretations of Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist canons in virtue terms. Others have expressed firm skepticism, claiming that virtues are not proven to be grounded in the nature of things and that, ultimately, the appeal to virtue might just well be a mere façon de parler. In this paper, we aim to advance the discussion of Indian virtue ethics. Our intent is not to provide a catch‐all interpretation of the different Indian schools. Our goal is, more modestly, to offer a theory of virtues in Indian philosophies, as a framework for theorists and interpreters who see these diverse traditions as amenable to systematic virtue analysis. Our theory grounds virtues in the reality of genuine moral dispositions and in a system of beliefs where morality is understood as transformative in nature.

Why moral psychology needs personality psychology.

People vary in how they perceive, think about, and respond to moral issues. Clearly, we cannot fully understand the psychology of morality without accounting for individual differences in moral functioning. But decades of neglect of and explicit skepticism toward such individual differences has resulted in a lack of integration between moral psychology and personality psychology-the study of psychological differences between people. In recent years, these barriers to progress have started to break down. This special issue aims to celebrate and further increase the visibility of the personality psychology of morality. Here, we introduce the articles in this special issue by highlighting some important contributions a personality-based perspective has to offer moral psychology-particularly in comparison to the currently prominent social psychological approach. We show that personality psychology is well-placed to (a) contribute toward a rigorous empirical foundation for moral psychology, (b) tackle the conceptualization and assessment of stable moral tendencies, (c) assess the predictive validity of moral traits in relation to consequential outcomes, (d) uncover the mechanisms underlying individual differences in moral judgments and behavior, and (e) provide insights into moral development. For these reasons, we believe that moral psychology needs personality psychology to reach its full scholarly potential.

Intergenerational transmission of moral decision‐making inclinations

AbstractObjectiveThis study investigated the intergenerational transmission of utilitarian and deontological inclinations, examining whether these pass from parents to adult children and exploring the potential moderating effects of parenting style and intergenerational involvement in this process.BackgroundFamily factors, including religious norms and work values, influence moral development, but the intergenerational transmission of two moral inclinations—utilitarianism (emphasizing consequences, e.g., sacrificing one person to save five) and deontology (emphasizing intrinsic norms, e.g., refraining from intentionally harming the innocent)—remains underexplored.MethodWe measured these inclinations in 171 parent–adult child pairs using a moral decision thought experiment and questionnaires on parenting style and intergenerational involvement.ResultsPositive correlations emerged between parents and adult children for both inclinations. “Emotional warmth” in parenting style and intergenerational involvement showed significant negative moderating effects on the transmission of utilitarianism between generations.ConclusionThis study provides empirical evidence of intergenerational transmission of moral inclinations. Higher emotional warmth and increased intergenerational involvement inhibit the transmission of utilitarian inclinations, leading to reduced prioritization of better consequences.ImplicationsEnhanced emotional warmth and greater intergenerational involvement by parents can deter the transmission of utilitarian inclinations among adult children, prioritizing adherence to intrinsic norms over intentional harm for greater benefits.

What COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution Disparity Reveals About Solidarity

What COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution Disparity Reveals About Solidarity

Moral conflict in a (post)war story: Narrative as enactment of and reflection on moral injury

AbstractThis article examines the discursive construction of moral conflict in a military veteran's (post)war story. By closely examining the linguistic details of a single veteran's narrative of war, this article addresses how moral conflict is revealed in shifts among varying modes of morality: from the conventional moral dispositions of the military, in which soldiers are socialized into acting, often violently and without reflection, to conscious ethical reasoning, which soldiers have historically been socialized not to engage in. The analysis of this veteran's narrative, informed by ethnographic research on veterans’ experiences of combat and return after deployment, outlines how structural and linguistic components of the narrative engage shifting modes of moral experience. As such, the article provides a critical discussion of moral injury, as well as a potential model for the study of language and morality.

The Qur’an: An Oral Transmitted Tradition Forming Muslims Habitus

This paper examines the relationship between religious practices and the forming of moral dispositions in light of the Qur’an. Using Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, this paper explains the way religious practices mentioned in the Qur’an can form moral dispositions for Muslims. The question that this research aims to answer is whether being a Muslim has anything to do with how he/she is expected to behave in society. It also investigates how central the Qur’an is in Muslims’ lives. Moreover, it discusses how and why Muslims act the way they do and what guides their practices and actions. This paper aims to clarify the ethical, moral and spiritual consequences of embodying religious practices. For example, practices like prayer and charity may give Muslims moral direction and help them be good citizens.

A Reexamination of Mencian Theory of Human Nature - The relationship between biological desires and moral inclinations -

A Reexamination of Mencian Theory of Human Nature - The relationship between biological desires and moral inclinations -

The Change of Heart, Moral Character and Moral Reform

AbstractI examine Kant’s claim in part one ofReligion within the Boundaries of Mere Reasonthat moral reform requires both a ‘change of heart’ and gradual reformation of one’s sense (R,6: 47). I argue that Kant’s conception of moral reform is neither fundamentally obscure nor is it as vulnerable to serious objections as several commentators have suggested. I defend Kant by explaining how he can maintain both that we can choose our moral disposition via an intelligible choice and that we become good through a continuous struggle. I then provide an interpretation of how moral reform occurs in the phenomenal realm.

Climate Change as Dark Magic in <em>Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir</em> Animation

Climate Change as Dark Magic in <em>Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir</em> Animation

AI and bureaucratic discretion

ABSTRACT Algorithmic decision-making has the potential to radically reshape policy-making and policy implementation. Many of the moral examinations of AI in government take AI to be a neutral epistemic tool or the value-driven analogue of a policymaker. In this paper, I argue that AI systems in public administration are often better analogised to a street-level bureaucrat. Doing so opens up a host of questions about the moral dispositions of such AI systems. I argue that AI systems in public administration often act as indifferent bureaucrats, and that this can introduce a problematic homogeneity in the moral dispositions in administrative agencies.

Difference between genders in attitudes toward ethics in digital business. Evidence from Croatia

As organizations grapple with the transformative implications of business digitization, the intricate interplay between technological progress, sustainable development, and ethical responsibilities becomes increasingly apparent. This article explores the influence of gender diversity on business ethics within the digital environment. An elevated perspective, infused with an ethical approach embracing gender diversity, leads to a deeper and more holistic understanding of these multifaceted dynamics, poised to inform, and guide decisions over the long term. Research investigating the ethical inclinations of men and women in the business and digital realm reveals a noteworthy trend: women attribute higher importance to ethical standards in digital business compared to men. Women tend to exhibit a stronger moral inclination and are more attuned to unethical practices, particularly in the context of the challenges and complexities accompanying digital transition. The study uncovers that women display a lower tolerance for unethical behavior, including negotiation strategies, underscoring their more pronounced ethical stance. This discrepancy is attributed to women's deeper integration of morality into their self-identities, fostering heightened sensitivity to interpersonal dynamics and emotions, while men lean towards an independent and less reliant self-perception. Such gender-based disparities have the potential to significantly impact organizational leadership dynamics. However, it is crucial to refrain from overgeneralizing and assuming that male employees engage in unethical conduct more frequently than their female counterparts, particularly in contexts that prioritize moral leadership principles. Moreover, it is noteworthy that financial incentives possess the capacity to compromise the ethical compass of individuals, irrespective of gender. Still, gender plays a pivotal role in shaping ethical decisions, irrespective of whether they are made within a personal or corporate setting.

The moral rhetoric of populist radical right: the case of the Sweden Democrats

ABSTRACT While morality is considered an invariable part of populism, it has somewhat been neglected in populism scholarship. This paper aims to analyze the moral structures underlying the radical-right version of populist antagonism between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’. To achieve this, the paper applies the conceptual framework of moral dispositions and normative justification strategies to the case of the Sweden Democrats. The study compares the moral rhetoric of the Sweden Democrats with that of other Swedish political parties, while also conducting an in-depth analysis of the moral structures that underpin the narratives of the Sweden Democrats. The findings suggest that the Sweden Democrats tend to sacralize their core ideas and predominantly employ virtue ethical justification strategies, positioning themselves as morally superior to other parties. This implies that the Sweden Democrats assign essentialist value to their key political concepts, a stance that sharply contrasts with the moral composition of the rest of the political spectrum.