Moral Reasoning Process Research Articles

The communicative nature of moral development: A theoretical framework on the emergence of moral reasoning in social interactions

Moral reasoning is a central aspect of morality, and its acquisition is therefore a central aspect of moral development. Children acquire moral norms through social interactions with others. Yet, the moral reasoning process that subserves the appreciation of norms remains vastly understudied. In this article we present a theoretical framework on the nature of moral development that conceives human morality in terms of communication. Following this framework, we argue for a closer, systematic investigation of children’s moral reasoning that complements the predominant approach of adult-led interviews examining children’s moral judgments. To better understand the role of the reasoning process for moral development, we need to investigate how different reasoning partners and individual differences influence this process. Ultimately, giving moral reasoning the much-deserved attention has the potential to broaden our understanding of how children become moral beings and how human morality is constituted.

Online Hate Speech as a Moral Issue: Exploring Moral Reasoning of Young Italian Users on Social Network Sites

Taking a neo-Kohlbergian approach, we explore the moral reasoning of 486 young Italian users of social network sites exposed to moral dilemmas concerning online hate speech. The aims are to understand what moral reasoning schemas they use as they face homophobic, racist, or sexist online hate speech, and what influence personal values and moral disengagement might have on their moral reasoning process. The results reveal the prevalence of Maintaining Norms reasoning (conformity to rules and authority) in making moral decisions concerning online hate speech and confirms the mediating role of Hate Speech Moral Disengagement in the relationship between personal values and the moral reasoning process.

Кант во времена COVID

During the coronavirus pandemic, communities have faced shortages of important healthcare resources such as COVID-19 vaccines, medical staff, ICU beds and ventilators. Public health officials in the U.S. have had to make decisions about two major issues: which infected patients should be treated first (triage), and which people who are at risk of infection should be inoculated first (vaccine distribution). Following Beauchamp and Childress’s principlism, adopted guidelines have tended to value both whole lives (survival to discharge) and life-years (survival for years past discharge). This process of collective moral reasoning has revealed our common commitment to both Kantian and utilitarian principles. For Kant, respecting people’s rights entails that we ought to value whole lives equally. Therefore we ought to allocate resources so as to maximise the number of patients who survive to discharge. By contrast, the principle of utility has us maximise life-years so that people can satisfy more of their considered preferences. Although people are treated impartially in the utilitarian calculus, it does not recognise their equal worth. Subjecting Kantian ethics and utilitarianism to the process of reflective equilibrium lends support to the idea that we need a pluralistic approach that would accommodate our moral intuitions regarding both the equal value of whole lives and the additive value of life-years.

Desensitization and Violent Video Games: Mechanisms and Evidence.

Desensitization, the reduction of cognitive, emotional, and/or behavioral responses to a stimulus, is an automatic and unconscious phenomenon often experienced in everyday life. Exposure to violent media, especially violent video games, may cause desensitization to real-life violence. Desensitization to violence blocks empathy which is needed to trigger the moral reasoning process that triggers prosocial responding. Representative research was reviewed to examine links between exposure to violent video games and desensitization to violence in children and adolescents. It was concluded that exposure to violent video games increases the risk of desensitization to violence, which in turn may increase aggression and decrease prosocial behavior. Parents should be counseled to discuss the differences between real and screen violence, to encourage nonviolent problem-solving, and to provide empathy-building experiences for their children.

ERP Study of Liberals’ and Conservatives’ Moral Reasoning Processes: Evidence from South Korea

Do liberals’ and conservatives’ brain processes differ in moral reasoning? This research explains these groups’ dissimilar moral stances when they face ethical transgressions in business. Research that explores the effects of ideological asymmetry on moral reasoning processes through moral foundations (i.e., fairness and authority) has been limited. We hypothesize two different moral reasoning processes and test them in the South Korean culture. Study 1 uses the neuroscientific method of event-related potentials (ERP) to explore the dissociable neural mechanisms that underlie Korean liberals’ and conservatives’ moral reasoning processes in business ethical transgressions. Liberals’ early frontal negative-going (EFN) brain waves showed that they are quick to pass negative judgment by intuitively detecting violations of fairness (i.e., moral engagement), while conservatives’ temporoparietal positive-going (TPP) brain waves showed that they have a higher motivation to respect authority (i.e., moral rationalization). Both liberals’ and conservatives’ ERP components occur within the first second of the decision-making phase, suggesting the rapid and intuitive nature of moral reasoning processes. Study 2 tests a mediating process and confirms that Korean liberals (conservatives) exhibit the moral engagement (rationalization) strategy, through the fairness (authority) foundation. These findings from our interdisciplinary research deepen the knowledge of the complexity of human morality in business ethics research.

Fairness in Resource Distribution: Relationship between Children’s Moral Reasoning and Logical Reasoning

Abstract Introduction: The aim of this study is to examine children’s moral reasoning and logical reasoning processes and the relationship between these two mechanisms. In the present study the focus is on the relationship between the factors such as fair sharing, equality, merit, ownership, opportunity in the resource allocation and logical reasoning among the children aged 5-7. Methods: In this study, which aims to examine how the logical thinking skills differ according to the children’s moral reasoning process, a survey design approach was used. Participants were 92 children aged 5 (female N=13, male N=14) and aged 6 (female N=17, male N=18), aged 7 (female N=17, male N=13). The data collected from the moral and logical reasoning tasks were analyzed in two steps. At the first step the answers of the participants were scored. At the second step their justifications were categorized. To test out hypotheses we used two general linear models to examine the age effects of Age (5-7 years) and Reasoning (equality, ownership, merit, opportunity) on children’s evaluations of the vignette characters’ actions. Age-related changes in children’s evaluation and their logical reasoning skills related to initial distribution and transfer status were analyzed by the variance analysis. Results: Based on the findings of the study it can be stated that the children in the age group of 6-7 evaluated negatively the reward distribution based on the outcomes due to their concerns about the inequality in the opportunities and the violation of the principle of equality. The findings of the study indicate that there is no significant difference in children’s logical thinking skills depending on their age. As a result of the study, it is found that although there is no direct relationship between the moral and logical reasoning processes of children, the children who can reject the AC type inference predominantly emphasize the principle of equality. Although there is no significant relationship between moral reasoning and logical reasoning processes, it can be said that children with higher levels of logical reasoning much more frequently emphasize the principle of equality in moral reasoning process. Discussion: Research indicates that children aged around 5 consider the reward distribution based on the outcomes fair. Older children, on the other hand, evaluate the inequalities in resource distribution as unfair. These findings support the results of the study suggesting that older children consider inequal source distribution both at the first case and at the transfer cases unfair. The children’s approval or disapproval of the transfer varies based on their reasoning processes. They support transfer if they emphasize the principle of equality, but they do not support it if their focus is on the principle of ownership. Older children are found to have a commitment to the principle of equality, and the difference between the 5-year age group and the 6-7-year age group is remarkable in this regard. Similar findings are reported in the previous studies, and it is generally stated that younger children are more selfish and that the tendency to distribute resources equally becomes dominant due to the increase in the age of children. Although there is no significant relationship between moral reasoning and logical reasoning processes, it can be said that children with higher levels of logical reasoning emphasize the principle of equality in moral reasoning process much more frequently. Conclusion: Cognitivists argue that cognition and particularly reasoning have significant roles in making moral decisions. It suggests that children whose logical thinking skills are higher than others understand the necessity of equality to ensure fairness. The basic information on logic should be taught and introduced to the children from an early age. In addition, children should be ensured to use these methods through connections with both daily life and other courses at schools. It is thought that having basic logic knowledge by children will affect positively their cognitive, affective and social development. In order to examine this effect, a logic program including simple logic rules and basic inference types should be developed and the effects of such programs on the cognitive, affective and social development of children should be examined.

A study on the dynamics between the moral reasoning process and celebrity image and their impact on consumers’ support for celebrity comebacks after a transgression

A study on the dynamics between the moral reasoning process and celebrity image and their impact on consumers’ support for celebrity comebacks after a transgression

Moral Reasoning in Bodybuilding

Background. The aim of the research was to disclose the process of moral reasoning in bodybuilding: to reveal the features of bodybuilding sport (athletes’ goals, benefits of the sport and its costs), to find out the circumstances which can affect athletes’ moral decisions, to evaluate bodybuilding athletes’ moral reasoning strategies, and to reveal athletes’ most important moral decisions.Methods. The study employed qualitative research which involved eight bodybuilding athletes. The respondents were selected using the theoretical purposeful convenience sampling strategy. A semi-structured interview method was used to collect information.Results. Athletes’ goals in bodybuilding can be sports related (getting to know the sport, athletic achievements) or personal (moral and psychological toughness, personal improvement, self-realization, material benefits). Bodybuilders benefit from the sport in physical (health and appearance improvement) and social (gained experience, self-realization) ways. The price of this sport is athletes’ hard work, large amounts of money, sacrificed personal life and deterioration of psychological and physical health. Moral reasoning can be influenced by positive circumstances (bodybuilding philosophy, internal beliefs, fighting against cheating, team spirit) and negative (ingrained misdemeanours in sport, corruption, flawed rating system, possibility to avoid responsibility, big price of winning, psychological pressure, inadequate goals). Athletes most often use rational moral reasoning strategies (regarding their beliefs, solution seeking, situational decisions, self-mobilization, setting options, relying on experience). Athletes more often make positive moral decisions (changing the trainer, following the rules, resisting pressure, moral behaviour) than negative (adapting to the situation, acting like the others, winning at any cost).Conclusions. Bodybuilders most often aim for personal goals. Bodybuilding provides its athletes with physical and social benefits. The price of this sport is bodybuilders’ hard work, large sums of money, sacrifice of personal life and health. Certain circumstances might influence athletes to make positive moral decisions while others might influence negative decisions. Bodybuilding athletes use two different moral reasoning strategies: rational or irrational. Bodybuilders’ more often make positive moral decisions, but negative decisions occur as well. Keywords: morality, moral reasoning, bodybuilding.

Morální intuice z pohledu současné deskriptivní etiky

In the last twenty years, there has been an enormous growth of scientific research concerning the process of human moral reasoning and moral intuitions. In contemporary descriptive ethics, three dominant approaches can be found – heuristic approach, dual-process theory, and universal moral grammar. Each of these accounts is based on similar empirical evidence combining findings from evolutionary biology, moral psychology, and neuroethics. Nevertheless, they come to different conclusions about the reliability of moral intuitions. The aim of this paper is to critically investigate each of these approaches and compare them with recent scientific findings. Last chapter addresses implications of these findings for moral epistemology and normative ethics. The aim is to show that despite different interpretations of available data, we can reach a satisfying pragmatical conclusion which would be in compliance with the empirical evidence, yet it would not necessarily depend on it.

Human moral reasoning types in autonomous vehicle moral dilemma: A cross-cultural comparison of Korea and Canada

The widespread of Autonomous Vehicle (AV) promises a transportation system revolution. Despite its potential benefits, there has been an unsolved discussion of how AV should behave during unavoidable crash situations, which is known as the Moral Dilemma of AV. The goal of this study is to investigate how AV Morality can be designed to align with human values by observing human moral reasoning process, which could be applicable for AV Moral Dilemma scenarios. To do that, we used an exploratory sequential mixed-research methodology to compare human moral reasoning types from two cultures: Korea, a highly collectivist culture, and Canada, a typical individualist culture. First, unavoidable crash scenarios that reflect the complex real-world crash contexts were developed. Second, a moral thought experiment in the form of in-depth interviews was conducted for both cultures (N = 70, Koreans = 33, Canadians = 37). Finally, K-means clustering analysis was conducted. As a result, three human moral reasoning types (Moral Altruist, Moral Non-determinist, and Moral-Deontologist) were defined. The study results reduce abstractness of AV morality by defining distinct moral decision-making patterns which are described by moral value. The findings provide guidelines for designing culture-specific moral behaviors, provide guidelines for AV practitioners, and increase AV morality transparency for the public.

The role of moral decoupling in the causes and consequences of unethical pro-organizational behavior

In this paper we explore the antecedents and consequences of employees’ unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) through the lens of moral decoupling—a moral reasoning process whereby individuals separate their perceptions of morality from their perceptions of performance. First, we argue that employees increase their engagement in UPBs when they (1) see their supervisors doing the same and (2) believe that their supervisors endorse moral decoupling. Second, we argue that employees’ UPBs are only positively related to supervisors’ evaluations of their job performance when supervisors themselves report that they morally decouple. We test these hypotheses in a field sample of supervisor–employee dyads and two experimental studies. This combination of studies highlights the complex link between ethics and perceptions of performance within organizations.

Left-Wing Wittgenstein

Writing in the wake of the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, the moral philosopher Bernard Williams considers the opposing claims of Rawlsian liberalism, with its emphasis on pluralism and procedural fairness, and communitarianism, which instead promotes more or less culturally homogeneous societies formed around shared values. Williams shares the communitarians’ critique of Rawls’s theory as excessively abstract, questioning whether a rational commitment to pluralism as the most just social arrangement can serve as a sufficiently binding social force. He simultaneously resists, however, the conservative tendencies of the communitarians, particularly their dismissal of ethically motivated social critique. Grounded in the late philosophy of Wittgenstein, communitarians reject foundationalism, the notion that beliefs can be philosophically justified, instead regarding ideologically driven social arrangements as the result of inherently particular historical and environmental conditions. This perspective precludes rational reevaluation of a society’s status quo; if a society’s adoption of values does not depend on philosophically grounded principles, neither can those values be altered through a process of collective moral reasoning. For Williams, however, because pluralism is a condition of modern life with which even culturally homogenous communities must contend, members of modern societies are aware of alternatives to their own social model, leaving a space for self-critical reassessment. Finally, Williams suggests that the desire of cultural minorities for separate states in the post-Soviet geopolitical landscape underscores the limits of both pluralism and communitarianism, limits that all of us will need to grapple with as we confront the immediate social and political realities of modernity.

Towards understanding the moral reasoning process of senior chemical engineering students in process safety contexts

Despite process safety and ethical decision making being recognized priorities in many chemical companies, process safety incidents continue to occur with unfortunate regularity. In order to understand why such incidents keep occurring, and to prevent future accidents from happening, it is important to study the decision-making habits of people employed at chemical companies, and to inform students of the difference between the influences of ethics and behavioral ethics in process safety decision making. This study seeks to determine how senior chemical engineering students approach reasoning through process safety scenarios through the use of a mixed methods study. This study found that four out of the five students who participated in the study demonstrated post-conventional reasoning, and the remaining student showed conventional reasoning based on the quantitative analysis of their responses. Students showed mostly post-conventional reasoning in their responses based on a qualitative analysis; however, through comparison of these results it was found that the moral schema students were classified as was not always truly representative of their moral reasoning.

Ethical consumption and consumers’ decision making: the role of moral intuition

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the understudied antecedents of moral reasoning and cognitive processes that ultimately shape the ethical consumption. The theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the socio-intuitionist model are integrated. Holistic, inferential, and affective dimensions of intuition are identified as critical antecedents of environmental concerns that then influence the ethical consumption.Design/methodology/approachStructural equation modeling is used to analyze intuitive judgments and ethical concerns in 256 US undergraduates. The New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) is used to measure ethical concerns and the ecologically conscious consumer behavior (ECCB) instrument is used to measure ethical consumption.FindingsThe results indicate that inferential intuition, but not affective intuition, significantly predicts the ethical concerns (NEP), which in turn significantly influence all five dimensions of ethical consumption behavior (ECCB).Practical implicationsManagers and marketing strategists should focus on non-rational influences such as moral intuition to effectively promote ethical and responsible consumption.Originality/valueThe TPB and the intuitionist theory are integrated to reveal empirically how intuitive judgments may affect consumer attitudes and to provide new insights regarding the ethical consumption.

Salience network engagement with the detection of morally laden information.

Moral cognition is associated with activation of the default network, regions implicated in mentalizing about one’s own actions or the intentions of others. Yet little is known about the initial detection of moral information. We examined the neural correlates of moral processing during a narrative completion task, which included an implicit moral salience manipulation. During fMRI scanning, participants read a brief vignette and selected the most semantically congruent sentence from two options to complete the narrative. The options were immoral, moral or neutral statements. RT was fastest for the selection of neutral statements and slowest for immoral statements. Neuroimaging analyses revealed that responses involving morally laden content engaged default and executive control network brain regions including medial and rostral prefrontal cortex, and core regions of the salience network, including anterior insula and dorsal anterior cingulate. Immoral vs moral conditions additionally engaged the salience network. These results implicate the salience network in the detection of moral information, which may modulate downstream default and frontal control network interactions in the service of complex moral reasoning and decision-making processes. These findings suggest that moral cognition involves both bottom-up and top-down attentional processes, mediated by discrete large-scale brain networks and their interactions.

When a good company transgresses: A study of the influences of CSR, moral decoupling, and ethnocentrism

Transgressions can result in negative consequences, especially when committed by global companies. Some of the biggest multinational companies in the world take extra steps to be socially responsible and to have positive reputations in domestic and foreign markets. Despite the extra steps that may be taken, it is a common occurrence for some of these companies to commit transgressions. The knowledge of the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) history and the country of origin of transgressing companies is scarce in studies that examine the consumers’ reasoning process to forgive or not to forgive the transgression. While the moral reasoning process to forgive transgressions has been examined in instances with public figures, studies are lacking in the instance of companies. This study will bridge these gaps by examining the effects of CSR history and consumer ethnocentrism on the evaluation of companies before and after transgressions. This study will also examine the effects of company evaluations before and after transgressions in the reasoning process of consumers. The authors conclude the study by discussing implications for marketing managers and the potential for further research.

Moral Dilemmas and Moral Injury

Psychiatrists working with war veterans have, in recent years, constructed ‘moral injury’ as a separate manifestation of war trauma that is distinct from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This paper argues that for moral degradation to occur, it necessarily involves one’s commissions or omissions that transgresses one’s personal morality, and hence, distinguishes sufferers of moral injury from PTSD sufferers who were witnesses to traumatic and morally abhorrent events. To this end, it clarifies how some of the situations surrounding moral injury are misunderstood, by discussing the process of moral reasoning in the context of moral dilemmas, dirty hands, and moral blind alleys. Finally, it concludes that when we conceptualise moral injury as being caused by one’s commissions and omissions in moral dilemmas, we find that shame and guilt are situation-appropriate responses with a role to play in what ethics mean.

A Moral (Normative) Framework for the Judgment of Actions and Decisions in the Construction Industry and Engineering: Part II.

The construction industry is typically characterized as a fragmented, multi-organizational setting in which members from different technical backgrounds and moral values join together to develop a particular business or project. The most challenging obstacle in the construction process is to achieve a successful practice and to identify and apply an ethical framework to manage the behavior of involved specialists and contractors and to ensure the quality of all completed construction activities. The framework should reflect a common moral ground for myriad people involved in this process to survive and compete ethically in today's turbulent construction market. This study establishes a framework for moral judgment of behavior and actions conducted in the construction process. The moral framework provides the basis of judging actions as "moral" or "immoral" based on three levels of moral accountability: personal, professional, and social. The social aspect of the proposed framework is developed primarily from the essential attributes of normative business decision-making models identified in the literature review and subsequently incorporates additional attributes related to professional and personal moral values. The normative decision-making models reviewed are based primarily on social attributes as related to moral theories (e.g., utilitarianism, duty, rights, virtue, etc.). The professional and moral attributes are established by identifying a set of common moral values recognized by professionals in the construction industry and required to prevent common construction breaches. The moral framework presented here is the complementary part of the ethical framework developed in Part I of this article and is based primarily on the personal behavior or the moral aspect of professional responsibility. The framework can be implemented as a form of preventive personal ethics, which would help avoid ethical dilemmas and moral implications in the first place. Furthermore, the moral framework can be considered as a decision-making model to guide actions and improve the moral reasoning process, which would help individuals think through possible implications and the consequences of ethical and moral issues in the construction industry.

Distributed Cognition and Distributed Morality: Agency, Artifacts and Systems.

There are various philosophical approaches and theories describing the intimate relation people have to artifacts. In this paper, I explore the relation between two such theories, namely distributed cognition and distributed morality theory. I point out a number of similarities and differences in these views regarding the ontological status they attribute to artifacts and the larger systems they are part of. Having evaluated and compared these views, I continue by focussing on the way cognitive artifacts are used in moral practice. I specifically conceptualise how such artifacts (a) scaffold and extend moral reasoning and decision-making processes, (b) have a certain moral status which is contingent on their cognitive status, and (c) whether responsibility can be attributed to distributed systems. This paper is primarily written for those interested in the intersection of cognitive and moral theory as it relates to artifacts, but also for those independently interested in philosophical debates in extended and distributed cognition and ethics of (cognitive) technology.

Family Communication Patterns, Sympathy, Perspective-Taking, and Girls’ Thoughts About Interpersonal Violence

This self report online study explored the process of moral reasoning about interpersonal violence by considering the roles of family communication patterns, mediated by sympathy and perspective-taking (PT) in girls ages 6–16 (N = 253). Using structural equation modeling, findings suggest that families where conversation communication plays a central role nurture abilities to sympathize and PT. Further, younger girls tend to be driven by sympathy, which shifts to PT as they age. These abilities positively correlate with thoughts about interpersonal violence as wrong whether “justified” and independent of severity. Error correlations infer that, at some level, “justified” violence is acceptable and, to a lesser degree, the severity of the violence plays a role in moral reasoning about violence, thus suggesting complex thought.