Type Of Dilemma Research Articles

Variations in Level of Moral Judgment as a Function of Type of Dilemma and Moral Choice

ABSTRACTThis study compares the predictive power of two models of moral judgment: (a) Kohlberg's model, which predicts stage consistency across varying content, and (b) a model that predicts variations in stage as a function of complex interactions between people and social contexts. Forty university students were asked to make and justify choices on three moral dilemmas—a dilemma involving the sale of defective merchandise (selling dilemma) and two dilemmas from Kohlberg's test of moral judgment. Half the participants made hypothetical choices on the selling dilemma; the other half were offered a selfish incentive—money—for concealing the defects in the merchandise. In support of the interactional model, (a) participants scored lower on the selling dilemma than on Kohlberg's test, (b) the monetary incentive affected moral choices, (c) participants justified the choice to conceal defects in the merchandise with significantly lower stage moral judgments than they invoked in support of the decision to disclose its defects, and (d) participants who upheld the choice to disclose supported it with higher stage justifications than those who rejected it. Surprisingly, however, participants who stood to make money disclosed more about the defects in the article and charged less than participants who did not.

In Men's Eyes: Women Who Participate in, and Take Part in Discussing, Politics and Government

When it comes to discussing the subject of women's liberation, certain feminists, who are given to their passions and emotions, often point their fingers at men, as if every man was an executioner who has a part in strangling women. In fact, I must acknowledge that I myself have often been pulled along by the orientation of this type of thinking. Nevertheless, sometimes I also feel trapped in another type of dilemma, which is that in real life many men with whom we have contact and with whom we deal on a daily basis are kind, gentle, and friendly, and as far as I can tell, good, innocent, and well intentioned. In particular, especially in regard to women, these men are good to the extreme.

Behavioral decision theory and environmental risk management: Assessment and resolution of four ‘survival’ dilemmas

Environmental degradation and the call for ‘sustainable development’ provide an extended context and new challenges for decision-theoretic research on risk assessment and management. We characterize environmental risk management as the resolution of four different types of ‘survival’ dilemmas in human social activity: benefit-risk, temporal, spatial and social dilemmas. These may lead into traps which arise through discounting of risks, future and distant effects, and collective interests, respectively. Each type of dilemma is discussed separately, against the background of differing research traditions. The four types of dilemma may combine into various problems of environmental degradation; descriptive field research should clarify this in each case. For resolving such problems a number of policy strategies is discussed. The dilemmas paradigm suggests multidisciplinary research whereby decision theorists could play meaningful roles, e.g., in formulating decision problems, assessing environmental quality and risk, describing typical human responses to the threat of being trapped, and designing and evaluating ways to achieve a better position in a given dilemma.

Situational variation in moral judgment: In a stage or on a stage?

Two issues were examined in this study-the consistency of moral judgment across different types of dilemma and different social contexts, and the relationship between the structure (stage) of moral judgment and the content of moral decisions. Forty subjects were given two hypothetical dilemmas about business decisions and two standard Kohlberg dilemmas. Half the subjects directed their responses to a business audience, half to a philosophical audience. Responses to the moral dilemmas were scored in accordance with the Colby and Kohlberg (1987) scoring manual. Stage of moral reasoning was found to be significantly higher on the Kohlberg dilemmas than on the business dilemmas. A significant interaction between type of dilemma and audience was attributed to the tendency of subjects directing their responses to a business audience to interpret one of the business dilemmas in terms of the moral order of business, but for subjects directing their responses to a philosophy audience to treat it as a philosophical dilemma. The other business dilemma evoked uniformly low-level moral judgments. The amount of selfishness intrinsic in subjects' moral choices on the business dilemmas was significantly negatively correlated with moral maturity on the business dilemmas, but not with their moral maturity on Kohlberg's test. These results are interpreted as more consistent with models of moral development such as those advanced by C. G. Levine ([1979] "Stage Acquisition and Stage Use: An Appraisal of Stage Displacement Explanations of Variation in Moral Reasoning, " Human Development, Vol. 22, pp. 145-164), J. Rest ([1983] "Morality," in: P. H. Mussen [ed.], J. H. Flavell and E. Markman [Vol. eds.], Handbook of Child Psychology [Vol. 3, 4th ed.], John Wiley & Sons, New York), and R. Harré ([1984]) Personal Being: A Theory for Individual Psychology, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts), which posit a relatively wide range of within-person stage use and emphasize the determining power of social situations, than with the more constructivistic model of moral development of Colby and Kohlberg (1987).

Levels of Information and Contributions to Public Goods

The provision of public goods is a social dilemma in which individuals must decide whether to contribute to the group or not to contribute and therefore free ride. We posit that if individuals have information about how each of the other group members has contributed, free riding will occur less frequently than if they do not have this information. If individuals know how others have contributed, they are able to employ trigger strategies. Three experimental treatments are used to test our predictions: (1) no information about other members' contributions, (2) aggregated information about other members' contributions, and (3) individualized information about each member's contribution. We find that contributions to a public good in the individualized information condition are greater than contributions in the other two conditions. However, contribution levels for no information and aggregated information do not differ. A social dilemma is any social situation in which an individual's short-term incentives for not cooperating exceed those for cooperating. However, if individuals do not cooperate, payoffs are lower in the long run (sometimes catastrophically lower) than if all had cooperated (see Dawes 1980). One type of social dilemma involves the provisioning of a public good. A public good is characterized by nonexcludability in consumption so that regardless of whether or not one contributes to it, one shares in its consumption. Examples of public goods include community parks, public radio, television, and national defense. Based upon this characteristic of nonexcludability, most economists have

Maternal Views on Autonomy

Maternal views on the separateness and independence of their children were investigated in the present study. Sixty Japanese and 60 Israeli mothers of kindergarten children were interviewed about their children's obedience/disobedience and capacity to manage on their own. The findings indicate that for the Japanese mothers, the capacity of the child to manage on his/her own, is expressed in his/her moving from exclusive ties with mother towards interacting with other children, while Israeli mothers emphasize the child's instrumental independence in taking care of him- or herself, performing tasks (e.g., answering the phone, setting the table) and being able to occupy him- or herself constructively when his or her mother is not present. Japanese mothers also report behaviors which can be labeled as instrumental independence, but present them as examples of obedience. Israeli mothers describe the child's instrumental independence as internal, often putting the mother in a conflict situation (i.e., wanting the child to be independent but not at an inappropriate time or in unsuitable endeavors). Japanese mothers did not mention this type of dilemma.

Believing that everyone else is less ethical: Implications for work behavior and ethics instruction

Studies consistently report that individuals believe they are far more ethical than co-workers, superiors, or managers in other firms. The present study confirms this finding when comparing undergraduate students' own ethical standards to their perceptions of the standards held by most managers or supervisors. By maintaining a “holier than thou” ethical perception, new and future managers might rationalize their unethical behavior as being necessary for success in an unethical world. A prisoner's dilemma type problem can be said to exist when choosing an unethical behavior becomes each player's dominant strategy and the interaction of dominant behaviors is Pareto inferior. Dispelling the “holier than thou” perception may encourage students to revise their personal behavior payoffs such that the collective benefits that emanate from ethical conduct are favored and the prisoner's dilemma problem is converted into a coordination problem.

Cooperation in a repeated game with random payment function

A model of cooperation versus defection in a sequence of games is analysed under the assumptions that the rules of the game are randomly changed from one encounter to another, that the decisions are to be made each time anew, according to the (random) rules of the specific local game, and that the result of one such game affects the ability of a player to participate and thus, cooperate in the next game. Under plausible assumptions, it is shown that all Nash solutions of the supergame determine cooperation over a non-degenerate range of rules, determining encounters of the prisoner's dilemma type.

Cooperation in a repeated game with random payment function

A model of cooperation versus defection in a sequence of games is analysed under the assumptions that the rules of the game are randomly changed from one encounter to another, that the decisions are to be made each time anew, according to the (random) rules of the specific local game, and that the result of one such game affects the ability of a player to participate and thus, cooperate in the next game. Under plausible assumptions, it is shown that all Nash solutions of the supergame determine cooperation over a non-degenerate range of rules, determining encounters of the prisoner's dilemma type.

Issue Linkage and the Evolution of International Cooperation

This article extends Axelrod's results concerning the evolution of cooperation to situations in which a pair of individuals is simultaneously engaged in several continuing interactions, all of the Prisoners' Dilemma type. It is shown formally that in such a PD multisupergame, players may adopt strategies that create linkages across time and games, thus opening up new opportunities for cooperative outcomes in games for which cooperation would not be rational if considered in isolation. However, such linkage-based cooperation is often very brittle, in that attempts to include or delete issues may shatter the existing basis of cooperation. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate the wide variety of possible cooperative equilibria and the sensitivity of these equilibria to small changes in the payoffs of each game. Some implications for the evolution of arms control and other international regimes are discussed.

Early Field Experiences: POTPOURRI Recurring Dilemmas Jane H. Applegate

This article reviews dilemmas faced by teacher educators in the conduct of early field experiences. Three types of dilem mas are identified by Applegate: pro grammatic, institutional and personal. Critical questions are identified related to each type of dilemma.

Economics of Philanthropy: A Comment

In seeking a way out of the maze problems of associated with philanthropy, Sugden (i 982) suggests that 'Kantian' behaviour is the most promising avenue to explore and kindly refers to Collard (I978). However, he seems to believe that Kantianism supplants altruism whereas the two are really complementary. According to Kant a rule is morally acceptable only if it may be universalised: 'Act on a maxim which can also hold good as a universal law. Every maxim which is not capable of being so is contrary to morality' (Kant, 1909, p. 282). Thus moral actions appear to follow from a rational conception of duty not from 'inclination [which] goes its own secret way: indeed it can do no other, because it has no principle' (Kant, I930, p. 197). In economics we may say that an individual's strategy follows the Kantian rule if, when also adopted by others in the relevant group, it may be expected to lead to a preferred social state. Consider a prisoner's dilemma type of model.

Underdevelopment and the economics of corruption: A game theory approach

Previous attempts to treat corruption are surveyed critically. A game theory approach is preferred on the grounds that it can most effectively explain the basis for decisions of reasonable men to be corrupt. A simple model is presented showing how bribery might be a dominant strategy. A prisoner's dilemma type of situation emerges with the added complication that the judge and jailer may be corrupt. Other conclusions are that one official will not accept bribes from more than one firm. It is impossible to predict which firm will win the contract. No obvious solution emerges and legal remedies are discounted. This paper then reviews the principal general equilibrium effects and concludes that their likely effect on economic development is negative.

An Analogy for Arms Control

I f everything is like something else, what is like? If we narrow to the area of bilateral activity usually known as SALT, we can give a quick answer. Arms is very like what goes on among a handful of producers of near identical commodities when they weary of the risks and costs of actually competing with each other on a market basis and turn instead to a price-fixing or market-sharing arrangement. They will look for an orderly marketing arrangement when experience has taught them that no one firm seems likely ever to dominate the market, and that is, therefore, a waste of their resources. Once such an arrangement is reached, each party is deterred from breaking it (for instance by cutting prices unilaterally) because it knows the result will be for the others to do the same; its advantage would therefore be short lived. Arms control, for the purposes of this short essay, is an arrangement between the superpowers to avoid the costs of military competition, thereby increasing their pay-off. What keeps the basis of the arrangement (an explicit agreement or merely an understanding) intact is the strong expectation, based upon experience, that an attempt to breach it will be nullified by compensating action on the other side. Arms is a consequence of the recognition by each superpower of the impressive capacity of the other to come up with an adequate counter to any new weapon that either may dream up. It is also, in a sense, a consequence of there being a high likelihood that a breach of the arrangement by one side will be fairly immediately apparent to the other. Formally, the resemblance between arms control and orderly marketing can be expressed in the simple 2 x 2 matrix of the Prisoner's Dilemma type, and this is demonstrated in the short Appendix to this essay. But the analogy between the two classes of activity can be explored rather more interestingly in an informal manner. That is to say that by plundering from the rather extensive literature on imperfect competition those regularities of behavior that have actually been identified amongst firms involved in orderly marketing arrangements, we can identify shadow patterns of

Survey of Career Choices in Surgery

soon as possible. Maybe that is why we are getting more gastroenterologists and dermatologists these days. Since interns are calculating the work/pay ratio for potential specialties, the student perceives that requirements of the academic world are very tough. He sees that the number ofcommittees, boards, reports have proliferated tremendously. Everyone has the same kind of requirements for accountability. It is not just the federal government. It is the university, the medical school, the state, the medical specialty network, the Social Security Administration, the foundation. Ifyou actually do what you are required to do, you make a lie out of the questionnaire in which you said you would give 10 or 15 percent of your time to teaching and certainly some small percentage to research. This type of dilemma affects the perception of the young person who sees clinical research abused in this way. The people being selected at Harvard are no different now than they were 10 years ago; they may even be better or smarter. Yet a smaller percentage of them is opting to go into academic medicine. That does not mean that they will not do some form of clinical investigation, or that they will not learn, or that they do not have inquiring minds. A well-trained, philosophical person will use the resources at hand in the most efficient way that he can. Beeson has shown us one way, and I think many clinicians of this generation will follow it. It does not mean the grant process is wrong, and I do not think we need to be quite so pessimistic. If the senior investigators peel offafter 10 years, that may be a very, very good thing. Survey of Career Choices in Surgery DAVIDB. SKINNER* Are we faced in this conference with a real problem or only a perceived problem? I have been increasingly concerned over the last several years with the shifts that are occurring in the bases of support for academic medical centers. I am also concerned that the perceived attrition of faculty across the country is indeed a real problem. Earlier this year we set out to get some data on this subject as it relates to surgery. The basis for the concern, I think, is well documented. Data generated by the RAND Corporation for the President's Biomedical Research Panel indicate that funding ofour academic medical centers has indeed ""Chairman, Department of Surgery, University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, 950 East 59th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637. S54 J George E. Schreiner The Independent Researcher shifted away from research—from 41 percent of the total in 1965 to only 23 percent 10 years later. The difference was made up by an increase in the professional fee contributions of the faculties to the academic medical centers. Tuition, endowments, gifts, indirect costs, and everything else stayed absolutely steady as a percentage of total funding during that decade. This has necessarily had a large impact on the clinical faculties who do the clinical investigation and are the focus for our discussions here. Last fall I went back to the three institutions with which I have been associated over the past 20 years—Massachusetts General Hospital, Johns Hopkins Hospital, and the University of Chicago—and surveyed the graduates of their surgical training programs to see what had happened and what changes had taken place. All together, 109 chief residents completed the three surgical programs between 1966 and 1978. All three of these institutions have stressed the training of academic surgeons and clinical investigators. All three have selected their house staff on the basis of potential to become clinical investigators. AU three have been supported by NIH academic surgery training grants. All three have a strong heritage of producing professors, investigators, and academic surgeons. It pleased me that there was a very high response rate of 86 percent of the total group to a 64-part multifactorial questionnaire. It covered their activities and the factors bearing on their decision to enter private practice or academic medicine. The first striking finding was a statistically significant decrease in the number of graduates entering academic surgery from these three institutions . Seventy-five percent ofthose who received their M.D.'s...

The Irrationality of Choosing Egoism - A Reply to Eshelman

In Reason, Egoism, and the Prisoner's Dilemma''1, Larry Eshelman attempts to defuse critisisms of egoism which rest on the egoist's inability to achieve optimal outcomes in Prisoner's Dilemma type situations. Eshelman agrees that the egoist can not achieve such outcomes, accepting my argument that the egoist, or straightforward maximizer of individual utility, cannot consistently engage in the genuinely interdependent action required to secure optimal outcomes in Prisoner's Dilemma type situations.2 But he denies that this inability

Exposure to the Military Experience and Level of Moral Reasoning

In a study recently published in this Journal, i t was found that as predicted, children responded with a higher level of moral reasoning on an issue which has received a great deal of exposure (slavery) than on other moral dilemmas ( 2 ) . These results were interpreted as indicating that levels of moral reasoning are more advanced around those issues with which the child has had the most experience. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the degree to which familiarity with military matters would influence one's moral reasoning about military issues. It was hypothesized that level of moral reasoning on military moral dilemmas as compared to orher types of dilemmas would be higher for students enrolled in a full-rime Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program and lower for civilian males and females. Subjects were 78 students enrolled in one of three social science classes at a state university which has a full-time ROTC program. All subjects were administered four of Kohlberg's (1) moral dilemma stories during a regular class session. In each of these stories the subject gives his reasoning for deciding on the outcome. Half of the dilemmas concerned military simations; the others focused on the issues of a thief and a reformed criminal. The subjects' written responses to the four stories were coded by a practiced scorer who was a member of Kohlberg's research group. This scorer was. kept blind as to the sample composition and the hypotheses. Each subject was assigned two Moral Maturicy Scores,l one of which represented the subject's level of moral reasoning on the military issues and the other based on the nonmilitary dilemmas. These scores provided a quantitative index of moral reasoning paralleling Kohlberg's six stages of moral development. A 3 X 2 factorial analysis of variance indicated no main effects for either group membership or for type of dilemma, but the predicted interaction approached significance ( p < .06). Examination of the cell means showed that for che ROTC students there was no significant difference between scores on the military ( M = 322.22 & 36.19) and nonmilitary stories (319.44 -t38.90). While the females had a lower Moral Maturity Score on the military stories as predicted (305.61 2 30.78 vs 311.11 2 34.26; P < .05), the civilian males demonstrated a significantly higher level of moral reasoning on the military as compared to the nonmilitary dilemmas (307.10 -t42.02 vs 300.74 2 43.20; p < .05). While such results can only be suggestive, it appears that experience with an issue per se may not be as important as the type of experience. Furthermore, one could speculate that the civilian males had spent more time construcring concepts concerning the military than the females. It may be that thinking about a potential experience is quite important for advancing one's level of moral development.

Self-Realization and the Ancestors: An Analysis of Two Japanese Ritual Procedures for Achieving Domestic Harmony

R. P. Dore in his book City Life in Japan suggests that the types of moral dilemmas faced by Japanese have changed as the bonds of the traditional family become weakened because of societal change through a process of individuation. This is a process in which one sets oneself apart from some larger wegroup, such as the family, in order to progressively select personal goals rather than collective ones (1958: 381). Traditionally, conflict of personal loyalties such as that between one's lord and one's family constituted the type of moral dilemma explicitly recognized and expressed in moral instruction. However, according to Dore, the type of moral dilemma faced by Japanese today is likely to involve conflicts between, on the one hand, particularistic loyalties, and on the other, either individual aspirations ... or generalized principles of conduct which are held to be applicable to all (1958: 381). I shall focus on one current type of moral dilemma, namely, that pertaining to conflict between loyalty to one's family and to one's individual aspirations. In the first part of this paper I shall describe by means of a number of examples how this type of dilemma is manifested in particular conflict situations which involve youths. In the second part I shall show how the dilemma and the conflict are resolved through religious belief and ritual which involve the ancestors. My thesis is that for some youths who are caught in this dilemma in which individual aspirations are pitted against family obligations, resolution of the dilemma is possible by equating one's aspirations with one's family obligations. This can be achieved through ritual action without a sense of personal loss, even when individual and family goals