Moral preference reversals: Violations of procedure invariance in moral judgments of sacrificial dilemmas

In this research, we examine whether moral judgments sometimes violate the normative principle of procedure invariance - that is, whether normatively equivalent elicitation tasks can result in different judgment patterns. Specifically, we show that the relative morality of two actions can reverse across evaluation modes and elicitation tasks, mirroring preference reversals in consumer behavior. Across six studies (five preregistered, total N = 719), we provide evidence of three reversals of moral judgments of sacrificial dilemmas. First, directly killing one person to save many others was rated as morally worse than indirectly killing one person via an intervening mechanism in order to save a few others in separate evaluation, but this difference reversed in joint evaluation, in both between-subjects (Studies 1a and 1b) and within-subjects (Study 2) designs. Next, directly killing one person to save many others was judged as morally better than indirectly killing one person to save a few others more often in matching than in choice (Study 3) and rating (Study 4), between-subjects. Lastly, we replicate the results of Studies 3 and 4 within-subjects and show that susceptibility to these moral preference reversals is correlated with Faith in Intuition (Study 5). The present research introduces a new methodological approach to moral psychology, demonstrates that moral judgments can fully reverse across tasks, and supports an emerging view that moral judgments, like consumer preferences, are at least sometimes constructed in the moment, relative to the context and task at hand.

Racial Discrimination in Patient Care-Preserving Relationships With Integrity

The following case study describes what is known as the health care system's open secret of allowing a patient or family to refuse care from a clinician of another race. This article explores the ethical tension between autonomy, nonmaleficence, justice, and duty to treat as it relates to racism and the potential harm to clinicians, health care teams, and organizations. When racism is experienced within the clinical setting, clinician knowledge, organizational training, and moral character are essential for identifying and addressing it effectively. Racial discrimination and related mistreatment are not part of a responsive and proactive moral community. This article explores creative solutions that preserve patient-clinician relationships without sacrificing personal integrity when racism is encountered.

Triage in Times of COVID-19: A Moral Dilemma

We present evidence from choice experiments on hypothetical triage decisions in a pandemic. Respondents have to decide who out of two patients gets ventilation. Patients are described in terms of attributes such as short-term survival chance, long-term life expectancy, and their current ventilation status. Attributes are derived from the ethical discourse among experts regarding triage guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic and differ in the extent to which they are salient from a utilitarian or deontological perspective. Empirically, we find that although nonexperts agree with experts in prioritizing utilitarian attributes in triage decisions, nonexperts also consider the adherence to the norm of wearing face masks as particularly relevant. Furthermore, our study supports Greene and colleagues' dual-process model of moral judgment; we find that utilitarian attributes are more decisive for respondents with a greater inclination toward utilitarianism and for respondents with a greater tendency toward reflection.

Intolerance of Transgressive Protest Actions: The Differential Roles of Deontological and Utilitarian Morality

The current research examines intolerance of protest actions by focusing on two major questions: (a) How intolerant are people of transgressive protest actions of their least-liked versus most-liked groups? and (b) how do individual differences in deontological and utilitarian moral predisposition relate to intolerance of transgressive protest actions by these two groups? In two survey-embedded experiments using nationally representative samples from two West European countries (Germany, Netherlands), we found that people were overwhelmingly intolerant of morally transgressive protest actions by both their most-liked and least-liked groups, although slightly less so for the former. In addition, deontological moral predisposition was related to increased intolerance of protest actions regardless of whether it was committed by a most-liked or least-liked group. Individual difference in utilitarian moral predisposition was related to increased acceptance of protest actions regardless of group, but especially when the actions were perceived as serving the greater good.

An Oscillatory Path to Vaccination: The Roles of Normative and Epistemic Factors in Explaining Vaccination Hesitancy in COVID-19

This study examined the roles of normative and epistemic factors in influencing individuals' reluctance to be vaccinated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Individuals' ethical orientations (IEO; teleology vs. deontology) were introduced as normative characteristics, while COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy beliefs and vaccine knowledge were addressed as issue-specific epistemic factors. We conducted two online surveys to investigate each of these three factors' influences on the level of Americans' reluctance to receive COVID-19 vaccines. Combinations of these factors that predict COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy levels were also explored to provide integrated perspectives in the specific vaccination context. Our findings demonstrated the positive association between IEO and reluctance to receive COVID-19 vaccines. Significant interactions between 1) COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy beliefs and IEO and 2) conspiracy beliefs and vaccine knowledge were also identified. Implications, limitations, and suggestions for future study were addressed.

Ethical Reasoning During a Pandemic: Results of a Five Country European Study

Introduction: There has been no work that identifies the hidden or implicit normative assumptions on which participants base their views during the COVID-19 pandemic, and their reasoning and how they reach moral or ethical judgements. Our analysis focused on participants' moral values, ethical reasoning and normative positions around the transmission of SARS-CoV-2.Methods: We analyzed data from 177 semi-structured interviews across five European countries (Germany, Ireland, Italy, Switzerland and the United Kingdom) conducted in April 2020.Results: Findings are structured in four themes: ethical contention in the context of normative uncertainty; patterns of ethical deliberation when contemplating restrictions and measures to reduce viral transmission; moral judgements regarding "good" and "bad" people; using existing structures of meaning for moral reasoning and ethical judgement.Discussion: Moral tools are an integral part of people's reaction to and experience of a pandemic. 'Moral preparedness' for the next phases of this pandemic and for future pandemics will require an understanding of the moral values and normative concepts citizens use in their own decision-making. Three important elements of this preparedness are: conceptual clarity over what responsibility or respect mean in practice; better understanding of collective mindsets and how to encourage them; and a situated, rather than universalist, approach to the development of normative standards.

Ethical Orientation and Research Misconduct Among Business Researchers Under the Condition of Autonomy and Competition

The topics of ethical conduct and governance in academic research in the business field have attracted scientific and public attention. The concern is that research misconduct in organizations such as business schools and universities might result in practitioners, policymakers, and researchers grounding their decisions on biased research results. This study addresses ethical research misconduct by investigating whether the ethical orientation of business researchers is related to the likelihood of research misconduct, such as selective reporting of research findings. We distinguish between deontological and consequentialist ethical orientations and the competition between researchers and investigate the moderating role of their perceived autonomy. Based on global data collected from 1031 business scholars, we find that researchers with a strong deontological ethical orientation are less prone to misconduct. This effect is robust against different levels of perceived autonomy and competition. In contrast, researchers having a consequentialist ethical orientation is positively associated with misconduct in business research. High levels of competition in the research environment reinforce this effect. Our results reveal a potentially toxic combination comprising researchers with a strong consequentialist orientation who are embedded in highly competitive research environments. Our research calls for the development of ethical orientations grounded on maxims rather than anticipated consequences among researchers. We conclude that measures for ethical governance in business schools should consider the ethical orientation that underlies researchers' decision-making and the organizational and institutional environment in which business researchers are embedded.

Dietary behaviour as a form of collective action: A social identity model of vegan activism

Adopting plant-based, or vegan, diets can have a number of benefits, including mitigating climate change, promoting animal welfare, or improving public health. In the current research, we use social psychological theory to better understand what motivates vegans to engage in collective action on behalf of this social group - that is, what motivates individuals to promote, or encourage others to adopt, a vegan lifestyle. We develop and test a Social Identity Model of Vegan Activism, which highlights the roles of individuals' social identities, sense of efficacy, emotions and moral convictions in fostering collective action. In two pre-registered studies, the first with self-identified vegans from Australia and the UK (N = 351), and the second with self-identified vegans from the UK and the US (N = 340), we found that individuals more frequently engaged in vegan activism (i.e., actions to promote vegan lifestyles) when they had stronger moral convictions (i.e., deontological or consequentialist), greater collective efficacy (i.e., beliefs that vegans can make a positive difference), anger (i.e., when thinking about the reasons why they are vegan), and identification (both with vegans, and with animals). Deontological and consequentialist moral convictions had significant indirect effects on vegan activism via different mediators. We conclude by discussing the implications and importance of studying dietary behavior from a social identity perspective, including its ability to help explain how and why individuals become motivated to not only adopt a certain (e.g., vegan) lifestyle themselves, but to also 'act collectively' on behalf of that shared group membership (e.g., promote vegan-friendly behaviors). We also highlight some key insights for policy makers and campaigners aiming to promote plant-based diets.

Evaluating rural participation in wetland management: A contingent valuation analysis of the set-aside policy in Iran

Growing conditions of water scarcity and population growth necessitate measures for improved water availability to meet agricultural, industrial, and domestic and consumer water demands; generating new environmental pressures on wetlands and other aquatic ecosystems. In Iran, the "set-aside program" incentivizes farmer participation in wetland conservation through mandated land management practices, making them key stakeholders in environmental conservation action. This study explores attitudes to participation in the set-aside wetland conservation program to revive the Jazmurian wetland in Iran, using a random sample of 226 farmer-stakeholder respondents. Farmers were surveyed to investigate economic and social participation using a willingness to accept (WTA) and willingness to pay (in money per ha) (WTP) model. Results show strong (45%) respondent opposition to wetland conservation participation. On the basis of their WTA, the amount of compensation offered by the villagers was significantly affected by "the cultivated area", "gender", "education", "family size", "residency", "income", "moralism", and "Inverse Mills Ratio index" factors. Also, "the cultivated area", "age", "education", "marital status", "family size", and "income" were found to be significantly affecting their WTP. We argue firstly, that policies to improve wetland conservation must join together infrastructure and agricultural development planning - such that dam projects, agricultural and water conservation planning are better integrated across wetland catchments. Secondly, that wetland conservation participation will be improved through land consolidation agreements for small-holders, and through incomes stabilization, capacity building, social learning and awareness-raising initiatives for farmers towards sustainable agricultural practices.

The effects of idealism and relativism on the moral judgement of social vs. environmental issues, and their relation to self-reported pro-environmental behaviours

Many studies have demonstrated that moral philosophies, such as idealism and relativism, could be used as robust predictors of judgements and behaviours related to common moral issues, such as business ethics, unethical beliefs, workplace deviance, marketing practices, gambling, etc. However, little consideration has been given to using moral philosophies to predict environmentally (un)friendly attitudes and behaviours, which could also be classified as moral. In this study, we have assessed the impact of idealism and relativism using the Ethics Position Theory. We have tested its capacity to predict moral identity, moral judgement of social vs. environmental issues, and self-reported pro-environmental behaviours. The results from an online MTurk study of 432 US participants revealed that idealism had a significant impact on all the tested variables, but the case was different with relativism. Consistently with the findings of previous studies, we found relativism to be a strong predictor of moral identity and moral judgement of social issues. In contrast, relativism only weakly interacted with making moral judgements of environmental issues, and had no effects in predicting pro-environmental behaviours. These findings suggest that Ethics Position Theory could have a strong potential for defining moral differences between environmental attitudes and behaviours, capturing the moral drivers of an attitude-behaviour gap, which continuously stands as a barrier in motivating people to become more pro-environmental.

Scrutinizing the Criteria for Character Strengths: Laypersons Assert That Every Strength Is Positively Morally Valued, Even in the Absence of Tangible Outcomes

This study examines Peterson and Seligman’s (2004, p. 19) claim that every VIA character strength “(…) is morally valued in its own right, even in the absence of obvious beneficial outcomes”. Although this criterion assumes a pivotal role in distinguishing character from personality, no previous study has investigated its validity. Based on what Peterson and Seligman (2004) have provided us with, we describe how we built our study around indirectly testing every strength’s assumed moral evaluation, in which inclinations toward deontology (e.g., “torture is wrong regardless of tangible positive outcomes”) and consequentialism (e.g., “torture can be good if it accounts for more positive than negative outcomes”) may play a critical role. We used Peterson and Seligman’s (2004) handbook to construct four ultra-short stories for every strength: the stories depict various agents engaging in strength-related behavior (e.g., a young student courageously stepping up against school bullies). We prompted participants to rate these and twelve anchor stories multiple times as to whether the agents acted morally correct: In the first block, the actions’ consequences were undetermined while in the second block, the actions had either positive, negative, or mixed consequences, which we used to compute proxies of participants’ inclinations toward deontology and consequentialism. The ratings of N = 230 German-speaking laypersons suggest that the criterion stands: participants perceived every strength as positively morally valued when consequences were undetermined, and positive consequences did not account for or increase this effect. However, moral value seems to come in degrees, and some strengths were valued more strongly than others (top five: judgment, honesty, kindness, fairness, and hope). Furthermore, specific character strengths (measured by self-report) were connected with more positive evaluations (e.g., endorsing spirituality was connected with rating spirituality as more positively valued). Both deontology and consequentialism were connected with more positive evaluations, and we suggest two hypotheses to explain how such inclinations can lead to perceiving character strengths as positively valued. Our findings highlight the importance of scrutinizing the criteria for character strengths, and our experimental paradigm can offer a template to further investigate character strengths’ moral evaluation and other fundamental assumptions in upcoming studies.

An Advanced Measure of Moral Sensitivity in Business

Abstract. Moral sensitivity, understood as an individual’s capability of identifying and ascribing importance to moral issues when they arise, is often considered a key competence in professional life and a precondition of ethical behavior. With a focus on business settings, this article presents a new measure to assess individual’s sensitivity to moral and business values. The measure was developed using a vignette-based domain-specific approach and validated in two studies. In Study 1, we compared our instrument and various convergent and divergent scales to obtain the first evidence of the construct validity of the instrument. Study 2 provides evidence of criterion validity by comparing the sensitivity to moral and business-related issues between a sample of business managers/bankers and employees of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The results demonstrate that business managers/bankers reveal lower scores of moral sensitivity than employees of NGOs. Further directions for moral sensitivity research and limitations are discussed.

Accountable algorithms? The ethical implications of data-driven business models

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to identify, analyze and explain the ethical implications that can result from the datafication of service.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses a midrange theorizing approach to integrate currently disconnected perspectives on technology-enabled service, data-driven business models, data ethics and business ethics to introduce a novel analytical framework centered on data-driven business models as the general metatheoretical unit of analysis. The authors then contextualize the framework using data-intensive insurance services.

Findings

The resulting midrange theory offers new insights into how using machine learning, AI and big data sets can lead to unethical implications. Centered around 13 ethical challenges, this work outlines how data-driven business models redefine the value network, alter the roles of individual actors as cocreators of value, lead to the emergence of new data-driven value propositions, as well as novel revenue and cost models.

Practical implications

Future research based on the framework can help guide practitioners to implement and use advanced analytics more effectively and ethically.

Originality/value

At a time when future technological developments related to AI, machine learning or other forms of advanced data analytics are unpredictable, this study instigates a critical and timely discourse within the service research community about the ethical implications that can arise from the datafication of service by introducing much-needed theory and terminology.

Think of the consequences: A decade of discourse about same-sex marriage

Approaching issues through the lens of nonnegotiable values increases the perceived intractability of debate (Baron & Spranca in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 70, 1-16, 1997), while focusing on the concrete consequences of policies instead results in the moderation of extreme opinions (Fernbach, Rogers, Fox, & Sloman in Psychological Science, 24, 939-946, 2013) and a greater likelihood of conflict resolution (Baron & Leshner in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 6, 183-194, 2000). Using comments on the popular social media platform Reddit from January 2006 until September 2017, we showed how changes in the framing of same-sex marriage in public discourse relate to changes in public opinion. We used a topic model to show that the contributions of certain protected-values-based topics to the debate (religious arguments and freedom of opinion) increased prior to the emergence of a public consensus in support of same-sex marriage (Gallup, 2017), and declined afterward. In contrast, the discussion of certain consequentialist topics (the impact of politicians' stance and same-sex marriage as a matter of policy) showed the opposite pattern. Our results reinforce the meaningfulness of protected values and consequentialism as relevant dimensions for describing public discourse and highlight the usefulness of unsupervised machine-learning methods in tackling questions about social attitude change.

Refinement of Outcome Bias Measurement in the Parental Decision-Making Context

The aim of this study was twofold: one was to test the impact of the involvement on the parental outcome bias, and the second was to refine the measurement of outcome bias, normally reported as the difference between evaluations of a single decision, with different outcomes assigned to it. We introduced the evaluation of a decision without an outcome, to induce theoretically normative evaluation, unbiased by outcome, from which the evaluation shift could be calculated in either direction. To test this refinement in the parental decision-making context, we produced childcare dilemmas with varying levels of complexity, since the rise of complexity induces stronger bias. Complexity was determined by the particular combination of two factors: parental involvement in a decision - the amount of motivation, interest and drive evoked by it – and whether the decision was health-related or not. We presented parents with the decisions for evaluation, followed by a positive and a negative outcome, and without an outcome. The results confirm the interaction between involvement and domain on decision evaluation. Highly involving decisions yielded weaker outcome bias than low-involvement decisions in both health and non-health domain. Results also confirm the validity of the proposed way of measuring OB, revealing that in some situations positive outcomes skew evaluations more than negative outcomes. Also, a highly-involving dilemma followed by negative outcome did not produce significantly different evaluation compared to evaluation of a decision without outcome. Thus, adding a neutral position rendered OB measurement more precise and our involvement-related insights more nuanced.

Do People Believe That They Are More Deontological Than Others?

The question of how we decide that someone else has done something wrong is at the heart of moral psychology. Little work has been done to investigate whether people believe that others' moral judgment differs from their own in moral dilemmas. We conducted four experiments using various measures and diverse samples to demonstrate the self-other discrepancy in moral judgment. We found that (a) people were more deontological when they made moral judgments themselves than when they judged a stranger (Studies 1-4) and (b) a protected values (PVs) account outperformed an emotion account and a construal-level theory account in explaining this self-other discrepancy (Studies 3 and 4). We argued that the self-other discrepancy in moral judgment may serve as a protective mechanism co-evolving alongside the social exchange mechanism and may contribute to better understanding the obstacles preventing people from cooperation.

Turning off the empathy switch: Lower empathic concern for the victim leads to utilitarian choices of action

Empathy enables people to vicariously experience the other’s pain. At the same time, the focus of empathy can be narrow and reserved for a limited number of people. In sacrificial dilemmas, non-empathic people are more likely to sacrifice one person for greater good. However, no study has investigated the role of diminished empathic concern for the victim in utilitarian choices of action. In two studies, we investigated how empathy actually experienced in sacrificial dilemmas affects a decision to perform a harmful action onto the victim. In Study 1 (N = 275), participants were asked to rate the extent to which they were feeling two divergent tropes of affective empathy: other-oriented empathy (empathic concern) and self-oriented empathy (personal distress). Results showed that lower levels of other-focused empathy for the victim predicted utilitarian choices of action. In Study 2 (N = 170), participants were asked to rate the extent to which they empathized with the victim and the saved. We also assessed dispositional empathy and psychopathy to test a hypothesis that psychopathy mediates the relationship between lower empathy for the victim and utilitarian choices of action. Results supported this hypothesis, whereas dispositional empathy was not significantly correlated with utilitarian choices of action. Overall, lower empathy experienced in the dilemma situation was associated with utilitarian choices of action, and this was specific to reduced empathic concern for the victim. People choose to pursue the utilitarian end that accompanies harm onto the other as a mean when the victim is out of their empathic focus.

Julgamento Moral do Aborto: Influência da Atitude Prévia, Princípios Deontológicos e Utilitaristas

Resumo Julgamentos morais fazem parte do cotidiano das pessoas e processos cognitivos são utilizados como base para a formulação de um julgamento moral. Este trabalho tem como objetivo mensurar o efeito covariante da atitude prévia em relação a um tema moral na relação entre a sobrecarga cognitiva e o julgamento de um cenário moral. O Experimento 1 testou a relação direta entre princípios morais (i.e., deontológico e utilitarista) e sobrecarga cognitiva em uma tarefa de julgamento moral. No Experimento 2, foi testada a interferência da atitude prévia em tarefa de julgamento moral. Em ambos os experimentos, a amostra foi composta por estudantes universitário, em sua maioria homens. Os resultados sugerem que a sobrecarga cognitiva induz um julgamento de origem deontológica e que a atitude prévia em relação a um objeto moral interfere significativamente na tarefa de julgamento moral independente do cenário.

Comparing mortality risk reduction, life expectancy gains, and probability of achieving full life span, as alternatives for presenting CVD mortality risk reduction: A discrete choice study of framing risk and health behaviour change

The growing rate of obesity has recently required governments to divert considerable resources in the promotion of healthy lifestyles. We explored the relative effectiveness in inducing healthy behaviour change of three different communication strategies about the benefits of an intervention that reduces the mortality risks of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and encourages respondents to embrace healthier lifestyles. We designed a Discrete Choice Experiments questionnaire to analyse the trade-off between lifestyles, defined in terms of diet and exercise, and reduction in cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality risk. We set three ways of framing an identical benefit: (A) as a reduction in mortality risk from cardiovascular disease, (B) as an increase in months of life expectancy, and (C) as an increase in the probability of reaching an individual's full lifespan. The experiment was tailored for each subject in the sample according to his/her individual's baseline information on diet and physical activity. During the period February 2010-July 2011, we interviewed 1008 individuals in Northern Ireland, split randomly into three samples for the three CVD risk reduction frames. Considering the models' goodness of fit and significance, we conclude that the most effective way of communicating these CVD health benefits is using an increase in life expectancy, since with this frame individuals are more inclined to state that they would change to a healthier lifestyle.

Parental Decision-Making on Childhood Vaccination

A growing number of parents delay vaccinations or are deciding not to vaccinate their children altogether. This increases the risk of contracting vaccine-preventable diseases and disrupting herd immunity, and also impairs the trust in the capacities of health care systems to protect people. Vaccine hesitancy is related to a range of both psychological and demographic determinants, such as attitudes toward vaccinations, social norms, and trust in science. Our aim is to understand those determinants in parents, because they are a special group in this issue-they act as proxy decision makers for their children, who are unable to decide for themselves. The fact that deciding to vaccinate is a socially forced choice that concerns a child's health makes vaccine-related decisions highly important and involving for parents. This high involvement might lead to parents overemphasizing the potential side effects that they know to be vaccine-related, and by amplifying those, parents are more focused on the potential outcomes of vaccine-related decisions, which can yield specific pattern of the outcome bias. We propose two related studies to investigate factors which promote vaccine hesitancy, protective factors that determine parental vaccination decisions, and outcome bias in parental vaccination intentions. We will explore demographic and psychological factors, and test parental involvement related to vaccine hesitancy using an online battery in a correlation panel design study. The second study is an experimental study, in which we will investigate the moderating role of parents' high involvement in the specific domain of vaccination decision making. We expect that higher involvement among parents, compared to non-parents, will shape the pattern of the proneness to outcome bias. The studies will be conducted across eight countries in Europe and Asia (Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, and the United Kingdom), rendering findings that will aid with understanding the underlying mechanisms of vaccine hesitancy and paving the way for developing interventions custom-made for parents.

Is saving lives your task or God’s? Religiosity, belief in god, and moral judgment

Should a Catholic hospital abort a life-threatening pregnancy or let a pregnant woman die? Should a religious employer allow his employees access to contraceptives or break with healthcare legislation? People and organizations of faith often face moral decisions that have significant consequences. Research in psychology found that religion is typically associated with deontological judgment. Yet deontology consists of many principles, which may, at times, conflict. In three studies, we design a conflict between moral principles and find that the relationship between moral judgment and religiosity is more nuanced than currently assumed. Studies 1 and 2 show that, while religious U.S. Christians and Israeli Jews are more likely to form deontological judgments, they divide between the deontological principles of inaction and indirectness. Using textual analysis, we reveal that specific beliefs regarding divine responsibility and human responsibility distinguish inaction from indirectness deontologists. Study 3 exploits natural differences in religious saliency across days of the week to provide causal evidence that religion raises deontological tendencies on Sundays and selectively increases the appeal of inaction deontology for those who believe in an interventionist and responsible God.

Measuring value sensitivity in medicine

BACKGROUND

Value sensitivity - the ability to recognize value-related issues when they arise in practice - is an indispensable competence for medical practitioners to enter decision-making processes related to ethical questions. However, the psychological competence of value sensitivity is seldom an explicit subject in the training of medical professionals. In this contribution, we outline the traditional concept of moral sensitivity in medicine and its revised form conceptualized as value sensitivity and we propose an instrument that measures value sensitivity.

METHODS

We developed an instrument for assessing the sensitivity for three value groups (moral-related values, values related to the principles of biomedical ethics, strategy-related values) in a four step procedure: 1) value identification (n = 317); 2) value representation (n = 317); 3) vignette construction and quality evaluation (n = 37); and 4) instrument validation by comparing nursing professionals with hospital managers (n = 48).

RESULTS

We find that nursing professionals recognize and ascribe importance to principle-related issues more than professionals from hospital management. The latter are more likely to recognize and ascribe importance to strategy-related issues.

CONCLUSIONS

These hypothesis-driven results demonstrate the discriminatory power of our newly developed instrument, which makes it useful not only for health care professionals in practice but for students and people working in the clinical context as well.

Beyond Affective Influences on Deontological Moral Judgment: The Role of Motivations for Prevention in the Moral Condemnation of Harm

Past research suggests that deontological judgments, which condemn deliberate harm no matter what the beneficial consequences, typically arise from emotional and intuitive reactions to the harm, whereas utilitarian judgments, which acknowledge the potential benefits of deliberate harm, typically arise from rational deliberation about whether these benefits outweigh the costs. The present research explores whether specific motivational orientations might, at times, increase the likelihood of deontological judgments without increasing emotional reactions. A meta-analysis of 10 newly conducted studies indicated that, compared with when focused on advancement ( promotion), when people were focused on security ( prevention) they made stronger deontological judgments in hypothetical moral dilemmas. Moreover, this effect could not be explained by participants' differing emotional reactions to the dilemmas when prevention-focused, but instead mirrored reports of their explicit reasoning. Implications for expanding current models of deontological and utilitarian moral judgment are discussed.

Core values versus common sense: consequentialist views appear less rooted in morality

When a speaker presents an opinion, an important factor in audiences' reactions is whether the speaker seems to be basing his or her decision on ethical (as opposed to more pragmatic) concerns. We argue that, despite a consequentialist philosophical tradition that views utilitarian consequences as the basis for moral reasoning, lay perceivers think that speakers using arguments based on consequences do not construe the issue as a moral one. Five experiments show that, for both political views (including real State of the Union quotations) and organizational policies, consequentialist views are seen to express less moralization than deontological views, and even sometimes than views presented with no explicit justification. We also demonstrate that perceived moralization in turn affects speakers' perceived commitment to the issue and authenticity. These findings shed light on lay conceptions of morality and have practical implications for people considering how to express moral opinions publicly.

“Lean not on your own understanding”: Belief that morality is founded on divine authority and non-utilitarian moral judgments

Recent research has shown that religious individuals are much more resistant to utilitarian modes of thinking than their less religious counterparts, but the reason for this is not clear. We propose that a meta-ethical belief that morality is rooted in inviolable divine commands (i.e., endorsement of Divine Command Theory) may help explain this finding. We present a novel 20-item scale measuring a belief that morality is founded on divine authority. The scale shows good internal reliability and convergent and discriminant validity. Study 1 found that this scale fully mediated the relationship that various religiosity measures had with a deontological thinking style in our sample of American adults. It also accounted for the link between religiosity and social conservative values. Furthermore, the relationship between the scale and these outcome variables held after statistically controlling for variables related to actively open-minded thinking and the Big Five. Study 2 replicated the results using naturalistic moral dilemmas that placed deontological and utilitarian concerns in conflict, and showed that the results of Study 1 cannot be explained by differences in moral foundations (e.g., concern for authority more generally) or differences in the perceived function of rules. Quite the contrary, endorsement of the divine origins of morality fully mediated the relationship religiosity had with the so-called “binding” foundations (i.e., Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity). Our findings highlight the importance of meta-ethical beliefs for understanding individual differences in moral judgment.

WITHDRAWN: Consequences are far away: Psychological distance affects modes of moral decision making

Much of the work on deontological and consequentialist moral choices assumes that these modes of decision making are rooted in individual differences or cognitive capacities. We examine the idea that whether a person focuses on actions or outcomes while making moral choices depends on the psychological distance from the moral situation. When the situation is perceived as far off, whether in time or space, consequentialist considerations loom larger. In the first four studies in this paper, we establish that psychological distance from an event decreases deontological judgments and increases consequentialist choices. This effect holds across two distinct paradigms. Finally, in Experiment 5 we use Construal Level Theory to suggest that deontology and consequentialist reasoning may be linked to how information is represented at near and far distances. This work implies that decision makers have several distinct strategies when making moral choices but the selection of those strategies is far from fixed, and may depend on factors such as psychological distance.

How do we assign punishment? The impact of minimal and maximal standards on the evaluation of deviants

To explain the determinants of negative behavior toward deviants (e.g., punishment), this article examines how people evaluate others on the basis of two types of standards: minimal and maximal. Minimal standards focus on an absolute cutoff point for appropriate behavior; accordingly, the evaluation of others varies dichotomously between acceptable or unacceptable. Maximal standards focus on the degree of deviation from that standard; accordingly, the evaluation of others varies gradually from positive to less positive. This framework leads to the prediction that violation of minimal standards should elicit punishment regardless of the degree of deviation, whereas punishment in response to violations of maximal standards should depend on the degree of deviation. Four studies assessed or manipulated the type of standard and degree of deviation displayed by a target. Results consistently showed the expected interaction between type of standard (minimal and maximal) and degree of deviation on punishment behavior.