Morality, self-control, age, type of offence and sentence length as predictors of psychopathy amongst female incarcerated offenders in South Africa

There has been an increase in female incarcerated offenders nationally and internationally. Despite this trend, literature and research on female offenders remain limited compared to their male counterparts. Evidence of the relationship between certain personality disorders and offending behaviour has led numerous countries to prioritise identifying and assessing personality disorders among the offender population. Psychopathic personality traits may contribute to women's risk factors for expressing antisocial behaviours, resulting in their potential future incarceration. Thus, a need exists to understand possible factors that may predict the expression of psychopathic traits in females, which may have notable utility among female offenders. This study aimed to investigate possible predictor variables of psychopathy amongst incarcerated female offenders in South Africa. A quantitative research approach, non-experimental research type, and correlational research design were employed. A convenience sampling technique was used. The sample consisted of 139 (N = 139) female offenders housed in two correctional centres in South Africa who voluntarily participated in this study. Correlation analyses and hierarchical regression analysis procedures were conducted to analyse the results. Results indicated (i) a certain combination of predictor variables that statistically and practically significantly explained both primary and secondary psychopathy and (ii) individual predictor variables (e.g., Impulsivity, Simple Tasks, Risk-Seeking, and Self-Centredness) that explained both primary and secondary psychopathy statistically and practically significantly. This study provides valuable information about the possible predictor variables of psychopathy amongst female offenders within the context of South Africa. However, further research must be conducted to validate these findings and advance our knowledge on this topic.

Moral Imagination, the Collective Desirable, and Strategic Purpose

In contrast to the prevalent outside-in perspectives on corporate purpose as a response to competing normative demands of stakeholders, we introduce an inside-out perspective on purpose as based in firm-specific, agentic commitments to specific values, ideals, and societal goals. Drawing on moral philosophy, we propose how strategists can develop a strategic purpose through moral imagination that involves developing shaping intentions based in values and ideals, empathetic relating, and imaginativeness in stakeholder contexts. These processes support the generation of an emergent theory of value, which we term “the collective desirable.” This theory of value—a creative synthesis of the shaping intentions of the firm, and the interests and perspectives of stakeholders—provides the foundation of purpose, which is strategic, dynamic, and generative for the firm and its stakeholders. Such a strategic purpose becomes an organizational logic of action enacted through designated processes for articulation, maintenance, and evolvability, and through blueprints for credible commitments and resource allocations. By theorizing the microfoundations of an agentic, inside-out view of purpose, our theoretical framework articulates a set of mechanisms through which strategists can develop a strategic purpose that is tightly linked to the firm’s future-oriented strategy and the exercise of moral leadership. Our conception of moral imagination as a form of prosocial prospective cognition contributes a novel perspective to the socio-cognitive and subjectivist perspectives on strategy and extends the microfoundations of strategy.

The Moral Injury Experience Wheel: An Instrument for Identifying Moral Emotions and Conceptualizing the Mechanisms of Moral Injury

This paper introduces an infographic tool called The Moral Injury Experience Wheel, designed to help users accurately label moral emotions and conceptualize the mechanisms of moral injury (MI). Feeling wheels have been used by therapists and clinical chaplains to increase emotional literacy since the 1980s. The literature on the skill of emotion differentiation shows a causal relationship between identifying emotions with specificity and emotional and behavioral regulation. Emerging research in moral psychology indicates that differentiating moral emotions with precision is related to similar regulatory effects. Based on this evidence, it is proposed that increasing moral emotional awareness through use of an instrument that visually depicts moral emotions and their causal links to MI will enhance appraisal and flexible thinking skills recognized to reduce the persistent dissonance and maladaptive coping related to MI. Design of the wheel is empirically grounded in MI definitional and scale studies. Iterative evaluative feedback from Veterans with features of MI offers initial qualitative evidence of validity. Two case studies will show utility of the wheel in clinical settings and present preliminary evidence of efficacy.

Phronesis (Practical Wisdom) as a Type of Contextual Integrative Thinking

Coinciding with the recent psychological attention paid to the broad topic of wisdom, interest in the intellectual virtue of phronesis or practical wisdom has been burgeoning within pockets of psychology, philosophy, professional ethics, and education. However, these discourses are undercut by frequently unrecognized tensions, lacunae, ambivalences, misapplications, and paradoxes. While a recent attempt at conceptualizing the phronesis construct for the purpose of psychological measurement offers promise, little is known about how phronesis develops psychologically, what motivates it, or how it can be cultivated. Many psychologists aspire to make sense of wise thinking without the contextual, affective, and holistic/integrative resources of phronesis. This article explores some such attempts, in particular, a new “common model” of wisdom. We argue for the incremental value of the phronesis construct beyond available wisdom accounts because phronesis explains how mature decision-making is motivated and shaped by substantive moral aspirations and cognitively guided moral emotions. We go on to argue that, in the context of bridging the gap between moral knowledge and action, phronesis carries more motivational potency than wisdom in the “common model.” The phronesis construct, thus, embodies some unique features that psychologists studying wise decision-making ignore at their peril.

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.

Baselines for human morality should include species typicality, inheritances, culture, practice, and ecological attachment

Empirical studies involve WEIRD (Western, European, industrialized, rich, democratic) but also un-nested (raised outside humanity's evolved nest) and underdeveloped participants. Assessing human moral potential needs to integrate a transdisciplinary approach to understanding species typicality and baselines, relevant evolutionary inheritances beyond genes, assessment of cultures and practices that foster (or not) virtue, and ecological morality. Human moral reason (nous) emerges from all of these.

Traditional Stories as Possible Vignettes in the Research of Moral Judgement: A Preliminary Report Using Stories from Mahabharata

The most prevalent stimuli for exploring moral judgement in laboratory settings are small vignettes in the form of moral dilemmas. These dilemmas, mostly borrowed from the field of philosophy, are often criticised for lacking ecological validity due to their confined outcomes, hypothetical physical harms, focus on one character and overlooking cultural aspects. These criticisms are especially implicative for Indian culture which may have a different perspective on morality due to cultural prerogatives, encouraging collectivism as opposed to individualism of the West. Moreover, Indian culture often incorporates hints of ancient traditions and tales in a subtle but extensive way. We wished to probe this complex paradigm of moral judgement in the Indian context empirically by qualitatively analysing the responses and exploring the corresponding ratings of 60 participants, employing 10 selected stories from the Mahabharata. A preliminary report of the analysis is presented here. While the ratings varied considerably for similar judgements, the qualitative results indicated a complex amalgamation of emotions, reasons, intuitions and cultural influences. The scope for using epic stories to understand moral judgement, in the context of contemporary society, is discussed. The findings further encourage questioning the relevance of culture and issues of the ecological validity of vignettes.

Modelo de toma de decisiones bioéticas en ciencias de la salud

La importancia de la toma de decisiones éticas en ciencias de la salud ha promovido la generación de esquemas que orientan este proceso. El objetivo es proponer un modelo teórico de toma de decisiones bioéticas. Se hizo una búsqueda y revisión de la literatura en bases de datos y bibliotecas electrónicas con palabras clave, se identificaron y analizaron once modelos de toma de decisiones éticas según parámetros establecidos y se incluyeron resultados de estudios sobre el tema. Los esquemas analizados plantean una toma de decisiones basada en la razón a partir de un número variable de pasos cognitivos y, en general, aportan pocos elementos para su aplicación práctica. Se planteó el Modelo de Integración Razón Emoción para la Toma de Decisiones Bioéticas en Ciencias de la Salud. Este modelo sintetiza los pasos cognitivos para tomar decisiones adecuadas, mediante la integración de la razón y la emoción, la posibilidad de aplicación de diversos marcos éticos y la puesta en juego de la competencia ética y las habilidades de pensamiento crítico.

The Strengths of Wisdom Provide Unique Contributions to Improved Leadership, Sustainability, Inequality, Gross National Happiness, and Civic Discourse in the Face of Contemporary World Problems

We present evidence for the strengths of the intellectual virtues that philosophers and behavioral scientists characterize as key cognitive elements of wisdom. Wisdom has been of centuries-long interest for philosophical scholarship, but relative to intelligence largely neglected in public discourse on educational science, public policy, and societal well-being. Wise reasoning characteristics include intellectual humility, recognition of uncertainty, consideration of diverse viewpoints, and an attempt to integrate these viewpoints. Emerging scholarship on these features of wisdom suggest that they uniquely contribute to societal well-being, improve leadership, shed light on societal inequality, promote cooperation in Public Goods Games and reduce political polarization and intergroup-hostility. We review empirical evidence about macro-cultural, ecological, situational, and person-level processes facilitating and inhibiting wisdom in daily life. Based on this evidence, we speculate about ways to foster wisdom in education, organizations, and institutions.

The Relationship between Intuitive Action Choices and Moral Reasoning on Animal Ethics Issues in Students of Veterinary Medicine and Other Relevant Professions

With growing understanding of animals' capabilities, and public and organizational pressures to improve animal welfare, moral action by veterinarians and other relevant professionals to address animal issues is increasingly important. Little is known about how their action choices relate to their moral reasoning on animal ethics issues. A moral judgment measure, the VetDIT, with three animal and three non-animal scenarios, was used to investigate the action choices of 619 students in five animal- and two non-animal-related professional programs in one Australian university, and how these related to their moral reasoning based on Personal Interest (PI), Maintaining Norms (MN), or Universal Principles (UP) schemas. Action choices showed significant relationships to PI, MN, and UP questions, and these varied across program groups. Having a previous degree or more experience with farm animals had a negative relationship, and experience with horses or companion animals a positive relationship, with intuitive action choices favoring life and bodily integrity of animals. This study helps to explain the complex relationship between intuitive moral action choices and moral reasoning on animal ethics issues. As a useful research and educational tool for understanding this relationship, the VetDIT can enhance ethical decision making.

Attitude Moralization: Probably Not Intuitive or Rooted in Perceptions of Harm

People vary in the extent to which they imbue attitudes with moral conviction, and this variation is consequential. Yet we know relatively little about what makes people’s feelings about a given attitude object transform from a relatively nonmoral preference to a moral conviction. In this article, we review evidence from two experiments and a field study that sheds some light on the processes that lead to attitude moralization. This research explored the roles of incidental and integral affect, cognitive factors such as recognition of harm, and whether attitude-moralization processes can occur outside conscious awareness or require some level of conscious deliberation. The findings present some challenges to contemporary theories that emphasize the roles of intuition and harm and indicate that more research designed to better understand moralization processes is needed.

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.

Not all stories of professional identity formation are equal: An analysis of formation narratives of highly humanistic physicians

OBJECTIVE

We sought to identify and define "highly humanistic" formation narratives, and understand how these events described, together with a reflective learning process, the professional development of physicians in a longitudinal faculty development program.

METHODS

Qualitative analysis of twenty highly humanistic appreciative inquiry narratives selected from a total of 124 written by faculty members at the beginning and end of an eighteen month program at eight medical schools. [9,10] We employed the immersion/crystallization method of Borkan [20] to capture the rich meanings and emotional depth of the twenty narratives.

RESULTS

Highly humanistic formation narratives described emotionally charged events in which the faculty writers provided humanistic care that went beyond what they had previously thought themselves capable of; benefited the patient, family or faculty member to a major extent; and reaffirmed or strengthened their professional values. Highly humanistic formation narratives were clustered at the end of our eighteen month curriculum.

CONCLUSIONS

Participation in faculty development for humanism may have increased the numbers of highly humanistic events by sensitizing and motivating faculty members to meet their patients' emotional needs.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

Our paper describes a process whereby faculty members may achieve growth in their capacities to meet patients' needs.

Rationalizing the GMO Debate: The Ordonomic Approach to Addressing Agricultural Myths

The public discourse on the acceptability of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is not only controversial, but also infused with highly emotional and moralizing rhetoric. Although the assessment of risks and benefits of GMOs must be a scientific exercise, many debates on this issue seem to remain impervious to scientific evidence. In many cases, the moral psychology attributes of the general public create incentives for both GMO opponents and proponents to pursue misleading public campaigns, which impede the comprehensive assessment of the full spectrum of the risks and benefits of GMOs. The ordonomic approach to economic ethics introduced in this research note is helpful for disentangling the socio-economic and moral components of the GMO debate by re- and deconstructing moral claims.

Relevance of the rationalist-intuitionist debate for ethics and professionalism in medical education

Despite widespread pedagogical efforts to modify discrete behaviors in developing physicians, the professionalism movement has generally shied away from essential questions such as what virtues characterize the good physician, and how are those virtues formed? Although there is widespread adoption of medical ethics curricula, there is still no consensus about the primary goals of ethics education. Two prevailing perspectives dominate the literature, constituting what is sometimes referred to as the "virtue/skill dichotomy". The first perspective argues that teaching ethics is a means of providing physicians with a skill set for analyzing and resolving ethical dilemmas. The second perspective suggests that teaching ethics is a means of creating virtuous physicians. The authors argue that this debate about medical ethics education mirrors the Rationalist-Intuitionist debate in contemporary moral psychology. In the following essay, the authors sketch the relevance of the Rationalist-Intuitionist debate to medical ethics and professionalism. They then outline a moral intuitionist model of virtuous caring that derives from but also extends the "social intuitionist model" of moral action and virtue. This moral intuitionist model suggests several practical implications specifically for medical character education but also for health science education in general. This approach proposes that character development is best accomplished by tuning-up (activating) moral intuitions, amplifying (intensifying) moral emotions related to intuitions, and strengthening (expanding) intuition-expressive, emotion-related moral virtues, more than by "learning" explicit ethical rules or principles.

On the role of experience in ethical decision making at work

Previous research has produced contradictory results on whether and how “experience” relates to ethical decision making in the workplace. Maintaining that these divergent findings result from underspecified and inconsistent treatments of experience in the business ethics literature, we build theory around experience and its connection to ethical decision making. To this end, we draw upon and advance research on ethical expertise, defined as the degree to which one is knowledgeable about and skilled at applying moral values within a given work context. We also unpack the nature and consequences of two forms of ethical expertise, convergent and divergent. Building on this foundation—and seeking to reconcile the contradictory results around experience and ethical decision making—we theorize factors associated with the acquisition of ethical expertise in the workplace. We conclude by discussing the implications of our theorizing for business ethics scholarship and expertise research.

The world looks small when you only look through a telescope: The need for a broad and developmental study of reasoning

If the target article represents the summary findings of the field, reasoning research is deeply flawed. The vision is too narrow and seems to fall into biological determinism. Humans use reasoning in effective ways apparently not studied by researchers, such as reasoning for action. Moreover, as the brain develops through adulthood and from experience so do reasoning capabilities.

Moral Psychology Must Not Be Based on Faith and Hope: Commentary on Narvaez (2010)

Narvaez (2010, this issue) calls for a moral psychology in which reasoning and intuitions are equal partners. But empirical research on the power of implicit processes and on the weakness of everyday reasoning indicates that the partnership is far from equal. The ancient rationalist faith that good reasoning can be taught and that it will lead to improved behavior is no longer justified. The social intuitionist model (Haidt, 2001) is a more realistic portrayal of the ways that moral intuition and reasoning work together.