Student Moral Foundations in the Context of Research Misbehavior: An Experimental Study

The study aimed to examine whether the use of words related to different moral foundations can predict the perceived severity of research misconduct. We gave two groups of participants, undergraduate medical students, the same hypothetical scenarios of research misconduct cases containing words related to different aspects of morality, and asked them to assess how inappropriate the described behavior was. Students ranked the described behaviors differently by the inappropriateness of the behavior, but the group wording was not a significant predictor of appropriateness. The reasons for the ranking were not related to any standardized procedures for research integrity but were related to the moral assessment of the students, which was assessed using qualitative approach. The results of this study implicate that personal moral views are an important part in research integrity training.

Voters' view of leaders during the Covid-19 crisis: Quantitative analysis of keyword descriptions provides strength and direction of evaluations

OBJECTIVES

Previous research suggests that governments usually gain support during crises such as the Covid-19. However, these findings are based on rating scales that only allow us to measure the strength of this support. This article proposes a new measure of how voters evaluate Prime Ministers (PM) by asking for descriptive keywords that are analyzed by natural language processing.

METHODS

By collecting a representative sample of citizens' own key words describing their PM in 15 countries in Europe during the outbreak of Covid-19, and analyzing these by latent semantic analysis and a multiple OLS regression, we could quantify the strength and direction of voters' view.

RESULTS

The strength analysis supported previous studies that describing the PM with positive words was strongly associated with vote intention. Furthermore, a change in the direction of the attitudes from "good" to "honest" was found. A new finding was that the pandemic was associated with an increase in polarization.

CONCLUSIONS

The keyword evaluation analysis provides opportunities of evaluating both strength and direction of voters' view of their PM, where we show new results related to increased polarization and shift in the direction of attitudes.

[The analysis of newspaper articles' reporting of legislation relating to Cancer Registries]

Objectives　The first population-based cancer registry (PBCR) was established in Japan in the 1950s; however, the legality of the registry was unclear, and scarcity of government funding resulted in data of poor quality. Although the collection of personal information is indispensable to checking for duplicated records and for patient follow-up, privacy protection was a main obstacle and was directly related to public opinion. The purpose of this study is to figure out the changing perspectives of newspaper reports about PBCR and to discuss qualitative changes in them.Methods　Articles with the PBCR-related keywords "cancer and registration", "cancer and statistics", "cancer and control policies" and "cancer and information" were extracted from five major newspapers and 50 local papers published during the 3rd-term Comprehensive 10-year Strategy for Cancer Control (2004-2013), the era of improved quality and standardization of cancer registries. From the 960 articles containing the keywords, 441 were finally for analysis.Results　Key social events occurred in the background while the articles on cancer registries increased. For instance, legislation passed for the Cancer Control Act in 2006 and the Cancer Registry Promotion Act in 2013, and carcinogenic health hazard incidents such as the nuclear plant accident after the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 contributed to increased interest in PBCR. The word "cancer registry" appeared most frequently in 2006 (68 times) followed by 2011 (60 times). Qualitative analysis of the articles showed the tide of public opinion turned against conservative privacy protection and toward the need for data.Conclusion　The interest in cancer registries increased during the observation period due to the background events that demanded the monitoring of cancer incidences and survival rates and providing precise information on cancer burden. For the general public, the benefit of PBCR is indirect. Active provision of information on PBCRs and related epidemiology information should help generate positive public opinion in Japanese society.

Positive Emotional Language in the Final Words Spoken Directly Before Execution

How do individuals emotionally cope with the imminent real-world salience of mortality? DeWall and Baumeister as well as Kashdan and colleagues previously provided support that an increased use of positive emotion words serves as a way to protect and defend against mortality salience of one’s own contemplated death. Although these studies provide important insights into the psychological dynamics of mortality salience, it remains an open question how individuals cope with the immense threat of mortality prior to their imminent actual death. In the present research, we therefore analyzed positivity in the final words spoken immediately before execution by 407 death row inmates in Texas. By using computerized quantitative text analysis as an objective measure of emotional language use, our results showed that the final words contained a significantly higher proportion of positive than negative emotion words. This emotional positivity was significantly higher than (a) positive emotion word usage base rates in spoken and written materials and (b) positive emotional language use with regard to contemplated death and attempted or actual suicide. Additional analyses showed that emotional positivity in final statements was associated with a greater frequency of language use that was indicative of self-references, social orientation, and present-oriented time focus as well as with fewer instances of cognitive-processing, past-oriented, and death-related word use. Taken together, our findings offer new insights into how individuals cope with the imminent real-world salience of mortality.