Motivated inference: Self-serving generation and evaluation of causal theories.

The results of four studies suggest that people tend to generate and evaluate causal theories in a self-serving manner: They generate theories that view their own attributes as more predictive of desirable outcomes, and they are reluctant to believe in theories relating their own attributes to undesirable events. As a consequence, people tend to hold theories that are consistent with the optimistic belief that good things will happen to them and bad things will not. I argue that these self-serving biases are best explained as resulting from cognitive processes guided by motivation because they do not occur in the absence of motivational pressures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Bad news transmission as a function of the definitiveness of consequences and the relationship between communicator and recipient.

There is ample evidence suggesting (e.g., A. Tesser & S. Rosen, 1975) that people are reluctant to transmit bad news. Research on rumors, on the other hand, suggests that people sometimes are less reluctant to transmit bad news. It is argued that differences between the 2 lines of research include the definitiveness of the consequences of the news and the relationship between communicator and recipient. The influence of these 2 factors on news transmission was investigated in 3 experiments. Results showed that bad news with indefinite consequences was transmitted more often than bad news with definite consequences and that both kinds of bad news were transmitted more often if the recipient was a friend rather than a stranger. Differences in feelings of moral responsibility to transmit the news largely accounted for both effects. The 2 factors did not affect the likelihood of good news transmission. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interactive effects of training domain and age on children's moral judgments.

69 1st, 3rd, and 5th graders were (a) read stories depicting either good (nice) or bad (naughty) acts paired with neutral acts, (b) trained to consider intentions rather than consequences while making moral judgments, and (c) tested for their use of intentions in both moral judgment domains (niceness and naughtiness). Results support the hypotheses that (a) training would be effective in both domains, (b) cross-domain generalization of training would occur, and (c) Ss would judge bad behavior on the basis of intentions and independently of consequences before they would do so for good behavior. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Moral norms and social conventions: A cross-cultural comparison.

60 boys and 60 girls in the 1st and 4th grades in Israel were interviewed to examine the distinction between moral and conventional norms. Ss were equally divided between 3 groups: secular urban Jews, secular kibbutz Jews, and traditional Arab villagers. Ss were presented with 8 behaviors, all breaches of moral or conventional norms. Two of them dealt with norms strongly observed by the traditional but not by the other groups and 2 with norms central to the kibbutz. Ss were asked the extent to which the behavior was bad (or good) in a country where (a) it was prohibited and (b) it was permitted. They were also asked whether it should be forbidden by law, and why. City and kibbutz Ss did not differ in their judgments, even in regard to behaviors emphasized in the kibbutz. Compared with these groups, the traditional group judged all behaviors as bad even when permitted; they thought all should be prohibited by law and their justifications tended to be in normative terms. Results are interpreted in terms of 2 distinct orientations to social norms: one where the criteria for social judgment of behaviors and norms are consequences to others and law, and the other where social norms are considered to have absolute validity and constitute the dominant criterion for moral judgment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Just world responding in 6- and 9-year-old children.

Investigated the just world effect in children's judgments of moral behavior and whether the effect was produced by a shifting assessment of (a) the victim or (b) the good or bad outcome befalling the victim. 96 kindergarten and 1st-grade girls and 96 3rd and 4th graders were shown 1 or more film segments in various orders in which a girl (a) helped a friend, (b) grabbed candy, (c) found $10, or (d) had a shelf of books fall on her, and were asked to rate how good or bad the outcomes and/or the girl were. The good fortune outcome suggested to both age groups that the girl was good but the misfortune outcome had no analagous effect. Six-year-olds were more likely to judge outcomes lower when they followed bad behavior but were unaffected by good behavior. (3 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The moral status of mice and humans.

Suggests that H. A. Herzog's (1988) differentiation among the ethical protections afforded "good mice" (laboratory mice), "bad mice" (pests not in cages), and "feeders" (food for other species) offers roles and labels equally applicable to humans in the moral decisions of psychologists. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Moral reasoning and judgments of aggression.

Examined the role of type of aggression, aggressor intentions, victim consequences, and stage of moral reasoning in the judgments of aggressive acts. 346 high school and college students who scored at Stages 2, 3, or 4 in L. Kohlberg's (1976) moral reasoning system read physical, verbal, or passive aggression scenarios in which the aggressor's intentions were harmful, instrumental, or altruistic and in which the victim's consequences were good or bad. Results indicate that each variable influenced ratings of aggression independently and that type of aggression and stage of moral reasoning interacted with aggressor intentions to influence the ratings. Similar results were found on ratings of inappropriateness. Victim consequences had a strong but independent influence on ratings of both aggressiveness and inappropriateness. It is concluded that stages of moral reasoning in adolescent and adult populations are important when considering judgments of aggression and that the Kohlberg framework can be usefully applied to these types of judgments. (47 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Credit and blame among American and Japanese children: Normative, cultural, and individual differences.

Japanese and American 5th graders (N?=?593 children, 198 American and 395 Japanese) assigned credit and blame to good and bad classroom deeds and performances. Theoretically, a morality of aspiration involves assigning more credit for a good deed than blame for a corresponding bad deed; a morality of duty involves assigning more blame than credit. In both countries academic achievement norms were more consistent with aspiration, moral norms were judged as duties, and procedural norms were intermediate. Japanese children's responses were more consistent with aspiration than those of Americans. Analyses also explored cultural versus individual differences in sanctioning. The conclusion addresses the relevance of the concept of aspiration to the study of achievement and other norms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Gastronomic Realism - A Cautionary Tale.

Moral realism, the view that there are moral facts that are independent of our beliefs about them, has many defenders. But much less has been said about realism concerning other sorts of value. One of these, gastronomic realism (the view that there are facts about how good or bad particular foods and drinks are, and that these facts are similarly independent of our beliefs) is likely to seem implausible on its face. This paper argues, however, that much of the reasoning used to defend moral realism is about as well suited for defending gastronomic realism. Although these considerations do not directly undermine moral realism, they do suggest that the two views should stand or fall together. And they rob moral realists of one ad hominem argument that often emerges in their debate with irrealists, that the irrealists cannot justify their widespread practice of taking their own moral values seriously. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Authoritarianism and "Tolerance of Trait Inconsistency."

The California F Scale was found to correlate positively with a paper-and-pencil measure of propensity to expect people to be thoroughly good or thoroughly bad. As a further explanation of this relationship, Ss in a laboratory situation were given mildly derogatory information about one respected partner and nonderogatory information about another respected partner. Ss who had scored high on the F Scale resisted the mildly derogatory information and continued to rate their 2 partners about equally favorably. Low F Ss lowered their evaluations of the partner about whom mildly derogatory information had been received and gave their 2 partners final ratings which were more unequally favorable than those given by high scorers. Low F Ss also conformed more unequally to the judgments expressed by the 2 partners than did high scorers. These experimental findings are interpreted to reflect the greater reluctance of high scorers to believe that "good people" possess a mixture of good and bad attributes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When the future feels worse than the past: A temporal inconsistency in moral judgment.

Logically, an unethical behavior performed yesterday should also be unethical if performed tomorrow. However, the present studies suggest that the timing of a transgression has a systematic effect on people's beliefs about its moral acceptability. Because people's emotional reactions tend to be more extreme for future events than for past events, and because such emotional reactions often guide moral intuitions, judgments of moral behavior may be more extreme in prospect than in retrospect. In 7 studies, participants judged future bad deeds more negatively, and future good deeds more positively, than equivalent behavior in the equidistant past. In addition, participants thought that future unfair actions deserved more punishment than past unfair actions, and were more willing to sacrifice their own financial gain to be treated fairly in the future compared with in the past. These patterns were explained in part by the stronger emotions that were evoked by thoughts of future events than by thoughts of past events. Taken together, the results suggest that permission for actions with ethical connotations may be harder to get than forgiveness for those same actions, and demonstrate a systematic way in which moral judgments of the same action are inconsistent across time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The moral status of mice.

Illustrates how assigning roles and labels has a profound effect on ethical decision making by typifying the roles assigned to mice by a research laboratory. The good mice (used in research) are offered government and institutional protections, while the bad mice (free ranging pests) are trapped and often suffer miserable deaths. Feeder mice occupy a gray area in terms of moral status, being both prey for other carnivores and Ss in predator research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Susceptibility to faking of the Defining Issues Test of moral development.

Administered the Defining Issues Test (DIT) by J. Rest et al to 146 student teachers on 2 occasions with instructions to either fake bad, fake good, or record their own views (standard instructions). Results support the general theory of a sequence of cognitive stages of moral judgment in which Ss recognize stages they have passed through as immature and can respond appropriately when asked to fake low, while stages higher than the S's own are unattainable thus preventing faking upwards. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dual processing and organizational justice: The role of rational versus experiential processing in third-party reactions to workplace mistreatment.

The moral perspective of justice proposes that when confronted by another person's mistreatment, third parties can experience a deontic response, that is, an evolutionary-based emotional reaction that motivates them to engage in retribution toward the transgressor. In this article, we tested whether the third party's deontic reaction is less strong when a rational (vs. experiential) processing frame is primed. Further, we tested whether third parties high (vs. low) in moral identity are more resistant to the effects of processing frames. Results from a sample of 185 French managers revealed that following an injustice, managers primed to use rational processing reported lower retribution tendencies compared with managers primed to use experiential processing. Third parties high in moral identity, however, were less affected by the framing; they reported a high retribution response regardless of processing frame. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Bad is stronger than good.

The greater power of bad events over good ones is found in everyday events, major life events (e.g., trauma), close relationship outcomes, social network patterns, interpersonal interactions, and learning processes. Bad emotions, bad parents, and bad feedback have more impact than good ones, and bad information is processed more thoroughly than good. The self is more motivated to avoid bad self-definitions than to pursue good ones. Bad impressions and bad stereotypes are quicker to form and more resistant to disconfirmation than good ones. Various explanations such as diagnosticity and salience help explain some findings, but the greater power of bad events is still found when such variables are controlled. Hardly any exceptions (indicating greater power of good) can be found. Taken together, these findings suggest that bad is stronger than good, as a general principle across a broad range of psychological phenomena. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cultivating a moral sense of nursing through model emulation

This paper reports part of a longitudinal research project, which sought to capture students' conceptualization of caring practice as they progressed to different levels of study in a nursing diploma programme in Hong Kong. Model emulation was found to be an effective means of focusing students' learning processes on the moral aspects of nursing practice. The theory of model emulation from a Chinese perspective and how it is applied to create a learning context to allow students to acquire a moral sense of nursing are discussed. The participating students are invited to be sincere enquirers in the pursuit of the good embedded in practice through introspective self-examination and dialogue. They are asked to describe and share their experience of positive and negative examples of nursing in written accounts. Van Kaam's phenomenological method was adopted to explicate the good and bad constituents of nursing from these examples, with the students assuming an active role in the explication process. The explication reveals that the students were able to articulate the good and bad practices in a variety of patient care situations.     

Moral attentiveness: Who pays attention to the moral aspects of life?

This research draws from social cognitive theory to develop a construct known as moral attentiveness, the extent to which an individual chronically perceives and considers morality and moral elements in his or her experiences, and proposes that moral attentiveness affects a variety of behaviors. A series of 5 studies with undergraduates, MBA students, and managers were conducted to create and validate a reliable multidimensional scale and to provide evidence that moral attentiveness is associated with (a) the recall and reporting of self- and others' morality-related behaviors, (b) moral awareness, and (c) moral behavior. Results of the studies suggest that moral attentiveness has a significant effect on how individuals understand and act in their moral worlds. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of moral judgment and moral identity on moral behavior: An empirical examination of the moral individual.

Recognizing limitations in classic cognitive moral development theory, several scholars have drawn from theories of identity to suggest that moral behavior results from both moral judgments and moral identity. The authors conducted 2 survey-based studies with more than 500 students and managers to test this argument. Results demonstrated that moral identity and moral judgments both independently influenced moral behavior. In addition, in situations in which social consensus regarding the moral behavior was not high, moral judgments and moral identity interacted to shape moral behavior. This interaction effect indicated that those who viewed themselves as moral individuals pursued the most extreme alternatives (e.g., never cheating, regularly cheating)--a finding that affirms the motivational power of a moral identity. The authors conclude by considering the implications of this research for both theory and practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)