The emotional dog does learn new tricks: A reply to Pizarro and Bloom (2003).

D. A. Pizarro and P. Bloom (see record 2002-08416-009) argued against the social intuitionist model of moral judgment in the current author's article (see record 2001-18918-008) and for a modified rationalist model. This reply responds to their 2 main arguments by demonstrating that an intuitionist model allows for malleability and flexibility in judgment, and it allows for cases of moral deliberation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The intelligence of the moral intuitions: A comment on Haidt (2001).

The social intuitionist model (J. Haidt, see record 2001-18918-008) posits that fast and automatic intuitions are the prim source of moral judgments. Conscious deliberations play little causal role; they are used mostly to construct post hoc justifications for judgments that have already occurred. In this article, the authors present evidence that fast and automatic moral intuitions are actually shaped and informed by prior reasoning. More generally, there is considerable evidence from outside the laboratory that people actively engage in reasoning when faced with real-world moral dilemmas. Together, these facts limit the strong claims of the social intuitionist model concerning the irrelevance of conscious deliberation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Haidt's Moral Intuitionist Theory: A Psychological and Philosophical Critique.

Jon Haidt's (2001) proposal (see record 2001-18918-008) for a moral intutionist theory of morality is criticized on psychological and philosophical grounds, including (a) the apparent reduction of social influence to one kind, overt compliance, and the virtual ignoring of the role of persuasion in moral and other decision making; (b) the failure to distinguish development of a psychological entity from its deployment or functioning; and (c) the failure to consider, in distinguishing cause and reason as explanatory concepts, the motivating power of reasons. Arguments for an evolutionary approach to morality are also faulted on the grounds that they assume that adaptation is served by nonmoral rather than moral (fairness- and benevolence-based) criteria. Finally, the authors suggest that an intuitionist approach such as that of Haidt may obscure important aspects of moral decision making. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Emotional Dog Gets Mistaken for a Possum.

H. D. Saltzstein and T. Kasachkoff (2004) (see record 2004-21519-004) critique the social intuitionist model (J. Haidt, 2001) (see record 2001-18918-008), but the model they critique is a stripped-down version that should be called the "possum" model. They make 3 charges about the possum model that are not true about the social intuitionist model: that it includes no role for reasoning, that it reduces social influence to compliance, and that it does not take a developmental perspective. After a defense of the honor of the social intuitionist model, this article raises 2 areas of legitimate dispute: the scope and nature of moral reasoning and the usefulness of appealing to innate ideas, rather than to learning and reasoning, as the origin of moral knowledge. This article presents 3 clusters of innate moral intuitions, related to sympathy, hierarchy, and reciprocity. (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)     

Influence of social reinforcement and the behavior of models in shaping children's moral judgment.

This experiment was designed to test the relative efficacy of social reinforcement and modeling procedures in modifying moral judgmental responses considered by Piaget to be age-specific. 1 group of children observed adult models who expressed moral judgments counter to the group's orientation, and the children were reinforced with approval for adopting the model's evaluative responses. A 2nd group observed the models but received no reinforcement for matching their behavior. A 3rd group of children had no exposure to models but were reinforced for moral judgments that ran counter to their dominant evaluative tendencies. Following the treatments, the children were tested for generalization effects. The experimental treatments produced substantial changes in the children's moral judgment responses. Conditions utilizing modeling cues proved to be more effective than the operant conditioning procedure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relation of multicultural experiences to moral judgment and mindsets.

Multicultural experience is considered to be beneficial, but it remains a difficult construct to measure. We tested the validity of a new assessment tool, the Multicultural Experiences Questionnaire (MEQ), using an undergraduate sample (N = 164), and examined the relation of multicultural experience to moral judgment, closed-mindedness, growth, and fixed mindsets. We expected that greater multicultural experience would be related to lower levels of closed-mindedness and higher levels of moral judgment and growth mindsets. Higher MEQ scores were correlated with decreased closed-mindedness and higher moral judgment scores. In regression analyses, controlling for age and sex, higher MEQ scores positively predicted participant scores on postconventional moral judgment and growth mindsets, but negatively predicted use of less developed moral judgment and fixed mindsets. Overall, these results support the validity of the MEQ and suggest that multicultural experiences are positively linked to measures of moral judgment and growth mindsets. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The moral emotions: A social–functionalist account of anger, disgust, and contempt.

Recent research has highlighted the important role of emotion in moral judgment and decision making (Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001; Haidt, 2001). What is less clear is whether distinctions should be drawn among specific moral emotions. Although some have argued for differences among anger, disgust, and contempt (Rozin, Lowery, Imada, & Haidt, 1999), others have suggested that these terms may describe a single undifferentiated emotional response to morally offensive behavior (Nabi, 2002). In this article, we take a social–functionalist perspective, which makes the prediction that these emotions should be differentiable both in antecedent appraisals and in consequent actions and judgments. Studies 1–3 tested and found support for our predictions concerning distinctions among antecedent appraisals, including (a) a more general role for disgust than has been previously been described, (b) an effect of self-relevance on anger but not other emotions, and (c) a role for contempt in judging incompetent actions. Studies 4 and 5 tested and found support for our specific predictions concerning functional outcomes, providing evidence that these emotions are associated with different consequences. Taken together, these studies support a social–functionalist account of anger, disgust, and contempt and lay the foundation for future research on the negative interpersonal emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Deciding versus reacting: Conceptions of moral judgment and the reason-affect debate.

Recent approaches to moral judgment have typically pitted emotion against reason. In an effort to move beyond this debate, we propose that authors presenting diverging models are considering quite different prototypical situations: those focusing on the resolution of complex dilemmas conclude that morality involves sophisticated reasoning, whereas those studying reactions to shocking moral violations find that morality involves quick, affect-laden processes. We articulate these diverging dominant approaches and consider three directions for future research (moral temptation, moral self-image, and lay understandings of morality) that we propose have not received sufficient attention as a result of the focus on these two prototypical situations within moral psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotion concepts and emotional states in social judgment and categorization.

An objection to conclusions of research investigating effects of emotions on cognitive processes is that the effects are due to the activation of semantic concepts rather than to emotional feelings. A sentence unscrambling task was developed to prime concepts of happiness, sadness, or neutral ideas. Pilot studies demonstrated that unscrambling emotional sentences did not affect emotional state but did prime semantically related words. Experiment 1 showed that the induction of emotional state but not the sentence unscrambling task produced emotion-congruent judgments. Results of Experiment 2 showed that individuals in emotional states categorized according to emotional equivalence more often than participants in a neutral state. Sentence unscrambling had no effect on emotional response categorization. The influences of emotions and emotion knowledge in cognition and emotion are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Understanding the relationship between moral judgment development and individual characteristics: The role of educational contexts.

This study examines variation in moral judgment level as measured by the Defining Issues Test 2 (DIT-2; J. R. Rest & D. Narvaez, 1998), based on individual demographic information and educational contexts. Individual DIT-2 scores and demographic information were obtained from the archived data sets housed at the Center for the Study of Ethical Development. The information on educational contexts was obtained by surveying the researchers who initially gathered the data. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to analyze DIT-2 data from 7,642 individuals and 65 institutions. Findings indicate that average DIT-2 scores vary significantly among institutions. Further, the authors found that the strength of the relation of DIT-2 scores to gender and English language status is significant and consistent across contexts, whereas the strength of the relation to educational level and political identity varies across contexts. These findings indicate that information about the individuals' educational context as well as the broader regional contexts should be taken into account to understand variation in individual levels of moral judgment. The findings can also be used as an interpretive guide for DIT-2 users. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A study of normative and informational social influences upon individual judgment.

Several modifications of the Asch experiment in which the S judges the length of lines in the company of a group of "stooges" who carry out the experimenter's instructions are described. These include a face-to-face situation, an anonymous situation, and a group situation, with self-commitment, public commitment and Magic Pad commitment variations. The results indicate that, even when normative social influence in the direction of an incorrect judgment is largely removed (as in the anonymous situation), more errors are made by Ss in experimental groups than by Ss making their judgments when alone. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Social discourse and moral judgment.

Reviews the book, Social discourse and moral judgment by Daniel N. Robinson (see record 1992-98331-000). It is not every day that a group of such original scholars in any field come together to debate a topic of genuine significance. Social Discourse and Moral Judgment is the result of such an occasion, a symposium dedicated to examining social constructionist contributions to the study of moral judgment, conducted at Georgetown University during March of 1991. Although all of the articles in this volume assume some level of familiarity with psychological theory and vocabulary, Social Discourse and Moral Judgment should appeal to the philosophical novice as well as those well-versed in social constructionist theory. While it is entirely impossible to adequately describe or summarize the complex argument and debate presented in this volume in so brief a space, some examination of the issues discussed should serve to illuminate its worth. Although there are many themes which reoccur throughout the book, discussion of only three (agency, individualism and relativism) are dealt with in this review. As a genuinely significant contribution to research in morality and moral judgment, this book has only two drawbacks. The first, which Robinson acknowledges, is simply that there were not more selections presented from the final discussion, and that the selections presented are sometimes sketchy and hard to follow. The second drawback is that there is no critique of the social constructionist position from a clearly hermeneutic or other continental perspective. (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)     

Certainty of judgment and resistance to social influence.

The present note presents evidence on the importance of certainty, obtained under conditions where there are marked individual differences in reactions to a given stimulus and associated differences in certainty of judgment. The method involved the use of phenylthiourea (also known as phenylthiocarbamide), referred to as PTU. The subjects, Yale University upperclassmen, were told that we were trying to find out "whether there are absolute values for these tastes or whether there are individual differences in ratings of them." He was then given a form, asked to taste Label A, and instructed to give it a rating of 5 (average) on the scale of pleasantness. He was then asked to taste B and C, and to rate each one in relation to A. After rating B, he was asked to rate his certainty that B should be given the pleasantness rating he had given it. A similar procedure was followed for C. On the basis of these private judgments, the Ss were scheduled in 30 three-man groups, half composed of one taster and two nontasters and half, of two tasters and one nontaster. The instructions were similar to those used earlier, except that certainty ratings were not requested and the Ss were asked to announce their ratings publicly, each one first giving his rating of B, and then of C. Each time, the majority persons, whether tasters or nontasters, were asked to announce their ratings first. When it came his turn on B, the minority person usually found that the others had given ratings similar to his private ones. But on C, he found that their ratings were markedly different from his own evaluation. It was found that the effects of majority opinion were markedly different depending upon whether the minority persons were tasters or nontasters of PTU. The data suggest that this asymmetric effect, whereby nontasters are more susceptible to majority influence, may be attributable to the stronger reactions tasters have to PTU and the resulting greater certainty they have about their judgments of the substance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comparison processes in social judgment: Mechanisms and consequences.

This article proposes an informational perspective on comparison consequences in social judgment. It is argued that to understand the variable consequences of comparison, one has to examine what target knowledge is activated during the comparison process. These informational underpinnings are conceptualized in a selective accessibility model that distinguishes 2 fundamental comparison processes. Similarity testing selectively makes accessible knowledge indicating target-standard similarity, whereas dissimilarity testing selectively makes accessible knowledge indicating target-standard dissimilarity. These respective subsets of target knowledge build the basis for subsequent target evaluations, so that similarity testing typically leads to assimilation whereas dissimilarity testing typically leads to contrast. The model is proposed as a unifying conceptual framework that integrates diverse findings on comparison consequences in social judgment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Moral typecasting: Divergent perceptions of moral agents and moral patients.

Moral agency is the capacity to do right or wrong, whereas moral patiency is the capacity to be a target of right or wrong. Through 7 studies, the authors explored moral typecasting—an inverse relation between perceptions of moral agency and moral patiency. Across a range of targets and situations, good- and evil-doers (moral agents) were perceived to be less vulnerable to having good and evil done to them. The recipients of good and evil (moral patients), in turn, were perceived as less capable of performing good or evil actions. Moral typecasting stems from the dyadic nature of morality and explains curious effects such as people's willingness to inflict greater pain on those who do good than those who do nothing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sexual overperception: Power, mating motives, and biases in social judgment.

Results from 4 experiments suggest that power motivates heightened perceptions and expectations of sexual interest from subordinates. Having power over a member of the opposite sex activated sexual concepts that persisted across a temporal delay, indicating the activation of a mating goal (Study 1). Having power increased participants' expectations of sexual interest from a subordinate (Study 2) but only when a mating goal was attainable (i.e., when the subordinate was romantically available; Study 3). In a face-to-face interaction between 2 participants, power heightened perceptions of sexual interest and sexualized behavior among participants with chronically active mating goals (i.e., sexually unrestricted individuals; Study 4). Tests of mediation demonstrated that sexual overperception mediated power's effect on sexually tinged behavior. Through its capacity to induce goal pursuit, power can activate mating goals that sexualize interactions between men and women. This research demonstrates one route through which power might lead to sexual harassment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fundamental dimensions of social judgment: Understanding the relations between judgments of competence and warmth.

In seems there are two dimensions that underlie most judgments of traits, people, groups, and cultures. Although the definitions vary, the first makes reference to attributes such as competence, agency, and individualism, and the second to warmth, communality, and collectivism. But the relationship between the two dimensions seems unclear. In trait and person judgment, they are often positively related; in group and cultural stereotypes, they are often negatively related. The authors report 4 studies that examine the dynamic relationship between these two dimensions, experimentally manipulating the location of a target of judgment on one and examining the consequences for the other. In general, the authors' data suggest a negative dynamic relationship between the two, moderated by factors the impact of which they explore. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When the association between appearance and outcome contaminates social judgment: A bidirectional model linking group homogeneity and collective treatment.

Group formation is an inevitable consequence of social life, and the tendency to perceive people as a collective unit persists once they have been categorized as a group. Drawing on the concept of homogeneity, the authors propose a model suggesting that groups may endure in part because people who are perceived as homogeneous attract collective treatment (e.g., monetary rewards and punishment), and such treatment further reinforces the perception that the group’s members are homogeneous. In support of this model, more homogeneous groups attracted collective treatment and collectively treated groups seemed to be more homogeneous thereafter. The authors suggest that these effects arise in part because people intuitively believe that group homogeneity is associated with collective treatment, and they present evidence suggesting that this applies to at least one policy-relevant real-world setting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)