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Theories of justice suggest that it serves two main purposes: punishment and restoration. Although punishment emerges early and has been well-documented, little is known about the contexts in which young children engage in restorative practices like compensation for victims. The current study investigated whether children's engagement in compensation and punishment (which often involve a redistribution of resources) was sensitive to characteristics of the perpetrator and victim known to shape distributive justice decisions (decisions about how resources should be distributed), such as social dominance, resource inequality, and moral character. A total of 54 children aged 3 to 7 years completed a series of moral judgment experiments. Each experiment featured interactions between a perpetrator and a victim, ending with the perpetrator stealing the victim's toy. In Experiment 1 (N = 44), social dominance did not affect punishment or compensation overall, but older children compensated the dominant victim (but not the subordinate victim) less than younger children. In Experiment 2 (N = 42), children compensated the poor victim more than the rich victim, but they did not punish the rich perpetrator more than the poor perpetrator. In Experiment 3 (N = 45), children compensated the victim with a good moral character more than the victim with a bad moral character, and the victim's moral character did not influence punishment. Altogether, these findings offer new insights into how children resort to compensation for victims as a complement to, rather than an alternative to, punishment.

In the fight for legitimacy, understanding the rules of status games is critical. This idea holds true in the wedding marketplace. However, when legalization of marriage for same-sex couples disrupted the binary wedding script, the rules of the game became less clear to consumers. Couples sometimes found their gendered bodies, roles, and expressions were out of sync with the evolving script of a destabilized wedding field, thus raising legitimacy questions. This situation is defined as hysteresis—meaning delays in the realignment between habitus and the field. Hysteresis results in consumers' disorientation about what forms of capital are valued as well as perceived absences of materials or recognition from the market. This study investigates consumers' attempts to mobilize gendered capital to resolve hysteresis through realignment of habitus and the script. Grounded in a Bourdieuian field-level analysis of depth interviews with 30 same-sex couples and ethnographic observation in the wedding field, four consumption alignment strategies are identified that consumers leverage to address hysteresis: confronting, masking, collaborating, and experimenting. Consumers' variations in gendered capital explain which consumption alignment strategies they use, with different possibilities for updating habitus and expanding the script. Throughout this process, consumers' moral judgments hinder this pursuit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Countless policies are crafted with the intention of punishing all who do wrong or rewarding only those who do right. However, this requires accommodating certain mistakes: some who do not deserve to be punished might be, and some who deserve to be rewarded might not be. Six preregistered experiments (N = 3,484 U.S. adults) reveal that people are more willing to accept this trade-off in principle, before errors occur, than in practice, after errors occur. The result is an asymmetry such that for punishments, people believe it is more important to prevent false negatives (e.g., criminals escaping justice) than to fix them, and more important to fix false positives (e.g., wrongful convictions) than to prevent them. For rewards, people believe it is more important to prevent false positives (e.g., welfare fraud) than to fix them and more important to fix false negatives (e.g., improperly denied benefits) than to prevent them.

The interplay between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and employee commitment has been viewed positively. However, the COVID-19 pandemic prompted employees to question the value of their organizations' CSR initiatives, especially when they are not the direct recipients. This study explores the influence of employees' ethical judgment of their organizations' CSR initiatives on employee engagement. Drawing on social exchange theory (SET), a theoretical model was constructed to examine CSR communication during the crisis. Survey data indicates that employees' favorable ethical assessments of their organization's CSR efforts during COVID-19 correlate with increased participation in CSR programs, heightened organizational commitment, and a greater propensity to engage in supportive WOM behaviors. The study also shows the mediating roles of employees' CSR communication engagement and organizational commitment in the nexus between ethical judgment and positive WOM actions. Implications for theory and practice are discussed, underscoring the critical role of ethical judgment in employee communication during unprecedented times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People view AI as possessing expertise across various fields, but the perceived quality of AI-generated moral expertise remains uncertain. Recent work suggests that large language models (LLMs) perform well on tasks designed to assess moral alignment, reflecting moral judgments with relatively high accuracy. As LLMs are increasingly employed in decision-making roles, there is a growing expectation for them to offer not just aligned judgments but also demonstrate sound moral reasoning. Here, we advance work on the Moral Turing Test and find that Americans rate ethical advice from GPT-4o as slightly more moral, trustworthy, thoughtful, and correct than that of the popular New York Times advice column, The Ethicist. Participants perceived GPT models as surpassing both a representative sample of Americans and a renowned ethicist in delivering moral justifications and advice, suggesting that people may increasingly view LLM outputs as viable sources of moral expertise. This work suggests that people might see LLMs as valuable complements to human expertise in moral guidance and decision-making. It also underscores the importance of carefully programming ethical guidelines in LLMs, considering their potential to influence users' moral reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U-shaped development pattern in social cognitive domain theory can explain adolescents' "moral retrogression" in a certain period. This study employs quantitative methods to investigate moral judgments made by Chinese urban and rural junior high school students in situations involving conflicts between the personal and moral domains, thereby cross-culturally validating the proposed U-shaped pattern. The results show that this pattern exhibits some degree of cross-cultural applicability. Specifically, grades 8–9 represent a transitional phase in the moral development of Chinese students from both urban and rural areas. Students in the grade 9 tend to defend their personal domain when in conflict with the moral domain. However, the content and scope of the moral and personal domains may vary across cultures. When urban students encounter conflicts between the personal and moral domains, they tend to protect the personal domain. Furthermore, Chinese students have a strong sense of self-defense awareness, and when the target of their behavior is an immoral person in a specific context, it significantly increases their support for non-moral behaviors. This knowledge may be valuable for educators and policy-makers seeking to design moral educational programs aimed at promoting moral behavior among adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the academic and grey literature, near- and mid-term mitigation trajectories by single actors (countries, firms, cities or regions) are often labelled with terms including long-term temperature goals (e.g. 1.5°C scenario). Yet direct links between single actors' mitigation efforts in the near- to mid-term and global temperature goals in the long-term are neither consistent nor defensible without making important additional assumptions about space, time and equity. We argue that such labelling should be avoided. If labelling has to be used, these assumptions should be transparently stated, to bridge spatial and temporal scales, and to make explicit ethical judgments about the distribution of mitigation efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large body of research has investigated responses to artificial scenarios (e.g., trolley problem) where maximizing beneficial outcomes for the greater good (utilitarianism) conflicts with adherence to moral norms (deontology). The CNI model is a computational model that quantifies sensitivity to consequences for the greater good (C), sensitivity to moral norms (N), and general preference for inaction versus action (I) in responses to plausible moral dilemmas based on real-world events. Expanding on a description of the CNI model, the current article provides (a) a comprehensive review of empirical findings obtained with the CNI model, (b) an analysis of their theoretical implications, (c) a discussion of criticisms of the CNI model, and (d) an overview of alternative approaches to disentangle multiple factors underlying moral-dilemma responses and the relation of these approaches to the CNI model. The article concludes with a discussion of open questions and new directions for future research. How do people make judgments about actions that violate moral norms yet maximize the greater good (e.g., sacrificing the well-being of a small number of people for the well-being of a larger number of people)? Research on this question has been criticized for relying on highly artificial scenarios and for conflating multiple distinct factors underlying responses in moral dilemmas. The current article reviews research that used a computational modeling approach to disentangle the roles of multiple distinct factors in responses to plausible moral dilemmas based on real-world events. By disentangling sensitivity to consequences, sensitivity to moral norms, and general preference for inaction versus action in responses to realistic dilemmas, the reviewed work provides a more nuanced understanding of how people make judgments about the right course of action in moral dilemmas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Herman Cain Awards are presented on reddit.com/r/hermancainaward to individuals who share COVID-19 misinformation on social media (SM) and subsequently die from the disease. We apply affective disposition theory's moral judgment predictions regarding message and audience factors and Schadenfreude theorizing to explain reactions to similar SM posts. In an experiment with a large census-matched sample, participants viewed a series of SM posts similar to those on featured on reddit.com/r/hermancainaward. We manipulated two message factors: whether the poster was dogmatic or uncertain in their anti–COVID-19-vaccination stance and whether they expressed regret before they died. Dogmatic posting resulted in perceptions of the poster as more immoral and deserving of worse health outcomes, but regret mitigated these effects. Notably, political party and vaccination status, two audience factors, moderated these processes. Our findings demonstrate that SM posting is a morally relevant behavior and that narrative moral judgment theories seem capable of explaining reader's responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we develop test cases to adjudicate between dual-process and the causal mapping explanations of order effects. Using dilemmas with minimized emotional force, we explore new conditions for order effects to occur. Overall, the results support causal model theory. We produced novel evidence that order effects extend not only to cases with low emotional engagement, but also to specialized judgments about whether an action violates a rule. However, when objects are sacrificed instead of persons the order effect either disappears or becomes symmetrical, contrary to previous theorizing that it is an asymmetrical transfer effect. Causal model theory needs to be developed to include interplays between the moral status of sacrificed entities and computational models of causal mapping. Symmetric order effects remain a puzzle, motivating future research. Though we do not know how to explain them yet, we discuss how symmetric order effects can influence policy decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to reconcile conflicting findings about the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in counteracting the negative impacts of brands' ethical transgressions by testing the moderating role of self-brand connection (SBC). Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on motivated reasoning theory, this paper posits that high- and low-SBC consumers' information processing and moral judgment are driven by distinct goals: to reach desired versus accurate conclusions, respectively. Five experiments were conducted to test whether CSR efforts can mitigate the impact of blatant ethical transgressions. Findings: CSR allows high-SBC consumers to evaluate brand transgressions more favorably, as CSR serves as counterfactual evidence that reinforces their beliefs in the brand's morality. In contrast, low-SBC consumers view CSR as hypocritical, leading to more negative responses. Increased perceptions of brand morality (hypocrisy) mediate CSR's buffering (backfiring) effects among high- (low-) SBC consumers. Research limitations/implications: This paper does not control for the effect of the time gap between CSR and ethical transgressions even if buffering effects of CSR could be faded out as memories recede. Practical implications: Brand transgressions may be inevitable events, but firms or managers can alleviate the negative impact of transgressions by engaging in CSR activities. In doing so, they need to make clear to whom they will appeal using CSR information considering its backfiring effects among low-SBC consumers. Originality/value: Few studies have examined when and how CSR attenuates or exacerbates the negativity of brand transgressions with a strong theoretical framework. This paper, grounded in motivated reasoning theory, explains how the same CSR initiative can yield opposing outcomes based on the consumer's self-brand connection. Rather than solely exploring how strong consumer-brand relationships buffer brand transgressions, this research shows how high-SBC consumers biasedly seize CSR information to justify brand transgressions, even when they are blatant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do voters vote for candidates known for corruption allegations? We herein suggest two possible explanations for it. First, the choice context affects voters' risk assessment, since voting for a candidate considers other candidates because aversion to extreme alternatives can change their preferences. Second, the judgment, according to which, candidates' features are relevant, is not impartial because previously defined preferences set the relevant ones. We also seek to assess such judgments from a moral perspective supported by the understanding that individuals presenting utilitarian ethical orientation substantiate their choices of candidates who deliver results for voters. In contrast, individuals accounting for a deontological orientation focus on means and principles. We designed a vignette experiment with 223 respondents who were randomly exposed to two different scenarios in order to assess such elements empirically: two candidates, one newcomer and one experienced candidate whose accounts were disapproved by the court of auditors; three candidates, the two previous candidates and one experienced candidate who was convicted of corruption. Based on the results, the presence of the most corrupt candidate significantly increased the probability of voters voting for the newcomer; thus, the stronger the utilitarian orientation, the greater the likelihood of voters voting for the experienced candidate, mainly when there is a more corrupt candidate in the race. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interpersonal trust is the premise and foundation of encouraging cooperation in this age of rapid progress. The purpose of this study was to investigate how moral judgment affects bystanders' interpersonal trust and its internal mechanisms when there are ethical transgressions. The moral judgment of the evaluators was divided into three categories—opposition, neutrality and approval—on the basis of the moral transgressions of the offenders. Three moral judgment circumstances were randomly assigned to 143 primary school pupils, and the assessors scored the children via trustworthiness and trust scales. According to the findings, interpersonal trust is significantly predicted by moral judgment. Compared with neutral judgment, opposing moral violations significantly improves bystanders' interpersonal trust in the evaluator, whereas approving moral violations does not significantly predict interpersonal trust. Trustworthiness plays a mediating role in the influence of moral judgment on interpersonal trust. Compared with neutral judgment, trustworthiness mediates the influence of opposed judgment on interpersonal trust rather than the influence of approved judgment on interpersonal trust. The findings demonstrate that moral opposition to transgressions influences interpersonal trust either directly or indirectly through trustworthiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethical judgments differ according to personal characteristics. Our study aimed to determine the relationship between ethical positions (idealism and relativism subdimensions) and psychological well-being. The study's second aim was to compare socio-demographic characteristics, taking medical ethics courses, participating voluntarily in social responsibility projects and religiosity with ethical positions and psychological well-being. The Ethical Positions Questionnaire and Flourishing Scale have been used to collect the data. The research sample comprises first- to sixth-grade medical students (n=246) in Turkey. The study found a significant relationship between idealism ethics position and psychological well-being. A significant relationship was also found between engaging in prosocial behaviours and psychological wellbeing. In addition, among the participants, those who defined themselves as religious had high idealism and well-being scores, and those who did not define themselves as religious had high relativism scores. Further research is needed to identify more features that affect ethical judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents social data and knowledge collective intelligence platform for TRaining Ethical AI Models (STREAM) to address the challenge of aligning AI models with human moral values, and to provide ethics datasets and knowledge bases to help promote AI models "follow good advice as naturally as a stream follows its course". By creating a comprehensive and representative platform that accurately mirrors the moral judgments of diverse groups including humans and AIs, we hope to effectively portray cultural and group variations, and capture the dynamic evolution of moral judgments over time, which in turn will facilitate the Establishment, Evaluation, Embedding, Embodiment, Ensemble, and Evolvement (6Es) of the moral capabilities of AI models. Currently, STREAM has already furnished a comprehensive collection of ethical scenarios, and amassed substantial moral judgment data annotated by volunteers and various popular Large Language Models, collectively portraying the moral preferences and performances of both humans and AIs across a range of moral contexts. This paper will outline the current structure and construction of STREAM, explore its potential applications, and discuss its future prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to present a way to foster moral growth through Søren Kierkegaard's work The Sickness Unto Death as a tool capable of developing moral sensitivity and judgment. After discussing the need for this topic in the education of today's youth, the thought of Martha Nussbaum will be introduced as the foundation for my proposal, justifying the ethical potential inherent in narrative. This potential is abundantly reflected in Kierkegaard's work. From his unique existential style, the Danish philosopher addresses the authenticity of the self and of one's own existence to achieve the true constitution of oneself. The various forms of despair that the author explores are analyzed, with excerpts from the work highlighting his mastery and subtlety in reflecting the complexity and dynamism inherent in human interiority. This provides the reader with the opportunity to reflect on their ethical and existential state from a Kierkegaardian perspective, recognizing in it the universal aspects of the human condition that great authors throughout history have conveyed through their works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For contractualist accounts of morality, actions are moral if they correspond to what rational or reasonable agents would agree to do, were they to negotiate explicitly. This, in turn, often depends on each party's bargaining power, which varies with each party's stakes in the potential agreement and available alternatives in case of disagreement. If there is an asymmetry, with one party enjoying higher bargaining power than another, this party can usually get a better deal, as often happens in real negotiations. A strong test of contractualist accounts of morality, then, is whether moral judgments do take bargaining power into account. We explore this in five preregistered experiments (n = 3,025; U.S.-based Prolific participants). We construct scenarios depicting everyday social interactions between two parties in which one of them can perform a mutually beneficial but unpleasant action. We find that the same actions (asking the other to perform the unpleasant action or explicitly refusing to do it) are perceived as less morally appropriate when performed by the party with lower bargaining power, as compared to the party with higher bargaining power. In other words, participants tend to give more moral leeway to parties with better bargaining positions and to hold disadvantaged parties to stricter moral standards. This effect appears to depend only on the relative bargaining power of each party but not on the magnitude of the bargaining power asymmetry between them. We discuss implications for contractualist theories of moral cognition and the emergence and persistence of unfair norms and inequality. Public Significance Statement: Many social interactions involve opportunities for mutual benefit. By engaging in negotiation—sometimes explicitly, but often tacitly—we decide what each party should do and enter arrangements that we anticipate will be advantageous for everyone involved. Contractualist theories of morality insist on the fundamental role played by such bargaining procedures in determining what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate behavior. But the outcome of a negotiation often depends on each party's bargaining power and their relative positions if an agreement cannot be reached. And situations in which each party enjoys equal bargaining power are rare. Here, we investigate the influence of bargaining power on our moral judgments. Consistent with contractualist accounts, we find that moral judgments take bargaining power considerations into account, to the benefit of the powerful party, and that parties with lower bargaining power are held to stricter moral standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moral judgments differ across cultures and politics, but they share a common theme in our minds: perceptions of harm. Both cultural ethnographies on moral values and psychological research on moral cognition highlight this shared focus on harm. Perceptions of harm are constructed from universal cognitive elements—including intention, causation, and suffering—but depend on the cultural context, allowing many values to arise from a common moral mind. This review traces the concept of harm across philosophy, cultural anthropology, and psychology, then discusses how different values (e.g., purity) across various taxonomies are grounded in perceived harm. We then explore two theories connecting culture to cognition—modularity and constructionism—before outlining how pluralism across human moral judgment is explained by the constructed nature of perceived harm. We conclude by showing how different perceptions of harm help drive political disagreements and reveal how sharing stories of harm can help bridge moral divides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do descriptive norms shape injunctive norm beliefs, and what does this tell us about the cognitive processes underlying social norm cognition? Across six studies (N = 2,671), we examined whether people update their injunctive norm beliefs—as well as their moral judgments and behavioral intentions—after receiving descriptive norm information about how common (or uncommon) a behavior is. Specifically, we manipulated the descriptive normativity of behaviors, describing behaviors as uncommon (20% of people were doing the behavior) or common (80% of people were doing the behavior), and the type of behavior across studies (fairness, conventional, harm, preference). To measure belief updating, we assessed beliefs prior to and after receiving information about the descriptive norm. We had three main findings: First, participants positively updated their prior injunctive norm beliefs, moral judgments, and behavioral intentions (i.e., rated behaviors more injunctively normative and moral) after receiving a common descriptive norm and negatively updated their beliefs (i.e., rated behaviors less injunctive and moral) after receiving an uncommon descriptive norm, and updated to a larger extent for the common than uncommon descriptive norm. Second, participants were more likely to update their beliefs about what is moral for others compared to what is moral for the self. Third, participants updated their beliefs to a greater extent for fairness and conventional behaviors compared to harm behaviors and preferences. Together, our findings suggest that descriptive norms shape our injunctive norm beliefs and moral judgments and help to paint a fuller picture of the social cognition of social norms. Statement of Limitations: The present work has several potential limitations. First, our data were collected via online convenience samples, which, while generally more representative than a sample of college undergraduates, potentially limits the generalizability of our findings to people more broadly, particularly those from non-Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies. Second, we used a limited number of vignettes as stimuli in our study. While these were stringently normed on several dimensions preinclusion, it is possible that our findings might not generalize to other normative behaviors. Third, because we used real (rather than novel) behaviors, participants likely entered our study with prior beliefs about those behaviors, potentially influencing the extent of their belief updating. However, because we were interested primarily in between-condition comparisons, this is unlikely to explain our results. Fourth, while our dependent measures are interrelated, our modeling approach treated them as independent, including each dependent measure in a different model. To account for interdependence between measures, we conducted exploratory multivariate regression models which support our initial findings. Lastly, because we assessed self-report behavioral intentions, it is possible that participants' actual behavior would diverge from their intentions—consequently, we cannot make claims about the effect of descriptive norms on behavior per se. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the concept of happiness in the work of Julien Offray de La Mettrie Anti-Seneca or Discourse on Happiness (2010). Before exploring the term happiness, it is essential to answer the question: what does the French philosopher understand by being human? To fulfill this purpose, in the first chapter, the idea of the human body, understood as an organic machine, will be analyzed. In the second chapter, we will investigate the physical damage or diseases that can affect the machine or human body. In the third part, we will explore the concept of happiness, understood as carnal pleasure, voluptuousness and organic or arterial happiness. In the fourth chapter, the different ways to achieve a happy life will be examined. As a conclusion, it can be affirmed that happiness is, according to La Mettrie, the result of the organization or composition of the human body; therefore, the individual, when acting according to his nature, must be exempt from recrimination or ethical judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the most important objection to the existence of moral beauty, true judgements of moral beauty are not possible as moral judgements require being motivated to act in line with the moral judgement made, and judgements of beauty require not being motivated to act in any way. Here, I clarify the argument underlying the objection and demonstrate that it does not show that moral beauty does not exist. I present two responses: namely, that the beauty of moral beauty does not lie in the moral goodness per se (the 'adjacent properties' response), and that only a dispositional motivation to act is required for the moral judgements that are typically made as part of judgements of moral beauty, whereas aesthetic judgements only rule out state motivations to act (the 'equivocation of motivation required' response). In addressing the objection, I show how moral beauty is consistent with disinterestedness, and so should be accepted more widely; also clarifying where the beauty in moral beauty resides, and how the moral–aesthetic distinction should be drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many previous studies indicate that children are highly sensitive to the immoral behavior of others, preferring prosocial over antisocial characters. Accordingly, children avoid transgressors from a very early age. A special kind of transgressor is the moral hypocrite, who not only acts immorally but also acts in contrast to what they preach. There are very few studies establishing whether children recognize moral hypocrisy and if it impacts their moral judgment. We ran three studies with preschoolers aged 4 to 6 years on whether children recognize moral hypocrisy and how children assess moral hypocrisy. In Studies 2 and 3, we also tested false‐signaling theory as an explanation of the more negative assessments of moral hypocrites. In Study 1 (N = 133), we showed that children indeed assess moral hypocrites more negatively than nonhypocritical moral transgressors. In Study 2 (N = 115), we initially demonstrated that the assessment of moral hypocrites results from their inconsistency between words and deeds. Study 3 (N = 159) replicated the results of Studies 1 and 2 and, by excluding an alternative explanation, explained that moral hypocrites are perceived as less moral and liked less due to the false signals that they send. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moral decisions often involve dilemmas: cases of conflict between competing obligations. In two studies (N = 204), we ask whether children appreciate that reasoning through dilemmas involves acknowledging that there is no single, simple solution. In Study 1, 5‐ to 8‐year‐old US children were randomly assigned to a Moral Dilemma condition, in which story characters face dilemmas between two prosocial actions, or a Personal Cost control, in which story characters face decisions between a matched prosocial action and a self‐interested action. Children were then presented with two reasoners who made the same judgment, but one confidently endorsed one moral action, and the other hesitantly acknowledged both actions. As they aged, children became more likely to prefer the uncertain reasoner's "way of thinking" in the Moral Dilemma compared to the Personal Cost condition. They also inferred that the uncertain reasoner was nicer and more trustworthy than the confident one. In Study 2, when both reasoners acknowledged the dilemma and differed only in their level of uncertainty, 5‐year‐olds preferred the acknowledgment to be accompanied by a confident decision, 6‐ and 7‐year‐olds preferred it be accompanied by uncertainty, and 8‐year‐olds showed no preference. These results show that, before the age at which children can resolve dilemmas successfully on their own, they recognize and value others who approach dilemmas with appropriate humility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By disentangling the history of free indirect style from the history of the novel, we can see the narratorial complexity of prose fiction at a revealingly early stage, when the channeling of other minds and other experiences seemed less like a generic affordance than a problem of etiquette, moral judgment, and simple intelligibility. Lacking novelistic conventions (for example, quotation marks), the Elizabethan writer George Gascoigne experimented with a range of techniques for representing the voices and thoughts of his characters. In The Adventures of Master F.J. (1573), he does not consistently or clearly mark particular expressions as belonging to either character or narrator. The effect of this is a wandering or mobile point of view, a protoform of free indirect style—not as a deliberate aesthetic effect but rather as the product of experimentation with a not yet fully articulated set of formal conventions. Gascoigne's use of this emergent free indirect style centers on a key scene of sexual assault and its aftermath. This, I argue, is no accident as sexual consent foregrounds with particular urgency the moral stakes of attributing thoughts, desires, and motives to other people. In the early days of prose fiction, Master F.J. thus shows us the potentially disturbing entanglement between sexual nonconsent and one of the central tools and methods of literary narrative: its practice of channeling the voices of others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence has been a hot topic in recent years, particularly as it relates to warfare and military operations. While rational choice approaches have been widely used to understand the causes of war, there is little literature on using the rational choice methodology to investigate the role of AI in warfare systematically. This paper aims to fill this gap by exploring how rational choice models can inform our understanding of the power and limitations of AI in warfare. This theoretical approach suggests (a) an increase in the demand for moral judgment due to a reduction in the price of AI and (b) that without a human in the AI decision-making loop, peace is impossible; the very nature of AI rules out peace through mutually assured destruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Disgust, a fundamental human emotion, is triggered by unpleasant stimuli. Previous research has demonstrated its influence on judgments of both moral and non-moral behaviors. This study addresses the gaps in existing literature and controversies by investigating the impact of disgust on immoral and non-moral behavior using the emotional priming paradigm and Approach-Avoidance Task (AAT). Additionally, the study examines how individuals' propensity for disgust affects moral judgment. The findings reveal that, compared to neutral priming, participants exhibit a greater tendency to avoid non-moral behaviors when primed with disgust. This is evidenced by a higher Avoidance-Approach Rate D-value. Furthermore, a positive correlation is observed between individuals' disgust propensity scores and the Avoidance-Approach Rate D-value for non-moral behaviors under disgust priming. These results support the moralization hypothesis and highlight the link between disgust and moral judgment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exposure to potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs) among combat veterans has been acknowledged as a significant stressful combat event that may lead to various mental health problems, including depression and moral injury (MI), outcomes of shame and guilt. Recent studies have examined both risk and protective factors that can contribute to PMIEs and their consequences. However, while the general level of one's moral judgment is a logical contributor to moral injuries, it has yet to be examined empirically. In the current study, we examined the unique impact of moral judgment levels on the experience of PMIEs among combat veterans. We also examined the moderating role of moral judgment in the relationship between PMIEs and MI outcomes and depressive symptoms. A volunteer sample of 70 male Israeli combat veterans completed self-report questionnaires and a moral judgment task in a cross-sectional design study. Our findings indicate that moral judgment contributed to higher levels of perceiving others' actions as transgressive (PMIE-Other), above and beyond combat exposure. Moreover, we found that moral judgment has a moderating role in the link between PMIEs and their negative outcomes: Among veterans with higher levels of moral judgment, the association between PMIEs and their expressions was stronger than for those with lower levels of moral judgment. Our finding highlights the unique contribution of moral judgment level to PMIEs and their mental health consequences. It can be cautiously suggested that moral judgment should be viewed as a pre-recruitment risk factor that can help identify those at greater risk for mental health problems following exposure to PMIEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Studies have investigated cognitive and emotional processes related to moral judgment, with recent findings showing sex-related differences in moral reasoning. This study aimed to investigate sex differences in acceptability and emotional states in relation to resolving moral dilemmas, comparing Brazil and Spain. The sample consisted of: 333 Brazilian participants (46.2% men and 53.8% women) and 292 Spanish participants (45.5% men and 54.5% women), aged between 18 and 39 years. They read and judged five utilitarian and deontological moral dilemmas. Main results: men presented higher scores in acceptability and lower scores in emotional states; the Spanish subsample scored higher in both variables; there was no interaction between gender and country; sex predicted acceptability only in the second utilitarian dilemma. The results suggest that moral transgressions are more acceptable to men and Spanish people. This suggests that sociocultural factors are important for a proper understanding of morality.

Joshua Greene has famously argued for two distinct processes of how humans make moral judgments. Despite a lively controversy around potential normative implications of this view, less attention has been paid to those philosophical assumptions that are fundamental to Greene’s dual-process theory itself. In this paper, I argue that Greene’s dual-process theory hinges on a modular account of cognition and the brain, and I critically discuss the plausibility of Greene’s view in light of increasing popularity of dynamical systems accounts in cognitive science. If we reject modularity and adopt a dynamical systems perspective instead, we can still hope to find relative differences in the functional specialization of dynamic brain networks within one interconnected system, but Greene’s original theory in terms of two asymmetrically independent processes will no longer be tenable. This imposes constraints on the kind of explanations that we can expect from an empirically informed ethics in that only non-exclusive dual-process theories would be compatible with a dynamical systems account. Ultimately, however, the controversy around the modularity of mind should not be misconceived as a purely empirical question, but rather as a matter of conflicting epistemic standards as to what qualifies as a good explanation in cognitive science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological advancements and augmenting technologies foster competitiveness and improved performance for businesses, nations, and individuals. The potential of memory implants offers a competitive edge to individuals seeking higher performance levels. The present study investigates whether the trait of competitiveness predicts the intention to use memory implants and explores how moral equity, egoism, and utilitarianism moderate this relationship. A total of 402 digital native technology users from four countries participated in the study. The results revealed a significant positive relationship between competitiveness traits and the intention to use memory implants. Furthermore, this relationship is weaker for individuals scoring high on moral equity against memory implants but stronger for those scoring high on utilitarianism in favor of memory implants. Egoism did not influence this relationship. This research improves the understanding of how competitiveness traits and ethical judgments influence the acceptance of human–machine hybrid technologies, enhancing competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research has shown that individuals tend to make norm-based (deontological) moral choices more frequently when observed by real humans. Our aim in this study was to explore whether this phenomenon extends to virtual observers. Sixty-two participants (39 women, 22 men and 1 non-binary) with mean age of 24.95 (SD = 5.70, age range 19-44) were presented with textual moral dilemmas, both in the presence of a virtual observer and alone. Prior to making the moral judgment, Skin Conductance Response (SCR) was recorded upon presentation of the moral dilemma in order to assess potential modulation of moral decisions by physiological arousal. Moral judgments were modulated by both the physiological arousal immediately preceding the decision and the directness of the dilemma (a personal dilemma involves direct harm; an impersonal one does not). Higher arousal was associated with more frequent utilitarian choices in personal dilemmas, but no effect in impersonal choices. We did not observe any impact of the virtual character's presence on the moral decisions, thus demonstrating the potential bounds within which a virtual character can shape human behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The deviant behavior (DB) of construction workers has always been a troubling event in project management. Although scholars continue to search for the main causes of this behavior to curb it at the source, the authors know less about the role and contribution of the team. This study aims to uncover the mechanisms and conditions under which collective moral judgment focus on self (CMJS) effectively enhances DB. Design/methodology/approach: Adopting Chinese construction enterprises as samples, a hierarchical linear model (HLM) is used to test the results of the hypothesis. Moderated mediating effects are used to analyze the potential mechanisms and boundary conditions of DB. Findings: The results of the HLM analysis show that CMJS could directly and significantly induce DB, and moral disengagement (MD) plays a mediator role in this association. In addition, the positive relationship between MD and DB is stronger when performance-avoidance goal orientation (PaGO) or overqualification (Overq) is higher. Research limitations/implications: The conditions and mechanisms that influence DB are not unique. Future study could examine the explanatory and weighting mechanisms of DB from other perspectives or to construct a framework and summarize the factors that may influence DB. Practical implications: This study provides a rich theoretical basis for the prevention and correction of construction workers' DB in Chinese construction firms from the perspective of CMJS. In addition, objective moral judgments contribute to guiding employees' moral cognitive processes and positive work. Originality/value: This study extends existing research on DB and advances the practical outcomes of construction project governance. It not only illustrates that CMJS has a direct impact on DB but also clarifies the mechanisms and conditions that predispose to the generation of DB, filling the research gap on construction workers' DB from cross-level mechanisms and also enriching the theoretical system for preventing this behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractDesigning courses which enhance the holistic formation of students, integrating knowledge, skills, competencies, capacity for reflection, judgment and moral choice, brings challenges for learning design, particularly in distance and online learning contexts. In theological education these challenges are widely discussed, yet there are not yet evidence-based design principles for designing online courses to support student formation in these contexts. We used a design-based research approach to collaboratively develop, implement, and evaluate a complex design solution to support and enhance holistic student formation at an Australian theological college. Over three cycles of implementation we collected data from students and educators on the impact of 21 asynchronous online subjects on student formation, and iteratively reviewed the design conjectures. Through this iterative process we identified which design elements and pedagogies were effective in contributing to holistic student formation and developed ten design principles. These principles and the reflections offered on the process of refining design conjectures into design principles will be of interest to educators and designers in theological and other online learning contexts which aim to support holistic student formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Loyalty is considered central to people's moral life, yet little is known about how people think about what it means to be loyal. We used a prototype approach to understand how loyalty is represented in Colombia and the United States and how these representations mediate attributions of loyalty and moral judgments of loyalty violations. Across seven studies (N = 1,984), we found cross-cultural similarities in the associative meaning of loyalty (Study 1) but found differences in the centrality of features associated with loyalty (Study 2) and the latent structure of loyalty representations (Study 3). Colombians represent loyalty in terms of more general moral characteristics, while U.S. participants represent loyalty in terms of interpersonal commitment, both in contrast with current approaches to loyalty. By comparing representations of loyalty and honesty, we establish that differences in loyalty conceptualizations reflect a different way of thinking about loyalty rather than morality more generally (Study 4). Further, Colombians attributed greater loyalty to individuals with general moral characteristics compared to participants from the U.S. sample (Study 5) and were more likely to classify nonloyal values as loyalty-related (Study 6). While the centrality of prototypical features predicts categorizing norm violations as loyalty-related, differences in prototypical structure account for differences in the severity of moral judgment for such violations (Study 7), which suggests that loyalty representations have similar functions, even though these representations differ in structural characteristics. Public Significance Statement: Do people think differently about loyalty in other cultures? This study suggests that Colombians represent loyalty differently than people in the United States. For Colombians, general moral qualities of honesty, kindness, and caring are more central to being loyal. Differences in thinking about loyalty were associated with differences in how people from Colombia and the United States make moral judgments about loyalty violations. Theoretically, our results challenge the descriptive adequacy of theoretical characterizations of loyalty in terms of individual-to-group commitments. Methodologically, our studies provide a model of how prototype analysis can help design culturally sensitive instruments to study variation in moral attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study employs Bayesian inference to explore class-based differences in moral judgment. Based on the dual-process perspective in interdisciplinary action theory, we estimate in a first step a process model which differentiates parametrically between emotionally driven deontological, deliberatively driven utilitarian, and residual judgmental inclinations. In a second step, our estimates of these parameters are correlated via beta regressions with indicators of social class and thinking dispositions. We find a considerable association between social class, specifically income, and deontological inclinations, whereas consequentialist inclinations correlate with thinking dispositions but not with social class. This research underscores the utility of Bayesian estimation in closing the gap between theoretical and statistical modelling. Employing this approach enhances our understanding of the nuanced interplay between intuitive and deliberative processes in moral judgment and, more generally, offers a promising direction for advancing sociological action theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The change in moral attitude due to discrimination of the degree of reality of thought is an unexplored potential effect of mindfulness training. In this article we examine whether the mindfulness training of novices reduces the defensive reaction to normative transgressions when the threatening thought is salient, that is, a thought that stands out regardless of the objective reality that threatens self-survival. To test the study hypotheses, we used a bifactorial design mindfulness training (pre vs. post) x threatened thought salience (low vs high) in a sample of 115 participants. The dependent variable (punishment of social norm transgression) was measured on two different occasions: (1) pre-training (T1), (2) after training (T2). One group receives training in mindfulness in the threatened thought salience low condition (N = 47), and a second group receives the same training in the threatened thought salience high condition (N = 38). A third group did not receive training in threatening thought salience high condition (N = 30). The results show that training mindfulness reduces moral punishment with high threatening thought salience and reduces moral judgment with low threatening thought salience. The shift in reactivity (punishment) is more representative of a MT effect than the shift in moral judgment (seriousness). Implications of the results and limitations of the study are also explored [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research on people's moral judgments about moral dilemmas has revealed a connection between utilitarian judgment and reflective cognitive style. This has traditionally been interpreted as reflection is conducive to utilitarianism. However, recent research shows that the connection between reflective cognitive style and utilitarian judgments holds only when participants are asked whether the utilitarian option is permissible, and disappears when they are asked whether it is recommended. To explain this phenomenon, we propose that reflective cognitive style is associated with a greater moral leniency—that is, a greater tendency to be tolerant of moral violations, and that moral leniency predicts utilitarian judgment when utilitarian judgment is measured through permissibility. In Study 1 (N = 192), we design a set of vignettes to assess moral leniency. In Studies 2 and 3 (N = 455, 428), we show that reflective cognitive style is indeed associated with greater moral leniency, and that moral leniency mediates the connection between cognitive style and utilitarian judgment. We discuss the implication of our results for the interpretation of the relationship between utilitarianism and reflective cognitive style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People often perceive their moral judgments as objective and unbiased, yet research indicates that positive interpersonal attitudes lead to more lenient moral character assessments. Here we investigate how likeability towards moral transgressors and the different moral rationalization strategies they may employ impact both the perceived severity of the immoral behavior and the attribution of humanity to the transgressor. In two studies, participants (N = 475) engaged in a 2 (likeability towards the transgressor: high vs. low) × 2 (moral rationalization: reconstruction of agency vs. reconstruction of morality) between-subjects experiment. Participants read information about an individual and an immoral action they engaged in and then evaluated the severity of the behavior and the degree of dehumanization of the transgressor. Results showed that feelings of likeability towards the transgressor, as well as rationalizing by reconstructing agency (compared to morality) reduced behavior severity and transgressor dehumanization. Moreover, likeability and the use of agency reconstruction by the transgressor showed an additive effect, as they combined to generate the most benevolent judgments. Recognizing the influence of these variables enhances our understanding of moral decision-making processes in interpersonal contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kant presented the schema of reason as the source of human actions. This schema is referred to as critical through his specific work. This critical investigation, on the other hand, determines boundaries within the framework of duty, authority and working principles. For example, during his studies on the faculty of understanding, Kant investigated what a person could know by getting to know the mind better, even if he could not know the thing in itself. He mentioned other faculties of reason for issues outside this boundary. The faculty of understanding and the schema belonging to this section, as well as the problems and functioning of this field, were systematically explained. For this reason, Kant, who showed thinking as a form of judgment, made important distinctions between logical judgments and moral judgments. However, Kant caused a gap that overshadowed the success he achieved in the first two critiques. The third critique was designed to both close this gap, strengthen the distinctions between judgments and finally examine aesthetic and teleological judgment forms. In general terms, the power of judgment, which is determined as a faculty between reason and understanding, is explained as the ability to think "under a particular universal". The determining power of judgment is the power that makes it special under the given laws. The power that the particular is given and that the law must be found for the particular is the power of reflective judgment. Aesthetic judgment is not a judgment of knowledge or morality. It is not objective like them. It is subjective because it is based on pleasure and non-pleasure. Because it is related to pleasure. Since the problems related to the faculty of judgment are very diverse and it tries to define more than one form of judgment, aesthetic judgments are touched upon in this study. In this direction, concepts such as common sense, imagination, pleasure, unpleasure, beauty and the sublime are examined. One of the basic characteristics of the faculty of judgment is the attainment of a reflective form of judgment in the context of pleasure, the beautiful and the sublime image and conceptualizations. How the thought that begins with aesthetic experience is gathered under a general expression also deserves to be discussed. One of the main purposes of this study is how Kant establishes aesthetic experience and how he criticizes whether a priori principles can be obtained under reflective judgment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]