Moral condemnation of harmful behavior is influenced by both cognitive and affective processes. However, despite much recent research, the proximate source of affect remains unclear. One obvious contender is empathy; simulating the victim's pain could lead one to judge an action as wrong ("outcome aversion"). An alternative, less obvious source is one's own aversion to performing the action itself ("action aversion"). To dissociate these alternatives, we developed a scale that assessed individual aversions to (a) witnessing others experience painful outcomes (e.g., seeing someone fall down stairs); and (b) performing actions that are harmless yet aversive (e.g., stabbing a fellow actor with a fake stage knife). Across 4 experiments, we found that moral condemnation of both first-person and third-party harmful behavior in the context of moral dilemmas is better predicted by one's aversion to action properties than by an affective response to victim suffering. In a fifth experiment, we manipulated both action aversion and the degree of expected suffering across a number of actions and found that both factors make large, independent contributions to moral judgment. Together, these results suggest we may judge others' actions by imagining what it would feel like to perform the action rather than experience the consequences of the action. Accordingly, they provide a counterpoint to a dominant but largely untested assumption that empathy is the key affective response governing moral judgments of harm.
Heishman, AD, Daub, BD, Miller, RM, Freitas, EDS, Frantz, BA, and Bemben, MG. Countermovement jump reliability performed with and without an arm swing in NCAA Division 1 intercollegiate basketball players. J Strength Cond Res XX(X): 000-000, 2018-The countermovement jump (CMJ) is routinely used in athlete performance to quantify adaptions to training, as well as monitor neuromuscular readiness and fatigue. However, controversy remains in whether to incorporate an arm swing during the CMJ (CMJ AS) or keep the hands placed on the hips (CMJ NAS). Incorporating the arms provides a higher degree of sport-specificity that may yield improved reliability, especially in skilled jumpers. By contrast, the hands-on-hips approach isolates lower extremity force production and eliminates potential arm-swing variation. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to establish the reliability of CMJ typical (CMJ-TYP), CMJ concentric alternative (CMJ-Conc-ALT), and CMJ eccentric alternative (CMJ-Ecc-ALT) variables obtained during the CMJ AS and CMJ NAS. Twenty-two (men = 14, women = 8) NCAA Division 1 collegiate basketball players performed 3 CMJ AS and 3 CMJ NAS on a force plate, in a randomized order. To assess the test-retest reliability, participants returned 1 week later to perform 3 additional CMJ AS and 3 CMJ NAS. Intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and coefficient of variation (CV) were used to assess intersession and intrasession reliability for the various CMJ variables. A majority of CMJ-TYP and several CMJ-Conc-ALT and CMJ-Ecc-ALT variables exhibited adequate intersession and intrasession reliability (ICC > 0.700 and CV <10%) during both the CMJ AS and the CMJ NAS. Countermovement jump AS may provide more pertinent information about long-term changes in sport-specific performance, whereas the CMJ NAS may be more beneficial for detecting acute changes in neuromuscular fatigue and athlete readiness.
Many studies attest to the critical role of affect in the condemnation of harmful actions, but few attempt to identify the precise representations underlying this affective response. We propose a distinction between two potential sources of affect: an aversion to the negative outcomes of an action versus an aversion grounded in the action itself. Whereas previous models have focused on outcomeoriented processes (e.g. empathy and victim perspective-taking), we argue that moral judgment is also strongly influenced by action-based aversions. Specifically, we propose that individuals engage in a process of 'evaluative simulation' when judging others, imagining how much it would bother them to perform the same action. Furthermore, we present evidence that this aversion can be based in superficial sensory or motor properties of the action. We consider how such 'action aversions' might be acquired, and we highlight important areas for future research. 708 Aversive for Me, Wrong for You Social and Personality Psychology Compass 7/10 (2013): 707-718, 10.1111/spc3.12066
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