Reasons probably won’t change your mind: The role of reasons in revising moral decisions.

Stanley, Matthew L.; Dougherty, Ashley; Yang, Brenda W.; Henne, Paul; Brigard, Felipe De

doi:10.1037/xge0000368

Cited by 33 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…There might, however, be other differences between more general moral judgements and blame judgements, for example in adjustment size, which we did not explicitly assess here. Our findings starkly contrast with other previous research studying updating that reports rare and small judgement adjustments (Baron & Gürçay, 2017;Gürcay & Baron, 2017;Koop, 2013;Stanley et al, 2017). For instance, we found changes in moral judgement valence to occur in 22.3% of the trials on average, whereas these studies reported 1.2-4.8%.…”

Section: Adjustment Of Judgements After Learning Contextual Informationcontrasting

confidence: 99%

“…Decision reversals were rare, occurring between 1.2 -4.8% of all trials. Another study investigated moral judgement updating when participants were presented with reasons opposing the initial judgement (Stanley, Dougherty, Yang, Henne, & De Brigard, 2017). The authors reported that people rarely changed their initial judgement after considering the provided reasons.…”

Section: Moral Judgment Updatingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Moral judgements of fairness-related actions are flexibly updated to account for contextual information

Andrejević¹,

Feuerriegel²,

Turner³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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In everyday life we are constantly updating our moral judgements of people and actions as we learn new information. We developed a novel paradigm to investigate how people update their moral judgements of fairness-related actions upon receiving contextual information regarding the deservingness of the action recipient. Participants (N = 313) observed a variant of the dictator game, whereby a ‘Decision-maker’ was given 10 dollars and decided how much of this amount to share with another person termed the ‘Receiver’. Participants first made an initial, context-absent judgement of the Decision-maker’s offer to the Receiver, and then a subsequent judgement of the same offer after learning contextual information regarding the Receiver’s previous offer to another person (context-present judgement). This sequence was repeated for varying combinations of Decision-maker and Receiver offers. Functional Principle Component Analyses revealed that participants showed patterns of judgements across offers that were interpretable in relation to moral norms, but that these patterns varied across individuals. Participants who endorsed equal-split (5 dollar) offers in their context-absent judgements also endorsed offers made by Decision-makers that were similar to the previous offer made by the Receiver (i.e. indirectly reciprocal offers). Participants who endorsed high (>5 dollar) offers in context-absent judgements also endorsed Decision-maker offers that were more generous than those made by the Receiver. Our findings show that most participants flexibly switched from relying on commonly studied context-independent norms (generosity, equality), to relying on related, context-dependent norms (relative generosity, indirect reciprocity), as they successfully integrate contextual information. The paradigm we have developed also provides a novel framework for investigating how moral judgements evolve in real time as people learn more information about a given situation.

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Section: Adjustment Of Judgements After Learning Contextual Informationcontrasting

confidence: 99%

Section: Moral Judgment Updatingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moral judgements of fairness-related actions are flexibly updated to account for contextual information

Andrejević¹,

Feuerriegel²,

Turner³

et al. 2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In contrast to such approaches, experimental moral psychology examining individual decision-making explains that, "Moral judgments and decisions are often driven by automatic, affective responses, rather than explicit reasoning" [105], a fact which does not exclude the moral decisions of medical practitioners. Indeed, even when such reasoning is examined ex post facto, individuals are unlikely to change their minds on the initial decision taken [106]. Such experimental results are consonant with other studies published by neurocognitive psychologists such as Joshua Greene and Jonathan Haidt [107][108][109].…”

Section: Settling the Moral Dilemmasupporting

confidence: 82%

A Duty to treat? A Right to refrain? Bangladeshi physicians in moral dilemma during COVID-19

Swazo

Talukder

Ahsan

2020

Philos Ethics Humanit Med

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Background Normally, physicians understand they have a duty to treat patients, and they perform accordingly consistent with codes of medical practice, standards of care, and inner moral motivation. In the case of COVID-19 pandemic in a developing country such as Bangladesh, however, the fact is that some physicians decline either to report for duty or to treat patients presenting with COVID-19 symptoms. At issue ethically is whether such medical practitioners are to be automatically disciplined for dereliction of duty and gross negligence; or, on the contrary, such physicians may legitimately claim a professional right of autonomous judgment, on the basis of which professional right they may justifiably decline to treat patients. Methods This ethical issue is examined with a view to providing some guidance and recommendations, insofar as the conditions of medical practice in an under-resourced country such as Bangladesh are vastly different from medical practice in an industrialized nation such as the USA. The concept of moral dilemma as discussed by philosopher Michael Shaw Perry and philosopher Immanuel Kant’s views on moral appeal to “emergency” are considered pertinent to sorting through the moral conundrum of medical care during pandemic. Results Our analysis allows for conditional physician discretion in the decision to treat COVID-19 patients, i.e., in the absence of personal protective equipment (PPE) combined with claim of duty to family. Physicians are nonetheless expected to provide a minimum of initial clinical assessment and stabilization of a patient before initiating transfer of a patient to a “designated” COVID-19 hospital. The latter is to be done in coordination with the national center control room that can assure admission of a patient to a referral hospital prior to ambulance transport. Conclusions The presence of a moral dilemma (i.e., conflict of obligations) in the pandemic situation of clinical care requires institutional authorities to exercise tolerance of individual physician moral decision about the duty to care. Hospital or government authority should respond to such decisions without introducing immediate sanction, such as suspension from all clinical duties or termination of licensure, and instead arrange for alternative clinical duties consistent with routine medical care.

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“…Some have suggested that reasoning over moral principles may be a better basis for decision-making (Bloom, 2016(Bloom, , 2017aSlovic, 2007). Yet people reason in a motivated fashion to reach desired conclusions (Kunda, 1990;Mercier & Sperber, 2011), and often precisely in moral contexts where reasoning is encouraged (e.g., Stanley et al, 2017). Truly objective reasoning may require effort, and be exhausting in ways that are comparable to empathy.…”

Section: What Are the Alternatives?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The ends of empathy: Constructing empathy from value-based choice

Cameron¹,

Cunningham²,

Saunders³

et al. 2017

Preprint

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Empathy, or the ability to understand and resonate with the experiences of others, has long been considered by philosophers and scientists to be an important part of human morality. We present a new framework that explains empathy as resulting from motivated decisions. Drawing on models of cybernetic control, value-based choice, and constructionism, we suggest that empathy shifts depending on how people value and prioritize conflicting goals. We generate novel predictions about the nature of empathy from the science of goal pursuit, and address its apparent limitations. Empathy appears less sensitive to suffering of large numbers and out-groups, leading some to suggest that empathy is an unreliable ethical guide. Whereas these arguments assume that empathy is a limited-capacity resource, we suggest that apparent limits of empathy reflect byproducts of domain-general goal pursuit. Arguments against empathy reflect a misguided essentialism: they mistake our own choices to avoid empathy for intrinsic features of empathy, treating empathy as a capricious emotion in conflict with reason. We suggest that empathy results from a rational decision, even if its rationality is bounded, as in many decisions in everyday life. Empathy may only be limited if we choose to avoid pursuing empathic goals.Ends of empathy 3 "Empathy isn't just something that happens to us-a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain-it's also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It's made of exertion, the dowdier cousin of impulse." -Leslie Jamison (2014), The Empathy ExamsIn the summer of 2016, empathy went viral. The world learned about Harambe, a silverback gorilla in the Cincinnati Zoo who was shot and killed by zookeepers in an attempt to save the life of a child who had fallen into his enclosure. In the aftermath of the incident, people around the world expressed support for Harambe in a variety of ways, ranging from social media posts to charitable donations to Harambe tattoos. Empathy for Harambe became a meme in its own right. On the other hand, many people appeared to lack empathy for the zookeepers, the child, and the child's mother, to the point that some even issued death threats. This example reveals a broader point about empathy (and the lack thereof): it can feel effortless, contagious, a passion to which we are subject, rather than something we choose or control.Empathy-our ability to understand and resonate with the experiences of others-is typically considered an emotion, which can entail the conceptual baggage that many people associate with emotion. People often see emotions as passions that are out of our control, as something that happen to us. This idea has much precedent. The term derives from the Greek empatheia, which takes feeling or passion (pathos) and directs it at or into (em) someone else;this was adapted to the German Einfühlung ("feeling into"), and translated into English as empathy (Wispe, 1987). These traditions emphasize continuity of empathy with emotions, and in so doing, ca...

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Reasons probably won’t change your mind: The role of reasons in revising moral decisions.

Cited by 33 publications

References 64 publications

Moral judgements of fairness-related actions are flexibly updated to account for contextual information

Moral judgements of fairness-related actions are flexibly updated to account for contextual information

A Duty to treat? A Right to refrain? Bangladeshi physicians in moral dilemma during COVID-19

The ends of empathy: Constructing empathy from value-based choice

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