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PubMed1999

The relationship between moral decision making and patterns of consolidation and transition in moral judgment development.

Following models that describe intraindividual correlates of stage transitions (S. S. Snyder & D. H. Feldman, 1984), this study assessed the relation between a measure of consolidation and transition in moral judgment development and the utility of moral concepts in sociomoral decision making. The study extends previous research in suggesting that individuals use moral concepts differently as they cycle through periods of consolidation and transition. With multiple cross-sectional and longitudinal samples, findings indicate that participants' reliance on a Kohlbergian moral framework as measured by the Defining Issues Test is highest during periods of consolidation and lowest during transitions. As participants move into periods of consolidation, the utility of moral stage information increases. Thus, this study indicates that the consolidation and transition model can be used to help identify individuals who are more or less likely to use Kohlberg's moral stages in their moral decision making.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed1993

Coping, defending, and the relations between moral judgment and moral behavior in prostitutes and other female juvenile delinquents.

Twenty female juvenile delinquents who acknowledged engaging in prostitution, 20 juvenile delinquents who denied doing so, and 20 same-age control subjects responded to Colby and Kohlberg's (1987) Moral Judgment Interview (MJI), a moral dilemma about prostitution, and Joffe and Naditch's (1977) test of coping and defending. Delinquents scored lower on moral maturity and coping and higher on defensiveness than nondelinquents. Post hoc analyses revealed that low-coping delinquents (but not high-coping delinquents or control subjects) made significantly lower level moral judgments on the prostitution dilemma than on the less personally relevant MJI dilemmas. Groups did not differ in their prescriptive judgments on the MJI, but prostitutes made weaker judgments against prostitution than the other delinquents. Prescriptive judgments were not related to moral maturity. The results elucidate the relation between moral judgment and moral behavior.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1999

Moral hypocrisy: appearing moral to oneself without being so.

How can people appear moral to themselves when they fail to act morally? Two self-deception strategies were considered: (a) misperceive one's behavior as moral and (b) avoid comparing one's behavior with moral standards. In Studies 1 and 2 the authors documented the importance of the 2nd strategy but not the 1st. Among participants who flipped a coin to assign themselves and another participant "fairly" to tasks, even a clearly labeled coin that prevented misperception did not produce a fair result (Study 1). Inducing behavior-standard comparison through self-awareness did (Study 2). Study 3 qualified the self-awareness effect: When moral standards were not salient before acting, self-awareness no longer increased alignment of behavior with standards. Instead, it increased alignment of standards with behavior and produced less moral action. Overall, results showed 3 different faces of moral hypocrisy.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Defense mechanisms and morality: a link between isolation and moralization.

The relationship between morality and perceptual defense mechanisms was studied. Three new scales were constructed to measure different aspects of morality: moralism (the tendency to evaluate everything in terms of right and wrong), conscience (strength of feelings of right and wrong) and reparation (inclination to repair the damage one has caused). Perceptual defense mechanisms were measured with Kragh's Defense Mechanism Test (DMT). Three hypotheses about relationships between morality and defense mechanisms, derived from psychoanalytical literature, were tested on 54 male University students. Results show positive correlations between the defense mechanism isolation of affect and moralism, and between identification with the aggressor and reparation. Total amount of perceptual defense correlated positively with moralism. It is argued that the psychological study of morality should take unconscious processes into consideration.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Perils of proximity: a spatiotemporal analysis of moral distress and moral ambiguity.

The physical nearness, or proximity, inherent in the nurse-patient relationship has been central in the discipline as definitive of the nature of nursing and its moral ideals. Clearly, this nearness is in service to those in need of care. This proximity, however, is not unproblematic because it contributes to two of the most prolonged difficulties, both for individual nurses and the discipline of nursing--moral distress and moral ambiguity. In this paper we explore proximity using both a moral and geographical lens and offer some insights regarding this practice reality. We examine the effect of proximity to patients on nurses' moral responsiveness, particularly as it affects nurses' moral distress. Proximity is paradoxical in this regard because, while it propels nurses to act, it can also propel nurses to ignore or abandon. Likewise, we argue that nursing's tendency to define itself in relation to the closeness of the nurse-patient relationship leads to problems of moral ambiguity. Our recommendations include moving others closer to the bedside and thus to the work of nursing in the literal and theoretical sense.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2004

Integrity and moral residue: nurses as participants in a moral community.

This paper will examine the concepts of integrity and moral residue as they relate to nursing practice in the current health care environment. I will begin with my definition and conception of ethical practice, and, based on that, will go on to argue for the importance of recognizing that nurses often find themselves in the position of compromising their moral integrity in order to maintain their self-survival in the hospital or health care environment. I will argue that moral integrity is necessary to a moral life, and is relational in nature. When integrity is threatened, the result is moral distress, moral residue, and in some cases, abandonment of the profession. The solution will require more than teaching bioethics to nursing students and nurses. It will require changes in the health care environment, organizational culture and the education of nurses, with an emphasis on building a moral community as an environment in which to practise ethically.

Ethics, Nursing↗
PubMed2002

The neural correlates of moral sensitivity: a functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation of basic and moral emotions.

Humans are endowed with a natural sense of fairness that permeates social perceptions and interactions. This moral stance is so ubiquitous that we may not notice it as a fundamental component of daily decision making and in the workings of many legal, political, and social systems. Emotion plays a pivotal role in moral experience by assigning human values to events, objects, and actions. Although the brain correlates of basic emotions have been explored, the neural organization of "moral emotions" in the human brain remains poorly understood. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and a passive visual task, we show that both basic and moral emotions activate the amygdala, thalamus, and upper midbrain. The orbital and medial prefrontal cortex and the superior temporal sulcus are also recruited by viewing scenes evocative of moral emotions. Our results indicate that the orbital and medial sectors of the prefrontal cortex and the superior temporal sulcus region, which are critical regions for social behavior and perception, play a central role in moral appraisals. We suggest that the automatic tagging of ordinary social events with moral values may be an important mechanism for implicit social behaviors in humans.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Moral awareness and ethical predispositions: investigating the role of individual differences in the recognition of moral issues.

The impact of the role of individual ethical predispositions, preferences for utilitarian and formalistic ideals, on managerial moral awareness was examined in 2 studies. Results suggested that a manager's ethical predispositions influence his or her responses to the characteristics of the moral issue. Both utilitarianism and formalism shaped moral awareness, but formalism demonstrated a greater capacity to do so in that formalists recognized both harm and the violation of a behavioral norm as indicators of the moral issue, whereas utilitarians responded only to harm. These findings provide support for the basic arguments underlying theories of moral development and offer several implications for the study and practice of moral awareness in organizations.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Moral identity and the expanding circle of moral regard toward out-groups.

This article examines moral identity and reactions to out-groups during intergroup conflict Four studies suggest that a highly self-important moral identity is associated with an expansive circle of moral regard toward out-group members (Study 1) and more favorable attitudes toward relief efforts to aid out-group members (Study 2). Study 3 examines moral identity and national identity influences on the provision of financial assistance to out-groups. Study 4 investigates the relationship between moral identity and (a) the willingness to harm innocent out-group members not involved in the conflict and (b) moral judgments of revenge and forgiveness toward out-group members directly responsible for transgressions against the in-group. Results are discussed in terms of self-regulatory mechanisms that mitigate in-group favoritism and out-group hostility.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

The moral universe of injecting drug users in the era of AIDS: sharing injecting equipment and the protection of moral standing.

Recent work on HIV counselling suggests that the protection of the moral status of the recipient is a key factor in the successful uptake of advice. This study suggests it may be equally important in the uptake of health promotion messages. A discourse analysis of the talk of 20 young injecting drug users (IDUs) identified a contradiction between their asserted self-identity as careful and socially responsible injectors, and their admission of risky lending and borrowing of injecting equipment. This contradiction was resolved by the production of discourses of exoneration, differentially tailored to the moral implications of lending and of borrowing. Lenders argued a form of 'market morality' wherein it was the duty of each to accept the consequences of his/her decisions. Lenders were therefore morally exonerated since moral failure was the 'borrowers'. Borrowing was usually depicted as 'desperate measures' for which moral culpability was disavowed because of 'powerlessness'. The exception of routine borrowing, acknowledged as risky and against community norms, was accounted for in a nihilistic discourse of indifference to infection and death. The need for a 'counter discourse' around notions of community is discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

Psychiatry, moral worry, and the moral emotions.

There has been increased philosophical, psychological, and, more recently, psychiatric interest in the moral emotions, most specifically the emotions of guilt, shame, regret, and remorse. Interest in these emotions has not been in their role as symptoms of a particular mental illness, but in their presence in everyday life and in their importance in defining our character and our very humanity. Moral emotions are those emotions that arise in the context of life experiences and daily choices that bear upon our perceptions of the rightness or wrongness of particular actions or inactions. Human beings have a moral scanner that constantly provides both a cognitive judgment and a feeling tone of ease or unease in the moral evaluation of life's moment-to-moment activities. This paper discusses the intersection of psychiatry and the moral emotions, providing case examples and a review of empirical studies to illustrate the relevance of patients' concerns about their moral choices to psychiatric evaluation and practice.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Moral balance: the effect of prior behaviour on decision in moral conflict.

Two studies examined predictions from the 'moral balance' model, according to which moral decisions are affected by evaluation of the actor's moral status based on his/her recent moral history. It was found that people are more willing to allow a deviation to, and believe that this should generate less guilt in, a person who generally behaves morally than in one who generally behaves immorally. It was also found that an unworthy act by a person (self or other) who has recently behaved morally is evaluated less severely than the same act performed by one who has recently behaved immorally. This trend for normative judgements is contrary to that found for descriptive judgements: a person who has recently behaved immorally is perceived as more likely to choose to act improperly and to feel less guilty. This discrepancy between normative and descriptive judgements is analysed in terms of the distinction between attributions to trait as opposed to effort, to trait as opposed to situation, and between those made from the perspective of actors as opposed to observers.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

Aiming towards "moral equilibrium": health care professionals' views on working within the morally contested field of antenatal screening.

OBJECTIVE: To explore the ways in which health care practitioners working within the morally contested area of prenatal screening balance their professional and private moral values. DESIGN: Qualitative study incorporating semistructured interviews with health practitioners followed by multidisciplinary discussion groups led by a health care ethicist. SETTING: Inner city teaching hospital and district general hospital situated in South East England. PARTICIPANTS: Seventy practitioners whose work relates directly or indirectly to perinatal care. RESULTS: Practitioners managed the interface between their professional and private moral values in a variety of ways. Two key categories emerged: "tolerators", and "facilitators". The majority of practitioners fell into the "facilitator" category. Many "facilitators" felt comfortable with the prevailing ethos within their unit, and appeared unlikely to feel challenged unless the ethos was radically challenged. For others, the separation of personal and professional moral values was a daily struggle. In the "tolerator" group, some practitioners sought to influence the service offered directly, whereas others placed limits on how they themselves would contribute to practices they considered immoral. CONCLUSIONS: The "official" commitment to non-directiveness does not encourage open debate between professionals working in morally contested fields. It is important that practical means can be found to support practitioners and encourage debate. Otherwise, it is argued, these fields may come to be staffed by people with homogeneous moral views. This lack of diversity could lead to a lack of critical analysis and debate among staff about the ethos and standards of care within their unit.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed2000

Moral hazard: a question of morality?

Economists use the term moral hazard to describe the tendency for insurance plans to encourage behavior that increases the risk of insured loss. Numerous economic studies have examined moral hazard effects in workers' compensation. Many of these have focused on the supposed propensity of workers to exercise less caution or to file more claims in response to increases in workers' compensation benefit levels. Although many authorities insist that moral hazard is a value-neutral concept, there are often pejorative connotations associated with contemporary discussions of moral hazard that intentionally or unintentionally disparage the motives of workers and undermine public support for workers' compensation programs. This article critically examines that literature and explores the conceptual underpinnings of economists' claims that employee moral hazard is rampant in workers' compensation. We examine the historical roots of moral hazard and its role in recent economic analyses of workers' compensation, consider the practical and ethical implications of that discourse, and offer suggestions for a truly value-neutral approach that would describe the system more fairly and accurately.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1987

Social influence on group moral decisions: the interactive effects of moral reasoning and sex role orientation.

In this study, we examined the effects of moral reasoning level and sex role orientation on social influence in group decision making. We predicted that these two individual difference constructs would have an interactive effect such that people who are compatible or nonconflicted on the two dimensions would have more influence on a group task with moral implications than would people who are conflicted. All subjects individually completed a distributive decision task that required ranking terminally ill patients for access to a life-saving kidney machine. They then met in small groups and reached a group decision on the same task. The subjects' moral reasoning level and sex role orientation--assessed via the Rest Defining Issues Test (Rest, 1979) and the Bem Sex Role Inventory (Bem, 1974), respectively--were used to predict influence on the group decision. Influence was measured in three ways: similarity between individual and group ranks, self-rated influence, and selection of the most influential group member. The results of all three influence measures provided support for the interactive hypothesis. In the discussion we consider the implications of the data for individual difference models of moral reasoning, the need for further understanding of goal competition and personality conflict, and the importance of considering the impact of moral factors on group decision-making proceses.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Confronting deep moral disagreement: the President's Council on Bioethics, moral status, and human embryos.

The report of the President's Council on Bioethics, Human Cloning and Human Dignity, addresses the central ethical, political, and policy issue in human embryonic stem cell research: the moral status of extracorporeal human embryos. The Council members were in sharp disagreement on this issue and essentially failed to adequately engage and respectfully acknowledge each others' deepest moral concerns, despite their stated commitment to do so. This essay provides a detailed critique of the two extreme views on the Council (i.e., embryos have full moral status or they have none at all) and then gives theoretical grounding for our judgment about the intermediate moral status of embryos. It also supplies an account of how to address profound moral disagreements in the public arena, especially by way of constructing a middle ground that deliberately pays sincere respect to the views of those with whom it has deep disagreements.

Advisory Committees↗
PubMed2004

Moral conflict and collaborative mode as moral conflict resolution in health care.

Moral conflict as a complex moral issue in health care has emerged from several causes that are related to different values, beliefs and opinions. Moral conflict can occur when duties and obligations of health care providers or general guiding ethical principles are unclear. Health care providers and institutions or agencies need to resolve or initiate appropriate methods for professional staff so they can recognize, discuss and resolve moral conflicts in the health care delivery system. Collaborative mode is a useful method for moral conflict resolution, because patient care is a complex phenomenon that results from the integrated knowledge and work of individuals with different professional training. In the process of collaborative practice, all members need to respect each other's opinions, values and responsibilities regarding patient care.

Communication↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Aggression and moral development: integrating social information processing and moral domain models.

Social information processing and moral domain theories have developed in relative isolation from each other despite their common focus on intentional harm and victimization, and mutual emphasis on social cognitive processes in explaining aggressive, morally relevant behaviors. This article presents a selective summary of these literatures with the goal of showing how they can be integrated into a single, coherent model. An essential aspect of this integration is Crick and Dodge's (1994) distinction between latent mental structures and online processing. It is argued that moral domain theory is relevant for describing underlying mental structures regarding the nature and boundaries of what is moral, whereas the social information processing model describes the online information processing that affects application of moral structures during peer interactions.

Affect↗