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"Moral psychology"
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Ethical challenges in the behavioral and brain sciences : case studies and commentaries
\"In recent years, a growing number of scientific careers have been brought down by scientists' failure to satisfactorily confront ethical challenges. Scientists need to learn early on what constitutes acceptable ethical behavior in their professions. Ethical Principles for the Behavioral and Brain Sciences encourages readers to engage in discussions of the diverse ethical dilemmas encountered by behavioral and brain scientists. The goal is to allow scientists to reflect on ethical issues before potentially confronting them. Each chapter is authored by a prominent scientist in the field who describes a dilemma, how it was resolved, and what the scientist would do differently if confronted with the situation again. Featuring commentary throughout and a culmination of opinions and experiences shared by leaders in the field, the goal of this book is not to provide 'correct' answers to real-world ethical dilemmas. Instead, authors pose the dilemmas, discuss their experiences and viewpoints on them, and speculate on alternative reactions to the issues\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Evil and Moral Psychology
This book examines what makes someone an evil person and how evil people are different from merely bad people. Rather than focusing on the \"problem of evil\" that occupies philosophers of religion, Barry looks instead to moral psychology-the intersection of ethics and psychology. He provides both a philosophical account of what evil people are like and considers the implications of that account for social, legal, and criminal institutions. He also engages in traditional philosophical reasoning strongly informed by psychological research, especially abnormal and social psychology.
In response to the popularity of phrases like \"the axis of evil\" and the ease with which politicians and others describe their opponents as \"evil,\" Barry sets out to make clear just what it is to be an evil person.
eBook
The power of ideals : the real story of moral choice
\"Cynicism often seems a smarter choice than idealism. There are reasons for this. Politicians have disappointed us time and again; trusted institutions have proven to be self-serving and corrupt; hopes for lasting world peace repeatedly have been dashed; and social inequities persist and increase, unabated by even the grandest of charitable efforts. It is now considered foolish to think that people can be counted on to rise above their narrow self-interests to serve the broader good, or to tell the truth if it does not reflect well on the self. Supporting this bleak view of the human condition is a moral psychology that has taken increasingly cynical turns in recent years. Famous studies have shown that we have an almost unlimited potential for cruelty when placed in the wrong situations. The Power of Ideals presents a different vision, supported by a different kind of evidence. It examines the lives and work of six 20th century moral leaders who pursued moral causes ranging from world peace to social justice and human rights. Using these six cases to illustrate how people can make choices guided by their moral convictions, rather than by base emotion or social pressures, authors William Damon and Anne Colby explore the workings of three virtues: inner truthfulness, humility, and faith. Through their portrayal of the noble lives of moral leaders, the authors argue that all of us--with ordinary lives--can exercise control over important life decisions and pursue ideals that we believe in\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The Importance of Context in Moral Judgments
There is a gap between morality as experienced and morality as studied. In our personal and professional lives, moral judgments are embedded within a specific context. We know the who, what, where, and when and often can infer the why; we know the broader context of actions; and we may have a specific relationship with the actors. However, scholarly theorizing is often built on inferences from participants’responses to decontextualized, impoverished stimuli. In our quest for uncovering general psychological truths, moral psychologists have examined evaluations of poorly guarded trolleys, strangers with odd sexual proclivities, and endorsement of abstract principles. The four articles included in this section demonstrate the power of contextualizing morality. In the current article, I place these papers within a broader framework for how scholars can contextualize morality research. I then argue why contextualizing morality matters: not only do contextualized questions better reflect the nuances of reality but also contextualized judgments might be key for improving predictions of moral behavior and understanding moral change.
Journal Article
Benign Violations: Making Immoral Behavior Funny
Humor is an important, ubiquitous phenomenon; however, seemingly disparate conditions seem to facilitate humor. We integrate these conditions by suggesting that laughter and amusement result from violations that are simultaneously seen as benign. We investigated three conditions that make a violation benign and thus humorous: (a) the presence of an alternative norm suggesting that the situation is acceptable, (b) weak commitment to the violated norm, and (c) psychological distance from the violation. We tested the benign-violation hypothesis in the domain of moral psychology, where there is a strong documented association between moral violations and negative emotions, particularly disgust. Five experimental studies show that benign moral violations tend to elicit laughter and amusement in addition to disgust. Furthermore, seeing a violation as both wrong and not wrong mediates behavioral displays of humor. Our account is consistent with evolutionary accounts of laughter, explains humor across many domains, and suggests that humor can accompany negative emotion.
Journal Article
Concept Creep: Psychology's Expanding Concepts of Harm and Pathology
Many of psychology's concepts have undergone semantic shifts in recent years. These conceptual changes follow a consistent trend. Concepts that refer to the negative aspects of human experience and behavior have expanded their meanings so that they now encompass a much broader range of phenomena than before. This expansion takes \"horizontal\" and \"vertical\" forms: concepts extend outward to capture qualitatively new phenomena and downward to capture quantitatively less extreme phenomena. The concepts of abuse, bullying, trauma, mental disorder, addiction, and prejudice are examined to illustrate these historical changes. In each case, the concept's boundary has stretched and its meaning has dilated. A variety of explanations for this pattern of \"concept creep\" are considered and its implications are explored. I contend that the expansion primarily reflects an ever-increasing sensitivity to harm, reflecting a liberal moral agenda. Its implications are ambivalent, however. Although conceptual change is inevitable and often well motivated, concept creep runs the risk of pathologizing everyday experience and encouraging a sense of virtuous but impotent victimhood.
Journal Article
Virtuous violence : hurting and killing to create, sustain, end, and honor social relationships
\"What motivates violence? How can good and compassionate people hurt and kill others, or themselves? Why are people much more likely to kill or assault people they know well, rather than strangers? This provocative and radical book shows that people mostly commit violence because they genuinely feel that it is the morally right thing to do. In perpetrators' minds, violence may be the morally necessary and proper way to regulate social relationships according to cultural precepts, precedents and prototypes. These moral motivations apply equally to the violence of the heroes of the Iliad, to parents smacking their child, and many modern murders and everyday acts of violence. Virtuous Violence presents a wide-ranging exploration of violence across different cultures and historical eras, demonstrating how people feel obligated to violently create, sustain, end, and honor social relationships in order to make them right, according to morally motivated cultural ideals\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book