Lecture 1 - Values and morality Flashcards
1
Q
philosophy important debates
A
- are values/morals objective vs subjective?
- are moral judgements rational vs intuitive?
2
Q
what is social psychology
A
- allport (1935) - the discipline that seeks to understand how the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of indivs are influenced by actual imagined or implied presence of others
3
Q
values
A
- aim to understand: what people value, is there a set of universal values, impacts on behaviour, value-behaviour relationship
4
Q
schwartz values
A
- values are desirable goals and relate to behaviours and motivate our actions across all situations
- influence judgements of others as a criteria
- more important values are more influential
5
Q
theory - universal argument
A
- assumed to be universal as they fulfil indiv bio needs, social interaction and survival of groups
- values are grounded in these 3 universal requirements of human existance
- values are seen as inherently positive - we are satisfied with our values
- values justify our actions
- people believe it is harder to change values than traits
- how many values?
> Rokeach - 36: 18 terminal (world at peace, comfortable life etc) and 18 instrumental (forgiving, honest, capable etc) - schwartz (2012) 10. refined to 19
6
Q
10 basic values
A
- schwartz separated 10 values into social values related to communities & interactions, while personal values relate to the self
> social values: security, conformity, tradition, benevolence, universalism
> personal values: self direction, stimulation, hedonism, achievement, power - values tend to be represented in a circle. the circle means the theory assumes certain relationships between values
- actions we pursue have consequneces that conflict with some values but are congruent with others
- values on opp dimensions pursue dif goals
- values in same wedge share same broad motivational goal
- upper hald of valyes are about pusuit of goals for own development while values on lower half are more for reduction of uncertainty, protection of oneself and more susceptible to extrinsic rewards
7
Q
value measurement
A
- schwartz value survey - people rate how important a value is to them. enables people to report opposition to values they avoid promoting which is necessary for cross cultural studies
- PVQ- alt survey for children and people not educated in western school of thought. translated into pursuit of specific goals via description e.g. ‘like me’. assumes more similar you are to a statement the more important the value is. qu gender matches pp.
8
Q
value priorities
A
- women stronger preference for benevolence and universalism. men preference for power, sitmulation, hedonism, achievement and self direction.
- culture: structure is universal overall, individual-level difs larger than country-difs. only stable country differences explain more variance in pertaining to conformity & tradition (Fischer & Schwartz 2011)
- need to eliminate indiv difs in response scales
- cross cultural evidence from 82 countries shows each of 10 valyes is distinguished in at least 90% samples especially benevolence, universalism and self-direction
9
Q
the dynamic structure: organising principles
A
- behaviour in line with one value consequneces for others:
> conflict (opposite)
> congruent (next to) can both influence course of action
> no relation (not in line) - value expressive behaviours (behaviour is linked easily to a certain value e.g. helping others) vs value ambivalent behaviours (hard to say if behaviours are motivated by one value e.g. smoking can be expression of hedonism, self direction & stimulation or conformity to norms
10
Q
values and behaviour
A
- Bardi and schwartz (2003) - correlations show values may predict a behaviour
- values underlie attitudes which are used to evaluate people, behaviour and events etc. on a pos/neg scale.
- our values also affect whether we accept/reject norms
11
Q
A
12
Q
values and behaviour model
A
- argues for values to be translated into behaviours in a context they have to be activated e.g. universalism valuing nature, interpreted, then the action would be chosen
- people that value the same thing can choose different actions
- stronger correlation when behaviour seen as prototypical
- two ways to line up specific values and actions:
1. making actions more abstract when they are usually quite concrete
2. making values more concrete when they are usually quite abstract, putting values on same level as behaviours
13
Q
morality
A
- prescriptive judgements of justice, rights and welfare pertaining to how people ought to relate to each other
- moral systems are interlocking sets of moral values, practices, institutions and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible
- peoples beliefs about what is right moral and good and what is wrong immoral and evil
- common aspects:
> distinguishing right from wrong
> regulating social life - differences: how many? 1 vs 5 vs indefinite
14
Q
Gray Theory of Moral Mind
A
- mind perception entails ascribing mental capacities to other entities, whereas moral judgements entails labelling entities as good/bad or right/wrong (Gray et al 2012)
- mind perception 2 dimensions: experience (capacity to feel pain/pleasure) vs agenct (capacity to act vs intention to act)
- denying mind - moral disengagement and dehumanisation
- Gray assumes when we judge when someonthing was moral/immoral we look if someone has intention to act & the recipeint e.g earthquake vs 9/11
- morality = agent + patient
- template of perceived intentional moral agent and a suffering moral patient. builds into legal consequneces
- immoral/wrong = intent + sufferring
- law links to mind perception e.g. whether someone has mental capacity
- if we cannot find an agent or patient people still fill this template & judge something as immoral e.g. drug users & family sufferring
- we acsribe blame and responsibility to agent & moral right to patient
- moral typecasting:
> moral agents - seen as superheroes or villians resistant to pain
> moral patients (victims) seen as having less capacity to act - different emotions are felt towards agents/patients
15
Q
moral minds and robots
A
- robots used for aversion to making ethical decision - lack emotionallity & not seen as victim
- people have a bigger aversion to robots making ethical decisions. to over come robots have become more humanised
16
Q
Haidt moral foundations theory
A
- all manifestations of morality are derived from one foundation
- theoretical assumptions
1. nativism - morality not about cog templates
- evolutionary innate predispositions help us solve adaptive problems quickly & efficiently
- recurrent problems produce domain-specific cognitive adaptations for responding rapidly
2. cultural learning - evolutionary based foundations get rewritten through experiences
- rejected by piaget
3. intuition vs reasoning - moral evaluations occur rapidly & automatically
- reasoning important when we need to explain, defend & justify our intuitive moral reacrions to others
4. pluralism - Haidt (2012) table of 5 foundations of intuitive ethics & emotions. evolutionary thinking encourages pluralism. loyalty/authority based on value of community & sanctity based on purity.
> ethics of autonomy
> ethics of community
> ethics of divinity
> 6th dimension: liberty/oppression - feelings of reactance & resentment towards those who dominate & restrict their liberty - Graham et al (2009) - liberals judging something as moral more likely to think about harm/fairness ideals. conservatives think about loyalty, authority & purity.
17
Q
gray vs haidt
A
- grays theoretical framework believes people are still judging if there is harm if they use the haidt framework. the essence is harm,
- haidt framework argues not everything can be reduced to harm and one of the tricky dimensions is about purity/impurity
- gray revised theory to inc more intuitive and enotional aspects of morality.
18
Q
schwartz vs haidt
A
- morality mostly maps onto the idea of social values (schwartz) relating to the moral definition
- values can relate to right and wrong but also have other consequences while morality is about judgement of right and wrong
