Moral psychology Flashcards
Lecture 10
What two schools of thought are considered to underpin ethical decision-making?
- Deontology (Kant).
- Consequentialism (Anscombe).
Outline deontology (Kant)
- The idea that actions should be based on what is fundamentally right or wrong.
- No consideration for potential consequences.
- Based on a clear set of rules that determine whether an action is good or bad.
In the trolley problem, deontologists would consider it immoral to inflict harm to the 1 individual when situational happenstance has placed the 5 in this situation (Ross, 1930). Therefore, the deontologist would not pull the lever (Alexander and Moore, 2007).
This philosophy of inherent good and bad can be attributed to multiple situation - for example, Kant believed it was morally wrong to lie in any situation, regardless of the outcome - there is always a right or wrong.
Issues:
- Rigidity/inflexibility: doesn’t allow for changes to the rules of what is good which can make the theory impractical.
- Simplicity: doesn’t take complex moral decisions into account.
- Harm: ignores consequences, which is a serious omission in ethical decision making.
Outline consequentialism (Anscombe)
- The idea that the right or wrongness of an action is rooted in its consequences.
- Actions should be based on achieving the greatest pleasure for the greatest number.
- Maximising good consequences and minimising bad.
- An example is utilitarianism.
In the trolley problem, consequentialists would argue that chooses should make the decision making resulting in the least amount of harm (Rosen, 2005). Therefore, consequentialists would pull the lever to benefit the greatest number of people.
Issues:
- Weighing up what is the best option: it can be hard to measure different benefits to decide which one is morally preferable.
- Harm: consequentialism: can seem to justify harming some people in order to benefit others.
Moral philosophy vs moral psychology
Moral philosophy:
- Moral philosophy explores what more decisions we should make and the fundamentals of being a good, moral person.
- Is concerned primarily with understanding right and wrong.
Moral psychology:
- Moral psychology is the study of how we make these decisions.
- Considers how people develop to be good, moral decision-makers.
What is moral psychology?
- Fairly recent development in the field of psychology.
- The study of moral identity development.
- How people integrate moral ideals with the development of their own character.
- Moral judgement, reasoning, and character.
- Decision-making.
Moral psychology is a field of study that combines psychology and philosophy to examine how people think and behave in ethical contexts. It focuses on how people make decisions and integrate moral ideals into their character, rather than exploring what decisions they should make.
What is moral reasoning?
One of the fundamental branches of moral psychology.
The study of how people think about right and wrong, and how they acquire and apply moral rules.
Children use moral reasoning in peer interactions, and their reasoning becomes more sophisticated over time.
Moral reasoning helps people to recognise when change is needed. This occurs by people noticing inconsistencies in principles or unequal treatment of others.
Who is Haidt?
A key moral reasoning psychologist.
Research focuses on the intuitive foundations of morality and how emotions and intuitions form the basis of moral knowledge:
- Moral foundations theory.
- Moral digust and elevation.
- Social intuitionism.
What is moral foundations theory?
MFT proposes that morality is made up of several fundamental moral values (harm, purity, loyality, authority, fairness), or “foundations”, that influence decision making.
What is social intuitionism?
A model of moral judgment that emphaises the role of intuition and deemphasises the role of private reasoning.
The model states that moral judgements are primarily the results of quick, automatic evaluations, or intuitions.
Intuition = suddent and affective reactions that lead to a moral judgement without conscious awareness.
Reasoning = used to construct justifications for judgements that have already been made.
what is hypotheticality?
Luckily for us, the trolley problem, and other extreme moral dilemmas are entirely hypothetical.
A way of thinking that involves imagining possibilities and exploring their consequences through mental stimulation:
- Examining cause and effect relationships.
- Creative therapeutic processes.
- Considering alternative options.
Hypotheticals can be necessary to make data collection and research accessible - we use hypotheticals in a wide range of areas in psychology.
Problems with hypotheticals
Using hypotheticals to understand human behaviour seems questionable.
People don’t always do what they say they’re going to do even if they really do believe this is how they would act.
Arguably, in other research areas, using hypotheticals to understand human behaviour seems questionable.
Research into hypotheticals
Research has found there to be great discrepancies between what people say they will do, and what they actually do in real-life.
But using hypotheticals is necessaru to make data collection more accessible and avoid ethical issues.
This is an issue, as psychologists attempt to build real-world ideas from hypothetical choices and behaviour.
If we don’t know that the responses participants are providing are accurate, then what does this tell us about the conclusions we’re drawing.
LaPiere, 1934:
- Explored attitudes and actions regarding racial prejudice.
- When US establishments were contacted by LaPiere via letters of enquiry, 92% responded that they would not accept Chinese individuals in their establishment.
- However, whilst travelling around the US with LaPiere, a Chinese couple were served at 95% of over 250 establishments visited.
- There may be a significant difference between what people say, and what they actually do.
FeldmanHall et al. (2012):
- Asked participants how much of a £20 endowment they would spend to prevent another from obtaining an electric shock.
- Hypothetical vs real.
- Hypothetical condition: participants were significantly less likely to harm others for profit.
- Real-life condition: participants were significantly more likely to harm of reward.
- Real-life behaviour can differ significantly from hypothetical in moral dilemmas, even when participants believe their actions have consequences.
Bostyn et al. (2018):
- Conducted a (almost) real life version of the trolley problem.
- Hypothetical vs real.
- Given the choice between allowing 5 mice to receive an electric shock or pressing a button to administed the shock to just one mouse.
- Real-life condition: participants acted consequentially and shocked the singular mouse.
- Hypothetical condition: participants acted deontology and did not alter the course of the electric shock.
- The electric shock was fake.
Why do we keep using hypotheticals in psychology?
- Finding a solution is tricky.
- The most up-to-date research in this area looks to understand why these differences between hypothetical and real are occurring.
- Once we understand why and how they occur, we can being to try and mitigate them, allowing more accurate conclusions to be drawn from research where hypotheticals are necessary.
