Two studies were conducted to support the dual process model of moral decision making, which states that there are two pathways to moral decisions: one emotional and the other cognitive. Decisions made in personal dilemmas are driven by emotions and intuition, while decisions made in impersonal dilemmas are driven by cognitive factors. Intuitive, emotional reactions tend to lead to non-utilitarian decisions while deliberative reasoning tends to lead to utilitarian decisions. For the current studies, undergraduate students from the University of North Florida completed working memory tests, an empathy scale, and also responded to moral dilemma scenarios. In the second study, participants were asked to respond to the moral dilemma scenarios in the following conditions: baseline, working memory condition (counting task), cold water (cold pressor task), and warm water. In Study 1, participants in the high working memory group had slower reaction times while responding to self dilemmas. In Study 2, the empathy item “I feel other people’s joy” was the best predictor of participants’ utilitarian decisions. These results are framed in terms of the dual process model and possible directions for future research.

La plupart des interactions sociales humaines font intervenir des objets, et ceci dès le plus jeune âge. Dans ces interactions, les enfants semblent prendre en compte qui est le propriétaire de l’objet. La notion de propriété ne concerne donc pas seulement une personne et un objet, mais constitue une relation entre différentes personnes vis-à-vis d’un objet. Cette relation est régie par un ensemble de règles ou droits de propriété. Nos travaux portent sur la compréhension qu’ont les enfants de la notion de propriété. A quel âge les enfants acquièrent-ils la compréhension des droits de propriété ? Avant de manier la notion de propriété de manière explicite, les enfants en ont-ils une compréhension plus implicite ? Plus particulièrement, nous avons exploré la compréhension et l’évaluation de transferts de propriété illégitimes et légitimes chez des enfants de 5 mois à 5 ans. Nous avons étudié deux types de transgressions de propriété : l’acquisition illégitime d’un objet (sans intention de transfert de la part du propriétaire) et l’absence de restitution d’un objet à son propriétaire. L’ensemble de nos études ont consisté à présenter aux enfants des transferts de propriété entre deux personnages de manière non verbale, dans des dessins animés ou des films mettant en scène des marionnettes, puis à mesurer la compréhension et l’évaluation de ces transferts par les enfants. Les études du Chapitre 2 (Etudes 1 et 2) se sont intéressées à l’évaluation que font les enfants de l’acquisition d’un objet. Les deux expériences de l’Etude 1 ont exploré la compréhension et l’évaluation de transferts de propriété illégitimes et légitimes par des enfants de 3 ans et 5 ans, ainsi que des adultes (population contrôle). Cette étude est la première à examiner simultanément la compréhension explicite et implicite qu’ont les enfants de la notion de propriété. En effet, les questions posées concernent respectivement les droits de propriété, ainsi que l’évaluation sociale et morale des agents impliqués. Dans l’Etude 1a, les participants ont vu un personnage acquérir un objet soit de manière illégitime (condition vol), soit de manière légitime (condition réception par don). Dans l’Etude 1b, c’est une action illégitime (condition vol) qui était comparée à une action légitime (condition don). Les enfants de 5 ans (comme les adultes) ont montré une compréhension de la notion de propriété à la fois implicite par leur évaluation sociale/morale, en préférant l’agent de la condition légitime (receveur du don ou donneur) par rapport à l’agent de la condition illégitime (voleur), et explicite par leur capacité à attribuer des droits de propriété différents selon la légitimité du transfert. Les enfants de 3 ans n’ont pas distingué les conditions illégitime et légitime, ni dans leur évaluation, ni dans leur attribution de droits de propriété. Ces résultats suggèrent que les enfants acquièrent simultanément les compréhensions implicite et explicite de la propriété. Dans l’Etude 1, aucune réaction émotionnelle n’était présente. Nous avons examiné dans l’Etude 2 le rôle des émotions du premier possesseur dans l’évaluation que font les enfants de 3 ans de l’acquisition d’un objet. En présence d’indices émotionnels (les mêmes dans la condition légitime et illégitime : le premier possesseur étant triste après le transfert dans les deux cas), les enfants de 3 ans sont parvenu à distinguer les deux conditions dans leur évaluation sociale/morale. Cette distinction n’a pu être basée uniquement sur la présence de l’émotion négative étant donné que l’émotion présentée était la même dans les deux conditions. Nous suggérons que les enfants de 3 ans ont détecté la transgression morale dans le cas du vol, et se sont basés sur l’émotion négative pour la confirmer. Les études du Chapitre 3 (Etudes 3 à 5) se sont intéressées à l’évaluation que font les enfants de la restitution d’un objet à son propriétaire… / Since a very young age, the majority of human social interactions involve objects. In these interactions, children seem to take into account who owns what. The notion of ownership thus does not involve only a person and an object, but is a relationship between several persons with respect to an object. This relationship is organized by a set of rules or property rights. Our work deals with children’s understanding of the notion of ownership. At what age do children acquire the understanding of property rights? Before an explicit mastery of the notion of ownership, do children have a more implicit understanding of it? More precisely, we explored the understanding and evaluation of illegitimate and legitimate transfers of property in children from 5 months to 5 years of age. We studied two types of ownership transgressions: illegitimate acquisition of an object (without owner’s intention to transfer it), and absence of restitution of an object to its owner. In all our studies, we presented to children property transfers between two characters using non-verbal animated cartoons or movies with puppets as actors, and then measured children’s understanding and evaluation of those transfers. The studies in Chapter 2 (Studies 1 and 2) assessed children’s evaluation of different modes of acquisition of an object. The two experiments of Study 1 explored 3- and 5-year-olds’s understanding and evaluation of illegitimate and legitimate property transfers. Adults were also tested as a control population. This study is the first one to investigate simultaneously children’s explicit and implicit understanding of the notion of ownership, by asking questions about property rights, as well as social and moral evaluations of the characters implicated in the transfers, respectively. In Study 1a, participants saw a character acquiring an object either in an illegitimate way (theft condition) or in a legitimate one (gift-reception condition). In Study 1b, an illegitimate action (theft) was compared to a legitimate action (giving). 5-year-old children (as adults) showed both an implicit understanding of ownership through their social/moral evaluation (preferring the legitimate agent (gift recipient or giver) compared to the illegitimate agent (thief)), and an explicit understanding of ownership through their ability to attribute different property rights considering the legitimacy of the transfer. 3-year-old children did not make any distinction between the illegitimate and legitimate conditions in their evaluation, neither in their attribution of property rights. These results suggest that children acquire implicit and explicit understanding of ownership at the same time. In Study 1, no emotional reaction was present. We examined in Study 2 the role of the first possessor’s emotions in 3-year-olds’ evaluation of object acquisition. The same cue was present in the legitimate and illegitimate conditions: the first possessor being sad after both transfers. In the presence of this emotional cue, 3-year-olds managed to distinguish between the two conditions in their social/moral evaluation. This distinction could not have been based solely on the presence of a negative emotion, as the emotion displayed was the same in both conditions. We suggest that 3-year-old children detected the moral transgression in the theft condition, and used the negative emotion to confirm it. The studies in Chapter 3 (Studies 3 to 5) examined children’s evaluations of the restitution of an object to its owner. Young children (2-3-year-old) have a bias to consider that the first possessor of an object is its “owner” and that the object cannot be definitively transferred to someone else. We thus investigated whether 3-year-old children (Studies 3 and 4) implicitly evaluate the absence of restitution as a transgression, and evaluate it negatively compared to the restitution of an object to its first possessor…

Orientador: Maria Cristina Pereira Lima / Resumo: Introdução: A competência de juízo moral, baseada na teoria de Lawrence Kohlberg, tem sido estudada por muitos pesquisadores para avaliar o desenvolvimento moral de adolescentes e adultos. Pesquisas indicam que ocorre aumento da competência de juízo moral conforme o aumento da idade, maturidade e nível educacional. Apesar disso, resultados de estudos realizados com estudantes de medicina têm demonstrado que a competência moral desse público diminui conforme o curso avança. Até o presente momento, os principais motivos apontados para essa diminuição foram os currículos dos cursos, focados na formação tecnicista, além do ambiente de alta competição entre os alunos. Contudo, não encontramos na literatura pesquisas que verificassem se há associação entre competência moral e Transtorno Mental Comum. Objetivo: Descrever a relação entre competência moral e TMC de estudantes de medicina de uma instituição pública identificando fatores associados. Método: Trata-se de um estudo transversal. Participaram deste estudo alunos matriculados no curso de medicina de uma faculdade pública do interior do estado de São Paulo, que consentiram em participar da pesquisa. Para a coleta de dados foram utilizados os seguintes instrumentos: questionário que investiga aspectos sociodemográficos e da vida universitária; questionário para avaliação de Transtorno Mental Comum (TMC), o Self Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ-20); AUDIT (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test), instrumento de rastreamento criad... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Mestre

博士(心理学) / Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology / 同志社大学 / Doshisha University

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This thesis is a critical discussion of political thinker Hannah Arendt’s moral thought, as developed in her works from EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM onwards. Arendt, I argue, sought to respond to the moral challenge she saw posed by the phenomenon of banal evildoing, as revealed in Nazi Germany. Banal evildoers are agents who, under circumstances in which their ordinary moral triggers and guides (conscience, moral habits and norms, the behavior of their peers, etc.) are subverted, commit evil despite having no evil intent. Such subversion of ordinary moral voices would appear to absolve these agents from moral responsibility for their acts, which led most commentators to reject claims to such subversion by Nazi collaborators. Arendt, who sees the phenomenon of banal evildoing as factually substantiated, set out to show that such agents possessed other mental capacities (namely, critical and speculative thinking, reflective judging, and free willing), more appropriate for moral decision-making, on which they could have relied even under Nazi conditions. It is for their disregard of such capacities that banal evildoers can be held morally responsible. In this thesis I critically engage with this Arendtian argument. I show how the Nazi subversion of German agents’ ordinary moral voices was achieved. I then exegetically explicate Arendt’s (unfinished) analysis of the above mental capacities and of their moral role. I then argue for the addition of the capacities of empathetic perception and practical wisdom to this understanding of moral performance. In the course of this analysis I show that in responding to this challenge, Arendt develops a powerful argument regarding the moral dangers of overreliance on mental shortcuts in decision-making, a strong argument regarding the interconnectedness between morality and humanness, and implicitly, a novel conception of selfhood that sees otherness as interrelated and interconnected with selfhood, such that concern for others is part of what constitutes, and therefore is inscribed into, care for the self. I end by critically assessing the applicability of Arendt’s moral analysis to more ordinary decisional circumstances than those of Nazi Germany, and the insight this analysis points to regarding the relationship between moral and political decision-making.

This thesis is a critical discussion of political thinker Hannah Arendt’s moral thought, as developed in her works from EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM onwards. Arendt, I argue, sought to respond to the moral challenge she saw posed by the phenomenon of banal evildoing, as revealed in Nazi Germany. Banal evildoers are agents who, under circumstances in which their ordinary moral triggers and guides (conscience, moral habits and norms, the behavior of their peers, etc.) are subverted, commit evil despite having no evil intent. Such subversion of ordinary moral voices would appear to absolve these agents from moral responsibility for their acts, which led most commentators to reject claims to such subversion by Nazi collaborators. Arendt, who sees the phenomenon of banal evildoing as factually substantiated, set out to show that such agents possessed other mental capacities (namely, critical and speculative thinking, reflective judging, and free willing), more appropriate for moral decision-making, on which they could have relied even under Nazi conditions. It is for their disregard of such capacities that banal evildoers can be held morally responsible. In this thesis I critically engage with this Arendtian argument. I show how the Nazi subversion of German agents’ ordinary moral voices was achieved. I then exegetically explicate Arendt’s (unfinished) analysis of the above mental capacities and of their moral role. I then argue for the addition of the capacities of empathetic perception and practical wisdom to this understanding of moral performance. In the course of this analysis I show that in responding to this challenge, Arendt develops a powerful argument regarding the moral dangers of overreliance on mental shortcuts in decision-making, a strong argument regarding the interconnectedness between morality and humanness, and implicitly, a novel conception of selfhood that sees otherness as interrelated and interconnected with selfhood, such that concern for others is part of what constitutes, and therefore is inscribed into, care for the self. I end by critically assessing the applicability of Arendt’s moral analysis to more ordinary decisional circumstances than those of Nazi Germany, and the insight this analysis points to regarding the relationship between moral and political decision-making.

Although a number of studies report that disgust exerts a special influence on moral judgments by making them more severe, these studies have not properly explained whether (a) the influence of disgust is moral-specific and (b) whether such influence results from specific disgust appraisals or if it is caused by a more basic affective computation. In this context, in the present investigation we test how affective priming by disgust and horror influences participant’s moral and nonmoral judgments. Additionally, by varying the stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) duration, the present study tests the way such an influence varies through the time course of affective priming. This is, to our knowledge, the first research testing the effects of the time course of affective priming on moral judgments. / Tot i que diferents investigacions suggereixen que l’emoció de repugnància incrementa la severitat dels judicis morals, aquests estudis no han acabat d’explicar prou si: (a) l’esmentada influència de la repugnància resulta específica dels judicis morals o afecta també als judicis no morals; (b) si l’efecte susdit resulta d’un procés de valoració (appraisal) específica o es tracta més aviat d’una influència de l’afecte. En el context descrit, aquesta investigació contrasta si el priming afectiu (a partir d’estímuls prime de repugnància i horror) influeix sobre els judicis morals i no morals, analitzant, alhora, si aquest efecte canvia segons els paràmetres temporals del priming, tot investigant com influeix la durada de l’interval entre l’aparició del prime i la del target (Stimulus-Onset Asynchrony, SOA). Aquest treball constitueix el primer estudi en torn dels efectes del priming afectiu de repugnància i horror (i del seu curs temporal) sobre els judicis morals i no morals / Aunque diversas investigaciones sugieren que la repugnancia incrementa la severidad de los juicios morales, estos estudios explican suficientemente: (a) si dicha influencia es específica de los juicios morales o afecta también a los no morales; (b) si el efecto descrito resulta de un proceso de valoración (appraisal) o se trata de una mera influencia del afecto. En el contexto descrito, esta investigación contrasta si el priming afectivo, utilizando primes de repugnancia y de horror, influye sobre los juicios morales y sobre los no morales, estudiando asimismo si dicho efecto cambia según los parámetros temporales del priming a partir del análisis de la influencia del intervalo entre la aparición del prime y la del target (stimulus-onset asynchrony, SOA). Este trabajo constituye el primer estudio en torno a los efectos del priming afectivo de repugnancia y horror, así como de su curso temporal, sobre los juicios morales vs. no morales.

CHARLES UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION PhD programme studied subject - education DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Vliv dlouhodobého pobytu jedince v dětském domově na jeho morální vývoj Effect of Long-term Residence of Individual in Children's Home to His Moral Development Mgr. Petr Šusta Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Jaroslav Koťa Prague 2018 Abstract and keywords The dissertation thesis elaborates on the effect of the long-term residence of an individual in a children's home to his moral development. The dissertation thesis includes theoretical and empirical parts and the aim of the thesis is to find and eventually describe differences in the level of moral development of children and teenagers experienced with a long-therm residence in a children's home and subjects without this expirience. It has been gained and collected results of the original research in accordance with the methodology of Lawrence Kohlberg in cooperation with children from the children's homes and children from usuall families as control group. There are elaborated these topisc in the theoretical part of the thesis: institutional foster care in the Czech Republic, methodological research issues of the level of moral development in accordance with the theory of Lawrence Kohlberg. The empirical part of the dissertation thesis defines...

Dans ses documents officiels, le Magistère de l’Église catholique qualifie souvent la contraception artificielle intraconjugale d’acte intrinsèquement mauvais. Le recours à cette notion semble considérer la nature biologique comme l’index impératif d’une norme morale sans autre considération. De quoi dépend alors la moralité d’un acte ? Une technique, prise en elle-même, comporte-t-elle une valeur morale définie ? Pour répondre à ces questions, nous avons retracé l’évolution de cette notion à travers une relecture de ses enjeux théologiques en les fondant sur la circulation de plusieurs pôles de réflexion (Écriture, Tradition, raison, sciences, vécu). Pour dissiper les ambiguïtés liées à cette notion, nous avons estimé qu’il serait préférable d’employer l’expression d’acte injustifiable plutôt que celle d’acte intrinsèquement mauvais. La notion d’acte injustifiable a l’avantage de faire droit à l’herméneutique et à l’exercice de la raison pratique dans le discernement éthique. Ainsi, on peut faire droit à la pluralité et articuler au mieux la temporalité et la complexité systémique dans le jugement moral des actes humains / In its official documents, the Magisterium of the Catholic Church often refers to intra-marital artificial contraception as an intrinsically evil act. The use of this concept seems to consider the biological nature as an imperative index of a moral standard without other considerations. If artificial contraception is wrong in itself, then what place do we give to conscience and freedom of couples in birth control? Is there an irreducible opposition between the natural law and contraceptive techniques? Does a technique, if taken by itself, hold a defined moral value? To answer these questions, we have traced back the evolution of this concept through a rereading of its anthropological-theological issues based on the circulation of several poles of thought (Scripture, Tradition and Reason, Humanities, Experience, etc.). To dispel any equivocities and ambiguities related to this concept, we believe it is better to use the term unjustifiable act rather than that of an intrinsically evil act. The concept of unjustifiable act has the advantage of granting hermeneutics and the use of practical reason in ethical discernment. In this way, we can honor otherness (recognition of particularities and subjectivities, while searching for the universal), grant the plurality of actions, norms and systems of legitimation of standards and allow regulation to better enable the regulation of historicity, temporality and systemic complexity in moral judgment of human actions.