The objectives are to examine the tension between the ethics of care and the ethics of justice, offer critical analysis and develop an amalgam of key elements from both. A more sufficient framework for moral decision-making will be proposed and its validity assessed. Part One investigates the ethics of care, beginning with a critical analysis of Carol Gilligan's approach to the ethics of care and justice, leading to an exploration of the nature and content of care from key authors in the debate. By focusing on nursing the tensions surrounding care are highlighted. Critical analysis draws out key themes from care including persons, relationships, context and responsibilities. Part Two examines the ethics of justice, concentrating on the substantive theories of John Rawls and Alasdair MacIntyre. Through critical analysis the need for minimum standards of protection for the vulnerable in society is highlighted. The thesis emphasises and argues for justice as equality, fairness and equity, the importance of persons, community, rationality, justification, fittingness, morality, duties and obligations. Part Three argues for an amalgam of key themes from both the ethics of care and justice. This model consists of the crucial role of context, persons and relationships, responsibilities, justice and appropriateness in moral decision-making as a framework for a middle way. After arguing for its sufficiency in theory, it is tested in practice by application to the Child B case. The thesis argues a middle way model is more adequate than either the ethics of care or justice alone for critically examining the decisions and justifications offered in this case. In conclusion, critical reflection on the theory and practice of a middle way model is offered, and its potential for further application and development regarding moral decision-making and training for the caring professions explored.

Symbols represent information we have previously learned or experienced, but they can also serve to encourage thoughts and behaviors that are consistent with this knowledge/experience in order to maintain social cohesion (Guthrie, 1996). Pictures (e.g., American Red Cross image) representing moral rules (e.g., ‘save lives’) have been shown to influence moral decisions (Broeders, van den Box, Muller, & Ham, 2011), but there is no empirical evidence to demonstrate that religious pictures encourage the same outcome. Four studies examined whether religious pictures would influence decision making (lexical, moral), and furthermore whether personal belief in religion was a moderating factor. In Study 1, participants viewed religious and neutral (control) pictures, and then made a series of lexical decisions (Meyer & Schvaneveldt, 1971). In Study 2, participants viewed religious and neutral words (which represented the pictures viewed in Study 1), and then made lexical decisions. In Studies 3 and 4, participants made decisions about moral actions. Moral decisions were preceded by viewing pictures in Study 3, and by words in Study 4. Self-reported religiosity was assessed last in each experiment. Across the four studies, we found support for the influence of religious pictures on decision making. In Studies 1 and 2, lexical decisions were faster to religious words when primed with religious pictures. In Study 3, participants rated morally ambiguous actions as less appropriate when primed with religious pictures. This occurred to a greater degree for religious participants. In Study 4, there was a general priming effect of religious words, but this was not influenced by individual religious beliefs.

Yes / Peoples’ judgments and decisions often change when made in their foreign language. Existing research testing this foreign language effect has predominantly used text-based stimuli with little research focusing on the impact of listening to audio stimuli on the effect. The only existing study on this topic found shifts in people’s moral decisions only in the audio modality. Firstly, by reanalyzing the data from this previous study and by collecting data in an additional experiment, we found no consistent effects of using foreign language on moral judgments. Secondly, in both datasets we found no significant language by modality interaction. Overall, our results highlight the need for more robust testing of the foreign language effect, and its boundary conditions. However, modality of presentation does not appear to be a candidate for explaining its variability. Data and materials for this experiment are available at https://osf.io/qbjxn/.

If Aristotle was right in claiming that the aim of moral philosophy is to help us determine how we ought to live, then part of the aim of moral philosophy must be to help us improve our prescriptive accounts of moral decision making--our accounts of how we should make moral decisions. In my dissertation I examine implications of empirical research in cognitive science, social psychology, and decision theory for issues in moral decision making. I argue that empirical evidence suggests that principled guidance is in fact beneficial for decision making, which calls into question particularist prescriptive accounts. I also argue that contrary to the prevailing view, research suggests that taking a first-person perspective when making judgments about what we ought to do might actually help us make better moral judgments. Additionally, I argue that jurors will be more likely to make fairer and more accurate judgments by taking the perspective of the defendant than by trying to maintain a detached and 'objective' point of view.

This cumulative dissertation consists of investigations the brain processes related to legal and moral decision-making as well as a philosophical reflection. The behavioral main finding is that lawyers perceive themselves to be less emotionally involved during legal and moral decision-making than other academics. Regarding brain processes, the major finding is that legal decisions are correlated with stronger activation in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, suggesting a stronger engagement of rule application. The philosophical part reflects the normative implications of these investigations and comprises a wider discussion of neuroimaging in the context of clinical research.

Morality has been a subject of study for centuries, though there is still much that is not understood about the factors that dictate moral decision making and moral identity. This study examines the relationship between the Big Five Personality traits (agreeableness, openness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and extraversion) as well as empathy and moral decision making. However, we use a slightly different methodology than previous studies on morality and personality by incorporating more relevant moral dilemmas related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in addition to the purely hypothetical dilemmas used in previous research (referred to as standard dilemmas). Additionally, rather than considering only the response to the dilemma as variable, this study also explored the relationship between these personality traits and the guilt felt by the decision made as well as how difficult participants felt it was for them to make the decision. The results suggest that there is a relationship between certain aspects of personality and the guilt felt by moral decisions as well as how difficult one finds making a decision. Additionally, the results imply that the relevance of the dilemma does significantly impact moral dilemma decisions and the feeling associated with such decisions.

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Yes / Rationale: Hypothetical moral dilemmas, pitting characteristically utilitarian and non-utilitarian outcomes against each other, have played a central role in investigations of moral decision-making. Preferences for utilitarian over non-utilitarian responses have been explained by two contrasting hypotheses; one implicating increased deliberative reasoning, and the other implicating diminished harm aversion. In recent field experiments, these hypotheses have been investigated using alcohol intoxication to impair both social and cognitive functioning. These studies have found increased utilitarian responding, arguably as a result of alcohol impairing affective empathy. Objectives: The present research expands existing investigations by examining the acute effects of alcohol on affective empathy and subsequent moral judgments in traditional vignettes and moral actions in virtual reality, as well as physiological responses in moral dilemmas. Methods: Participants (N = 48) were administered either a placebo or alcohol in one of two dosages; low or moderate. Both pre- and post intervention, participants completed a moral action and moral judgment task alongside behavioural measures of affective empathy. Results: Higher dosages of alcohol consumption resulted in inappropriate empathic responses to facial displays of emotion, mirroring responses of individuals high in trait psychopathy, but empathy for pain was unaffected. Whilst affective empathy was influenced by alcohol consumption in a facial responding task, both moral judgments and moral actions were unaffected. Conclusions: These results suggest that facets, beyond or in addition to deficits in affective empathy, might influence the relationship between alcohol consumption and utilitarian endorsements.

As public confidence in policing has dropped, demand for ethical behavior from law enforcement officers has grown, and correspondingly, a better understanding of ethics training and ethical acquisition processes has become paramount. Though much literature exists on related topics, understanding of the ethics training for law enforcement officers as it currently exists, has remained murky. This research aimed to gain a better understanding of ethics training for law enforcement in the United States, and as such, to fill the aforementioned gap in the literature. Four research questions were explored in this study including the understanding of current pre-service and in-service ethics training for law enforcement, teaching strategies and instructional methods, and the feasibility of scenario-based ethics training. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 31 law enforcement training instructors located across the United States. Finally, unique findings, limitations, and directions for further research were discussed.

The prevalence of work and family in people’s lives combined with limited time and resources often results in a moral decision between work and family, posing a dilemma between hedonistic values for work and altruistic values for family. This study aimed to understand the processes of decision-making in work-family dilemmas and tested three approaches. Therefore, the construal-level theory, time perspectives and logic of appropriateness were introduced. In line with research on construal-level theory and dilemmas, the impact of psychological distance and construal level theory on the decision was examined. Operationalizing social distance, participants were asked to either advise a closely related person (group 1) or someone they just met (group 2) on four work-family dilemmas. The total sample consisted of 212 participants from Germany (49.5%), Sweden (35.8%) and other countries (14.2%). t-tests between the two treatment groups did not reveal significant differences in the dilemma advice (p > .05). Exploratory analyses did not find time perspectives to be related to the decision (p > .005) but work-family centrality was found to be significantly associated to the decision-making in the dilemma (p <.005). With the limitations of the study in mind, the construal level theory could not be supported but values have shown to impact attitudinal decisions, supporting the logic of appropriateness. In work-family conflicts, it, therefore, does not matter whom one advises but whether the advisor values work or family more, influences the given advice. Based on this study, implications for further research are pointed out.