The empirical and theoretical consideration of ethical decision making has focused on the process of moral judgment; however, a precondition to judgment is moral sensitivity, the ability to detect and evaluate moral issues [Rest, J. R. (1984). The major components of morality. In W. Kurtines & J. Gewirtz (Eds.), Morality, moral behaviour, and moral development (pp. 24-38). New York, NY: Wiley]....

Recent advances in the fields of robotics, cyborg development, moral psychology, trust, multi agent-based systems and socionics have raised the need for a better understanding of ethics, moral reasoning, judgment and decision-making within the system of man and machines. Here we seek to understand key research questions concerning the interplay of ethical trust at the individual level and the s...

This research examined the influence of undergraduate degree and ethics education on the moral reasoning of social workers. Statistical analyses found MSW social workers with liberal arts undergraduate degrees more likely to prefer postconventional levels of moral reasoning, defined as greater complexity of thought and principled reasoning. The overall mean Defining Issues Test scores of 44.77 ...

The Defining Issues Test (DIT), developed by Rest (1986), measures a person’s level of moral development using hypothetical social dilemmas. Although the DIT is useful for measuring moral development in social settings, it might not adequately capture an individual’s moral judgement abilities in solving work-related problems (Weber, 1990; Trevino, 1992; Welton et al., 1994). In the present stud...

introduction: spiritual identity, defined as self-identification based on spirituality and spiritual experiences, has gained increasing attention during the past few years. the aim of this study was to assess several predictors and outcomes of spiritual identity based on a causal model. methods: for this purpose, parent and peer attachment were considered as exogenous variables, spiritual ident...

I compare a ‘realist’ with a ‘social-relational’ perspective on our judgments of the moral status of artificial agents (AAs). I develop a realist position according to which the moral status of a being particularly in relation to moral patiency attribution is closely bound up with that being’s ability to experience states of conscious satisfaction or suffering (CSS). For a realist both moral st...

Humans are endowed with a natural sense of fairness that permeates social perceptions and interactions. This moral stance is so ubiquitous that we may not notice it as a fundamental component of daily decision making and in the workings of many legal, political, and social systems. Emotion plays a pivotal role in moral experience by assigning human values to events, objects, and actions. Althou...

This article offers an introductory analysis of the philosophical and empirical considerations having to do with the significance of psychopathy, intellectual disability and ADHD regarding one’s moral responsibility. Moral responsibility comes in degrees and is ultimately determined on social grounds. Whether a certain diagnosis and its underpinning neuro-cognitive impairment affects one’s cogn...