Moral hypocrisy is typically viewed as an ethical accusation: Someone is applying different moral standards to essentially identical cases, dishonestly claiming that one action is acceptable while otherwise equivalent actions are not. We suggest that in some instances the apparent logical inconsistency stems from different evaluations of a weak argument, rather than dishonesty per se. Extending...

Emotions and feelings are now considered as decisive in the human intelligent decision process. In particular, social emotions would help us to enhance the group and cooperate. It is still a matter of debate the what that motivates biological creatures to cooperate or not with their group. Would all kinds of cooperation hide a selfish interest, or would it exist truly altruism? If we pore over ...

High-functioning autism (ASD) is characterized by real-life difficulties in social interaction; however, these individuals often succeed on laboratory tests that require an understanding of another person's beliefs and intentions. This paradox suggests a theory of mind (ToM) deficit in adults with ASD that has yet to be demonstrated in an experimental task eliciting ToM judgments. We tested whe...

Recent research in moral psychology has attempted to characterize patterns of moral judgments of actions in terms of the causal and intentional properties of those actions. The present study directly compares the roles of consequence, causation, belief and desire in determining moral judgments. Judgments of the wrongness or permissibility of action were found to rely principally on the mental s...

We assessed 5- to 11-year-olds' (N = 76) judgments of straightforward moral transgressions (prototypical harm) as well as their evaluations of complex, hypothetical scenarios in which an actor transgresses in order to prevent injury (necessary harm). The nature of the actor's transgression (psychological or physical harm) varied across participants. Moral judgments and justifications, knowledge...

This paper presents and analyzes the attitudes of university students on presence, characteristics, causes and ways to overcome the crisis of morality. The aim of this study was to determine whether and how students recognize the presence of a morality crisis in our society, as well as the causes of this phenomenon. Also, the intention of the authors of this paper is to determine students’ atti...

The world has always been a dangerous place, and it remains so. There are different kinds of dangers, for there are different kinds of evils. Some of those evils are termed natural evils, some others, moral evils. Both of them are called evils for they cause death, sickness, devastation. Natural evil like death by old age is a common human lot. Other natural evils, like earthquakes or the pesti...

When interpreting the actions of people from other societies from a moral point of view, we often err. Two types of errors are of particular relevance here. One consists in overestimating the similarity across cultures of the moral judgments that guide people’s actions and interactions. The other consists in underestimating this similarity. Arguably, the first kind of error is common among psyc...

Do victims’ emotions underlie preschoolers’ moral judgment abilities? Study 1 asked preschoolers (n072) to judge actions directed at characters who could and could not feel hurt and who did and did not cry. These judgments took into account only the nature of the action, not the nature of the victim. To further investigate how victims’ emotions might impact children’s moral judgments, Study 2 p...

As we outsource more of our decisions and activities to machines with various degrees of autonomy, the question of clarifying the moral and legal status of their autonomous behaviour arises. There is also an ongoing discussion on whether artificial agents can ever be liable for their actions or become moral agents. Both in law and ethics, the concept of liability is tightly connected with the c...