Counterfactual thinking is thinking about a past that did not happen. This is often the case in "if only…" situations, where we wish something had or had not happened. To make a choice in a moral decision-making situation is particularly hard and, therefore, may be often associated with the imagination of a different outcome. The main aim of the present study is to investigate counterfactual th...

This research provides novel insights into the evolutionary basis of cultural norm development and maintenance. We yield evidence for a unique culture-gene coevolutionary model between ecological threat, allelic frequency of the serotonin transporter polymorphism (5-HTTLPR), cultural tightness-looseness-the strength of norms and tolerance for deviance from norms-and moral justifiability. As hyp...

Information technology helps people in many ways, but it doesn't help them answer important questions like: What do I do with my life? How should I act? How should I treat others? Perhaps IT can help ordinary people create and live a personal moral philosophy. This paper offers a framework for research on this possibility. Ethical choice is viewed as guided imagination, and moral development as...

An analysis of the degree of genomic variation between two individual genomes suggests that there may be considerable biochemical differences among individuals. Examination of DNA sequence variations in 14 canonical signaling pathways and Monte-Carlo simulation modeling suggest that the kinetic and quantitative behavior of signaling pathways in many individuals may be significantly perturbed fr...

The issue of consumer water wastage is a serious in Malaysia. A reason for behavior, particularly Penang state, may be because public good and the population enjoys paying low price this natural resource. Wastage reflects not only population's unsustainable behavior; it also difficult position faced by providers managing nation's increasing demand related costs. aim study to identify whether pr...

Moral ideals are strongly ingrained within society and individuals alike, but actual moral choices are profoundly influenced by tangible rewards and consequences. Across two studies we show that real moral decisions can dramatically contradict moral choices made in hypothetical scenarios (Study 1). However, by systematically enhancing the contextual information available to subjects when addres...

Clean up your own mess: An experimental study of moral responsibility and efficiency by Michael Jakob, Dorothea Kübler, Jan Christoph Steckel and Roel van Veldhuizen* Although market-based environmental policy instruments feature prominently in economic theory and are widely employed, they often meet with public resistance. We argue that such resistance may be driven by a feeling of moral respo...

Taxpayers may justify non-compliant behaviour with the perceived high prevalence (descriptive norm) or high acceptability (injunctive norm) of tax non-compliance in the population. However, their perception may be distorted: their taxpaying behaviour may follow misperceived norms and reflect ‘pluralistic ignorance’. In an experimental questionnaire study focusing on the injunctive norm, psychol...