In the prisoner's dilemma, self-interest clashes with collective interest. The way players resolve this conflict affects how others view them. Cooperators are seen as more moral than defectors, and, when there is no information about the other player's choice, cooperators and defectors are seen as equally competent. However, players who are defected against are seen as less competent, especiall...

Most discussions in ethics argue that a certain practice or act is morally justified, with any underlying theory taken as supporting a guide to general action by aiding discovery of the objectively and singularly right thing to do. I suggest that this oversimplifies the agent's own experience of the moral dilemma, and I take the recent English case of Diane Pretty's request for assisted suicide...

Diverse lines of evidence point to a basic human aversion to physically harming others. First, we demonstrate that unwillingness to endorse harm in a moral dilemma is predicted by individual differences in aversive reactivity, as indexed by peripheral vasoconstriction. Next, we tested the specific factors that elicit the aversive response to harm. Participants performed actions such as discharg...

The Dilemma of Penal Reform. By Dr. Hermann Mannheim, with a preface by Prof. A. M. Carr-Saunders. Allen & Unwin. 1939. pp. 228. 7s. 6d. This book is based on a course of public lectures given at the London School of Economics in 1938-9. Professor Carr-Saunders points ?ut that for the constructive development of Penal Reform we need, firstly, accurate systematic sociological and psychological s...

Abstract This paper assesses the ‘power-induced failure of reciprocity’ account exploitation in domain trade. I argue that its proponents face a dilemma. Either cost variable reciprocity is understood to include opportunity costs. Then, implausibly implies those with more valuable outside options should get larger part overall benefits cooperation. Or exclude has awkward implications cases wher...

Several studies are reviewed that examine differences in moral schema development using techniques intermediate between measuring implicit knowledge (such as with the DeŽ ning Issues Test) and explicit knowledge (such as with the Moral Judgment Interview). Findings include signiŽ cant differences in the comprehension of moral narratives based on age/education and on level of expertise. Also, in...

In our study, we tried to clarify whether patients with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) reveal different moral decision patterns as compared to healthy subjects and whether common social interaction difficulties in ASD are reflected in altered brain activation during different aspects of moral reasoning. 28 patients with high-functioning ASD and 28 healthy subjects matched for gender, age and ed...

• The tradeoff between fairness and loyalty corresponds to whistleblowing decisions. • Experimental and dispositional variation in this tradeoff maps onto whistleblowing. • Five studies demonstrate this previously undocumented relationship. • These results shed light on a novel psychological determinant of whistleblowing. a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o Whistleblowing – reporting another ...

In Interests and Rights / The Case Against Animals /1 R. G. Frey believes he has animal rights advocates firmly skewered on the horns of a dilemma: (1) Animal rights advocates agree that "all and only beings which (can) have interests (can) have moral rights. " Frey labels this "the interest requirement. "2 (2) Interests must be divided into needs and desi res. 3 (3) If "interests" in (1) refer...

The opportunity to tell a white lie (i.e., a lie that benefits another person) generates a moral conflict between two opposite moral dictates, one pushing towards telling always the truth and the other pushing towards helping others. Here we study how people resolve this moral conflict. What does telling a white lie signal about a person’s pro-social tendencies? To answer this question, we cond...