Can people accurately predict how they will act in a moral dilemma? Our research suggests that in some situations, they cannot, and that emotions play a pivotal role in this dissociation between behavior and forecasting. In the current experiment, individuals in a moral action condition cheated significantly less on a math task than participants in a forecasting condition predicted they themsel...

This article explores the antagonism expressed by two different theoretical positions within medical anthropology towards the structural violence position: the culture as central approach and the post-structuralist approach. While medical anthropologists trained in cultural models of illness are disappointed by the lack of culture in the structural violence approach, medical anthropologists tra...

Artificial insemination using the husband's semen (AIH) has always seemed more acceptable than the same procedure using donor semen. However, the layman may not even have thought of the legal problems or the moral dilemma if in fact a woman is inseminated using her husband's frozen semen after his death. In the USA there are already sperm banks set up by private individuals, generally for the u...

In the current study, we examine the effect of physical coldness on personal moral dilemma judgment. Previous studies have indicated that utilitarian moral judgment-sacrificing a few people to achieve the greater good for others-was facilitated when: (1) participants suppressed an initial emotional response and deliberately thought about the utility of outcomes; (2) participants had a high-leve...

Cultural narratives such as those mentioned in religious texts and folk stories are instrumental in teaching core cultural moral values. In this paper, we investigate the role of cultural narratives in understanding novel moral situations. We examine whether the processes by which core cultural narratives are applied in people‘s lives follow the principles of analogical retrieval and mapping. I...

This qualitative research study was undertaken, in part, in an effort to develop an understanding of decisions experienced as moral conflicts by women who have experienced abuse by an intimate partner. Eighteen rural women who had been or were currently in an abusive relationship with a male partner participated in the study. An adaptation of the Real-Life Moral Conflict and Choice Interview (L...

Does unethical behavior always represent selfish behavior? Consider the seminal dilemma that serves as the foundation for modern moral psychology: The wife of a man named Heinz was near death and desperate for a medicine that he could not afford (Kohlberg, 1963). To save her life, Heinz broke into a drugstore to steal the medicine. Kohlberg asked his subjects, “Should Heinz have stolen for his ...

Though scholars have speculated for centuries on links between individuals' social class standing and approach to moral reasoning, little systematic research exists on how class and morality are associated. Here, we investigate whether the tendency of upper-class individuals to exhibit reduced empathy makes them more likely to resist intuitionist options in moral dilemmas, instead favoring util...