Are Morally Good Actions Ever Free?

Counterfactual thoughts and judgments about morally good actions

Evaluating the morality of an action is affected by thoughts about whether the outcome might have turned out differently. We report experimental results that show a moral action effect occurs for judgments about morally good actions. Participants read stories about a morally elevating situation, e.g., an agent is found to be a match as a bone-marrow donor for someone else. The agent decided to ...

Are physicians’ strikes ever morally justifiable? A call for a return to tradition

Though physicians strike provides an opportunity to generate more knowledge about the process in which legitimacy of an organization can be restored, it meets with a great deal of resistance not only by the public but from within the medical profession. This paper critically examines the legitimacy of strike by medical doctors heretofore referred to as physicians. Though critically reflecting o...

Benefiting from misfortune: when harmless actions are judged to be morally blameworthy.

Dominant theories of moral blame require an individual to have caused or intended harm. However, the current four studies demonstrate cases where no harm is caused or intended, yet individuals are nonetheless deemed worthy of blame. Specifically, individuals are judged to be blameworthy when they engage in actions that enable them to benefit from another's misfortune (e.g., betting that a compa...

Are smoke-free policies good for business?

Do good actions inspire good actions in others?

Actions such as sharing food and cooperating to reach a common goal have played a fundamental role in the evolution of human societies. Despite the importance of such good actions, little is known about if and how they can spread from person to person to person. For instance, does being recipient of an altruistic act increase your probability of being cooperative with a third party? We have con...