Derek Parfit claims that, at certain times and places, the metaphysical units he labels “selves” may be thought of as the morally significant units (i.e., the objects of moral concern) for such things as resource distribution, moral responsibility, commitments, etc. But his concept of the self is problematic in important respects, and it remains unclear just why and how this entity should count...

Classic social psychology studies demonstrate that people can behave in ways that contradict their intentions--especially within the moral domain. We measured brain activity while subjects decided between financial self-benefit (earning money) and preventing physical harm (applying an electric shock) to a confederate under both real and hypothetical conditions. We found a shared neural network ...

There is often a divide between moral judgment and moral action; between what we believe we ought to do (or not do) and what we do. Knowledge of this divide is not new, and numerous theories have attempted to offer more robust accounts of ethical decision-making and moral functioning. Knowledge of widespread academic dishonesty among students is also not new, and several studies have revealed t...

Recent work has distinguished “harm” from “purity” violations, but how does an act get classified as belonging to a domain in the first place? We demonstrate the impact of not only the kind of action (e.g., harmful versus impure) but also its target (e.g., oneself versus another). Across two experiments, common signatures of harm and purity tracked with other-directed and self-directed actions,...

With the emergence of Web 2.0, people are able to share their thoughts and photos with their friends and strangers. Yet, they also risk invasion of their privacy. Information privacy has therefore become an important issue in the information age. In this research, we focus on the influence of anger on immoral judgment of privacy invasion in cyberspace. Specifically, two scenarios, nonviolent an...

David Wong’s essay is not only eye-opening, but (at least for me) contains an element of surprise. His topic is ancient Chinese ideas on how to promote moral development. His explicit aim is to describe and interpret various pictures in Confucian thought of “how the given and unlearned interacts with learning in moral cultivation.” Consequently, special attention was given to classical Chinese ...

We present an in…nite-horizon planner-doer model of moral standards, where individuals receive random temptations (such as bribe o¤ers) and must decide which to resist. Individual actions depend both on conscious deliberation and on a type re‡ecting unconscious drives. Temptations yield consumption value, but con…dence in being the type of person who resists temptations yields self-esteem. We i...

introduction: spiritual identity, defined as self-identification based on spirituality and spiritual experiences, has gained increasing attention during the past few years. the aim of this study was to assess several predictors and outcomes of spiritual identity based on a causal model. methods: for this purpose, parent and peer attachment were considered as exogenous variables, spiritual ident...