The Behavior of Ethicists (ch 15 of A Companion to Experimental Philosophy)

Chapter 15. The Behavior of Ethicists. Eric Schwitzgebel and Joshua Rust. In A Companion to Experimental Philosophy, edited by Justin Sytsma and Wesley Buckwalter. DOI: 10.1002/9781118661666.ch15

Summary: We review and present a new meta-analysis of research suggesting that ethicists in the United States appear to behave no morally better overall than do non-ethicist professors. Measures include: returning library books, peer evaluation of overall moral behavior, voting participation, courteous and discourteous behavior at conferences, replying to student emails, paying conference registration fees and disciplinary society dues, staying in touch with one's mother, charitable giving, organ and blood donation, vegetarianism, and honesty in responding to survey questions. One multi-measure study found ethicists tending to embrace more stringent moral views, especially about meat eating and charitable donation. The same multi-measure study found ethicists and other professors to show similarly small-to-medium correlations between their expressed normative attitudes and their self-reported or directly measured behavior.

Keywords: ethics; attitude-behavior correlation; metaphilosophy; experimental philosophy; applied ethics

Value change in men and women entering parenthood: New mothers' value priorities shift towards Conservation values

Value change in men and women entering parenthood: New mothers' value priorities shift towards Conservation values. Jan-Erik Lönnqvist, Sointu Leikas, and Markku Verkasalo. Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 120, 1 January 2018, Pages 47–51, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.08.019

Highlights
•    Becoming a parent changes the values of women, but not men.
•    New mothers' value priorities shift towards Conservation over Openness to Change.
•    Men's ratings of their spouse's values corroborate the change in women's self-ratings.
•    Women mistakenly believe new fathers' to have undergone a change similar to their own.
•    Value change may facilitate adaptation to major life-events.

Abstract: There is little research on how life transitions influence value priorities. Our purpose was to investigate, within the framework provided by Schwartz's Values Theory, the effects of entering parenthood on personal values. Study 1 (N = 12,850), employing cross-sectional European Social Survey data, showed that Finnish mothers, as compared to non-mothers, were closer to the Conservation pole of the value dimensions that opposes Conservation values with Openness to Change values. Study 2 longitudinally followed Finnish couples (N = 292) entering parenthood from the first weeks of pregnancy to three months after childbirth. Both self- and spouse-ratings of values showed that new mothers' value priorities shifted towards Conservation values. New mothers perceived a similar shift in new fathers' personal values, but no changes occurred in men's self-ratings. Neither study suggested change on the value dimension that opposes Self-Transcendence values with Self-Enhancement values. Across the cross-sectional and longitudinal designs, and across self- and spouse-ratings of values, our results consistently suggest that new mothers' shift their value priorities in the direction of increased Conservation over Openness to Change. These results are consistent with the notion that value change may facilitate adaptation to life events.

Keywords: Schwartz' values theory; Value change; Personal values; Parenthood; Sex differences

The Perniciousness of Perfectionism: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Perfectionism-Suicide Relationship

Smith, M. M., Sherry, S. B., Chen, S., Saklofske, D. H., Mushquash, C., Flett, G. L. and Hewitt, P. L., The Perniciousness of Perfectionism: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Perfectionism-Suicide Relationship. Journal of Personality. doi:10.1111/jopy.12333, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jopy.12333/abstract

Abstract: Over 50 years of research implicates perfectionism in suicide. Yet the role of perfectionism in suicide needs clarification due to notable between-study inconsistencies in findings, underpowered studies, and uncertainty whether perfectionism confers risk for suicide. Objective: We addressed this by meta-analyzing perfectionism's relationship with suicide ideation and attempts. We also tested whether self-oriented, other-oriented, and socially prescribed perfectionism predicted increased suicide ideation, beyond baseline ideation. Method: Our literature search yielded 45 studies (N = 11,747) composed of undergraduates, medical students, community adults, and psychiatric patients. Results: Meta-analysis using random effects models revealed ***perfectionistic concerns (socially prescribed perfectionism, concern over mistakes, doubts about actions, discrepancy, perfectionistic attitudes), perfectionistic strivings (self-oriented perfectionism, personal standards), parental criticism, and parental expectations displayed small-to-moderate positive associations with suicide ideation. Socially prescribed perfectionism also predicted longitudinal increases in suicide ideation. And perfectionistic concerns, parental criticism, and parental expectations displayed small, positive associations with suicide attempts***. Conclusions: Results lend credence to theoretical accounts suggesting self-generated and socially based pressures to be perfect are part of the premorbid personality of people prone to suicide ideation and attempts. Perfectionistic strivings' association with suicide ideation also draws into question the notion that such strivings are healthy, adaptive, or advisable.

Making punishment palatable: Belief in free will alleviates punitive distress

Cory J. Clark, Roy F. Baumeister, Peter H. Ditto, Making punishment palatable: Belief in free will alleviates punitive distress. Consciousness and Cognition, Volume 51, 2017, Pages 193-211, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2017.03.010


Highlights
•    Motivated increases in free will belief help justify punishing others.
•    Due to this justification, free will beliefs reduce remorse over punitive harm.
•    Highly punitive free will skeptics experience heightened anxiety.
•    Punishers feel more anxious when punished partner had no choice but to be unfair.
•    Punitive desires increase anxiety only when free will beliefs are reduced.

Abstract

Punishing wrongdoers is beneficial for group functioning, but can harm individual well-being. Building on research demonstrating that punitive motives underlie free will beliefs, we propose that free will beliefs help justify punitive impulses, thus alleviating the associated distress. In Study 1, trait-level punitiveness predicted heightened levels of anxiety only for free will skeptics. Study 2 found that higher state-level incarceration rates predicted higher mental health issue rates, only in states with citizens relatively skeptical about free will. In Study 3, participants who punished an unfair partner experienced greater distress than non-punishers, only when their partner did not have free choice. Studies 4 and 5 confirmed experimentally that punitive desires led to greater anxiety only when free will beliefs were undermined by an anti-free will argument. These results suggest that believing in free will permits holding immoral actors morally responsible, thus justifying punishment with diminished negative psychological consequences for punishers.

Keywords: Free will; Punishment; Morality; Motivated reasoning; Anxiety

The “social” facilitation of eating without the presence of others: Self-reflection on eating makes food taste better and people eat more

The “social” facilitation of eating without the presence of others: Self-reflection on eating makes food taste better and people eat more. Ryuzaburo Nakata and Nobuyuki Kawai. Physiology & Behavior, Volume 179, 1 October 2017, Pages 23-29, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2017.05.022

Highlights
•    We investigated the social facilitation of eating in the absence of other individuals.
•    Participants rated food as tasting better in front of a mirror reflecting visual information of themselves.
•    Consumption of food was also increased by observing themselves eating.
•    A similar facilitation effect was observed even when eating in front of a static picture of themselves

Abstract: Food tastes better and people eat more of it when eaten with company than alone. Although several explanations have been proposed for this social facilitation of eating, they share the basic assumption that this phenomenon is achieved by the existence of co-eating others. Here, we demonstrate a similar “social” facilitation of eating in the absence of other individuals. Elderly participants tasted a piece of popcorn alone while in front of a mirror (which reflects the participant themselves eating popcorn) or in front of a wall-reflecting monitor, and were found to eat more popcorn and rate it better tasting in the self-reflecting condition than in the monitor condition. Similar results were found for younger adults. The results suggest that the social facilitation of eating does not necessarily require the presence of another individual. Furthermore, we observed a similar “social” facilitation of eating even when participants ate a piece of popcorn in front of a static picture of themselves eating, suggesting that static visual information of “someone” eating food is sufficient to produce the “social” facilitation of eating.

When sex doesn’t sell to men: mortality salience, disgust and the appeal of products and advertisements featuring sexualized women

When sex doesn’t sell to men: mortality salience, disgust and the appeal of products and advertisements featuring sexualized women. Seon Min Lee et al. Motivation and Emotion, August 2017, Volume 41, Issue 4, pp 478–491, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11031-017-9615-9

Abstract: Although men typically hold favorable views of advertisements featuring female sexuality, from a Terror Management Theory perspective, this should be less the case when thoughts of human mortality are salient. Two experiments conducted in South Korea supported this hypothesis across a variety of products (e.g., perfume and vodka). Men became more negative towards advertisements featuring female sexuality, and had reduced purchase intentions for those products, after thinking about their own mortality. Study 2 found that these effects were mediated by heightened disgust. Mortality thoughts did not impact women in either study. These findings uniquely demonstrate that thoughts of death interact with female sex-appeal to influence men’s consumer choices, and that disgust mediates these processes. Implications for the role of emotion, and cultural differences, in terror management, for attitudes toward female sexuality, and for marketing strategies are discussed.

Keywords: Mortality salience, Sex-appeal, Disgust, Advertisements, Terror management


Conclusion: There is a high prevalence of using female sexuality with the intention to sell across a wide range of products, entertainment types (e.g., sports) and media. While men typically enjoy advertisements that utilize sex appeal, and female sexuality, the current research suggests that, in conjunction with thoughts of death (which are primed in many media contexts, such as television programs, movies, internet articles, and also in the physical environment, such as cemeteries, hospitals, war memorials, funeral homes), these advertisements would not be effective as a means to sell products. On a broader level, they suggest that, in the context of existential concerns, sexuality, and in particular female sexuality, continues to be paradoxical, serving as a key component to the origin of human life and as a source of immense pleasure, but remaining a lens through which we are disgusted with our own animal nature.