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Wrongness attributions concerning the violations of different moral foundations at varying degrees of health threat
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Novel moral norms peculiar to the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in tension between maintaining one's preexisting moral priorities (e.g., loyalty to one's family and human freedoms) and avoiding contraction of the COVID-19 disease and SARS COVID-2 virus. By drawing on moral foundations theory, the current study questioned how the COVID-19 pandemic...
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Prior research has indicated that disease threat and disgust are associated with harsher moral condemnation. We investigated the role of a specific, highly salient health concern, namely the spread of the coronavirus, and associated COVID-19 disease, on moral disapproval. We hypothesized that individuals who report greater subjective worry about CO...
Citations
... 2014). It has gained considerable recognition and widespread application across diverse academic disciplines, particularly finding popularity in the realm of ethical decision-making (e.g., Finch, 1987;Hyman and Steiner, 1996;Clifford et al., 2015;Ekici et al., 2023). The study adopted a single-factor within-subject design. ...
Introduction
In the field of education, new technologies have enhanced the objectivity and scientificity of educational evaluation. However, concerns have been raised about the fairness of evaluators, such as artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. This study aimed to assess college students’ perceptions of fairness in educational evaluation scenarios through three studies using experimental vignettes.
Methods
Three studies were conducted involving 172 participants in Study 1, 149 in Study 2, and 145 in Study 3. Different evaluation contexts were used in each study to assess the influence of evaluators on students’ perception of fairness. Information transparency and explanations for evaluation outcomes were also examined as potential moderators.
Results
Study 1 found that different evaluators could significantly influence the perception of fairness under three evaluation contexts. Students perceived AI algorithms as fairer evaluators than teachers. Study 2 revealed that information transparency was a mediator, indicating that students perceived higher fairness with AI algorithms due to increased transparency compared with teachers. Study 3 revealed that the explanation of evaluation outcomes moderated the effect of evaluator on students’ perception of fairness. Specifically, when provided with explanations for evaluation results, the effect of evaluator on students’ perception of fairness was lessened.
Discussion
This study emphasizes the importance of information transparency and comprehensive explanations in the evaluation process, which is more crucial than solely focusing on the type of evaluators. It also draws attention to potential risks like algorithmic hegemony and advocates for ethical considerations, including privacy regulations, in integrating new technologies into educational evaluation systems. Overall, this study provides valuable theoretical insights and practical guidance for conducting fairer educational evaluations in the era of new technologies.
... The pool of studies that explored the influence of moral foundations found clear evidence that populations largely considered public health responses to be moral issues (Ekici et al. 2021;Zhang et al. 2023) and that those that did not were less likely to support COVID-19 control measures (Bruchmann and LaPierre 2022;Lo Presti et al. 2022). The group found a fairly consistent positive correlation between endorsement of the fairness and care foundations and attitudes and behavioural intentions towards COVID-19 protective behaviours-that is, the more people endorsed the fairness and care foundations, the more they approved of and practised protective policies and behaviours (Bruchmann and LaPierre, 2022;Chan 2021;Díaz and Cova 2022;Lo Presti et al. 2022;Pagliaro et al. 2021;Qian and Yahara 2020;Tarry et al. 2022). ...
This chapter explores how and why risk communication in an outbreak or pandemic context should take account of values. The chapter first briefly discusses the fact that values have been very little explored in risk communication research, despite the close connection between risk perception factors and moral values. We then present evidence showing that values exerted a strong influence values on responses to COVID-19 and the various recommended infection prevention behaviours and public health orders put in place to manage the pandemic. We provide a synthesis of studies that investigated the role of values on COVID-19 related risk perceptions and attitudes using a ‘Moral Foundations’ framework or a ‘Cultural Cognition/ Worldview’ framework. We found that values had a strong but distal influence on public responses to COVID-19, and note the surprisingly positive impacts of reframing infection control messages in values-congruent forms. We consider the possible implications for the design and delivery of outbreak and pandemic risk communication in the future.
... Contrary to our predictions (H2), people endorsing the Individualizing values tended to fear COVID-19 more than people endorsing the Binding and the Anti-Individualizing moral values. This is possibly related to the high Harm/Care foundation level, which is linked with perception of suffering and distress (especially highlighted during a public health crisis) and with high motivation to care and protect others (Ekici et al., 2021). Moreover, taking into account the further results, people of Individualizing morality generally were inclined to believe less in conspiracy theories than people of Binding morality, which could have translated into being more aware of the danger of the virus. ...
... En oposición a nuestras predicciones (H2), las personas que adoptan valores morales de tipo Individualista tienden a temer más el COVID-19 que los que adoptan valores morales Aglutinantes o Anti-individualistas. Esto podría estar relacionado con un nivel alto del fundamento Cuidado/Daño, que está vinculado a la percepción de sufrimiento y angustia (especialmente relevante durante una crisis de salud pública), y con un nivel alto de preocupación (cuidado) y protección de los demás (Ekici et al., 2021). Asimismo, teniendo en cuenta los demás resultados, las personas con una moralidad Individualista tienden a creer menos en teorías conspiranoicas que las de moralidad Aglutinante, lo que podría traducirse en un mayor nivel de concienciación sobre los peligros del virus. ...
Building on the Moral Foundations Theory and findings regarding the linkage of values, convictions, and beliefs, the aim of the study was to compare people displaying various constellations of moral foundations regarding their tolerance of ambiguity, fear of COVID-19 (FCV), endorsement of COVID-19 conspiracy theories, and the extent to which they believed in the effectiveness of five COVID-19 preventive measures. This study was self-report and questionnaire-based (N = 212), performed on the general public (age from 18 to 65). Moral foundations clustered into four groups: Individualizing, Binding, Anti-Individualizing, and Generally Moral. The endorsement of Individualizing values (Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity) was linked to higher FCV and higher rating of the effectiveness of COVID-19 preventive measures. Endorsing Binding values (Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity) was related to lower tolerance of ambiguity and displaying higher conspiracy beliefs. Findings are discussed in the light of their meaning of values for socially responsible behavior during a pandemic.
... However, such messaging needs explicit testing prior to implementation. Studies may draw on resources such as vignettes of moral foundation violations developed and tested by Ekici et al. (2021), which include COVID-19 prompts that can be used to test sensitivity to moral foundation violations. Such resources would be useful in the design, testing, and implementation of interventions. ...
The debate around vaccine passports has been polarising and controversial. Although the measure allows businesses to resume in-person operations and enables transitioning out of lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some have expressed concerns about liberty violations and discrimination. Understanding the splintered viewpoints can aid businesses in communicating such measures to employees and consumers. We conceptualise the business implementation of vaccine passports as a moral decision rooted in individual values that influence reasoning and emotional reaction. We surveyed support for vaccine passports on a nationally representative sample in the United Kingdom in 2021: April (n = 349), May (n = 328), and July (n = 311). Drawing on the Moral Foundations Theory—binding (loyalty, authority, and sanctity), individualising (fairness and harm), and liberty values—we find that individualising values are a positive predictor and liberty values a negative predictor of support for passports, suggesting adoption hinges on addressing liberty concerns. Longitudinal analysis examining the trajectory of change in support over time finds that individualising foundations positively predict changes in utilitarian and deontological reasoning over time. In contrast, a fall in anger over time predicts increased support towards vaccine passports. Our study can inform business and policy communication strategies of existing vaccine passports, general vaccine mandates, and similar measures in future pandemics.
... It defines five moral foundations: care/harm (empathy, dislike of suffering), fairness/cheating (proportionality, justice and rights), loyalty/betrayal (sense of belonging to identified group), authority/subversion (respect of authority and tradition), and sanctity/degradation (concerns with sickness and contamination). Previous work on moral foundations and COVID-19 includes Ekici et al. (2021), who showed that fairness, care, and purity moral foundations are found to be the most relevant to COVID-19. Henderson et al. (2021), in contrast, found that individuals who were worried about disease infection made harsher moral judgments. ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has upended daily life around the globe, posing a threat to public health. Intuitively, we expect that surging cases and deaths would lead to fear, distress and other negative emotions. However, using state-of-the-art methods to measure emotions and moral concerns in social media messages posted in the early stage of the pandemic, we see a counter-intuitive rise in some positive affect. In addition, we measure changes in emotions and moral concerns during notable events, such as the first US death and state-ordered lockdowns, and find that negativity shows a short-term increase and then a counter-intuitive decrease after COVID-19 takes hold in the US. We hypothesize that the long-term increase of positivity, as well as amelioration of short-term negative reactions, are associated with hedonic adaptation, emotion regulation, and a decrease of uncertainty. Finally, we identify a partisan divide in affect that emerged after the first US death, which resulted in differences in moral and emotional reactions of liberals and conservatives and among US regions. Overall, these results show how collective emotional states have changed since the pandemic began, and how social media can provide a useful tool to understand, and even regulate, diverse patterns underlying human affect.
... Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have begun to focus on how moral foundations are related to COVID-19 related behaviors and moral transgressions. Ekici et al. (2021) found that people perceived moral transgressions as more permissible if they happened because of attempts to mitigate COVID-19 threats. For example, participants who endorsed the moral foundations of care, fairness, and purity were more likely to rate a target who missed a sibling's wedding more favorably if they did so to minimize COVID-19 exposure than for another reason. ...
... Research suggests that conservatives-despite being more likely to endorse the authority foundation-view obedience as more positive when it is toward conservative or in-group authorities (Frimer et al., 2014); throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, experts in the United States such as the Center for Disease Control have often been directly at odds with conservative leadership which might undermine their authority. Inconsistent with previous research (Chan, 2021;Ekici et al., 2021;Pagliaro et al., 2021), we did not see that individualizing foundations predicted more self-reported COVID-19 prevention behaviors, but we did see that binding foundations were related to reporting fewer prevention behaviors such as hand-washing, masking, and social-distancing. This is contrary to recent research in a French population that found that endorsing the binding foundations of authority and purity were associated with increased prevention behaviors (Díaz and Cova, 2021), suggesting that the effects we found may be unique to the U.S. American population. ...
... However, since regulations are in place in order to prevent harm and protect those who are more vulnerable, it may be that endorsing the care foundation makes reporting COVID-19 violations more acceptable. Indeed Ekici et al. (2021) found that moral violations were seen as more permissible when people were exhibiting them to avoid the spread of COVID-19. ...
In the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic has become highly politicized and highly moralized. The current study explored whether participants’ (N = 118) endorsements of binding (promoting group cohesion) versus individualizing (promoting care for individuals) moral foundations explained partisan differences in views and behaviors regarding COVID-19. Participants completed the Moral Foundations Questionnaire before they indicated how morally permissible they thought it was to violate COVID-19 mandates, report others’ violations, or not get vaccinated. Additionally, they indicated their own prevention behaviors. Results show that endorsement of both individualizing and binding foundations explain partisan differences in moral permissibility ratings. Political conservatism predicted greater endorsement of binding foundations which in turn predicted seeing COVID-19 violations and not getting vaccinated as more morally permissible, and predicted fewer self-reported prevention behaviors. Endorsement of individualizing foundations predicted seeing violations as less morally permissible and reporting others’ violations as more morally permissible.
During the COVID‐19 pandemic, behaviours that violated various precautionary policies were recurring. The present research examined how Chinese participants' perception of targets in terms of immorality and dehumanization depends on the target's knowledge of their COVID‐19 infection. In Study 1 ( N = 223), we manipulated the presentation of the target's knowledge of their COVID‐19 infection before violating policies and observed that a target who knew they were infected was perceived as more immoral and less human than a target who knew they were not infected. In Study 2 ( N = 267), we replicated this effect and further observed that a target was perceived as less moral and human even when they did not acquire knowledge of their COVID‐19 infection until after having violated the policies. Moreover, perceived immorality played a mediating role between the target's knowledge of their COVID‐19 infection and dehumanization, which was moderated by risk perception of COVID‐19 in Study 2, but not by fear of COVID‐19 in Study 1. These findings increase our understanding of the phenomenon of moralization in the context of a pandemic.
The first chapter outlines the concepts of policy and policymaking, distinguishing them from politics and presenting the evolution of the policy concept in the twentieth century. Various approaches to policymaking are presented, including the positivist approach, according to which public affairs are governed in a rational-comprehensive manner. An alternative is the post-positivist approach, eliminating the illusion of certainty and acknowledging the existence of divergent opinions or viewpoints. Then, the method of analysis based on the policy cycle model is described, with special emphasis on processes such as: (1) agenda setting; (2) policy formulation; (3) decision-making; (4) policy implementation; (5) policy evaluation. Furthermore, attention is drawn to the question of ethical values and group identity, which form the basis for understanding human cognition and conduct. Factors influencing the shift in policymaking approaches, including the argumentative turn, the increasing role of open participation, and the epistemic value of civic deliberation, are discussed. Issues of civic activity and social self-organization are highlighted as crucial, with the premise that active and engaged citizens are the core of effective deliberation. The chapter demonstrates how the shift towards deliberation, dialogue, and civic engagement in public policy has led, in the early 21st century, to the development of various innovative e-participatory mechanisms classified as 'open' policymaking. It concludes that open policymaking necessitates a different analytic approach compared to traditional policymaking, potentially involving the scrutiny of collective intelligence manifestations in online projects.
One reason why the COVID‐19 pandemic presented a challenge to public health is that individuals struggled to adhere to virus protective behaviors, such as physical distancing. To aid understanding why people engaged in distancing practices, we investigated the role of threat perceptions and the moralization of physical distancing. We collected longitudinal data from 340 US citizens across five measurement waves from April 2020 to June 2021. Results showed that individuals who perceived COVID‐19 as more threatening, and those who more strongly moralized physical distancing, were more likely to engage in physical distancing behavior. Moreover, the effect of threat perceptions on physical distancing behavior was mediated by moralization of physical distancing. These results provide new insights into the adherence to physical distancing behaviors during pandemics and underscore the importance of moralization in shaping behavior.