Pegah Nejat

Shahid Beheshti University | SBU · Department of Psychology

Moral judgment is among the topics studied in social cognition. Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) is a recent theory in moral psychology which has an intercultural intuitionist approach to moral beliefs of people around the world. The current study is concerned with examining psychometric properties of the Persian version of the questionnaire associat...

Upon the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, various conspiracy theories regarding the virus proliferated in the social media. This study focused on the sociodemographic, personality, and moral predictors of these beliefs. More specifically, we asked whether moral values predict belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories over and above sociodemograph...

As a culture-sensitive theory in moral psychology, Moral foundations theory (MFT) has generated a considerable volume of studies since its inception. The theory has very recently been refined by splitting the Fairness foundation to Equality and Proportionality, leading to the introduction of a second version of its corresponding questionnaire, name...

Morality-as-Cooperation Theory (MAC) views moral values in terms of seven distinct domains. Given the recency of this theory and the paucity of empirical data putting it to the test from countries other than the theory’s birthplace, this study aimed to examine reliability and validity of Morality-as-Cooperation Questionnaire (N = 552) in Iran. A se...

We examined the effect of pathogen and mortality salience on moral values and political orientation, testing competing hypotheses derived from three relevant perspectives. While Terror Management Theory (TMT) predicts a delayed shift toward preexisting moral values and political orientation, Pathogen Prevalence Hypothesis (PPH) anticipates a shift...

When someone violates a social norm, others may think that some sanction would be appropriate. We examine how the experience of emotions like anger and disgust relate to the judged appropriateness of sanctions, in a pre-registered analysis of data from a large-scale study in 56 societies. Across the world, we find that individuals who experience an...

According to cognitive-dissonance theory, performing counterattitudinal behavior produces a state of dissonance that people are motivated to resolve, usually by changing their attitude to be in line with their behavior. One of the most popular experimental paradigms used to produce such attitude change is the induced-compliance paradigm. Despite it...

According to the phenomenon commonly known as action effect and vastly replicated across the judgment and decision-making literature, more regret is associated with decisions resulting from action than inaction. Action vs. inaction, however, might either refer to change vs. no change or doing something vs. not doing something. The purpose of this s...

Background: thical competence is a skill that guides managers in finding appropriate ethical solutions in ethical situations. The current research was carried out with the aim of predicting moral competence based on moral judgment and problem solving and decision-making skills in the evaluation center of managers of National Gas Company of Iran. Me...

Individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have rigid moral judgments compared to healthy people. They tend to prefer deontological options when they face moral dilemmas. Recent research has indicated that activating the Veil-of-Ignorance (VOI) reasoning changes moral judgment in healthy participants, leading them to favor utilitarian cho...

Consumer nationalism in the age of global changes has a strong relationship with national identity. From the point of view of social identity and based on national identity, the attitude of consumer nationalism in the direction of supporting one's own group against others forms a framework in which a person has a positive attitude towards domestic...

Introduction: Terror management Theory is concerned with the effect of mortality salience on human psychological functions. The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of a pictorial manipulation to induce death threat based on this theory. The second purpose of this study was to compare death thought accessibility resulting from the indu...

Introduction: This study aimed to examine the effect of social exclusion on state self-esteem at both implicit and explicit levels and the moderating role of trait implicit and explicit self-esteem in this relation. Method: It was an experimental study with one between-subjects factor (acceptance, rejection). Participants were 110 individuals (80%...

Norm enforcement may be important for resolving conflicts and promoting cooperation. However, little is known about how preferred responses to norm violations vary across cultures and across domains. In a preregistered study of 57 countries (using convenience samples of 22,863 students and non-students), we measured perceptions of the appropriatene...

Taking Moral Foundations Theory as the morality framework, this study asked whether moral norms are prescribed differentially for various social roles, and what mechanism can be deemed responsible for that. We tested social perception as formulated by Stereotype Content Model as one such mediating mechanism. High- and low-status roles from three so...

The purpose of this dissertation was to determine the relationship between an individual’s social role and the moral norms expected regarding acts by/toward him. Further, the possible mechanisms underlying these effects were explored. The intuitionist Moral Foundations Theory (Graham et a., 2013) was adopted as the framework organizing moral concer...

The aim of this study was to investigate national, religious and modern identities at explicit and implicit levels. Method: The method was correlational and the population of the study consisted of adolescents and youth in Mazandaran and Yazd from whom 168 participants were selected through convenience sampling. For collecting data at explicit leve...

The current study was conducted with the aim of examining the impact of social-cognitive categorization of a victim of aggression on the degree of empathy individuals feel toward him. The innocent victim categorized as an in-group member was hypothesized to evoke the highest empathy, whereas the guilty victim belonging to an out-group was expected...

Moral Foundations Theory is among the latest theories of moral judgement in social cognition. This theory has specified six foundations of care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity, and liberty as underlying morality concerns. The present study aimed to examine the characteristics of these foundations in Iranian moral mentality and compared them...