How moral bioenhancement affects perceived praiseworthiness.

Psychological literature indicates that actions performed with the assistance of cognition-enhancing biomedical technologies are often deemed to be less praiseworthy than similar actions performed without such assistance. This study examines (i) whether this result extends to the bioenhancement of moral capacities, and (ii) if so, what explains the effect of moral bioenhancement on perceived praiseworthiness. The findings indicate that actions facilitated by morally bioenhanced individuals are considered less deserving of praise than similar actions facilitated by 'traditional' moral enhancement-for example, moral self-education. This diminished praise does not seem to be driven by an aversion to (moral) bioenhancement per se. Instead, it appears to be primarily attributable to a perceived lack of effort exerted by bioenhanced individuals in the course of their moral enhancement. Our findings advance the philosophical discourse on the foundations of praise in the context of moral bioenhancement by elucidating the empirical basis underlying some assumptions commonly employed to argue for or against the permissibility of moral bioenhancement.

A neuroscientific perspective on the computational theory of social groups.

We welcome a computational theory on social groups, yet we argue it would benefit from a broader scope. A neuroscientific perspective offers the possibility to disentangle which computations employed in a group context are genuinely social in nature. Concurrently, we emphasize that a unifying theory of social groups needs to additionally consider higher-level processes like motivations and emotions.

Humans first: Why people value animals less than humans.

People routinely give humans moral priority over other animals. Is such moral anthropocentrism based in perceived differences in mental capacity between humans and non-humans or merely because humans favor other members of their own species? We investigated this question in six studies (N = 2217). We found that most participants prioritized humans over animals even when the animals were described as having equal or more advanced mental capacities than the humans. This applied to both mental capacity at the level of specific individuals (Studies 1a-b) and at the level typical for the respective species (Study 2). The key driver behind moral anthropocentrism was thus mere species-membership (speciesism). However, all else equal, participants still gave more moral weight to individuals with higher mental capacities (individual mental capacity principle), suggesting that the belief that humans have higher mental capacities than animals is part of the reason that they give humans moral priority. Notably, participants found mental capacity more important for animals than for humans-a tendency which can itself be regarded as speciesist. We also explored possible sub-factors driving speciesism. We found that many participants judged that all individuals (not only humans) should prioritize members of their own species over members of other species (species-relativism; Studies 3a-b). However, some participants also exhibited a tendency to see humans as having superior value in an absolute sense (pro-human species-absolutism, Studies 3-4). Overall, our work demonstrates that speciesism plays a central role in explaining moral anthropocentrism and may be itself divided into multiple sub-factors.

Why stress and hunger both increase and decrease prosocial behaviour.

Humans are regularly in suboptimal psychophysiological states like stressed or hungry. Previous research has made both claims that such impairments should decrease and that they should increase prosocial behaviour. We describe the overarching theoretical reasoning underlying these opposing predictions. Then we discuss empirical research on the two impairments most frequently studied, acute stress and acute hunger, and we find that neither alters prosocial behaviour clearly in one direction. We argue that this is because even under impairments, humans react flexibly to the incentive structure of the specific social situation they are in. Hence, either prosocial or egoistic tendencies get expressed, depending on which strategy can lead to fulfilment of the need the impairment triggered.

When Helping Is Risky: The Behavioral and Neurobiological Trade-off of Social and Risk Preferences.

Helping other people can entail risks for the helper. For example, when treating infectious patients, medical volunteers risk their own health. In such situations, decisions to help should depend on the individual's valuation of others' well-being (social preferences) and the degree of personal risk the individual finds acceptable (risk preferences). We investigated how these distinct preferences are psychologically and neurobiologically integrated when helping is risky. We used incentivized decision-making tasks (Study 1; N = 292 adults) and manipulated dopamine and norepinephrine levels in the brain by administering methylphenidate, atomoxetine, or a placebo (Study 2; N = 154 adults). We found that social and risk preferences are independent drivers of risky helping. Methylphenidate increased risky helping by selectively altering risk preferences rather than social preferences. Atomoxetine influenced neither risk preferences nor social preferences and did not affect risky helping. This suggests that methylphenidate-altered dopamine concentrations affect helping decisions that entail a risk to the helper.

Utilitarianism for animals, Kantianism for people? Harming animals and humans for the greater good.

Most people hold that it is wrong to sacrifice some humans to save a greater number of humans. Do people also think that it is wrong to sacrifice some animals to save a greater number of animals, or do they answer such questions about harm to animals by engaging in a utilitarian cost-benefit calculation? Across 10 studies (N = 4,662), using hypothetical and real-life sacrificial moral dilemmas, we found that participants considered it more permissible to harm a few animals to save a greater number of animals than to harm a few humans to save a greater number of humans. This was explained by a reduced general aversion to harm animals compared with humans, which was partly driven by participants perceiving animals to suffer less and to have lower cognitive capacity than humans. However, the effect persisted even in cases where animals were described as having greater suffering capacity and greater cognitive capacity than some humans, and even when participants felt more socially connected to animals than to humans. The reduced aversion to harming animals was thus also partly due to speciesism-the tendency to ascribe lower moral value to animals due to their species-membership alone. In sum, our studies show that deontological constraints against instrumental harm are not absolute but get weaker the less people morally value the respective entity. These constraints are strongest for humans, followed by dogs, chimpanzees, pigs, and finally inanimate objects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The Psychology of Existential Risk: Moral Judgments about Human Extinction.

The 21st century will likely see growing risks of human extinction, but currently, relatively small resources are invested in reducing such existential risks. Using three samples (UK general public, US general public, and UK students; total N = 2,507), we study how laypeople reason about human extinction. We find that people think that human extinction needs to be prevented. Strikingly, however, they do not think that an extinction catastrophe would be uniquely bad relative to near-extinction catastrophes, which allow for recovery. More people find extinction uniquely bad when (a) asked to consider the extinction of an animal species rather than humans, (b) asked to consider a case where human extinction is associated with less direct harm, and (c) they are explicitly prompted to consider long-term consequences of the catastrophes. We conclude that an important reason why people do not find extinction uniquely bad is that they focus on the immediate death and suffering that the catastrophes cause for fellow humans, rather than on the long-term consequences. Finally, we find that (d) laypeople-in line with prominent philosophical arguments-think that the quality of the future is relevant: they do find extinction uniquely bad when this means forgoing a utopian future.

Acute hunger does not always undermine prosociality.

It has been argued that, when they are acutely hungry, people act in self-protective ways by keeping resources to themselves rather than sharing them. In four studies, using experimental, quasi-experimental, and correlational designs (total N = 795), we examine the effects of acute hunger on prosociality in a wide variety of non-interdependent tasks (e.g. dictator game) and interdependent tasks (e.g. public goods games). While our procedures successfully increase subjective hunger and decrease blood glucose, we do not find significant effects of hunger on prosociality. This is true for both decisions incentivized with money and with food. Meta-analysis across all tasks reveals a very small effect of hunger on prosociality in non-interdependent tasks (d = 0.108), and a non-significant effect in interdependent tasks (d = -0.076). In study five (N = 197), we show that, in stark contrast to our empirical findings, people hold strong lay theories that hunger undermines prosociality.

Speciesism, generalized prejudice, and perceptions of prejudiced others.

Philosophers have argued there is a normative relationship between our attitudes towards animals ("speciesism") and other prejudices, and psychological work suggests speciesism relies on similar psychological processes and motivations as those underlying other prejudices. But do laypeople perceive such a connection? We compared perceptions of a target who is high or low on speciesism with those of a target who is high or low on racism (Studies 1-2), sexism (Study 2), or homophobia (Study 3). We find that just like racists, sexists, and homophobes, speciesists were both evaluated more negatively and expected to hold more general prejudicial attitudes and ideologies (e.g., thought to be higher on SDO and more prejudiced in other ways). Our results suggest that laypeople seem intuitively aware of the connection between speciesism and "traditional" forms of prejudice, inferring similar personality traits and general prejudicial attitudes from a speciesist just as they do from a racist, sexist, or homophobe.

Impartiality and infectious disease: Prioritizing individuals versus the collective in antibiotic prescription.

BACKGROUND: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global public health disaster driven largely by antibiotic use in human health care. Doctors considering whether to prescribe antibiotics face an ethical conflict between upholding individual patient health and advancing public health aims. Existing literature mainly examines whether patients awaiting consultations desire or expect to receive antibiotic prescriptions, but does not report views of the wider public regarding conditions under which doctors should prescribe antibiotics. It also does not explore the ethical significance of public views or their sensitivity to awareness of AMR risks or the standpoint (self-interested or impartial) taken by participants. METHODS: An online survey was conducted with a sample of the U.S. public (n = 158). Participants were asked to indicate what relative priority should be given to individual patients and society-at-large from various standpoints and in various contexts, including antibiotic prescription. RESULTS: Of the participants, 50.3% thought that doctors should generally prioritize individual patients over society, whereas 32.0% prioritized society over individual patients. When asked in the context of AMR, 39.2% prioritized individuals whereas 45.5% prioritized society. Participants were significantly less willing to prioritize society over individuals when they themselves were the patient, both in general (p = .001) and in relation to AMR specifically (p = .006). CONCLUSIONS: Participants' attitudes were more oriented to society and sensitive to collective responsibility when informed about the social costs of antibiotic use and when considered from a third-person rather than first-person perspective. That is, as participants came closer to taking the perspective of an informed and impartial "ideal observer," their support for prioritizing society increased. Our findings suggest that, insofar as antibiotic policies and practices should be informed by attitudes that are impartial and well-informed, there is significant support for prioritizing society.

The moral standing of animals: Towards a psychology of speciesism.

We introduce and investigate the philosophical concept of 'speciesism' -the assignment of different moral worth based on species membership -as a psychological construct. In five studies, using both general population samples online and student samples, we show that speciesism is a measurable, stable construct with high interpersonal differences, that goes along with a cluster of other forms of prejudice, and is able to predict real-world decision-making and behavior. In Study 1 we present the development and empirical validation of a theoretically driven Speciesism Scale, which captures individual differences in speciesist attitudes. In Study 2, we show high test-retest reliability of the scale over a period of four weeks, suggesting that speciesism is stable over time. In Study 3, we present positive correlations between speciesism and prejudicial attitudes such as racism, sexism, homophobia, along with ideological constructs associated with prejudice such as social dominance orientation, system justification, and right-wing authoritarianism. These results suggest that similar mechanisms might underlie both speciesism and other well-researched forms of prejudice. Finally, in Studies 4 and 5, we demonstrate that speciesism is able to predict prosociality towards animals (both in the context of charitable donations and time investment) and behavioral food choices above and beyond existing related constructs. Importantly, our studies show that people morally value individuals of certain species less than others even when beliefs about intelligence and sentience are accounted for. We conclude by discussing the implications of a psychological study of speciesism for the psychology of human-animal relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The costs of being consequentialist: Social inference from instrumental harm and impartial beneficence.

Previous work has demonstrated that people are more likely to trust "deontological" agents who reject harming one person to save many others than "consequentialist" agents who endorse such instrumental harms, which could explain the higher prevalence of non-consequentialist moral intuitions. Yet consequentialism involves endorsing not just instrumental harm, but also impartial beneficence, treating the well-being of every individual as equally important. In four studies (total N = 2086), we investigated preferences for consequentialist vs. non-consequentialist social partners endorsing instrumental harm or impartial beneficence and examined how such preferences varied across different types of social relationships. Our results demonstrate robust preferences for non-consequentialist over consequentialist agents in the domain of instrumental harm, and weaker - but still evident - preferences in the domain of impartial beneficence. In the domain of instrumental harm, non-consequentialist agents were consistently viewed as more moral and trustworthy, preferred for a range of social roles, and entrusted with more money in economic exchanges. In the domain of impartial beneficence, preferences for non-consequentialist agents were observed for close interpersonal relationships requiring direct interaction (friend, spouse) but not for more distant roles with little-to-no personal interaction (political leader). Collectively our findings demonstrate that preferences for non-consequentialist agents are sensitive to the different dimensions of consequentialist thinking and the relational context.

Sex differences in the effects of acute stress on behavior in the ultimatum game.

Acute stress affects human decision making. It has been argued that there are systematic sex differences in behavioral responses to acute stress, with males showing a 'fight or flight' and females showing a 'tend and befriend' response. A 'tend and befriend' response would suggest that women become more cooperative under acute stress, while men do not. We investigated the effects of acute stress on social behavior. We induced stress via the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) and then immediately after measured how participants reacted to offers made in the ultimatum game by a male proposer. We found that female participants were less likely to reject offers under stress (n = 25) vs. no stress (n = 37), p = 0.009, independent of how fair these offers were, cooperative behavior consistent with the 'tend and befriend' hypothesis. Male participants when stressed (n = 30) did not show differences in rejections rates compared to the control condition (n = 26), p = 0.41. Our results provide support for a qualitatively different behavioral response to acute stress among men and women.

Concern for Others Leads to Vicarious Optimism.

An optimistic learning bias leads people to update their beliefs in response to better-than-expected good news but neglect worse-than-expected bad news. Because evidence suggests that this bias arises from self-concern, we hypothesized that a similar bias may affect beliefs about other people's futures, to the extent that people care about others. Here, we demonstrated the phenomenon of vicarious optimism and showed that it arises from concern for others. Participants predicted the likelihood of unpleasant future events that could happen to either themselves or others. In addition to showing an optimistic learning bias for events affecting themselves, people showed vicarious optimism when learning about events affecting friends and strangers. Vicarious optimism for strangers correlated with generosity toward strangers, and experimentally increasing concern for strangers amplified vicarious optimism for them. These findings suggest that concern for others can bias beliefs about their future welfare and that optimism in learning is not restricted to oneself.

Beyond sacrificial harm: A two-dimensional model of utilitarian psychology.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 125(2) of Psychological Review (see record 2018-15704-001). The copyright attribution was incorrectly listed, and the Creative Commons CC-BY license disclaimer was incorrectly omitted from the author note. The correct copyright is "© 2017 The Author(s)" and the omitted disclaimer is found in the erratum. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Recent research has relied on trolley-type sacrificial moral dilemmas to study utilitarian versus nonutilitarian modes of moral decision-making. This research has generated important insights into people's attitudes toward instrumental harm-that is, the sacrifice of an individual to save a greater number. But this approach also has serious limitations. Most notably, it ignores the positive, altruistic core of utilitarianism, which is characterized by impartial concern for the well-being of everyone, whether near or far. Here, we develop, refine, and validate a new scale-the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale-to dissociate individual differences in the 'negative' (permissive attitude toward instrumental harm) and 'positive' (impartial concern for the greater good) dimensions of utilitarian thinking as manifested in the general population. We show that these are two independent dimensions of proto-utilitarian tendencies in the lay population, each exhibiting a distinct psychological profile. Empathic concern, identification with the whole of humanity, and concern for future generations were positively associated with impartial beneficence but negatively associated with instrumental harm; and although instrumental harm was associated with subclinical psychopathy, impartial beneficence was associated with higher religiosity. Importantly, although these two dimensions were independent in the lay population, they were closely associated in a sample of moral philosophers. Acknowledging this dissociation between the instrumental harm and impartial beneficence components of utilitarian thinking in ordinary people can clarify existing debates about the nature of moral psychology and its relation to moral philosophy as well as generate fruitful avenues for further research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Uncertainty about the impact of social decisions increases prosocial behaviour.

Uncertainty about how our choices will affect others infuses social life. Past research suggests uncertainty has a negative effect on prosocial behaviour1-12 by enabling people to adopt self-serving narratives about their actions1,13. We show that uncertainty does not always promote selfishness. We introduce a distinction between two types of uncertainty that have opposite effects on prosocial behaviour. Previous work focused on outcome uncertainty (uncertainty about whether or not a decision will lead to a particular outcome). However, as soon as people's decisions might have negative consequences for others, there is also impact uncertainty (uncertainty about how others' well-being will be impacted by the negative outcome). Consistent with past research1-12, we found decreased prosocial behaviour under outcome uncertainty. In contrast, prosocial behaviour was increased under impact uncertainty in incentivized economic decisions and hypothetical decisions about infectious disease threats. Perceptions of social norms paralleled the behavioural effects. The effect of impact uncertainty on prosocial behaviour did not depend on the individuation of others or the mere mention of harm, and was stronger when impact uncertainty was made more salient. Our findings offer insights into communicating uncertainty, especially in contexts where prosocial behaviour is paramount, such as responding to infectious disease threats.

Sleep Deprivation Impairs and Caffeine Enhances My Performance, but Not Always Our Performance.

What effects do factors that impair or enhance performance in individuals have when these individuals act in groups? We provide a framework, called the GIE ("Effects of Grouping on Impairments and Enhancements") framework, for investigating this question. As prominent examples for individual-level impairments and enhancements, we discuss sleep deprivation and caffeine. Based on previous research, we derive hypotheses on how they influence performance in groups, specifically process gains and losses in motivation, individual capability, and coordination. We conclude that the effect an impairment or enhancement has on individual-level performance is not necessarily mirrored in group performance: grouping can help or hurt. We provide recommendations on how to estimate empirically the effects individual-level performance impairments and enhancements have in groups. By comparing sleep deprivation to stress and caffeine to pharmacological cognitive enhancement, we illustrate that we cannot readily generalize from group results on one impairment or enhancement to another, even if they have similar effects on individual-level performance.

Self-Other Mergence in the Frontal Cortex during Cooperation and Competition.

To survive, humans must estimate their own ability and the abilities of others. We found that, although people estimated their abilities on the basis of their own performance in a rational manner, their estimates of themselves were partly merged with the performance of others. Reciprocally, their ability estimates for others also reflected their own, as well as the others', performance. Self-other mergence operated in a context-dependent manner: interacting with high or low performers, respectively, enhanced and diminished own ability estimates in cooperative contexts, but the opposite occurred in competitive contexts. Self-other mergence not only influenced subjective evaluations, it also affected how people subsequently objectively adjusted their performance. Perigenual anterior cingulate cortex tracked one's own performance. Dorsomedial frontal area 9 tracked others' performances, but also integrated contextual and self-related information. Self-other mergence increased with the strength of self and other representations in area 9, suggesting it carries interdependent representations of self and other.

Why is Cognitive Enhancement Deemed Unacceptable? The Role of Fairness, Deservingness, and Hollow Achievements.

We ask why pharmacological cognitive enhancement (PCE) is generally deemed morally unacceptable by lay people. Our approach to this question has two core elements. First, we employ an interdisciplinary perspective, using philosophical rationales as base for generating psychological models. Second, by testing these models we investigate how different normative judgments on PCE are related to each other. Based on an analysis of the relevant philosophical literature, we derive two psychological models that can potentially explain the judgment that PCE is unacceptable: the "Unfairness-Undeservingness Model" and the "Hollowness-Undeservingness Model." The Unfairness-Undeservingness Model holds that people judge PCE to be unacceptable because they take it to produce unfairness and to undermine the degree to which PCE-users deserve reward. The Hollowness-Undeservingness Model assumes that people judge PCE to be unacceptable because they find achievements realized while using PCE hollow and undeserved. We empirically test both models against each other using a regression-based approach. When trying to predict judgments regarding the unacceptability of PCE using judgments regarding unfairness, hollowness, and undeservingness, we found that unfairness judgments were the only significant predictor of the perceived unacceptability of PCE, explaining about 36% of variance. As neither hollowness nor undeservingness had explanatory power above and beyond unfairness, the Unfairness-Undeservingness Model proved superior to the Hollowness-Undeservingness Model. This finding also has implications for the Unfairness-Undeservingness Model itself: either a more parsimonious single-factor "Fairness Model" should replace the Unfairness-Undeservingness-Model or fairness fully mediates the relationship between undeservingness and unacceptability. Both explanations imply that participants deemed PCE unacceptable because they judged it to be unfair. We conclude that concerns about unfairness play a crucial role in the subjective unacceptability of PCE and discuss the implications of our approach for the further investigation of the psychology of PCE.

Reputational concerns as a general determinant of group functioning.

To understand a group's (dys)functionality, we propose focusing on its members' concerns for their reputation. The examples of prosocial behavior and information exchange in decision-making groups illustrate that empirical evidence directly or indirectly suggests that reputational concerns play a central role in groups. We argue that our conceptualization fulfills criteria for a good theory: enhancing understanding, abstraction, testability, and applicability.