The deflationary model of harm and moral wrongdoing: A rejoinder to Royzman & Borislow.

With a series of studies, Royzman and Borislow (2022) purport to show that extant models about the conditions under which harmful actions are deemed morally wrong do not have explanatory power-for any proposed condition, various harmful actions meet the condition but are not deemed immoral. And they reach the following conclusion: judgments of moral wrongdoing in the context of harmful actions (or judgments of moral wrongdoing more generally) are not reducible to an explanatory template. However, they did not address the main claim of the deflationary model of harm and moral wrongdoing, which is that intuitions of injustice connect harmful actions to judgments of moral wrongdoing (Sousa & Piazza, 2014). Our first study adjusts Royzman and Borislow' design to include a measure of perceived injustice, while our second elaborates their design to manipulate perceived injustice. The results undermine their conclusion and support the deflationary model, which we further refine here in light of the results of Royzman and Borislow's studies and ours.

Expanding Protection Motivation Theory to explain vaccine uptake among United Kingdom and Taiwan populations.

Vaccination can sufficiently ameliorate the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). Investigating what factors influence vaccine uptake may benefit ongoing vaccination efforts (e.g. booster injections, annual vaccination). The present study expanded Protection Motivation Theory with possible factors including perceived knowledge, adaptive responses, and maladaptive responses to develop a proposed model investigating vaccine uptake among United Kingdom (UK) and Taiwan (TW) populations. An online survey collected responses from UK (n = 751) and TW (n = 1052) participants (August to September, 2022). The results of structural equation modeling (SEM) showed that perceived knowledge was significantly associated with coping appraisal in both samples (standardized coefficient [ß] = 0.941 and 0.898; p < .001). Coping appraisal was correlated with vaccine uptake only in the TW sample (ß = 0.319, p < .05). Multigroup analysis showed there were significant differences between the path coefficients of perceived knowledge to coping and threat appraisals (p < .001), coping appraisal to adaptive and maladaptive responses (p < .001), as well as threat appraisal to adaptive response (p < .001). Such knowledge may improve vaccine uptake in Taiwan. The potential factors for the UK population require further investigation.

Does ought imply can?

Most philosophers believe that a person can have an obligation only insofar as she is able to fulfil it, a principle generally referred to as "Ought Implies Can". Arguably, this principle reflects something basic about the ordinary concept of obligation. However, in a paper published recently in this journal, Wesley Buckwalter and John Turri presented evidence for the conclusion that ordinary people in fact reject that principle. With a series of studies, they claimed to have demonstrated that, in people's judgements, obligations persist irrespective of whether those who hold them have the ability to fulfil them. We argue in this paper that due to some problems in their design, Buckwalter & Turri's conclusions may not be warranted. We present the results of a series of studies demonstrating the problems with their design and showing that, with an improved design, people judge that obligation depends on ability after all.