Intrinsic, not Extrinsic Motivation Leads to Greater Reward – 2 Theories
Presented in the context of bringing together consilience from outside of psychology, a friend of mine sent me the below TED video, by Simon Sinek, which I believe has a lot in common with what much of psychology is discovering, specifically that intrinsic gut-level motivations are much more powerful than extrinsic rational motivations. In some ways, much [...]
On the Morality of Torture & Utilitarianism
I personally do not believe in torture, but I have to admit that when I think of it, my mind prototypically thinks of the potential harm that might befall an innocent person caught by an unscrupulous policeman who is all too sure of his moral superiority. What would I do if I knew with 100% [...]
What is more Immorral? Distracted Driving or Smoking Marijuana?
The answer is that it depends on whom you ask. Below is a graph based on yourmorals data where participants were randomly assigned to answer whether they agreed that “XXX is immoral” about one of seven health behaviors.
As you can see, conservatives feel that ingesting all types of substances (cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine) are [...]
Hypermoralism – Morality causes ordinary people to do immoral things.
Some people believe that immoral acts are caused by amoral individuals. However, very few people are truly immoral (~1% of individuals are psychopaths). The idea of the term, hypermoralism, is to popularize the idea that morality can actually cause people to be immoral, rather than prevent them from being immoral (e.g. see this post). It’s [...]
Separating Pro-Peace from Anti-War Attitudes using Moral Psychology Measures
I’m off to SPSP 2010 and will be presenting the below poster at the morality and justice pre-conference. It’s based on a scale I found measuring separate war and peace attitudes (Vander Linden et. al, 2008) at the main political psychology conference 2 years ago. The concept is pretty simple…I found scales that predicted pro-war and [...]
Reading Palin’s “Going Rogue” & expanding the liberal moral imagination (Lederach & Wright)
I bought Sarah Palin’s new book, Going Rogue. As someone interested in moral confabulation, Sarah Palin is an a great case study. She has a very visceral intuitive sense of her own moral opinions (e.g. her opinion on Israeli settlements)…yet she often seems to have no preconceived notion of the source of those opinions. So [...]
What are the basic foundations of morality?
A few years ago, I was fortunate to catch a talk by Jon Haidt at the Gallup Positive Psychology Summit where he gave a wonderful talk about moral foundation theory, which seeks to determine the fundamental systems of morality. I sought to use his scale in my work and using that scale eventually grew into [...]
The values of people who are “Spiritual, but not Religious”
Some people in psychology have a theory that everyone wants to study themselves. I don’t really have a religious category that fits. I grew up going occasionally to a protestant church and I occasionally go to a new-age church in Los Angeles. If I had to pick a category, I might pick “Spiritual, but not [...]
J Street vs. The Weekly Standard: Is it possible to be pro-peace and pro-Israel?
A group called J Street has recently sought to question the wisdom of military action by the Israeli government. Their influence is supposed to be a counterbalance to the traditionally hawk-ish Israel lobby embodied by AIPAC. Many lobbying groups which oppose military action by Israel identify with the groups that Israel has conflicting interests with or [...]