The value‐action gap poses a considerable challenge to normative environmental ethics. Because of the wide array of empirical research results that have become available in the fields of environmental psychology, education, and anthropology, ethicists are at present able to take into account insights on what effectively motivates proenvironmental behavior. The emotional aspect apparently forms a key element within a transformational process that leads to an internalization of nature within one's identity structure. We compare these findings with studies on environmental activists, (...) which appear to a significantly lesser degree hampered by the value‐action gap, thereby attempting to understand what provides them with the drive to act more consistently on their moral attitudes. Hermeneutics is found to play a crucial role in the processes that lead to lasting and consistent motivation toward proenvironmental behavior. An empirically informed hermeneutical approach could therefore provide a promising impetus for contemporary environmental ethics. (shrink)

Ethical decision-making is a multi-faceted phenomenon, and our understanding of ethics rests on diverse perspectives. While considering how leaders ought to act, scholars have created integrated models of moral reasoning processes that encompass diverse influences on ethical choice. With this, there has been a call to continually develop an understanding of the micro-level factors that determine moral decisions. Both rationalist, such as moral processing, and non-rationalist factors, such as virtue and humanity, shape ethical decision-making. Focusing on the role of moral (...) judgement and moral intent in moral reasoning, this study asks what bearings a trait of mindfulness and a sense of moral responsibility may have on this process. A survey measuring mindfulness, moral responsibility and moral judgement completed by 171 respondents was used for four hypotheses on moral judgement and intent in relation to moral responsibility and mindfulness. The results indicate that mindfulness predict moral responsibility but not moral judgement. Moral responsibility does not predict moral judgement, but moral judgement predicts moral intent. The findings give further insight into the outcomes of mindfulness and expand insights into the models of ethical decision-making. We offer suggestions for further research on the role of mindfulness and moral responsibility in ethical decision-making. (shrink)

We explore the possibility that a priori philosophical commitments continue to result in a narrowing of inquiry in moral psychology and education where theistic worldviews are concerned. Drawing from the theories of Edward L. Thorndike and John Dewey, we examine naturalistic philosophical commitments that influenced the study of moral psychology and moral education in the USA. We then address the question of whether these foundational naturalistic commitments can be rendered as compatible with theistic commitments, using both modernist and postmodern philosophical (...) approaches that might be viewed as attempts at compatibility. Arguing that these attempts at compatibility fail, we draw from contemporary approaches to moral psychology and education in order to illustrate how naturalistic commitments might prevent these approaches from adequately addressing theistic understandings and experiences of morality. (shrink)

While the current discussion on embodied cognition provides valuable accounts of an agent’s bodily sensitivity to instrumental possibilities, in this paper I investigate felt demands as the bodily-affective dimension of the agent’s recognition of deontic powers such as obligations. I argue that there is a close kinship between felt demands and affordances in the stricter sense. I will suggest that what is unique about felt demands on an experiential level is that they involve an evaluative perspective arising from acute or (...) anticipated shame-like feelings. The conclusion is that the recognition of deontic power is also a matter of bodily sensitivity. (shrink)

The value-action gap poses a considerable challenge to normative environmental ethics. Because of the wide array of empirical research results that have become available in the fields of environmental psychology, education, and anthropology, ethicists are at present able to take into account insights on what effectively motivates proenvironmental behavior. The emotional aspect apparently forms a key element within a transformational process that leads to an internalization of nature within one's identity structure. We compare these findings with studies on environmental activists, (...) which appear to a significantly lesser degree hampered by the value-action gap, thereby attempting to understand what provides them with the drive to act more consistently on their moral attitudes. Hermeneutics is found to play a crucial role in the processes that lead to lasting and consistent motivation toward proenvironmental behavior. An empirically informed hermeneutical approach could therefore provide a promising impetus for contemporary environmental ethics. (shrink)

Although the issue of moral identity and morality is under investigation for the last many years, there is still a need to investigate its role in how it promotes behavior. This study tends to extend this string of literature and attempted to investigate the mediating role of moral reasoning among the elements of moral culture, prosocial behavior, and psychological wellbeing. For this purpose, college students were selected as participants in this study. For this purpose, a two-wave strategy was followed to (...) collect data. In the first wave of questionnaire distribution, 600 college students were contacted to complete the response. A hidden secret code was allotted to each questionnaire to trace the respondent for the second wave. From the distributed 600 questionnaires, 507 questionnaires were received back. At this stage, demographic characteristics and questions related to both the independent variables were asked from the respondents. While in the next wave, 448 questionnaires were received back from the redistributed questionnaires in the second wave. After discarding the incomplete and partially filled questionnaires there were left 431 useable responses. These responses were used to run the tests through structural equation modeling through assessment of measurement and structural model. Results indicate that symbolization promotes positive changes in the psychological wellbeing of the students and prosocial behavior of the college students. Moreover, internalization can promote psychological wellbeing. However, the impact of internalization on the prosocial behavior of college students has not been found statistically significant. Moreover, it can be safely concluded that moral reasoning has the potency to mediate the relationship of symbolization and psychological wellbeing as well as prosocial behavior. Moral reasoning also mediates the relationship between internalization and psychological well-being and prosocial behavior. (shrink)

Since its inception, experimental social psychology has arguably been of two minds about the nature and role of theory. Contemporary social psychology's experimental approach has been strongly informed by the “nomological-deductive” approach of Carl Hempel in tandem with the “hypothetico-deducive” approach of Karl Popper. Social psychology's commitment to this hybrid model of science has produced at least two serious obstacles to more fruitful theorizing about human experience: the problem of situational specificity, and the manifest impossibility of formulating meaningful general laws (...) of human social behavior. It is argued that a social psychology based on the search for this kind of lawfulness, under the auspices of either a strict or loose interpretation of the largely Hempelian model, is ultimately unworkable. An alternative approach to social psychology that is attentive both to the need for understanding individual situations and behaviors and to the need for generalized understanding of actual human behaviors is offered. This approach is grounded in the hermeneutic tradition. (shrink)

The field of behavioral ethics has seen considerable growth over the last few decades. One of the most significant concerns facing this interdisciplinary field of research is the moral judgment-action gap. The moral judgment-action gap is the inconsistency people display when they know what is right but do what they know is wrong. Much of the research in the field of behavioral ethics is based on early work in moral psychology and American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg’s foundational cognitive model of moral (...) development. However, Kohlberg’s model of moral development lacks a compelling explanation for the judgment-action gap. Yet, it continues to influence theory, research, teaching, and practice in business ethics today. As such, this paper presents a critical review and analysis of the pertinent literature. This paper also reviews modern theories of ethical decision making in business ethics. Gaps in our current understanding and directions for future research in behavioral business ethics are presented. By providing this important theoretical background information, targeted critical analysis, and directions for future research, this paper assists management scholars as they begin to seek a more unified approach, develop newer models of ethical decision making, and conduct business ethics research that examines the moral judgment-action gap. (shrink)

AbstractSpirituality continues to exert a strong influence in people’s lives both in work and beyond. However, given that spirituality is often non-formalized and personal, we continue to know little about how moral reasoning is strategized. In this paper, we examine how Buddhist leader-practitioners interpret and operationalize a process of self-decentralization based upon Buddhist emptiness theory as a form of moral reasoning. We find that Buddhist leader-practitioners share a common understanding of a self-decentralized identity and operationalize self-decentralization through two practices in (...) Buddhist philosophy—skillful means and the middle way—to foreground social outcomes. However, we also find that practitioners face tensions and challenges in moral reasoning relates to agency—the ‘re-centering’ of the self as an enlightened self and the use of karmic reasoning to justify (un)ethical behavior—and contextual constraints that lead to feelings of vulnerability and exclusion. We present a model that elaborates these processes and invite further research that examines novel approaches and dynamic interpretations of the self in moral reasoning. (shrink)