Moral Attitudes and Decision-Making

Moral Attitudes and Decision-Making at the Kenan Institute for Ethics explores why people think and do what they do through the lenses of psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and sociology. Through national and Duke-wide survey projects, as well as in a new, vertically-integrated lab, students and faculty work together to better understand aspects of human motivation and human behavior, and to disseminate these findings broadly.

Moral Attitudes and Decision-Making encompasses three distinct areas.

MADLAB
MADLAB is a vertically-integrated, interdisciplinary laboratory, co-directed by Phil Costanzo (Psychology and Neuroscience), Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Philosophy and the Kenan Institute for Ethics), and Stephen Vaisey (Sociology), where faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and undergrads work together on shared research projects. A new collaborative space was provided for the MADLAB to members to meet and work on research.

MADLAB is built around the broad theme of how social, cultural, neurological, and biological factors shape our moral attitudes, decisions, and judgments. Researchers plan to work on the roles of attention and automatic processes, scrupulosity and psychopathy, objectivity and evolution, virtue and development, and toxoplasmosis. Lab activities will include presentations of works in progress, discussions of recent relevant literature, and occasional faculty talks.

Measuring Morality
Measuring Morality aims to create a Rosetta Stone for researchers. The first phase involved fielding a nationally-representative survey of 1,500 adults in the United States aimed at understanding the interrelations among moral constructs, and at exploring moral differences in the U.S. population. Survey items were chosen in consultation with an international group of scholars from sociology, psychology, and linguistics, and represent a wide range of theoretical traditions. The survey includes both morality scales (typically shortened for inclusion on the survey, and including several recently developed scales), and measures of constructs theoretically associated with morality. In a second phase, select items from the Measuring Morality survey will be included in the fourth wave of the National Study of Youth and Religion, a nationally-representative study of the religious lives of teenagers and young adults. This will allow us to trace how experiences in the formative adolescent years shape the moral perspectives developed by American young adults.

The research project is directed by Stephen Vaisey, Associate Professor of Sociology at Duke University, and funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

Academic Integrity
In 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2011, the Academic Integrity Council and the Kenan Institute for Ethics surveyed thousands of Duke undergraduates, asking questions about cheating, collaboration, plagiarism, and other matters. Each survey’s findings have led to recommendations to and actions from university officials, including the creation of the Duke Community Standard. The 2011 survey also included questions about integrity outside the classroom, as well as in-depth interviews with graduating seniors. The 2011 survey and interviews documented marked reductions in academic dishonesty; significant gaps between the large numbers of students perceived to be cheating vs. the smaller number of students self-reporting cheating; and rising numbers of students reporting inappropriate collaboration. The survey and interviews also explored the relationships among integrity in different domains (academic, social, work, and civic) and raised key questions about how a Duke education can and should affect multiple dimensions of a student’s sense of integrity.