A Self for Others: Models of the Self for Benevolent and Beneficent Action
The cognitive science of moral action seeks accounts of moral cognition – and their conceptual and valuational structures – that explain stable or unstable, reasoned or unreasoned, moral commitments in the real world. To be successful, cognitive science requires experimental approaches that are relevant to the lives and choices of people who demonstrate stable moral commitment in real life. Further, cognitive science should be able to develop models analogous to the theories from other scholarly inquiries into moral cognition, such as moral philosophy and theology. We applied cognitive valuational modeling and Bayesian model comparison to analyze choices in groups of people who 1) demonstrate real-world stable and reasoned action for others in long-term commitments of compassionate care; 2) demonstrate stable and reasoned action in the laboratory over 2-3 years and across context; and 3) a large group of young adults. We compared 4 different models, intended to correspond with being insensitive to context (Model 1), with ethical utilitarianism (Model 2), with an ethics of nondual self (Model 3), and with an ethics of relationally nondual self (Model 4). In all 3 studies, greater action for others associated with having a joint representation of values for self and others while still differentiating between the two (Model 4). Our findings show that action for others is facilitated by having a “self for others”: a representation of value for self that is tied to value for others without losing the distinction between the two.
Michael Spezio
Chair, Department of Psychology
Chair, Institutional Review Board
Associate Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience
Scripps College
Visiting Associate Scientist, Psychology & Neuroscience
Division of Humanities & Social Sciences
California Institute of Technology
Visiting Researcher
University of Hamburg Medical Center, Hamburg, Germany
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