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Ioannidou M, Lesk V, Stewart-Knox B, Francis KB. Moral emotions and justifying beliefs about meat, fish, dairy and egg consumption: A comparative study of dietary groups. Appetite 2023; 186:106544. [PMID: 36965525 DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2023.106544] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/16/2022] [Revised: 03/13/2023] [Accepted: 03/18/2023] [Indexed: 03/27/2023]
Abstract
Meat eaters and meat abstainers differ in their beliefs and moral emotions related to meat consumption alongside gender differences. Few studies have investigated beliefs and moral emotions in pescatarians and vegans. Little is known about differences in moral emotions and beliefs regarding dairy, eggs, and fish or about speciesist beliefs within and between specific dietary groups. To address this gap, we investigated moral emotions (consumption-related disgust and guilt), attitudes towards animals (Animal Attitudes Scale) and justifying beliefs related to meat (Carnism Inventory), dairy, egg, and fish consumption in omnivores (n = 167), pescatarians (n = 110), vegetarians (n = 116), and vegans (n = 149). Results showed that people who consumed animal-derived products reported lower disgust and guilt and held stronger justifying beliefs about consumption of these products than those who did not consume animal products. All dietary groups significantly differed from each other in their attitudes about using animals for human benefit, with omnivores showing the least positive attitudes towards animals, followed by pescatarians and vegetarians, and with vegans showing the most positive attitudes towards animals. Women experienced greater moral emotions and held fewer justifying beliefs than men within groups where animal products were consumed and related to the animal-based products they consume (i.e., fish for pescatarians and eggs/dairy for vegetarians). These findings emphasise the importance of considering a wider range of animal products, such as eggs, dairy and fish, and dietary groups in order to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the psychological underpinnings of animal product consumption. The results highlight differences between dietary groups in attitudes and moral concern towards animals, which may be important to consider when designing interventions to reduce animal product consumption.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Valerie Lesk
- Department of Psychology, University of Bradford, UK
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Duan S, Valmaggia L, Fennema D, Moll J, Zahn R. Remote virtual reality assessment elucidates self-blame-related action tendencies in depression. J Psychiatr Res 2023; 161:77-83. [PMID: 36905843 DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2023.02.031] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/09/2022] [Revised: 02/15/2023] [Accepted: 02/23/2023] [Indexed: 03/13/2023]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Action tendencies are implicit cognitive and motivational states before an action is taken, such as feeling like hiding when experiencing shame or guilt, independent of the actions people decide to take. Such "action tendencies" are key to understanding the maladaptive impact of self-blame in depression. For example, feeling like "hiding" in a text-based task was previously associated with recurrence risk in remitted depression. Despite their functional importance, action tendencies have not been systematically investigated in current depression, which was the aim of this pre-registered study. METHODS We developed and validated the first virtual reality (VR) assessment of blame-related action tendencies and compared current depression (n = 98) with control participants (n = 40). The immersive VR-task, pre-programmed on devices sent to participants' homes, used hypothetical social interactions, in which either participants (self-agency) or their friend (other-agency) were described to have acted inappropriately. RESULTS Compared with controls, people with depression showed a maladaptive profile: particularly in the other-agency condition, rather than feeling like verbally attacking their friend, they were prone to feeling like hiding, and punishing themselves. Interestingly, feeling like punishing oneself was associated with a history of self-harm but not suicide attempts. CONCLUSIONS Current depression and self-harm history were linked with distinctive motivational signatures, paving the way for remote VR-based stratification and treatment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Suqian Duan
- Department of Psychological Medicine, Centre for Affective Disorders, UK
| | - Lucia Valmaggia
- Department of Psychology, UK; South London and Maudsley, NHS Trust, UK; Ku Leuven, Belgium
| | - Diede Fennema
- Department of Psychological Medicine, Centre for Affective Disorders, UK
| | - Jorge Moll
- Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience Unit, D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR), 22280-080, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil; Scients Institute, USA
| | - Roland Zahn
- Department of Psychological Medicine, Centre for Affective Disorders, UK; South London and Maudsley, NHS Trust, UK.
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Fleming WH. The Moral Injury Experience Wheel: An Instrument for Identifying Moral Emotions and Conceptualizing the Mechanisms of Moral Injury. J Relig Health 2023; 62:194-227. [PMID: 36224299 DOI: 10.1007/s10943-022-01676-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 09/16/2022] [Indexed: 06/16/2023]
Abstract
This paper introduces an infographic tool called The Moral Injury Experience Wheel, designed to help users accurately label moral emotions and conceptualize the mechanisms of moral injury (MI). Feeling wheels have been used by therapists and clinical chaplains to increase emotional literacy since the 1980s. The literature on the skill of emotion differentiation shows a causal relationship between identifying emotions with specificity and emotional and behavioral regulation. Emerging research in moral psychology indicates that differentiating moral emotions with precision is related to similar regulatory effects. Based on this evidence, it is proposed that increasing moral emotional awareness through use of an instrument that visually depicts moral emotions and their causal links to MI will enhance appraisal and flexible thinking skills recognized to reduce the persistent dissonance and maladaptive coping related to MI. Design of the wheel is empirically grounded in MI definitional and scale studies. Iterative evaluative feedback from Veterans with features of MI offers initial qualitative evidence of validity. Two case studies will show utility of the wheel in clinical settings and present preliminary evidence of efficacy.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wesley H Fleming
- Clinical Chaplain, Syracuse VAMC, 800 Irving Ave, Syracuse, NY, 13210, USA.
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Duan S, Lawrence A, Valmaggia L, Moll J, Zahn R. Maladaptive blame-related action tendencies are associated with vulnerability to major depressive disorder. J Psychiatr Res 2021; 145:70-76. [PMID: 34875461 PMCID: PMC8756141 DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2021.11.043] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/23/2021] [Revised: 10/22/2021] [Accepted: 11/24/2021] [Indexed: 01/09/2023]
Abstract
Biases towards self-blaming emotions, such as self-contempt/disgust, were previously associated with vulnerability to major depressive disorder (MDD). Self-blaming emotions are thought to prompt specific action tendencies (e.g. "feeling like hiding"), which are likely to be more important for psychosocial functioning than the emotions themselves. Systematic investigations, however, of these action tendencies in MDD are lacking. Here, we investigated the role of blame-related action tendencies for MDD vulnerability and their relationship with blame-related emotions. 76 participants with medication-free remitted MDD and 44 healthy control (HC) participants without a history of MDD completed the value-related moral sentiment task, which measured their blame-related emotions during hypothetical social interactions and a novel task to assess their blame-related action tendencies (feeling like hiding, apologising, creating a distance from oneself, attacking oneself, creating a distance from other, attacking other, no action). As predicted, the MDD group showed a maladaptive profile of action tendencies: a higher proneness to feeling like hiding and creating a distance from themselves compared with the HC group. In contrast, feeling like apologising was less common in the MDD than the HC group. Apologising for one's wrongdoing was associated with all self-blaming emotions including shame, guilt, self-contempt/disgust and self-indignation. Hiding was associated with both shame and guilt. Our study shows that MDD vulnerability was associated with specific maladaptive action tendencies which were independent of the type of emotion, thus unveiling novel cognitive markers and neurocognitive treatment targets.
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Affiliation(s)
- Suqian Duan
- Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, Department of Psychological Medicine, Centre for Affective Disorders, King's College London, London, UK
| | - Andrew Lawrence
- Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, Department of Psychological Medicine, Centre for Affective Disorders, King's College London, London, UK
| | - Lucia Valmaggia
- Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, Department of Psychological Medicine, Centre for Affective Disorders, King's College London, London, UK
| | - Jorge Moll
- Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience Unit, D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR), 22280-080, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
| | - Roland Zahn
- Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, Department of Psychological Medicine, Centre for Affective Disorders, King's College London, London, UK; Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience Unit, D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR), 22280-080, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil; South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, London, UK.
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Lawrence AJ, Stahl D, Duan S, Fennema D, Jaeckle T, Young AH, Dazzan P, Moll J, Zahn R. Neurocognitive Measures of Self-blame and Risk Prediction Models of Recurrence in Major Depressive Disorder. Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging 2021; 7:256-264. [PMID: 34175478 DOI: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2021.06.010] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/22/2021] [Revised: 04/30/2021] [Accepted: 06/13/2021] [Indexed: 11/19/2022]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Overgeneralized self-blaming emotions, such as self-disgust, are core symptoms of major depressive disorder and prompt specific actions (i.e., action tendencies), which are more functionally relevant than the emotions themselves. We have recently shown, using a novel cognitive task, that when feeling self-blaming emotions, maladaptive action tendencies (feeling like hiding and feeling like creating a distance from oneself) and an overgeneralized perception of control are characteristic of major depressive disorder, even after remission of symptoms. Here, we probed the potential of this cognitive signature, and its combination with previously employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) measures, to predict individual recurrence risk. For this purpose, we developed a user-friendly hybrid machine/statistical learning tool, which we make freely available. METHODS A total of 52 medication-free patients with remitted major depressive disorder, who had completed the action tendencies task and our self-blame fMRI task at baseline, were followed up clinically over 14 months to determine recurrence. Prospective prediction models included baseline maladaptive self-blame-related action tendencies and anterior temporal fMRI connectivity patterns across a set of frontolimbic a priori regions of interest, as well as including established clinical and standard psychological predictors. Prediction models used elastic net regularized logistic regression with nested 10-fold cross-validation. RESULTS Cross-validated discrimination was highly promising (area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve ≥ 0.86), and positive predictive values over 80% were achieved when including fMRI in multimodal models, but only up to 71% (area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve ≤ 0.74) when solely relying on cognitive and clinical measures. CONCLUSIONS This study shows the high potential of multimodal signatures of self-blaming biases to predict recurrence risk at an individual level and calls for external validation in an independent sample.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrew J Lawrence
- Centre for Affective Disorders, Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Daniel Stahl
- Department of Biostatistics, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Suqian Duan
- Centre for Affective Disorders, Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Diede Fennema
- Centre for Affective Disorders, Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Tanja Jaeckle
- Centre for Affective Disorders, Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Allan H Young
- Centre for Affective Disorders, Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London, London, United Kingdom; National Service for Affective Disorders, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, London, United Kingdom
| | - Paola Dazzan
- Centre for Affective Disorders, Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London, London, United Kingdom; National Service for Affective Disorders, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, London, United Kingdom
| | - Jorge Moll
- Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience Unit, D'Or Institute for Research and Education, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
| | - Roland Zahn
- Centre for Affective Disorders, Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London, London, United Kingdom; National Service for Affective Disorders, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, London, United Kingdom; Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience Unit, D'Or Institute for Research and Education, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
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Berghofer P. Evaluative experiences: the epistemological significance of moral phenomenology. Synthese 2021; 199:5747-5768. [PMID: 33551495 PMCID: PMC7845789 DOI: 10.1007/s11229-021-03044-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/22/2020] [Accepted: 01/16/2021] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
Recently, a number of phenomenological approaches to experiential justification emerged according to which an experience's justificatory force is grounded in the experience's distinctive phenomenology. The basic idea is that certain experiences exhibit a presentive phenomenology and that they are a source of immediate justification precisely by virtue of their presentive phenomenology. Such phenomenological approaches usually focus on perceptual experiences and mathematical intuitions. In this paper, I aim at a phenomenological approach to ethical experiences. I shall show that we need to make a distinction between evaluative experiences directed at concrete cases and ethical intuitions directed at general principles. The focus will be on evaluative experiences. I argue that evaluative experiences constitute a sui generis type of experience that gain their justificatory force by virtue of their presentive evaluative phenomenology. In Sect. 1, I introduce and motivate the phenomenological idea that certain experiences exhibit a justification-conferring phenomenology. In Sect. 4, I apply this idea to morally evaluative experiences. In Sect. 5, I suggest that certain epistemic intuitions should be considered epistemically evaluative experiences and I outline a strong parallelism between ethics and epistemology.
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Affiliation(s)
- Philipp Berghofer
- Department for Philosophy, University of Graz, Heinrichstraße 26/5, Graz, 8010 Austria
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Fontenelle LF, Frydman I, Hoefle S, Oliveira-Souza R, Vigne P, Bortolini TS, Suo C, Yücel M, Mattos P, Moll J. Decoding moral emotions in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Neuroimage Clin 2018; 19:82-89. [PMID: 30035005 PMCID: PMC6051311 DOI: 10.1016/j.nicl.2018.04.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/08/2017] [Revised: 03/07/2018] [Accepted: 04/01/2018] [Indexed: 11/20/2022]
Abstract
Background Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) exhibit abnormal neural responses when they experience particular emotions or when they evaluate stimuli with emotional value. Whether these brain responses are sufficiently distinctive to discriminate between OCD patients and healthy controls is unknown. The present study is the first to investigate the discriminative power of multivariate pattern analysis of regional fMRI responses to moral and non-moral emotions. Method To accomplish this goal, we performed a searchlight-based multivariate pattern analysis to unveil brain regions that could discriminate 18 OCD patients from 18 matched healthy controls during provoked guilt, disgust, compassion, and anger. We also investigated the existence of distinctive neural patterns while combining those four emotions (herein termed multiemotion analysis). Results We found that different frontostriatal regions discriminated OCD patients from controls based on individual emotional experiences. Most notably, the left nucleus accumbens (NAcc) discriminated OCD patients from controls during both disgust and the multiemotion analysis. Among other regions, the angular gyrus responses to anger and the lingual and the middle temporal gyri in the multi-emotion analysis were highly discriminant between samples. Additional BOLD analyses supported the directionality of these findings. Conclusions In line with previous studies, differential activity in regions beyond the frontostriatal circuitry differentiates OCD from healthy volunteers. The finding that the response of the left NAcc to different basic and moral emotions is highly discriminative for a diagnosis of OCD confirms current pathophysiological models and points to new venues of research.
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Affiliation(s)
- Leonardo F Fontenelle
- D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Brain & Mental Health Laboratory, Monash Institute of Cognitive and Clinical Neurosciences, Monash University, Victoria, Australia; Obsessive, Compulsive, and Anxiety Spectrum Research Program, Institute of Psychiatry, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
| | - Ilana Frydman
- D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Obsessive, Compulsive, and Anxiety Spectrum Research Program, Institute of Psychiatry, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
| | - Sebastian Hoefle
- D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
| | | | - Paula Vigne
- D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Obsessive, Compulsive, and Anxiety Spectrum Research Program, Institute of Psychiatry, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
| | - Tiago S Bortolini
- D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
| | - Chao Suo
- Brain & Mental Health Laboratory, Monash Institute of Cognitive and Clinical Neurosciences, Monash University, Victoria, Australia
| | - Murat Yücel
- Brain & Mental Health Laboratory, Monash Institute of Cognitive and Clinical Neurosciences, Monash University, Victoria, Australia
| | - Paulo Mattos
- D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
| | - Jorge Moll
- D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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Smith CE, Warneken F. Does it always feel good to get what you want? Young children differentiate between material and wicked desires. Br J Dev Psychol 2014; 32:3-16. [PMID: 25284361 DOI: 10.1111/bjdp.12018] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/01/2013] [Revised: 07/11/2013] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
One line of research on children's attributions of guilt suggests that 3-year-olds attribute negative emotion to self-serving victimizers, slightly older children attribute happiness, and with increasing age, attributions become negative again (i.e., a three-step model; Yuill et al., 1996, Br. J. Dev. Psychol., 14, 457). Another line of research provides reason to expect that 3-year-olds may be predisposed to view self-serving moral transgression as leading to positive emotion; this is a linear developmental model in which emotion attributions to transgressors become increasingly negative over the course of childhood (e.g., Nunner-Winkler & Sodian, 1988, Child Dev., 59, 1323). However, key differences in methodology make it difficult to compare across these findings. The present study was designed to address this problem. We asked how 3- to 9-year-old children (n = 111) reason about transgression scenarios that involve satisfying wicked desires (wanting to cause harm and doing so successfully) versus material desires (wanting an object and getting it successfully via harmful behaviour). Three-year-old children reasoned differently about desire and emotion across these two types of transgressions, attributing negative emotion in the case of wicked desires and positive emotion in the case of material desires. This pattern of emotion attribution by young children provides new information about how young children process information about desires and emotions in the moral domain, and it bridges a gap in the existing literature on this topic.
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Affiliation(s)
- Craig E Smith
- Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
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