Nurse Life-and-Death Education From the Perspective of Chinese Traditional Culture.

This quasi-experimental study investigated the impact of traditional Chinese culture-based life-and-death education on 38 ICU nurses. Participants underwent 14 hours of training, and data were collected before and after the intervention using various questionnaires. Frequency and percentage were used for categorical data; mean and standard deviation for measurement data; and paired-sample t test for comparison of teaching effects before and after the intervention of life-and-death education programs. Results indicated significant improvements in understanding of death, reduced death anxiety, enhanced death coping abilities, and increased search for meaning (p < .05). However, there was no statistically significant change in attitude toward death (p > .05). Life-and-death education rooted in traditional Chinese culture positively influenced ICU nurses, fostering improved death cognition, reduced death anxiety, enhanced coping skills, and a heightened sense of meaning in life. Subsequent research will explore the relationship and distinctions between explicit and implicit death attitudes.

Do Adverse Childhood Experiences Make Us More Utilitarian in Moral Dilemmas?

Purpose: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have been associated with various aspects of morality, but their precise impact on moral decision-making remains unclear. This study aims to explore how ACEs influence moral decision-making in sacrificial dilemmas. Methods: Study 1 employed traditional dilemma analysis to quantify utilitarian responses and compare them among groups with no, low, and high ACEs. Study 2 utilized the CNI model to quantify three determinants of moral decision-making: sensitivity to consequences (C parameter), sensitivity to norms (N parameter), and general action tendencies (I parameter). Differences in these parameters among groups with no, low, and high ACEs were investigated. Results: Both Study 1 and Study 2 revealed that the high-ACE and low-ACE groups showed significantly higher utilitarian responses compared to the no-ACE group. However, no notable differences emerged between the high-ACE and low-ACE groups. Study 2 found that the N parameter was significantly lower in the high-ACE group compared to the low and no-ACE groups. Similarly, the low-ACE group exhibited significantly lower scores in the N parameter compared to the no-ACE group. Additionally, no significant differences were observed in the C and I parameters among groups with no, low, and high ACEs. Conclusion: These findings suggest that individuals with a high number of ACEs tend to exhibit more utilitarian responses, attributed to decreased affective response to the violation of moral rules, rather than increased deliberative cost-benefit reasoning or a general preference for action. Such insights deepen our understanding of the precise aspects of moral decision-making influenced by ACEs.

Effects of Alexithymia on Moral Decision-Making in Sacrificial Dilemmas: High Alexithymia is Associated with Weaker Sensitivity to Moral Norms.

Purpose: Although several studies have investigated the association between alexithymia and moral decision-making in sacrificial dilemmas, the evidence remains mixed. The current work investigated this association and how alexithymia affects moral choice in such dilemmas. Methods: The current research used a multinomial model (ie, CNI model) to disentangle (a) sensitivity to consequences, (b) sensitivity to moral norms, and (c) general preference for inaction versus action irrespective of consequences and norms in responses to moral dilemmas. Results: Higher levels of alexithymia were associated with a greater preference for utilitarian judgments in sacrificial dilemmas (Study 1). Furthermore, individuals with high alexithymia showed significantly weaker sensitivity to moral norms than did those with low alexithymia, whereas there were no significant differences in sensitivity to consequences or a general preference for inaction versus action (Study 2). Conclusion: The findings suggest that alexithymia affects moral choice in sacrificial dilemmas by blunting emotional reactions to causing harm, rather than through increased deliberative cost-benefit reasoning or general preference for inaction.

Influence of subjective social class and social mobility beliefs on self-focused attention: the mediating role of sense of control.

We verified whether social class shapes different models of the self in China, by integrating individuals' social mobility beliefs and exploring the mediating effect of sense of control. Participants were randomly assigned to one of 2 (subjective social class: upper vs. low class) × 2 (social mobility beliefs: high vs. low mobility) manipulation conditions. They then completed the sense of control questionnaire and self-focused attention task. High mobility belief could alleviate the difference in perception among different subjective social classes and improve lower classes' control perception. Sense of control mediates subjective social class effects and social mobility beliefs on self-focused attention.

Problem Behaviors of Adolescents: The Role of Family Socioeconomic Status, Parental Educational Expectations, and Adolescents' Confidence in the Future.

The comprehensive theoretical model of problem behaviors proposes that family socioeconomic status is one of the factors affecting adolescent problem behaviors. The purpose of this study is to further explore the mechanism of the influence of family socioeconomic status on adolescent problem behaviors based on the framework of the comprehensive theoretical model of problem behaviors. Further, it is to discover more protective or risk factors affecting adolescent problem behaviors, so as to provide theoretical guidance for the prevention of and intervention in adolescent problem behaviors. This study used data from the 2014-2015 academic year of the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS) conducted by the China survey and data center at the Renmin University of China. A national representative sample of 6888 junior high school students was selected. Among them, 3342 (48.5%) were girls and 3546 (51.5%) were boys with an average age of 14.50 years (SD = 0.68 years). The results revealed that parental educational expectations and adolescents' confidence in the future played a contributory mediating role in the association between family socioeconomic status and adolescents' problem behaviors. Both parental educational expectations and adolescents' confidence in the future are protective factors against adolescents' problem behaviors and enhancing these factors can decrease the likelihood of adolescents' engagement in problem behaviors.

When the going gets tough: Power affects the process of making tough decisions.

Powerful roles often require individuals to cope with impactful, complicated decisions. The present article reports two experiments investigating the effect of manipulated power mindset on the process of decision-making under different conditions: high vs. low choice conflict (Exp. 1) or high vs. no cognitive load (Exp. 2). Results showed that under the high-choice conflict and high-cognitive load conditions, high-power participants were more likely than low-power participants to take less time, adopt an alternative-based (rather than attribute-based) strategy, rate the tasks as easier, and report higher confidence in and satisfaction with their decisions. Power had no effect on the decision-making process under the low-choice conflict and no-cognitive load conditions. These results suggest that power interacts with choice difficulty to affect the decision-making process.

Childhood Environmental Unpredictability and Prosocial Behavior in Adults: The Effect of Life-History Strategy and Dark Personalities.

Purpose: Childhood environments have an impact on an individuals' behavior and cognition. We explored the relationship and possible mechanisms between childhood environmental unpredictability (CEU) and prosocial behavior (PSB) in adults. Participants and Methods: We recruited Chinese college students (N = 1035) and adopted a questionnaire survey and structural equation modeling. Results: The results showed that CEU negatively predicted PSB in adults. Life-history strategy and dark personality chains mediated this relationship. Higher CEU facilitated faster development of life-history strategies in individuals, and dark personalities, via fast life-history strategies, further influenced PSB in adults. The mediating pathways of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and sadism were significant, while psychopathy was not. Women were more prosocial than men, and there was no sex difference in the influence mechanism of CEU on PSB. Conclusion: This study has practical significance as it emphasizes the importance of shaping a stable childhood environment and that individuals' prosociality can be improved by intervening in the mediation.

Scarcity Enhances Outcome Evaluation in the Present: Electroencephalography Evidence.

Scarcity goods have generally been perceived as high in value in real-world and empirical studies. However, few studies have investigated this value over time, such as performance in intertemporal decision making. This study's chief objective was to determine how scarcity evaluation changes temporally. We used the electroencephalogram technique and an outcome evaluation task with the valuation of scarcity and ordinary rewards delivered at different times to explore the effect of scarcity on delay discounting. The feedback-related negativity (FRN) results show that ordinary goods were associated with a more negative amplitude than scarcity goods, and that rewards delivered in the future evoked more negative deflection compared to those delivered immediately. The prominent FRN effect was derived mainly from ordinary trials rather than scarcity trials in the immediate condition and in the future rather than only in the immediate condition. The Frontal Asymmetry Index (FAI) results show that the scarcity condition was associated with greater relative left frontal cortical activity than the ordinary condition when delivered immediately. The frontal asymmetry indicated greater approach motivation. Our electrophysiology data indicate that scarcity goods have a perceived high value, particularly when delivered immediately.

The effect of faith in intuition on moral judgment: The mediating role of perceived harm.

This study aimed to explore the relationship between faith in intuition and moral judgment and the underlying mechanism among Chinese college students using a questionnaire and experimental method. The results showed that levels of faith in intuition predicted more moral wrongness regarding ambiguous hurtful behaviors than unambiguous ones. Additionally, the perceived harm mediated the effect of individuals' levels of faith in intuition on moral wrongness regarding ambiguous harm behaviors but not regarding unambiguous harm behaviors. The results of this study provide empirical evidence on the relationship between faith in intuition and moral judgment in Chinese culture and have implications for future studies of moral judgments.

Effects of Primary and Secondary Psychopathy on Deontological and Utilitarian Response Tendencies: The Mediator Role of Alexithymia.

(1) Background: The purpose of this study is to provide more nuanced insights into the effects of sub-dimensional levels of psychopathy on moral dilemma judgments. To this end, this study examined the effects of primary and secondary psychopathy on utilitarian and deontological response tendencies. Moreover, this study also explored the mediating role of alexithymia as well as the moderating role of gender in these effects. (2) Methods: A total of 1227 participants were recruited through the online questionnaire service wjx.cn. After deleting unfinished questionnaires, the remaining 1170 participants were included in the final data analysis. Each participant completed a demographic information questionnaire, the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20, and six pairs of moral dilemmas. Descriptive and correlational analyses of study variables were conducted in SPSS 22.0. Mediation and gender difference analyses were conducted in AMOS 23.0. (3) Results: Primary psychopathy was negatively correlated with deontological response tendencies and uncorrelated with utilitarian response tendencies. By contrast, secondary psychopathy also correlated negatively with deontological response tendencies, but it correlated positively with utilitarian response tendencies. Mediation analysis revealed that alexithymia only mediated the relationship between secondary psychopathy and deontological response tendencies. Multi-group analysis revealed that there was no difference between females and males in the indirect effect model. (4) Conclusions: People with high primary psychopathy are less likely to reject harm in moral dilemmas. By contrast, people with high secondary psychopathy have high alexithymia, which causes them to be less concerned about avoiding harm, and they are more likely to maximize outcomes in moral dilemmas. These findings shed new light on the moral dilemma judgments of individuals with primary and secondary psychopathy.

Can Sexual Appeal, Beauty, or Virtue Increase the Opportunity for a Woman to Be Selected as a Spouse? The Mediating Role of Human Uniqueness.

High mating value is believed to correspond with high mating opportunities. On that premise, this study explores three cues that are linked to women of high long-term mating value, namely a "beautiful" facial appearance, "sexually attractive" body shape, and "virtuous" behavior. With exclusive attention focused on the above cues, this study examines what kind of human attributes would make a contribution to women's mating opportunities. The results reveal that both "beautiful" women and "virtuous" women were assessed (in this study) as having greater mating opportunities than "sexually attractive" women. In regard to the human attributes, only the "beautiful" woman was assessed as having high levels of human uniqueness and human nature. Meanwhile, "virtuous" women were assessed as having higher levels of human uniqueness but lower levels of human nature. In contrast, "sexually attractive" women were assessed as having lower levels of human uniqueness but higher levels of human nature. In addition, the results of a mediation analysis show that the trait of human uniqueness, and not human nature, was the mediator between the three types of women and women's mating opportunities. This finding means that, when women have higher levels of human uniqueness, they can acquire more mating opportunities. These findings contribute an improved understanding to why and how "beauty" or "virtue" increases the opportunity for woman to be selected as a spouse.

Do High Psychopaths Care More about Moral Consequences than Low Psychopaths in Chinese Culture? An Exploration Using the CNI Model.

Purpose: Fewer studies are about the influence of psychopath traits on moral judgment and the underlying psychological mechanism in Chinese cultural background. In this paper, we use the creative CNI (Consequences, Norms, Inaction versus action) model to quantify the subject's reaction to moral dilemmas. Method: In this research, the Chinese version of the Levenson Psychopathic Scale, CNI model materials, and a multinomial model to further analyze the associations among the psychopathy characteristics and utilitarian moral judgment are applied. The CNI model is proposed by Gawronski et al., which can quantify the subjects' sensitivity to moral consequence, sensitivity to moral norms, and the general preference for inaction or action in moral dilemmas. Result: This study finds that there were significant differences in the utilitarian moral judgment between the groups, t (360) = 3.24, p = 0.001, and Cohen's d = 0.36. The analysis results of the CNI model show that the high psychopathy group on the N parameter was significantly lower than the group of low psychopathy, ΔG2 (2) = 79.70, p = 0.001. In terms of the C parameter, we found no significant distinctions between the two groups, ΔG2 (2) = 1.356, p = 0.244. For the I parameter, the two groups also have no significant differences, ΔG2 (2) = 0.093, p = 0.76. Conclusion: Persons with high psychopathy traits prefer to make more utilitarian moral judgments and have a weak sensitivity to moral norms (N). The sensitivity to consequences (C) of the two groups is no significant difference. The general preference for inaction versus action (I) also has no significant differences between those two groups. Moreover, the CNI model fits well in Chinese subjects.

The Characteristics of Moral Judgment of Psychopaths: The Mediating Effect of the Deontological Tendency.

PURPOSE: Many studies explore the relationship between moral judgment and psychopathy in western culture, but the mechanism underlying this relationship remains unclear. By far, no research about this topic in the background of Chinese culture exists. In the current study, we adopt one of the creative process-dissociation approaches to explore the relationship between the psychopath and moral judgment. METHODS: Adopt the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathic Scale, the Chinese version of Interpersonal Reactivity and Process-dissociation approach to explore the relationship between the psychopath and moral judgment. RESULTS: Traditional utilitarian moral score of the high psychopathy group are significantly higher than that of low psychopathy group (t= 2.97, p<0.05), people with high psychopathy utilitarian tendency U factor score and people with low psychopathy have no significant difference (F= 0.85, p = 0.36). CONCLUSION: Individuals with high psychopathy tend to make fewer deontological moral judgments because of their decreased deontological tendencies rather than their increased utilitarian tendencies. They may make more acceptance choices not to increase the well-being of the majority of people, but because of their increased acceptance of hurting others in the moral dilemma.

Why People With High Alexithymia Make More Utilitarian Judgments.

Although recent studies have investigated the effect of alexithymia on moral judgments, such an effect remains elusive. Furthermore, moral judgments have been conflated with the moral inclinations underlying those judgments in previous studies. Using a process dissociation approach to independently quantify the strength of utilitarian and deontological inclinations, the present study investigated the effect of alexithymia on moral judgments. We found that deontological inclinations were significantly lower in the high alexithymia group than in the low alexithymia group, whereas the difference in the utilitarian inclinations between the two groups was nonsignificant. Furthermore, empathic concern and deontological inclinations mediated the association between alexithymia and conventional relative judgments (i.e., more utilitarian judgments over deontological judgments), showing that people with high alexithymia have low empathic concern, which, in turn, decreases deontological inclinations and contributes to conventional relative judgments. These findings underscore the importance of empathy and deontological inclinations in moral judgments and indicate that individuals with high alexithymia make more utilitarian judgments over deontological judgments possibly due to a deficit in affective processing.

Belief Bias Effect in Older Adults: Roles of Working Memory and Need for Cognition.

Belief bias is the tendency in syllogistic reasoning to rely on prior beliefs rather than to fully obey logical principles. Few studies have investigated the age effect on belief bias. Although several studies have recently begun to explore this topic, little is known about the psychological mechanisms underlying such an effect. Accordingly, we investigated belief bias in older and young adults and explored the roles of working memory (WM) and need for cognition (NFC) in the relationship between age and reasoning performance. We found that older adults showed a lower accuracy rate compared with young adults when conclusion believability and logical validity were incongruent. However, older adults showed a higher accuracy rate compared with young adults when conclusion believability and logical validity were congruent. The results indicated that in comparison with young adults, prior beliefs hampered logical reasoning more significantly in older adults under incongruent conditions and boosted logical reasoning more significantly under congruent conditions. Moreover, the logic index in older adults was significantly lower than in young adults, and the interaction index of believability and validity in older adults was significantly below zero. Furthermore, NFC mediated the age effect on reasoning performance under the two conditions. By contrast, WM mediated the age effect on reasoning performance only under incongruent conditions and did not act as a mediator under congruent conditions.

Different timing features in brain processing of core and moral disgust pictures: an event-related potentials study.

Disgust, an emotion motivating withdrawal from offensive stimuli, protects us from the risk of biological pathogens and sociomoral violations. Homogeneity of its two types, namely, core and moral disgust has been under intensive debate. To examine the dynamic relationship between them, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) for core disgust, moral disgust and neutral pictures while participants performed a modified oddball task. ERP analysis revealed that N1 and P2 amplitudes were largest for the core disgust pictures, indicating automatic processing of the core disgust-evoking pictures. N2 amplitudes were higher for pictures evoking moral disgust relative to core disgust and neutral pictures, reflecting a violation of social norms. The core disgust pictures elicited larger P3 and late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes in comparison with the moral disgust pictures which, in turn, elicited larger P3 and LPP amplitudes when compared to the neutral pictures. Taken together, these findings indicated that core and moral disgust pictures elicited different neural activities at various stages of information processing, which provided supporting evidence for the heterogeneity of disgust.

Event-related potential correlates of the collective self-relevant effect.

The present study investigated the electrophysiological correlates of the psychological processing of the collective self-relevant stimulus using a three-stimulus oddball paradigm. The results showed that P300 amplitude elicited by the collective self-relevant stimulus was larger than those elicited by familiar and unfamiliar stimuli. In addition, N250 and P300 amplitudes elicited by subjects' own names were larger than those elicited by other name stimuli. In terms of lateralization of P300, the collective self-relevant effect was largest in the left region sites and the individual self-relevant effect was largest in the right region sites. Therefore, the present study extended previous findings by showing that the collective self, similar to the famous individual self, was psychologically important to humans.