Virtue in Media

The Moral Psychology of Excellence in News and Public Relations

Patrick Lee Plaisance

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781134596287
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This work establishes a contemporary profile of virtue in professional media practice. Author Patrick Lee Plaisance examines the experiences, perspectives, moral stances, and demographic data of two dozen professional exemplars in journalism and public relations. Plaisance conducted extensive personal "life story" interviews and collected survey data to assess the exemplars' personality traits, ethical ideologies, moral reasoning skills and perceived workplace climate.

The chosen professionals span the geographic United States, and include Pulitzer Prize winners and trendsetting PR corporate executives, ranging from rising stars to established veterans. Their thoughts, opinions, and experiences provide readers with an insider's perspective on the thought process of decision makers in media.

The unique observations in this volume will be stimulating reading for practitioners, researchers, and students in journalism and public relations. Virtue in Media establishes a key benchmark, and sets an agenda for future research into the moral psychology of media professionals.

Chapter 1
Moral Psychology : The Grand Convergence

Imagine that you are the driver of a municipal trolley. While serving your route and coasting down an incline, you realize that the trolley’s brakes have failed. Panic-stricken, you look ahead and see, working on the track, a group of five men. You are unable to warn them to jump out of the way; on your present course, your trolley will surely run them down and kill them. However, you also see a small rail spur in front of the spot where the men are working. You have the ability to switch your trolley to the spur and thus avoid a catastrophe. But just as you realize this, you see a sixth worker dutifully working alone on the rail spur, and again, you have no way of warning him. What do you do? How might you morally justify your actions? How might you explain that switching to the spur and killing the single worker is more defensible than not acting at all and killing the five? Then consider this: While you are frantically trying to contemplate your impossible choices, also up ahead is a footbridge over the trolley tracks. Standing on the bridge, watching your trolley, is a man named George. George instantly realizes that your trolley is out of control, and he is familiar enough with trolleys to know that the only way to stop it would be to drop a very heavy weight in its path. But the only available, sufficiently heavy weight is a fat man next to him on the bridge. George, too, then, also has a dilemma: He can either shove the fat man down onto the track, thereby killing him, or he could refrain from doing this, and thus let the workers die. What might be George’s most defensible course of action, and why?

The scenario above was first proposed by moral philosopher Philippa Foot in 1967 and later expanded upon by Judith Jarvis Thomson in 1976. While it is just one of many such dilemma scenarios that have preoccupied philosophers for centuries, the “Trolley Problem,” as Foot’s came to be called, is among the more famous. Foot’s point was to make us think about the moral weight we assign to our intentions and to the various duties we have to others. Since our duty to avoid harming others is paramount, usually trumping other “positive” duties such as giving aid, more harm is avoided by switching to the rail spur, she concludes. But what about a surgeon who could also save five lives by killing a patient and distributing her organs to five other people who would otherwise die? The math is the same, but Foot says the moral equation is quite different: Unlike the trolley driver, who confronts the conflict between the two “negative” duties of avoiding harm to one or to five, the surgeon must weigh a negative duty against the “positive” duty of rendering aid. In such cases, both Foot and Jarvis argued, our duty to refrain from inflicting harm on others trumps our duty to provide aid to others. Thus, George, watching the trolley from the footbridge, must opt for “letting die” and refrain from “killing”:

Here is something bad, up for distribution, a speeding trolley. If nothing is done, five will get it, and one will not; so five will die and one will live. It strikes us that it would be better for five to live and one die than for one to live and five die, and therefore that a better distribution of the bad thing would be for the one to get it, and the five not to. If the one has no more claim against the bad thing than any of the five has, he cannot complain if we do something to it in order to bring about that it is better distributed: i.e., it is permissible for [the driver] to turn [the trolley]. But even if the one has no more claim against the bad thing than any of the five has, he can complain if we do something to him in order to bring about that the bad thing is better distributed: i.e., it is not permissible for George to shove his fat man off the bridge into the path of the trolley [author’s emphasis].

(1976, p. 215)

The Trolley Problem gets us into the realm of moral psychology, or the study of the intersection of behavior, motivations and questions about our moral agency. The Trolley Problem and its variants have engaged not only moral philosophers but neuroscientists, economists and evolutionary psychologists. It also has spawned a huge body of work, research and commentary known as “trolleyology,” which “makes the Talmud look like CliffsNotes,” joked one philosopher (Appiah, 2008). Such moral psychology dilemma exercises have engaged a wide range of philosophers and scientists, not necessarily because they illuminate how we might act in the most moral fashion when faced with a crisis, but because they suggest how we might better understand moral functioning itself. Philosophers and ethicists are most concerned with exploring our reasons for embracing certain principles, such as avoidance of harm and courage, and with articulating justifications for using those principles to guide actions in a given situation. Psychologists, neuroscientists and cognitive researchers are interested in all the various forces that shape our behavior—personality traits, dispositions, motivations, social contexts, cultural environments. Moral psychology, then, is a valuable, transdisciplinary arena of theory and research that brings all these concerns together, encouraging us to construct a more holistic view of human behavior and moral deliberation. We don’t make judgments in vacuums. We are neither creatures of abstraction, who blindly follow our moral beliefs whatever situation we find ourselves in, nor are we simply a collection of nerve endings that respond impulsively to any external stimuli. Two researchers, Daniel Cervone and Ritu Tripathi, hinted at the daunting complexity facing psychologists interested in studying the nature of the moral life:

The components of moral functioning that are identified [in decades of research on moral reasoning] encompass psychological functions that are diverse: interpreting situations, formulating courses of action, contemplating and selecting among alternative values that bear on a given circumstance, executing courses of action. If one considers also the psychological structures and processes (declarative and procedural knowledge, affective systems, cognitive appraisal processes, etc.) that may come into play as individuals execute each of these four functions (interpreting, formulating, selecting, executing), the resulting set of psychological systems is so diverse that it becomes difficult to identify systems that are not involved in moral reasoning or action [authors’ emphasis].

(2009, p. 30)

Moral psychology theorists argue that moral philosophers and social scientists must learn from each other and join forces to cultivate a more comprehensive understanding of human moral agency. Philosopher and cognitive theorist Owen Flanagan and his colleagues described the need for this sort of synthesis that explores the interconnectedness of moral theory with theories of our social and psychological lives:

Moral imperatives and judgments can guide action and motivate individuals not because of anything internal to their syntax, semantics, or logical structure, still less because our biology makes us think that they refer to something objective, but rather because of how they relate to vital human needs, desires, interests, such as a need for safety, security, friendship, reciprocity, and a sense of belonging…. Without these contingent facts about the species Homo sapiens, morality would be inert.

(Flanagan, Sarkissian & Wong, 2008, p. 47)

This chapter provides a brief survey of the field of moral psychology as the basis for this study of exemplars in journalism and public relations. It will summarize key claims of the field, review the issues that have been emphasized in recent research and outline major debates among moral psychology theorists. It will then review central implications of moral psychology research regarding moral development, education and normative claims. Finally, it will discuss the value of and need for media ethics researchers to draw on moral psychology methods and theory, toward which this study of media exemplars is but a rudimentary step, to strengthen and mature the field.

Overview of Moral Psychology

“Ethics must not—indeed cannot— be psychology, but it does not follow that ethics should ignore psychology” [authors’ emphasis] (Doris & Stich, 2005, p. 115). This challenge by two prominent moral psychology theorists, John Doris and Stephen Stich, could be considered the galvanizing slogan for the field. For much of the twentieth century, philosophy and science went their separate ways. Moral philosophers had little use for the empirical sciences, fearful of what is known as the naturalistic fallacy, or committing illogical leaps from the descriptive to the normative—that is, asserting claims about what we should do based on mere descriptions of the way things are. Such “ought” statements can never be justified by stating what is, and the naturalistic fallacy rightly remains a concern in moral philosophy. An unfortunate result, however, was that “too many moral philosophers and commentators on moral philosophy … have been content to invent their psychology or anthropology from scratch” (Darwall, Gibbard & Railton, 1997, pp. 34–35). Social scientists, conversely, had little use for the abstract and largely unquantifiable claims of philosophy, fearful of resting “hard science” on deceptively simple and often muddled assumptions behind the nature of values and other “squishy” concepts. Consequently, the mutual exclusivity of the two realms has “discouraged investigators in the biological, behavioral and social sciences from undertaking philosophically informed research on ethical issues” (Doris & Stich, 2005, p. 115). As a result, the field of moral philosophy developed largely ignorant of developments in biology and psychology, and empirical researchers studying human behavior kept bumping up against broader, moral implications of the personal and social dynamics that their “scientific” language was hard-pressed to incorporate. But since the 1990s, however, many philosophers have drawn on recent advances in cognitive psychology, brain science and evolutionary psychology to inform their work. And many scientists in those fields have recognized the potential explanatory power of incorporating the language of moral philosophy.

As a discipline, moral psychology concerns itself with the intersection of human sciences and moral deliberation. It is a central focus of researchers in philosophy, psychology, neuroscience and even anthropology and economics. As such, the field touches on both the profound and the prosaic. By studying tragically brain-damaged individuals, researchers have gained insight in the workings of our brains when we make moral decisions. Other research seeks to tease out the nature of norms and values that appear to be universal, in contrast to culturally bound concepts. For example, the field has something to say about the persistence of clashing conservative and liberal ideologies. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt (2001, 2007) has developed what he and others call five “foundational” moral principles that, more or less, most rational people embrace as important:

• Harm/care. It is wrong to hurt people; it is good to relieve suffering.
• Fairness/reciprocity. Justice and fairness are good; people have certain rights that need to be upheld in social interactions.
• In-group loyalty. People should be true to their group and be wary of threats from the outside. Allegiance, loyalty and patriotism are virtues; betrayal is bad.
• Authority/respect. People should respect social hierarchy; social order is necessary for human life.
• Purity/sanctity. The body and certain aspects of life are sacred. Cleanliness and health, as well as their derivatives of chastity and piety, are all good. Pollution, contamination and the associated character traits of lust and greed are all bad.

Haidt’s research shows that liberals feel strongly about the first two principles, preventing harm and ensuring fairness but only minimally embrace the other three. In contrast, conservatives place greater value on loyalty, authority and purity, which often strike liberals as backward or outdated. Conservatives, too, embrace the value of harm prevention and fairness, but not with the zeal of liberals. Political writer Will Wilkinson described this dichotomy:

While the five foundations are universal, cultures build upon each to varying degrees. Imagine five adjustable slides on a stereo equalizer that can be turned up or down to produce different balances of sound. An equalizer preset like “Show Tunes” will turn down the bass and “Hip Hop” will turn it up, but neither turns it off. Similarly, societies modulate the dimension of moral emotions differently, creating a distinctive cultural profile of moral feeling, judgment and justification. If you’re a sharia devotee ready to stone adulterers and slaughter infidels, you have purity and in-group pushed up to 11. PETA members, who vibrate to the pain of other species, have turned in-group way down and harm way up.

(Jacobs, 2009, pp. 50–51)

Psychology, Reasoning and Moral Exemplars

More broadly, moral psychology research represents a valuable effort to provide a strong empirical foundation for normative ethics theorizing by suggesting connections between the theories and methodologies of psychology and the values and principles of moral philosophy. The link between virtue theory and moral psychology, in fact, was made as early as 1958, when Anscombe sought to shift the focus of the philosophy of ethics away from systems analysis to the concept of virtue. Most recently, Appiah (2008) articulated the relationship between moral psychology and virtue ethics, which, according to Doris and Stich, typically left the notion of “character” unanalyzed beyond a simplistic disposition to act in a certain way (Doris and Stich, 2005, pp. 116–123). Virtuous action, as more applied ethics research is suggesting, is not contingent on character or context but on the complex interchange between character and context. As Robert Solomon, a contemporary philosopher, noted, “circumstances and character cannot be pried apart and should not be used competitively as alternative explanations of virtuous or vicious behavior” (2005, p. 654). Moral psychology is less concerned with justifying the rightness of specific actions, as is the case with Kantianism, utilitarianism and other frameworks, and aligns itself instead with virtue ethics and the concern of what constitutes notable character. Consequently, in addition to drawing on hugely expensive and sophisticated neurology and brain-scan technology, research in moral psychology also utilizes more straightforward, paper-based psychological survey instruments that effectively measure individuals’ personality traits, values systems, ethical ideologies and moral reasoning skills. With these instruments, empirical researchers have been able to “operationalize” or quantify important philosophical and ethical concepts such as moral development, empathy and people’s relative emphasis placed on concerns about pursuing justice and avoiding harm. Moral psychology “investigates human functioning in moral contexts, and asks how these results may impact debate in ethical theory,” according to Doris and Stich (2006, p. 1).

This is not to say that such rigorous, empirical approaches...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• CHAPTER 1 Moral Psychology: The Grand Convergence
• CHAPTER 2 Design of an Exemplar Study
• CHAPTER 3 A Profile of Media Exemplars by the Numbers
• CHAPTER 4 Patterns That Point to Virtue
• CHAPTER 5 Professionalism and Public Service
• CHAPTER 6 Moral Courage
• CHAPTER 7 Humility and Hubris
• CHAPTER 8 Crucibles of Experience
• CONCLUSION Lessons for Media Ethics Theory
• APPENDIX A The Life Story Interview
• APPENDIX B Moral Agency in Media: A Study of Professional Exemplars
• Index