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1. Loopholes, a Window into Value Alignment and the Learning of Meaning

   Bridgers, S. (January 2023, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society,)

   Finding and exploiting loopholes is a familiar facet of fable, law, and everyday life. But cognitive, computational, and em- pirical work on this behavior remains scarce. Engaging with loopholes requires a nuanced understanding of goals, social ambiguity, and value alignment. We trace loophole behavior to early childhood, and we propose that exploiting loopholes results from a conflict in actors’ goals combined with a pres- sure to cooperate. A survey of 260 parents reporting on 425 children reveals that loophole behavior is prevalent, frequent, and diverse in daily parent-child interactions, emerging around ages five to six and tapering off from around ages nine to ten into adolescence. A further experiment shows that adults con- sider loophole behavior in children as less costly than non- compliance, and children increasingly differentiate loophole behavior from non-compliance from ages four to ten. We dis- cuss limitations of the current work together with a proposal for a formal framework for loophole behavior. 

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2. Trust in Religious Leaders and Voluntary Compliance: Lessons from Social Distancing during COVID‐19 in Central Asia

   https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12804  

   Jones, Pauline; Menon, Anil (September 2022, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion)

   Dr. Korie Little Edwards (Ed.)

   Abstract What is the relationship between trust in religious leaders and compliance with policies that are costly to the individual? Religious leaders often have the moral authority to affect individuals’ willingness to adopt prosocial behaviors. Yet, that influence can be either positive or negative because religious leaders face mixed incentives to encourage compliance and their leadership is often decentralized. We argue that greater trust in religious leaders will increase compliance in countries with a dominant religion and centralized religious authority because religious leaders will offer a coherent message that aligns with state directives. We test our hypotheses using data from surveys fielded in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan during the COVID‐19 pandemic. We find a positive and significant relationship between trust and voluntary compliance only in Kazakhstan, where religious leaders reduced the costs of compliance by enabling adherents to practice their faith while social distancing. We thus identify an alternative mechanism whereby trust promotes compliance. 

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3. Morally Homogeneous Networks and Radicalism

   https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506211059329  

   Atari, Mohammad; Davani, Aida Mostafazadeh; Kogon, Drew; Kennedy, Brendan; Ani Saxena, Nripsuta; Anderson, Ian; Dehghani, Morteza (December 2021, Social Psychological and Personality Science)

   Online radicalization is among the most vexing challenges the world faces today. Here, we demonstrate that homogeneity in moral concerns results in increased levels of radical intentions. In Study 1, we find that in Gab—a right-wing extremist network—the degree of moral convergence within a cluster predicts the number of hate-speech messages members post. In Study 2, we replicate this observation in another extremist network, Incels. In Studies 3 to 5 ( N = 1,431), we demonstrate that experimentally leading people to believe that others in their hypothetical or real group share their moral views increases their radical intentions as well as willingness to fight and die for the group. Our findings highlight the role of moral convergence in radicalization, emphasizing the need for diversity of moral worldviews within social networks. 

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4. Comparing Norm-Based and Role-Based Strategies for Robot Communication of Role-Grounded Moral Norms

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3571719  

   Wen, Ruchen; Kim, Boyoung; Phillips, Elizabeth; Zhu, Qin; Williams, Tom (September 2023, ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction)

   Because robots are perceived as moral agents, they must behave in accordance with human systems of morality. This responsibility is especially acute for language-capable robots because moral communication is a method for building moral ecosystems. Language capable robots must not only make sure that what they say adheres to moral norms; they must also actively engage in moral communication to regulate and encourage human compliance with those norms. In this work, we describe four experiments (total N =316) across which we systematically evaluate two different moral communication strategies that robots could use to influence human behavior: a norm-based strategy grounded in deontological ethics, and a role-based strategy grounded in role ethics. Specifically, we assess the effectiveness of robots that use these two strategies to encourage human compliance with norms grounded in expectations of behavior associated with certain social roles. Our results suggest two major findings, demonstrating the importance of moral reflection and moral practice for effective moral communication: First, opportunities for reflection on ethical principles may increase the efficacy of robots’ role-based moral language; and second, following robots’ moral language with opportunities for moral practice may facilitate role-based moral cultivation. 

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5. Conservatives’ Moral Foundations Are More Densely Connected Than Liberals’ Moral Foundations

   https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167220916070  

   Turner-Zwinkels, Felicity M.; Johnson, Branden B.; Sibley, Chris G.; Brandt, Mark J. (May 2020, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin)

   We use network psychometrics to map a subsection of moral belief systems predicted by moral foundations theory (MFT). This approach conceptualizes moral systems as networks, with moral beliefs represented as nodes connected by direct relations. As such, it advances a novel test of MFT’s claim that liberals and conservatives have different systems of foundational moral values, which we test in three large datasets ( NSample1 = 854; NSample2 = 679; NSample3 = 2,572), from two countries (the United States and New Zealand). Results supported our first hypothesis that liberals’ moral systems show more segregation between individualizing and binding foundations than conservatives. Results showed only weak support for our second hypothesis, that this pattern would be more typical of higher educated than less educated liberals/conservatives. Findings support a systems approach to MFT and show the value of modeling moral belief systems as networks. 

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