How moral bioenhancement affects perceived praiseworthiness.

Psychological literature indicates that actions performed with the assistance of cognition-enhancing biomedical technologies are often deemed to be less praiseworthy than similar actions performed without such assistance. This study examines (i) whether this result extends to the bioenhancement of moral capacities, and (ii) if so, what explains the effect of moral bioenhancement on perceived praiseworthiness. The findings indicate that actions facilitated by morally bioenhanced individuals are considered less deserving of praise than similar actions facilitated by 'traditional' moral enhancement-for example, moral self-education.

A neuroscientific perspective on the computational theory of social groups.

We welcome a computational theory on social groups, yet we argue it would benefit from a broader scope. A neuroscientific perspective offers the possibility to disentangle which computations employed in a group context are genuinely social in nature. Concurrently, we emphasize that a unifying theory of social groups needs to additionally consider higher-level processes like motivations and emotions.

Humans first: Why people value animals less than humans.

People routinely give humans moral priority over other animals. Is such moral anthropocentrism based in perceived differences in mental capacity between humans and non-humans or merely because humans favor other members of their own species? We investigated this question in six studies (N = 2217). We found that most participants prioritized humans over animals even when the animals were described as having equal or more advanced mental capacities than the humans.

When Helping Is Risky: The Behavioral and Neurobiological Trade-off of Social and Risk Preferences.

Helping other people can entail risks for the helper. For example, when treating infectious patients, medical volunteers risk their own health. In such situations, decisions to help should depend on the individual's valuation of others' well-being (social preferences) and the degree of personal risk the individual finds acceptable (risk preferences).

Why stress and hunger both increase and decrease prosocial behaviour.

Humans are regularly in suboptimal psychophysiological states like stressed or hungry. Previous research has made both claims that such impairments should decrease and that they should increase prosocial behaviour. We describe the overarching theoretical reasoning underlying these opposing predictions.

Utilitarianism for animals, Kantianism for people? Harming animals and humans for the greater good.

Most people hold that it is wrong to sacrifice some humans to save a greater number of humans. Do people also think that it is wrong to sacrifice some animals to save a greater number of animals, or do they answer such questions about harm to animals by engaging in a utilitarian cost-benefit calculation? Across 10 studies ( = 4,662), using hypothetical and real-life sacrificial moral dilemmas, we found that participants considered it more permissible to harm a few animals to save a greater number of animals than to harm a few humans to save a greater number of humans. This was explained by a reduced general aversion to harm animals compared with humans, which was partly driven by participants perceiving animals to suffer less and to have lower cognitive capacity than humans.

The effects of psychosocial stress on intergroup resource allocation.

Stress changes our social behavior. Traditionally, stress has been associated with "fight-or-flight" - the tendency to attack an aggressor, or escape the stressor. But stress may also promote the opposite pattern, i.

The Psychology of Existential Risk: Moral Judgments about Human Extinction.

The 21st century will likely see growing risks of human extinction, but currently, relatively small resources are invested in reducing such existential risks. Using three samples (UK general public, US general public, and UK students; total N = 2,507), we study how laypeople reason about human extinction. We find that people think that human extinction needs to be prevented.

Acute hunger does not always undermine prosociality.

It has been argued that, when they are acutely hungry, people act in self-protective ways by keeping resources to themselves rather than sharing them. In four studies, using experimental, quasi-experimental, and correlational designs (total N = 795), we examine the effects of acute hunger on prosociality in a wide variety of non-interdependent tasks (e.g.

Speciesism, generalized prejudice, and perceptions of prejudiced others.

Philosophers have argued there is a normative relationship between our attitudes towards animals ("speciesism") and other prejudices, and psychological work suggests speciesism relies on similar psychological processes and motivations as those underlying other prejudices. But do laypeople perceive such a connection? We compared perceptions of a target who is high or low on speciesism with those of a target who is high or low on racism (Studies 1-2), sexism (Study 2), or homophobia (Study 3). We find that just like racists, sexists, and homophobes, speciesists were both evaluated more negatively and expected to hold more general prejudicial attitudes and ideologies (e.

Uncertainty about the impact of social decisions increases prosocial behaviour.

Uncertainty about how our choices will affect others infuses social life. Past research suggests uncertainty has a negative effect on prosocial behaviour by enabling people to adopt self-serving narratives about their actions. We show that uncertainty does not always promote selfishness.

Impartiality and infectious disease: Prioritizing individuals versus the collective in antibiotic prescription.

Background: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global public health disaster driven largely by antibiotic use in human health care. Doctors considering whether to prescribe antibiotics face an ethical conflict between upholding individual patient health and advancing public health aims. Existing literature mainly examines whether patients awaiting consultations desire or expect to receive antibiotic prescriptions, but does not report views of the wider public regarding conditions under which doctors should prescribe antibiotics.

The costs of being consequentialist: Social inference from instrumental harm and impartial beneficence.

Previous work has demonstrated that people are more likely to trust "deontological" agents who reject harming one person to save many others than "consequentialist" agents who endorse such instrumental harms, which could explain the higher prevalence of non-consequentialist moral intuitions. Yet consequentialism involves endorsing not just instrumental harm, but also impartial beneficence, treating the well-being of every individual as equally important. In four studies (total  = 2086), we investigated preferences for consequentialist vs.

Sex differences in the effects of acute stress on behavior in the ultimatum game.

Acute stress affects human decision making. It has been argued that there are systematic sex differences in behavioral responses to acute stress, with males showing a 'fight or flight' and females showing a 'tend and befriend' response. A 'tend and befriend' response would suggest that women become more cooperative under acute stress, while men do not.

The moral standing of animals: Towards a psychology of speciesism.

We introduce and investigate the philosophical concept of 'speciesism' -the assignment of different moral worth based on species membership -as a psychological construct. In five studies, using both general population samples online and student samples, we show that speciesism is a measurable, stable construct with high interpersonal differences, that goes along with a cluster of other forms of prejudice, and is able to predict real-world decision-making and behavior. In Study 1 we present the development and empirical validation of a theoretically driven Speciesism Scale, which captures individual differences in speciesist attitudes.

Concern for Others Leads to Vicarious Optimism.

An optimistic learning bias leads people to update their beliefs in response to better-than-expected good news but neglect worse-than-expected bad news. Because evidence suggests that this bias arises from self-concern, we hypothesized that a similar bias may affect beliefs about other people's futures, to the extent that people care about others. Here, we demonstrated the phenomenon of vicarious optimism and showed that it arises from concern for others.

Beyond sacrificial harm: A two-dimensional model of utilitarian psychology.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 125(2) of (see record 2018-15704-001). The copyright attribution was incorrectly listed, and the Creative Commons CC-BY license disclaimer was incorrectly omitted from the author note. The correct copyright is "© 2017 The Author(s)" and the omitted disclaimer is found in the erratum.

Self-Other Mergence in the Frontal Cortex during Cooperation and Competition.

To survive, humans must estimate their own ability and the abilities of others. We found that, although people estimated their abilities on the basis of their own performance in a rational manner, their estimates of themselves were partly merged with the performance of others. Reciprocally, their ability estimates for others also reflected their own, as well as the others', performance.

Sleep Deprivation and Advice Taking.

Judgements and decisions in many political, economic or medical contexts are often made while sleep deprived. Furthermore, in such contexts individuals are required to integrate information provided by - more or less qualified - advisors. We asked if sleep deprivation affects advice taking.

The influence of social preferences and reputational concerns on intergroup prosocial behaviour in gains and losses contexts.

To what extent do people help ingroup members based on a social preference to improve ingroup members' outcomes, versus strategic concerns about preserving their reputation within their group? And do these motives manifest differently when a prosocial behaviour occurs in the context of helping another gain a positive outcome (study 1), versus helping another to avoid losing a positive outcome (study 2)? In both contexts, we find that participants are more prosocial towards ingroup (versus outgroup members) and more prosocial when decisions are public (versus private) but find no interaction between group membership and either anonymity of the decision or expected economic value of helping. Therefore, consistent with a preference-based account of ingroup favouritism, people appear to prefer to help ingroup members more than outgroup members, regardless of whether helping can improve their reputation within their group. Moreover, this preference to help ingroup members appears to take the form of an intuitive social heuristic to help ingroup members, regardless of the economic incentives or possibility of reputation management.

Why is Cognitive Enhancement Deemed Unacceptable? The Role of Fairness, Deservingness, and Hollow Achievements.

We ask why pharmacological cognitive enhancement (PCE) is generally deemed morally unacceptable by lay people. Our approach to this question has two core elements. First, we employ an interdisciplinary perspective, using philosophical rationales as base for generating psychological models.

Reputational concerns as a general determinant of group functioning.

To understand a group's (dys)functionality, we propose focusing on its members' concerns for their reputation. The examples of prosocial behavior and information exchange in decision-making groups illustrate that empirical evidence directly or indirectly suggests that reputational concerns play a central role in groups. We argue that our conceptualization fulfills criteria for a good theory: enhancing understanding, abstraction, testability, and applicability.

Pills or Push-Ups? Effectiveness and Public Perception of Pharmacological and Non-Pharmacological Cognitive Enhancement.

We review work on the effectiveness of different forms of cognitive enhancement, both pharmacological and non-pharmacological. We consider caffeine, methylphenidate, and modafinil for pharmacological cognitive enhancement (PCE) and computer training, physical exercise, and sleep for non-pharmacological cognitive enhancement (NPCE). We find that all of the techniques described can produce significant beneficial effects on cognitive performance.

Sleep Deprivation Impairs and Caffeine Enhances My Performance, but Not Always Our Performance.

What effects do factors that impair or enhance performance in individuals have when these individuals act in groups? We provide a framework, called the GIE ("Effects of Grouping on Impairments and Enhancements") framework, for investigating this question. As prominent examples for individual-level impairments and enhancements, we discuss sleep deprivation and caffeine. Based on previous research, we derive hypotheses on how they influence performance in groups, specifically process gains and losses in motivation, individual capability, and coordination.