Imagine that someone robs a bank but instead of keeping the money for themselves, the robber donates the full amount of the money to a local orphanage. If the crime is reported, the money will be seized and returned to the bank, but if nothing is said, the lives of the children in the orphanage would vastly improve. If you were a witness to this crime, would you choose to report the rob banker? Alternately, if you were the robber how do you make the decision to commit a crime, even if it would aid those who truly needed it? Morality is “the standards of rightness and goodness by which we judge human behavior: fairness, non-malevolence, tolerance, and truthfulness” (Leighton & Reiman, 2001). An individual’s moral code, and thus their moral
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Morality is a system by which we make decisions and is possibly the most integral system to our decision making processes: determining if something is right or wrong? Not all moral decisions are as complicated as the one outlined before. We engage with our moral codes on a daily basis, without truly realizing it: is it right to laugh at a sexist joke? Should you connect to this wifi network just because someone forgot to set a password? Do you try to find the owner of the $100 you found on the sidewalk?
The most important shift in our understanding of morality and moral decision making came with the acknowledgement “that morality does not consist of any specific behaviors but of a special perspective of the agent, a certain kind of understanding that the agent has of action and situations” (Puka, 1994). Our culture gives us the understanding to know not to lie, cheat, or steal, but the minutiae …show more content…
This program’s dedication to application is the reason that this program is my first choice. I would be honored to have the chance to work in the lab of Dr. Sarah Desmarais. I had the chance to visit NC State and meet staff and faculty in the psychology department, current graduate students in the program, and Dr. Desmairas herself. Her lab has a specific focus on working with criminal populations and would afford me the particular insights of the prison system and the inmates that would be necessary for the research that I want to conduct. Dr. Desmarais’ research is not centrally in moral psychology but in risk assessment and interventions, specifically for mentally ill inmates, but when I had the chance to speak with Dr. Desmarais she sparked my interest in considering more applied functions of my research. The Psychology PhD program at NC State supports a focus on applied uses for the research that its graduate students conduct including the cognitive therapy interventions that Dr. Desmarais and her students have implemented in the local prisons. I have begun to consider the applications that my research could have including early interventions with at-risk populations that would engage a redefining of morality and refocus the moral decision making for populations that
Morality is a system by which we make decisions and is possibly the most integral system to our decision making processes: determining if something is right or wrong? Not all moral decisions are as complicated as the one outlined before. We engage with our moral codes on a daily basis, without truly realizing it: is it right to laugh at a sexist joke? Should you connect to this wifi network just because someone forgot to set a password? Do you try to find the owner of the $100 you found on the sidewalk?
The most important shift in our understanding of morality and moral decision making came with the acknowledgement “that morality does not consist of any specific behaviors but of a special perspective of the agent, a certain kind of understanding that the agent has of action and situations” (Puka, 1994). Our culture gives us the understanding to know not to lie, cheat, or steal, but the minutiae …show more content…
This program’s dedication to application is the reason that this program is my first choice. I would be honored to have the chance to work in the lab of Dr. Sarah Desmarais. I had the chance to visit NC State and meet staff and faculty in the psychology department, current graduate students in the program, and Dr. Desmairas herself. Her lab has a specific focus on working with criminal populations and would afford me the particular insights of the prison system and the inmates that would be necessary for the research that I want to conduct. Dr. Desmarais’ research is not centrally in moral psychology but in risk assessment and interventions, specifically for mentally ill inmates, but when I had the chance to speak with Dr. Desmarais she sparked my interest in considering more applied functions of my research. The Psychology PhD program at NC State supports a focus on applied uses for the research that its graduate students conduct including the cognitive therapy interventions that Dr. Desmarais and her students have implemented in the local prisons. I have begun to consider the applications that my research could have including early interventions with at-risk populations that would engage a redefining of morality and refocus the moral decision making for populations that