Moral Sensitivity; Moral (Ethical) Decision Making; Moral Competences; Moral Intelligence; Serious Games; Moral Enhancement; Behavioral Business Ethics; Medical Ethics
Schmocker David, Tanner Carmen, Katsarov Johannes, Christen Markus (2019), An Advanced Measure of Moral Sensitivity in Business, in
European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 1-10.
SchmockerD, GötzA (2019), Entwicklung von Serious Games als Lernmethode im Hochschulunterricht. Ein Praxisbericht, in Berendt B (ed.), DUZ Verlags- und Medienhaus, Berlin, 1-30.
KatsarovJ, ChristenM (2018), Promoting the Moral Sensitivity of Police and Military Personnel, in Olsen OK, Waaler G (ed.), Royal Norwegian Naval Academy, Oslo, 114-120.
ChristenM, KatsarovJ (2018), Serious Moral Games – Videospiele als Werkzeuge der Ethikbildung, in Junge T, Schumacher C (ed.), Institut für Bildungswissenschaft, Hagen, 1-12.
Katsarov Johannes, Christen Markus, Mauerhofer Ralf, Schmocker David, Tanner Carmen (2017), Training Moral Sensitivity Through Video Games: A Review of Suitable Game Mechanisms, in
Games and Culture, 14(4), 344-366.
Christen Markus, Katsarov Johannes (2016), Moral Sensitivity as a Precondition of Moral Distress, in
The American Journal of Bioethics, 16(12), 19-21.
KatsarovJ, Biller-AndornoN, ChristenM, EichingerT, SchmockerD, UMED: YOUR CHOICE. Conception of a Digital Game to Enhance Medical Ethics Training, in Groen M, Kiel N, Wessel A, Tillmann A (ed.), Springer, Berlin, 1.
Moral sensitivity is defined as the ability that enables professionals to recognize that a moral issue or problem is at stake. It includes being responsive to the need of others, envisaging whether a course of action can harm or help others or violate internalized moral standards or codes of conducts. As such, moral sensitivity plays a significant role in many professional practices, such as nursing, medicine or business. Yet, despite being long identified as a key component of moral decision-making and being a core psychological competence of moral intelligence, research on moral sensitivity is still scarce. In addition, research and daily experience alike suggests substantial individual differences: while some people may be quite good in identifying moral dimensions when they arise, others appear to be morally blind. Not surprisingly, moral sensitivity has recently emerged as a concept considered as having much potential utility in research and practice, though our understanding of moral sensitivity, how it affects moral behavior, why and how it can and should be approved is still severely limited. Such questions are relevant for theory and practice alike.In this research proposal, we will address such issues both from an empirical and normative perspective. We believe that the recent moral enhancement debate offers a promising field of practicing interdisciplinary collaboration (between psychology and ethics). In terms of mechanisms underlying moral sensitivity, we rely on social cognition theory and dual-process models. In order to assess moral sensitivity, the project will rely on a domain-specific, vignette-based moral sensitivity scale that was developed and validated by us in previous re-search, and which captures both, explicit and implicit aspects of moral sensitivity. Furthermore, in terms of training moral sensitivity, the project will make use of new media (Serious Moral Game) - a development that enjoys increasing popularity in recent years - creating a unique opportunity to further develop our understanding of moral behavior and to facilitate learning. In this regard, we can also draw from own past work that was designed to make first steps in setting up such a novel game-based learning tool for research and educational purposes.This proposed research serves three main purposes: First, one goal is to examine implications of moral sensitivity (What are the consequences of moral sensitivity? Why should moral sensitivity be enhanced?). Second, another main goal is to investigate various strategies to promote moral sensitivity, again from a normative and empirical perspective (How to enhance moral sensitivity in ethically acceptable ways? How effective are various strategies?). Building on previous work, this proposal also aims to develop a moral sensitivity enhancement tool (MSET) to examine the role and usefulness of various interventions strategies in enhancing moral sensitivity. The third issue will be to investigate, whether implications and improvements of moral sensitivity are domain-specific or not. Since moral sensitivity is mainly discussed in business and medicine, our studies will focus on these two social domains to make a comparative analysis. Overall, this research is designed to improve our understanding about the “why” and “how” of moral sensitivity, within and across two relevant practical fields. Of course, it is also designed to contribute to moral education by linking basic theory to applications in the fields.