Situational ethics

About: Situational ethics is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4023 publications have been published within this topic receiving 145379 citations.

Psychological perspectives on the perpetrators of the Holocaust: the role of situational pressures, personal dispositions, and their interactions.

Abstract: Three psychological approaches attempting to explain the behavior of the perpetrators of the Holocaust are reviewed and evaluated The first is a situational approach building largely on the laboratory experiments of the social psychologist Stanley Milgram The second is an approach focusing on the personal dispositions of the perpetrators, the primary example being work which has tried to find evidence of psychopathology among the Nazi leaders The third is an interactional approach-one that sees the Nazis' murderous actions as a product of both situational pressures and personal dispositions Among the last, the work of Helen Fein stands out because, through its main findings, it encompasses the diversity of Nazi destructiveness: both the enthusiastic serf-initiated horrors of the hate-driven antisemite and the impersonal, routinized actions of the bureaucrat carrying out the orders of his superior

The emotional spectrum in traffic situations: Results of two online-studies

Abstract: Statistics indicate that in 2011 more than 2,3 Million traffic accidents occurred on German roads inflicting almost 4100 casualties. A contributing factor for accidents is inappropriate driving behaviour (e.g., risky or aggressive driving or delayed reactions) due to the drivers' strong emotional state. Several situational factors such as goal congruence, goal relevance and blame have been examined and are considered responsible for the nature and intensity of the emotions experienced. However, the impact - and especially the interaction - of these situational factors on emotions experienced in traffic situations are not yet sufficiently clear. Therefore two consecutive studies have concentrated on this question. The participants had to rate emotions they would experience in traffic scenarios, which were presented as short texts in an online-questionnaire. A distinct combination of the situational factors served as a framework for each of the scenarios. In order to assess an extensive variety of emotions, two different versions of the Geneva Emotion Wheel were used. In both studies different combinations of goal congruence, goal relevance and blame influenced participants' emotions. Anger, anxiety and positive feelings such as hope, relief and satisfaction were related to the situational factors. The second study showed that the development of pride, guilt and shame could also be traced back and associated with the appraisal of those situational characteristics.

Constraints on the moral agency of nurses.

Abstract: Awareness of nurses' ethical concerns has increased greatly over the last few years. In response to this awareness, the Canadian Nurses Association revised the Code of Ethics to provide direction for the implementation of ethical standards for nursing. Yet, a growing body of literature suggests that situational constraints make it difficult for nurses to uphold these standards. Overcoming these constraints will take concerted efforts in nursing education, administration, practice and research.

Depression and embodiment: phenomenological reflections on motility, affectivity, and transcendence

Abstract: This paper integrates personal narratives with the methods of phenomenology in order to draw some general conclusions about 'what it means' and 'what it feels like' to be depressed. The analysis has three parts. First, it explores the ways in which depression disrupts everyday experiences of spatial orientation and motility. This disruption makes it difficult for the person to move and perform basic functional tasks, resulting in a collapse or contraction of the life-world. Second, it illustrates how depression creates a situational atmosphere of emotional indifference that reduces the person's ability to qualitatively distinguish what matters in his or her life because nothing stands out as significant or important anymore. In this regard, depression is distinct from other feelings because it is not directed towards particular objects or situations but to the world as a whole. Finally, the paper examines how depression diminishes the possibility for 'self-creation' or 'self-making'. Restricted by the illness, depression becomes something of a destiny, preventing the person from being open and free to access a range of alternative self-interpretations, identities, and possible ways of being-in-the-world.

MEDIA AND CIVIC PARTICIPATION: On Understanding and Misunderstanding Communication Effects

Abstract: Inquiries into the health of civil society and engagement in public life have long rooted their accounts in citizens’ personal traits and social standing (Almond & Verba, 1963; Habermas, 1979; Rosenstone & Hansen, 1993; Tocqueville, 1835/1840; Verba, Schlozman, & Brady, 1995). For many years, individuals’ characteristics and connections were considered the keys to understanding differences in involvement in the public sphere, with age, gender, education, race, employment status, church attendance, residential stability, and general sociability the key factors explaining participation. More recently, scholars such as John Coleman (1990), Robert Putnam (1992), and Francis Fukuyama (1995) have theorized that these dispositional and situational factors may in fact be discrete indicators of latent constructs such as community integration, network membership, and a commitment to civic virtues and values (see Friedland, 2001; Friedland & Shah, 2005).