Ethics and Us: A Review of the Moral Psychology Field

The field of moral psychology is a field of growing interest as psychologists become more interested in the study of how people make decisions about right and wrong. Research from several different disciplines has contributed to the study of moral psychology, making it inherently interdisciplinary. Moral psychology finds its roots in philosophical theories, before finding its place in developmental psychology. More modern research includes contributions from anthropology, evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and more. Future moral psychology research may discover more disciplines that can contribute to the research and explain the real-life implications of people’s moral systems. This paper traces the history of moral psychology research in a chronological review of the related literature. With several suggestions for future research, this review first presents an overview of the literature before providing ideas for the future of moral psychology research

Universe and You: A Search for Universal Moral Values

Intercultural and multicultural communication can be difficult when opposing points of view try to find common ground. This is, in part, due to the different moral values people hold, which can come from their spiritual beliefs, legal systems, personal principles, relationships, and more. The present study aims to find a set of universal moral principles that apply to all humans in order to improve intercultural and multicultural communication. This study will synthesize the current literature on universal moral values across six different disciplines. These disciplines include philosophy/ethics, religion, communication, developmental psychology, evolutionary psychology, and anthropology. First, this paper will review the literature on universal moral values in each of the six selected disciplines to establish what each discipline believes to be the best contenders for universal moral values. Then, this literature will be synthesized and compared to assess the prevalence of certain moral values across research disciplines. Results show the most prevalent moral values, and best contenders for universal moral values, to be justice and care/harm, followed by sanctity, respect for/recognition of authority, honesty, and tolerance. Some more values that could be contenders for universal moral values with more research are reciprocity, loyalty, forgiveness, and harmony. Perhaps these moral values come in varying degrees across cultures and people, with justice and care/harm being prevalent in most people, and forgiveness and harmony showing up in fewer, but still a considerable amount, of people. Future research should continue this search for universal moral values across different disciplines, as each of the six disciplines explored in this paper brought insightful contributions to the research on moral values. Further exploration of the values mentioned in this paper is necessary, as well as more research on other values and disciplines not investigated here

Ethics and Us: A Review of the Moral Psychology Field

The field of moral psychology is a field of growing interest as psychologists become more interested in the study of how people make decisions about right and wrong. Research from several different disciplines has contributed to the study of moral psychology, making it inherently interdisciplinary. Moral psychology finds its roots in philosophical theories, before finding its place in developmental psychology. More modern research includes contributions from anthropology, evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and more. Future moral psychology research may discover more disciplines that can contribute to the research and explain the real-life implications of people’s moral systems. This paper traces the history of moral psychology research in a chronological review of the related literature. With several suggestions for future research, this review first presents an overview of the literature before providing ideas for the future of moral psychology research

Morality and Me: An Investigation of a Moral Framework for College Students

The field of moral psychology studies how people make decisions about right and wrong. These moral decisions can be based on a number of different moral considerations in the dilemma. The present study looks at the moral considerations of college students in the U.S when faced with a moral dilemma. We surveyed U.S. college students in February 2023 by presenting them with a moral dilemma they might come across during their college years and asking what they would do in the situation and why. This study developed the Moral Dilemmas Questionnaire to test the moral reasoning of college students. The Moral Dilemmas Questionnaire is made of ten moral dilemmas relevant to college students and asks them what they would do. Then, it offers participants the opportunity to explain why they chose a certain decision for researchers to discern the moral values and considerations used in the moral reasoning. Our results found that college students most frequently consider the consequences of their moral actions, followed by their intentions and personal motivations in the moral dilemma. This suggests that a U.S. college student\u27s moral framework emphasizes the consequences and intentions and motivations in a moral situation. We present the results of all ten questions from the Moral Dilemmas Questionnaire, showing which moral dimensions college students considered for each question. These findings contribute to the moral psychology literature as information on how a particular population reasons through moral situations as well as a methodology that could be used for similar studies with other populations. With a better understanding of how different groups rely on different moral considerations, we can understand more clearly the root of conflict in moral decisions and better understand other perspectives

Mental Health among College Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Longitudinal Study

This research project was a continuation of research conducted in PSY215 Research Methods from the Fall 2020 Semester and subsequently extended in Spring 2021 via Asher funds to collect additional data. The purpose of the research was twofold: conduct a longitudinal study that examines how college students’ mental health has been impacted by the COVID-19 virus from the Fall 2020 semester to the Spring 2021 semester; a second goal was to obtain a racially diverse sample (expanding beyond our initial cross-section) and to also examine factors such as the impact of big vs smaller universities’ administrative responses to COVID-19, and the impact these administrative responses have had on the mental health of college students

Mental health and academic experiences among U.S. college students during the COVID-19 pandemic

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, U.S. college students reported increased anxiety and depression. This study examines mental health among U.S college students during the subsequent 2020–2021 academic year by surveying students at the end of the fall 2020 and the spring 2021 semesters. Our data provide cross-sectional snapshots and longitudinal changes. Both surveys included the PSS, GAD-7, PHQ-8, questions about students’ academic experiences and sense of belonging in online, in-person, and hybrid classes, and additional questions regarding behaviors, living circumstances, and demographics. The spring 2021 study included a larger, stratified sample of eight demographic groups, and we added scales to examine relationships between mental health and students’ perceptions of their universities’ COVID-19 policies. Our results show higher- than-normal frequencies of mental health struggles throughout the 2020–2021 academic year, and these were substantially higher for female college students, but by spring 2021, the levels did not vary substantially by race/ethnicity, living circumstances, vaccination status, or perceptions of university COVID-19 policies. Mental health struggles inversely correlated with scales of academic and non-academic experiences, but the struggles positively correlated with time on social media. In both semesters, students reported more positive experiences with in-person classes, though all class types were rated higher in the spring semester, indicating improvements in college students’ course experiences as the pandemic continued. Furthermore, our longitudinal data indicate the persistence of mental health struggles across semesters. Overall, these studies show factors that contributed to mental health challenges among college students as the pandemic continued

Mental health and academic experiences among U.S. college students during the COVID-19 pandemic

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, U.S. college students reported increased anxiety and depression. This study examines mental health among U.S college students during the subsequent 2020–2021 academic year by surveying students at the end of the fall 2020 and the spring 2021 semesters. Our data provide cross-sectional snapshots and longitudinal changes. Both surveys included the PSS, GAD-7, PHQ-8, questions about students’ academic experiences and sense of belonging in online, in-person, and hybrid classes, and additional questions regarding behaviors, living circumstances, and demographics. The spring 2021 study included a larger, stratified sample of eight demographic groups, and we added scales to examine relationships between mental health and students’ perceptions of their universities’ COVID-19 policies. Our results show higher-than-normal frequencies of mental health struggles throughout the 2020–2021 academic year, and these were substantially higher for female college students, but by spring 2021, the levels did not vary substantially by race/ethnicity, living circumstances, vaccination status, or perceptions of university COVID-19 policies. Mental health struggles inversely correlated with scales of academic and non-academic experiences, but the struggles positively correlated with time on social media. In both semesters, students reported more positive experiences with in-person classes, though all class types were rated higher in the spring semester, indicating improvements in college students’ course experiences as the pandemic continued. Furthermore, our longitudinal data indicate the persistence of mental health struggles across semesters. Overall, these studies show factors that contributed to mental health challenges among college students as the pandemic continued

A Large, Uniform Sample of X-Ray-emitting Active Galactic Nuclei from the ROSAT All Sky and Sloan Digital Sky Surveys: The Data Release 5 Sample

We describe further results of a program aimed at yielding ~104 fully characterized optical identifications of ROSAT X-ray sources. Our program employs X-ray data from the ROSAT All Sky Survey (RASS) and both optical imaging and spectroscopic data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). RASS/SDSS data from 5740 deg² of sky spectroscopically covered in SDSS Data Release 5 provide an expanded catalog of 7000 confirmed quasars and other active galactic nuclei (AGNs) that are probable RASS identifications. Again, in our expanded catalog the identifications as X-ray sources are statistically secure, with only a few percent of the SDSS AGNs likely to be randomly superposed on unrelated RASS X-ray sources. Most identifications continue to be quasars and Seyfert 1 galaxies with 15 < m < 21 and 0.01 < z < 4, but the total sample size has grown to include very substantial numbers of even quite rare AGNs, e.g., it now includes several hundreds of candidate X-ray-emitting BL Lac objects and narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies. In addition to exploring rare subpopulations, such a large total sample may be useful when considering correlations between the X-ray and the optical and may also serve as a resource list from which to select the "best" object (e.g., X-ray-brightest AGN of a certain subclass at a preferred redshift or luminosity) for follow-up X-ray spectral or alternate detailed studies

A Large, Uniform Sample of X-ray Emitting AGN from the ROSAT All-Sky and Sloan Digital Sky Surveys: the Data Release 5 Sample

We describe further results of a program aimed to yield ~10^4 fully characterized optical identifications of ROSAT X-ray sources. Our program employs X-ray data from the ROSAT All-Sky Survey (RASS), and both optical imaging and spectroscopic data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). RASS/SDSS data from 5740 deg^2 of sky spectroscopically covered in SDSS Data Release 5 (DR5) provide an expanded catalog of 7000 confirmed quasars and other AGN that are probable RASS identifications. Again in our expanded catalog, the identifications as X-ray sources are statistically secure, with only a few percent of the SDSS AGN likely to be randomly superposed on unrelated RASS X-ray sources. Most identifications continue to be quasars and Seyfert 1s with 15<m<21 and 0.01<z<4; but the total sample size has grown to include very substantial numbers of even quite rare AGN, e.g., now including several hundreds of candidate X-ray emitting BL Lacs and narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies. In addition to exploring rare subpopulations, such a large total sample may be useful when considering correlations between the X-ray and the optical, and may also serve as a resource list from which to select the "best" object (e.g., X-ray brightest AGN of a certain subclass, at a preferred redshift or luminosity) for follow-on X-ray spectral or alternate detailed studies.Comment: Accepted for publication in AJ; 32 pages, including 11 figures, and 6 example table