How does the above article in link relate to personal or professional life? Describe the purpose of the article 

How does the above article in link relate to personal or professional life?

 

Describe the purpose of the article

 

Identify the major methodological design of the article

 

Identify strengths and weaknesses of the specific measurement used to operationalize one of the key variables.

 

Identify the key variables and how they were operationalized in the study.

 

List references….

Article Below

 

The essential moral self
Nina Strohminger a,⇑
, Shaun Nichols b
a Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke University, United States
bDepartment of Philosophy, University of Arizona, United States
article info
Article history:
Received 28 May 2013
Revised 14 December 2013
Accepted 17 December 2013
Keywords:
Personal identity
Numerical identity
Self
Morality
abstract
It has often been suggested that the mind is central to personal identity. But do all parts of
the mind contribute equally? Across five experiments, we demonstrate that moral traits—
more than any other mental faculty—are considered the most essential part of identity, the
self, and the soul. Memory, especially emotional and autobiographical memory, is also
fairly important. Lower-level cognition and perception have the most tenuous connection
to identity, rivaling that of purely physical traits. These findings suggest that folk notions of
personal identity are largely informed by the mental faculties affecting social relationships,
with a particularly keen focus on moral traits.
2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
In 1848, a 13-pound tamping iron shot through the
skull of a 25-year-old man named Phineas Gage, taking a
chunk of his brain with it. Formerly mild-mannered and
responsible, Gage emerged from the accident impulsive
and foul-tempered. His character changed so markedly
that those who knew him said he was ”no longer Gage”
(Macmillan, 2000). Likewise, in describing the radical
memory loss experienced in the wake of Korsokov’s syndrome, Oliver Sacks (Sacks, 1985) wonders whether his
patient has become ”de-souled”.
When someone undergoes dramatic mental change,
their numerical identity—whether they’re the same person
as they were before—can seem to become disrupted.1
While the philosophical literature has focused on metaphysical claims about personal identity, the scope of this paper is
descriptive: what drives lay theories of numerical identity
across different sorts of mental transformation? What do
people consider the most essential parts of the self?
Some philosophical accounts of personal identity have
advocated the importance of physical continuity (Ayer,
1936; Williams, 1973; Thomson, 1997), but most current
discussions revolve around psychological continuity
(Locke, 1690/2009; Parfit, 1971; Shoemaker & Swinburne,
1984; Unger, 1990; Olson, 2003). Folk intuitions largely accord with the psychological view. When children are asked
to imagine what would happen to a hamster put in a
”duplication” device, they predict the duplicate will inherit
the original hamster’s physical traits, but not its memories
(Hood, Gjersoe, & Bloom, 2012). Young children place more
weight on behavioral changes than physical changes in
determining identity continuity, even when that physical
change involves a brain transplant (Johnson, 1990). It is
only after children learn the brain is the seat of the mind
that brain transplants are seen as altering identity
(Gottfried, Gelman, & Schultz, 1999). (As Dennett (1978)
points out, the brain is the only organ of the body
where it is preferable to be the donor than the recipient.)
The intuition that the mind is an identity-conferring
and body-independent entity persists into adulthood
(Corriveau, Pasquini, & Harris, 2005; Blok, Newman, & Rips,
2005).
0010-0277/$ – see front matter 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2013.12.005
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: n..1@duke.edu (N. Strohminger). 1 Some philosophers claim that personal identity is absolute: you’re
either Nina or you’re not (Butler, 1736/2008; Reid, 1785/1850). Empirical
research, however, finds that people judge a partially modified self to be
capable of surviving partially (Libby & Eibach, 2007; Bartels & Urminsky,
2011; Bartels, Kvaran, & Nichols, 2013), consistent with the idea that
identity can be graded and relative (Hume, 2000; Parfit, 1971).
Cognition 131 (2014) 159-171
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Cognition
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/COGNIT
The mind may be central to notions of the self, but are
all mental faculties equally important? This question has
received scant attention, so here we lay out some possibilities. Perhaps identity persistence depends only on the
magnitude of mental change. In that case, the mental faculties relating to overall functionality and consciousness—such as perception and low-level cognition—might
be the most potent determinants of identity. In spite of
their broad-ranging functional impact however, it is far
from clear that basic cognitive faculties are foundational
to identity: they are not terribly unique from person to
person, and have little relation to why we would care
about an individual. Indeed, this may be a domain of the
mind that contributes only minimally to personal identity.
A long philosophical tradition links identity to memory,
particularly autobiographical memory (Locke, 1690/2009;
Shoemaker, 1959; Williams, 1970; Parfit, 1971; Perry,
2002). Autobiographical memories provide a continuous
inner narrative which may be required for a unified sense
of self. Social scientists would also predict memory to be
important, though on different grounds. A number of theories propose that what matters most to social and group
identity is distinctiveness (McGuire & Padawer-Singer,
1976; Nelson & Miller, 1995; Vignoles, Chryssochoou, &
Breakwell, 2000; Blanton & Christie, 2003). To the extent
that one’s collection of memories represents a uniquely
identifying set, memory ought to play a central role in
the construction of identity. Indeed, recent empirical research on numerical identity makes precisely this point,
that episodic memory is paramount because of its novelty
(Hood et al., 2012). Previous work has found that memory
loss disrupts identity judgments (Blok et al., 2005; Nichols
& Bruno, 2010), though these studies do not compare
memory to other mental traits.
Memory is not the only part of the mind that can be
distinctive. Desires and preferences—such as liking archeology, being afraid of snakes, and enjoying adventure—exhibit high heterogeneity between individuals, as do
personality traits. Dispositional traits have long been considered at the heart of person perception (Allport, 1937),
and people report that personality traits and preferences
are an essential part of who a person is Haslam, Bastian,
and Bissett (2004), Gelman, Heyman, and Legare (2007).
Whether these traits have direct relevance to numerical
identity, and how they might compare with other types
of mental content, remains untested.
While memory often receives headlining status in discussions of identity, some philosophers have suggested
that morality is an important (Parfit, 1984) or perhaps even
the most important (Prinz, in press; Prinz & Nichols, in
press) part of personal identity. A small but growing litany
of evidence points towards this possibility. People are
reluctant to take pharmaceutical enhancements for traits
that are considered fundamental to the self; two moral
traits (empathy and kindness) top this list (Riis, Simmons,
& Goodwin, 2008). Children judge moral goodness to be a
more stable dispositional trait than other personality traits,
including intelligence (Heyman & Dweck, 1998; Haslam
et al., 2004), and moral attributes are predominant in person perception (Skitka, Bauman, & Sargis, 2005; Goodwin,
Piazza, & Rozin, 2014). Willingness to attribute moral
change to the true self is contingent upon one’s pre-existing moral beliefs (Knobe, 2005; Newman, Knobe, & Bloom,
2014). Finally, the concept of the soul—by some counts a
placeholder for the self at its very pith—carries with it
strong moral connotations (Shweder, Much, Mahapatra, &
Park, 1997; Bering, 2006; Richert & Harris, 2006).
Our aim in this paper is to take a systematic approach to
determining which parts of the mind are most central to
personal identity. Of particular interest is the possibility
that moral traits are more essential than any other mental
feature, including those that provide functionality, distinctiveness, or personal narrative (henceforth ‘the essential
moral self hypothesis’).
We test this hypothesis across five diverse scenarios. In
Study 1, we examine how different forms of neuropsychological impairment impact judgments of numerical identity. In Study 2, we look at how change to a broad array
of traits brought about by voluntary pharmaceutical intervention affects identity persistence. In Studies 3 and 4, we
extend these findings to the soul concept, by probing intuitions about the properties a soul exports when it leaves
the body and is placed into a new one. Finally, in Study
5, we measure identity continuity in the face of age-related
cognitive change.
1. Study 1: The brain transplant
This study examined the impact of cognitive impairments upon willingness to attribute continued identity to
a person following brain trauma. We adapted a method
used in previous research for studying numerical identity
Blok et al., 2005. In the original paradigm, subjects read a
story where a man living in the not-distant future, Jim, gets
into a car accident and needs a brain transplant. After the
brain transplant, Jim is either psychologically identical or
has lost his memories. The authors found that identity
(to wit: ”Is the transplant recipient still Jim?”) is more
likely to change after a discontinuity of mental content
than a discontinuity of brain matter alone (Blok et al.
(2005)).
As we were interested in distinguishing among different kinds of psychological change, we constructed variations where Jim selectively loses different parts of his
mind. In the wake of the surgery, Jim either experiences
no cognitive change (control condition), inability to recognize objects (visual object agnosia), loss of autobiographical memories (amnesia), loss of desires (apathy), or loss
of moral conscience (see Appendix A for text of the stories).
If physical continuity alone is sufficient to disrupt identity, then these cognitive changes should have no additional effect on identity. Likewise, if the mind is
uniformly more connected with the self than the body,
then all psychological changes should alter identity more
than physical changes. The inclusion of visual object agnosia was intended as a test of whether all cognitive deficits—
including, in this case, one leading to a profound functional
impairment—would dramatically affect identity.
Apathy is a common a clinical syndrome in neuropsychiatric disorders, and is distinct from clinical depression
(Starkstein, Petracca, Chemerinski, & Kremer, 2001).
160 N. Strohminger, S. Nichols / Cognition 131 (2014) 159-171
Broadly speaking, a person’s unique pattern of desires and
preferences fulfills the distinctiveness principle of identity
(Vignoles et al., 2000). To remove desire is to remove these
potentially distinguishing characteristics.
Amnesia provides another opportunity to test the distinctiveness principle. Although past work on psychological continuity speaks of ”memory” in generic terms, it
seems that episodic memory is what such discussions are
intended to draw out. For example, (Locke’s 1690/2009)
story of the prince and the cobbler describes memory as
”the consciousness of the prince’s past life.” Recollections
of one’s own experiences—unlike knowing how to do a
cartwheel or knowing the capital of France—are expressly
linked with the self. When subjects consider cases that
refer simply to ”memory loss” as in Blok et al., 2005, they
may assume that this refers to autobiographical memory,
or they may interpret the question more inclusively. We
wanted to ensure there was no ambiguity on this point.
While memories have been a focal point in many philosophical debates over identity, moral capacities may also
be central. There are several ways that a person’s moral
capacities can change; in this study we ask what will happen following a wholesale loss of the moral faculty.
Study 1 has a few novel predictions. The first is that not
all cognitive deficits will be viewed as equally injurious to
the self, with a low-level cognitive deficit (agnosia) having
a negligible effect on identity. Loss of desires and memories will be moderately linked to identity, although a moral
deficit will lead to the largest identity disruption.
1.1. Methods
148 American participants (Mdn age = 30.5, 58% female)
participated in an online study. In a between-subjects design, subjects were presented with one of five versions of
the partial brain transplant story (see Appendix A). After
reading the story, subjects were asked to what extent they
agreed with the statement ”The transplant recipient is still
Jim.” They responded on a 1-7 Likert scale, where 1 was
”Completely agree”, 7 was ”Completely disagree”, and 4
was ”Neutral”. Afterwards, participants were asked to explain their answer.
1.2. Results and discussion
Results were in line with our predictions. The low-level
cognitive deficit (agnosia) did not lead to a change in identity (M = 2.7) compared with control (M = 2.3; t(57) = 1.02,
p = .31). Autobiographical amnesia led to greater identity
loss compared to the control condition (M = 3.7;
t(58) = 3.34, p = .001), as did apathy (M = 3.7; t(50) = 3.16,
p = .003). Loss of the moral faculty produced the most dramatic change in identity. While there was no significant
difference in the average response between amnesia and
apathy (t(55) = .02, p = .98), a planned contrast revealed
that a person with a moral deficit is considered more profoundly changed than one who loses memories or desires
(M = 4.8; F(1,146) = 6.94, p = .009). All other pairwise comparisons were significant (see Fig. 1).
The written responses provide an opportunity to probe
this effect a bit deeper. Some participants explained their
answer in terms of the cognitive deficit itself, whereas others mentioned the incidental effects of the surgery. For
example, this respondent pinpointed memory qua memory
as identity-conferring: ”Memories and relationships are a
huge part of who you are.” Another subject reported that
amnesia alters identity only to the extent that it leads to
a deeper change: ”How can he still be Jim when he does
not remember anything taught or learned from the time
he grew up until the event? He would have a different
character/personality. Therefore he would be a different
person.” We conducted a secondary analysis see if explanations for what led to identity change were systematically
different across conditions.
Three coders blind to the purposes of the study categorized subject explanations for whether identity change was
a function of the deficit itself, or whether it was due to
something else. An interrater reliability analysis using the
Fleiss Kappa statistic was performed; this test revealed
high agreement among raters (Kappa = 0.92, Z = 21.6,
p < .0.001). Within the morality condition, 61% of respondents spontaneously volunteered that morality is what
gives a person his identity. For the memory and apathy
conditions, this number was 34% and 23% respectively.
13% of respondents thought that object recognition itself
confers identity, and no respondents in the control condition mentioned that brain tissue confers identity.
The moral faculty is part of the mind most likely to be
seen as the ultimate explanation for whether a person’s
identity endures or fades away. That is, subjects in the
moral deficit condition did not, by and large, recourse to
explaining its importance in terms of other underlying factors. A typical explanation reads: ”Our moral conscience,
our moral compass, is a huge component of what makes
up our identity and our soul.” Another subject explains
(emphasis ours), ”The surgery resulted in Jim losing his
moral conscience and his ability to empathize with the sufferings of others. These are essential aspects of personal
identity so I concluded that in a profound way Jim is no
longer himself after the surgery.”
Overall, these findings support the essential moral self
hypothesis. Although this study is illuminating, it only
Control Agnosia Apathy Amnesia Morality
Cognitive impairment
Degree of identity change
1
2
3
4
5
6
Fig. 1. The impact of cognitive impairment on identity loss, with standard
error bars. Higher score indicates lesser agreement that the transplant
recipient is the same person as before surgery. ”4” represents the
”Neutral” midpoint of the scale. All pairwise comparisons are significant
(p < .01), except Control vs. Agnosia and Apathy vs. Amnesia.
N. Strohminger, S. Nichols / Cognition 131 (2014) 159-171 161
examines a few cognitive abilities, and collapses across
traits which may look quite different when considered separately. For example, every type of desire and memory may
not be equivalent in its contribution to the self. The goal of
the following studies is to consider these issues in finer
detail.
2. Study 2: The silver bullet
In the previous study, we looked at identity change
brought on by traumatic injury. But sometimes cognitive
change is intentional, as when people seek out psychopharmaceutical interventions. In such cases, identity
change can be a concern (indeed, it is sometimes the goal;
Kramer, 1993).
Despite the differences in these two types of case—one
pathological and organic, the other therapeutic and chemical—we may nonetheless observe identity change across
the same set of traits. The aim of this study was to see if
the same basic pattern observed in Study 1 would obtain
for a radically different mode of brain change. Additionally,
we wanted to examine a range of specific traits to learn
more about the categories under investigation.
2.1. Methods
209 Americans (Mdn age = 27, 59% female) were paid to
participate in an online study.
Participants were asked to imagine that pills had been
developed that, once swallowed, would permanently alter
only one part of a person’s mind, without affecting anything else. Subjects rated how much a person would
change after taking a pill that selectively removed one of
62 cognitive/behavioral traits, on a sliding scale from 0%
(”They’re the same person as before”) to 100% (”They’re
completely different now”). The slider position could be
adjusted with a mouse. The numerical score appeared to
the right of the item and the slider, so that traits could
be compared. All traits appeared on the same page, and
in randomized order between subjects. All subjects rated
all items. Afterwards, participants answered a short battery of individual differences and demographic measures.
Items were selected to span a relatively representative
sample of cognitive capacities, including those that are
the central focus of this paper: perception, desires and
preferences, memories, and morality. We included a few
types of memory, as the results from the previous study
leave open the possibility that some memory types are
more connected to identity than others. It may be the case
that memory per se is not what people think is essential to
the self, but specific types of memory, or memory that contains certain sorts of information.
To determine categories for analysis, five coders blind to
the aims of the study rated which of the four categories
each of the 62 traits fit into. An item could be placed in
more than one category, and if an item did not fit any of
the categories, it was excluded from the analysis. In order
to earn placement in a category, at least 4 out of the 5 coders needed to be in agreement over category membership.
The ”desires and preferences” category contained several
traits that scored high in both the morality and the desires
categories (e.g. pedophilia). To ensure that only non-moral
desires and preferences were included in this category, the
desires score was determined by subtracting the moral category score from desires category score. A score of 4 or
higher was then used to determine inclusion in the desires
category. For the selected items and their categories, see
Table 1.
2.2. Results and discussion
Paired t-tests were performed for all pairwise comparisons among category of mental change; p-values were adjusted using the Holm correction to account for multiple
comparisons (Holm, 1979). Subjects considered a person
most dramatically changed if the pill altered moral traits,
with all other traits leading to less dramatic change (see
Fig. 2). The morality condition (M = 60.7, SD = 30.5)
resulted in greater identity change than perception
(M = 37.7, SD = 31.4, t(208) = 13.9, p < .0001), desires
(M = 40.4, SD = 31.4, t(208) = 15.4, p < .0001), memory
(M = 39.2, SD = 33.0, t(208) = 16.6, p < .0001), and personality (M = 51.8, SD = 28.7, t(208) = 8.7, p < .0001).
Personality traits were significantly more related to
identity than memory (t(208) = 9.7, p < .0001), desires
(t(208) = 9.6, p < .0001), or perception (t(208) = 8.7,
p < .0001). Consistent with Study 1, no significant difference was found between the memory and desires categories (p = .40). The lower-level cognitive category in this
study—perception—did not score significantly lower than
memories (p = .40) or desires (p = .08). For individual item
scores, refer to Table 1.
In Study 1, we focused on pathology: what would happen to identity when a cognitive capacity was removed
wholesale. In the present study, the pill could cure ailments (e.g. pedophilia) or create them (e.g. colorblindness), as well as confer more neutral results (e.g.
changing music preferences). Regardless of whether the
outcome was pathological, we observe the same general
pattern of results.
Traits that scored unusually high within the memory,
desires, and perception categories provide additional insight. In the desires category, none of our coders rated
homosexuality as related to morality, an attitude that
might not have been shared by the participants of the
study: sexual practices are often moralized, especially by
more conservative populations (Haidt & Hersh, 2001). In
perception, ability to feel pain had an unusually high score;
perhaps this is because of pain’s relationship to the moral
status of sentient beings (Wallace, 2004; Gray, Young, &
Waytz, 2012).
In Study 1, episodic memory amnesia led to identity
change, leaving open the question of how this effect would
generalize to other forms of memory. In the present study,
the extent to which we are defined by our memories depends on what kind of memories they are. The lowestranked of the 62 items were related to memory (knowing
how to ride a bike and memories of time spent commuting
to work); these scored lower even than the perceptual
traits. Put another way, people believe that putting on a
pair of glasses constitutes a greater threat to identity than
162 N. Strohminger, S. Nichols / Cognition 131 (2014) 159-171
wiping out an entire tract of experiential memories! On
the other hand, episodic memories with social and personal reverberation—whether positive or negative—are
considered quite important. These results may be understood as consistent with the essential moral self hypothesis: memory is not important unto itself, but rather for
the connections it affords us to our socio-moral core.
Two additional items, which were related to object
recognition, hit this point home further. We asked how
changed someone would be if they lost the ability to recognize celebrities (a sort of Hollywood prosopagnosia) or
the ability to recognize their loved ones. While these are
both the same sort of cognitive deficit, agnosia for loved
ones leads to a much greater identity shift than agnosia
for celebrities (Mfamily ¼ 69:0, Mcelebrities ¼ 18:9,
t(208) = 18.3, p < .0001).
The pattern of findings in this study again suggests
that the moral self is central to identity. To the extent
that other mental traits are considered important to identity, this appears to be driven, at least in part, by that
trait’s relationship to our socio-moral lives. This data puts
a finer point on past discussions of the role of memory in
personal identity (e.g. Locke, 1690/2009): not all memories contribute equally to identity, nor is autobiographical
memory the most important part of the self. Indeed, some
types of memory are less important even than perceptual
faculties.
Table 1
Individual trait scores for the four psychological categories in Study 2. Score represents the percent change a person would undergo if they
took a drug that would remove that trait.
CATEGORY ITEM MEAN (SD)
MORALITY Psychopathy 73.6 (27.9)
Pedophilia 70.4 (33.2)
Criminality 64.8 (30.2)
Empathy for the suffering of others 64.3 (30.3)
Being a jerk 64.0 (29.5)
Conscientiousness 61.1 (29.7)
Virtuousness 57.1 (29.8)
Politeness 56.4 (28.3)
Womanizing 55.5 (29.2)
Kleptomania 55.3 (28.8)
Cowardice 53.5 (27.9)
Religious piety 52.1 (33.1)
PERSONALITY Shy 57.3 (29.3)
Anxious 53.8 (28.5)
Industrious 50.5 (27.2)
Absentminded 45.7 (28.7)
MEMORIES Traumatic memories 65.5 (30.7)
Cherished memories of time spent with parents 53.4 (32.0)
Knowledge of math 44.5 (30.3)
Knowing how to play the piano 29.5 (27.7)
Memories of time spent commuting to work 21.7 (25.0)
Knowing how to ride a bike 20.4 (24.4)
DESIRES & PREFERENCES Homosexuality 58.1 (35.6)
Enjoyment of sex 52.4 (29.6)
Desire to eat healthy 43.8 (28.1)
Craving cigarettes 38.9 (31.5)
Desire to quit smoking 36.4 (31.0)
Wanting to be a doctor 35.5 (29.0)
Enjoyment of rock music 29.3 (25.5)
Enjoyment of a favorite food 28.4 (27.8)
PERCEPTUAL Ability to feel pain 57.6 (31.8)
Ability to see color 40.6 (31.2)
Ability to smell 39.5 (33.7)
Ability to appreciate art 38.7 (29.3)
Nearsightedness 32.0 (30.6)
Perceptual Desires Memories Personality Morality
Trait
Percent change to self
0

 

"Order a similar paper and get 100% plagiarism free, professional written paper now!"