Moral psychology and public opinion on capital punishment

Death Penalty Is Wrong

It is often suggested that morality comes from a venerated source - from reason, or from God (Wheatley & Haidt, 2005). Judgments on the basis of morals are important, complex, and intuitive. Moral judgments thus become particularly fertile foundations of motivated reasoning (Ditto, Pizarro, & Tannenbaum, 2009). In view of this respected observation, we chose to develop a broad-based questionnaire based on morality institutional regimens. This has been necessitated as Morality does not have the same rigors as that of logical and reasoning assiduity. The essence of Morality and post hoc deliberations are relative and affect combined societal percepts. There has always been a quandary about the rights of a person when posited in opposition to another. "The consensus view in moral psychology has been that morality is first and foremost about protecting individuals"-- (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009). Thus, quandaries arise out of morality being largely about fairness and aid instead of causing harm or deprivation of rights and entitlements. The main consideration in the morality institutions have revolved around sound values of justice and harm in academic domain and psychological studies.

At some or other time, most societies have sanctioned the employment of death penalties. Ancient Judaic and Roman civilizations observed retributive justice, going by the rule 'an eye for an eye'. Capital punishment was adopted in the United States (U.S.) from seventeenth-century European settlers, who promoted the idea that atrocious crimes were deserving of harsh punishment (Williams, 2000).

Current-day advocates of capital penalties claim that execution serves as the most appropriate sentence for individuals who have deliberately committed murder. They assert that modern-day principles of criminal justice necessitate a murderer's facing a penalty similar to the damage inflicted by his offense. Also, advocates argue that the death sentence allows society to defend the value of innocent human lives and express its warranted moral indignation at the murder (Williams, 2000). However,, in accordance with a national-level opinion poll from the public carried out in 2007, society seems to be losing its confidence in death penalties. Individuals are highly concerned about several factors: the possibility of executing an innocent person; the righteousness of the death penalty as punishment; and the apparent futility of capital punishment to achieve its primary purpose as a deterrent against murder and other heinous crimes. Many, if not most, Americans are of the view that innocents have already faced this penalty, that the death sentence does not deter crimes, and that all executions should be suspended (Dieter, 2007). However, there remains a strong segment of the population that is still 'pro-death penalty'. A moral case is made on the unfairness of death penalty in this paper. Its aim is persuading the audience towards this stance, by employing a strategy.

The remainder of the paper displays the strategy which is to be adopted, discussion and stages of every point in the adopted strategy, and conclusion.

Strategy

The strategy that is being put forth in this paper was formulated more than 2000 years back by the Greek philosopher, Aristotle: he asserted that there were three key ways to convince an audience regarding your position. They are - ethos, pathos, and logos (Edlund & Pomona).

These strategies applied were chosen for various reasons.

Appealing to the logic/emotion of the audience was chosen as a strategy to determine (1) the agent's (government) intention (i.e. whether the harmful-event (death penalty) is intended as a means or merely foreseen as a side-effect) and (2) whether the agent harms the victim in a manner that is relatively "direct" or "personal." (Greene, et al., 2009). In the experiment carried out by Greene, et al., (2009) to prove the above two hypothesis, it was discovered that these harmful events were less morally acceptable.

The pathos strategy was chosen because the study by Haidt (2001), argues that judgments are based on intuition rather than logic. Intuition being more inclined to the emotional aspects of a human. Intuitions are not 'taught', logically imbued, or experimental experiences. They are usually percepts and notions about 'right and 'wrong' that are inherent in the human psyche and dormant, but rigidly held that are fuelled by external intrusions but may also have self and retrospective affectations. The usual response under this construct would be 'I know it is not correct, I don't know why, but I know it is not acceptable'. The operating principle here is validation of a judgment through repetition, and often without logic or reasoning, as we now seem inclined to adhere to in the Western ethical structure. That brings us to understand that culture, social conditions, political climate play a major role in choosing or rejecting a stand based on morality. In order to accommodate these influences, Graham and Kesebir (2010) expanded the domain of morality into functionality. Here, they seek to lay the foundation of 'morality as a means of suppressing selfish thoughts to make way for a fluid social co-existence'.

Finally, the study by Graham et al., (2009), outlined how politicians spend large sums to appeal to the self-interest of voters, yet it has a weak correlation to voting behavior. This shows the image of personality of the agent plays a great role in influencing the decision of others. Indeed, as a functional factor, when people with similar inclinations confer and interact, a distinct morality percept emerges that has a common historical and cultural thread. This also has the effect of considering a normatively immoral disposition (theocracy, patriarchical society, etc.) as an acceptable moral system within the said context.

Ethos: ethics and writers image

The Greek term 'ethos' is connected with the English word ethical or ethics; however, a more precise modern translation of the term may be 'image'. 'Ethos' was used by Aristotle to express the character of the speaker as is perceived by his audience. Aristotle is of the opinion that if the audience believes that the speaker possesses good morals, good sense and goodwill, they will be more inclined to have faith in what the speaker is saying. In the present day, it may also be added that speakers should seem to possess the appropriate authority or expertise to knowledgably speak on a given topic. Often, the first point that is noticed is ethos; therefore, it helps in creating a first impression that then influences the way the rest of the topic is perceived (Edlund & Pomona).

Ethos is concerned with allowing the audience to decide whether the matter presented is wrong or right, such as national beliefs, political issues, and religious issues. It usually uses starkly contrasting colors, black and white, to symbolize differences between evil and good.

The ethos of a writer is largely created by style and word choice. Student writers frequently face problems with ethos as they endeavor to write reports, research papers, and other kinds of textual material as though they possessed the authority to talk persuasively. In one respect, the student is new to the discourse community and subject matter (Edlund & Pomona). On the other hand, if the student has fully availed themselves of the research material, and has actually come to 'know' a topic, then they could fairly be seen to be an 'authority' on that topic.

Logos: Present Logical Argument and Evidence

Right from the times of Plato in the fourth century B.C., philosophers have been intrigued by the dilemma faced by humans between logic and emotion. Emotions have been seen as conceptual errors leading to difficult conditions created by affectual feelings of morality. The model presented in support of such an understanding makes use of the affectations of reasoning of one person, A, on the intuition of another, B whose judgment, consequently in turn affects the intuition of A, thereby becoming a self-feeding mechanism leading to a social acceptance that, as noted earlier is swayed by motivated or manipulated machinations. This is a rationalist model of moral judgment, in which moral judgement is thought to result from moral reasoning (Haidt, 2001). This strategy is perhaps the most persuasive of all three adopted strategies. The audience is made to ponder over what is being presented. It employs facts, statistical data, and authorities, i.e. this approach is fact-based. Logos refers to appeal which is based on reason or logic. Documents that are distributed by corporations or companies are logos-guided, as are scholarly documents. Logos (plural: logoi) refers to rational appeal or its simulation; the word 'logic' stems from 'logos'. Normally, it is used for describing facts or figures to support the topic of the speaker. Logos appeals tend to enhance ethos, as this information makes the individual speaking appear prepared and knowledgeable to the audience (Henning, 1998).

Rationality and logic are greatly valued in the present society, and this kind of strategy for persuasion is more privileged compared to an appeal to the speaker's character or the audience's emotions. However, scientific reasoning and formal logic are not usually apt for the general audience; thus, a dependence on more rhetorical kinds of reasoning should be made (Edlund & Pomona). In particular, an eliciting situation affects senses and by consequence morality that in turn has an effect on the reasoning (or the lack of it) an individual carries, which is the fore bearer of judgement in the rationalist model of judgement

This strategy is opposed by the hypothesis put forward, where moral reasoning does not cause moral judgement; rather, it is an after effect generated when a judgment has been made (Haidt, 2001).. Implying that, the reverse sequence holds