Did anyone think that our moral values and behavior change with the seasons? So perhaps the wise Balzac was not right when he wrote: “The moral crisis goes hand in hand with the political crisis,” because the moral crisis goes hand in hand with the weather crisis. At least that’s what the results of new research suggest.
University of British Columbia (UBC) Psychologists Over 230,000 People They were interviewed. For a decade, people in the United States, Canada, and Australia have been surveyed about their social behavior and conformity, and it turns out that our moral values also change with the seasons. The study’s lead author, Ian Hum, a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia, investigated group cohesion and values related to conformity with colleagues.
Five basic values were identified, and changes in them were examined.
- Loyalty
- Authority
- Ethics,
- Care
- Fairness.
They have been seen as binding moral foundations because they encourage conformity to group norms and focus on individual rights and well-being. Group cohesion and the emergence of conformity-enhancing moral values have been shown to be stronger in spring and autumn than in winter and summer. In addition, it has also been observed that if the difference between seasons is greater, the neglect of values is more extreme, i.e. in months when temperatures are more extreme – for example, in the heat of summer – we hold these moral norms in less consideration.
The value change was not affected by geographical location, even in one place, within a country, the value consideration changes if the weather changes more extreme. But after realizing this fact, we have to change our political and legal behavior, because it does not matter when we call elections, if we know that we will be more united in May than in August. Moreover, legislation can also be affected if we are more moral in the spring, because it is possible to issue stricter judgments taking into account basic values.
Crimes that violate social norms may result in more severe punishment.
An additional finding of the study is that there may be a link between seasonal moral shifts and anxiety: Anxiety is highest in the spring and fall, when support for core values is strongest. Perhaps anxiety can motivate us to seek comfort in binding values and traditional principles.
Well, scientists aren't any better either.
Fortunately, the behavior of the researchers has already been analyzed (by other researchers), because it might be interesting to see how ethical the behavior of psychologists and specialists who study the moral standards of ordinary people is, and not so much.
Swedish In the examination 11,050 researchers participated and only had to answer two questions. One was:
As a researcher, how well do you feel you follow research practices and rules compared to other colleagues?
They questioned whether researchers were honest enough with others, whether they were honest about how their data was used, whether they acted fairly when publishing, and whether their research did not harm the environment. Forty-four percent of them considered themselves more ethical than their peers in research practice, 55% rated themselves as being the same as others, and 1% said they were perhaps less ethical than their peers.
The other question said
How ethical are you in evaluating researchers in your field of study compared to researchers in other fields?
Twenty-nine percent said colleagues in their field do more ethical research than scientists in other fields. For 8 percent, it’s the opposite.
These results refute the objective and neutral attitude expected of scientists, since when they had to judge their position, they were biased and overconfident. We can say that they are human beings too, of course, but they should have realized how distorted it is to give such answers. They should have been careful not to be biased, but they could not help it. As the Russian anarchist philosopher Bakunin wrote, “The freedom, morality and dignity of man lie precisely in the fact that he does good not because he is ordered to do so, but because he does good, because he understands it, because he wants it and loves it.” Scientists do not seem to want more objective results.
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