The Influence of Time of Day on Unethical Behavior

What time is it? That simple question gains new meaning in this study: “The Morning Morality Effect: The Influence of Time of Day on Unethical Behavior,” Maryam Kouchaki [pictured here] and Isaac H. Smith, Psychological Science, epub October 28, 2013. (Thanks to investigator Cheryl Isley for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at Harvard […]

Abusing robots – current positions [part 2 of 4]

Continuing the discussion regarding the abuse of robots we turn now to a recent lift research workshop conducted in Geneva, Switzerland, entitled – ‘Harming and Protecting Robots : Robotic Dinosaur Abuse’. Kate Darling (who is a ‘research  specialist’ at MIT’s Media Lab) and Hannes Gassert (who is a ‘technology activist’ ) presented the workshop in which […]

Abusing robots – current positions [part 1 of 4]

“The shocks are becoming too much.” “Please, please stop.” “My circuits cannot handle the voltage.” “I refuse to go on with the experiment.” “That was too painful, the shocks are hurting me.” The dialogue above may remind readers of Stanley Milgram’s disturbing (and now-classic) psychology experiments on authority and obedience (1963). But there’s a difference. […]

Dead co-authors (1)

The Anole Annals (which are ‘written and edited by scientists who study Anolis lizards’) posed an intriguing question: “how far one could take posthumous co-authorship. What’s stopping me from including Darwin as a co-author on my next manuscript?” In the paper that triggered this dilemma — Poe et al. (2009) — Poe and his still living co-author […]

Do ethicists steal more books (and stuff)?

“One might suppose that ethicists would behave with particular moral scruple,” begins the little monograph, looking you straight in the eye while snorting and grinning, textily. The two co-authors, philosophy professors who specialise in ethics, thus embark on what they call a “preliminary investigation” of their fellow ethics experts. Eric Schwitzgebel of the University of […]