Dataset Information

High-status individuals are held to higher ethical standards.

ABSTRACT: Although there is evidence for the generosity of high-status individuals, there seems to be a strong perception that the elites are selfish and contribute little to others' welfare, and even less so than poorer people. We argue that this perception may derive from a gap between normative and empirical expectations regarding the behavior of the elites. Using large-scale survey experiments, we show that high-status individuals are held to higher ethical standards in both the US and China, and that there is a strong income gradient in normatively expected generosity. We also present evidence for a gap between people's normative expectations of how the rich should behave, and their empirical expectations of how they actually do: empirical expectations are generally lower than both normative expectations and actual giving.

SUBMITTER: Trautmann ST

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10499905 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

High-status individuals are held to higher ethical standards.

Trautmann Stefan T ST Wang Xianghong X Wang Yijie Y Xu Yilong Y

Scientific reports 20230913 1

Although there is evidence for the generosity of high-status individuals, there seems to be a strong perception that the elites are selfish and contribute little to others' welfare, and even less so than poorer people. We argue that this perception may derive from a gap between normative and empirical expectations regarding the behavior of the elites. Using large-scale survey experiments, we show that high-status individuals are held to higher ethical standards in both the US and China, and that ...[more]

PMID: 37704790

Similar Datasets

Project description:Health inequities are differences in health that are 'unjust'. Yet, despite competing ethical views about what counts as an 'unjust difference in health', theoretical insights from ethics have not been systematically integrated into epidemiological research. Using diabetes as an example, we explore the impact of adopting different ethical standards of health equity on population health outcomes. Specifically, we explore how the implementation of population-level weight-loss interventions using different ethical standards of equity impacts the intervention's implementation and resultant population health outcomes. We conducted a risk prediction modelling study using the nationally representative 2015-16 Canadian Community Health Survey (n = 75,044, 54% women). We used the Diabetes Population Risk Tool (DPoRT) to calculate individual-level 10-year diabetes risk. Hypothetical weight-loss interventions were modelled in individuals with overweight or obesity based on each ethical standard: 1) health sufficiency (reduce DPoRT risk below a high-risk threshold (16.5%); 2) health equality (equalize DPoRT risk to the low risk group (5%)); 3) social-health sufficiency (reduce DPoRT risk <16.5 in individuals with lower education); 4) social-health equality (equalize DPoRT risk to the level of individuals with high education). For each scenario, we calculated intervention impacts, diabetes cases prevented or delayed, and relative and absolute educational inequities in diabetes. Overall, we estimated that achieving health sufficiency (i.e., all individuals below the diabetes risk threshold) was more feasible than achieving health equality (i.e., diabetes risk equalized for all individuals), requiring smaller initial investments and fewer interventions; however, fewer diabetes cases were prevented or delayed. Further, targeting only diabetes inequalities related to education reduced the target population size and number of interventions required, but consequently resulted in even fewer diabetes cases prevented or delayed. Using diabetes as an example, we found that an explicit, ethically-informed definition of health equity is essential to guide population-level interventions that aim to reduce health inequities.

Project description:BackgroundPatients with COVID-19 may feel under pressure to participate in research during the pandemic. Safeguards to protect research participants include ethical guidelines [e.g. Declaration of Helsinki and good clinical practice (GCP)], legislation to protect participants' privacy, research ethics committees (RECs) and informed consent. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) advises researchers to document compliance with these safeguards. Adherence to publication guidelines has been suboptimal in other specialty fields. The aim of this rapid review was to determine whether COVID-19 human research publications report compliance with these ethical safeguards.MethodsA rapid systematic literature review was conducted in MEDLINE using the search term 'COVID-19'. The search was performed in April 2020 with no start date and repeated to include articles published in November 2020. Filters were 'Full free text available' and 'English Language'. Two reviewers assessed article title, abstracts and full texts. Non-COVID-19 articles and non-clinical studies were excluded. Independent reviewers conducted a second assessment of a random 20% of articles. The outcomes included reporting of compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki and GCP, REC approval, informed consent and participant privacy.ResultsThe searches yielded 1275 and 1942 articles of which 247 and 717 were deemed eligible, from the April search and November respectively. The majority of journals had editorial policies which purported to comply with ICMJE ethical standards. Reporting of compliance with ethical guidelines was low across all study types but was higher in the November search for case series and observational studies. Reporting of informed consent for case studies and observational studies was higher in the November search, but similar for case series. Overall, participant confidentiality was maintained but some case studies included a combination of details which would have enabled participant identification. Reporting of REC approval was higher in the November search for observational studies.ConclusionsWhile the majority of journal's editorial policies purported to support the ethical safeguards, many COVID-19 clinical research publications identified in this rapid review lacked documentation of these important safeguards for research participants. In order to promote public trust, ethical declarations should be included consistently.

Project description:IntroductionArguments over the appropriate Crisis Standards of Care (CSC) for public health emergencies often assume that there is a tradeoff between saving the most lives, saving the most life-years, and preventing racial disparities. However, these assumptions have rarely been explored empirically. To quantitatively characterize possible ethical tradeoffs, we aimed to simulate the implementation of five proposed CSC protocols for rationing ventilators in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsA Monte Carlo simulation was used to estimate the number of lives saved and life-years saved by implementing clinical acuity-, comorbidity- and age-based CSC protocols under different shortage conditions. This model was populated with patient data from 3707 adult admissions requiring ventilator support in a New York hospital system between April 2020 and May 2021. To estimate lives and life-years saved by each protocol, we determined survival to discharge and estimated remaining life expectancy for each admission.ResultsThe simulation demonstrated stronger performance for age-sensitive protocols. For a capacity of 1 bed per 2 patients, ranking by age bands saves approximately 29 lives and 3400 life-years per thousand patients. Proposed protocols from New York and Maryland which allocated without considering age saved the fewest lives (~13.2 and 8.5 lives) and life-years (~416 and 420 years). Unlike other protocols, the New York and Maryland algorithms did not generate significant disparities in lives saved and life-years saved between White non-Hispanic, Black non-Hispanic, and Hispanic sub-populations. For all protocols, we observed a positive correlation between lives saved and life-years saved, but also between lives saved overall and inequality in the number of lives saved in different race and ethnicity sub-populations.ConclusionWhile there is significant variance in the number of lives saved and life-years saved, we did not find a tradeoff between saving the most lives and saving the most life-years. Moreover, concerns about racial discrimination in triage protocols require thinking carefully about the tradeoff between enforcing equality of survival rates and maximizing the lives saved in each sub-population.

Dataset Information

High-status individuals are held to higher ethical standards.

Publications

High-status individuals are held to higher ethical standards.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets