When You Think of and Identify Yourself as a Nurse, You Will Become More Deontological and Less Utilitarian

Mufan Zheng (), Junhua Zhao () and Xielan Zhang
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Mufan Zheng: Department of Psychology, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China
Junhua Zhao: Department of Psychology, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China
Xielan Zhang: Department of Psychology, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China

IJERPH, 2024, vol. 21, issue 6, 1-12

Abstract: This study aims to examine how the activation of the role of nursee and professional identification as a nurse can influence moral judgments in terms of deontological and utilitarian inclinations. In Study 1, a priming technique was used to assess the impact of activating the nursing concept on moral reasoning. Participants were randomly assigned to either a nursing prime or neutral prime condition. By using a scrambled-sentence task, participants were prompted to think about nursing-related or neutral thoughts. Following the priming task, participants were asked to respond to 20 moral dilemmas. The process dissociation approach was employed to measure the degree of deontological and utilitarian tendencies in their moral reasoning. In Study 2, participants completed the nursing profession identification scale and the moral orientation scale before engaging in moral judgments similar to those in Study 1. The findings revealed that priming the concept of being a nursee resulted in an increase in deontological clinical inclinations while having no significant effect on utilitarian inclinations. Additionally, a positive correlation was observed between identification with the nursing profession and deontological clinical inclinations, whereas a negative correlation was found with utilitarian inclinations. Deliberation orientation acted as a complete mediator in the relationship between nursing professional identification and deontological tendencies and as a partial mediator for utilitarian tendencies.

Keywords: moral judgments; deontology; utilitarianism; nursing role; professional identification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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