Motor learning is often hindered or facilitated by visual information from one’s body and its movement. However, it is unclear whether visual representation of the body itself facilitates motor learning. Thus, we tested the effects of virtual body-representation on motor learning through a virtual reality rotary pursuit task. In the task, visual feedback on participants’ movements was identical, but virtual body-representation differed by dividing the experimental conditions into three conditions: non-avatar, non-hand avatar, and hand-shaped avatar. We measured the differences in the rate of motor learning, body-ownership, and sense of agency in the three conditions. Although there were no differences in body-ownership and sense of agency between the conditions, the hand-shaped avatar condition was significantly superior to the other conditions in the rate of learning. These findings suggest that visually recognizing one’s body shape facilitates motor learning.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare professionals have often faced moral challenges, which required them to choose between endorsing self- or other-sacrifice for the greater good. Drawing on the altruistic rationalization hypothesis and trait-activation theory, this study investigates (a) whether healthcare students’ endorsement of utilitarian solutions to sacrificial moral dilemmas varies when they are confronted with the minority group, majority group, or third-person perspective on the given dilemma and (b) whether individual differences in utilitarian thinking, as measured by the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale (both instrumental harm and impartial beneficence), predict endorsement of utilitarian solutions to moral dilemmas. The study population was divided into a group of healthcare students and a group of non-healthcare students. It was found that the members of both groups expressed a stronger pro-utilitarian position when making moral dilemma judgments from a majority perspective than from the two other perspectives. However, a difference was observed with healthcare students being more reluctant to endorse the utilitarian action than their non-healthcare counterparts in the self-in-majority context. The instrumental harm component was a significant predictor of utilitarian judgments in the healthcare group, but impartial beneficence significantly predicted utilitarian judgments in the non-healthcare group in the self-in-majority context.

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted prosocial behavior as a professional healthcare core competency. Although medical students are expected to work in the best interests of their patients, in the pandemic context, there is a greater need for ethical attention to be paid to the way medical students deal with moral dilemmas that may conflict with their obligations. Methods This study was conducted in the spring semester of 2019 on 271 students majoring in health professions: medicine, dentistry, and veterinary medicine. All participants provided informed consent and completed measures that assessed utilitarian moral views, cognitive reflections, cognitive reappraisal, and moral judgment. Results The healthcare-affiliated students who scored higher on the instrumental harm subscale in the measurement of utilitarian moral views were more likely to endorse not only other-sacrificial actions but also self-sacrificial ones for the greater good in moral dilemma scenarios. In particular, those engaged in deliberative processes tended to make more self-sacrificial judgments. The mediation analysis also revealed that the effect of deliberative processes on self-sacrificial judgments was mediated by cognitive reappraisal. Conclusions These findings suggested that cognitive reappraisal through deliberative processes is involved when the students with utilitarian inclination make prosocial decisions, that it is necessary to consider both moral views and emotional regulation when admitting candidates, and that moral education programs are needed in the healthcare field.

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