Morality

About: Morality is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 22623 publications have been published within this topic receiving 545733 citations. The topic is also known as: moral & morals.

Moral character predominates in person perception and evaluation.

Abstract: What sorts of trait information do people most care about when forming impressions of others? Recent research in social cognition suggests that "warmth," broadly construed, should be of prime importance in impression formation. Yet, some prior research suggests that information about others' specifically moral traits--their moral "character"--may be a primary dimension. Although warmth and character have sometimes been conceived of as interchangeable, we argue that they are separable, and that across a wide variety of contexts, character is usually more important than warmth in impression formation. We first showed that moral character and social warmth traits are indeed separable (Studies 1 and 2). Further studies that used correlational and experimental methods showed that, as predicted, in most contexts, moral character information is more important in impression formation than is warmth information (Studies 2-6). Character information was also more important than warmth information with respect to judgments of traits' perceived fundamentalness to identity, their uniquely human quality, their context-independence, and their controllability (Study 2). Finally, Study 7 used an archival method to show that moral character information appears more prominently than warmth information in obituaries, and more strongly determines the impressions people form of the individuals described in those obituaries. We discuss implications for current theories of person perception and social cognition.

Culture and moral development.

Abstract: This essay reports the results of a cross-cultural development study of ideas about the moral (its form) and ideas about what is moral (its content). The informants for the study are children, five to thirteen years of age, and adults, male and female, from Brahman and “Untouchable” families in the orthodox Hindu temple town of Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India; and from Judeo-Christian families in the secular university neighborhood of Hyde Park in Chicago, Illinois. One aim of the essay is to assess the strengths and limitations of two prominent and important theories about the origins and development of moral understandings: Kohlberg's “cognitive developmental” theory (Kohlberg 1969, 1981; Kohlberg, Levine, and Hewer 1983) and Turiel's “social interactional” theory (Turiel 1979, 1983; Nucci and Turiel 1978; Turiel and Smetana 1984). A second aim is to highlight the role of social communication processes in the ontogeny of moral understandings by outlining a “social communication” theory of moral development and using it to interpret the similarities and differences in the moral understandings of children and adults in the two cultures. Three theories of moral development The three theories to be discussed present different portraits and accounts of the ontogenetic origins of the idea of a moral obligation. Kohlberg's “cognitive developmental” theory hypothesizes that a genuine understanding of the idea of a moral obligation (stages five and six) has its origins in the idea of a conventional, or consensusbased, obligation (stages three and four).

Presidential address institutions and culture

Abstract: How and why does distant political and economic history shape the functioning of current institutions? This paper argues that individual values and convictions about the scope of application of norms of good conduct provide the “missing link.” Evidence from a variety of sources points to two main findings. First, individual values consistent with generalized (as opposed to limited) morality are widespread in societies that were ruled by non-despotic political institutions in the distant past. Second, well-functioning institutions are often observed in countries or regions where individual values are consistent with generalized morality, and under different identifying assumptions this suggests a causal effect from values to institutional outcomes. The paper ends with a discussion of the implications for future research. (JEL: A10, D7, E00)