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.

“... As you Would have Them Do Unto You”: Does Imagining Yourself in the Other's Place Stimulate Moral Action?

Abstract: Philosophers, psychologists, and religious teachers have suggested that imagining yourself in another's place will stimulate moral action. The authors tested this idea in two different situations. In Experiment 1, participants had the opportunity to assign themselves and another research participant to tasks, with one task clearly more desirable than the other. Imagining oneself in the other's place did little to increase the morality (fairness) of the decision. A different form of perspective taking, imagining the other's feelings, increased direct assignment of the other to the desirable task, apparently due to increased empathy. In Experiment 2, participants confronted a different decision: either accept an initial task assignment that would give them highly positive consequences and the other participant nothing or change the assignment so they and the other would each receive moderately positive consequences. In this situation, imagining oneself in the other's place did significantly increase moral action.

The Development of Toddlers' Moral and Conventional Judgments.

Abstract: The development of toddlers' (n = 108) moral and conventional judgments and the effects of language development on those judgments were examined. Equal numbers of 2634-, and 42-month-old boys and girls judged the permissibility, seriousness, generalizability, and rule and authority contingency of 10 familiar moral and conventional transgressions, and also responded to parallel language comprehension items. The youngest subjects did not distinguish morality and convention on any of the criteria, but 34-month-olds judged moral transgres sions to be more generalizably wrong than conventional transgressions. By age 42 months, morality and convention were distinguished on all the criteria. Chil dren who responded correctly to the corresponding language comprehension items differentiated moral and conventional transgressions on the basis of gener alizability, rule contingency, and authority contingency at earlier ages than when language ability was not considered. Thus, rudimentary distinctions between morality and conventionality emerge and become more consistently applied during the third year of life.

Moral Stages and Moral Orientations in Real-Life and Hypothetical Dilemmas.

Abstract: WALKER, LAWRENCE J.; DE VRIES, BRIAN; and TREVETHAN, SHELLEY D. Moral Stages and Moral Orientations in Real-Life and Hypothetical Dilemmas. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1987, 58, 842-858. We examined 2 influential theories of moral reasoning: Kohlberg's moral stage model and Gilligan's moral orientation model. 3 issues were of particular interest: (a) the relation between reasoning about hypothetical and real-life dilemmas, (b) the validity of Gilligan's notion of sex-related moral orientations (response vs. rights), and (c) the relation of moral orientation to moral stage. Participants were 80 family triads (mother, father, and child, total N = 240), with children drawn from grades 1, 4, 7, and 10. In individual interviews, they discussed hypothetical dilemmas and a personally generated real-life dilemma, which were scored for both moral stage and moral orientation. Content analyses were also conducted for the real-life dilemmas. Results indicated consistency in moral stage between responses to hypothetical and real-life dilemmas, supporting the notion that stages are holistic structures. However, few individuals showed consistent use of a single moral orientation. The evidence regarding the relation between sex and orientation was inconsistent. Among other results, sex differences were evident in dilemma content but were not evident in orientations when dilemma content was controlled. The sexes did not differ in stage of moral development; however, there were moral stage differences as a function of moral orientation.

Religion and morality.

Abstract: The relationship between religion and morality has long been hotly debated. Does religion make us more moral? Is it necessary for morality? Do moral inclinations emerge independently of religious intuitions? These debates, which nowadays rumble on in scientific journals as well as in public life, have frequently been marred by a series of conceptual confusions and limitations. Many scientific investigations have failed to decompose “religion” and “morality” into theoretically grounded elements; have adopted parochial conceptions of key concepts—in particular, sanitized conceptions of “prosocial” behavior; and have neglected to consider the complex interplay between cognition and culture. We argue that to make progress, the categories “religion” and “morality” must be fractionated into a set of biologically and psychologically cogent traits, revealing the cognitive foundations that shape and constrain relevant cultural variants. We adopt this fractionating strategy, setting out an encompassing evolutionary framework within which to situate and evaluate relevant evidence. Our goals are twofold: to produce a detailed picture of the current state of the field, and to provide a road map for future research on the relationship between religion and morality.