Showing papers on "Social cognitive theory of morality published in 1985"

The formation of conscience in an age of technology

Abstract: In this article, moral development is construed as the educational formation of conscience, and conscience is concerned with much more than moral conduct in the modern sense of "moral." Thus, a contrast is drawn between moral philosophy and a philosophy of moral education. The educational development of conscience is not viewed as the progressive stagelike emergence of rational moral judgment. It is viewed instead as the elaboration and continuing juxtaposition of the different voices of conscience as craft, membership, sacrifice, memory, and imagination.

The Role of Affective Information in Social-Cognitive Development: Children's Differentiation of Moral and Conventional Events.

Abstract: The role of affect in one aspect of social-cognitive development was examined. Specifically, it was hypothesized that children are able to discriminate moral and conventional rules and events at young ages in part because affective informa tion is a salient feature of such events. Based on a standard interview technique, the results of Study 1 provided initial support for this hypothesis, as first and third graders consistently rated hypothetical conventional infractions as affec tively neutral, but tended to regard moral transgressions as affectively negative. Children also were more likely to justify their decisions to intervene in moral sit uations by referring to affect-related considerations. Study 2 provided additional support for the hypothesized importance of affective information by experimen tally manipulating affect prior to a controlled recall task involving moral and con ventional stories. Results showed that an induced negative affective state aided recall of moral but not conventional transgressions. Discussion focused on the potential role of affect in children's understanding of social events.

Theories of moral development

Abstract: (1986). Theories of Moral Development. The Journal of Higher Education: Vol. 57, No. 5, pp. 554-556.

The process of moral conflict resolution and moral development

Abstract: Peer discussion of moral disagreements can be analyzed to reveal processes of moral reasoning growth.

The Current Formulation of Kohlberg's Theory and a Response to Critics.

Abstract: This article is a synopsis of the monograph Moral Stages : A Current Formulation and a Response to Critics . Recent changes in the theory of moral stages are presen

The Development of Prosocial Behavior and Cognitions in German Children

Abstract: The development of German children's moral reasoning about prosocial conflicts, and the interrelations of moral reasoning and prosocial behavior were examined. Hedonistic reasoning decreased in usage from the preschool years to fourth grade; direct reciprocity, needs-oriented, approval/ interpersonal, and reasoning involving references to others' humanness increased with age. The pattern of development was strikingly similar to that of an American sample of the same age. However, German children used more direct reciprocity and less stereotypic reasoning than did American children. As has been found for American children, sharing behavior but not helping was related to level of moral judgment. The results are discussed in relation to theory and the existing research concerning prosocial development in America.

Moral dilemmas : philosophical and psychological issues in the development of moral reasoning

Abstract: Dilemmas are often thought to be unresolvable situations, typically having equally abhorrant alternatives. In everyday affairs however one must not only face moral dilemmas but live through them by making moral choices. This book is a study of dilemmas, choices, and the process of reasoning that goes into both. Contents: Carol Harding, "The Psychological Reality of Moral Dilemmas"; Marvin W. Berkowitz, "Four Perspectives on Moral Argumentation"; Georg Lind, "Growth and Regression in Cognitive-Moral Development of Young University Students"; Lawrence Kohlberg, "The Just Community Approach of High School Moral Education"; Larry P. Nucci, "Children's Conceptions of Morality, Societal Convention, and Religious Prescription"; Larry May, "The Moral Adequacy of Kohlberg's Moral Development Theory"; Marilyn Friedman, "Abraham, Socrates, and Heinz: Where Are the Women? Care and Context in Moral Reasoning"; Laurence Hunman, "The Emotions and the Development of Moral Awareness."

Ways of Moral Learning

Abstract: The issue of moral relativism is the question of how similar morality is to science-or, more precisely, to the common image of science as using reason and evidence to establish objective truths. So one would think that the best discussions of moral relativism would be based on the best philosophy of science of the time. In fact, the most advanced discussions of the issue are still limited by obsolete views of meaning and justification, inherited from positivist philosophy of science. After defending this diagnosis, I will base a solution to the problem of moral relativism on a more completely post-positivist account of meaning and justification. From this perspective, the problem of relativism will turn out to be a question about learning: do our moral beliefs emerge from a process of reliable learning, and are there contrary processes of moral learning that we cannot refute in any fair way? On the most plausible reading of the current evidence, anthropological, historical and psychological, the answer is at least half-relativist. The truth in moral absolutism is that our moral talk refers to something real and often describes it correctly. Our basic moral beliefs are sustained by processes of detection as the post-positivist account of reference requires. But the truth in relativism is that some moral outlooks radically different from our own are associated with rival conceptions of moral learning, whose claim to reliability cannot be refuted. While our confidence in our ways of learning is reasonable, it would be incorrect to assess the other ways as unreasonable or ill-informed. In the natural sciences, when people investigate the world using rival techniques, instruments or hypotheses, there is almost always reason to hope that more evidence would be the basis for a fair argument resolving the disputes between them. In morality, conflicting ways of learning often turn out to represent different kinds of emotional maturity, neither of them subject to fair refutation in light of the totality of data. This, and this alone, is the relativist difference between morality and science.

Women's Moral Development in Search of Philosophical Assumptions∗

Abstract: This paper first examines Carol Gilligan's thesis that men and women use different moral languages to resolve moral dilemmas; women speak a language of caring and responsibility and men speak a language of rights and justice. Gilligan's statements about women's moral language can be interpreted in three different ways. Each one of these is analysed. Then it is questioned whether Gilligan's thesis about men's and women's moral languages can be grounded with adequate philosophical assumptions. It is argued that three main moral theories cannot undergird this dichotomy and further, that it is unacceptable to divide morality on the basis of gender. Instead, Gilligan's thesis can provide a criticism of the quality of public moral life and thus be a means to develop a rather different moral theory for both men and women. ∗This paper is an enlarged version of one section of a paper given at the University of Pennsylvania. My most sincere thanks to members of that seminar and to Professor Dwight Boyd and...

Do corporations have moral rights

Abstract: My aim in this paper is to explore the notion that corporations have moral rights within the context of a constitutive rules model of corporate moral agency. The first part of the paper will briefly introduce the notion of moral rights, identifying the distinctive feature of moral rights, as contrasted with other moral categories, in Vlastos' terms of overridingness. The second part will briefly summarize the constitutive rules approach to the moral agency of corporations (a la French, Smith, Ozar) and pose the question of the paper. The third part will argue that, since the moral agency of corporations is dependent on the choices of those whose acceptence of the relevant rules constitutes the corporation as a moral agent, the rights of corporations are conventional; that is, they exist because they are so created. Thus, as a first answer, corporations do not have moral rights. But this raises a further question which we must explore. Once a corporation has been constituted, by the acceptance of the relevant rules by the relevant persons, does the corporation then have rights which endure? Can those who have constituted a corporation with certain rights morally change or cancel those rights in medias res without doing some sort of moral violence to the corporation? Do corporations at least have a moral right to persist in the conventional rights with which they were constituted? The balance of the paper will explore this question. I shall speak of the overriding character of a corporation's claim that its conventional rights persist, and also the important way in which such a moral claim is non-conventional, if such a claim can be made at all. But I shall argue in conclusion that corporations do not have such a right. But I shall also argue that those persons whose acts have originally constituted the corporation as a moral agent may well have rights which would be violated if the conventional rights of the corporation were changed or terminated without their participation.

Social conflict and the development of children's moral and conventional concepts

Abstract: Observations of naturally occurring social transgressions indicate that peer interactions in the context of moral conflicts differ qualitatively from those in the context of breaches of convention.

Moral rules and moral ideals: A useful distinction in business and professional practice

Abstract: The distinction between moral rules and moral ideals is presented and explained in various ways. The authors propose that people in business are required to obey the moral rules and have a choice with respect to ideals. Thus, they are not in a different position from that of anyone else in society.

Real-World Knowledge as the Basis for Social and Cognitive Development

Abstract: One of the most basic and long-standing divisions in empirical psychology is that between the “social” and “cognitive” domains. Over the past decade, this division has been being slowly eroded from both sides. Within developmental psychology, social psychologists are asking how age-related changes in cognitive ability affect social understanding and social reasoning (e.g., Shantz, 1983), while cognitive developmentalists are emphasizing the role of social interaction in cognitive development (e.g., Olson, 1980; Bruner, 1983; Rogoff & Wertsch, 1984; Wertsch, 1979).Butterworth (1982) notes with regret that as yet.