Social cognitive theory of morality

About: Social cognitive theory of morality is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 5842 publications have been published within this topic receiving 250337 citations.

The Idea of Moral Progress

Abstract: This paper shows that moral progress is a substantive and plausible idea Moral progress in belief involves deepening our grasp of existing moral concepts, while moral progress in practices involves realizing deepened moral understandings in behavior or social institutions Moral insights could not be assimilated or widely disseminated if they involved devising and applying totally new moral concepts Thus, it is argued, moral failures of past societies cannot be explained by appeal to ignorance of new moral ideas, but must be understood as resulting from refusals to subject social practices to critical scrutiny Moral philosophy is not the main vehicle for disseminating morally progressive insights, though it has an important role in processes that lead to moral progress Yet we have grounds for cautious optimism, since progressive moral insights can be disseminated and can, sometimes, have constructive social effects

Common morality and moral reform.

Abstract: The idea of moral reform requires that morality be more than a description of what people do value, for there has to be some measure against which to assess progress. Otherwise, any change is not reform, but simply difference. Therefore, I discuss moral reform in relation to two prescriptive approaches to common morality, which I distinguish as the foundational and the pragmatic. A foundational approach to common morality (e.g., Bernard Gert’s) suggests that there is no reform of morality, but of beliefs, values, customs, and practices so as to conform with an unchanging, foundational morality. If, however, there were revision in its foundation (e.g., in rationality), then reform in morality itself would be possible. On a pragmatic view, on the other hand, common morality is relative to human flourishing, and its justification consists in its effectiveness in promoting flourishing. Morality is dependent on what in fact does promote human flourishing and therefore, could be reformed. However, a pragmatic approach, which appears more open to the possibility of moral reform, would need a more robust account of norms by which reform is measured.

Religiosity, Moral Attitudes and Moral Competence: A Critical Investigation of the Religiosity-Morality Relation.

Abstract: The present study investigates the relation between the religiosity dimensions which Wulff (1991) described (Exclusion versus Inclusion of Transcendence and Literal versus Symbolic) and both moral attitudes and moral competence. The Post-Critical Belief Scale (Duriez, Fontaine, & Hutseabut, 2000) was used as a measure of Wulff’s religiosity dimensions, and the Moral Judgment Test (Lind, 1998) was used to measure both moral attitudes and moral competence. Results from a middle adolescent sample (N = 338), a university sample (N = 336) and an adult sample (N = 336) suggest that whereas the Literal versus Symbolic dimension shows substantial relations with moral attitudes and moral competence, the Exclusion versus Inclusion of Transcendence dimension is unrelated to both of them. This suggests that, although there is no intrinsic relationship between religiosity and morality, the way people process religious contents is predictive of the way they deal with moral issues.

Hedonism or empathy?: Hard-to-manage children's moral awareness and links with cognitive and maternal characteristics

Abstract: Disruptive children have long been thought to show hedonistic rather than empathic attitudes to moral dilemmas, but accounts of what underlies this stance vary in different theoretical perspectives. Candidate factors include: general problems in verbal reasoning, specific delays in social understanding, reduced affective responsiveness and control, and negative parental influences. The present study is novel in examining each of these factors in a preschool-aged sample of disruptive children. In addition, interview assessments of moral awareness were compared with real-life observations of peer interactions to examine the ecological validity of such tasks. The study is also unusual in adopting a longitudinal design: the stability of group differences in moral awareness and its correlates was examined across a 2-year period spanning the transition to school. At age 4, 40 hard-to-manage children and their typically developing peers received a moral judgments and justifications interview and were filmed playing with a friend (Slomkowski & Killen, 1992). At age 6, the two groups completed a moral-stories task (Arsenio & Fleiss, 1996). Significant group differences were found at both time points; these differences showed stable relations with each of the correlates above, although the relation between interview measures of moral awareness and real-life behaviour was rather more complex. Overall, the findings of this study suggest that disruptive children show early and multi-faceted problems in socio-moral reasoning, that are associated with difficulties in their family and peer relationships.

Morality or economic interest? The impact of moral motives and economic factors on the purchase of fair trade groceries

Abstract: In this article, we compare the impact of moral motives and economic factors on the purchase of fair trade groceries. Moral motives are measured by three different constructs, which are derived from different theoretical perspectives: one from the classical theory of attitude, one from the subjectively expected utility theory and one from the norm-activation model. The empirical results of the analysis show that moral motives as well as economic factors are important determinants for explaining the purchase of fair trade groceries. Furthermore, the study indicates that the impact of moral motives is greater than that of economic factors, and among the moral factors, the personal norm is especially explanatorily powerful.