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 relation of role taking to the development of moral judgment in children.

Abstract: SELMAN, ROBERT L. The Relation of Role Taking to the Development of Moral Judgment in Children. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1971, 42, 79-91. In order to explore the relationship in middle childhood between two socialcognitive processes, role-taking ability and moral reasoning, 60 middle-class children (10 boys and 10 girls each at ages 8, 9, and 10) were administered Kohlberg's (1963) moral-judgment measure, two role-taking tasks, and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, a conventional measure of intelligence. Results indicated that at this age range, with intelligence controlled, the development of reciprocal role-taking skills related to the development of conventional moral judgment. Results of a reexamination 1 year later of 10 subjects whose role-taking and moral-judgment levels were low in the original study supported the hypothesis that the development of the ability to understand the reciprocal nature of interpersonal relations is a necessary but not suficient condition for the development of conventional moral thought.

The Role of the Human Prefrontal Cortex in Social Cognition and Moral Judgment

Abstract: Results from functional magnetic resonance imaging and lesion studies indicate that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is essential for successful navigation through a complex social world inundated with intricate norms and moral values. This review examines regions of the PFC that are critical for implicit and explicit social cognitive and moral judgment processing. Considerable overlap between regions active when individuals engage in social cognition or assess moral appropriateness of behaviors is evident, underscoring the similarity between social cognitive and moral judgment processes in general. Findings are interpreted within the framework of structured event complex theory, providing a broad organizing perspective for how activity in PFC neural networks facilitates social cognition and moral judgment. We emphasize the dynamic flexibility in neural circuits involved in both implicit and explicit processing and discuss the likelihood that neural regions thought to uniquely underlie both processes heavily interact in response to different contextual primes.

Children's understanding of moral emotions.

Abstract: 4-8-year-old children's attributions of emotion to a story figure who violated a moral rule were studied in a series of experiments. Most 4-year-olds judged a wrongdoer to experience positive emotions, focusing their justifications on the successful outcome of his action, whereas almost all 8-year-olds attributed negative feelings, focusing on the moral value of the wrongdoer's action. A developmental trend from outcome-oriented toward morally oriented emotion attributions was also observed in children's judgments of the feelings of a story character who had resisted temptation. When morally evaluating a wrongdoer, only children above the age of 6 years took emotional reactions into account, judging a "happy" wrongdoer to be worse than a "sorry" one. 4- and 5-year-olds attributed positive emotions to a wrongdoer even if his transgression was severe and if he did not gain any material profit from it. However, they did not expect a person (even an ill-motivated one) to feel good if he or she unintentionally harmed another person or merely observed someone being hurt. These results are discussed in relation to recent research on children's developing conceptions of emotion and on the early development of moral understanding.

Expertise in Moral Reasoning? Order Effects on Moral Judgment in Professional Philosophers and Non-Philosophers

Abstract: We examined the effects of order of presentation on the moral judgments of professional philosophers and two comparison groups. All groups showed similar- sized order effects on their judgments about hypothetical moral scenarios targeting the doctrine of the double effect, the action-omission distinction, and the principle of moral luck. Philosophers' endorsements of related general moral principles were also substantially influenced by the order in which the hypothetical scenarios had previously been presented. Thus, philosophical expertise does not appear to enhance the stability of moral judgments against this presumably unwanted source of bias, even given familiar types of cases and principles.