The Difference Catholic Makes: Catholic Faculty and Catholic Identity

This study examines, for the case of Catholics, the thesis that a "critical mass" of devoted faculty members—50 percent or more, according to the papal document Ex Corde Ecclesia—serves to promote or preserve the religious character of religiously affiliated institutions of higher education. Factor analysis and structural equations are employed to analyze a random sample of faculty members ( n = 1,290) and institutional profiles ( n = 100) of American Catholic colleges and universities. Catholic faculty show higher support for Catholic identity in latent structures of aspiration for improved Catholic distinctiveness, a desire for more theology or philosophy courses, and longer institutional tenure. Institutions having a majority of Catholic faculty exhibit four properties consistent with stronger Catholic identity: a policy of preferential hiring for Catholics ("hiring for mission"), a higher proportion of Catholic students, higher faculty aspiration for Catholic identity, and longer faculty tenure in the institution. These latter two characteristics are not due simply to aggregation, but are stronger, on average, for Catholic faculty when they are in the majority. Preferential hiring marks Catholic identity, but is ineffective to increase the proportion of Catholic faculty. I conclude that the prediction of the critical mass thesis is correct.     

Educating moral emotions: a praxiological analysis

This paper presents a praxiological analysis of three everyday educational practices or strategies that can be considered as being directed at the moral formation of the emotions. The first consists in requests to imagine other's emotional reactions. The second comprises requests to imitate normative emotional reactions and the third to re-appraise the features of a situation that are relevant to an emotional response. The interest of these categories is not just that they help to organize and recognize the significance of what might otherwise appear to be a disparate set of ordinary moral-educational interactions between children and educators. We suggest, further, that this analysis provides some new insight into what distinguishes the broad and recurrent conceptions of moral education from one another. Rather than being straightforwardly reducible to intractable differences over core normative or meta-ethical questions they can also be seen as correlating with different suppositions about the central role of the emotions in moral life and, correspondingly, different but to a large degree compatible interpretations of what the "education of the moral emotions" primarily means.

You see, the ends don't justify the means: visual imagery and moral judgment

We conducted three experiments indicating that characteristically deontological judgments-here, disapproving of sacrificing one person for the greater good of others-are preferentially supported by visual imagery. Experiment 1 used two matched working memory tasks-one visual, one verbal-to identify individuals with relatively visual cognitive styles and individuals with relatively verbal cognitive styles. Individuals with more visual cognitive styles made more deontological judgments. Experiment 2 showed that visual interference, relative to verbal interference and no interference, decreases deontological judgment. Experiment 3 indicated that these effects are due to people's tendency to visualize the harmful means (sacrificing one person) more than the beneficial end (saving others). These results suggest a specific role for visual imagery in moral judgment: When people consider sacrificing someone as a means to an end, visual imagery preferentially supports the judgment that the ends do not justify the means. These results suggest an integration of the dual-process theory of moral judgment with construal-level theory.     

Beliefs about birth control: a consistency theory analysis

201 lower income women aged 20-40 were interviewed in a large midwestern city in December 1967 and January 1968 to determine attitudes towards, beliefs about, and use of birth control. Those who approved of birth control had more positive beliefs about the consequences of birth control than those with less favorable attitudes. Users of reliable methods also held more positive attitudes about birth control consequences than nonusers or users of nonreliable methods although this relationship was weak. Strategies for improving family planning behavioral predictions are suggested as well as implications of this for family planning communication programs.     

The dual moral self: moral centrality and internal moral motivation

In this study, the relationship between two aspects of the moral self, moral centrality and internal moral motivation, was analyzed. It is argued that these 2 aspects are conceptually distinct but nonetheless empirically related. Based on a cross-sectional study of 205 adolescents (M age = 14.83 years, SD = 2.21 years) it was found that moral centrality and internal moral motivation, even though substantially correlated, interacted in predicting moral emotion expectancies. Even though moral centrality was unrelated to adolescents' age it predicted a longitudinal increase in internal moral motivation over a 1-year interval. Overall, the findings call for a differentiation of moral centrality and internal moral motivation as 2 distinct but interrelated aspects of moral self-development that follow different developmental trajectories and are differentially related to age. At the same time, the study points out that adolescence may be less important for the development of the moral self than commonly assumed.     

Subsidized abortion: moral rights and moral compromise

The right of indigent women to have government-subsidized abortions is considered in light of the opposing societal opinions on the morality of abortion. Arguments for funding abortions as another facet of health care, and the welfare rights and freedom of indigents, are discussed. A compromise between pro- and anti-abortion factions in society is suggested--the elimination of government funding for elective abortions while continuing to allow them for those who can pay.     

Catholic Head Teachers: The importance of culture building in approaches to spiritual and moral development and the transmission of faith tradition

Voluntary aided Catholic schools form 10% of the state education provision. Within the state system, voluntary aided schools maintain a particular educational philosophy and the head teachers of these schools play an important role in maintaining and developing this philosophy. This paper explores the role of the head teacher of the Catholic school in developing a school culture that seeks to make a positive contribution to children's spiritual and moral development.     

Deviance and the neutralization of moral commitment: An empirical analysis

Neutralization theory was proposed by Sykes and Matza (1957) as a theory of juvenile delinquency. Its major propositions are: (1) Delinquents maintain moral commitment to conventional norms, and (2) the ability to neutralize moral commitment facilitates juvenile delinquency. The present research attempts to evaluate neutralization theory for predicting variation in self‐reported expected illegal behavior in a random sample of 350 adults. Data analysis indicates that (1) neutralization is conceptually and empirically distinct from moral commitment, and (2) the interaction between moral commitment and neutralization significantly explains expected involvement in future deviance.     

Rationality and moral autonomy: An essay in moral psychology

Although there are many variations on the theme, so much is made of the good of moral autonomy that it is difficult not to suppose that there is everything to be said for being morally autonomous and nothing at all to be said for being morally nonautonomous. However, this view of moral autonomy cannot be made to square with the well-received fact that most people are morally nonautonomous — not, at any rate, unless one is prepared to maintain that most people are irrational in this respect. I am not. Thus, I reject what I take to be the prevailing view of moral autonomy. I argue that it is false that (1) moral autonomy is such that it is rational for every person to prefer being morally autonomous to being morally nonautonomous, but true that (2) moral autonomy is such that if anyone is morally autonomous, then it is rational for him to prefer being morally autonomous to being morally nonautonomous.     

The effects of moral judgment and moral identity on moral behavior: an empirical examination of the moral individual

Recognizing limitations in classic cognitive moral development theory, several scholars have drawn from theories of identity to suggest that moral behavior results from both moral judgments and moral identity. The authors conducted 2 survey-based studies with more than 500 students and managers to test this argument. Results demonstrated that moral identity and moral judgments both independently influenced moral behavior. In addition, in situations in which social consensus regarding the moral behavior was not high, moral judgments and moral identity interacted to shape moral behavior. This interaction effect indicated that those who viewed themselves as moral individuals pursued the most extreme alternatives (e.g., never cheating, regularly cheating)--a finding that affirms the motivational power of a moral identity. The authors conclude by considering the implications of this research for both theory and practice.     

Self-concept consistency and culture: the differential impact of two forms of consistency

Self-concept consistency is viewed as central to authenticity and adjustment in Western cultures. The authors propose that the implications of self-concept consistency depend on both the cultural background of the individual and the type of consistency involved. Specifically, although consistency of the self-concept across different contexts may be less important in East Asian than Western cultures, East Asians may still benefit from consistency within specific social contexts over time (i.e., maintaining stable, distinct relational selves). Supporting these ideas, across three studies, inconsistency of trait self-perceptions across different relationship contexts was linked to lower subjective authenticity and relationship quality for European Americans but not East Asian Americans. However, inconsistency within the same relationship context over time showed similar negative associations with these outcomes in both groups. Overall, the results suggest that inconsistency may be less consequential for East Asians relative to Westerners only if it reflects culturally prescribed adjustment to different social contexts.     

Tacit coordination in monozygotic twins, dizygotic twins and virtual twins: Effects and implications of genetic relatedness

Game theorists have long been interested in why some partners are more successful at achieving mutual goals than others. The present study was conducted to determine if tacit coordination (non-negotiated consensus) varies as a function of genetic relatedness between social partners. The sample included 7–13-year-old monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs (n = 53), dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs (n = 85) and virtual twin (VT) pairs (n = 42; same-age unrelated siblings). Co-twin agreement on questions completed under individual and coordination conditions was compared across the three groups. MZ twins showed significantly greater overall agreement than DZ twins and VTs, using multiple criteria. The implications of these findings are considered with reference to behavioral-genetic and evolutionary theories of behavior.     

Design and power analysis: n and confidence intervals of means

In this study, we analyzed the validity of the conventional 80% power. The minimal sample size and power needed to guarantee non-overlapping (1-alpha)% confidence intervals for population means were calculated. Several simulations indicate that the minimal power for two means (m = 2) to have non-overlapping CIs is .80, for (1-alpha) set to 95%. The minimal power becomes .86 for 99% CIs and .75 for 90% CIs. When multiple means are considered, the required minimal power increases considerably. This increase is even higher when the population means do not increase monotonically. Therefore, the often adopted criterion of a minimal power equal to .80 is not always adequate. Hence, to guarantee that the limits of the CIs do not overlap, most situations require a direct calculation of the minimum number of observations that should enter in a study.