Individual Moral Development and Moral Progress

At first glance, one of the most obvious places to look for moral progress is in individuals, in particular in moral development from childhood to adulthood. In fact, that moral progress is possible is a foundational assumption of moral education. Beyond the general agreement that moral progress is not only possible but even a common feature of human development things become blurry, however. For what do we mean by ‘progress’? And what constitutes moral progress? Does the idea of individual moral progress presuppose a predetermined end or goal of moral education and development, or not? In this article we analyze the concept of moral progress to shed light on the psychology of moral development and vice versa; these analyses are found to be mutually supportive. We suggest that: moral progress should be conceived of as development that is evaluated positively on the basis of relatively stable moral criteria that are the fruit and the subject of an ongoing conversation; moral progress does not imply the idea of an end-state; individual moral progress is best conceived of as the development of various components of moral functioning and their robust integration in a person’s identity; both children and adults can progress morally - even though we would probably not speak in terms of progress in the case of children - but adults’ moral progress is both more hard-won and to a greater extent a personal project rather than a collective effort.     

Moral development and behavior.

The study of moral development as well as the relation of moral development and behavior has been of great interest to many over the past half a century. While some studies have shown no association between one's moral development and behavior, some evidence indicates level of moral reasoning influences behavior. Over 16 selected studies postconventional principles of justice are likely to be more prosocial and law-abiding than those appropriate at the lower stages of moral development.     

The effect of leader moral development on ethical climate and employee attitudes

This study examines the effect of leader moral development on the organization’s ethical climate and employee attitudes. Results indicate that the relationship between leader moral development and ethical climate is moderated by two factors: the extent to which the leader utilizes his or her cognitive moral development (i.e., capacity for ethical reasoning), and the age of the organization. Specifically, the influence of the leader’s moral development was stronger for high utilizing leaders, those whose moral actions were consistent with their moral reasoning. Additionally, the influence of the leader’s moral development was stronger in younger organizations. Finally, as predicted, congruence between the leader’s moral development and the employee’s moral development was positively associated with job satisfaction and organizational commitment and negatively associated with turnover intentions.     

Ritual Education and Moral Development: A Comparison of Xunzi and Vygotsky

Xunzi’s 荀子 advocacy for moral education is well-documented; precisely how his program bolsters moral development, and why a program touting study of ritual could be effective, remain subjects of debate. I argue that these matters can be clarified by appealing to the theory of learning and development offered by Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky posited that development depends primarily on social interactions mediated by sociocultural tools that modify learners’ cognitive architecture, enabling increasingly sophisticated thought. Vygotsky’s theory is remarkably similar to Xunzi’s account of how studying and practicing ritual restructures learners’ moral psychology. Specifically, both Vygotsky and Xunzi offer nonnativist accounts of psychosocial development that emphasize the centrality of sociocultural tools for learning. This comparison yields a more nuanced and empirically supported interpretation of Xunzi’s account of moral education, as well as an account that has applications in contemporary work in moral education and development.     

Anderson's Overlap-Hypothesis and the Discontinuities of Growth

Role-taking ability and level of moral development were measured in three groups of boys and girls including 16 moderately retarded adolescents (mean chronological age 15; mean mental age 9), 16 nonretarded adolescents matched for chronological age, and 16 nonretarded children matched for mental age. The mentally retarded adolescents scored significantly lower on role-taking ability and moral development than the adolescents matched for chronological age. They did not differ from children of their same mental age in role-taking ability; and they tended to score lower in moral development. The results supplied qualified support for Kohlberg's theory of moral development.     

The relation of moral judgment development and educational experience to recall of moral narratives and expository texts

Moral text processing was used as an ecologically valid method for assessing implicit and explicit moral understanding and development. The authors tested undergraduates, seminarians, and graduate students in political science and philosophy for recall of moral narratives and moral expository texts. Multivariate analyses of covariance using educational experience as an independent variable, age and moral judgment score as covariates, and recall of embedded moral arguments as a dependent variable revealed a relation between education and level of moral arguments recalled. Lower stage moral reasoning was best recalled by undergraduates, whereas higher stage reasoning was best recalled by graduate students, with seminarians intermediate for both types of text. Moral judgment score was related to recall of the highest level moral arguments even when age and educational experience were controlled. Moral judgment development appeared to be particularly helpful in recall of expository compared with narrative texts.     

Moral Development and Counselor Trainee Empathy

A high moral development group was superior to a low moral development group in the demonstration of empathy on a counseling tape.     

Integrity Tests and Morality: Associations with Ego Development,Moral Reasoning,and Psychopathic Personality

Although past research has shown links between integrity tests and the Big Five personality traits, little is known about the relationship between integrity and other individual difference constructs used to predict moral behavior. The present study expands this research by examining the relationships between ego development, moral reasoning, psychopathic personality, and three commonly used integrity tests. Both overt and personality‐based integrity tests showed the strongest (negative) correlations with psychopathic personality but only modest correlations with ego development and moral reasoning. On the whole, these findings suggest that integrity tests may be more closely related to overt moral behavior than to moral reasoning.     

医学生道德发展与医德教育模式的探索

医学生的道德发展有其内在规律性,医学生在低年级进入社区医疗机构,开展早期接触临床的实践,遵循了道德发展规律,明确了医德教育的阶段性目标和定位,是一项非常有益的探索。     

Worker equality and adult development: the kibbutz as a developmental model

Adults' social status, particularly their occupations, is a powerful predictor of their level of moral and ego development. This association's inevitability was tested by examining the relationship of personal development with social status among 3 groups of workers. Results showed that kibbutz workers' moral and ego development were not significantly associated with educational, occupational, or social class standing, but that Israeli city and North American workers' moral and ego development were significantly associated with all measures of social status. In further contrast, work complexity was significantly associated with both moral and ego development only for kibbutz workers, suggesting that they engage in jobs that are appropriate to their psychological development without creating social inequality. Implications for developmental theory and workplace research are considered.     

交往理性与德育理念的重建

哲学意义上的交往理论,尤其是哈贝马斯的交往理性可以解决当前目的理性泛滥带来的的德育危机。交往德育是在超越灌输德育的基础上,对主体存在、人的存在目标和生存意义提出本质追问并提供某种可能性诠释的德育理论。它是一种扬弃与超越灌输德育而又与灌输德育截然不同的德育理念,是德育发展的必经阶段。     

Moral development and perceptions of attempted suicide and physician-assisted suicide

In a sample of 115 undergraduates, no association was found between a measure of moral development and the perception of attempted suicides. For the 85 women in the sample, a higher moral development score was associated with less approval of physician-assisted suicide.     

道德信仰的演变及其规律性

道德信仰的演变既表现为共时态的亢进律、波动律、蜕变律,又表现为历时态的崇拜、服从、自由。两交织使道德信仰的演变呈现出复杂性。     

Judging Yourself as You Judge Others: Moral Development and Exculpation

This study investigated two main issues: Whether people's judgments about real-life moral transgressions are affected by the role they play in them and whether self-serving biases in such judgments vary with level of moral development. One-hundred twenty university students took Colby and Kohlberg's (1987) test of moral judgment and made open-ended and rating-scale judgments about three real-life transgressions they considered moral in nature. As expected, participants made more exculpatory judgments about transgressions they committed than they did about transgressions others committed, but participants did not judge transgressions committed against them more harshly than they judged transgressions committed against others. The higher participants scored on Kohlberg's test the less they externalized and excused their moral transgressions. Contrary to expectation, this relation also applied to moral judgments about transgressions committed by others against others. These findings have important implications for models of moral development and social cognition.     

Situationism and Confucian Virtue Ethics

Situationist research in social psychology focuses on the situational factors that influence behavior. Doris and Harman argue that this research has powerful implications for ethics, and virtue ethics in particular. First, they claim that situationist research presents an empirical challenge to the moral psychology presumed within virtue ethics. Second, they argue that situationist research supports a theoretical challenge to virtue ethics as a foundation for ethical behavior and moral development. I offer a response from moral psychology using an interpretation of Xunzi—a Confucian virtue ethicist from the Classical period. This Confucian account serves as a foil to the situationist critique in that it uncovers many problematic ontological and normative assumptions at work in this debate regarding the prediction and explanation of behavior, psychological posits, moral development, and moral education. Xunzi’s account of virtue ethics not only responds to the situationist empirical challenge by uncovering problematic assumptions about moral psychology, but also demonstrates that it is not a separate empirical hypothesis. Further, Xunzi’s virtue ethic responds to the theoretical challenge by offering a new account of moral development and a ground for ethical norms that fully attends to situational features while upholding robust character traits.     

Addressing the Relationships Among Moral Judgment Development,Authenticity, Nonprejudice,and Volunteerism

This study addresses how moral judgment development, authenticity, and nonprejudice account for variance in scores pertaining to various motivational functions underlying volunteerism in order to clarify certain problems associated with previous research that has considered such relationships. In the study, 127 participants completed measurements that pertain to these constructs. Correlations revealed that moral judgment had a negligible relationship with both authenticity and nonprejudice, thereby affirming that the former construct is distinct from the latter two. Linear regression analyses supported that moral judgment development and nonprejudice provided the strongest contributions to the variance of the considered indices of volunteer motivation. The motivational function underlying volunteerism was also recognized as an important factor that pertains to the observed contributions of variance. Findings are discussed in concert with and compared to prior considerations of relationships between moral judgment development and considerations of the moral self. Implications where moral education is concerned are also considered.     

Shared Moral and Spiritual Development Among Human Persons and Artificially Intelligent Agents

Technical advances in artificial intelligence make somewhat likely the possibility of robotic or software agents exhibiting or extending human-level intelligence within a few decades. Theological investigation can help meet significant research goals in artificial intelligence by orienting the development of agent communication and moral reasoning toward a shared moral and spiritual development of human persons and intelligent agents. In particular, Josiah Royce’s Loyalty-to-Loyalty initiates a moral stance within which humans and intelligent agents can develop constructive ethical frameworks and his semiotic philosophy of community can guide the development and functioning of an agent’s interpretive processes and can model shared spiritual formation.     

Describing and testing a moderator of the moral judgment and action relationship

The relationship between moral judgment development and action for Ss who differ in the degree to which justice-based moral judgments influence moral decision making was investigated. First, a method for quantifying Ss' use of justice-based moral judgments in moral decision making (the utilizer variable) is described. Second, 5 moral judgment and action studies are reanalyzed to assess the moderating effect of the utilizer variable information. Results indicate that the relationship between moral judgment scores and action intensifies as utilization increases. Moreover, the utilizer effect appears uniform across different age and educational levels and behavioral domains. These findings support the validity of the utilizer variable and are consistent with recent multiprocess models of moral action that suggest that moral judgements are a necessary, but insufficient, factor in the production of moral action.     

Individual moral judgment and cultural ideologies

Moral judgment cannot be reduced to cultural ideology, or vice versa. But when each construct is measured separately, then combined, the product predicts powerfully to moral thinking. In Study 1, 2 churches (N = 96) were selected for their differences on religious ideology, political identity, and moral judgment. By combining these 3 variables, a multiple correlation of .79 predicted to members' moral thinking (opinions on human rights issues). Study 2 replicated this finding in a secular sample, with the formula established in Study 1 (R = .77). Individual conceptual development in moral judgment and socialization into cultural ideology co-occur, simultaneously and reciprocally, in parallel, and not serially. Individual development in moral judgment provides the epistemological categories for cultural ideology, which in turn influences the course of moral judgment, to produce moral thinking (e.g., opinions about abortion, free speech).