The development of moral beliefs: A retrospective study

The present study tested a model of moral belief development based on Erikson’s (1963) and McAdams’ (1989) theories of personality development. The sequence of moral belief development is beliefs about outcomes, outcome certainty, beliefs about humanity, and social concern. The developmental antecedents of these beliefs were measured using 13 rationally constructed scales based on background data items. The belief and developmental scales were given to a sample of 246 undergraduates. Using a series of hierarchical blocked regressions, we found a pattern among the beliefs that supported a stage or contingent sequence model of belief development. The results suggest that a supportive, conventional and consistent family environment is a major antecedent of beliefs about outcomes and outcome certainty. Adjustment to the demands of adult culture rather than peer culture is the major antecedent of belief about humanity and social concern. Parts of this research were supported by a grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research (Contract No. N00014-91-J-4167), Michael D. Mumford and Theodore L. Gessner, Principal Investigators.     

Prayer Utterances as Aligning Actions

Social actors use prayer utterances (e.g., statements such as “prayed over,”“prayed about,” or “spent time in prayer”) as aligning actions that justify problematic or questionable courses of action and prevent possible negative characterizations. The prayer utterance functions as an aligning action in American society because of Americans’ beliefs and actions concerning the efficacy of prayer in solving problems and because prayer is viewed as a sign of personal morality and trustworthiness. Three examples of individuals who use the prayer utterance as an aligning action serve as illustrations of this argument (Oprah Winfrey, Alabama State Supreme Court Justice Sue Bell Cobb, and President Barack Obama). Scholars should investigate the uses and functions of prayer utterances in social life and should also investigate the possible uses of other religious talk as aligning actions.     

School connection through engagement associated with grade scores and emotions of adolescents: four factors to build engagement in schools

Social Psychology of Education - This study investigated school connectedness, student engagement, academic grades, and student affect. Factor analyses of 331 adolescent students (Years 7, 9, and...     

An alternative approach to analysis of mental states in experimental social cognition research

Establishing the mental states that affect human behavior is a primary goal of experiments on social cognitive processes. Such mental states can be manipulated only indirectly; therefore, after delivering a manipulation, researchers attempt to verify that the mental state of interest, the representation of a mental state, was in fact changed by the manipulation and that this change caused the observed effect. The usual procedure is to examine mean differences in a measure of the mental state of interest (a manipulation check) among experimental conditions and to infer whether the manipulation was effective. We describe a procedure that strengthens the construct validity of manipulations and, hence, causal inferences in experiments that focus on mental states using analyses familiar to most researchers. This procedure employs a traditional manipulation check that assesses the relationship between manipulations and mental states but, additionally, tests the relationship between the manipulation check and dependent measure.     

Book reviews

>P. P. KIRSCHENMANN. Information and Reflection. D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1970. Pp. xv, 225. Indexed. $14.00.

HUBERT L. DREYFUS, What Computers Can't Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason. New York: Harper and Row, 1972. Pp. xxxv, 259. Indexed.

DONALD M. MACKAY, Information, Mechanism and Meaning. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1969. Pp. ix, 196. Indexed. $2.95 (paper).

YORICK ALEXANDER WILKS, Grammar, Meaning and the Machine Analysis of Language. London : Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972. Pp. 1–198. Indexed. $10.00.     

Kant's conception of pedagogy

Confronted with the thoroughgoing marketisation of education, scholars have revisited the nature of pedagogy. The work of Immanuel Kant is a resource for critiquing the channelling of the transformation of self and society into rapacious consumerism. Kant's exploration of the connection between inner freedom and political freedom has been recast as pedagogy of the oppressed. Countering the dismissal of the Enlightenment as an accomplice of colonialism and imperialism, Kantian pedagogy is enlisted in the struggle against the forces undermining the very structure of liberal democracy and humanity on a global scale. This essay points to the limitations of this revindication on the grounds that it leaves undisturbed the formative complicities at work in the current crisis, complicities all too familiar to those who teach and learn.     

The influence of discrete emotions on judgement and decision-making: A meta-analytic review

During the past three decades, researchers interested in emotions and cognition have attempted to understand the relationship that affect and emotions have with cognitive outcomes such as judgement and decision-making. Recent research has revealed the importance of examining more discrete emotions, showing that same-valence emotions (e.g., anger and fear) differentially impact judgement and decision-making outcomes. Narrative reviews of the literature (Lerner & Tiedens, 2006 Lerner, J. S. and Tiedens, L. Z. 2006. Portrait of the angry decision maker: How appraisal tendencies shape anger's influence on cognition. Journal of Behavioral Decision-Making, 19: 115–137. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Pham, 2007 Pham, M. T. 2007. Emotion and rationality: A critical review and interpretation of empirical evidence. Review of General Psychology, 11(2): 155–178. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) have identified some under-researched topics, but provide a limited synthesis of findings. The purpose of this study was to review the research examining the influence of discrete emotions on judgement and decision-making outcomes and provide an assessment of the observed effects using a meta-analytic approach. Results, overall, show that discrete emotions have moderate to large effects on judgement and decision-making outcomes. However, moderator analyses revealed differential effects for study-design characteristics and emotion-manipulation characteristics by emotion type. Implications are discussed.