Shame and guilt development in preschoolers: The role of context,audience and individual characteristics

The study examined the early development of shame and guilt, the individual differences related to them and the role of situation and audience. Fifty-eight children aged 3 to 5 years were observed in two paradigms: moral, in which they were led to believe that they had broken an object, and non-moral, in which they failed an easy task. Each session was led twice, with an adult and with a peer. Temperament and conduct were assessed through parental reports. Results showed that older children expressed more guilt than younger children. Shame-proneness was characterized by bodily tension, reticence and gaze avoidance, whereas guilt-proneness by latency to repair and confession. Children were able to distinguish the moral from the non-moral situation and, only in the former, shame was associated with difficult temperament and with emotional problems, whereas guilt was correlated with adaptive characteristics. Finally, children mainly expressed distress with the adult, who holds the authority.     

Describing and testing an intermediate concept measure of adolescent moral thinking

This paper describes the development and preliminary testing of an intermediate concept measure (ICM) of moral thinking for adolescent populations. First proposed by Rest and Narvaez (1994), intermediate concepts are described as more context specific than moral stages defined within the Kohlberg tradition, but are more abstract than assessments of codes of conduct. The process of developing the adolescent ICM is described and data are presented to provide initial support for the measure. Results indicate that the adolescent ICM can distinguish age educational groups across high school and individuals who are acting out in school achieved significantly lower scores than all other students. In addition, ICM scores are related to Defining Issues Test scores providing preliminary support for the claim that both measures assess the moral domain. Coupled with the respectable psychometric properties of the measure, these findings support the adolescent ICM as a measure of moral thinking in adolescent populations and as a potential outcome measure for character education programmes.     

Sociomoral reasoning in children and adolescents from two collectivistic cultures

This study compared the sociomoral reasoning of 7-, 9-, 12-, and 15-year-old children and adolescents of two collectivistic cultures in the 1990s: Spain (horizontal collectivism; N = 208) and Russia (vertical collectivism; N = 247). Participants reasoned about choices and moral justifications of a protagonist in a sociomoral dilemma where participants can focus on different moral and non-moral concerns (e.g., going with their best friend, going with a new classmate or trying to do something with both). Results support previous research in western societies: participants tend to choose the option “visiting the best friend”, and self-interest tends to decrease with age whereas altruism tends to increase. Moreover, Spanish participants tended to consider all parties involved in the dilemma (i.e., old friend and new classmate), whereas Russian participants did not. These results are discussed in light of their differences as horizontal and vertical collectivistic societies. Overall, the results open an avenue for new studies when comparing the effects of culture on children's and adolescents' development.     

Adolescents' preferences for organ allocation: The role of empathy and altruism in allocation judgments

Distributive justice reasoning in adolescence, regarding the allocation of scarce medical resources, has not been thoroughly studied yet. The present study aimed to explore adolescents' preferences for organ allocation, the ethical principles that form bioethical judgments in adolescence, as well as the role of empathy and altruism in the formation of those judgments. One hundred fifty one adolescents (90 females) aged between 12 and 19 years old participated in the study. Participants were asked to suggest the criteria that should be considered in the construction of transplant waiting lists, to evaluate adults' preferable criteria and to justify their judgments. Results indicate that utilitarianism and egalitarianism were both used to form allocation judgments. Ingroup favouritism was also observed. Age differences in adolescents' preferences were witnessed, but no age effect were found regarding the principles that form participants' judgments. Aspects of empathy and altruism seemed to associate with certain allocation criteria.     

A closer look at moral dilemmas: Latent dimensions of morality and the difference between trolley and footbridge dilemmas

Although a distinction between moral-personal and moral-impersonal dilemmas (Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001 Greene, J. D., Sommerville, R. B., Nystrom, L. E., Darley, J. M. and Cohen, J. D. 2001. An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgement. Science, 293: 2105–2108. doi:10.1126/science.1062872.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) has been widely accepted as an explanation for a difference between the trolley and footbridge dilemmas (Thomson, 1985 Thomson, J. J. 1985. “The trolley problem”. In Ethics: Problems and principles, Edited by: Fischer, J. M. and Ravizza, M. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.  [Google Scholar]), its psychometric properties remain a mystery. In this study 219 participants completed 62 moral dilemma tasks used in Greene et al. (2001 Greene, J. D., Sommerville, R. B., Nystrom, L. E., Darley, J. M. and Cohen, J. D. 2001. An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgement. Science, 293: 2105–2108. doi:10.1126/science.1062872.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), and the correlation structure among the dilemmas was analysed through factor analysis and structural equation modelling. Findings suggest that, first, moral-personal dilemmas are composed of one factor, indicating that the assumption in Greene et al. (2001 Greene, J. D., Sommerville, R. B., Nystrom, L. E., Darley, J. M. and Cohen, J. D. 2001. An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgement. Science, 293: 2105–2108. doi:10.1126/science.1062872.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) was supported. Second, moral-impersonal dilemmas are explained by two factors that reflect procedural and consequential aspects of decision making. Third, the trolley and footbridge dilemmas fall under the same factor category; therefore the difference between the two dilemmas cannot be attributed to emotional involvement. Additionally, the results of the structural equation modelling suggest that they differ in the engagement of rational processing.     

What Accounts for Prosocial Behavior? Roles of Moral Identity,Moral Judgment,and Self-Efficacy Beliefs

Prior research suggests that moral identity influences individuals’ willingness to engage in prosocial behavior. Little attention, however, has been given to the roles of and relations between moral identity and other factors, such as moral judgment, in accounting for types of prosocial behavior in adolescence. The current study examined the extent to which moral identity, moral judgment, and social self-efficacy contribute to prosocial behaviors in adolescence. Approximately 338 adolescents (M_age?=?13.4 years) completed measures of moral identity, moral judgment, social self-efficacy, and prosocial behavior. Teachers rated adolescents’ prosocial behaviors, which largely corroborated the adolescents’ self-reports. Moral identity was found to predict most types of prosocial behavior. Moral judgment and moral identity were related and jointly predicted altruistic prosocial behaviors, but did not predict helping in front of others. Further, moral identity mediated the relationships between moral judgment and some forms of prosocial behavior (e.g., emotional, volunteering). Self-efficacy beliefs were found to predict some types of prosocial behavior (e.g., public), perhaps providing adolescents with confidence to engage in prosocial action. Overall, moral identity was especially effective in directly accounting for prosocial behavior, and may act as a mediator to bridge the moral judgment–moral action gap among adolescents.     

Are Thoughtful People More Utilitarian? CRT as a Unique Predictor of Moral Minimalism in the Dilemmatic Context

Recent theorizing about the cognitive underpinnings of dilemmatic moral judgment has equated slow, deliberative thinking with the utilitarian disposition and fast, automatic thinking with the deontological disposition. However, evidence for the reflective utilitarian hypothesis—the hypothesized link between utilitarian judgment and individual differences in the capacity for rational reflection (gauged here by the Cognitive Reflection Test [CRT; Frederick, 2005]) has been inconsistent and difficult to interpret in light of several design flaws. In two studies aimed at addressing some of the flaws, we found robust evidence for a reflective minimalist hypothesis—high CRT performers’ tendency to regard utility‐optimizing acts as largely a matter of personal prerogative, permissible both to perform and to leave undone. This relationship between CRT and the “minimalist” orientation remained intact after controlling for age, sex, trait affect, social desirability, and educational attainment. No significant association was found between CRT and the strict utilitarian response pattern or CRT and the strict deontological response pattern, nor did we find any significant association between CRT and willingness to act in the utility‐optimizing manner. However, we found an inverse association between empathic concern and a willingness to act in the utility‐optimizing manner, but there was no comparable association between empathic concern and the deontological judgment pattern. Theoretical, methodological, and normative implications of the findings are discussed.     

The portrait of a hedonist: The personality and ethics behind the value and maladaptive pursuit of pleasure

Hedonism is the prioritizing of pleasure over other life values and is theorized to be independent of well-being. However, popular culture depicts hedonists as unhappy, as well as selfishly unconcerned with others’ well-being. Because the current literature has not differentiated between people’s value of pleasure and their maladaptive pursuit of it, we examined if these related, but not equivalent, dispositions had different personality and morality profiles. We found that value-based hedonists have a distinct moral profile (i.e., they are less likely to endorse moral foundations associated with social conservatism) and, yet, they differ little from others in regard to personality traits. We also found that people’s maladaptive hedonism (i.e., excessive pleasure-seeking) was best predicted by their personality traits (i.e., being less agreeable, less conscientious, and more neurotic) rather than by their conceptions of right and wrong. We discuss how these results contribute to our understanding of hedonism and why some people pursue their value of pleasure into over-indulgence.     

Cruel nature: Harmfulness as an important,overlooked dimension in judgments of moral standing

Entities that possess moral standing can be wronged and deserve our moral consideration. Past perspectives on the folk psychology of moral standing have focused exclusively on the role of “patiency” (the capacity to experience pain or pleasure) and “agency” (usually defined and operationalized in terms of intelligence or cognitive ability). We contend that harmfulness (i.e., having a harmful vs. benevolent disposition) is an equally if not more important determinant of moral standing. We provide support for this hypothesis across four studies using non-human animals as targets. We show that the effect of harmfulness on attributions of moral standing is independent from patiency and intelligence (Studies 1–2), that this effect pertains specifically to an animal’s harmful disposition rather than its capacity to act upon this disposition (Study 3), and that it primarily reflects a parochial concern for human welfare in particular (Study 4). Our findings highlight an important, overlooked dimension in the psychology of moral standing that has implications for real-world decisions that affect non-human animals. Our findings also help clarify the conditions under which people perceive patiency and agency as related versus truly independent dimensions.