The Impact of Leadership Style on Moral Identity and Subsequent In-Role Performance: A Moderated Mediation Analysis

This study investigated the impact of supervisors’ servant leadership (i.e., leadership that starts with a leader who wants to serve) on supervisees’ moral identity and subsequent in-role performance. Data from 226 supervisor–supervisee dyads were collected from several domestic and multinational companies operating in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to confirm the factorial validity of the measures that were employed in this study. The hypothesized moderated mediation model was tested using hierarchical multiple regression analysis. Based on social learning theory, the results showed that supervisees’ moral identity served as the psychological mediating mechanism through which supervisors’ servant leadership led to supervisees’ increased in-role performance. Furthermore, the results also supported supervisees’ avoidance orientation as the dispositional boundary condition of this mediating effect. This study contributes to both the servant leadership and moral identity literatures by addressing questions with useful theoretical and managerial implications.     

Affective Empathy and Moral Disengagement Related to Late Adolescent Bullying Perpetration

Bullying has damaging short-term and long-term consequences. Research suggests that perpetrators have low empathy and high moral disengagement, but relations between these variables are unclear and are rarely integrated in a single study. Thus, the objective of this study was to discover if empathy and moral disengagement mechanisms were related to bullying perpetration. This study was conducted with 904 Polish adolescents enrolled in 6 rural and urban upper secondary schools. High affective empathy predicted lower bullying perpetration. Moral-disengagement mechanisms such as moral justification, euphemistic language, advanced comparison, and distorting consequences were uniquely related to increased bullying perpetration. Low affective empathy was also uniquely related to increased perpetration. These findings have important implication for school policy and practice.     

Moral Motivation Based on Multiple Developmental Structures: An Exploration of Cognitive and Emotional Dynamics

Intrapersonal variability and multiplicity in the complexity of moral motivation were examined from Dynamic Systems and Self-Determination Theory perspectives. L. Kohlberg's (1969) stages of moral development are reconceptualized as soft-assembled and dynamically transformable process structures of motivation that may operate simultaneously within person in different degrees. Moral motivation is conceptualized as the real-time process of self-organization of cognitive and emotional dynamics out of which moral judgment and action emerge. A detailed inquiry into intrapersonal variation in moral motivation is carried out based on the differential operation of multiple motivational structures. A total of 74 high school students and 97 college students participated in the study by completing a new questionnaire, involving 3 different hypothetical moral judgments. As hypothesized, findings revealed significant multiplicity in the within-person operation of developmental stage structures, and intrapersonal variability in the degrees to which stages were used. Developmental patterns were found in terms of different distributions of multiple stages between high school and college samples, as well as the association between age and overall motivation scores. Differential relations of specific emotions to moral motivation revealed and confirmed the value of differentiating multiple emotions. Implications of the present theoretical perspective and the findings for understanding the complexity of moral judgment and motivation are discussed.     

The Relation of Distressful Childhood Experiences and Empathy in College Undergraduates

We assessed the relation between the empathic responsiveness of young adults and the relative frequency and intensity of distressful events they experienced as children. Undergraduate subjects (N = 111; 56 men and 55 women) were led to believe that they were participating in two separate studies. In the first study, students completed the Distress Experiences in Childhood questionnaire, a filler task, and a slightly abbreviated version of the Mehrabian and Epstein (1972) empathy measure. In the second study, students watched an emotion-laden videotape of a patient (actually an actress) in a therapy session and subsequently completed an emotional-response questionnaire adapted from Batson, O'Quin, Fultz, Vanderplas, and Isen (1983). Students who rated their distressful childhood experiences as highly distressing scored higher on both measures of empathy than did students who rated their experiences as relatively less distressing. In contrast, the number of distressful childhood experiences reported was generally unrelated to empathy scores.     

Moral Virtue and Practical Wisdom: Theme Comprehension in Children,Youth, and Adults

The authors tested 3 hypotheses about the relation of moral comprehension to prudential comprehension by contrasting comprehension of themes in moral stories with comprehension of themes in prudential stories among third-grade, fifth-grade, and college students (n = 168) in Study 1, and among college students, young and middle-aged adults, and older adults (n = 96) in Study 2. In both studies, all groups were statistically significantly better at moral theme comprehension than prudential theme comprehension, suggesting that moral comprehension may develop prior to prudential comprehension. In Study 2, all groups performed equally on moral theme generation whereas both adult groups were significantly better than college students on prudential theme generation. Overall, the findings of these studies provide modest evidence that moral and prudential comprehension each develop separately, and that the latter may develop more slowly.     

Kinesthetic Aftereffect and Augmenting/Reducing: A Two-Session Procedure,and Hence Identification of Stimulus-Governed Subjects,is Contraindicated

A few of the recent researchers of kinesthetic aftereffect (KAE) as an index of augmenting/reducing have continued to employ a two-session procedure. Findings that have accrued in the past decade indicate (a) The first administration of KAE is a reliable (internally consistent) and valid index of augmenting-reducing; (b) there are carry-over effects from the first to the second administration that bias the second session's preinduction scores; (c) KAE scores from sessions after the first do not relate to first-session scores (low retest reliability) and do not measure augmenting/reducing; and (d) unless special procedures are undertaken to avoid using the biased second- (or later-) session preinduction scores, a KAE procedure involving more than one session is contraindicated. When we reached a similar conclusion earlier (Baker et al., 1974), Petrie (1974) disagreed, arguing that a two-session procedure was needed to identify and eliminate an atypical subgroup, the “stimulus governed.” The case for determining which subjects are stimulus-governed is assessed and found wanting. Except in special circumstances, a one-session KAE procedure, in which all preinduction trials precede the first exposure to aftereffect induction, is indicated.     

Situating Moral Justification: Rethinking the Mission of Moral Epistemology

This is the first of two companion articles drawn from a larger project, provisionally entitled Undisciplining Moral Epistemology. The overall goal is to understand how moral claims may be rationally justified in a world characterized by cultural diversity and social inequality. To show why a new approach to moral justification is needed, it is argued that several currently influential philosophical accounts of moral justification lend themselves to rationalizing the moral claims of those with more social power. The present article explains how discourse ethics is flawed just in this way. The article begins by identifying several conditions of adequacy for assessing reasoning practices designed to achieve moral justification and shows that, when used in contexts of cultural diversity and social inequality, discourse ethics fails these conditions. It goes on to argue that the failure of discourse ethics is rooted in its reliance on a broader conception of moral epistemology that is invidiously idealized. It concludes by pointing to the need to rethink both the mission and the method of moral epistemology.     

Moral reasoning in autistic individuals: a theoretical review / El razonamiento moral en personas con Trastorno del Espectro Autista: una revisión teórica

Abstract

Individuals diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often find it difficult to attribute mental states to others and to understand their own and others’ behaviour (Theory of Mind, [ToM]/social cognition). These difficulties can affect their moral judgements. The present article focuses on evidence on moral reasoning and ToM, with the aim of analysing theoretical and review research into autism. The weight intention has in moral reasoning and the causal relation between mental states, actions and outcomes is an essential part of this study. Evidence in the field of autism reports how autistic people would not be able to make moral judgements based on the agent’s intention. Instead, they would reason based on the outcomes of the action. For example, this can be translated into misunderstandings, malicious judgements or ‘over-blaming’ in accidental situations (ambiguous valences). These impairments can confirm the association between ToM and moral reasoning.     

World ethics: Its foundation

Although there are enormous differences between humans, it is also the case that they are fundamentally alike in certain ways. As a prelude to universal ethics, this paper enumerates many commonalities among humans.     

Charles Darwin,Paul MacLean,and the lost origins of “the moral sense”: Some implications for general evolution theory

This paper reports the discovery of a lost part of Charles Darwin's theory of the origins of “the moral sense,” its apparent corroboration by what are in effect lost findings by brain researcher Paul MacLean, and the implications of these findings for the advancement of General Evolution Theory and humanity.