Abstract
Since the purpose of this volume is to show commonalities among three seemingly disparate research areas—morality, altruism, and social solidarity—we attempt to make a unique contribution to this endeavor by discussing how identity theory in social psychology can help unify these ostensibly different research areas. In general, identity theory offers a way for us to see how social actors’ standards and goals in their identity direct their behavior with outcomes that may reverberate beyond the immediate interaction with the wider society. When this theory is applied to “good” standards, behavior, and outcomes, we can see how actors with a strong moral identity direct their behavior in altruistic ways, resulting in greater social solidarity. This single theory makes it possible to see the connection among three apparently different areas. We develop this argument in this chapter. We make no claims that identity theory is the only theory that can demonstrate a connection among these three areas. Instead, we rely on it as one currently available theory that can help bridge these areas.
We would like to thank members of the Social Psychology Seminar at UCR for their comments and James L. Heft.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bartal, Inbal Ben-Ami, Jean Decety, and Peggy Mason. 2011. “Empathy and Pro-Social Behavior in Rats.” Science 334:1427–1430.
Batson, Daniel C. 2011. Altruism in Humans. New York: Oxford University Press.
Brown, Donald E. 1991. Human Universals. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Brown, Donald E. 2004. “Human Universals, Human Nature, and Human Culture.” Daedalus 133:47–54.
Burke, Peter J. and Jan E. Stets. 1999. “Trust and Commitment through Self-Verification.” Social Psychology Quarterly 62:347–366.
Burke, Peter J. and Jan E. Stets. 2009. Identity Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.
Cast, Alicia D. and Peter J. Burke. 2002. “A Theory of Self-Esteem.” Social Forces 80:1041–1068.
Clavien, Christine and Michel Chapuisat. 2013. “Altruism across Disciplines: One Word, Multiple Meanings.” Biology and Philosophy 28:125–140.
Collins, Randall. 2004. Interaction Rituals. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Cross, Susan E., Erin E. Hardin, and Berna Gercek-Swing. 2011. “The What, How, Why, and Where of Self-Construal.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 15:142–179.
de Waal, Frans B. M. 2008. “Putting the Altruism Back into Altruism: The Evolution of Empathy.” Annual Review of Psychology 59:279–300.
Durkheim, Emile. [1912] 1965. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. New York: Free Press.
Gilligan, Carol. 1982. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Graham, Jesse, Brian A. Nosek, Jonathan Haidt, Ravi Iyer, Spassena Koleva, and Peter H. Ditto. 2011. “Mapping the Moral Domain.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101:366–385.
Haidt, Jonathan and Jesse Graham. 2007. “When Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives have Moral Intuitions that Liberals may not Recognize.” Social Justice Research 20:98–116.
Iacoboni, Marco. 2009. “Imitation, Empathy and Mirror Neurons.” Annual Review of Psychology 60:653–670.
Kohlberg, Lawrence. 1981. The Philosophy of Moral Development. San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row.
Mitchell, Jason P., Mahzarin R. Banaji, and C. Neil Macrae. 2005. “The Link between Social Cognition and Self-Referential Thought in the Medial Prefrontal Cortex.” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 17:1306–1315.
Molm, Linda D., Jessica L. Collett, and David R. Schaefer. 2007. “Building Solidarity through Generalized Exchange: A Theory of Reciprocity.” American Journal of Sociology 113:205–242.
Narvaez, Darcia. 2009. “Triune Ethics Theory and Moral Personality.” Pp. 136–158 in Personality, Identity and Character: Explorations in Moral Psychology, edited by D. Narvaez and D. K. Lapsley. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Osgood, Charles E., George J. Suci, and Percy H. Tannenbaum. 1957. The Measurement of Meaning. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Preston, Stephanie, Antoine Bechara, Hanna Damasio, Thomas J. Grabowski, R. Brent Stansfield, Sona Mehta, and Antonio R. Damasio. 2007. “The Neural Substrates of Cognitive Empathy.” Social Neuroscience 2:254–275.
Preston, Stephanie D. and Frans de Waal. 2002. “Empathy: Its Ultimate and Proximate Bases.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25:1–20.
Preston, Stephanie D. and Alicia J. Hofelich. 2011. “The Many Faces of Empathy: Parsing Empathic Phemomena through a Proximate, Dynamic Systems View of Representing the Other in the Self.” Emotion Review 4:24–33.
Rozin, Paul, Jonathan Haidt, and Clark R. McCauley. 2008. “Disgust.” Pp. 757–776 in Handbook of Emotions, edited by M. Lewis, J. M. Haviland-Jones, and L. Feldman. New York: Guilford Press.
Shweder, Richard A., Nancy C. Much, Manamohan Mahapatra, and Lawrence Park. 1997. “The Big ‘Three’ of Morality (Autonomy, Community, and Divinity), and the Big ‘Three’ Explanations of Suffering.” Pp. 119–169 in Morality and Health, edited by A. Brandt and P. Rozin. New York: Routledge.
Stets, Jan E. 2011. “Applying Identity Theory to Moral Acts of Commission and Omission.” Advances in Group Processes 28:97–124.
Stets, Jan E. and Michael J. Carter. 2011. “The Moral Self: Applying Identity Theory.” Social Psychology Quarterly 74:192–215.
Stets, Jan E. and Michael J. Carter. 2012. “A Theory of the Self for the Sociology of Morality.” American Sociological Review 77:120–140.
Stets, Jan E., Michael J. Carter, Michael M. Harrod, Christine Cerven, and Seth Abrutyn. 2008. “The Moral Identity, Status, Moral Emotions, and the Normative Order.” Pp. 227–251 in Social Structure and Emotion, edited by D. T. Robinson and J. Clay-Warner. San Diego, CA: Elsevier.
Stryker, Sheldon. [1980] 2002. Symbolic Interactionism: A Social Structural Version. Caldwell, NJ: The Blackburn Press.
Suhler, Christopher L. and Patricia Churchland. 2011. “Can Innate Modular ‘Foundations’ Explain Morality? Challenges for Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory.” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 23:2103–2116.
Turiel, Elliot. 1983. The Development of Social Knowledge: Morality and Convention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Turner, Jonathan H. and Jan E. Stets. 2006. “Moral Emotions.” Pp. 544–566 in Handbook of the Sociology of Emotions, edited by J. E. Stets and J. H. Turner. New York: Springer.
Weber, Max. 1978. “Value-Judgments in Social Science.” Pp. 69–98 in Weber: Selections in Translation, edited by W. G. Runciman. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2014 Vincent Jeffries
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Stets, J.E., McCaffree, K. (2014). Linking Morality, Altruism, and Social Solidarity Using Identity Theory. In: Jeffries, V. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137391865_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137391865_15
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-48311-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-39186-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social Sciences CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)