Abstract
Fairness or justice is central to moral development. A universal and impartial point of view on fairness has been considered as the final stage of life-span trajectories on moral development. Human rights are viewed as the core of such a fully developed morality. Although the study of fairness implies paying attention to trust, the relationship between fairness and trust has seldom been studied empirically. Fairness and trust are both necessary for and stimulated by cooperation. Fairness depends upon the development of social perspective-taking skills; empathy refers to the affective side of these skills. According to Gibbs’ developmental theory of moral motivation, the cognitive judgment of fairness and the affective response of empathy may both become a primary moral motive. Breaches of fairness or empathy can threaten or undermine interpersonal or social trust. In turn, disturbances in the development of trust in early childhood may have long-term negative consequences for the development of social perspective-taking skills and thus affect moral motivation.
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Notes
- 1.
During and after World War II, the intellectual and scientific community stood up to investigate how it could be possible for human beings to show that kind of “inhumanity” to their own mankind. Maslow for example wrote: “it was at that moment that I realized that the rest of my life must be devoted to discovering a psychology for the peace table” (Hoffman 1999, p. 137). After the war the international community vowed never again to allow atrocities like those of World War II happen again. As a result The United Nations was created, which developed The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations 2014a). The basic ideas are that human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, independent of our nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, language, or any other status. All human beings are all equally entitled to our human rights without discrimination. These rights are all interrelated, interdependent and indivisible (United Nations 2014b). In the preamble of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is stated that the “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world” (United Nations 2014a). Clearly, equality or fairness appears as a major principle. This is in accordance with for example article 1: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” and article 7: “All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law”. These human rights are central to (inter)national law, and can be viewed as a morality in which the consequences of impartiality and uniformity are fully represented.
- 2.
For a critique of domain theory, see Gibbs 2010.
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Brugman, D., Out, C., Gibbs, J.C. (2016). Fairness and Trust in Developmental Psychology. In: Kury, H., Redo, S., Shea, E. (eds) Women and Children as Victims and Offenders: Background, Prevention, Reintegration. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08398-8_10
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