Abstract
The scientific study of morals has been subject to a tremendous change throughout the past decades, eliciting various theoretical models, paradigms, and methodologies from disciplines as philosophy, social and developmental psychology, cognitive science, or anthropology. This chapter reviews some of the main approaches to study human moral judgment scientifically in their chronological order. The review will take off at the rational theories of Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, who considered moral judgment to be based on a process of explicit cognitive reasoning [1, 2], and move right through to Elliot Turiel’s attempt to distinguish conventional from moral (cognitive) domains [3]. This chapter then pays attention to current approaches, which particularly emphasize on the role of emotions on moral judgment (Jonathan Haidt’s Social Intuitionist Model and Joshua Greene’s Dual-Process Theory, see [4, 5]), and to the discussion on whether or not moral judgment is based on an innate moral grammar instead of being culturally shaped primarily (John Mikhail’s Moral Grammar Theory, [6]). Each approach is reviewed and evaluated by its respective research questions, theoretical model, and specific methodological paradigms. This chapter concludes with current directions in developmental psychology and with a brief discussion of the future of a genuinely interdisciplinary field of research that presumably will have to undergo further changes in attempt to integrate diverse approaches into one coherent and complex field of research – a field that hopefully will continue evoking novel and exceptional research in both psychology and philosophy.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Kohlberg L (1984) Essays on moral development, vol II, The psychology of moral development. Harper & Row, San Francisco
Piaget J (1997) The moral judgment of the child. Free Press, New York (Original work published 1932)
Turiel E (1983) The development of social knowledge: morality and convention. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Greene JD (2008) The secret joke of Kant’s soul. In: Sinnott-Armstrong W (ed) Moral psychology, vol 2, The cognitive science of morality. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 35–79
Haidt J, Kesebir S (2010) Morality. In: Fiske S, Gilbert D, Lindzey G (eds) Handbook of social psychology, 5th edn. Wiley, Hobeken, pp 797–832
Mikhail J (2009) Moral grammar and intuitive jurisprudence: a formal model of unconscious moral and legal knowledge. In: Ross BH (Series ed), Bartels DM, Bauman CW, Skitka LJ, Medin DL (eds) Psychology of learning and motivation. Moral judgment and decision making, vol 50. Academic, San Diego, pp 27–100
Dennett DC (1984) Elbow room: the varieties of free will worth wanting. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Doris JM, Stich S (2003) Moral psychology: empirical approaches. In: Zalta EN (ed) The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, Winter 2003 edition. URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-psych-emp/
Nado J, Kelly D, Stich S (2009) Moral judgment. In: Symons J, Calvo P (eds) Routledge companion to the philosophy of psychology. Routledge, London, pp 621–633
Rai TS, Fiske AP (2011) Moral psychology is relationship regulation: moral motives for unity, hierarchy, equality, and proportionality. Psychol Rev 118:57–75
Hauser MD (2006) Moral minds: how nature designed our universal sense of right and wrong. HarperCollins, New York
Machery E, Mallon M (2010) The evolution of morality. The moral psychology handbook. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Camerer CF (2003) Behavioral game theory: experiments in strategic interaction. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Piaget J (1952) The origins of intelligence in children. International University Press, Madison (Original work published 1936)
Kohlberg L (1976) Moral stages and moralization: the cognitive developmental approach. In: Lickona T (ed) Moral development and behavior: theory, research and social issues. Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, New York, pp 31–53
Kohlberg L, Kramer R (1969) Continuities and discontinuities in childhood and adult moral development. Hum Dev 12:93–120
Helwig CC, Turiel E (2002) Children’s social and moral reasoning. In: Smith PK, Hart CH (eds) Blackwell handbook of childhood social development. Blackwell, Malden, pp 476–490
Smetana JG (1993) Understanding of social rules. In: Bennett M (ed) The development of social cognition: the child as psychologist. Guilford, New York, pp 111–141
Smetana JG (2006) Social-cognitive domain theory: consistencies and variations in children’s moral and social judgments. In: Killen M, Smetana JG (eds) Handbook of moral development. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, pp 119–153
Turiel E (1974) Conflict and transition in adolescent moral development. Child Dev 45:14–29
Turiel E (2006) The multiplicity of social norms: the case for psychological constructivism and social epistemologies. In: Smith L, Voneche J (eds) Norms in human development. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp 189–207
Searle JR (1969) Speech acts. An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Nucci LP, Turiel E (1978) Social interactions and the development of social concepts in preschool children. Child Dev 49:400–407
Nucci LP, Nucci MS (1982) Children’s responses to moral and social conventional transgressions in free-play settings. Child Dev 53:1337–1342
Smetana JG, Braeges JL (1990) The development of toddlers’ moral and conventional judgments. Merrill-Palmer Q 36:329–346
Davidson P, Turiel E, Black A (1983) The effect of stimulus familiarity on the use of criteria and justifiations in children’s social reasoning. Br J Dev Psychol 1:46–65
Nucci LP (1981) The distinction between morality and social convention – implications for values instruction. Phi Delta Kappan 62:489–493
Killen M, Lee-Kim J, McGlothlin H, Stangor C (2002) How children and adolescents evaluate gender and racial exclusion. Monogr Soc Res Child Dev 67:1–132
Turiel E, Wainryb C (1998) Concepts of freedoms and rights in a traditional hierarchically-organized society. Br J Dev Psychol 16:375–395
Blair RJR (1996) Brief report: morality in the autistic child. J Autism Dev Disord 26:571–579
Arsenio WF, Lemerise EA (2004) Aggression and moral development: integrating social information processing and moral domain models. Child Dev 75:987–1002
Blair RJR, Monson J, Frederickson N (2001) Moral reasoning and conduct problems in children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. Pers Individ Differ 31:799–811
Blair RJR (1995) A cognitive developmental-approach to morality – investigating the psychopath. Cognition 57:1–29
Blair RJR (1997) Moral reasoning and the child with psychopathic tendencies. Pers Individ Differ 22:731–739
Kelly D, Stich S, Haley KJ, Eng SJ, Fessler DMT (2007) Harm, affect, and the moral/conventional distinction. Mind Lang 22:117–131
Haidt J (2001) The emotional dog and its rational tail: a social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychol Rev 108:814–834
Haidt J (2007) The new synthesis in moral psychology. Science 316:998–1002
Kohlberg L, Levine C, Hewer A (1983) Moral stages: a current formulation and a response to critics. Karger, Basel
Hume D (1960) An enquiry concerning the principles of morals. Open Court, La Salle (Original work published in 1777)
Asch S (1956) Studies of independence and conformity: a minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychol Monogr 70 (Whole No. 416)
Sherif M (1936) The psychology of social norms. Harper, New York
Wheatley T, Haidt J (2005) Hypnotic disgust makes moral judgments more severe. Psychol Sci 16:780–784
Schnall S, Haidt J, Clore GL, Jordan AH (2008) Disgust as embodied moral judgment. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 34:1096–1109
Eskine KJ, Kacinik NA, Prinz JJ (2011) A bad taste in the mouth: gustatory disgust influences moral judgment. Psychol Sci 22:295–299
Valdesolo P, DeSteno D (2006) Manipulations of emotional context shape moral judgment. Psychol Sci 17:476–477
Waldmann MR, Nagel J, Wiegmann A (2012) Moral judgment. In: Holyoak KJ, Morrison RG (eds) The Oxford handbook of thinking and reasoning. Oxford University Press, New York
Foot P (1967) The problem of abortion and the doctrine of the double effect. Oxf Rev 5:5–15
Thomson JJ (1985) The trolley problem. Yale Law J 94:1395–1415
Wiegmann A, Okan Y, Nagel J (2012) Order effects in moral judgment. Philos Psychol. Advance online publication
Paxton JM, Greene JD (2010) Moral reasoning: hints and allegations. Top Cogn Sci 2:511–527
Greene JD, Sommerville RB, Nystrom LE, Darley JM, Cohen JD (2001) An fMRI study of emotional engagement in moral judgment. Science 293:2105–2108
Greene JD, Nystrom LE, Engell AD, Darley JM, Cohen JD (2004) The neural bases of cognitive conflict and control in moral judgment. Neuron 44:389–400
Darwall SE (2003) Consequentialism. Blackwell, Oxford, UK
Darwall SE (2003) Deontology. Blackwell, Oxford, UK
Greene JD, Morelli SA, Lowenberg K, Nystrom LE, Cohen JD (2008) Cognitive load selectively interferes with utilitarian moral judgment. Cognition 107:1144–1154
Suter RS, Hertwig R (2011) Time and moral judgment. Cognition 119:454–458
Koenigs M et al (2007) Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgments. Nature 446:908–911
Moore AB, Clark BA, Kane MJ (2008) Who shalt not kill? Individual differences in working memory capacity, executive control, and moral judgment. Psychol Sci 19:549–557
Prinz JJ (2007) The emotional construction of morals. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Moll J, de Oliveira-Souza R (2007) Moral judgments, emotions, and the utilitarian brain. Trends Cogn Sci 11:319–321
Kahane G, Shackel N (2008) Do abnormal responses show utilitarian bias? Nature 452:7185
Greene JD et al (2009) Pushing moral buttons: the interaction between personal force and intention in moral judgment. Cognition 111:364–371
Mikhail J (2011) Elements of moral cognition: Rawl’s linguistic analogy and the cognitive science of moral and legal judgment. Cambridge University Press, New York
Chomsky N (1957) Syntactic structures. Mouton, The Hague
Pinker S (2008) The moral instinct. The New York Times Magazine, 13 Jan 2008
Waldmann MR, Wiegmann A (2010) A double causal contrast theory of moral intuitions in trolley dilemmas. In: Ohlsson S, Catrambone R (eds) Proceedings of the 32nd annual conference of the cognitive science society. Cognitive Science Society, Austin, pp 2589–2594
Waldmann MR, Dieterich JH (2007) Throwing a bomb on a person versus throwing a person on a bomb: intervention myopia in moral intuitions. Psychol Sci 18:247–253
Litman L, Reber AS (2005) Implicit cognition and thought. In: Holyoak KJ, Morrison RG (eds) The Cambridge handbook of thinking and reasoning. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp 431–453
Dupoux E, Jacob P (2007) Universal moral grammar: a critical appraisal. Trends Cogn Sci 11:373–378
Bartels DM (2008) Principled moral sentiment and the flexibility of moral judgment and decision making. Cognition 108:381–417
Liao SM, Wiegmann A, Alexander J, Vong G (2012) Putting the trolley in order: experimental philosophy and the loop case. Philo Psychol. Advance online publication
Santos LR, Chen MK (2009) The evolution of rational and irrational economic behavior: evidence and insight from non-human primate species. In: Glimcher PW, Camerer CF, Fehr E, Poldrack RA (eds) Neuroeconomics: decision making and the brain. Elsevier, London, pp 81–94
Silk JB (2009) Nepotistic cooperation in non-human primate groups. Philos Trans R Soc B 364:3243–3254
Warneken F, Tomasello M (2009) Varieties of altruism in children and chimpanzees. Trends Cogn Sci 13:397–402
Bloom P (2012) Moral nativism and moral psychology. In: Mikulincer M, Shaver PR (eds) The social psychology of morality: Exploring the causes of good and evil. Herzliya series on personality and social psychology. Washington, US, pp 71–89
Hamlin JK, Wynn K, Bloom P (2010) Three-month-olds show a negativity bias in their social evaluations. Dev Sci 163:923–929
Warneken F, Tomasello M (2006) Altruistic helping in human infants and young chimpanzees. Science 311:1301–1303
Eisenberg N, Fabes RA (1990) Empathy: conceptualization, measurement, and relation to prosocial behavior. Motiv Emotion 14:131–149
Vaish A, Carpenter M, Tomasello M (2010) Young children selectively avoid helping people with harmful intentions. Child Dev 81:1661–1669
Fehr E, Bernhard H, Rockenbach B (2008) Egalitarianism in young children. Nature 454:1079–1083
Gummerum M, Keller M (2008) Moral psychology and economic game theory. Eur J Dev Sci 2:206–220
Brownell CA, Svetlova M, Nichols S (2009) To share or not to share: when do toddlers respond to another’s needs? Infancy 14:117–130
Moore C (2009) Fairness in children’s resource allocation depends on the recipient. Psychol Sci 20:944–948
Warneken F, Lohse K, Melis AP, Tomasello M (2011) Young children share the spoils after collaboration. Psychol Sci 22:267–273
Cummins DD (1996) Evidence of deontic reasoning in 3- and 4-year-old children. Mem Cognit 24:823–829
Harris PL (2000) The work of the imagination. Blackwell, Malden
Gräfenhain M, Behne T, Carpenter M, Tomasello M (2009) Young children’s understanding of joint commitments. Dev Psychol 45:1430–1443
Rakoczy H (2008) Taking fiction seriously: young children understand the normative structure of joint pretence games. Dev Psychol 44:1195–1201
Rakoczy H, Warneken F, Tomasello M (2008) The sources of normativity: young children’s awareness of the normative structure of games. Dev Psychol 44:875–881
Smetana JG (1981) Preschool children’s conceptions of moral and social rules. Child Dev 52:1333–1336
Huebner B (2011) Critiquing empirical moral psychology. Philos Soc Sci 41:50–81
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this entry
Cite this entry
Gräfenhain, M., Wiegmann, A. (2013). Scientific Study of Morals. In: Luetge, C. (eds) Handbook of the Philosophical Foundations of Business Ethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1494-6_81
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1494-6_81
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-1493-9
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-1494-6
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law