Moral psychology is a field of study in both
philosophy and psychology. Historically, the
term "moral psychology" was used relatively
narrowly to refer to the study of moral development.
More recently however, the term has come to
refer more broadly to various topics at the
intersection of ethics, psychology, and philosophy
of mind. Some of the main topics of the field
are moral judgment, moral reasoning, moral
sensitivity, moral responsibility, moral motivation,
moral identity, moral action, moral development,
moral diversity, moral character (especially
as related to virtue ethics), altruism, psychological
egoism, moral luck, moral forecasting, moral
emotion, affective forecasting, and moral
disagreement.Some psychologists that have
worked in the field are: Jean Piaget, Lawrence
Kohlberg, Carol Gilligan, Elliot Turiel, Jonathan
Haidt, Linda Skitka, Leland Saunders, Marc
Hauser, C. Daniel Batson, Jean Decety, Joshua
Greene, A. Peter McGraw, Philip Tetlock, Darcia
Narvaez, Tobias Krettenauer, Aner Govrin,
Liane Young, Daniel Hart, Suzanne Fegley,
and Fiery Cushman. Philosophers that have
worked in the field include Stephen Stich,
John Doris, Joshua Knobe, John Mikhail, Shaun
Nichols, Thomas Nagel, Robert C. Roberts,
Jesse Prinz, Michael Smith, and R. Jay Wallace.
== History ==
Moral psychology began with early philosophers
such as Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates. They
believed that "to know the good is to do the
good". They analyzed the ways in which people
make decisions with regards to moral identity.
Empirical studies of moral judgment go back
at least as far as the 1890s with the work
of Frank Chapman Sharp, coinciding with the
development of psychology as a discipline
separate from philosophy. Since at least 1894,
philosophers and psychologists attempted to
empirically evaluate the morality of an individual,
especially attempting to distinguish adults
from children in terms of their judgment,
but these efforts failed because they "attempted
to quantify how much morality an individual
had—a notably contentious idea—rather
than understand the individual's psychological
representation of morality".As the field of
psychology began to divide away from philosophy,
moral psychology expanded to include risk
perception and moralization, morality with
regards to medical practices, concepts of
self-worth, and the role of emotions when
analyzing one's moral identity. In most introductory
psychology courses, students learn about moral
psychology by studying the psychologist Lawrence
Kohlberg, who introduced the moral development
theory in 1969. This theory was built on Piaget's
observation that children develop intuitions
about justice that they can later articulate.
He proposed six stages broken into 3 categories
of moral reasoning that, he believed to be
universal to all people in all cultures. The
increasing sophistication of articulation
of reasoning is a sign of development. Moral
cognitive development centered around justice
and guided moral action increase with development,
resulting in a postconventional thinker that
can "do no other" than what is reasoned to
be the most moral action. But researchers
using the Kohlberg model found a gap between
what people said was most moral and actions
they took. Today, some psychologists and students
alike rely on Augusto Blasi's self-model that
link ideas of moral judgment and action through
moral commitment. Those with moral goals central
to the self-concept are more likely to take
moral action, as they feel a greater obligation
to do so. Those who are motivated will attain
a unique moral identity.Today, moral psychology
is a thriving area of research spanning many
disciplines, with major bodies of research
on the biological, cognitive/computational
and cultural basis of moral judgment and behavior,
and a growing body of research on moral judgment
in the context of artificial intelligence.
== Methods ==
Philosophers, psychologists and researchers
from other fields have created various methods
for studying topics in moral psychology. These
include moral dilemmas such as the trolley
problem, structured interviews and surveys
as a means to study moral psychology and its
development, as well as the use of economic
games, neuroimaging, and studies of natural
language use.
=== Interview techniques ===
In 1963, Lawrence Kohlberg presented an approach
to studying differences in moral judgment
by modeling evaluative diversity as reflecting
a series of developmental stages (à la Jean
Piaget). Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral
development are:
Obedience and punishment orientation
Self-interest orientation
Interpersonal accord and conformity
Authority and social-order maintaining orientation
Social contract orientation
Universal ethical principlesStages 1 and 2
are combined into a single stage labeled "pre-conventional",
and stages 5 and 6 are combined into a single
stage labeled "post-conventional" for the
same reason; psychologists can consistently
categorize subjects into the resulting four
stages using the "Moral Judgement Interview"
which asks subjects why they endorse the answers
they do to a standard set of moral dilemmas.In
1999, some of Kohlberg's measures were tested
when Anne Colby and William Damon published
a study in which the development was examined
in the lives of moral exemplars that exhibited
high levels of moral commitment in their everyday
behavior. The researchers utilized the moral
judgement interview (MJI) and two standard
dilemmas to compare the 23 exemplars with
a more ordinary group of people. The intention
was to learn more about moral exemplars and
to examine the strengths and weaknesses of
the Kohlberg measure. They found that the
MJI scores were not clustered at the high
end of Kohlberg's scale, they ranged from
stage 3 to stage 5. Half landed at the conventional
level (stages 3, 3/4, and 4) and the other
half landed at the postconventional level
(stages 4/5 and 5). Compared to the general
population, the scores of the moral exemplars
may be somewhat higher than those of groups
not selected for outstanding moral behaviour.
Researchers noted that the "moral judgement
scores are clearly related to subjects' educational
attainment in this study". Among the participants
that had attained college education or above,
there was no difference in moral judgement
scores between genders. The study noted that
although the exemplars' scores may have been
higher than those of nonexemplars, it is also
clear that one is not required to score at
Kohlberg's highest stages in order to exhibit
high degrees of moral commitment and exemplary
behaviour. Apart from their scores, it was
found that the 23 participating moral exemplars
described three similar themes within all
of their moral developments: certainty, positivity,
and the unity of self and moral goals. The
unity between self and moral goals was highlighted
as the most important theme as it is what
truly sets the exemplars apart from the 'ordinary'
people. It was discovered that the moral exemplars
see their morality as a part of their sense
of identity and sense of self, not as a conscious
choice or chore. Also, the moral exemplars
showed a much broader range of moral concern
than did the ordinary people and go beyond
the normal acts of daily moral engagements.
Rather than confirm the existence of a single
highest stage, Larry Walker's cluster analysis
of a wide variety of interview and survey
variables for moral exemplars found three
types: the "caring" or "communal" cluster
was strongly relational and generative, the
"deliberative" cluster had sophisticated epistemic
and moral reasoning, and the "brave" or "ordinary"
cluster was less distinguished by personality.
=== Survey instruments ===
Between 1910 and 1930, in the United States
and Europe, several morality tests were developed
to classify subjects as fit or unfit to make
moral judgments. Test-takers would classify
or rank standardized lists of personality
traits, hypothetical actions, or pictures
of hypothetical scenes. As early as 1926,
catalogs of personality tests included sections
specifically for morality tests, though critics
persuasively argued that they merely measured
awareness of social expectations.Meanwhile,
Kohlberg inspired a new wave of morality tests.
The Defining Issues Test (dubbed "Neo-Kohlbergian"
by its constituents) scores relative preference
for post-conventional justifications, and
the Moral Judgment Test scores consistency
of one's preferred justifications. Both treat
evaluative ability as similar to IQ (hence
the single score), allowing categorization
by high score vs. low score.
The Moral Foundations Questionnaire is based
on moral intuitions consistent across cultures:
care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal,
authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation.
The questions ask respondents to rate various
considerations in terms of how relevant they
are to the respondent's moral judgments. The
purpose of the questionnaire is to measure
the degree to which people rely upon each
of the five moral intuitions (which may coexist).
The first two foundations cluster together
with liberal political orientation and the
latter three cluster with conservative political
orientation.
== Evolutionary origins ==
A substantial amount of research in recent
decades has focused on the evolutionary origins
of various aspects of morality. In Unto Others:
the Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish
Behavior (1998), Elliott Sober and David Sloan
Wilson demonstrated that diverse moralities
could evolve through group selection. In particular,
they dismantled the idea that natural selection
will favor a homogeneous population in which
all creatures care only about their own personal
welfare and/or behave only in ways which advance
their own personal reproduction. Tim Dean
has advanced the more general claim that moral
diversity would evolve through frequency-dependent
selection because each moral approach is vulnerable
to a different set of situations which threatened
our ancestors.
== Theories ==
=== Moral identity ===
Empirical studies show that reasoning and
emotion only moderately predicted moral action.
Scholars, such as Blasi, began proposing identity
as a motivating factor in moral motivation.
Blasi proposed the self model of moral functioning,
which described the effects of the judgment
of responsibility to perform a moral action,
one's sense of moral identity, and the desire
for self-consistency on moral action. Blasi
also elaborates on the structure of identity
and its connection to morality. According
to Blasi, there are two aspects that form
identity. One of the aspects focuses on the
specific contents that make up the self (objective
identity content), which include moral ideals.
The second refers to the ways in which identity
is subjectively experienced (subjective identity
experience). As the subjective side of identity
matures, the objective side tends to lean
towards internal contents like values, beliefs,
and goals, rather than external identity contents
like physical aspects, behaviors, and relationships.
A mature subjective identity yearns for a
greater sense of self-consistency. Therefore,
identity would serve as a motivation for moral
action.
Studies of moral exemplars have shown that
exemplary moral action often results from
the intertwining of personal goals and desires
with moral goals, and studies on moral behavior
also show a correlation between moral identity
and action. S. Hardy and G. Carlo raise critical
questions about Blasi's model as well, and
propose that researchers should seek to better
operationalize and measure moral identity
and apply findings to moral education and
intervention programs.Anne Colby and William
Damon suggest that one's moral identity is
formed through that individual's synchronization
of their personal and moral goals. This unity
of their self and morality is what distinguishes
them from non-exemplars and in turn makes
them exceptional. Colby and Damon studied
moral identity through the narratives of civil
rights activist Virginia Foster Durr and Suzie
Valadez, who provided services for the poor,
whose behavior, actions, and life's works
were considered to be morally exemplary by
their communities and those with whom they
came in contact. Some common characteristics
that these moral exemplars possess are certainty,
positivity (e.g. enjoyment of work, and optimism),
and unity of self and moral goals. The research
suggests that a "transformation of goals"
takes place during the evolution of one's
moral identity and development and therefore
is not an exercise of self-sacrifice but rather
one done with great joy; moral exemplars see
their personal goals and moral goals as synonymous.
This transformation is not always a deliberate
process and is most often a gradual process,
but can also be rapidly set off by a triggering
event. Triggering events can be anything from
a powerful moment in a movie to a traumatic
life event, or as in the case of Suzie Valadez,
the perception of a vision from God. In many
of the moral exemplars interviewed, the triggering
events and goal transformation did not take
place until their 40s. Moral exemplars are
said to have the same concerns and commitments
as other moral people but to a greater degree,
"extensions in scope, intensity and breadth".
Furthermore, exemplars possess the ability
to be open to new ideas and experiences, also
known as an "active receptiveness" to things
exterior to themselves.
Daniel Hart conducted a study to see how adolescents
who engaged in exemplary levels of prosocial
behavior viewed themselves. To empirically
study self-concept, he used four different
conceptual models to illustrate the concept
of self: Self-Concept as Content, Self-Concept
as Semantic Space, Self-Concept as Hierarchy
of Selves, and Self-Concept as Theory. The
findings suggested that adolescent caring
exemplars formulated their self-concept differently
from comparable peers. In a hierarchy of selves
model, exemplars were shown to incorporate
their "ideal self" into their "actual self".
Among the exemplar group there was more incorporation
of parental representations with the "actual
self". Conversely, there was less incorporation
of representations of their best friend or
the self-expected by the best friend. It is
theorized that this is because adolescents
are less likely to pick a best friend who
is a "goody-goody" and deeply involved in
service, as well as exemplars possibly having
to give up peer expectations in order to engage
in service. In a Self-Concept as Theory model,
exemplars were most commonly at level 4, a
level of self-theory uncommonly reached by
adolescents, but common among exemplars. They
were also more likely to emphasize academic
goals and moral typical activities. There
were no significant differences between the
exemplars and the control group concerning
moral knowledge. On a semantic space analysis,
the moral exemplars tended to view their actual
self as more integrated with their ideal and
expected self.David Wong proposes that we
think of cultures in an analogy to a conversation,
there are people with different beliefs, values,
and norms that can voice their opinion loudly
or quietly, but over the course of time these
factors can change. A moral culture can provide
other members with a kind of "language" where
there is plenty of room for different "dialects",
this allows moral identities to be established
and voiced more. Opposing ideas can create
conflict between those who are close to us,
such as family and friends, and strangers.
This can bring a greater risk of trying to
decide the best course of action in which
either party will be affected by it. In essence
the notion of Wong's theory is that in order
to define our true morality it ultimately
comes down to acceptance and being able to
accommodate within and between cultures around
the world. He also believes that the concept
of culture as conversation will help reduce
the problems with boundaries between cultures,
reconcile the autonomy with the cultural aspect
of moral identity and call into question the
understanding of healthy and well developed
moral identity.According to Blasi's theory
on moral character, moral character is identified
by the person's set of the morality of virtues
and vices. He theorized willpower, moral desires,
and integrity have the capability for a person
to act morally by the hierarchical order of
virtues. He believed that the "highest" and
complex of virtues are expressed by willpower
while the "lowest" and simplistic of virtues
are expressed integrity. He essentially stated
that to have the lower virtues, one must have
one or more of the higher virtues. The end
goals of moral development identity are to
establish and act upon core goals, as well
as and use one's strengths to make a difference.
=== Moral self ===
A "moral self" is fostered by mutually responsive
parenting in childhood. Children with responsive
parents develop more empathy, prosociality,
a moral self and conscience. Darcia Narvaez
describes the neurobiological and social elements
of early experience and their effects on moral
capacities.The moral self results when people
integrate moral values into their self-concept.
Research on the moral self has mostly focused
on adolescence as a critical time period for
the integration of self and morality (i.e.
self and morality are traditionally seen as
separate constructs that become integrated
in adolescence. However, the moral self may
be established around age 2–3 years. In
fact, children as young as 5 years-old are
able to consistently identify themselves as
having certain moral behavioral preferences.
Children's moral self is also increasingly
predictive of moral emotions with age.
=== Moral values ===
Kristiansen and Hotte review many research
articles regarding people's values and attitudes
and whether they guide behavior. With the
research they reviewed and their own extension
of Ajzen and Fishbein's theory of reasoned
action, they conclude that value-attitude-behavior
depends on the individual and their moral
reasoning. They also pointed out that there
are such things as good values and bad values.
Good values are those that guide our attitudes
and behaviors and allow us to express and
define ourselves. It also involves the ability
to know when values are appropriate in response
to the situation or person that you are dealing
with. Bad values on the other hand are those
that are relied on so much that it makes you
unresponsive to the needs and perspectives
of others.
Another issue that Kristiansen and Hotte discovered
through their research was that individuals
tended to "create" values to justify their
reactions to certain situations, which they
called the "value justification hypothesis".
The authors use an example from feminist Susan
Faludi's journal entry of how during the period
when women were fighting for their right to
vote, a New Rights group appealed to society's
ideals of "traditional family values" as an
argument against the new law in order to mask
their own "anger at women's rising independence."
Their theory is comparable to Jonathan Haidt's
social intuition theory, where individuals
justify their intuitive emotions and actions
through reasoning in a post-hoc fashion.
Kristiansen and Hotte also found that independent
selves had actions and behaviors that are
influenced by their own thoughts and feelings,
but Interdependent selves have actions, behaviors
and self-concepts that were based on the thoughts
and feelings of others. Westerners have two
dimensions of emotions, activation and pleasantness.
The Japanese have one more, the range of their
interdependent relationships. Markus and Kitayama
found that these two different types of values
had different motives. Westerners, in their
explanations, show self-bettering biases.
Easterners, on the other hand, tend to focus
on "other-oriented" biases.Psychologist S.
H. Schwartz defines individual values as "conceptions
of the desirable that guide the way social
actors (e.g.organisational leaders, policymakers,
individual persons) select actions, evaluate
people an events, and explain their actions
and evaluations." Cultural values form the
basis for social norms, laws, customs and
practices. While individual values vary case
by case (a result of unique life experience),
the average of these values point to widely
held cultural beliefs (a result of shared
cultural values).
=== Moral virtues ===
Piaget and Kohlberg both developed stages
of development to understand the timing and
meaning of moral decisions. They were interested
in placing people into moral categories or
stages of development instead of identifying
how each individual's views and behaviors
are affected by their background and personality.
In 2004, D. Lapsley and D. Narvaez outlined
how social cognition explains aspects of moral
functioning. The social cognitive approach
to personality has six critical resources
of moral personality: cognition, self-processes,
affective elements of personality, changing
social context, lawful situational variability,
and the integration of other literature. Lapsley
and Narvaez suggest that moral values and
actions stem from more than our virtues and
are controlled by a set of self-created schemas
(cognitive structures that organize related
concepts and integrate past events). They
claim that schemas are "fundamental to our
very ability to notice dilemmas as we appraise
the moral landscape" and that over time, people
develop greater "moral expertise".
==== Triune ethics theory ====
The triune ethics meta-theory (TEM) has been
proposed by Darcia Narvaez as a metatheory
that highlights the relative contributions
to moral development of biological inheritance
(including human evolutionary adaptations),
environmental influences on neurobiology,
and the role of culture. TET proposes three
basic mindsets that shape ethical behavior:
self-protectionism (a variety of types), engagement,
and imagination (a variety of types that are
fueld by protectionism or engagement). A mindset
influences perception, affordances, and rhetorical
preferences. Actions taken within a mindset
become an ethic when they trump other values.
Engagement and communal imagination represent
optimal human functioning that are shaped
by the evolved developmental niche (evolved
nest) that supports optimal psychosocial neurobiological
development. Based on worldwide anthropological
research (e.g., Hewlett and Lamb's Hunter-Gatherer
Childhoods), Narvaez uses small-band hunter-gatherers
as a baseline for the evolved nest and its
effects. The empirical support for the link
between early experience and the development
of triune ethics dispositions ("moral temperament")
is accumulating from studies of young children
and of adults.
=== Moral reasoning and development ===
Moral development and reasoning are two overlapping
topics of study in moral psychology that have
historically received a great amount of attention.
Moral reasoning refers specifically to the
study of how people think about right and
wrong and how they acquire and apply moral
rules. Moral development refers more broadly
to age-related changes in thoughts and emotions
that guide moral beliefs, judgments and behaviors.
==== Kohlberg's stage theory ====
Jean Piaget, in watching children play games,
noted how their rationales for cooperation
changed with experience and maturation. He
identified two stages, heteronomous (morality
centered outside the self) and autonomous
(internalized morality). Lawerence Kohlberg
sought to expand Piaget's work. His cognitive
developmental theory of moral reasoning dominated
the field for decades. He focused on moral
development as one's progression in the capacity
to reason about justice. Kohlberg's interview
method included hypothetical moral dilemmas
or conflicts of interest (most notably, the
Heinz dilemma). He proposed six stages and
three levels of development (claiming that
"anyone who interviewed children about dilemmas
and who followed them longitudinally in time
would come to our six stages and no others).
At the Preconventional level, the first two
stages included the punishment-and-obedience
orientation and the instrumental-relativist
orientation. The next level, the conventional
level, included the interpersonal concordance
or "good boy – nice girl" orientation, along
with the "law and order" orientation. Lastly,
the final Postconventional level consisted
of the social-contract, legalistic orientation
and the universal-ethical-principle orientation.
According to Kohlberg, an individual is considered
more cognitively mature depending on their
stage of moral reasoning, which grows as they
advance in education and world experience.
Critics of Kohlberg's approach (such as Carol
Gilligan and Jane Attanucci) argue that there
is an over-emphasis on justice and an under-emphasis
on an additional perspective to moral reasoning,
known as the care perspective. The justice
perspective draws attention to inequality
and oppression, while striving for reciprocal
rights and equal respect for all. The care
perspective draws attention to the ideas of
detachment and abandonment, while striving
for attention and response to people who need
it. Care Orientation is relationally based.
It has a more situational focus that is dependent
on the needs of others as opposed to Justice
Orientation's objectivity. However, reviews
by others have found that Gilligan's theory
was not supported by empirical studies since
orientations are individual dependent. In
fact, in neo-Kohlbergian studies with the
Defining Issues Test, females tend to get
slightly higher scores than males.
==== The attachment approach to moral judgment
====
The attachment approach to moral judgment
was proposed by Aner Govrin and it is based
on evidence from infant research, social psychology
and moral psychology. According to this approach,
through early interactions with the caregiver,
the child acquires an internal representation
of a system of rules that determine how right/wrong
judgments are to be construed, used, and understood.
By breaking moral situations down into their
defining features, the attachment model of
moral judgment outlines a framework for a
universal moral faculty based on a universal,
innate, deep structure that appears uniformly
in the structure of almost all moral judgments
regardless of their content.
=== Moral behaviour ===
Historically, major topics of study in the
domain of moral behavior have included violence
and altruism, bystander intervention and obedience
to authority (e.g., the Milgram experiment
and Stanford prison experiment). In recent
research on moral behavior, studies have ranged
from using experience sampling to try and
estimate the actual prevalence of various
kinds of moral behavior in everyday life,
and using beavioral experiments to investigate
the way people weight their own interests
against other people's when deciding whether
to harm people.James Rest reviewed the literature
on moral functioning and identified at least
four components necessary for a moral behavior
to take place:
Sensitivity – noticing and interpreting
the situation
Reasoning and making a judgment regarding
the best (most moral) option
Motivation (in the moment but also habitually,
such as moral identity)
implementation—having the skills and perseverance
to carry out the actionReynolds and Ceranic
researched the effects of social consensus
on one's moral behavior. Depending on the
level of social consensus (high vs. low),
moral behaviors will require greater or lesser
degrees of moral identity to motivate an individual
to make a choice and endorse a behavior. Also,
depending on social consensus, particular
behaviors may require different levels of
moral reasoning.More recent attempts to develop
an integrated model of moral motivation have
identified at least six different levels of
moral functioning, each of which has been
shown to predict some type of moral or pro-social
behavior: moral intuitions, moral emotions,
moral virtues/vices (behavioral capacities),
moral values, moral reasoning, and moral willpower.
This social intuitionist model of moral motivation
suggests that moral behaviors are typically
the product of multiple levels of moral functioning,
and are usually energized by the "hotter"
levels of intuition, emotion, and behavioral
virtue/vice. The "cooler" levels of values,
reasoning, and willpower, while still important,
are proposed to be secondary to the more affect-intensive
processes.
==== Value-behavior consistency ====
In looking at the relations between moral
values, attitudes, and behaviors, previous
research asserts that there is no dependable
correlation between these three aspects, differing
from what we would assume. In fact, it seems
to be more common for people to label their
behaviors with a justifying value rather than
having a value beforehand and then acting
on it. There are some people that are more
likely to act on their personal values: those
low in self-monitoring and high in self-consciousness,
due to the fact that they are more aware of
themselves and less aware of how others may
perceive them. Self-consciousness here means
being literally more conscious of yourself,
not fearing judgement or feeling anxiety from
others. Social situations and the different
categories of norms can be telling of when
people may act in accordance with their values,
but this still isn't concrete either. People
will typically act in accordance with social,
contextual and personal norms, and there is
a likelihood that these norms can also follow
one's moral values. Though there are certain
assumptions and situations that would suggest
a major value-attitude-behavior relation,
there is not enough research to confirm this
phenomenon.
==== Moral willpower ====
Building on earlier work by Metcalfe and Mischel
on delayed gratification, Baumeister, Miller,
and Delaney explored the notion of willpower
by first defining the self as being made up
of three parts: reflexive consciousness, or
the person's awareness of their environment
and of himself as an individual; interpersonal
being, which seeks to mold the self into one
that will be accepted by others; and executive
function. They stated, "[T]he self can free
its actions from being determined by particular
influences, especially those of which it is
aware". The three prevalent theories of willpower
describe it as a limited supply of energy,
as a cognitive process, and as a skill that
is developed over time. Research has largely
supported that willpower works like a "moral
muscle" with a limited supply of strength
that may be depleted (a process referred to
as Ego depletion), conserved, or replenished,
and that a single act requiring much self-control
can significantly deplete the "supply" of
willpower. While exertion reduces the ability
to engage in further acts of willpower in
the short term, such exertions actually improve
a person's ability to exert willpower for
extended periods in the long run. Additional
research has been conducted that may cast
doubt on the idea of ego-depletion.
=== 
Moral intuitions ===
In 2001, Jonathan Haidt introduced his social
intuitionist model which claimed that with
few exceptions, moral judgments are made based
upon socially derived intuitions. Moral intuitions
happen immediately, automatically, and unconsciously,
with reasoning largely serving to generate
post-hoc rationalizations to justify one's
instinctual reactions. He provides four arguments
to doubt causal importance of reason. Firstly,
Haidt argues that since there is a dual process
system in the brain when making automatic
evaluations or assessments, this same process
must be applicable to moral judgement as well.
The second argument, based on research on
motivated reasoning, claims that people behave
like "intuitive lawyers", searching primarily
for evidence that will serve motives for social
relatedness and attitudinal coherence. Thirdly,
Haidt found that people have post hoc reasoning
when faced with a moral situation, this a
posteriori (after the fact) explanation gives
the illusion of objective moral judgement
but in reality is subjective to one's gut
feeling. Lastly, research has shown that moral
emotion has a stronger link to moral action
than moral reasoning, citing Damasio's research
on the somatic marker hypothesis and Batson's
empathy-altruism hypothesis.In 2008, Joshua
Greene published a compilation which, in contrast
to Haidt's model, suggested that fair moral
reasoning does take place. A "deontologist"
is someone who has rule-based morality that
is mainly focused on duties and rights; in
contrast, a "consequentialist" is someone
who believes that only the best overall consequences
ultimately matter. Generally speaking, individuals
who answer to moral dilemmas in a consequential
manner take longer to respond and show frontal-lobe
activity (associated with cognitive processing).
Individuals who answer to moral dilemmas in
a deontological manner, however, generally
answer more quickly and show brain activity
in the amygdala (associated with emotional
processing).
==== Moral Foundations Theory ====
In regard to moral intuitions, researchers
Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham performed
a study to research the difference between
the moral foundations of political liberals
and political conservatives. Haidt and Graham
expanded on previous research done by Shweder
and his three ethics theory. Shweder's theory
consisted of three moral ethics: the ethic
of autonomy, the ethic of community, and the
ethic of divinity. Haidt and Graham took this
theory and extended it to discuss the five
psychological systems that more specifically
make up the three moral ethics theory. These
Five Foundations of Morality and their importance
vary throughout each culture and construct
virtues based on their emphasized foundation.
They challenged individuals to question the
legitimacy of their moral world and introduced
the five psychological foundations of morality:
Harm/care, which starts with the sensitivity
to signs of suffering in offspring and develops
into a general dislike of seeing suffering
in others and the potential to feel compassion
in response.
Fairness/reciprocity, which is developed when
someone observes or engages in reciprocal
interactions. This foundation is concerned
with virtues related to fairness and justice.
Ingroup/loyalty, which constitutes recognizing,
trusting, and cooperating with members of
one's ingroup as well as being wary of members
of other groups.
Authority/respect, which is how someone navigates
in a hierarchal ingroups and communities.
Purity/sanctity, which stems from the emotion
of disgust that guards the body by responding
to elicitors that are biologically or culturally
linked to disease transmission.The five foundations
theory are both a nativist and cultural-psychological
theory. Modern moral psychology concedes that
"morality is about protecting individuals"
and focuses primarily on issues of justice
(harm/care and fairness/reciprocity). Their
research found that "justice and related virtues…make
up half of the moral world for liberals, while
justice-related concerns make up only one
fifth of the moral world for conservatives".
Liberals value harm/care and fairness/reciprocity
significantly more than the other moralities,
while conservatives value all five equally.
=== Moral emotions ===
Moral emotions are a variety of social emotion
that are involved in forming and communicating
moral judgments and decisions, and in motivating
behavioral responses to one's own and others'
moral behavior.
While moral reasoning has been the focus of
most study of morality dating all the way
back to Plato and Aristotle, the emotive side
of morality has been looked upon with disdain.
However, in the last 30–40 years, there
has been a rise in a new front of research:
moral emotions as the basis for moral behavior.
This development began with a focus on empathy
and guilt, but has since moved on to encompass
new scholarship on emotions such as anger,
shame, disgust, awe, and elevation. With the
new research, theorists have begun to question
whether moral emotions might hold a larger
in determining morality, one that might even
surpass that of moral reasoning.
=== Moral conviction ===
Linda Skitka and colleagues have introduced
the concept of moral conviction, which refers
to a "strong and absolute belief that something
is right or wrong, moral or immoral." According
to Skitka's integrated theory of moral conviction
(ITMC), attitudes held with moral conviction,
known as moral mandates, differ from strong
but non-moral attitudes in a number of important
ways. Namely, moral mandates derive their
motivational force from their perceived universality,
perceived objectivity, and strong ties to
emotion. Perceived universality refers to
the notion that individuals experience moral
mandates as transcending persons and cultures;
additionally, they are regarded as matters
of fact. Regarding association with emotion,
ITMC is consistent with Jonathan Haidt's social
intuitionist model in stating that moral judgments
are accompanied by discrete moral emotions
(i.e., disgust, shame, guilt). Importantly,
Skitka maintains that moral mandates are not
the same thing as moral values. Whether an
issue will be associated with moral conviction
varies across persons.
One of the main lines of IMTC research addresses
the behavioral implications of moral mandates.
Individuals prefer greater social and physical
distance from attitudinally dissimilar others
when moral conviction was high. This effect
of moral conviction could not be explained
by traditional measures of attitude strength,
extremity, or centrality. Skitka, Bauman,
and Sargis placed participants in either attitudinally
heterogeneous or homogenous groups to discuss
procedures regarding two morally mandated
issues, abortion and capital punishment. Those
in attitudinally heterogeneous groups demonstrated
the least amount of goodwill towards other
group members, the least amount of cooperation,
and the most tension/defensiveness. Furthermore,
individuals discussing a morally mandated
issue were less likely to reach a consensus
compared to those discussing non-moral issues.
== Intersections with other fields ==
=== 
Sociological applications ===
Some research shows that people tend to self-segregate
based on moral or moral-political values.
=== Normative implications ===
Researchers have begun to consider what implications
(if any) moral psychology research has for
other subfields of ethics such as normative
ethics and meta-ethics. John Doris discusses
the way in which social psychological experiments—such
as the Stanford prison experiments involving
the idea of situationism—call into question
a key component in virtue ethics: the idea
that individuals have a single, environment-independent
moral character. As a further example, Shaun
Nichols (2004) examines how empirical data
on psychopathology suggests that moral rationalism
is false.Additionally, research in moral psychology
is being used to inform debates in applied
ethics around moral enhancement.
=== Robotics and artificial intelligence ===
At the intersection of moral psychology and
machine ethics, researchers have begun to
study people's views regarding the potentially
ethically significant decisions that will
be made by self-driving cars.
== See also ==
Action (philosophy)
Agency (philosophy)
Altruism
Descriptive ethics
Internalism and externalism §Moral philosophy
List of ethics topics
Meta-ethics
Moral luck
Personal identity
Psychological egoism
Science of morality
Trolley problem
== Notes
