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Moral courage captures one's ability to do 'what is right' for 'the greater good' in situations where doing so involves personal danger, risks, or difficulties (Detert & Bruno, 2017; Rate, 2010). Recognizing the organizational and social benefits of moral courage, management researchers and practitioners alike encourage business students and employees to engage in morally courageous behaviours (Comer & Sekerka, 2018; Sekerka & Godwin, 2010). However, we lack the understanding of how others perceive and react to organizational members' acts of moral courage (Detert & Bruno, 2017). This dissertation examines how individuals react to displays of workplace moral courage. I argue that although by and large people do respond favourably towards employees who engage in workplace moral courage, the extent to which such responses are (un)favourable is dependent on characteristics of both the actor (i.e., gender) and the observer (i.e., social dominance orientation). I conduct three pilot studies and three hypotheses testing studies as part of my dissertation. The hypotheses testing studies include two experimental designs and one field-survey design and examine both peer- and supervisor responses to employees' acts of moral courage. While the effects of actor's gender and observers' social dominance orientation on observers' reactions towards workplace moral courage did not fully replicate across all three studies, the pattern of the findings was generally consistent.

Psychopaths have traditionally been excluded from the moral realm and have regularly been used as a paradigm case for explaining why emotions, or emotional knowledge, is necessary for the acquisition of moral knowledge. Psychopaths possess an affective deficit that results in an almost total lack of empathy. Emotionists argue that emotions (specifically empathy) are central to moral understanding, and that, since the psychopaths possess this affective deficit, they lack the capacity to acquire moral knowledge which is necessary to be morally responsible. Given recent neurological findings regarding psychopaths, I ague that Emotionists cannot use the psychopath as a case example supporting their argument that emotions are necessary for moral knowledge. I argue that despite psychopaths’ affective disorder, they possess three of the capacities (via cognitive mechanisms) considered by many to be necessary for moral responsibility. Those three capacities are the capacity to acquire moral knowledge, the capacity to be reason-responsive to moral demands, and the capacity to control one’s actions in light of moral demands and reasons. The upshot of my analysis is a rethinking of what it means to possess the right kind of emotional knowledge and a rethinking of the capabilities of psychopaths in relation to the moral realm. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The commonly held view in philosophy is that psychopaths are not morally responsible. Psychopaths amount to about 1% of the current population and up to 25% of male criminal offenders. While these numbers seem rather small in comparison to the total population, philosophers, psychologists and behavioural psychologists regularly point to psychopaths for insight into the moral realm. The main aim of this dissertation is to block the Emotionist argument that emotions are necessary for moral knowledge and argue that psychopaths, despite their affective disorder, possess three of the capacities considered by many to be necessary for moral responsibility. The three capacities are the capacity to acquire moral knowledge, the capacity to be reason-responsive to moral demands, and the capacity to control one’s actions in light of moral demands and reasons. I conclude by arguing that psychopaths are capable of moral responsibility from a cognitive standpoint and that the Emotionist argument must seek another route to establish its conclusion that emotions are necessary for moral knowledge.

How should we understand the question "Why be moral?" Can we answer this question? If so, how? In this paper I develop an exemplarist theory of practical moral justification; that is, a theory of the justification of the prima facie moral things that we do, not the moral beliefs that we have. I take as my starting point that morality is, essentially, a set of practices in which all persons, in virtue of their being persons, participate. I argue that skillful practitioners of these various practices should be understood as moral authorities, and that the appeal to a moral authority for the purpose of one's justifying one's moral doings is necessarily justified for the appealer whenever she is practicing the same practice as the moral authority. This theory holds that moral authorities, so circumscribed, are Authoritative Exemplars, and as the appeal to their authority is necessarily justified they are able to provide a foundation for practical moral justifications, and thus rebutting the objection that all such justifications will run to regress. Among other things this account allows us to interpret the "Why be moral?" question as a question asking for more than can be had posed from a position of misunderstanding the nature of morality and practical moral justification. We cannot answer the "Why be moral?" question any more than we can answer the "Why be human?" question. / Master of Arts

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Psychological Sciences / Mark A. Barnett / The term “moral rebel” describes an individual who refuses to comply, stay silent, or conform to others when doing so would compromise his/her values (Monin, Sawyer, & Marquez, 2008). Preliminarily, this study examined the extent to which adolescents themselves, their peers, and their teachers agree in their ratings of adolescents’ general expressions of the tendency to be a moral rebel, tendencies to possess a moral identity (i.e., prioritize morality as an important part of identity), and tendencies to possess moral courage characteristics (i.e., qualities that motivate individuals to take action on their beliefs and values). As a theoretical and empirical extension of previous research (see Sonnentag & Barnett, 2013), the present study's primary purpose was to examine the interactive and independent roles of moral identity and moral courage characteristics in adolescents’ general and situation-specific (i.e., caring, just, and brave) expressions of the tendency to be a moral rebel. With regard to the interactive role of moral identity and moral courage characteristics, the present study examined (1) if relatively high levels of various general moral courage characteristics (i.e., Self-Esteem, [Low] Need to Belong, Self-Efficacy, Assertiveness, Social Vigilantism) encourage adolescents to act on their moral identities to display the general and situation-specific expressions of the tendency to be a moral rebel and (2) if relatively high levels of situation-specific moral courage characteristics (i.e., Empathic Concern, Justice Sensitivity, Willingness to Take Action in Physically Dangerous Situations) encourage adolescents to act on their moral identities to display the corresponding situation-specific (i.e., caring, just, and brave, respectively) expressions of the tendency to be a moral rebel. As predicted, results revealed significant positive correlations among the self-report, peer, and teacher ratings of adolescents' (1) general expressions of the tendency to be a moral rebel, (2) tendencies to possess a moral identity, and (3) tendencies to possess general moral courage characteristics. These significant positive inter-correlations emerged for the entire sample as well as for the male and female participants when they were considered separately. Contrary to prediction, moral identity (when considered independently and in combination with the general and situation-specific moral courage characteristics) did not consistently predict the general nor situation-specific expressions of the tendency to be a moral rebel. Furthermore, although the general moral courage characteristics did not consistently predict the adolescents’ caring, just, and brave expressions of the tendency to be a moral rebel, all of the indices of the adolescents' general moral courage characteristics (i.e., Self, Peer, and Teacher ratings; Self-Esteem, [Low] Need to Belong, Self-Efficacy, Assertiveness, Social Vigilantism) positively predicted the adolescents’ self-reported general tendency to be a moral rebel. Finally, two of the situation-specific moral courage characteristics (i.e., Empathic Concern and Willingness to Take Action in Physically Dangerous Situations) were found to be positively associated with the corresponding situation-specific (i.e., caring and brave, respectively) expressions of the tendency to be a moral rebel. The implications and limitations of the present findings, as well as directions for future research on the topic of moral rebelliousness in adolescents, are addressed

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Emerging work in moral psychology challenges our confidence in our moral judgment. Our moral intuitions have been attributed to automatic, emotionally laden processes and are alleged to be accordingly deficient. Intuitive moral judgments apparently neglect some of the most basic concerns of moral decision-making; for example, they purportedly disregard relevant information, fail to balance competing considerations, and ignore social costs and benefits. Some moral psychologists propose an evolutionary explanation, suggesting that our moral sensibilities track matters of adaptive, rather than moral, significance.These findings are disconcerting and might naturally be taken to unsettle our philosophical practice. An empirically-informed moral psychology seems to discredit moral common sense as well as prevailing accounts of method and justification in moral and political philosophy. In turn, it threatens to undermine substantive conceptions of matters such as virtue, rights, and distributive justice.I argue that contemporary moral psychology does not, as is often supposed, necessitate radical revisions to our conception of morality. Recent research does oblige us to reevaluate many of our views in moral and political philosophy; however, I argue that it also gives us the opportunity to supply these views with new and stronger support.

This study investigated the relationship between the character typology proposed by C. G. Jung, and the stages of cognitive-moral development described by Lawrence Kohlberg. It was hypothesized that certain character types, particularly those preferring introversion and intuition, would display the higher levels of moral development. A total of 120 male and female introductory psychology students at the University of Arizona were administered the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to assess character type, the Sociomoral Reflection Objective Measure (SROM) to identify stage of moral development, and the Shipley-Hartford Institute of Living Scale as a brief estimate of IQ. The only significant differences in moral development as a function of character type were between the judging and perceiving types, with perceiving types displaying the higher mean SROM score (p .02). This finding suggests that open-mindedness is more conducive to moral development than the tendency to jump to immediate conclusions.