Kantian theories of morality focus on the universal application of moral rules. However, both children and adults often apply different moral standards to in-group and out-group members. Psychologists have proposed that this group bias in moral judgments may be explained by “social essentialism”, a tendency to conceive of social groups as natural kinds. This dissertation uses a cross-cultural, developmental approach to test this hypothesis by investigating a) how the essentialization of five social groups changes with age and b) whether the differences in essentialization explain children’s moral judgments in inter-group contexts. In Study 1, I tested the degree of essentialization of five social categories (Gender, Nationality, Religion, Socioeconomic Status (SES), and Teams) in 5-10 year olds (N=147) and adults (N=223) in Turkey and the U.S. I hypothesized three possible patterns of results indicating different mechanisms underlying essentialization: 1) essentialization is a strong basic bias invariant across ages, cultures and categories; 2) essentialization varies by category across culture based on historical group conflicts; and 3) essentialization is over-generalized for pseudo-biological categories (Gender, Nationality) and declines with age for other categories in both cultures. I found strong support for the third mechanism and striking similarities in the developmental patterns by category across cultures. Study 2 examined the hypothesized link between children’s social essentialist bias and moral judgments in the US (N=211). I predicted that for highly essentialized categories from Study 1 (i.e., Gender), children would believe that it is more acceptable to harm the out-group than the in-group. There were no systematic differences between in-group and out-group judgments and no relationship with essentialization, however. These null results suggest that children are more Kantian than recent work on social groups proposes. Essentialism did, however, affect moral reasoning in inter-group contexts in more indirect ways, when accompanied by other social phenomena, such as salient discrimination. Combined, these studies make two contributions to the field. First, essentialist beliefs in the social domain are triggered cross-culturally by a biological representation of some categories. Second, children are not generally sensitive to group membership in their explicit judgments of moral transgressions in third-party scenarios.

One area of development that can be facilitated in the context of youth sports and physical education is sociomoral development. Sociomoral development is defined as moral development in the context of social groups. The physical education classroom today lacks the content, structure, and teaching style that middle school students need in order to cement their sociomoral development so that they can experience positive developmental growth as they mature into adulthood. The purpose of this project was to educate future physical education teachers about the importance of including sociomoral development activities in their standard PE curricula. The presentation focused on teaching how to deliver a curriculum that implements games and activities with dialogue and reflection. These games and activities are then infused with team sports, giving students multiple opportunities to build a close knit connection with their classmates and advance their sociomoral development. In order to test the effectiveness of the presentation, a pre and posttest was used. The pretest and posttest contained a number of open ended questions and a fixed 20 item questionnaire which was divided into five different categories. The five categories were: P.E and prosocial behavior, Theory of structural development, Teacher’s role in sociomoral development, logistics of a sociomoral curriculum, and moral competence activities. Results indicated very slight increase in mean scores moving from pretest to posttest in all but one category. The moral competence category showed a modest increase in mean score moving from pretest to posttest indicating that participants did learn in this part of the presentation. Results from the open ended questions indicated that participants had existing knowledge of sociomoral development learned previously; however they learned new knowledge pertaining to how to structure a sociomoral curriculum through the scope of structural development style teaching. Future sociomoral curricula should emphasize as much active learning as possible, since this type of learning creates a stronger bond between sports and academia.

Aristotle famously claims that we become virtuous by performing virtuous actions. He also recognizes the potential puzzle this claim gives rise to: How can we perform virtuous actions unless we are already virtuous? After all, virtuous actions require virtuous motives – they are performed “for the sake of the noble” – and virtuous motives characteristically belong to virtuous people. Many modern commentators presume that Aristotle’s solution rests upon characterizing the actions of learners as actions that are the right things to do in the circumstances but are not done with virtuous motivation. But this leaves Aristotle with the problem of bridging what I call “the moral upbringing gap” – i.e. the gap between the motivationally-neutral actions of learners and the dispositions to act reliably from a virtuous motive that such actions are supposed to produce. This gap emerges because the weaker the link between the way in which the actions of learners are performed and the way in which virtuous actions are done by virtuous agents, the more difficult it will be to understand how the repeated performance of the learners’ actions produce genuinely virtuous dispositions. The main aim of this thesis is to show that (and how) shame plays a crucial role in the process of moral development as the moral emotion that provides continuity between the actions of the learners of virtue and the corresponding dispositions that those actions eventually yield. My view is that Aristotle understands shame not as mere fear of external disapproval, nor as mere tendency to find pleasure in the noble, but as an emotion responsive to praise and blame and consequently to considerations about the nobility and shamefulness of one’s own actions and one’s character. Understood this way, shame provides learners with the sort of motivation that allows them to perform genuinely virtuous actions before they have acquired practical wisdom and the stable dispositions characteristic of virtuous agents. Shame thus bridges the “moral upbringing gap” by providing the kind of motivation that, when entrenched by understanding, constitutes moral virtue.

Aristotle famously claims that we become virtuous by performing virtuous actions. He also recognizes the potential puzzle this claim gives rise to: How can we perform virtuous actions unless we are already virtuous? After all, virtuous actions require virtuous motives – they are performed “for the sake of the noble” – and virtuous motives characteristically belong to virtuous people. Many modern commentators presume that Aristotle’s solution rests upon characterizing the actions of learners as actions that are the right things to do in the circumstances but are not done with virtuous motivation. But this leaves Aristotle with the problem of bridging what I call “the moral upbringing gap” – i.e. the gap between the motivationally-neutral actions of learners and the dispositions to act reliably from a virtuous motive that such actions are supposed to produce. This gap emerges because the weaker the link between the way in which the actions of learners are performed and the way in which virtuous actions are done by virtuous agents, the more difficult it will be to understand how the repeated performance of the learners’ actions produce genuinely virtuous dispositions. The main aim of this thesis is to show that (and how) shame plays a crucial role in the process of moral development as the moral emotion that provides continuity between the actions of the learners of virtue and the corresponding dispositions that those actions eventually yield. My view is that Aristotle understands shame not as mere fear of external disapproval, nor as mere tendency to find pleasure in the noble, but as an emotion responsive to praise and blame and consequently to considerations about the nobility and shamefulness of one’s own actions and one’s character. Understood this way, shame provides learners with the sort of motivation that allows them to perform genuinely virtuous actions before they have acquired practical wisdom and the stable dispositions characteristic of virtuous agents. Shame thus bridges the “moral upbringing gap” by providing the kind of motivation that, when entrenched by understanding, constitutes moral virtue.

Thesis (M.E.)--International Baptist College Graduate School, 2000. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [113-114]).

Kohlberg's stage model of moral reasoning is able to account for some of the variability in moral behavior, yet much remains unexplained. Recently, a number of components of personality have been proposed as bridging the gap between moral cognition and moral behavior, including that of identity. Kohlberg also theorized moral behavior as being based on transcendent or religious meaning, especially at the highest stages of moral reasoning. The present study is an investigation of the role that identity integration and religious orientation may have in leading to moral behavior. A sample of 60 undergraduates was assessed on identity integration, religious orientation, and level of moral reasoning, as well as moral behavior, using a self-report measure of altruism. A measure of socially desirable responding was used to account for the degree to which altruism scores may have been tainted by impression management. Identity integration, an intrinsic religious orientation, moral reasoning and self-report altruism were all positively related to one another. A regression analysis yielded a model with moral reasoning as the only predictor of altruistic behavior, implying that it is the integration of moral knowledge into identity that accounts for the relations between identity and moral reasoning. The discussion focuses on this relationship, and the relations between identity integration and an intrinsic religious orientation, suggesting that the intrinsic religious scale is a measure of identity integration in the religious domain.

In response to the overemphasis on cognition in understanding the moral domain, this study attempted to draw attention to the contribution personality can make. To do this, people affiliated with health, social and religious organizations were contacted and asked to nominate young adults whom they considered to be moral exemplars. Forty nominated moral exemplars participated in the study, along with forty comparison individuals who were matched to the exemplar group on age, gender, years of education, and ethnicity. Each person was given a battery of questionnaires, as well as participated in a life narrative interview. It was found that, in contrast to the comparison group, moral exemplars possessed a different personality disposition with these individuals rating themselves higher on the trait dimension of Agreeableness. On development-related measures, moral exemplars were found to be more mature in their thinking as reflected in higher scores on Faith Development and Moral Reasoning. As well, moral exemplars were further along in their identity formation as revealed in lower scores on Identity Diffusion. Within the stories regarding their life's high points, more agentic themes were found in those stories coming from moral exemplars. However, when it came to managing their everyday projects, moral exemplars were more disorganized. These diverse findings are discussed in reference to the contributions they make to the formation of a moral identity in the early adult years.

This dissertation is a study of Kohlberg's moral psychology, which is a six-stage model of moral development. Kohlberg claims that his stages form a universal invariant sequence and that they are hierarchical, i.e., higher stages are better than lower stages. Accordingly, he claims that Stage 6 morality, which centers on justice, is universally valid. This ethic of justice is embodied mainly in respect for persons, fairness, and the procedural principle of ideal role taking. Kohlberg claims not only that Stage 6 values and principles are universally valid, but also that they are determinate. In other words, reasoning in terms of these values and principles guarantees that, for each particular moral problem, there will be a distinct solution on which all morally mature people could agree. By making these claims Kohlberg is advocating a strong and traditional version of universalism, which I call 'paradigm universalism.' The dissertation is divided into five chapters. In the first two chapters I outline Kohlberg's theory and explore its philosophical implications. In Chapter 3 I discuss Kohlberg's debates with two important critics, Gilligan and Flanagan. Gilligan claims that Kohlberg's emphasis on justice rather than care indicates a gender bias in his model. Flanagan, on the other hand, argues that since morality is multifarious it is wrong to equate morality either with justice or care of a combination of both. While these criticism do point out certain shortcomings of Kohlberg's theory, I argue that they do not seriously threaten the universal validity of Stage 6 moral values and principles in general. Chapter 4 introduces the main philosophical arguments of this dissertation. In this chapter I argue that (1) moral psychology is relevant to moral philosophy; (2) that the claim of hierarchy for the Kohlbergian stages does receive significant support from his research; and therefore (3) Stage 6 does plausibly reflect certain universal moral ideals. At the same time I allow (4) that there is clearly certain cultural bias in Kohlberg's theory and (5) that he is excessively optimistic about the determinacy of Stage 6 moral reasoning. In the final Chapter, I reflect on the universalism-relativism debate in light of Kohlberg's theory. I argue that paradigm universalism is too strong for Kohlberg to support, and that universalism is acceptable only in a weakened form which I call 'minimal universalism.' Contrary to the hope of paradigm universalists, this minimal universalism cannot serve as a comprehensive theory for solving moral problems. Neither does it exclude all forms of ethical relativism, but it does set important limits to any acceptable relativist theory.

Cognitive-developmental theory claims that moral reasoning ordinarily progresses through distinct stages, and that such development can be stimulated by discussion with others, especially discussions involving exposure to higher-stage reasoning. The concern of this study was the social/contextual factors that interact with cognitive processes involved in the development of moral reasoning. Two types of such factors were studied: namely, sociometric status and intensity of moral education program. The first of these could be studied because the participants were residents of a facility for young offenders (a total institution), characterized by an obvious and rigid hierarchical peer status system within the culture. The second factor could be studied because the participants were drawn from three residential units within the larger center, which varied significantly in terms of their program activities (specifically, unit meetings), and hence their moral climates. A total of 101 young offenders served as participants. They were assessed for moral reasoning, their perceptions of moral and institutional climate, and also through behavioral ratings - all at the pretest and at the 1-month posttest. The three levels of program were reflected in the institutional and moral climate measures. As well, better climates were associated with improvements in behavior and lesser climates with reductions in prosocial behavior. It was concluded that moral climate represents a valid measure of the factors which predict behavior within and following release from institutional settings. In order to study the effects of peer status, 40 participants served as target subjects who engaged in moral dilemma discussions with one other subject, each day for 3 consecutive days. According to cognitive-developmental theory, a dyadic intervention such as the one used here would be expected to stimulate the moral reasoning competence of the participant who is lower in that ability. However, the dyads were formed in such a way that some of the high stage participants (who would be expected to have an influence on their partner) were of significantly lower peer status. It was found that both exposure to higher-stage reasoning and higher peer status were necessary but not sufficient elements within this developmental process, consistent with the Piagetian notions regarding peer interaction and disequilibration.

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