This study consists of two parts: the first part is the establishment of a theoretical model of moral development and the second part is an empirical study which includes the construction of a new psychological test called The Moral Development Test (MDT). The proposed theory postulates the following three parameters to explain the fundamental nature of moral development: Basic Psychological Needs (Parameter N), Human Relationships (R) and Structures of Judgmeht (J). Different current theories are applied in the elaboration of the above three parameters: Humanistic Psychology particularly Maslow's Theory for N, Sociobiological Theory of Kinship for R and Cognitive-developmental theory for J. The theory is a 7-stage model. In addition, an attempt is made to employ the Chinese Tao Philosophy in the primitive establishment of a theoretical basis for the Ultimate Stage of Human Development i.e. Stage 7 in the theory. The derivation of the theory is mathematically oriented. The MDT is constructed mainly for validating the above theoretical model. Each form of the MDT consists of five or six hypothetical dilemmas. The questions for each dilemma are divided into two parts. Part I is used to test the Parameters N and R and Part II the Parameter J. It was found that the test-retest and internal consistency reliabilities of the major MDT indices (labelled as NRRJ and WNRRJ indices) were usually in the 0.80s to 0.90s. The face validity, convergent-divergent validity and the construct validity have been demonstrated to be good. In addition, results of cross-cultural analyses using the English (London) and Chinese (Hong Kong) samples also support the cultural universal hypothesis of the present theoretical model. Nevertheless, the MDT only explores features of moral development up to the fifth stage of the present 7-stage model.

Orientador: Maria Suzana de Stefano Menin / Banca: Alessandra de Morais Shimizu / Banca: Raul Aragão Martins / Resumo: Esta pesquisa investigou as representações sociais e os julgamentos morais sobre injustiças que alunos(as) de escolas particulares e públicas do município de Presidente Prudente (SP) fizeram em situações escolares verificando a influência, nessas cognições, de diferentes pertinências sociais (idade, sexo, escolas particulares ou públicas). Para análise teórica, foram utilizadas as abordagens da Psicologia do Desenvolvimento Moral de Piaget, Kohlberg e Gilligan e das Representações Sociais criada por Moscovici. Como procedimentos metodológicos, foram realizadas observações em salas de quinta série do ensino fundamental e primeira do ensino médio e foi aplicado um questionário que continha várias indagações sobre injustiças na escola. Como resultados das observações, verificou-se que queixas espontâneas de injustiças que ocorrem no interior da escola foram freqüentes tanto em meninos quanto em meninas. Considerando como “queixas de injustiças” aquelas queixas dos alunos que se incluíam nos diferentes tipos de injustiças apontados por Piaget, quais sejam, injustiça legal, retributiva, distributiva e social, verificamos que na escola particular na 5ª. série as queixas identificadas foram, em primeiro lugar, do tipo distributiva e, em menor proporção, queixas do tipo retributiva. Na escola pública foram comuns queixas do tipo distributiva. Na escola particular, na 1ª. série do ensino médio, foram freqüentes queixas do tipo distributivo, e, em menor proporção, queixas do tipo retributiva. Na escola pública, nesta série, não foram identificadas queixas de injustiças que se enquadrassem nas categorias de injustiças propostas por Piaget e Kohlberg. Apareceram, também, queixas, tanto em escolas particulares quanto na pública, que apontaram o descontentamento dos(as) alunos(as) em relação aos aspectos pedagógicos. / Abstract: This research investigated the social representations and the moral judgements about injustices that private and public schools students (boys and girls) of the municipal district of Presidente Prudente (SP) did in school situations, verifying the influence, in those cognitions, of different social pertinences (age, sex, private or public schools). For theoretical analysis, it were utilized the approaches of the Moral Development Psychology of Piaget, Kohlberg and Gilligan, and of the Social Representations created by Moscovici. As methodological procedures, observations were accomplished at rooms from 5th grade of the fundamental school and first of the high school, and it was applied a questionnaire that contained several inquiries about injustices at school. As results of the observations, it was verified that spontaneous complaints of injustice that happen inside the school were frequent both in boys and in girls. Considering as “injustice complaints” those students complaints that included in the differents injustices types indicated by Piaget, which are, legal injustice, retributive, distributive and social, verified at private school on the 5th grade the complaints identified were, in first place, distributive and, in smaller proportion, complaints of the retributive type. At public school were usual complaints of the distributive type. At private school, on the 1 th grade of the high school, were frequent complaints of the distributive type, and, in smaller proportion, complaints of the retributive type. At public school, in on this grade, were not identified injustice complaints that framed in the injustice categories proposed by Piaget and Kohlberg. Appeared, also, complaints, both at private schools and at public school, that indicated the students dissatisfaction in relation to the pedagogic aspects. / Mestre

In my thesis, I examine the role of character friendship for the agent’s moral development in Aristotle’s ethics. I contend that we should divide character friendship in two categories: a) character friendship between completely virtuous agents, and, b) character friendship between unequally developed, or, equally developed, yet not completely virtuous agents. Regarding the first category, I argue that this highest form of friendship provides the opportunity for the agent to advance his understanding of certain virtues through the help of his virtuous friend. This process can be expressed in two ways. In the first way, I take character friendship in (a) as a relationship that is based on mutual relinquishing of opportunities for action or giving up external goods based on each agent’s needs. This process helps the agents develop their character in certain virtues which have remained slightly underdeveloped than others due to nature (NE 1144b4-7), or development (Politics 1329a9ff). This means, for instance, that if agent A is wealthy and his friend B is a middle class worker and they win the lottery together, A will relinquish his share of money to his friend so that he will be able to practice the virtue of magnificence; a virtue that his previous financial condition prevented him from developing appropriately. The second process is rather different and new in scholarly debate concerning Aristotle’s theory of moral development. I suggest that the completely virtuous agent is able to further develop his character through a process I will describe as interpretative mimesis. In this process, the agent receives the form of his friend’s action and is able to apply this pattern of behaviour in a situation that he thinks is appropriate. I have to highlight though the fact the fact that he does not just ape his friend’s action. Instead, he interprets the action based on his skills and abilities and the demands of the situations he faces. Thus, this pattern works as an extra epistemological tool in the agent’s hand in new and challenging moral situations. Now, case (b) comes on the opposite side of the majority of scholars’ view on character friendship. They think that Aristotle reserves character friendship only for completely virtuous agents. I argue that this is not the correct approach, and that less than completely virtuous agents can take part in character friendships as well. This view has the advantage of making character friendship in (b) a tool in Aristotle’s hands for his agents of lower moral level to develop their understanding of virtue and its applications. I propose that the route of moral development in case (b) resembles the one in the second process of case (a). Namely, the agent receives the form of his friend’s action and uses it as a pattern in some new situation he has to face. I will not name the process though as “interpretative” or any kind of mimesis. The reason for this is that Aristotle gives us textual evidence (NE 1172a9-14) for an imitative method of moral development only for the second process of case (a). I will take case (b) then as a pattern guide application of my friend’s action which we could call pre-interpretative mimesis period of the agent’s moral development. If my arguments are correct then character friendship is much more valuable than scholars thought. Our friends turn out to be examples of good action who guide us through the sweaty and painful path that is called virtue. And this path never stops; even if we have become “moral heroes”; or, put it differently, “masters” of practical wisdom.

This study was designed to explore possible relations between moral maturity and moral action by evaluating groups of delinquent and non-delinquent youth, and examining their relative position on multiple measures of moral maturity and criminality. Subjects were 60 male adjudicated juvenile offenders between the ages of 14 and 17, and 20 non-delinquent controls. All youth participated in a series of structured interviews used as a way of assessing their abilities on Kohlberg's moral reasoning, Turiel's social convention understanding, and Selman's social perspective taking measures, and were administered Hogan's socialization, empathy, and autonomy scales. The delinquent youth were assigned immorality ratings and further classified according to legal categories. Ratings for Hare's Psychopathy Checklist were obtained from primary therapists for the delinquents and from school counsellors for the non-delinquent comparison group. The results revealed that as a group, delinquent subjects showed substantial developmental delays in their performances on measures of moral reasoning, social convention understanding, interpersonal awareness and indices of socialization and autonomy. Hogan's empathy measure also showed a trend in the same direction. The majority of the delinquent youth were found to score at a preconventional-concrete reasoning level and showed a general lack of social-moral character. Tests of communality among the six moral maturity measures produced distinct and internally consistent cognitive reasoning (i.e., moral reasoning, interpersonal awareness, and social convention understanding) and moral character (i.e., socialization, empathy, and autonomy) clusters which lend support to the claims of Brown, Harre, and Hogan regarding the multidimensionality of moral development. There was an expected inverse relationship between immorality and moral maturity for the low and moderate seriousness groups, and an inconsistent pattern for the high group. This later finding was interpreted as an artifact of the fact that those delinquents whose criminal acts were judged most immoral were particularly guilty of various sexual offenses. The psychometric properties of the Psychopathy Checklist confirm its usefulness with adolescent populations. Three internally consistent factor scales emerged (i.e., motivational deficit, lack of ego strength, and behavioral deviation). While psychopathy was found to significantly correlate with immorality ratings, an unexpected positive relationship was also found between psychopathy and moral reasoning for the sex offender group. Taken together, all of these results were interpreted in terms of Heider's theory of the psychology of action, which views behavior, in this case moral behavior, as a combination of "can" (i.e., moral reasoning competency) and "try" (i.e., moral character). / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

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. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

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. / Arts, Faculty of / Philosophy, Department of / Graduate

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. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

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. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

Volunteering and service-learning (a pedagogical practice that combines volunteering with university-level courses) are associated with positive academic, psychological, and prosocial development in university students. Taking part in service-learning and volunteering is generally assumed to contribute to student development (Chapter 1), although little is known about students’ characteristics on entry into service-learning, specifically in comparison to volunteering or non-volunteering students. Characteristics of students who participate in service-learning or volunteering are shaped by institutional factors (Chapter 2) and are in turn related to developmental outcomes (Chapter 3). The unique motives for university student volunteering, particularly self-oriented motives such as career and understanding have likewise received little attention (Chapter 4). This thesis is structured in five chapters. Chapter 1 is an overview of key theoretical and practical issues in volunteering and service-learning research, including volunteering and service-learning in Canada and at the University of Ottawa. Chapter 2 is a study of 266 university students enrolled in developmental psychology courses offering elective service-learning. A model of institutional structuring of volunteering and service-learning was developed to examine students’ characteristics at entry into service. The study identified a novel subset of service-learners (service-learners with no prior volunteering engagement) that have yet to be examined in the literature. Chapter 3 is a longitudinal study, using the same sample as Chapter 2, testing developmental change using multi-level linear modelling (students nested in courses) to examine academic, psychological, and prosocial change over one semester, however, few changes were found. Chapter 4 examined volunteering motivations and prosocial tendencies among 270 undergraduate students, with the goal of testing the impact of motivations on wellbeing. Supporting past research, the study demonstrated that other-oriented volunteer motives are associated with well-being, however, some self-oriented volunteer motives (career and understanding motives) were positively associated with well-being contrary to expectations and previous research. Chapter 5 integrates the overall findings from each chapter in a general discussion, exploring: novel contributions of this thesis to the research literature, theoretical and practical issues raised in this dissertation, the connection between results and issues raised in the research literature, and limitations of the results with suggestions for future directions.

Serial murder investigations are normally hard for police to handle because of problems that appear internal and external to the police department. While the traditional techniques of investigating a crime (presence witness or witnesses, collecting evidence, and obtaining a confession from the suspect) are helpful in normal situations, their rare application to serial murder cases is only further complicated by other issues. This recognition of investigative issues is critical for not only apprehending these dangerous types of individuals but also for preventing more murders. Case studies of six serial killers have been examined to clarify the issues, using the traditional techniques of investigation as a reference. The data have been interpreted in terms of the factors present in helping to apprehend the offender as well as the problems that hindered the investigation. A final discussion of solutions and the identification of other problems that have not been previously addressed in other works are offered. It is imperative to take note of these issues and work to diminish and/or resolve them for more effectively pursuing serial killers. With acknowledgement of where law enforcement is deficient, a larger effort can be made to not only minimize but possibly even eliminate the errors within an investigation.