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.

Throughout Africa today Christian missionaries from the United States and Europe are providing more medical assistance than ever before and yet they remain, in much recent scholarship, more often associated with the colonial past than the humanitarian present. In many rural areas of Africa these missionaries provide much of the day-to-day healthcare that is available, treating commonplace afflictions, such as malaria, broken limbs or complications associated with childbirth. This dissertation considers Christian medical humanitarianism and its historical legacies by examining the lives and relationships of the many people who visited and worked at a small mission hospital in rural southern Zambia. Based on archival research and fieldwork (conducted between August 2014 and November 2015, and a month during August 2016), I consider how rural Zambian patients related to the expatriate missionary doctors and Zambian staff as they sought treatment at the hospital. I look at the motivations of the long- and short-term American missionaries, their relations with patients and staff members, and consider how they imagined the beneficial effects of their work. And I examine the place of the Zambian clinical staff members at the hospital – the nurses, clinical officers, laboratory technicians, and others – as they attempted to balance their multiple obligations to family members, neighbours, and friends with the needs of their patients and the high expectations of their missionary colleagues. Engaging with central themes in recent anthropological work on humanitarianism, Christianity, morality and ethics, I argue that Christian missionaries, staff members and patients at the hospital enduringly perceived different aspects of their relationships as morally significant: from the missionaries’ capacity to see the endurance and suffering of Zambian patients as evidence of God’s action in the world, to patients’ praise of the American missionaries as ‘angels’ (bangelo) who arrived from elsewhere and treated them ‘non-selectively’. At the mission hospital, patients, missionaries and staff members brought to their encounters the capacity to perceive moral meaning in their relations in ways that often exceeded one another’s expectations. In response to this, I outline a way of understanding the capacity, among these diverse actors, to perceive moral meaning in their ambivalent and unequal relations. This approach, I suggest, has implications for how we think about suffering, morality and politics, both in contemporary humanitarianism and in forms of anthropological writing.

First, the current study aims to provide companies with a comprehensive understanding on how consumers' ethical associations emerge, so that they will be better positioned to design social strategies aligned with consumers' expectations, and communicate their contribution to several social needs in an effective way. In this context, the objective is to empirically investigate the effect of varying geographic scope of companies' donations on consumers' perceptions of brand morality. The second objective is to examine the impact that a company's donation size has, on consumers' perceptions of brand morality, their willingness to pay a price premium, and their intentions to spread positive word-of-mouth. The third objective of this study is to complement extant research on the role that various individual differences paly on whether or how strongly consumers react to a company's philanthropic activity. Specifically, this research intends to investigate how people's ethnocentric tendency, perceived social control, attributions about company motives, and cause involvement, are likely to exert influence on their perceptions of brand morality, positive word-of-mouth intentions, and willingness to pay more. The final objective of this research is to add knowledge to the literature on potential outcomes of perceived brand morality, which has currently received little attention. More specifically, the question that will be addressed in this study is whether, and to what extent, consumers' positive word-of-mouth communication intentions, and willingness to pay more are affected by their perceptions of the brand's morality.

The study of self within psychology has been limited in a number of ways. Two sets of empirical studies extended the study of self beyond traditional trait-based self-perception. In the first set of studies, seven hundred and eighty-nine adults listed their multiple “self-aspects” that represent meaningful elements of their lives and completed trait ratings for each of their self-aspects. The similarity between trait responses for the different self-aspects indicated the degree of “self-complexity” for a participant, as well as the degree of “self-integration.” Results replicated previous findings indicating that lower self-complexity is associated with higher well-being, and that network-based approaches for measuring self-complexity were more strongly with well-being. Finally, participants who completed the same task 3 weeks later demonstrated an increase in self-integration. Broadly, the results demonstrate that network-based approaches are an effective metric for studying the structure of the self and that future work may have success using networks to inform identity-based interventions. In the second set of studies, five hundred and ninety-four adults completed studies about personal identity and morality. Participants imagined that some trait about someone had changed and were asked to indicate the degree to which the trait change would change the person’s identity. Comparisons of interest examined the degree to which moral trait changes led to more perceived identity change than non-moral trait changes and the degree to which imagining changes to oneself versus to another person yielded differences in perceived identity change. Results replicated previous work indicating that morals lead to most perceived identity change and find that changes to self yielded large perceived identity change than changes to a friend. Moreover, neuroimaging work revealed that thinking about identity change for both targets recruits regions of the cortical midline and that thinking about moral trait words does not recruit any regions compared to thinking about non-moral trait words, challenging previous assumptions about the nature of self-perception and personal identity. Results from both sets of studies were integrated with philosophical and translational perspectives to consider the overall contributions to real-world, self-control issues and broader questions about the nature of the self.

The purpose of this paper is to examine what role anger plays in the moral realm. To do so, I will critique Martha Nussbaum’s view that anger is normatively problematic for sustaining moral relations due to its prevalent relation to seeking payback and status. I will expand the limits Nussbaum imposes on what people can be angry at as well as what are normal responses to the emotion, to attempt to show how anger can be a vital tool in our moral lives as a tool in response to wrongdoing or injustice.

Morality has been a focus in criminal justice with recent events involving officers. This quantitative study offered research in the criminal justice field regarding the moral awareness of corrections officers. The main research question investigated the relationship between the security level of the prison unit in which a corrections officer works and his or her level of morality awareness. The study surveyed corrections officers of prison units in the Ohio Department of Rehabilitations and Corrections and focused on morality awareness of corrections officers. The independent variable was the security level of the prison unit worked in. The dependent variables were the correlational scores of the Defining Issues Test-2nd edition and the Corrections Officer Perception Survey. The security level of the prison unit was analyzed with a multiple regression analysis and concluded the significant difference of the security level. A paired sample t test and general linear multivariate analysis was conducted to determine the relation of variables. The results showed there was a correlation of general morality and morality in the workplace, but there was no significant difference between these two areas nor was there any significant difference in morality between the security levels of the prison units worked in. The lack of understanding and knowledge surrounding morality awareness of corrections officers involving sexual misconduct and other unethical acts has left the criminal justice field in a vulnerable position. This study contributes to social change by incorporating morality awareness of corrections officers that could be checked in preemployment screening in the future. These findings could also assist in reducing future lawsuits inviting all criminal justice employees to participate in future studies of morality awareness to assist in the same preventions.

This study is a transdisciplinary inquiry into the reasons for waging war, for fighting, and for repudiating war as an instrument of foreign policy. In Part I, its essential premise is that there are many ways for analysing the ethics and morality of war, and that to develop a comprehensive understanding of this subject one must be willing to engage with a broad range of alternate views. Though moralists usually argue about the rights and wrongs of conduct from within a given set of ethical ideas, the author's aim has been to move beyond the accepted boundaries of current philosophical argument.Questions raised include: To what extent is it morally right to adopt non-violent, pacifist or abolitionist attitudes?; How should the morality of domestic and ethnic wars be considered?; What are the human costs of war? Case studies such as the Vietnam War, the Falklands War, the Gulf War, Bosnia and Rwanda are used. In Part II, three inescapable observations add to the foundation of the thesis.First, war is not inevitable. Second, the need to prevent war is increasingly urgent.Third, preventing war is possible.Examples from 'hot' spots around the world illustrate that the potential for domestic war can be diffused through the early, skillful and integrated application of political, diplomatic, economic and military measures / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) (Social Ecology)

This thesis will examine intensively “The Tower of Babel: A Morality” a significant work of Thomas Merton, a major spiritual writer of the 20th Century, entitled. In order to explore this play three other works which impacted significantly on the development of the drama will also be examined. These three works are: A poem also called “Tower of Babel”; a second poem entitled “A Responsory” and a musical work titled “The Tower of Babel: An Oratorio”. Even though Victor Kramer, a Merton scholar, noted the significance of the Morality, the existing literature has all but ignored the impact of “The Oratorio” and the drama. Until this author requested a copy of “The Oratorio” from the Merton Centre in Louisville, Kentucky the work had been known by name only and had never been analysed. Yet this work was a major development from the poem “A Responsory” and led to the creation of the Morality Play. This work argues that “A Morality” was pivotal in contributing to personal and spiritual change in Merton as well as developing a greater depth of social understanding in him. It will also argue that the work contained the seeds of future Merton writings. Writing the drama moved Merton towards a contemplative maturity based on communion not simply community. While many studies have alluded to the play none of them have studied it with this particular focus. This new focus is the discovery of the ways Merton attempted to resolve the dilemma he experienced between the paths of monk and poet and how, in doing so, he created for spiritual seekers a fresh inner significance for the Babel story. This work is opening up new ground for an understanding of the importance of Merton’s insights in the contemporary world. The methods used in this thesis are: 1. Contextualising, that is establishing the historical, social, spiritual and literary framework in which the poems and plays were written, and 2. Literary analysis. Part A of the thesis examines the monastic, spiritual, social, literary and academic contexts which brought Merton to the moment of writing the Morality. Part B is organised chronologically and is an intensive analysis of the poems, the Oratorio and the Morality Play. Part C identifies the seeds of future growth contained within the Morality play and points to some of the directions in which these seeds developed in later Merton works.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis examines some projects of moral regulation, implemented by the agents of the church and king in the late Anglo-Saxon period, which sought to modify and govern marital conduct. Theories of moral regulation are analysed in the Introduction, which also examines Germanic marriage practices, as far as they can be recovered, and the Anglo-Saxon church’s inherited attitudes towards marriage. Manuscripts and texts are examined firstly as projects of moral regulation, and secondly as projects which attempted to alter marital behaviour. In Chapter 1, moral regulation is situated within the context of the Benedictine reform through the examination of one manuscript – Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 201 – as a case-study in the cooperative efforts of the church and king to regulate society. In particular, the legislative and penitential texts which are compiled in MS 201 bear witness to the tendency in late Anglo-Saxon England for legislation to be moralised, and for morality to be legislated. MS 201 also includes the unique copy of the Old English translation of Apollonius of Tyre, and the marital morality inscribed therein perhaps accounts for its inclusion in this predominantly Wulfstanian manuscript. In Chapter 2 the riddles recorded in the Exeter Book are interpreted as literary exercises in regulation. This chapter establishes the possible moral and regulatory agenda of the Exeter Book riddles by offering a new interpretation of, and solution to, one riddle. It also analyses the marriages made manifest in some of the so-called ‘double entendre’ riddles, which regulate the moral relationship following Pauline exegesis: emphasis in these riddles is on the sanctity of marriage, wifely obedience, and the payment of the conjugal debt. Conversely, Ælfric, in his Lives of Saints, idealises marriage as characterised by the absence of all sexual relations. In his Life of St Agnes (examined in Chapter 3), and in his Lives of married saints (SS Julian and Basilissa, SS Cecilia and Valerian, and SS Chrysanthus and Daria, examined in Chapter 4), Ælfric makes non-sexual, companionable, and loving marriage morally paradigmatic. Whilst both marriage and morality have been studied by modern critics, neither topic has inspired extended, specific study (with a few, notable, exceptions), and the nexus between these two topics has been hitherto unacknowledged. Although new, and often profound, insight is gained into Anglo-Saxon texts by considering them in the context of moral regulation, the morality they propose, as well as the regulatory process used to impose that morality, varies across context, text, genre, and author. This conclusion is also true for marital morality, Anglo-Saxon perceptions of which differed in each of the texts chosen for evaluation. This thesis does not claim to be comprehensive; nor does it attempt to synthesise attitudes towards marriage and morality, since a synthesis does not do justice to the richness or complexity with which this topic was treated. It is hoped that this thesis will provide insight into not only individual Anglo-Saxon attitudes towards marriage but also processes of regulation and social control, and, indeed, into the intersection between attitudes and processes.

Thesis (M.A. (Ethics))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.