Moral psychology

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. 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. 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. 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. 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: Stages 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.