Egocentrism shapes moral judgements

Egocentrism in moral development: Gibbs, Piaget, Kohlberg

In Gibb’s theory of moral development Piagetian ideas concerning egocentrism play an important role. Based on these ideas Gibbs offers a detailed analysis of transitions in moral development. However, Gibbs still fails to utilize the full potential offered by Piaget’s equilibration theory, because he does not generalize the idea of overcoming egocentrism, as an important mechanism, to all stage...

On Moral Judgements and Personality Disorders

Psychopathic personality has always been a conten tious concept, but it continues to be used in clinical practice and research. It also has its contemporary synonyms in the categories of antisocial personality disorder in DSM-III (American Psychiatric Associa tion, 1980) and “¿ personality disorder with pre dominantly asocial or sociopathic manifestations― in ICD—9(World Health Organizati...

When injustice is at stake, moral judgements are not parochial.

The role of analytic thinking in moral judgements and values

While individual differences in the willingness and ability to engage analytic processing have long informed research in reasoning and decision making, the implications of such differences have not yet had a strong influence in other domains of psychological research. We claim that analytic thinking is not limited to problems that have a normative basis and, as an extension of this, predict tha...

How serotonin shapes moral judgment and behavior

Neuroscientists are now discovering how hormones and brain chemicals shape social behavior, opening potential avenues for pharmacological manipulation of ethical values. Here, we review recent studies showing how altering brain chemistry can alter moral judgment and behavior, focusing in particular on the neuromodulator serotonin and its role in shaping values related to harm and fairness. We s...