Cognition and Norms: Toward a Developmental Theory Linking Trust, Reciprocity, and Willingness to Cooperate

I suggest that the constructivist developmental framework in psychology is of real significance for advancing our understanding on rational action and normative commitment in social action dilemmas. Yet, the recognition of the implications of the developmental perspective to deal with intersubjective conflicts of action has been hindered by often undisputed epistemological presuppositions which deny cognitive content to “value judgments,” “moral questions,” and the existential relevance of consciousness and culture. In this paper, I bring the epistemological issue to the fore in order to introduce a proposal for integrating of the developmental point of view into the Institutional Analysis and Development framework. I rely chiefly upon Jürgen Habermas’s discourse theory of ethics and his developmental account of the human capacity to coordinate interaction through communicative action. I then suggest how the implications of the resulting integration can be tested in subsequent experimental research. The interested reader is directed to preliminary experimental results reported elsewhere.