Moral Cognition, Emotions, and Neuroscience: An Integrative Developmental View

Longstanding debates about whether morality is best defined in terms of emotions or judgments have been recently rekindled. In this essay, we review recent approaches from social psychology and moral neuroscience that have emphasized emotions and intuitions as central to morality. We assert that the results of developmental science research on judgments and reasoning informs these approaches and provides an integrative view, drawing on judgments and emotions to explain the acquisition of morality in ontogenesis. We discuss developmental research that supports a theory of morality in which judgments are central and children use emotions to interpret morally relevant situations. Drawing on extensive empirical findings, we conclude that defining morality as the principled treatment of others based on fairness, justice, and others’ welfare remains the fundamental basis of morality in humans.