Professional decision making in forensic clinical practice may have lifelong consequences for offenders. Although information on moral development is important for prediction of reoffending and referral to adequate treatment, conclusions regarding moral development are still largely based on unstructured clinical judgment instead of assessment instruments. For this study, the authors examined t...

Morality is at the core of social development. How individuals treat one another, develop a sense of obligation toward others regarding equality and equity, and understand the emotions experienced by victims and victimizers, are essential ingredients for healthy development, and for creating a just and civil society. In this chapter, we review research on two forms of social exclusion, intergro...

Research on distributive justice indicates that preschool-age children take issues of equity and merit into account when distributing desirable items, but that they often prefer to see desirable items allocated equally in third-party tasks. By contrast, less is known about the development of retributive justice. In a study with 4- to 10-year-old children (n = 123) and adults (n = 93), we direct...

Medical ethics education remains an important venue of moral education. In spite of the intensity of these efforts, the desired outcomes of medical ethics education remain obscure, undefined and largely untested. In the first part of this study, the goals of medical ethics are operationalized along cognitive, behavioral and attitudinal dimensions. This includes a written moral judgment test, a ...

Communities have been concerned with the type of person that children become throughout human history, and scholars have addressed the topic for over two thousand years. Aristotle addressed this issue in the Nichomachean Ethics. Jean Jacques Rousseau faced it directly in Emile in 1762. Over the past century a wealth of data has been amassed concerning the development of morality in children and...

This study determined salient themes of female individuals who are inside the academic setting on their concept of happiness and moral development. The idea of studying the Filipina Female Concept of Happiness came from two areas of study – Female Psychology and Positive Psychology. The researchers were intrigued by the idea that since the female brain is influenced by various amounts of hormon...

Previous theories of moral development such as those by Piaget and Kohlberg usually focused on the cognitive or rational aspect, and seldom included the affective aspect in their construction. The characteristics of the stages of moral development in the present paper are elaborated with special reference to psychological needs, altruism and human relationships, and justice reasoning. The three...

People vary in the extent to which they imbue an attitude with moral conviction; however, little is known about what makes an issue transform from a relatively non-moral preference to a moral conviction. In the context of the 2012 U.S. presidential election, we test if affect and beliefs (thoughts about harms and benefits) are antecedents or consequences of participants’ moral conviction about ...

This paper addresses the current debate in public higher education regarding the proper goals of ethical education. On one side are those who espouse the classical aim of moral character formation, and on the other, those who emphasize the liberal aim of selfdetermination and autonomy. The paper attempts to analyze this debate in light of the context of Christian moral education and puts forth ...

Moral competence refers to the affective orientation to perform altruistic behaviors and the ability to judge moral issues logically. A five-stage theory of moral development is proposed. Both western and Chinese perspectives are incorporated in the elaboration of the characteristics of each stage. A brief review of the antecedents of moral competence is presented. The relationship between mora...