Morality

Perspectives on Psychological Science, Forthcoming

17 Pages Posted: 4 Dec 2007

See all articles by Jonathan Haidt

Jonathan Haidt

New York University (NYU) - Leonard N. Stern School of Business

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Abstract

Moral psychology is a rapidly growing field with two principle lineages. The main line began with Jean Piaget and includes developmental psychologists who have studied the acquisition of moral concepts and reasoning. The alternative line began in the 1990s with a new synthesis of evolutionary, neurological, and social-psychological research in which the central phenomena are moral emotions and intuitions. In this essay I show how both of these lines have been shaped by an older debate between two 19th century narratives about modernity, one celebrating the liberation of individuals, the other mourning the loss of community and moral authority. I suggest that both lines of moral psychology have limited themselves to the moral domain prescribed by the liberation narrative, and so one future step for moral psychology should be to study alternative moral perspectives, particularly religious and politically conservative ones, in which morality is in part about protecting groups, institutions, and souls.

Keywords: morality, moral psychology, intuition, evolution

JEL Classification: Z00

Suggested Citation

Haidt, Jonathan, Morality. Perspectives on Psychological Science, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1052601

Jonathan Haidt (Contact Author)

New York University (NYU) - Leonard N. Stern School of Business ( email )

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