The Development and Structure of Conscience [1 ed.] 2009013649, 0203869214, 9781841697420

Table of contents :
Book Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
Figures
Preface
1 The development of conscience: Concepts and theoretical and empirical approaches: An introduction
Part I: Theoretical and cultural historical notions on conscience
2 Moral violations and the ordinary moral person
3 Conscience: Does religion matter?: Empirical studies of religious elements in pro-social behaviour, prejudice, empathy development, and moral decision-making
4 Like snowflakes and memories: Affective, cognitive, and conative facets of conscience in middle and later childhood
Part II: Moral reasoning
5 Moral reasoning competence and the moral judgment–action discrepancy in young adolescents
6 Moral atmosphere and moral behaviour: A study into the role of adolescents’ perception of moral atmosphere for antisocial behaviour
7 Measuring moral development: Stages as markers along a latent developmental dimension
Part III: Social emotions
8 Reconciling interpersonal versus responsibility-based models of guilt
9 Children’s feelings and evaluations about altruistic and self-serving lies
10 Does shame bring out the worst in narcissists?: On moral emotions and immoral behaviours
11 Do violent media numb our consciences?
12 “Happy” and “unhappy” victimizers: The development of moral emotions from childhood to adolescence
Part IV: Conscience and antisocial behaviour
13 Young children’s self-regulation and the development of moral conduct
14 Sex differences in types of aggressive behaviours: Do women have a higher level of conscience than men?
15 Social cognition and selfregulation: Change in outcome expectations and aggressive behaviour over time
16 Conscience in the classroom: Early adolescents’ moral emotions, moral judgments, and moral identity as predictors of their interpersonal behaviour
Author index
Subject index

Citation preview

The Development and Structure of Conscience

This book focuses on the structure and development of conscience, a subject that has been dominant in developmental psychology since the 18th century. International experts in the field contribute to this broad overview of the relevant research on the development of moral emotions and on the Kohlbergian-originated cognitive aspects of moral development. The first section of the book focuses on the cultural conditions that create the context for the development of conscience, such as moral philosophy, religion, and media violence. Building on the theory and research on emotion, other chapters cover issues including the development of shame, self-regulation and moral conduct, social cognition, and models of guilt. The book also covers moral reasoning, identity, atmosphere, and behaviour, and discusses subjects such as lying, how to measure moral development, and issues surrounding gender and aggression. The Development and Structure of Conscience will be ideal reading for researchers and students of developmental and educational psychology. Willem Koops is Distinguished Professor of Developmental Psychology at Utrecht University. He has taught at the VU University Amsterdam, the University of Michigan, and several other universities in the USA, Japan, and Indonesia. Daniel Brugman is Professor of Developmental Psychology: Aspects of Intervention in Youth Care at Utrecht University. His research interests include the effectiveness of programmes to stimulate moral development in children and adolescents and on the relations between moral cognitions and antisocial behaviour. Tamara J. Ferguson is Professor of Psychology in the Department of Developmental Psychology at Utah State University. Her research interests include the role of emotion in managing one’s identity and the impact of such emotion on social relationships and behaviours. Andries F. Sanders is Emeritus Professor of Experimental Psychology and Ergonomics at the VU University Amsterdam and at the RWTH in Aachen, Germany. He was Managing Editor-in-Chief of Acta Psychologica from 1976 until 1990 and is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The Development and Structure of Conscience

Edited by Willem Koops, Daniel Brugman, Tamara J. Ferguson, and Andries F. Sanders The editors would like to thank the Van der Gaag Foundation for their support of this book

Published in 2010 by Psychology Press 27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Psychology Press 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 www.psypress.com This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

Psychology Press is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business Copyright © 2010 Psychology Press All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. This publication has been produced with paper manufactured to strict environmental standards and with pulp derived from sustainable forests. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The development and structure of conscience / edited by Willem Koops . . . [et al.]. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Conscience. 2. Moral development. I. Koops, W. (Willem) BJ1471.D48 2010 155.2′5–dc22 2009013649 ISBN 0-203-86921-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN: 978–1–84169–742–0 (hbk)

Contents

List of figures Preface 1 The development of conscience: Concepts and theoretical and empirical approaches. An introduction

ix xi

1

WILLEM KOOPS, DANIEL BRUGMAN, AND TAMARA J. FERGUSON

PART I

Theoretical and cultural historical notions on conscience 2 Moral violations and the ordinary moral person

23 25

BERT MUSSCHENGA

3 Conscience: Does religion matter? Empirical studies of religious elements in pro-social behaviour, prejudice, empathy development, and moral decision-making

49

JAMES MEREDITH DAY

4 Like snowflakes and memories: Affective, cognitive, and conative facets of conscience in middle and later childhood

69

TAMARA J. FERGUSON

PART II

Moral reasoning 5 Moral reasoning competence and the moral judgment–action discrepancy in young adolescents DANIEL BRUGMAN

117

119

vi

Contents

6 Moral atmosphere and moral behaviour: A study into the role of adolescents’ perception of moral atmosphere for antisocial behaviour

135

MARIANNE S. DE WOLFF AND DANIEL BRUGMAN

7 Measuring moral development: Stages as markers along a latent developmental dimension

151

JAN BOOM

PART III

Social emotions 8 Reconciling interpersonal versus responsibility-based models of guilt

169

171

TAMARA J. FERGUSON AND HEIDI L. DEMPSEY

9 Children’s feelings and evaluations about altruistic and self-serving lies

207

MARK MEERUM TERWOGT, TJEERT OLTHOF, AND CAROLIEN RIEFFE

10 Does shame bring out the worst in narcissists? On moral emotions and immoral behaviours

221

SANDER THOMAES, HEDY STEGGE, AND TJEERT OLTHOF

11 Do violent media numb our consciences?

237

BRAD J. BUSHMAN, JESSE CHANDLER, AND L. ROWELL HUESMANN

12 “Happy” and “unhappy” victimizers: The development of moral emotions from childhood to adolescence

253

MONIKA KELLER, AGNES BRANDT, AND GUDRIDUR SIGURDARDOTTIR

PART IV

Conscience and antisocial behaviour

269

13 Young children’s self-regulation and the development of moral conduct

271

ANNEMIEK KARREMAN, CATHY VAN TUIJL, MARCEL A. G. VAN AKEN, AND MAJA DEKOVIC´

14 Sex differences in types of aggressive behaviours: Do women have a higher level of conscience than men? SYLVANA M. CÔTÉ

287

Contents 15 Social cognition and self-regulation: Change in outcome expectations and aggressive behaviour over time

vii 311

JOHN E. LOCHMAN

16 Conscience in the classroom: Early adolescents’ moral emotions, moral judgments, and moral identity as predictors of their interpersonal behaviour

327

TJEERT OLTHOF

Author index Subject index

343 354

Figures

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7.6

11.1 11.2 13.1

14.1 14.2 15.1

15.2

Three types of consistency Moral atmosphere (composite) as a moderator in the relationship between moral competence and moral behaviour Moral atmosphere (composite) as a mediator between moral competence and moral behaviour Percentages of stage use per age group for moral development Complex Developmental Model Overlapping Waves Model (a) Basic S-shape of the logistic function that maps Logit scores to the probability of responding. (b) Category boundary response functions for a four-category polytomous item (a) Category boundary response functions for a fourcategory polytomous item, with areas representing stage use shaded. (b) Unstacked version of (a). A series of overlapping waves, representing the use of the respective stages. The top of each stage-characteristic curve represents the stage as a marker along the scale Data based on 287 studies involving 51,597 subjects Conservative scientific versus news reports of the effect of media violence on aggression Interaction between child effortful control and observed positive control by fathers in the prediction of externalizing problems at 3 years Developmental trajectories of physical aggression Developmental trajectories of indirect aggression Slopes of outcome expectations for aggression across time for Coping Power intervention and control children in growth curve analyses Mean levels of outcome expectations for aggression across time for Coping Power with booster, Coping Power without booster, and control children

126 138 138 157 158 158

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164 241 245

279 291 294

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Preface

In June 2006 Andries Sanders and Willem Koops organized a conference on “The development and structure of conscience”. This conference was part of a project, sponsored by the Van der Gaag Foundation, that is under the auspices of The Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. The project reflects an increasing concern about the perceived fading of norms and values in present-day Western (in this case specifically Dutch) society. Research on topics related to the conference was felt to be relevant to the presumed societal problems involved. The conference took place in the Tabe Zijlstra Hall of the Christ Triumphant Church in The Hague, The Netherlands. Happily enough many esteemed colleagues within as well as outside The Netherlands were prepared to present and discuss their research and its relevance for the study of the development of conscience. We decided to publish a book with chapters based on the presentations. For handling all the work of reviewing and editing Andries and Willem sought the collaboration of Daniel Brugman and Tamara Ferguson. Daniel and Tamara were working on a study of the relevant literature on psychological research on the development of conscience, another part of the Van der Gaag project. We decided together that, apart from their input in the review process for this book, we would also include in the book the main outcome of their study of the literature as well as the gist of their own research on the topic. This led to an extra set of chapters in this book. We, as the four editors of this book, are most grateful for the financial and intellectual support of the Van der Gaag Foundation and The Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. Furthermore we thank Mrs Madelon Pieper, personal assistant of Willem Koops, for her decisive desk editorial and organizational work. Her support helped us to overcome the final obstacles. Lastly we thank our publisher, Psychology Press, and in particular their representative Rohays Perry for their continuous support and understanding. The authors, who were very cooperative, hopefully are happy with the result and feel that their patience has paid off. It is eventually our hope that this book will stimulate colleagues to theorize about conscience development and offer them ideas and paradigms to do research in this important and

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Preface

highly relevant area of developmental psychology, pedagogy, and society at large. Willem Koops, Daniel Brugman, Tamara J. Ferguson, and Andries F. Sanders Utrecht, 20 December 2008

1

The development of conscience: Concepts and theoretical and empirical approaches An introduction Willem Koops Department of Developmental Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands Daniel Brugman Department of Developmental Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands Tamara J. Ferguson Department of Psychology, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA

It is not always realized that from the very beginnings of the fields of developmental psychology and education the core questions asked were predominantly about morality. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile (Rousseau, 1763) is above all a book that resulted from Rousseau’s quest for morality. That was the reason for Immanuel Kant’s admiration for Rousseau (Koops, 2008). Where Rousseau’s great work laid the foundation for developmental and pedagogical thinking (Koops, 2008) one could maintain that the entire field is basically about moral development and education. From the very beginning in the 18th century there have been two approaches; the dominant one within developmental psychology was, as just indicated, Rousseau’s cognitive approach. But from the same century there is a different orientation on conscience, one that stems from a friend and colleague of Rousseau, namely the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Volume 2 of Hume’s main work (1739/40) is entitled Of the passions and it is here that he explains that emotions are always primary. He acknowledges that reason could control the expression of emotions, but that it had no control over the emotions. For him reason was a “slave to the passions”. This precisely was the reason why Hume attacked rationalistic ethics (from Rousseau to Kant) in Volume 3, entitled Of morals: “. . . he did not provide a normative ethics whereby we can live, but ethics that was solely the expression of our feelings of benevolence or ‘fellow feelings’ ” (Farreras, 2000, p. 201). So from the 18th century on there is a Rousseauian foundation of a cognitive approach and a Humeian foundation of an emotional approach to

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conscience. Both philosophers had a decisive influence on psychology generally and on developmental psychology in particular. Both foundational philosophical approaches make clear that from the very beginning developmental psychology should, one way or another, account for both possible approaches. At the same time it is historically clear that developmental psychology and education, as academic fields, are predominantly occupied with moral issues. This is not the usual presentation of the field: any handbook of developmental psychology is mainly dedicated to cognitive development, with moral development being a relatively marginal aspect of the discussions of cognitive development. It is only relatively recently that some innovative attention in research has been dedicated to the role of emotions. We concentrate in this book on actual research on moral development, in particular the development of conscience, from a cognitive as well as an emotional perspective. In this chapter we first consider conceptual issues, then we move to the Piaget–Kohlberg tradition of the cognitive development of conscience, followed by a discussion of the emotional side. Finally, the chapter describes the design and content of the entire book.

The conceptualization of conscience In this first section we analyse the concept of conscience by concentrating on different facets of the concept, by discussing the system of relationships between these facets, and by describing the layperson’s implicit views on the concept of conscience. Facets of conscience Traditionally, philosophers and scientists construed conscience as a unified faculty (e.g., Childress, 1970), yet this conceptualization is fraught with tautologies. Fundamentally, however, conscience is of or about the individual. The content of any two individuals’ conscience is not identical. Shared in common, however, are the three facets of conscience (cognitive, emotional, and conative) that Broad (1973) delineated, with each of these restricted to the intentional object of morality. Each component involves a complex set of processes that can operate differentially in individuals as a function of cultural, historical, developmental, and social influences. Broad (1973, p. 8) considers a conscientious person as one who has and who exercises the: . . . cognitive power of reflecting on his own past and future actions, and considering whether they are right or wrong; of reflecting on his own motives, intentions, emotions, dispositions, and character, and considering whether they are morally good or bad; and of reflecting on the relative moral value of various alternative ideals of character and conduct . . .

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and who possesses the . . . emotional disposition to feel certain particular emotions, such as remorse, feeling of guilt, . . . shame, and moral approval, etc., in respect of the moral characteristics which he believes these to have . . . as well as . . . conative disposition to seek what he believes to be good and to shun what he believes to be bad, as such, and to do what he believes to be right and avoid what he believes to be wrong, as such. Activated in anticipation of a deed, while resolving a particular moral dilemma or resisting a specific temptation, Broad construed the three processes as iterative in nature. Clearly, moreover, Broad attributed prime importance to the cognitive facet, particularly during pre-act deliberation and evaluation. The emotional processes are what might be termed pre-event “amplifiers” that intensify the salience of one’s moral standards (cognition) and commitments or desires (conation). That the three processes can unfold in a different sequence after the decision to act is less clear in Broad’s analysis. In this reactive case, our sense is that wilful standard violations readily trigger the emotional facet in highly conscientious individuals. In turn, these feelings of remorse, guilt, or shame can activate post-event attention to cognitive and conative elements. The specific emotions aroused affect (and reflect) the thoughts and motivations the person entertains or rejects. The specific emotions expressed also alter how and with what intensity others react, thereby further influencing the unfolding interaction. In short, transformations can occur to elements within a facet and to the relationship of elements in one facet to elements of another. Conscience as a system of relationships Although largely agreeing with Broad’s characterization of each of the three components, Langston (2001) stresses that none of them, individually or combined, suffice to describe how well or poorly conscience functions. Langston conceptualizes conscience functioning as a system coordinating the relationships among the cognitive, emotional, and conative components. He illustrates this relational view of conscience by means of an “automobile” analogy. Imagine discerning when, why, and how an automobile is well or poorly functioning. Any long list of features associated with automobile-ness (e.g., wheels, drive train, gears, engine, muffler, steering mechanism, windows, doors, seats; transportation, fuel efficiency, safety, weight, cost, comfort, design aesthetics) fails to capture the vital essence of a well functioning or malfunctioning car. Evaluations of a car’s functionality involve assessing each component’s integrity as such and in relationship to other components.

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Not recognized by Langston, however, are additional factors influencing even these “physical” relationships. These include the car’s operators and passengers, how well the car is maintained, the routes, miles, or terrain typically negotiated, and the weather conditions or climate to which the car is subjected. Similarly, to describe conscience, as it functions well or poorly, one needs to identify and evaluate constituents of each relevant component, know how these are interrelated, and understand which component interrelationships contribute to different degrees or types of functionality. Evaluations of the functionality of a given system of conscience analogously depend on various sources of influence. Strengths or flaws in a particular component and its relationship to other components may result from factors involving engineering, design, production, maintenance, and the system’s users, passengers, or backseat drivers. In addition, the very same “system” might be well adapted in certain longer term contexts but break down in others (e.g., a supportive versus punitive family; a cutthroat versus supportive school or work setting); similarly, features of the more immediate context (e.g., natural disasters, divorce, employment loss) might challenge a system’s known integrity and design. The layperson’s view of conscience Broad’s and Langston’s views argue the existence of the three facets of conscience or conscientiousness. Their important and joint roles also are easy to illustrate based on various metaphors or similes of conscience in the English language. This language is replete with similes portraying the agony of acting contrary to conscience and the torment experienced while deliberating a moral dilemma. The person “racked by conscience” ruminates about a misdeed. Chewing the moral cud may function to “subdue conscience”, and seems equivalent to clearing working memory of conscience-oriented thoughts, emotions, or motivations. Examples consistent with these observations are those contrasting conscience as “clear”, “unburdened”, “silenced”, or “quiet” with conscience as “a burden”, “a weight” and “harsh”, or something that “seeps through”. Many additional examples illustrate conscience’s attention-getting functions (e.g., one’s conscience is “tweaked”, or “pricked”) and its affective–cognitive costs (it “grates on you”, “gnaws at you”, “picks at your soul”). They all seem to illustrate the highly motivating properties of conscience. Other examples illustrate the painful affective costs of not listening to the sometimes soft and other times booming “voice” of conscience; many of these are physical or somatic in nature. These include feeling as though “a noose is around one’s neck”, “there’s a pit in my stomach”, “blood sticking to one’s hands”; these contrast with certain somatically described rewards, such as “it was like having a heavy weight lifted off me” or “purging one’s soul”. That particular affects are central to conscience functioning is easily

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observable in similes referring specifically to guilt (“racked by” or “consumed by” guilt; “stricken with guilt”; being “flooded with”, “ridden with”, or “riddled by” guilt) or shame (“couldn’t look him in the eye”, “felt naked and caught”). It seems that the “average” individual’s thoughts, memories, and emotional reactions to standard violations often consume much of working or active memory. One fascinating line of study might be, in fact, whether individual or developmental differences in conscience functioning are attributable to similar “surpluses” or “deficits” in attention or working memory. For most individuals, acting in accordance with conscience yields cognitive and affective benefits, as in “a quiet conscience sleeps in thunder”, or “there is no softer pillow than a clear conscience”. On the other hand, acts that are mentally (e.g., imagining illicit sexual acts) or actually (e.g., cheating on one’s income tax form) wicked result in “pain” or “punishment” in each of the cognitive, affective, and motivational realms. Literally, the term “conscience” refers to knowledge or awareness of moral aspects of one’s conduct. As any budding psychoanalyst, cognitive psychologist, neuroscientist, or Jiminy Cricket will remind us, however, conscience can guide us outside of awareness, in much the same way as implicit or procedural memory. Individuals nonetheless become acutely aware of implicit conscience-related processes when contemplating, or after actually undertaking, actions contrary to standards. As with any cognitive burden, conscious attention to “matters of conscience” places limits on working memory.

The moral reasoning tradition At the core of the discussion in this second section is the cognitive facet. This implies a description of the Piaget–Kohlberg tradition, of the idea of stages of moral reasoning, and of the relationships between judgment and moral behaviour. The Piaget–Kohlberg tradition By far the most research in moral developmental psychology has been carried out on the development of moral judgment or reasoning about issues of justice (Tangney, Stuewig, & Mashek, 2007). Moral judgment refers to the mode of prescriptive reasoning, i.e., about what one should do and why. The cognitive-developmental view on morality goes back to Piaget’s classic 1932 book “The moral judgment of the child”. The rediscovery of this work by Kohlberg (1958), who reformulated and extended Piaget’s moral developmental theory, was a part of the cognitive revolution in psychology. Piaget investigated the development of moral judgment during childhood (up to 12–13 years). This development was characterized by three phases: amorality, heteronomous morality, and autonomous morality. According to Piaget the source for the heteronomous morality was the unilateral respect for adults,

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while the source for the autonomous morality was the reciprocal respect for peers. That is, the social relations in which the child was involved laid the basis for these two different types of morality. Kohlberg proposed a lifespan developmental model on moral judgment that consisted of three levels, each level consisting of two stages. He reformulated this model several times and in addition he introduced a broader conceptual framework to account for the relation between moral judgment and moral behaviour. According to Kohlberg the cognitive developmental view is based on three assumptions: phenomenalism, structuralism, and constructivism (Colby & Kohlberg, 1987; Kohlberg, Levine, & Hewer, 1983). A phenomenological approach takes individuals’ moral judgments seriously and interprets them as referring to moral reality as individuals perceive it. Structuralism implies that there are relationships among ideas in individuals’ thinking. A distinction is made between the content of a moral judgment and its structure or form, and it is the latter that is of interest because it exhibits developmental patterns within individuals. Constructivism holds that by thinking about and acting on the world, human beings construct meanings for themselves. These meanings are constrained by the individual’s current developmental pattern or stage. While Piaget claimed that action guided judgment, Kohlberg stressed that later in development, with the possibility of hypothetical reasoning, judgment guided action as well. Kohlberg (1964, p. 425) defined moral judgment competence as “the capacity to make decisions and judgments which are moral (i.e., based on internal principles) and to act in accordance with such judgments”. Later in his career Kohlberg defined moral judgment competence as the capacity underlying reflective decisions and judgments of the most advanced quality the individual is capable of at that moment (Colby & Kohlberg, 1987). In the later definition the behavioural component no longer is part of the moral judgment process. Hence the relationship between moral judgment and reallife moral behaviour that seemed once rather simple (“to know the good is to do the good”) became complex. Models were developed in which different types of intermediate moral and non-moral concepts were linked between moral judgment and moral action, concepts such as responsibility, moral motivation, ego strength, and the perception of the contextual moral atmosphere in which the behaviour takes place (Kohlberg & Candee, 1984; Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg, 1989; Rest, 1986; Rest, Narvaez, Bebeau, & Thoma, 1999). Stages of moral reasoning The core of the cognitive-developmental position is “the doctrine of cognitive stages” (Kohlberg, 1984, p. 14). The concept of stage only applies to moral competence underlying the reasoning in artificial, hypothetical moral dilemmas, not to reasoning that guides real-life moral decision-making. In the latter all kinds of other factors are involved too, while the former tries to

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evoke exclusively the moral reasoning capacity. Individuals in all cultures have to pass through the same irreversible sequence of stages of moral reasoning. Kohlberg (1984; Colby & Kohlberg, 1987) claimed that stage-wise development of moral judgment satisfies the “hard” stage criteria by having qualitatively distinct cognitive structures, an invariant developmental sequence, structural wholeness, and hierarchical integration. Stages have been redefined several times to satisfy these criteria, making the description more and more formal and removing content specifics. Colby and Kohlberg (1987) define stages as role-taking structures in the moral domain. Each new stage in development represents a more adequate solution to moral questions by taking into account more, different role positions. Regression in moral judgment is not possible except in specific circumstances such as mental deterioration or group pressure. Armed with this developmental model Kohlberg (1971) claimed that some moral philosophies are more advanced in development and hence more adequate than others. Support for his developmental model was found in cross-sectional, longitudinal, and cross-cultural studies. A reasonable degree of stage consistency within subjects was found; with increasing age, individuals tended to reach higher stages and stage skipping did not occur (Colby & Kohlberg, 1987); up to Stage 4 the same developmental sequence was found in different countries (Snarey, 1985). No gender effects in moral reasoning were found (Walker, 2006). Moral judgment, intuition, and behaviour Cognitive developmentalists object to labelling decisions driven by emotions and taken automatically as moral decisions (Haidt, 2001). Kohlberg’s argument vis-à-vis the behaviourists was precisely that moral behaviour cannot simply be encouraged through reward and punishment, but that a cognitive “mediator”, further defined in his developmental model, was necessary. According to Kohlberg an individual is not controlled by external or internal stimuli, but is a free, autonomous decision maker. Unless behaviour is motivated by a moral judgment it has no particular moral status. More recently, Blasi (1999, 2005) and Nucci (2004) have argued that there can be no moral behaviour without a prior, well-considered moral judgment. Blasi (1999) argues that emotions are not intentional, are not under the control of the individual experiencing them, and as such cannot form the basis for moral behaviour. However, according to Haidt (2001), moral reasoning in everyday situations is nearly always a form of rationalization. Only in the kind of moral dilemmas that Kohlberg invented does moral reasoning guide moral judgment. In these dilemmas, individuals do not know what the best option is and have to resort to reason. In everyday situations, in contrast, individuals immediately know the best option; there is no need to reason to find out what the best decision would be. Studies have shown that people generally rely on their moral intuition in

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resolving everyday moral problems. They say they simply have a good feeling about such decisions and that their feeling is important – and even sufficient – to justify their behaviour. This would seem to show that rationalization (a defensive strategy) is neither usual nor necessary. At the same time, however, people recognize the unreliable nature of intuition and see a rational strategy as desirable (Walker, Pitts, Hennig, & Matsuba, 1995, p. 400). Haidt (2001) indicates that it may be desirable to go through an analytic process in order to test the outcome of an intuitive process. In his view, many wrong decisions can be traced back to the fact that people (and politicians in particular) decide on intuitive grounds where they should be thinking rationally. Hypothetical and real-life moral dilemmas Moral judgments have been studied in widely different real-life situations with widely different age groups. Stage 2 moral thinking seems to be more widespread in real-life moral dilemmas than once thought. Krebs and Denton (2005) speak of pragmatic decision-making. Numerous studies have investigated the relationship between moral reasoning in everyday and hypothetical moral issues (Brugman & Aleva, 2004; Brugman & Weisfelt, 2000; Haviv & Leman, 2002; Krebs, Denton, & Wark, 1997; Walker, De Vries, & Trevethan, 1987). Roughly speaking, these studies have established a strong, positive relationship (correlations varied up to .77; Walker et al., 1987). Furthermore, it transpired that subjects reasoned at a higher level in the hypothetical situations than in the everyday situations, but that there was also a significant degree of contextual variability in the level of moral reasoning in everyday situations (Krebs, Denton, Vermeulen, Carpendale, & Bush, 1991). This can partly be explained by the fact that in certain situations a higher level of reasoning does not provide better insights. For example, one does not have to have reached the highest stage of moral development to understand that driving under the influence of alcohol is wrong. Many factors can influence an individual’s moral judgment in real-life situations. Krebs, Denton, and Wark (1997) have given an overview of the variables that may influence moral judgments in real life. For there to be a connection between moral judgment in hypothetical and everyday moral dilemmas it is necessary for the issue to be seen as a moral issue and not as a personal or conventional issue (Kuther & Higginsd’Alessandro, 2000). According to the domain theory (Tisak, 1995), very young children (3½ years old) distinguish between the moral, conventional, and personal domains. A breach of norms in the moral domain is judged to be less admissible and more serious than breaches in the conventional or personal domain. Furthermore, these breaches are less susceptible to change, less dependent on authority and local rules, and more open to generalization. Finally, the manner of justification is different. Breaches of norms in the moral domain cause damage; those in the conventional domain conflict with etiquette, usage, agreements, etc., and therefore get in the way of smooth

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social relations. Breaches in the personal domain conflict with the rules of hygiene or personal care. A great number of issues (among them alcohol and drug use, sexual relations or abortion) can be interpreted in a number of ways: some will see them as falling in the moral domain, others in the conventional or personal domain. Leenders and Brugman (2005) found that in adolescents the perception of an issue involving contravention of a statutory norm (aggression, vandalism, theft) as being moral, conventional, or personal is partly dependent on self-reporting of a similar type of offence by the individual concerned. Their study showed convincingly that making judgments on fictional situations says something about a person’s own behaviour as actor. Regarding theft or vandalism as a personal, non-moral issue is an example of moral disengagement (Bandura, 2002) and can probably be seen as a cognitive distortion of reality (Gibbs, 2003). Other examples of cognitive distortion include egocentric bias, blaming the victim, expecting the worst, and minimizing the seriousness of behaviour or giving it another name. Delinquent adolescents display a greater degree of cognitive distortion than their non-delinquent peers (Barriga, Morrison, Liau, & Gibbs, 2001).

Morality and emotions This third section consists first of a general discussion on the role of affect in the Piaget–Kohlberg tradition, and second on the study of specific emotions and their relationships with morality. Moral reasoning and affect Here we will focus on the relation between cognition and affect, because in this book attention will be paid to the cognitive and the affective side of morality and because we believe that Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s cognitive models have been widely misunderstood on this issue. The cognitive-developmental viewpoint subscribes to “cognitive–affective parallelism”, which holds that “there exists no pure cognition without affect, just as affect cannot arise in a vacuum without being channelled by cognitive structures” (Rosen, 1980, p. 39; cf. Lind, 2002). “Cognition” and “affect” are different aspects of, or perspectives on, the same mental events. All mental events have both cognitive and affective aspects, and the development of mental dispositions reflects structural changes recognizable in both cognitive and affective perspectives. Neither aspect of mental life solely determines the other (Kohlberg, 1969, pp. 389–390). Kohlberg has pointed out the difference between Kantian rationalism and his own cognitive developmentalism: While emotivism excludes the rational component of moral judgment, our assumption of cognitivism, unlike Kantian rationalism, does not deny affect as an integral component of moral judgment or justice reasoning.

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Koops, Brugman, and Ferguson For example, our theory recognizes affect in appeals to respect for the dignity of persons, as well as in appeals to caring and responsibility between persons. Our theory recognizes affect but always mediated by, or as structured by, cognitive processes such as role-taking, or putting oneself in the place of the other. This structured affect could be manifested as sympathy for the moral victim, indignation at the moral exploiter, and/ or concern for care and taking responsibility. (Kohlberg, 1984, p. 291, italics ours)

Kohlberg did not consider moral feelings of essential moral import, for “the quantitative role of affect is relatively irrelevant for understanding the structure and development of moral judgment”, and “the development of sentiments, as it enters into moral judgment, is . . . a development of structures with a heavy cognitive component” (Conn, 1981, p. 39). Consequently, affect is granted more importance than most critics have in mind. For cognitive developmentalists, affects have a different meaning depending on the cognitive developmental stage. For example, anxiety precipitated by the transgression of a moral precept will be experienced very differently on a symbolic plane by the Stage 1 person than by the Stage 4 person. The meaning conferred upon the anxiety has its source in the socio-cognitive moral stage from which it arose. According to Kohlberg: . . . the Stage 1 person may be anxious in relation to the possibility of going to school or suffering some bad consequences for himself, whereas this would be pre-empted for the Stage 4 person by a sense of guilt over having broken the law, which he felt obliged to preserve. (Rosen, 1980, p. 40) Self-conscious moral emotions (guilt and shame) presuppose at least to take the perspective of another person (Keller, 2004), a capacity that Kohlberg posited on Stage 2. These emotions manifest themselves at a much earlier age than Stage 2 develops (Keller, 2004). Moral judgment manuals introduce feelings of guilt and shame roughly in the transition to Stage 3 (Gibbs, Basinger, & Fuller, 1992). Gibbs et al. (1992) do mention some “superficial” forms of empathic guilt in the development from Stage 2 to Stage 3. However, the typical reference for a moral judgment involving an explicit reference to shame and/or guilt is Stage 3, when the quality of the relationship in itself is valued and role-related pro-social motives and expectancies dominate that one does not want to let down. One might assume that shame is typical for Stage 3 and guilt for Stage 4, and hence that guilt is developmentally advanced compared with shame. While feelings of shame and guilt may differ in subtlety according to the developmental stage of the subject and are differently symbolized at different stages, no stage differences could be found in statements of the scoring handbooks reporting these feelings or in their developmental complexity (Colby & Kohlberg, 1987; Gibbs,

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Basinger, & Fuller, 1992). Both shame and guilt presuppose an internalized figure, but in contrast to guilt there is no need with shame for the viewer to be angry or otherwise hostile (Williams, 1992, p. 221). In addition, we believe that shame and guilt can also be found at the highest stage. Compare the following description of Stage 6 – concern about self-condemnation for violating one’s own principles (Kohlberg, 1984, pp. 52–53): Differentiates between community respect and self-respect. Differentiates between self-respect for general achieving rationality and self-respect for maintaining moral principles. [Pro-] If you don’t steal the drug and let your wife die, you’d always condemn yourself for it afterward. You wouldn’t be blamed and you would have lived up to the outside rule of the law but you wouldn’t have lived up to your own standards of conscience. Morality and emotions Broad’s and Langston’s characterizations of the three conscience-related processes and their ease of identification in the English language dovetail nicely with several, though not all, approaches to the development of morality (cf. Blasi, 1983, 1999; Hoffman, 1983, 2000; Kohlberg, 1984; ZahnWaxler, Kochanska, Krupnick, & McKnew, 1990). In many analyses of moral development, emotions, feelings, and affect play central roles in the engagement of moral and immoral actions throughout the lifespan (e.g., Hoffman, 1992, 1998, 2000; Kochanska, Aksan, & Knaack, 2004). As with longstanding debates in philosophy contrasting the role of rational deliberation and emotion in morality (cf. Haidt, 2003), certain experts in moral development eschew the relevance of any emotion to the cultivation of moral cognition, reasoning, decision-making, behaviour, and commitment (Blasi, 2005). They deny the centrality of emotions to the moral realm because – unlike moral decisions, identities, or acts – emotions themselves are not intentional or chosen (but see De Rivera & Grinkis, 1986). Blasi argues that individuals report intense or chronic negative feelings regarding events they did not cause, events for which they do not “deserve” to feel bad, or ones that they caused purely by accident. Although people also experience these reactions regarding intentional acts, it is unwise to ground moral motivation in states that may result from pure happenstance. According to Ferguson, Brugman, White, and Eyre (2007) both intentionality criteria neglect three related and fundamentally important observations. First, people attach considerable value to various emotions (e.g., anger, contempt, disgust, shame, guilt, or pride) as signals of transgressors’ efforts to be moral individuals. They value these as genuine evidence of perpetrators’ moral aspirations, precisely because of the unintentional nature of these emotions. Second, certain emotions play central roles in people’s implicit

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conceptions of the moral person. Perpetrators and outsiders (victims and observers) can differentiate the conditions under which emotions are morally warranted. They understand that people sometimes react emotionally on various “non-moral” grounds. These include the state’s arousal when an act deviates from ideal rather than obligatory standards, or the state’s expression in helping to alleviate personal distress or to minimize punishment. These distinctions do not appear strongly until early adolescence but they are well entrenched by adulthood. Nonetheless, even very young children appreciate the moral versus non-moral grounds for feeling certain morally relevant emotions, such as guilt (e.g., Ferguson, Stegge, & Damhuis, 1991). Third, moral percepts, beliefs, and self-views are richly associated with evaluative meaning through processes of associative or instrumental conditioning, priming, exposure, accessibility, or even intuition (Haidt, 2001; Hoffman, 2000). In short, as Ferguson et al. (2007) review, emotions are central to understanding conscience when they reflect moral reasons related to the act or one’s identity after or before performing an act. Outsiders who observe certain emotional expressions will maintain or change their impressions and evaluations of the transgressor and/or the event labelled as a transgression. Relevant changes include predictions regarding the perpetrators’ future behaviour and desires to maintain a relationship with them by virtue of their imputed moral characters. These, in turn, affect the feedback that transgressors receive and may help to shape their own moral beliefs and evaluations. Moreover, the very same emotions, as experienced by transgressors, can serve to reinforce already existing cognitions regarding morally obligatory behaviour or these can signal discrepancies between their actions and values or beliefs, motivating further elaboration of these. Older research focused on the conditions under which anger operated as a moral emotion and motivator. In much of that work anger was observed as signalling a victim’s or observer’s moral indignation or outrage in response to intentionally harmful and unjust treatment. In both children and adults, Ferguson and Rule (e.g., 1982, 1983) demonstrated justified anger’s role in promoting reactive aggression that outsiders and transgressors believed was warranted. In addition, that work identified relational, contextual, and cognitive moderators of justice perceptions and their association with anger and aggression. Explicitly framed in terms of an affective–moral–cognitive model, Rule and Ferguson analysed certain cases of anger to result from perceived discrepancies between how the self and others were obligated to behave and not to behave. Manipulations of moral responsibility readily exacerbated or inhibited anger and aggression. Participants also displayed clear signs of additional emotions, including guilt, pride, or shame, depending upon the availability of legitimate accounts of their anger and aggression. These observations stimulated interest in a wider range of emotions, many of which can take moral or immoral actions and intentions as their objects (e.g., fear, pride, regret, anger, guilt, shame).

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Design of this book This book consists of four parts: theoretical and cultural historical notions of conscience, moral reasoning, the study of social emotions, and the study of antisocial behaviour. The first three parts are further elaborations of the three foregoing sections of this chapter. The fourth part is about the study of antisocial behaviour, as it can be based on the ideas of the development of conscience. The first part of the book opens with a chapter on “Moral violations and the ordinary moral person” by Bert Musschenga. He investigates the types of immoral persons distinguished in philosophical literature, corresponding to distinctive psychological profiles. The chapter starts with an overview of various types of negatively valued behaviour. To enable a distinction to be made between immoral behaviour and other forms of negatively valued behaviour, a clear definition of morality is needed. Next, the author develops a typology of immoral persons. In the third phase he collects findings from various disciplines and theoretical frameworks about the characteristics of morally normal and abnormal functioning persons. He then draws conclusions about the psychological profiles of the types of immoral persons. Musschenga suggests that most moral violators are ordinary, imperfect moral persons. Finally he discusses how to contain the consequences of moral imperfection. The second chapter of this part is entitled “Conscience: Does religion matter?” and is written by James Meredith Day. Day’s chapter considers empirical research regarding relationships amongst religious belief, experience, and practice, and matters related to moral functioning: pro-social behaviour, empathy development, and moral decision-making. Following a concise review of the literature, Day considers recent research showing relationships amongst religious elements and the moral decision-making processes, and outcomes, of religiously committed adolescents and young adults in Belgium and England from Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Islamic faith communities. Amongst the variables the author considers are moral and religious judgment scores, using valid and reliable measures, religious attitudes ranging from highly conservative to liberal-progressive stances, gender, and narratives of real-life moral decisions in which the subjects were asked to identify which, if any, religious elements figured in their efforts to resolve the dilemmas at hand, and to describe how religious elements interacted with other factors considered relevant to the dilemmas and their resolution. The chapter eventually points to some challenges in the current literature and offers some prospects for further research. The third and last chapter of Part I is “Like snowflakes and memories: Affective, cognitive, and conative facets of conscience in middle and later childhood” by Tamara Ferguson. Three components of conscience are distinguished (cognitive, affective, and conative), with each playing a substantive role in moral behaviour. The affective component takes centre stage and two

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sentiments central to conscience are guilt and shame. Vexing issues plaguing the definition and measurement of each emotion are reviewed. Major conclusions are that both emotions play a major role in predicting moral behaviour and that distinct action tendencies such as approach/repair or avoid/selfcriticize are not unique to guilt or shame. One large-scale study of 5- to 12year-old children and their mothers is featured to demonstrate the important contribution of both emotions in characterizing the quality of children’s conscience and their actual moral behaviour. The second part of the book, on moral reasoning, consists of three chapters. The first is written by Daniel Brugman and is about “Moral reasoning competence and the moral judgment–action discrepancy in young adolescents”. This chapter starts by claiming that psychological theory on moral functioning has to explain the discrepancy between what people say one should do and what they actually do. The Russian psychologist Subbotskij has shown that this moral judgment–action discrepancy can be observed already in children of 4 to 5 years of age. Kohlberg and Candee have hypothesized that the moral judgment–action discrepancy decreases with increasing maturity in moral reasoning, because moral maturity is accompanied by “an increasing sense of necessity of being responsible to act as [one] thinks right . . .”. The relation between moral reasoning and behaviour has often been investigated, in particular in the domain of delinquency. This suggests that moral reasoning directly influences behaviour; however, important mediators have been found in the relation between moral reasoning and antisocial behaviour, e.g., perception of moral atmosphere and cognitive distortions. In addition, this research has failed to address Kohlberg and Candee’s hypothesis. In this chapter the hypothesis and the recent criticism it has evoked are investigated. It is argued that a part of Kohlberg and Candee’s hypothesis can be tested by including the moral evaluation of (antisocial) behaviour in the research. Findings are presented that seem to confirm Kohlberg and Candee’s claim in a sample of young adolescents. The second chapter, “Moral atmosphere and moral behaviour” by Marianne de Wolff and Daniel Brugman, reports on a study exploring the relation between moral competence, perception of moral atmosphere, and antisocial behaviour in adolescents from the perspective of Kohlberg’s theory. The authors focus on perceived moral atmosphere in three contexts: the adolescent’s family, the peer group, and school. It is hypothesized that adolescents’ antisocial behaviour is more strongly related to moral atmosphere than to their moral competence. The second hypothesis is that moral competence moderates between moral atmosphere (in different contexts) and moral behaviour. Third, it is hypothesized that moral atmosphere mediates the relationship between moral competence and antisocial behaviour. To assess levels of moral competence, 266 adolescents (53% females) completed the short format of the Sociomoral Reflection Objective Measure. Antisocial behaviour was measured using the Youth Self Report and a questionnaire for undesirable behaviour. Moral atmosphere was assessed using the School

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Moral Atmosphere Questionnaire and short atmosphere questionnaires for the peer group and the family. Consistent with the first hypothesis, it is demonstrated that adolescents’ perception of moral atmosphere at home is a stronger predictor of antisocial behaviour than their level of moral reasoning, although the impact of atmosphere is still small. Second, the moderation hypothesis was not confirmed: Moral competence did not moderate between moral atmosphere and antisocial behaviour. Third, the association between moral competence and antisocial behaviour was partially mediated by the perception of moral atmosphere. “Measuring moral development” by Jan Boom is the last chapter of this part. Moral development, as is described in the second part of the present chapter, is a key construct in developmental psychology and has also figured in many theoretical, philosophical, and ethical debates thanks to Kohlberg. But his theory is not without its problems. For example, the relationship of moral competence with behaviour is unclear, intra-individual variation seems difficult to accommodate in the theory, and moral reasoning competence is difficult to measure. Nevertheless, Boom proposes that moral development represents an intrinsic force in the individual and therefore is still important. As such, its study allows us to understand better why most people (or some at least) are doing fine and normal, despite all kinds of risk factors, bad examples, etc. Moreover, recent studies using Rasch analysis gave new support for the validity of interview-based assessment of moral development. Based on these recent studies the author proposes a new conceptualization to remedy some of the problems mentioned. First, he briefly addresses the need for measuring moral development. Second, he clarifies the presuppositions of measuring moral development, and introduces the idea of moral competence development being movement along a Latent Developmental Dimension (LDD). In this view stages are the markers or the waypoints along this LDD that characterize an individual trajectory. Third, Boom introduces and outlines a statistical model for the LDD. The third part of the book builds on the third section of the present chapter and discusses research on social emotions, of course in relation to conscience. The first chapter “Reconciling interpersonal versus responsibility-based models of guilt” is a contribution by Tamara Ferguson and Heidi Dempsey. The opposing warrant for shame and guilt is a central theme of this chapter, as is children’s developing understanding of dimensions comprising each emotion’s arousal. Attention is given to several facets of the two emotions (e.g., intentionality, controllability) that have confounded their measurement and contributed to equivocal claims about each emotion’s adaptive value. Results of several studies show that shame’s arousal is not restricted to negative outcomes attributable to personal failing or a lack of control; conversely, guilt is aroused not only regarding controllable but also regarding uncontrollable events. Even very young children seem to appreciate these associations. A rather protracted development, however, concerns shame’s roles in motivating appropriately avoidant behaviour. The parallel

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understanding that feelings of shame reflect threats to one’s character or identity also is a rather late development. The second chapter by Mark Meerum Terwogt, Tjeert Olthof, and Carolien Rieffe discusses “Children’s feelings and evaluations about altruistic and self-serving lies”. In this chapter two studies are discussed. The first (a crosssectional study among 7- and 11-year-olds as well as adults) aimed to study the link between feelings and evaluations about lying, on the one hand, and “intentions” (egoistic reasons versus altruistic reasons) and “outcomes” (is harm inflicted or not), on the other. Both aspects had a marked impact, but whereas the outcome exercised the strongest impact on feelings, the intension proved to be most important to moral evaluations, especially in older children and adults. The second study showed that 11-year-old behaviourally disrupted children acknowledge the intention aspect just as well. They did not feel any better after lying than their typical developing age-mates, but showed themselves somewhat more lenient in their evaluations. Sander Thomaes, Hedy Stegge, and Tjeert Olthof try to answer the question “Does shame bring out the worst in narcissists?” in the third chapter of this part. The emotions of shame and guilt have been traditionally viewed as joint causes of virtuous, moral behaviour. Although empirical research supports the view of guilt as a moral emotion, controversy arose around the moral nature of shame. Research showed that shame can influence people to experience anger and to behave aggressively towards others. Consequently, some researchers labelled shame an “ugly” moral emotion. This chapter draws on recently conducted field and experimental studies showing that shame-based aggression is typically found in individuals holding narcissistic personality traits. The authors argue that shame is not “all good” or “all bad”. Shame can have a serious moral down-side, but only so in subsets of individuals who defensively regulate shame and fail to profit from its morally adaptive functions. The next chapter, by Brad Bushman, Jesse Chandler, and Rowell Huesmann, answers the question: “Do violent media numb our consciences?” Media have traditionally played an important role in conveying social values and influencing behaviour, but this role has grown considerably in the electronic age. Violence is a common theme in the mass media. This chapter reviews the scientific evidence that long-term exposure to media violence produces changes in the viewer’s emotive and cognitive processes that diminish their moral conscience. Physiological data suggest that frequent exposure to violent media numbs people to the consequences of violent acts. Violent media often encourage people to identify with an aggressor (the protagonist), consequently discouraging identification with the victim. Additionally, violent media often provide information that violent behaviour is both expected and acceptable behaviour. The combination of a lack of distress when confronted with aggression, lack of empathy for the victim, and a lack of strong social norms against it creates a situation in which there is no signal, either physiological, emotive, or cognitive, that indicates that violence is in fact

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“wrong”. The consequences of this diminished moral consciousness result in at least two notable behavioural effects: an increased propensity to behave aggressively, and a decreased tendency to sympathize with victims and to intervene as a bystander when aggression occurs. The last chapter of this part, by Monika Keller, Agnes Brandt, and Gudridur Sigurdardottir, is about “Happy and unhappy victimizers”. Moral feelings of guilt and shame originating from the violation of moral rules and obligations are an important indicator of moral development and the moral self. From a cognitive perspective they indicate that a person is aware of the validity of a moral rule. From a motivational perspective they imply the internalization of a moral norm. They indicate that the person is affectively concerned about the rule violation and has acquired a moral disposition of regret or remorse. The authors discuss the emergence of moral feelings in different theoretical conceptions (cognitive-developmental and theory of mind research) and they present their research findings on the “happy victimizer” phenomenon in a cross-cultural perspective. Furthermore, Keller and collaborators follow up on the questions of moral emotions in a dilemma context, in which children and adolescents from a Western and an Asian culture have to reflect on the emotional implication of a choice, violating obligations. The fourth and last part of the book consists of four chapters describing research about conscience and antisocial behaviour. The first is written by Annemiek Karreman, Cathy van Tuijl, Marcel van Aken, and Maja Dekovic´. The chapter describes their research on “Young children’s self-regulation and the development of moral conduct” and focuses on the importance of young children’s self-regulation for the development of moral conduct. In the first part of the chapter, theory on temperament and early conscience is described. Fearfulness and self-regulation are discussed as temperamental underpinnings of moral emotions and moral conduct, two key components of conscience. Attention is paid to Kochanska’s theoretical model of the interplay of temperament and socialization. The second part of the chapter describes studies conducted on the interplay of self-regulation and socialization experiences within the family. The results of a meta-analysis on parenting and self-regulation in preschoolers are presented. Furthermore, three empirical studies focusing on a community sample of 89 Dutch two-parent families with a first-born 3-year-old child are described. These studies examined different aspects of socialization experience in relation to self-regulation: parenting practices, co-parenting, and parental personality. In addition, interactions between self-regulation and socialization experiences in the prediction of externalizing behaviours of young children were investigated. The second chapter of this part is a contribution by Sylvana Côté on “Sex differences in types of aggressive behaviour”. Aggressive behaviours are often viewed as a reflection of one’s low level of respect for others and as a lack of social conscience. There is evidence to suggest that women are less violent and aggressive than men. Could women have a higher level of conscience than

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men? In order to examine this question, Côté first discusses the relation between aggression and conscience. She then presents data on the variations in the magnitude of the sex differences in aggression. Taking a developmental perspective, the author reviews research that compares the progression of physical aggression (predominantly used by males) with indirect aggression (typically seen as a female type of aggression) during the life-course. It is noted that the sex differences in adulthood are large in terms of physical aggression (higher prevalence in males) and small for indirect aggression (slightly higher prevalence in females). Thus, when considering both types of aggression, males appear more aggressive and less conscientious than females. Côté then reviews hypotheses based on evolution, biology, and social learning to provide insight into the origins and development of sex differences in conscience and aggression over the life-course. The chapter concludes by suggesting that pathological violence and lack of conscience in males may be effectively reduced through early, sustained intervention with high-risk mothers. The next chapter “Social cognition and self-regulation: Changes in outcome expectations and aggressive behaviour over time” is written by John Lochman. There is emerging interest in how moral development can be integrated with a social cognitive view of aggression. Social cognitive theories have emerged as one of the most prevalent conceptual frameworks in understanding developmental psychopathology, but the self-regulatory aspects of children’s functioning were not originally emphasized within these models. Social information processing and moral domain models have developed in relative isolation from one another. Guerra and Huesmann propose that certain social cognitions act as moral cognitions that are apparent as children’s moral development occurs. Lochman’s chapter explores the relation between children’s social cognitive processes and their emerging abilities to self-regulate their aggressive behaviour. The final chapter of the book is by Tjeert Olthof, who discusses “Conscience in the classroom”. Based on a conception of conscience that includes affective, cognitive, and self-related processes, an overview is given of research relating measures of all three components to morally relevant behaviour. The evidence suggests that a tendency to feel guilty both facilitates pro-social behaviour and inhibits those types of immoral behaviour that individuals themselves have labelled as such. Children with moral objections against behaving antisocially were found to either actively avoid such behaviour or to behave in pro-social ways. The evidence further suggests that having a strong moral identity, i.e., placing great value on the moral aspect of one’s self, primarily serves to inhibit antisocial behaviour rather than to facilitate prosocial behaviour. It is concluded that moral affect, moral cognitions, and moral self can well be seen as components of a coherent whole that could be labelled conscience, but also that some components primarily serve to inhibit antisocial behaviour and others to facilitate pro-social behaviour.

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structured flexibility of moral judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 1012–1023. Krebs, D. L., Denton, K., & Wark, G. (1997). The forms and functions of real-life moral decision-making. Journal of Moral Education, 26, 131–143. Kuther, T. L., & Higgins-d’Alessandro, A. (2000). Bridging the gap between moral reasoning and adolescent engagement in risky behavior. Journal of Adolescence, 23, 409–422. Langston, P. (2001). Conscience and other virtues. College Station, PA: Penn State Press. Leenders, I., & Brugman, D. (2005). The moral/non-moral domain shift in relation to delinquent behavior in adolescents. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 23, 65–79. Lind, G. (2002). Ist Moral lehrbar? Ergebnisse der modernen moralpsychologische Forschung. Berlin: Logos. Nucci, L. (2004). Reflections on the moral self construct. In D. K. Lapsley & D. Narvaez (Eds.), Moral development, self, and identity (pp. 111–132). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Piaget, J. (1932). The moral judgment of the child. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co. Power, C., Higgins, A., & Kohlberg, L. (1989). Lawrence Kohlberg’s approach to moral education. New York: Columbia. Rest, J. (1986). Moral development. Advances in research and theory. New York: Praeger. Rest, J. R., Narvaez, D., Bebeau, M. J., & Thoma, S. J. (1999). Postconventional moral thinking. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Rosen, H. (1980). The development of sociomoral knowledge. A cognitive-structural approach. New York: Columbia University Press. Rousseau, J.-J. (1763). Émile, or on education. London: Nourse and Vaillant. (Originally published as Émile, ou de l’éducation, 1762) Snarey, J. (1985). Cross-cultural universality of social-moral development: A critical review of Kohlbergian research. Psychological Bulletin, 97, 202–232. Tangney, J. P., Stuewig, J., & Mashek, D. J. (2007). What’s moral about self-conscious emotions? In: J. L. Tracy, R. W. Robins, & J. P. Tangney (Eds.), The self-conscious emotions. Theory and research (pp. 21–37). New York: Guilford Press. Tisak, M. S. (1995). Domains of social reasoning and beyond. Annals of Child Development, 11, 95–130. Walker, L. J. (2006). Gender and morality. In M. Killen & J. Smetana (Eds.), Handbook of moral development (pp. 93–115). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Walker, L. J., De Vries, B. J., & Trevethan, S. D. (1987). Moral stages and moral orientations in real-life and hypothetical dilemmas. Child Development, 58, 842–858. Walker, L. J., Pitts, R. C., Hennig, K. H., & Matsuba, M. K. (1995). Reasoning about morality and real-life moral problems. In M. Killen & D. Hart (Eds.), Morality in everyday life: Developmental perspectives (pp. 371–407). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Williams, G. J. (1992), Ethics in modern management. New York: Quorum Books. Zahn-Waxler, C., Kochanska, G., Krupnick, J., & McKnew, D. (1990). Patterns of guilt in children of depressed and well mothers. Developmental Psychology, 26, 51–59.

Part I

Theoretical and cultural historical notions on conscience

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Moral violations and the ordinary moral person Bert Musschenga Department of Philosophy, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Introduction Moral philosophy and empirical moral psychology meet in meta-ethics. Meta-ethics deals with the nature and status of ethical evaluation. One of its branches is moral psychology. Moral psychology asks what kind of state of mind you are in when you make an ethical evaluation, and how that state of mind is related to action or motivation to act. Is it a cognitive, belief-like state? Or is the bond between ethical evaluation and motivation so tight that it is non-cognitive, akin to desire or emotion? Moral psychology also discusses topics such as moral emotions, weakness of will, and moral responsibility (Cullity, 2006). Empirical moral psychology often derives its conceptual framework from meta-ethical theories, as is exemplified by the work of the well-known moral psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (Kohlberg, 1981–1984). Conversely, empirical moral psychology can illuminate topics much debated within meta-ethics, such as the relation between moral judgment and moral action. Remarkably, philosophical moral psychology hardly discusses the encompassing question of the nature of the moral subject or that of moral character. Moral character is rather a topic within a particular tradition within normative ethics, that of virtue ethics. Virtue-ethical theories contend that the moral quality of an action depends on the moral qualities or dispositions of the moral agent. This relative neglect of the moral subject is striking since in everyday life, we often draw conclusions about their moral character and sometimes also about their psychological health, from our judgments about people’s actions. From time to time all of us make moral mistakes, but people who consistently transgress moral rules are assumed to be psychologically different from those who only occasionally fail morally. We speak of immoral and amoral persons, moral beasts, and persons without a conscience. Some deeds are so wicked that they must have been done by sick persons. This categorisation also serves the purpose of creating a distance between ourselves as decent, moral persons and those who committed morally inappropriate or even despicable deeds.

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There is some philosophical literature on types of immoral persons. The question I want to examine is: Does the philosophical typology of immoral persons correspond with distinctive psychological profiles that differ from those of moral persons? I start with an overview of various types of negatively valued behaviour. To enable us to distinguish between immoral behaviour and other forms of negatively valued behaviour, I need to consider the definition of morality. I then introduce a typology of immoral persons and collect findings from various disciplines and theoretical frameworks about the characteristics of morally normal and abnormal functioning persons. Then, I draw my conclusions about the psychological profiles of the types of immoral persons and suggest that most moral violators are ordinary, imperfect moral persons. Finally I discuss how to contain the consequences of moral imperfection.

The definition of morality and (im)moral behaviour Immoral behaviour is negatively valued social behaviour. However, not all negatively valued social behaviour is immoral behaviour. I distinguish between five types of negatively valued social behaviour: • • • • •

indecent behaviour rudeness offensive behaviour immoral behaviour immoral cum illegal (“criminal”) behaviour.

Behaviour is indecent when it conflicts with accepted standards of what is right and proper in society. Examples of (what I regard as) indecent behaviour are loudly telephoning in public places like restaurants and on public transport, spitting, putting your legs on the seat in the bus or the train, and throwing your litter on the street. It is also indecent to go to a restaurant or a theatre in a swimsuit. Like indecent behaviour, rude behaviour is socially incorrect behaviour. Rude behaviour is impolite, ill-mannered, uncivilised. Contrary to indecent behaviour, rude behaviour has specific victims. It is rude not to wait until all the passengers of a bus or train have alighted. Not standing up in a bus or train for pregnant women and very old or handicapped persons is rude. So is slamming a door in someone’s face. Behaviour is offensive for someone if it shocks his senses or his mind. Lovers of classical music may experience listening to hard rock as offending their senses. People having sex in public is usually seen as offensive to both senses and mind. Saying nasty things about a person in public is offensive; it affects that person’s name and reputation in a negative way. There has been much discussion about the definition of morality. Some authors conceive morality narrowly, whereas others conceive it broadly. In the narrow conception, morality refers to values, principles, and rules that

Moral violations and the ordinary moral person 27 constrain an individual in realising his conception of the good life. Narrow morality is other-regarding. It protects the interests and the well-being of sentient beings other than the actor. In the broad conception morality comprehends the values, principles, and rules that guide an actor in forming and realising a conception of the good life. For the purpose of this chapter I prefer the narrow definition. This definition enables us to distinguish morality from other normative systems such as prudence, etiquette, religion, and law (Mackie, 1977; Musschenga, 1980). A further distinction is that between positive morality and personal morality. Positive morality refers to the values, principles, and rules that are endorsed by (the majority of ? a social group and that are used as the basis for moral (dis)approval and moral praise and blame. Personal morality refers to the values, principles, and rules that are endorsed by a particular person. Someone’s personal morality usually coincides for the greater part with the positive morality of his social group. The divergences between personal moralities and positive morality constitute the moral dynamics within a social group. Behaviour that conflicts with the positive morality of a group or a society may accord with the perpetrator’s personal morality. Again, for the purpose of this chapter I choose the perspective of the group. When speaking of (im)moral behaviour, I refer to behaviour that is known by the perpetrator to be in conflict with the positive morality of his group or his society (and that cannot be justified in public, for example, as a justified exception).

Typology of immoral persons My typology of immoral persons is inspired by Ronald Milo (1984). I do not take over Milo’s typology completely, nor do I follow the order in his typology. I start with a category that Milo, remarkably, does not mention, the category of evil. Evil persons Philosopher Claudia Card (2002) defines evil as “foreseeable intolerable harms produced by culpable wrongdoing” (p. 3). Thus, evils have two basic components, neither of them reducible to the other: (intolerable) harm and culpable wrongdoing. It is the nature and the severity of the harms that distinguish evils from ordinary wrongdoings. Harm is not evil unless aggravated, supported, or produced by culpable wrongdoing. Evildoers, Card says, are not necessarily malicious. They are often inexcusably reckless, callously indifferent, or amazingly unscrupulous. Evildoers need not be evil people, though they may become so over time (pp. 3–4). What makes an evildoer into an evil person? Card (2002) provides the following definition: “Someone may be rightly judged as an evil person on the basis of persistent and effective evil motives or intentions (or both) or on the basis of persistent gross negligence or recklessness” (p. 21). Evil intention

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can, according to Card, take different forms such as (1) the aim of bringing about intolerable harm, (2) the willingness to do so in pursuing an otherwise acceptable aim or in adhering to some other value or principle, or (3) the failure to attend to risks or take them seriously (p. 20). An agent’s motive is evil if it is no accident that, when the motive is effective, evil results. The example Card gives is malicious envy – the malicious desire to harm those who are better off, just because they are better off (p. 21). Remarkable is that Card also regards persistently negligent or reckless persons as evil. Contrary to her, I think that the presence of an intention to inflict harm is required to make an evildoer into an evil person. It is more appropriate to characterise the persistently reckless and inadvertent person as morally negligent (see below). Amoral persons According to Milo, to say that a person is amoral is to say that moral considerations play no role in his practical deliberations and that moral beliefs form no part of his motivation for acting as he does. Such a person (1) either has no moral convictions at all or (2), if he does have convictions they play no role in his motivation (Milo, 1984, pp. 56–57). Milo restricts the term “amorality” to amoral wrongdoing resulting from a lack of moral convictions. He refers to the second type of amoral wrongdoing as “moral indifference” (see below). People who have no moral convictions usually do know the difference between right and wrong, they do know what their society regards as right and wrong, but they do not endorse these beliefs. The amoralist is, according to another philosopher, Joseph Raz, someone who “does not believe in morality, either because he doubts its validity, or because he is not aware of it, or does not comprehend it” (Raz, 1999, pp. 274–275). In his view, the amoralist neither needs to be an egoist, nor does he need to act immorally more often than fallible, weak-willed moral persons do. In Raz’s view an amoralist can selflessly dedicate his life, for example, to restoring decaying or otherwise threatened works of art or other impersonal ideals. Raz seems to suggest that we can choose to be amoral on rational grounds. Morally negligent persons In the case of moral negligence the agent is unaware that what he does is in violation of moral principles. He mistakenly believes or assumes that what he does is right – either that it is morally permissible or perhaps even that it is morally required. In cases where the agent fails to attend (or to attend properly) to the features of the act that make it wrong, the agent, of course, fails to believe that it is wrong (Milo, 1984, p. 82). Further on, Milo states that moral negligence may be seen as involving the violation of a kind of second-order moral duty, a duty to ascertain – before acting – whether one’s proposed action is in conformity with or violates a moral principle (p. 85). Milo makes

Moral violations and the ordinary moral person 29 a further distinction between impulsiveness (acting without thinking about circumstances and consequences), carelessness (paying some attention to what one is doing, but not really caring about it), recklessness (completely disregarding features that make an action wrong), and self-deception (knowing in one’s heart that the action is wrong, but having managed to convince oneself that it is not wrong) (pp. 113–114). Morally indifferent persons Milo describes moral indifference as believing that an act is wrong without having some con-attitude (negative attitude) towards the act (Milo, 1984, p. 140). In other words, the agent has no concern about whether the act is intrinsically or consequentially wrong. He does not care for the wrongness of an act. Insofar as a person cares about something, says philosopher Harry Frankfurt, this determines how he thinks it is important to conduct his life (Frankfurt, 2004, p. 23). If someone does not care about morality, morality will not play a role in guiding his actions. Morally weak persons The last category I distinguish is moral weakness. Aristotle already made a distinction between the virtuous person who does the right thing without having to overcome any temptation, and the strong-willed person who needs to deploy his willpower to overcome the inclinations that divert him from doing what is right (Aristotle, 1955). Milo describes cases of moral weakness as cases where the agent does something that is morally wrong, even though he desires to avoid doing what is morally wrong and moreover believes that it is better to avoid moral wrongdoing than to act as he in fact does. In most cases the agent succumbs to a desire or emotion that he has failed to control. In these cases moral weakness takes, according to Milo, the form of intemperance. In other cases, moral weakness takes the form of irresolution rather than intemperance. The agent then lacks self-control and selfgovernance (Milo, 1984, pp. 117–119). According to philosopher Jeanette Kennett weak-willed persons experience a gap between their actual desires and what they find desirable, between their motivations and evaluations (Kennett, 2001). Even when evaluation and motivation diverge, we may still have the capacity to act in accordance with our all-things-considered value judgments (p. 117). This capacity is the capacity of self-control. Persons are weak-willed if they have the capacity for self-control but fail to act upon it. What is self-control? Self-control is, according to philosopher Alfred Mele, a means adjusted for the overcoming of temptations of various kinds. It is not only its exercise itself that is an expression of strength and effort. Self-control results from a person’s motivation, which is a factor that can vary in strength (Mele, 1995, p. 37).

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Empirical findings The typology sketched in the previous section is based on philosophical literature. In this section, I examine whether these types of immoral persons correspond with particular psychological profiles that differ from the profile of moral persons. I start with presenting empirical findings about the moral capacities and characteristics of very young children, in the very first stage of moral development, and about morally mature persons. After that, I present findings on the types of immoral persons I distinguished above. The morality of very young children Sentimental Rules by philosopher Shaun Nichols (Nichols, 2004) is an interesting attempt to provide insight into the moral capacities of very young children. Nichols builds on the distinction by Turiel and his colleagues between conventional and moral rules (Turiel 1983; Turiel, Killen, & Helwig, 1987). Moral persons regard violating moral rules as special on the dimensions of seriousness, wide applicability, authority, independence, and justification. Violation of moral rules is above all serious when it causes harm to other people. Although the domain of morality is probably wider than that of harm-based violations, Nichols assumes that rules whose violation brings about harm constitute the core of morality. The capacity to see harm-based violations as very serious, generalisable, authority-independent, and wrong because of well-being considerations appears, according to Nichols, early in children’s ontogenetic development – before their third year – and seems to be cross-culturally universal. Nichols calls this capacity the capacity for Core Moral Judgment (CMJ). CMJ depends on two mechanisms: a “normative theory” prohibiting harming others and a basic altruistic motivation that is activated by representing suffering in others. In referring to the studies of psychologist Robert Blair (1995, 1997), Nichols contends that psychopaths, known to be deficient in affective response to the distress of others, do have a normative theory prohibiting the harming of others. A striking feature of psychopaths is that they provide conventional-type justifications for why violating moral rules is wrong, rather than offering justifications in terms of harm suffered by the victim. This leads Nichols to the conclusion that the normative theory is at least dissociable from the affective system. Nichols seems to assume that children acquire the normative theory from their parents during early socialisation. He does not discuss what kind of capacities are necessary for this. His focus is on altruistic motivation. He wants to know the cognitive and affective mechanisms underlying this motivation. He argues that altruistic motivation depends on the minimal mindreading capacity for an enduring representation of pain or some other negative affective or hedonic state in others. This minimal mind-reading capacity does not suffice for perspective-taking. Thus, according to Nichols, altruistic motivation does not depend on some fairly sophisticated mind-reading

Moral violations and the ordinary moral person 31 capacities. How can attributing distress to others lead to altruistic motivation? Nichols assumes that the altruistic motivation is mediated by an affective response. He gives two accounts of this affect. The available evidence does not really decide between these two accounts. The first account is that there is a distinctive basic emotion of sympathy. The other is that distress attribution might produce a kind of second-order contagious distress in the subject. Representing the sorrow of another person may lead one to feel sorrow. This would produce an empathic response – to help for example. Nichols suggests that perhaps both affective mechanisms are operative. He introduces an overarching term for these two affective mechanisms: Concern Mechanism. Morally mature persons Nichols is interested in the basic moral capacities. The altruistic motivation that is central in his account requires both a cognitive capacity for minimal mind-reading and an affective response. Children who lack these capacities will never develop into morally mature beings. The field of moral development still shows a plurality of theories, although there seems to be a tendency towards convergence. All theories find that morally mature persons differ from immature persons both in level of moral reasoning and in degree of consistency between judgment and action. They differ in the view on the relative importance of cognitive and affective development for moral development. My account of moral maturity builds on elements from three types of theories: John Gibbs’ neo-Kohlbergian theory, the theory of Martin Hoffman, and that of Augusto Blasi. The Kohlbergian tradition of moral development as cognitive development: John Gibbs John Gibbs is a psychologist who worked with Kohlberg but in his work on moral development he wants to move beyond both Kohlberg and his antagonist Hoffman. According to Gibbs, the development of more mature moral judgment involves a growing ability to take the perspective of others (Gibbs, 1994, 1995, 2003). Antisocial youth show both immaturity in the stages of moral judgment and pronounced egocentric bias. He conceptualises Kohlberg’s main stages as developmental levels of moral immaturity and maturity (Gibbs, Basinger, & Fuller, 1992). Stages 1 and 2 represent immature or superficial moral judgment; an adolescent or adult operating at these stages would have a developmental delay in moral reasoning. Stages 3 and 4 represent mature or profound moral judgment. These four stages are summarised as follows: •

Stage 1. Power: “Might makes right.” Morality is whatever big or powerful people say that you have to do. If you are in charge, whatever you do is right, and whatever you get is fair. This superficial reasoning is

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Musschenga concrete or physical, for example, “the father’s the boss because he’s bigger”. Stage 2. Deals: “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” In this stage children ask “What’s in it for me?” before helping or obeying others. Morality is an exchange of favours – or even of blows (e.g., “pay them back” or “do to them before they do to you”). They think they have the right to do what they want and that authority should not “boss anybody around”. Judgment is more psychological but still superficial in a pragmatic way. A youth might justify keeping promises so that others will “keep their promises to me” or “treat me nice and not get mad”. The main reason for not stealing or cheating is that you could get caught. Stage 3. Mutuality: “Treat others as you wish to be treated.” In mutual morality, the relationship itself becomes a value. Trust and mutual caring, although intangible, are real and important. Moral judgment advances beyond pragmatic thinking to a perspective of mutual trust. By caring about others and treating them fairly, people feel part of a community of belonging. Sometimes, in their concern for what others think of them, these persons can turn into “moral marshmallows” in difficult situations. Stage 4. Systems: “Are you contributing to society?” This is a supplement to the interpersonal morality of Stage 3. The individual comes to appreciate the need for universal, consistent standards of interdependence. An older adolescent told Kohlberg: “You have got to have certain understandings in things that everyone is going to abide by or else you could never get anywhere in society, never do anything.” (Colby et al., 1987, p. 375). Morality is grounded in a deep commitment to justice and caring. Honouring commitments becomes the measure of self-respect, even if retaining integrity means becoming unpopular.

According to Gibbs, adolescents who have not advanced in moral judgment beyond Stage 2 usually have not had enough opportunities to take the roles of others or consider their perspectives; they are developmentally delayed (Gibbs, 1995). In a study analysing moral judgment delay, Gibbs and coworkers found that it appeared in every moral area (Gregg, Gibbs, & Basinger, 1994). The greatest delay concerned the reasons for obeying the law. Individuals who were not delinquent generally gave Stage 3 reasons – for example, the selfishness of lawbreaking and the resulting chaos, insecurity, or loss of trust in the world. In contrast, delinquent youth used reasoning that generally appealed to the risk of getting caught and going to jail (Stage 2). Empathy and moral development: Martin Hoffman While the Kohlbergian school stresses the importance of the cognitive development of moral reasoning for moral development, psychologist Hoffman highlights the role of empathy, which he defines as an affective response more

Moral violations and the ordinary moral person 33 appropriate to another’s situation than one’s own (Hoffman, 2000). Moral development consists above all of a developmental synthesis of children’s empathic distress and their development of a cognitive sense of others as distinct from themselves. The synthesis results in five stages in the development of empathic distress: (1) reactive newborn cry, where the newborn passively responds to a cue of distress and automatically imitates the sound of another’s cry; (2) egocentric empathy, where children still passively respond to another’s distress as if they were themselves in distress, but are confused about who is in distress; they still lack a clear distinction between self and other; (3) quasi-egocentric empathic distress, a stage in which children already realise that the distress is another’s but confuse the other’s inner state with their own and try to help by doing for the other what would comfort themselves; (4) veridical empathic distress, where children come closer to the feeling that the other is actually feeling because they realise that the other has inner states independent of their own; (5) empathy for another’s experience beyond the immediate situation, for their general circumstances of living, such as chronic illness, economic hardship, deprivation. Hoffman hypothesises that, beginning with Stage 3, children’s empathic distress is transformed in part into a feeling of sympathetic distress or compassion, which is the child’s first truly pro-social motive. Thus, the last three stages are also stages of sympathetic distress (Hoffman, 2000, chapter 3). Besides stages of the development of empathic distress, Hoffman also distinguishes between different modes of empathic arousal. In the earlier stages, the modes that are preverbal, automatic, and essentially involuntary prevail: mimicry and afferent feedback; classical conditioning; and direct association of cues from the victims or his situation with one’s own painful past experience. There are also two higher-order cognitive modes: mediated associations, whereby the association is mediated by semantic processing of information from or about the victim; and role- or perspective-taking, in which one imagines how the victim feels in the victim’s own situation. Victims need not be present for empathy to be aroused. It can be aroused by imagining victims. Hoffman recognises that morality cannot be solely based upon empathy. Empathy is biased towards familiar people and towards the present. It is also dependent on the presence of salient distress cues from victims. This bias should be minimised by embedding empathy in principles of justice (Hoffman, 2000, section 5). The integration of self-identity and morality: Augusto Blasi Struck by the numerous findings that people differ in fairly regular ways as to their willingness to translate moral judgments into action, well-known moral psychologist Kohlberg responded in his later work by starting to assess judgment and conduct separately and then by asking about the relation between the two (Kohlberg & Candee, 1984, p. 508). In this view, moral judgment is necessary but not sufficient for moral conduct. Kohlberg introduced a

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distinction between first-order judgment of rightness (“deontic judgments”) and second-order affirmations of the will to act in terms of that judgment (“responsibility judgments”) (p. 518). He suggests that deontic judgments in the higher, post-conventional stages of moral reasoning are always accompanied by responsibility judgments, whereas this is not the case in the conventional stages. In my view, moral psychologist Augusto Blasi offers the most promising theory to explain how in the course of moral development the gap between judgment and action is bridged (Blasi, 1984, 1993, 1995). In his theory, which aims to integrate moral cognition with moral personality, self-identity is the central explanatory concept in moral functioning. The self-identity model distinguishes three major components of moral functioning. The first focuses on the significance and salience of moral values in one’s identity. For some people moral values and principles permeate their perception and reasoning because they are rooted at the core of their identity, while for other people these values and principles are not particularly relevant for their self-concept and in their daily activities. Morality has different degrees of centrality in people’s perception, thinking, and acting. Morality and identity/self-concept are, according to Blasi, separate psychological systems that only slowly, and sometimes imperfectly, come together and become integrated. The second component refers to an individual’s sense of personal responsibility for moral action – an element, as we have seen, already present in Kohlberg’s later work. The third component is self-consistency. Selfconsistency is a fundamental motive that can only be satisfied by congruence between judgment and action. Thus, the identity of morally mature persons is constituted by moral values and principles; they feel responsible for their actions and they actively strive for congruence between judgment and action. A fully mature moral person has a strong internal moral motivation. Such a person does not need non-moral internal motives (such as considerations of self-interest) or external motives (such as informal social approval or disapproval, legal sanctions) to act in accordance with his moral judgments. Blasi’s findings about the central role of identity in moral motivation have been confirmed by other authors (Gibbs, 2003; Rest, 1983; for reviews see Bergman, 2004, and Hardy & Carlo, 2005). In their important study of moral exemplars, Some Do Care, Colby and Damon stress the importance of the unity of morality and self (Colby & Damon, 1992). This is, they say, the key to their extraordinary range and depth of moral commitments. Moral exemplars do not seem to experience the tension between self-regarding concerns and moral concerns that characterises ordinary moral persons. They have no inner conflicts that need to be resolved before acting morally; rather, they do the moral thing as a matter of course – it has become their habit. Blasi’s mature moral person reminds us of similar conceptions in moral philosophy, such as Aristotle’s truly virtuous person who must “proceed from a firm and unchangeable character” (Aristotle, 1955). The truly virtuous person is free from internal conflicts. He has silenced all opposing motives that

Moral violations and the ordinary moral person 35 keep him from doing what is virtuous, says philosopher John McDowell (1998). Philosopher Maria Merritt calls him “motivationally self-sufficient” (Merritt, 2000). The truly virtuous person is highly immune to pressure or temptation to act immorally. Aristotle assumes that proper nurture and practical experience are sufficient to secure firm and unchangeable virtuous dispositions. Evil persons Most of the empirical findings on evil deeds concern violent and aggressive actions. Baumeister and Campbell remark that the question “How can people bring themselves to do evil?” is misleading. What is an enormous evil in the eyes of the victims may be of far less importance for the perpetrators. In some cases, the perpetrator may even regard the victim’s suffering as trivial and as irrelevant to the perpetrator’s goals and satisfactions (Baumeister & Campbell, 1999, p. 210). Some people who repeatedly commit evil deeds evolve into sadists. Sadists are persons who have been able to overcome the initial aversive reactions to hurting others. Their initial distress seems to be at a visceral rather than at a moral or abstract level. This distress disappears over time. The pleasure that sadists have in harming others seems to emerge gradually over time and is described by some as comparable to an addiction (p. 213). According to Baumeister and Campbell, guilt is the substantial moderator variable that prevents most people from evolving into full-blown sadists when they perform repeated acts of harm. They suggest that most people who are sufficiently socialised to feel guilty when they harm others would not allow themselves to notice or accept any pleasant aspects of inflicting harm (p. 214). Sadists are often seen as the paradigm of evil persons, but they are not. Sadists are evil persons, but they differ from other evil persons by enjoying the harm and the suffering they inflict on humans and other sentient beings. Sadists are rare; most of the people who commit cruel and evil acts, such as Kapos in the German concentration camps or serial killers, are evil but are not sadists. Like psychopaths, sadists are psychopathological cases. Although sadism surely is the prototype of intrinsic enjoyment of evil, many violent actions may be enjoyed in a different, more shallow way. Perpetrators may not even seek or intend to cause harm. In many cases of evil actions, the goal is to overcome boredom and to find something thrilling. This category of perpetrators are characterised by high sensation-seeking and low self-control (pp. 215–218). A third form of intrinsic appeal that evil acts have involves threatened egotism. Aggressors tend to have quite favourable views of self. They behave aggressively when these views are questioned, undermined, or attacked (pp. 218–219).

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Amoral and morally indifferent persons According to Baumeister and Campbell, some of the persons we call evil are psychopaths. Psychopaths are usually regarded as the paradigm of amoral people. Although psychopaths attract our attention by a high level of antisocial behaviour, display of antisocial behaviour is, according to psychologists Blair, Mitchell, and Blair, not the crucial aspect of psychopathy. The crucial aspect is their emotional impairment (Blair, Mitchell, & Blair, 2005, p. 14). The psychological characteristics of psychopaths have been extensively described by psychologist Robert Hare (1993, 2004). Psychopaths have a narcissistic and grossly inflated view of their own selfworth and importance – a truly astounding egocentricity. They see themselves as the centre of the universe, justified in living according to their own rules. Psychopaths show a stunning lack of concern for the effects their actions have on others, no matter how devastating these might be. They may appear completely forthright about the matter, calmly stating that they have no sense of guilt, are not sorry for the ensuing pain, and that there is no reason now to be concerned. Many of the characteristics displayed by psychopaths are closely associated with a profound lack of empathy. They seem completely unable to “get into the skin” of others, except in a purely intellectual sense. Psychopaths seem to suffer a kind of emotional poverty that limits the range and depth of their feelings. At times they appear to be cold and unemotional while nevertheless being prone to dramatic, shallow, and short-lived displays of feeling. Besides being impulsive, psychopaths are highly reactive to perceived insults or slights. As a result, psychopaths are short-tempered or hotheaded and tend to respond to frustration, failure, discipline, and criticism with sudden violence, threats, or verbal abuse. But their outbursts, extreme as they may be, are often short-lived, and they quickly act as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. Blair et al. call this type of aggression “reactive aggression”. They stress that it is a characteristic of psychopaths that they display both reactive and instrumental aggression. In contrast with reactive aggression, instrumental aggression is purposeful and goal-directed (Blair et al., 2005, p. 13). Psychopaths are responsible for a high number of violent and exploitative crimes. Many psychopaths say that they are “doing crime” for excitement or thrills. The origins of psychopathy are still unknown. Blair et al. suggest that psychopathy is caused by an impairment in performing specific forms of emotional learning. This cognitive-level impairment is symptomatic of an underlying dysfunction involving specific neural and neurotransmitter systems. Whether this dysfunction has primarily a genetic or an environmental cause is still an open question (Blair et al., 2005, chapter 3). In recent years, acquired lesions in the prefrontal cortex are also mentioned as a cause of amoral behaviour. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio and coworkers extensively studied patients whose ventromedial part of the prefrontal cortex was damaged during their adult life. Elliot, Damasio’s best-known

Moral violations and the ordinary moral person 37 patient, still had the ability to reason about topics such as politics and economics. He scored above average on standard intelligence tests and responded normally to standard tests of personality. However, when shown pictures of bloody accidents or of people about to drown, he reports having no emotional responses. Patients like Elliot are unable to integrate emotional responses into their practical judgments, which leads to impulsive and irrational decisions. This deficiency also has an impact on their moral functioning. The patients were seriously impaired in their ability to act effectively in moral situations and showed no signs of being motivated to act in accordance with their judgments. However, they still had sufficient socio-moral knowledge and rational capacity to make justifiable moral judgments; they had a normal score on Kohlberg’s Standard Issue Moral Judgment Interview (Bechara, Damasio, & Anderson, 1994; Bechara, Damasio, & Damasio, 2000; Damasio, 1995). As an explanation for the dysfunctions of people with lesions in the frontal cortex, Damasio developed his “somatic marker hypothesis”. When emotionally significant decisions are being made (i.e., decisions involving rewards and/or losses), bioregulatory states provide affective colouring that automatically biases the individual towards or away from the available response options. The bodily feedback or “somatic marker” provides an automated way of labelling a particular option as either good or bad. Damasio and his colleagues subsequently studied subjects who incurred the damage as infants or toddlers. When tested on Kohlberg’s test, these subjects’ scores were completely abnormal, falling within the range of immature children. Not only did they have emotional deficits, but they were also unable to acquire socio-moral knowledge. Unlike patients such as Elliot, they exhibit more flagrantly antisocial behaviour, presumably because they did not have the advantage of years of normal social experience involving normal emotional responses (Anderson, Bechara, Damasio, Tranel, & Damasio, 1999). Weak-willed persons The term “weakness of will” is largely absent in the vocabulary of psychologists. Psychologists speak of insufficient self-control or lack of willpower. According to Kennett (2001), people are weak-willed if they have the capacity to act upon their all-things-considered value judgments but fail to do so. Besides self-control, psychologists use the term “self-regulation”. Some of them use the terms interchangeably, while others use “self-regulation” more broadly to refer to goal-directed behaviours and “self-control” to refer to conscious impulse control (Baumeister & Vohs, 2004, p. 1). I join Baumeister and Vohs who prefer to use the terms interchangeably. As we have seen, Milo (1984) distinguishes two different meanings of weakness of will: intemperance and irresolution. Intemperance clearly refers to failure in impulse control, while irresolution can be seen as a lack of goal-directed behaviour.

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Some researchers find that “self-regulation” should be restricted to conscious control, to “control of the self by the self ”, while others want to include automatic and non-conscious processes of self-control (Baumeister & Vohs, 2004, p. 2). With respect to weakness of will, only conscious self-control is relevant. Weakness of will is a failure to use the capacity of conscious selfcontrol. The psychological studies pertain to differences in degree of selfcontrol and their causes, not to failure to use the capacity of self-control. Philosophical discussion about weakness of will seems to presuppose that weak-willed persons do have the capacity to exert self-control. This difference limits the relevance of findings from empirical studies on self-control for philosophical discussions. In their contribution to the Handbook of Self-Regulation, psychologists Mischel and Ayduk review the empirical findings on “willpower”, or effortful control in self-regulation (Mischel & Ayduk, 2004). It is, they say, a widely observed fact that people differ in willpower, but what are the conditions and mechanisms that make willpower possible and underlie the individual differences? The model they use is the Cognitive–Affective Processing System (CAPS), which was designed as a broad processing framework for analysing individual differences and basic processes such as self-regulation, self-control, and pro-active, agentic (self-directed and future-oriented) behaviour over time (p. 101). In this model, the mental representations consist of cognitions and affects, abbreviated as CAUs or “Cognitive–Affective Units”, that are interconnected within a stable network that constrains and guides their activation and deactivation; willpower requires the joint operation of regulatory motivation and competences. Much research has focused on the types of CAUs based on person variables shown to be important for willpower. These variables include personal appraisals or construals (encodings) of the situation. The motivational strength to forgo a temptation highly depends on the coding of a situation. If you had stopped smoking and an old acquaintance then offers you a cigarette, you can interpret this situation either as a friendly gesture that cannot be refused or as a threat to your health. The variables also include beliefs and expectancies (e.g., self-efficacy and outcome expectations). In deciding about foregoing a smaller short-term reward for a greater long-term reward, it is important whether one trusts other people involved and whether one believes oneself to be able to exert enough influence to secure the greater reward. Other variables are personal values and goals, and affects (such as anxiety, shame, pride, and eagerness). Anticipation of shame can be important to prevent breaking self-binding commitments such as to stop smoking. Variables are also evaluative self-standards, which are activated in specific situations. If someone is not used to evaluating himself in terms of virtues such as steadfastness and endurance, he will hardly notice that he has broken a self-binding commitment. Mischel and Ayduk (2004) state that individual differences in selfregulation are assumed to reflect differences in the ease of accessibility of different CAUs (e.g., trust and efficacy expectations) and in the stable

Moral violations and the ordinary moral person 39 organisation of the relationships among the CAUs. In the CAPS model, the relatively stable patterns of activation are the processing dynamics of the selfregulatory system. Situational features are encoded by CAUs. These features may be events and social stimuli that are encountered, self-initiated (e.g., thoughts and affects activated by thinking, planning, or ruminating), or created by internal states (e.g., hunger or other arousal states). Person and situation interact reciprocally in a mutual influencing process (Mischel & Ayduk, 2004, pp. 102–103). The CAPS network and the situational features that elicit its different aspects are assumed to develop both as a function of biological and genetic predispositions and through the influence of the person’s culture, society, and ideographical learning history. The system does not merely react to the situations encountered; it also acts upon itself through a feedback loop, both by generating its own internal situations (in anticipated and planned events, in fantasy, in self-reflection) and through behaviour that the system generates in interaction with the social world. The development of the self-regulatory system is a life-long process (p. 104). Mischel and Ayduk distinguish between capacity for self-regulation and motivation for selfregulation. Those who are capable of self-regulation are not always motivated to control themselves. This depends on the context. They refer to President Bill Clinton, who was clearly capable of self-control in his political actions but not vis-à-vis a sexually attractive trainee. Morally negligent persons According to Milo, the morally negligent person mistakenly believes or assumes that what he does is right. He does so because of impulsiveness, carelessness, recklessness, or self-deception. The description Milo gives of the first three phenomena suggests that they are forms of thoughtlessness. I do not know of empirical studies into these phenomena, but the last one, selfdeception, is well studied and I restrict myself to it here. Although at first sight self-deception does not seem to be a morally wrong act – in the sense of my narrow definition of morality – I will argue that it may cause moral problems. Philosopher Alfred Mele (2001) makes a distinction between straight selfdeception and twisted self-deception. In the case of straight self-deception people falsely believe – in the face of strong evidence to the contrary – things they would like to be true. The belief we want to acquire or retain is a species of biased belief. This bias is motivated. An example of straight self-deception is when parents believe that their daughter does not use hard drugs, in spite of the fact that they found a syringe in her room. These parents want to believe that their daughter does not use hard drugs. Mele mentions four ways in which our desire that something – p – is the case contributes to believing p (pp. 26–27). We can interpret data that count against p in the absence of the desire as data that support p. Other ways are selective focusing/attending and selective evidence-gathering. An example of the former is that people who

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have just fallen in love often only observe the positive characteristics of the beloved; an example of the latter is when a mother of a son who murdered someone is only interested in looking for evidence of his innocence. Not all biased belief is motivated. People testing a hypothesis tend to search more often for confirming than disconfirming evidence. This is called “confirmation bias”. The confirmation bias is a general phenomenon that occurs independently of motivation, but can be unconsciously deployed in the production of particular motivationally biased beliefs (pp. 28–29). Straight selfdeception need not be morally problematic, but it often is, especially when self-deception goes along with deceiving others. Suppose that a person deceives himself into believing that he is a capable, experienced blue-water sailor. If he invites others who hardly know him to accompany him during a sea trip then he will endanger their lives. As I said, according to Mele, straight self-deception should be distinguished from twisted self-deception. In twisted instances of self-deception, people who are self-deceived in believing p do not desire p. A jealous husband who strongly believes that his wife has an affair, possibly against evidence to the contrary, does not want his wife to be unfaithful. Mele suggests that in the case of twisted self-deception emotion plays a role parallel to that of desire in straight self-deception (pp. 98–99). The husband believes that his wife is unfaithful because he fears that she is unfaithful. Twisted self-deception is probably morally more problematic than straight self-deception. If Mele is right in saying that emotions contribute to causing a person to believe something that he fears, then the false belief is probably strongly affect-laden. Affect-laden beliefs motivate people more strongly to act than other beliefs. The false beliefs of a jealous man may bring him to accuse his wife, to beat her, or even to kill her. I assume that self-deception is a widespread phenomenon and that now and then everybody deceives himself, but there are persons who deceive themselves all the time. With them, self-deception seems to be pathological. Straight as well as twisted self-deceivers differ in the degree to which the deception creates a tension within themselves. Psychologist William Hirstein suggests that self-deceivers who do not experience any tension are close to “confabulators” (Hirstein, 2005, p. 214). By studying confabulation, we also can learn about self-knowledge. There are different concepts of confabulation. According to the classic mnemonic concept, confabulations are stories to cover gaps in memory. According to the linguistic concept, to confabulate is to produce false narratives. In the epistemic concept, a confabulation is a certain type of epistemically ill-grounded claim that the confabulator does not know is ill-grounded. Confabulators fill in gaps, guess, speculate, and mistake theorising for observing. The mirror concept of confabulation points to people who claim to have certain abilities that they in fact lack (pp. 19–22). Hirstein postulates two processes in the brain: the creative process and the checking or censoring process. For him, confabulation is a failure of the process in the brain that checks thoughts. In confabulatory neurological

Moral violations and the ordinary moral person 41 patterns, the checking processes themselves are damaged, or in some more permanent way kept from evaluating a candidate belief. In the case of selfdeception, some process is capable of keeping the checking processes away from the thoughts that need to be evaluated. In cases where there is tension inside the self-deceiver, he has the ability to check but does not employ it (pp. 214–215).

The ordinary moral person In the previous section I presented empirical findings about the moral capacities and characteristics of very young children in the very first stages of moral development, about morally mature persons, and about types of immoral persons. Do these findings enable us to determine whether the types of immoral persons that are distinguished within philosophical literature correspond with distinctive psychological profiles that differ from those of moral persons? Often we learn most about the characteristics of a good exemplar of a species by analysing what we find lacking in bad exemplars; still better is to combine two approaches: to analyse both what makes a good exemplar good and what makes a bad exemplar bad. This is what I did in the previous section. The question “what makes a moral person morally good?” was reformulated as “what constitutes moral maturity?” For the purpose of this chapter it is not important to determine what is the best theory of moral maturity. I assume that each of the three theories I presented point to important aspects of moral maturation. Together they offer a comprehensive picture of the psychological profile of the fully maturated person, while Nichols’ (2004) account of the morality of very young children shows what morality’s basic building blocks are. These building blocks are a “normative theory” prohibiting harming others and a basic altruistic motivation that is activated by picturing suffering in others. The altruistic motivation depends on the minimal mind-reading capacity for an enduring representation of pain or some other negative affective or hedonic state in others. The altruistic motivation is mediated by an affective response. Nichols (2004) gives two accounts of this affect: there is a basic emotion of sympathy; and distress attribution might produce a kind of second-order contagious distress in the subject. From the morality of very young children to moral maturity is still a long way. Hoffman (2000) sketches the diverse stages in the development of empathic/sympathetic distress. Affective development goes hand-in-hand with cognitive development. The higher stages of empathic/sympathetic distress development require the capacity of perspective-taking that goes beyond minimal mind-reading. In the course of moral development, the “normative theory” gets replaced by, in Gibbs’s (1995) view, universal, consistent standards of interdependence – by a morality that is grounded in a deep commitment to justice and caring. Thus, the scope of morality broadens from concern about harm to others to issues of justice. Blasi (1984) shows

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that moral maturation requires the development of morality and that of the self-concept to converge. He also points to the importance of an individual’s responsibility for moral action and of the motive of self-consistency. Each of the types of immoral persons has characteristics that (may) cause them to behave immorally. I have analysed these characteristics from a psychological perspective, looking also into their causal conditions. What are the results? Claudia Card describes evil persons as people with an evil motive, a motive that, if effective, non-accidentally results in evil. Psychological research does not focus on this category, but studies more broadly the characteristics of persons who commit evil deeds. The findings do not show a particular psychological profile for evil persons. Evil persons usually have few moral emotions, such as guilt; evil deeds generally are deeds of aggression and violence. Some committers of evil are sadists who enjoy the harm and suffering they inflict upon others. Others are persons characterised by high sensation-seeking and low self-control. Still others behave aggressively when their grandiose view of their own superiority is questioned, undermined, or attacked. Of the last category some, but not all, are psychopaths. In the description given by Robert Hare (1993) and James Blair et al. (2005), psychopaths seem to have most of the characteristics that constitute amorality and moral indifference. Their emotional impairment is responsible for their moral indifference. Although I do not know of any research in the moral convictions of psychopaths, I assume that they lack moral convictions. They may know the rules and the beliefs of a society’s positive morality, but their emotional impairment prevents them from having a personal morality – personal moral convictions. Psychopaths have a distinctive psychological profile, be it with variations. According to Blair et al. (2005), this profile differs from the profiles of persons with lesions in the prefrontal cortex. Although the age at which the brain was damaged has consequences for their psychological profile, both people with late and early brain damage have the characteristics of amoral and morally indifferent persons. Weak-willed persons share a psychological profile. They lack a commitment to goals, goal directedness, and/or cognitive attention strategies and scripts for generating diverse types of behaviour that are essential for sustained, goal-directed effort, especially in the pursuit of difficult goals. However, weakness of will can only explain moral violations if the perpetrators endorse (i.e., have a certain commitment to) moral rules and principles. The literature I consulted does not allow us to draw conclusions about a common psychological profile for all self-deceivers. Hirstein (2005) suggests that self-deceivers who do not suffer from internal tensions can be compared with confabulators whose checking process does not function properly. Physically healthy people – people in normal health – differ from sick people and from athletes in top condition. Analogously, we can say that “normal” moral people differ from fully morally maturated moral exemplars and from morally “sick” people. We reviewed findings on both morally

Moral violations and the ordinary moral person 43 mature people and on people with moral deficiencies. But what is the profile of normal – ordinary – moral persons? In what respects do they differ from morally mature persons and from people with moral deficiencies? It seems evident that ordinary moral persons do not suffer from the kind of emotional impairment that causes amorality and moral indifference. What about weakness of will and self-deception? We all suffer, from time to time, from weakness of will and self-deception. Only the extreme versions seem to be pathological. Only extreme and constantly weak-willed persons and selfdeceivers can justly be called immoral persons. Ordinary moral persons are imperfect moral persons – imperfect in one or more of the following morally relevant capacities: empathy and mind-reading, sensitivity, self-control, self-knowledge, integration of self and morality, and, to be sure, capacity for moral reasoning. Most people who commit acts of violence and aggression show psychological abnormalities. Most moral violators are psychologically normal. We like to label persons who violate the rules of morality and criminal law as “evil”, “amoral”, and so on, thereby suggesting that they are different from morally innocent people. Most moral perpetrators do not have a psychological profile much different from “us”, the morally innocent. They are ordinary moral persons. I guess that what distinguishes the fully mature moral person from the less-developed moral person is, above all, the level of integration between morality and self. With ordinary moral persons the integration is imperfect. Mature moral persons are motivationally self-sufficient. They are the exception rather than the rule however. Ordinary moral persons do have moral motives, but the strength of these motives is variable and context-dependent. They are not, or not always, motivationally self-sufficient. They need additional non-moral motives to keep them on the moral path. Non-moral motives can be negative as well as positive. Negative non-moral motives are (fear of ? punishment and social disapproval. Positive motives are self-interest (desire for) approval, and positive social support and feedback. Ordinary moral persons regularly experience a conflict between moral motives and self-regarding desires, that is, they have difficulties in aligning their second-order moral desires with their first-order desires. Their secondorder moral desires are, in the terminology of philosopher Frankfurt (1988), not always strong enough to determine their will. Psychologist Mordecai Nissan (1993) introduced a concept that illuminates another aspect of the ordinary moral person: the concept of balanced (moral) identity. The basic claim of the moral balance model is that people who accept the validity of moral imperatives do not always demand proper moral actions of themselves. At certain times and under certain circumstances they allow themselves a measure of deviation. The moral choice of ordinary moral persons is guided by the will to maintain an acceptable level of moral identity. They feel obliged to behave properly, yet allow themselves room for deviations that do not seriously damage their moral identity (Nissan, 1993, 1995).

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Containing the consequences of moral imperfection In my view, moral maturity is a state of perfection that is seldom reached. Although I do not assume that adults never develop morally, I think that we have to accept that most people are and will stay imperfect, ordinary moral persons. The best thing to do is to try to contain the consequences of imperfection. If lack of motivational self-sufficiency is indeed the most widespread form of moral imperfection, we should focus our containment policy on that phenomenon. What can be done? I cannot say much about workable strategies, just a few remarks. Motivationally self-sufficient moral persons are characterised by a perfect integration of the self system and the morality system. They do not experience a gap between their actual desires and what they find morally desirable. Even if people experience such a gap, it is still possible to bridge that gap by using self-control. Self-regulatory competencies include cognitive attention strategies and scripts for generating diverse types of behaviour that are essential for sustained, goal-directed effort in the pursuit of difficult goals whose attainment requires impulse control and delay of gratification. If you want to avoid buying things in the supermarket that you do not need, you should take no more money with you than is sufficient for paying for the things you really do need. This is called diachronic self-control. Diachronic self-control is what prudent people do who think and plan ahead for realising their long-term goals and projects. One form of diachronic self-control is self binding or precommitment (Elster, 1979). Suppose you have a business of your own and you are a workaholic. Realising that this behaviour is a threat to your marriage, you have the code of the lock to your office door programmed such that you cannot open it on Sundays. Another form of diachronic self-control is what psychologist Howard Rachlin calls “soft commitment to behavioural patterns” (Rachlin, 2000). If you want to reduce the number of cigarettes you are smoking but find it hard to stop entirely, you could allow yourself to smoke one cigarette a day after dinner. An example from the moral domain: Suppose a woman is happily married but is unable to resist the urge to seduce other men. Her husband no longer trusts her and wants a divorce. She makes a deal with him. The deal is that she will only try to seduce another man once a year, on a certain day. If she fails to do so on that day, that is bad luck for her. The second way of self-control is synchronic self-control (Kennett, 2001). Synchronic self-control is largely cognitive. It has to do with the way you focus your attention. When you realise that your actual desires do not accord with what you value, there are three ways in which you may focus your attention so that you do what you think you should do and not what you desire most to do. First, you may restore the focus of your attention. Someone who has decided to become a vegetarian for moral reasons can start thinking of his most favourite vegetarian meal as soon as the image of a juicy beefsteak makes him salivate in anticipation. Second, you may narrow or redirect the

Moral violations and the ordinary moral person 45 focus of your attention. A quick-tempered mother who has the habit of hitting her little boy if he throws himself on the floor in a shop because he does not get what he wants can walk away. Third, you may expand the focus of your attention (Kennett, 2001, pp. 135–140). Parents in my youth used to say to children who did not like the food on their plate that they should think of the children in Biafra who had nothing to eat. (Biafra is a part of Nigeria, populated by the Ibo, at that time at war with the central authorities, dominated by the Hausa clan.) By referring to Biafra, the children were incited to broaden their focus. Ordinary moral persons are not motivationally self-sufficient. That is, to behave morally they are to a high degree dependent on support from their social environment (family, friends, neighbourhood, but also the political and legal system). The quality of the social environment is not only important for the moral development of youth, but also for the moral behaviour of ordinary moral adults. They need positive and negative support from their social environment. The social environment both reinforces their moral motives and makes them see that what morality demands is in their self-interest. This insight is confirmed by empirical findings. I will just give some examples. Crimes such as tax evasion increase if the risk of detection is low (Pommerehne & Weck-Hanneman, 1996). Most interesting is the research of American organisation ethicist Deborah Vidaver-Cohen (1995, 1998) regarding the importance of “moral climate” for the occurrence of morally responsible conduct within organisations. She says that every organisation has all sorts of norms that – directly or indirectly – contribute positively or negatively to the realisation of morally right conduct. Moral climate should be regarded as a continuum. At the one end we find the negative or “unethical” climate – a climate characterised by norms that will never contribute to realising moral behaviour. At the other end we find the positive moral or “ethical” climate, with norms that always contribute to establishing moral conduct. The objects of these norms are: “goal emphasis” – selection of the goals of an organisation; “means emphasis” – realisation of the goals of the organisation; “reward orientation” – how to reward achievements; “task support” – how resources should be distributed; and “socio-emotional support” – the type of relations one expects within an organisation. Even when employees have the best intentions, if there is a premium on high production targets and not on the moral quality of behaviour in realising that production, the moral climate is unfavourable to moral behaviour. If it is unusual in an organisation to talk to each other about inappropriate behaviour, one should not be surprised when immoral behaviour is widespread in the organisation. Vidaver-Cohen stresses that moral climate does not cause behaviour directly, rather it provides a context in which it is probable that certain types of behaviour will occur provided that other conditions are present. Moral climate is highly elusive in the sense that it cannot be changed directly and consciously. It changes, according to Vidaver-Cohen, “. . . in response to the

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deliberate transformation of political, technical and cultural processes . . .” (1998, p. 1220). Not only the social environment but also the economic situation can be responsible for a gap between the demands of morality and self-interest. Several studies have shown that there is a positive correlation between economic inequality and homicide. According to Chamlin and Cochran (2005), economic inequalities undermine the legitimacy of social order. The social order loses its moral authority, and thereby the capacity to regulate the social behaviour of its members. Fafchamps and Minten (2006) established that during the political crisis after the disputed presidential election of 2001, crime increased in Madagascar apace with poverty. In sum, if we want to prevent immoral behaviour in a society, we need to work at furthering and strengthening the moral development of its members. Knowing that many of them will never become morally fully mature, we also have to work at the quality of the economic and social circumstances in a society. This conclusion may sound trivial and unsurprising but I hope that my readers who followed me on the road to this conclusion will have gained non-trivial insights along the way.

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Kennett, J. (2001). Agency and responsibility: A common sense moral psychology. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kohlberg, L. (1981–1984). Essays on moral development (Vols I and II). Cambridge, MA: Harper & Row. Kohlberg, L., & Candee, D. (1984). The relationship of moral judgment to moral action. In L. Kohlberg (Ed.), Essays on moral development: Vol. 2. The psychology of moral development (pp. 498–581). New York: Harper & Row. Mackie, J. L. (1977). Ethics. Harmondsworth: Penguin. McDowell, J. (1998). Are moral requirements hypothetical imperatives? Virtue and reason: The role of eudaimonia in Aristotle’s ethics. In J. McDowell (Ed.), Mind, value, and reality (pp. 77–95). Harvard: Harvard University Press. Mele, A. R. (1995). Autonomous agents: From self-control to autonomy. New York: Oxford University Press. Mele, A. R. (2001). Self-deception unmasked. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Merritt, M. (2000). Virtue ethics and situationist personality psychology. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 3, 365–383. Milo, R. D. (1984). Immorality. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mischel, W., & Ayduk, O. (2004). Willpower in a cognitive-affective processing system. The dynamics of delay of gratification. In R. F. Baumeister & K. D. Vohs (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation (pp. 99–129). New York: Guilford Press. Musschenga, A. W. (1980). Noodzakelijkheid en mogelijkheid van moraal. Assen: Van Gorcum. Nichols, S. (2004). The sentimental rules. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nissan, M. (1993). Balanced identity: Morality and other identity values. In G. G. Noam & T. E. Wren (Eds.), The moral self (pp. 239–269). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Nissan, M. (1995). Moral balance: a model for moral choice. In W. M. Kurtines & J. L. Gewirtz (Eds.), Moral development. An introduction (pp. 475–493). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Pommerehne, W. W., & Weck-Hanneman, H. (1996). Tax rates, tax administration and tax evasion in Switzerland. Public Choice, 88, 161–170. Rachlin, H. (2000). The science of self-control. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Raz, J. (1999). The Amoralist. In J. Raz (Ed.), Engaging reason: On the theory of value and action (pp. 273–303). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rest, J. (1983). Morality. In P. Musen (series Ed.), J. Flavell, & E. Markman (vol. Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 3. Cognitive development (4th edn, pp. 556–628). New York: John Wiley & Sons. Turiel, E. (1983). The development of social knowledge: Morality and convention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Turiel, E., Killen, M., & Helwig, C. (1987). Morality: Its structure, functions, and vagaries. In J. Kagan & S. Lamb (Eds.), The emergence of morality in young children (pp. 155–244). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Vidaver-Cohen, D. (1995). Creating ethical work climates. Journal of SocioEconomics, 24, 317–343. Vidaver-Cohen, D. (1998). Moral climate in business firms: A conceptual framework for analysis and change. Journal of Business Ethics, 17, 1211–1226.

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Conscience: Does religion matter? Empirical studies of religious elements in pro-social behaviour, prejudice, empathy development, and moral decision-making James Meredith Day Université Catholique de Louvain: Human Development Laboratory and Psychology of Religion Research Center, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

Introduction The Cambridge Dictionary of the English Language defines conscience as “the part of you that judges the morality of your own actions and makes you feel guilty about bad things that you have done or things you feel responsible for”. This judging, evaluating, feature of conscience is found in classical definitions across cultures, along with the notion that conscience not only judges what we have done, but prods us into action in order to act on behalf of what we esteem to be decent, and good, and to repair what we feel we may have transgressed as a value, or damaged in the social contract or compact of which we are a part. Conscience typically is thought to include notions of justice and care; principles of fairness and of concern for the vulnerable; equitable distribution of goods and consequences; and solicitude, or a concern that the welfare of all be taken into account when considering the value of a given behaviour, which may include thought and/or concrete, observable, action. This would seem an apt point of departure for this chapter, in that it provides a purview of the dimensions we might hope psychological science would have taken into account in endeavouring to better understand the structure and development of conscience, and, for our purposes, some of the ways in which psychologists have studied the question of religious elements, such as religious belief, religious experience, and religious practice (belonging to a religious group or tradition, regularly participating in religious activities, attending religious services, etc.) in relationship to how people come to be, or not, conscientious about the impact they have on the lives of others, both in the immediate spheres of their lives and in the broader context of social participation (in institutions, civic society, national life, global concerns, etc.).

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As we shall see, psychologists have paid attention to these questions in at least four identifiable areas of scientific research: the role of religious elements in the development of pro-social behaviour, prejudice, empathy development, and moral decision-making. We shall briefly examine each of these in turn, before elaborating on examining a large-scale, international, and interreligious developmental study of religiously committed young people and their uses of religious elements in the making of moral decisions.

Religion and pro-social attitudes and behaviour In recent reviews of the literature on religion and pro-social attitudes and conduct, Pichon, Boccata, and Saroglou (2007) and Saroglou (2004, 2006) have shown that in most cases religious affiliation, belief, and practice are correlated with pro-social attitudes such as empathy, a general concern for others, volunteering, valuing benevolence, and a perceived willingness to go to the aid of others in distress (Batson, Anderson, & Collins, 2005; Batson, Schoenrade, & Ventis, 1993; McCullough & Worthington, 1999; Saroglou, 2002; Saroglou, Pichon, Trompette, Verscheuren, & Dernelle, 2005), in Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist samples. Some caveats, though, are in order: Some studies have shown that some religious elements, especially certain forms of fundamentalism and orthodox adherence, are linked, in some contexts, with antisocial attitudes such as egoism, unwillingness to forgive, discrimination, and prejudice (Batson et al., 1993, 2005; Cohen, Malka, Rozin, & Cherfas, 2006; Hunsberger & Jackson, 2005; Jackson & Esses, 1997; McCullough & Worthington, 1999), and what is considered pro-social or antisocial may vary according to religious affiliation (Cohen et al., 2006). Pichon et al. (2007), Saroglou (2004, 2006) and Saroglou et al. (2005) insist that instead of drawing broad conclusions as to whether religion is associated more with altruism and other pro-social attitudes, or egotism and antisocial ones, psychologists need to move beyond self-report studies concerning religious attitudes, toward observational and experimental studies of the contexts and conditions in which religious elements figure in how prosocial or antisocial attitudes and behaviours are “targeted”. Recent studies (Day, Hargot, & Philippot, in preparation; Hargot, 2005) have shown that practices such as “mindfulness meditation”, rooted in religious tradition but practiced outside them, are correlated with the development of empathic attitudes.

Religious fundamentalism, orthodoxy, and prejudice If Pichon et al. (2007) provide the most thorough, recent, reviews of the empirical literature on religion and pro-social or antisocial behaviour, Desimpelaere, Duriez, Hutsebaut, and Fontaine have done the most impressive job of operationalising definitions of religious orthodoxy and fundamentalism, and exploring their consequences for specific dimensions of prejudice

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(see Duriez & Soenens, 2006, for a review and complete list of relevant citations). Drawing from Wulff ’s “four-quadrant” model, which in turn is taken from Ricoeur’s phenomenology of religious attitudes, Hutsebaut, Duriez, Fontaine, and colleagues have shown that a strict adhesion to literalist conceptions of religious truth is linked to religious and racial prejudice and may incline to a favourable attitude toward right-wing authoritarianism. Such religious attitudes contrast with “post-critical belief ” in which people who have wrestled with classical objections to religious belief (drawing, for example, from sociology, psychoanalysis, and philosophy) nonetheless affirm transcendence and, in a way that takes into account symbolic cognitive operations, the meaning of religious doctrine. Post-critical belief is not correlated with prejudice, and is instead associated with tolerance, openness to experience, and benevolence (see also Desimpelaere, Sulas, Duriez, & Hutsebaut, 1999; Duriez, 2003; Duriez & Hutsebaut, 2000; Duriez, Luyten, Corveleyn, & Hutsebaut, 2005; Fontaine, Duriez, Luyten, Corveleyn, & Hutsebaut 2005; Hutsebaut 1995, 1996, 1997a, 1997b). Some current research suggests that cognitive complexity itself, which can be measured independently of religious attitude and moral judgment but can be measured within religious cognition, influences how people think about moral issues, shapes the kind of advice about moral decisions they are open to taking, and colours moral action (see Commons et al., 2007a; Commons, Ost, Lins, Day, Ross, & Crist, 2007b; Day, Commons, Ost, & Bett 2007; Ost, Commons, Day, & Bett, 2007).

Religious elements in moral decision-making We now turn to recent research in which we retested moral judgment– religious judgment relationships, considered young people’s perceptions of their religious groups’ styles and social attitudes in relationship to moral and religious judgment, and asked whether gender, cultural identity, and religious affiliation mattered in how our subjects talked about moral questions and their ways of trying to resolve them. We looked carefully at relationships amongst moral reasoning and religious judgment levels, relative complexity of moral dilemma narratives, and religious stances and styles in what subjects wrote, and said, about religious elements. Follow-up visits at three-year intervals have provided longitudinal data. In previous studies we found that religious commitment had influenced subjects’ fluency in relating religious elements to moral questions, that Roman Catholic subjects in Belgium had spoken differently about moral questions than had their Muslim peers, and that there were marked gender differences in the kinds of moral dilemmas that subjects described as well as in their ways of reasoning about how to resolve moral problems (e.g., Day, 2000, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c; Day & Naedts, 1999, 2006; Day & Youngman 2003). We examined these issues on a much larger scale this time, looking at Belgians again but adding and comparing them to English young people. In

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Table 3.1 The sample Age 15

Age 18

Female

Male

Female

Male

Christian Muslim Christian Muslim Christian Muslim Christian Muslim Belgian 25 English 25

25 25

25 25

25 25

25 25

25 25

25 25

25 25

Table 3.2 Additional sample of English Anglican Communion subjects Age 15

Age 18

English

Female

Male

Female

Male

Anglican

25

25

25

25

an effort to be fair to the context variables in England, we found it useful to replicate the study with a group of Anglican Communion members at the same age points. This allowed us to explore denominational as well as interreligious differences, and differences within Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Muslim groups. Table 3.1 illustrates the composition of our sample, whom we met in Roman Catholic and state-supported schools in Belgium, and in Roman Catholic and state-supported schools in England, in order to have comparable samples. The schools ranged from middle-class secondary schools with both academic (further education preparatory) and professional (specific skills preparation) orientations, to elite preparatory schools where the great majority of pupils go on to study in selective colleges and universities. Subgroups were composed of equal numbers of male and female, Christian and Muslim, subjects. As shown in Table 3.2, we also included a sample of Anglican Christians in the English sample in order to have a more representative sample from the English context. Longitudinal features As we observed previously, the study included a longitudinal element, which permitted us to revisit some of the same subjects at three-year follow-up points. Tables 3.3 and 3.4 show the numbers and affiliations of subjects whom we revisited after three years.

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Table 3.3 Three-year longitudinal follow-up of subjects who are now 18 years old Now age 18

Belgian English

Roman Catholic

Muslim

Anglican

Female

Male

Female

Male

Female

Male

5 5

5 5

5 5

5 5

5

5

Table 3.4 Three-year longitudinal follow-up of subjects who are now 21 years old Now age 21

Belgian English

Roman Catholic

Muslim

Anglican

Female

Male

Female

Male

Female

Male

3 3

3 3

3 3

3 3

3

3

Instruments and measures In order to assess the elements we wanted to understand, and to begin to appreciate relationships amongst various factors, we took measures of data in the categories found in the following list: • • • • • • • • •

Moral judgment scores Religious judgment scores REMD data: age, gender, religion, religious practice, cultural identity, and integration Dilemma narrative Religious elements Moral voice analysis Religious voice analysis Religious stance and style analysis Follow-up interviews at three-year intervals.

Moral judgment Moral judgment was measured using the Socio-Moral Reflection Measure – Short Form (SRM-SF; Gibbs, Basinger, & Fuller, 1992; Gibbs, Basinger, Grimes, & Snarey, 2007), a valid and reliable measure of moral judgment levels rooted in neo-Piagetian and Kohlbergian concepts and constructs of moral meaning-making, moral reasoning, moral decision-making, and stages

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of complexity in the moral cognition of people trying to resolve moral dilemmas. The SRM-SF is both a production measure, allowing subjects to write their own responses to questions about the importance of moral decisions, and a measure that permits ease of use in the gathering of data in large sample groups, and has been shown to have excellent properties for use in cross-cultural comparisons of moral decision-making and the relationship between moral judgment and moral action (Gibbs et al., 2007). We employed a French translation of the measure, which we have found, in collaboration with Gibbs’ research group, to have excellent validity and reliability (see Day, 2000; Day & Naedts, 1995, 1999; Day & Youngman, 2003) in the Belgian research and the original English measure with the English sample. We used the SRM-SF to explore relationships between Belgian and English samples in moral judgment scores, to explore moral judgment–religious judgment relationships, and to look at relationships between structural features of moral reasoning vis-à-vis the appropriation of religious elements in the resolution of moral dilemmas. SYSTAT-assisted analyses of variance were used to study the role of the independent variables on moral judgment scores, allowing us to test, for example, whether scores were higher or lower in relation to variables such as gender, ethnicity, religious affiliation, age, national school system, etc. Religious judgment Religious judgment was measured using the Religious Reflection Questionnaire (RRQ; Day & Naedts, 1994), a valid and reliable measure of religious judgment. The concept of religious judgment was developed by Oser and colleagues (see Kamminger & Rollett, 1996; Oser & Gmunder, 1991; Oser & Reich, 1996). Oser and Gmunder (1991) and Oser and Reich (1996) hold that religious judgment, like moral judgment, represents a distinct domain of human cognition about the relationship of individuals to ultimate meaning, sources of meaning in life (including God), and religious principles, and that it can be conceived of in structural and hierarchical terms. Though considered by Oser and his colleagues to be intimately related to moral reasoning, because moral issues and principles make up part of how people make meaning about their place in the universe and the ultimate meaning of life, they insist that religious judgment represents a distinct, and distinctly measurable, frame of cognitive operation. Our measure of religious judgment (RRQ) permits, like the Gibbs et al. (1992, 2007) measure of moral judgment, both the benefits of a production measure and relative ease of use for analysis of data from large numbers of subjects. Moreover, the RRQ was deliberately designed in a format parallel to the SRM-SF, in order to make comparisons between moral judgment and religious judgment and study relationships between the two (a matter of discussion and debate in developmental psychology and the psychology of religion; see Day, 2007b, 2007c; Tamminen & Nurmi, 1995). The measure has been translated from the French original

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into English, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. In all cases it was found to be useful as a valid and reliable measure of religious judgment, both in terms of construct validity vis-à-vis Oser and Gmunder (1991) and Oser and Reich (1996) the clinical interviews and analyses of and in terms of plausible relationships between religious judgment and relevant facets of stage-wise sequences of development in other domains (moral judgement, ego development, role-taking, etc.; Day & Youngman 2003; Day & Naedts, 2006). Again, SYSTAT-assisted analyses of variance allowed us to test relationships amongst religious judgment and other variables studied. REMD data: age, gender, religion, religious practice, cultural identity, and integration REMD refers to data gathered from the Religious Elements in Moral Decision-Making Questionnaire (Day, 2002), which asks respondents to furnish information regarding their age, gender, religious affiliation, rate and kind of religious practice, cultural identity, and relative degree of cultural integration. As we have previously observed, the subjects in this study were adolescents and young adults (age groups where we might expect to find both a range of developmental levels and movement between initial and follow-up points in our study) from three religious groups: Roman Catholic Christians, Anglican Christians, and Muslims. Since we were more interested in how religious elements were appropriated in moral decisions rather than whether they were, we deliberately selected a sample that would involve religiously active young people, that is, subjects who would actively identify themselves as having a religious affiliation to one of the groups we wanted to study and who would be involved at least once per week in religious practice. Religious practices in our sample included attendance at weekly services of worship, involvement in a prayer group, Bible and Koran study groups, and benevolent associations providing aid to others (soup kitchens for the homeless, aid to refugees, visits to elderly citizens confined to their homes, etc.). We had previously found that religious affiliation had an influence on whether or not, and how, religious elements counted in the making of moral decisions. For example, we had found that Roman Catholic subjects qualified fewer dilemmas as requiring religious elements to solve than did Muslim subjects, who almost always insisted that moral dilemmas were intertwined with religious dilemmas by their very nature. The gap between the two groups narrowed when we controlled for frequency of religious participation. We wanted, this time, to look more closely at equally involved samples of religiously committed young people to find out whether differences between religious groups would persist and, if so, how they would persist in the framing and resolution of moral dilemmas. In addition, we controlled this time for cultural integration: the degree to which subjects deemed themselves to be part of the majority culture in the

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society where they lived. We had hypothesized that the greater the degree of integration of Muslim immigrants to Belgium and Great Britain, the lesser the degree of difference between the two might be in terms of thinking about moral problems and the pertinence and type of religious elements that might be employed in trying to solve them. Finally, we decided to study a variable we called “religious attitude” in asking subjects to rank the religious community of which they were part, at a local level, on a Likert scale from highly conservative to highly progressive, with the label “moderate” falling at the midpoint. We did this because in studies like those cited in the introductory sections of this chapter, other researchers (e.g., Duriez, Hutsebaut, Saroglou) had found clear relationships between fundamentalism and conservative religious orthodoxy and prejudice (xenophobia, racism, and other forms of social attitudes), and we thought that some related issues might play a role in what our subjects described as moral dilemmas and the relationship of religious elements to their resolution. Dilemma narrative Dilemma narrative refers to a task every subject was asked to complete, in writing a brief account (no longer than one hand-written page) in which they described a moral dilemma they currently faced, or had recently faced, and then proceeded to say how they had attempted to resolve the dilemma and to answer the question whether, and how, religious elements had figured in their reasoning about the dilemma and its resolution. In previous studies we had demonstrated the utility of narrative components in teasing out relationships between moral judgment and religious judgment, elements of religious affiliation, and gender in attempts to resolve moral dilemmas (Day, 1993, 1998, 1999a, 1999b, 1999c, 2000, 2001a, 2001b, 2007a; Day & Naedts, 1997). Ganzevoort (1998, 2006), Gergen (1999, 2004), Rizzuto (2001), and Streib, Keller, and Csoff (2007) have observed that this research has marked an important enrichment of psychological science’s contribution to understanding how religion functions in real-life situations of decision-making. Religious elements Religious elements are those religious beliefs, principles, axioms, citations from religious literature, practices such as prayer, invocation, meditation, confession, ritual cleansing, or others described by our subjects as playing a role in the ways they thought about moral dilemmas and tried to resolve them. Moral voice analysis Moral voice analysis involves the use of valid and reliable measures of what Gilligan (1982, 1996), Day and Tappan (1996), Day and Youngman (2003),

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and others have called and verified as moral voices of justice and care: two major orientations in approaching and resolving moral dilemmas. In the justice orientation, people are concerned with principles of right and wrong, just and unjust, fair and unfair, and with the equitable distribution of consequences for all parties concerned. In the care orientation, people are chiefly concerned with relationships, and how to prevent any one party to the dilemma from being harmed. There is a longstanding debate in the literature on moral development as to whether, as Gilligan initially claimed, the construction of these moral orientations is related to the construction of gender and gender identity. In our studies with thousands of young people and adults, we have found this assertion to bear out. Religious voice analysis In a parallel fashion we began, more than a decade ago, to study whether similar “voice” patterns were present in how people described religion, religious experience, and religious decision-making. We were able to confirm our hypothesis, over and over again, that there exist “principled” and “relational” ways of talking about religion and religious experience, and that these two divide fairly neatly between male and female subjects (see Day, 2002; Day & Naedts, 1997; Day & Youngman, 2003). Religious stance and style analysis Religious stance and style analysis refers to our effort to discern whether there was a noticeable global religious attitude in which other religious elements were consolidated, or a religious style, that characterized the way religious language was used. This allowed us to consider whether, for example, religious conservatism, religious affiliation, or particular religious practices translated into particular types or forms of religious attitudes, and whether religious style, as a manner of appropriating religious language, concepts, practices, and the like, played a discernible role in the religion–morality relationship. This is in part related to the work on religious attitudes and cognitive styles outlined by Hutsebaut and colleagues (referenced earlier in this chapter) and to the work of Streib, who has persuasively argued (e.g., Streib, 1997) that religious style is sometimes a more useful concept to describe uses of religious language than religious stage, level, or other language implying hierarchies of value. Follow-up interviews Follow-up interviews refer to retesting, in exactly the same format, three years after the initial testing, with a selected subgroup of subjects. We wanted to know whether expected patterns of growth in moral and religious judgment would take place during the intervening years, and if so whether these would

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influence descriptions of moral dilemmas and uses of religious elements in their resolution, and whether, where it was anticipated that growth would occur and it did not, we would be able to understand why. Results Moral judgment scores Moral judgment scores were within expected ranges (see Gibbs et al., 2007) and varied according to age, orientation of social attitudes, and degree of integration in majority culture (Tables 3.5 and 3.6). Belgian scores were slightly lower than in the English sample, which was also anticipated (Day & Naedts, 1995, 1999; Gibbs et al., 2007). Females scored higher than did males, but not significantly so at the lower or higher age range, and the gap between the two narrowed at age 18. This is consistent with other findings (Day & Naedts, 1999; Day & Youngman, 2003; Gibbs et al., 2007). Table 3.5 Moral judgment mean stage scores at age 15

Christian Muslim Female Male Conservative Middle Liberal Low integration

Belgian (age 15)

English (age 15)

2.502 2.398 2.504 2.388 2.221 2.411 2.579 2.001

2.694 2.496 2.712 2.499 2.312 2.561 2.710 2.110

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Table 3.6 Moral judgment mean stage scores at age 18

Christian Muslim Female Male Conservative Middle Liberal Low integration

Belgian (age 18)

English (age 18)

2.979 2.799 2.916 2.842 2.697 2.869 3.102 2.412

3.266 2.981 3.244 3.014 2.812 2.812 3.231 2.687

Christian subjects scored higher than did Muslim ones, but not significantly so. Here again, differences were smaller at age 18 than they were at age 15. Subjects who used the attribution “highly conservative” to describe their religious group scored lower than did the “middle of the road” and “liberal” subjects in all subgroups: male and female; Christian and Muslim. This is consistent with research that reports a “liberal bias” in moral judgment scores, a trend that has been consistent during 30 years of research. Our “liberal” subjects had the highest scores in all subgroups. Liberal subject scores were significantly higher than those of conservative subjects. Subjects who reported lower integration had significantly lower scores than did those who described themselves as more integrated, at both age 15 and age 18. The subjects who reported lower scores were almost uniformly Muslim. Conservatism and low integration were correlated with lack of upwards movement in moral and religious judgment scores at the three-year intervals.

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Religious judgment scores Religious judgment scores so closely paralleled those of moral judgment that in stage terms they were indistinguishable, that is, stage levels were the same for religious judgment as they were for moral judgment at 15 and 18 years of age, and for every subgroup. Religious judgment scores varied by age, social attitudes orientation, and degree of integration, as did moral judgment scores. Significant differences, where they occurred, were reported as in moral judgment scores. Religious judgment scores were so closely correlated with moral judgment scores and predicted by them that we were unable to assert the independence of religious judgment from moral judgment constructs. This finding is consistent with previous research (e.g., Day, 2007b; Day & Naedts, 1999; Day & Youngman, 2003). SUPPLEMENTARY SAMPLE: ANGLICAN COMMUNION SUBJECTS

We studied 200 Anglican young people at ages 15 and 18 to supplement our “Christian” sample, which we had initially limited to Roman Catholic subjects in order to compare Belgian and English samples appropriately. The sample was equally divided by gender and age. The Anglicans were almost exclusively members of The Church of England, though there were a few who were members of The Scottish Episcopal Church, the Church of Canada, or the Episcopal Church in the USA, all member churches of the Anglican Communion. As was the case amongst the Belgian and English Roman Catholic and Muslim subjects, moral and religious judgment scores were highly correlated. Again, they varied by age and social attitude orientation. Anglican students at 15 and 18 who identified themselves as belonging to a parish that had liberal/progressive social attitudes had higher moral and religious judgment scores than did the conservative and middle-of-the-road groups. In the Anglican tradition, there is a broad range of traditions in liturgical style and worship tradition. We introduced standard categories by which parishes identify themselves in literature, on websites, in fellowship groups, etc., to find out whether there would be links between identified tradition and others of our variables. Some interactions were clear: Young people who described their parish as liberal Catholic almost uniformly said the values of their parish were socially liberal/progressive. Conservative evangelical and conservative Catholic subjects also said that their parishes endorsed conservative social values. Open evangelical subjects had higher moral and religious judgment scores than did conservative evangelical subjects and were more likely to rate their parish social orientation as “liberal/progressive”. Conservative Catholics sometimes described the social attitudes of their parish as “liberal/progressive”. We find it interesting to make some observations about a particular issue in the Anglican Communion that proved relevant for our study. For 50 years

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there has been an open debate within the Anglican Communion, and within the Church of England as its founding member, over the ordination of women. We asked an additional question to ascertain what kind of relationships we might find between parishes that were opposed (in Church of England parlance, parishes whose Councils have passed what are known as Resolution A&B: namely, that they would not have an ordained woman as priest on staff, and would not have an ordained woman to celebrate the Eucharist) to the ordination of women and variables of social attitudes and moral and religious judgment scores. Here we found no significant relationships, that is, young people who belonged to parishes who were clearly opposed to the ordination of women in the Church of England were not linked in a significant way to any designation of social attitudes or moral judgment scores. Half of the subjects who were from A&B parishes identified the social attitudes in their parish as “liberal/progressive” and had relatively higher moral and religious judgment scores and scores as high as the “liberal Catholic” subjects. Cultural integration Cultural integration predicted more for moral and religious judgment scores than did religion per se, and in our samples was almost exclusively linked to being of the Muslim faith. We found it interesting to note that some young people described themselves as being less integrated at 18 than they were at 15. When responding to the questions about this they identified perceived hypocrisy in the majority culture and their experiences of prejudice (racist remarks, bullying at school) had inclined them to hold to traditional values as opposed to those prevailing in the world around them. They were also more likely to describe situations of racism and bullying in the moral dilemma narratives they provided. In the follow-up sequence, conservatism and low integration were correlated with lack of upwards movement in moral and religious judgment scores. Analyses of the dilemma narratives The real-life moral dilemmas that subjects reported were read through several “lenses” in our effort to appreciate matters of dilemma types, types of moral reasoning (justice or care oriented), and religious elements in the dilemma descriptions themselves (whether a dilemma was inherently religious in character as well as moral in definition, and what kind, if any, of religious elements were cited as relevant to moral decision-making by the subjects). We then analysed the relationships among these elements and gender and religious affiliation.

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Types of moral dilemmas Moral dilemmas were of the following principal types: friendship, sexual activity, boyfriend/girlfriend relationship issues, truth-telling in friendships and with siblings or parents, joining in group activities and in so doing acceding to group pressure and temptation or not, and cheating in school. Both justice and care orientations were present in the dilemmas. About half the subjects described moral dilemmas as religious dilemmas per se or questions in which religious elements de facto should apply. Initial findings suggest the following patterns: •

•

Gender factors and religious affiliation. Girls were more likely to talk about dilemmas involving friendship, and to talk about things in relationship terms, and from a “care” orientation. This was true for Christians and Muslims in our sample. Boys were almost exclusively justice-oriented in their use of moral language. Girls used a relational religious style in talking about how religion mattered in their moral decisions, whereas boys used a principled style. Care and relational voices in moral judgment and religious judgment were highly correlated, as were justice and principled voices. Moral dilemmas as religious dilemmas. Whether moral dilemmas were de facto religious situations divided almost exactly between Christian and Muslim subjects: Catholic and Anglican subjects were both more likely to describe the moral dilemma itself without reference to religious elements. Muslim subjects almost always talked about moral dilemmas as though they were religious dilemmas. This finding parallels those from previous studies (Day, 2001a, 2001b; 2007b; Day & Naedts, 1999; Day & Youngman, 2003).

Religious elements When talking about religious elements that were deemed pertinent to the resolution of the moral dilemmas, the Christian subjects spoke in three major styles. In the first of these styles religious elements (Bible, God’s law, Jesus’ behaviour) established a direct-line relationship to what one ought to do; here religious elements were both pattern and answer with direct applicability. Subjects using this frame of religious element were likely to turn to the Bible, or to a pastor, whom they expected would tell them what to do. Such subjects were more likely to be highly conservative Roman Catholic and conservative evangelical Anglicans. This style of speaking was correlated with lower stages of moral and religious judgment. Doing God’s will, obedience, and worry over retribution or feelings of shame were highly important to this group. The second style was one of narration in a space of interpretation. Religious elements cannot tell us exactly what to do because each situation is

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by definition unique, but religious elements can give us the basic structure in the form (or principle) or story-line (or pattern) from which we can derive inspiration and guidance, according to these subjects. Subjects speaking in this frame were most likely to speak to peers or a pastor, or to pray, not expecting the other to tell them what to do but to guide them in being sensitized to what the most important elements were in the situation, so as to act in a Christ-like way or in a way that honoured their tradition and beliefs. Conformity with the mind of God, through a dialogical movement of interaction, in prayer, negotiating the meaning of texts, and discussion, typified the religious language used here. For these subjects there had to be differentiation in order for dialogue and creative action to happen. In the third style, which was characteristic of the Muslim students, religion was conceived of as a moral system – something God had given and the Prophet Mohammed dictated in order to help people, who were inherently corrupt without God, to live decent, ordered, and civil lives and to flourish. Here though there were also nuances diverging between the two styles already described above. Students with higher moral judgment and religious judgment scores, who were highly integrated in the majority culture and were from moderate or liberal faith communities, emphasized that every person in the end makes some sort of decision for himself or herself, weighing many factors, and not only those contained in canonical writing or sacred texts. Longitudinal commitments We are now in the process of recording follow-up interviews with subjects who had been 15 and 18 and are now 18 and 21. In an intensive series of interviews we revisit their dilemmas and religious elements from three years ago, and ask what has happened since in shaping their understanding of how to proceed now in their lives, where moral questions are numerous, and whether they remain committed to lives of religious engagement and faith. Upward movement from 15 to 18 is a tangible feature of the sample, but we have been especially interested to talk with people who remain stable in stage-score terms. Summary Some summary comments have been offered in each section. There is confirmation of expected moral judgment scores, confusion as to the independence of moral and religious judgment constructs, confirmation of moral and religious “voice” orientations, clear relationships between voice types and gender, and a relationship amongst higher reasoning scores, high cultural integration, liberal and progressive social orientations in religious group, complexity in moral dilemma narratives, and an interpretative rather than literal or “direct-line” stance in the appropriation of religious elements in moral decision-making. In the follow-up studies, some young people do not

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show evidence of change in moral and/or religious judgment scores, and a sub-sample of this group, who begin with low moral judgment and religious judgment levels and report what they experience as bullying, humiliation, and discrimination on account of their religious beliefs and identity, demonstrate an increasing willingness to tolerate, or show sympathy for, terrorist acts (see Day, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c, 2008).

Conscience: Does religion matter? The question with which we began defies easy answers, as we would have expected. Empirical inquiry inclines to appreciate not only that religion matters, but how it does. For example, we can observe, across the literatures consulted here, that religion matters more if one is actively and regularly engaged in religious practices. Some practices, in and of themselves, appear to incline people to a greater sensitivity towards the suffering of others and a more empathic response regarding it, and more broadly there is strong evidence that people who identify themselves, and thus portray themselves, as religious are inclined to pro-social attitudes, and in some cases behaviour. As we noted, some caveats were in order, for very recent experimental research demonstrates that such identities may be carefully tailored for the in-group audiences to which they are addressed, and that beyond the boundaries of the groups to which people belong pro-social behaviour and empathy may decline in presence, intensity, and power to affect pro-social action. Being religious does not account for all of the variance per se in how religion affects conscience: There is strong evidence that at least four distinct religious attitudes influence people’s perceptions of moral duty, obligation to act, and the spheres of action in which behaviour is to be evaluated on religious grounds. Thus, it may well be that religious fundamentalists and religious people of a more symbolic attitude may be as different from each other as religious people are from non-religious ones, and cognitive style, in relationship to attitude, may be as important as the fact and/or intensity of religious involvement and identity. In our own research we have found, as results from our studies show, that religion matters very much, but that again there are distinct styles in the ways religious elements are appropriated in the making of moral decisions. Religiosity is mediated by religious tradition, faith stances in particular religious communities, and by specific features of religions themselves and how they define moral order and obligation. As we have also seen, religious influence is closely interwoven with other factors: gender, ethnicity, cultural integration, and social attitudes in the self and in the individual’s particular religious community. Religion does and does not matter to conscience, depending on how questions are framed, how identities are structured and managed, and how moral discourse is oriented. Much work remains to be done, and some promising initiatives lie on the near horizon. One may hope that the inclusion of religion

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in scholarly colloquia, publications such as those noted here, and in this book will contribute to our understanding of how conscience develops and operates in human behaviour.

References Batson, C. D., Anderson, S. L., & Collins, E. (2005). Personal religion and prosocial motivation. Advances in Motivation and Achievement, 14, 151–185. Batson, D., Schoenrade, P., & Ventis, L. (1993). Religion and the individual: A socialpsychological perspective. New York: Oxford University Press. Cohen, A., Malka, A., Rozin, P., & Cherfas, L. (2006). Religion and unforgivable offenses. Journal of Personality, 74, 85–118. Commons, M., Ost, C., Bett, E., Alves, J., Marchand, H., Ross, S., et al. (2007a, April). Comparing Rasch scaled stage scores of items from five instruments to their hierarchical complexity and to each other: One scale or many? Paper presented at the Society for the Quantitative Analysis of Behaviour Conference, Boston, MA. Commons, M., Ost, C., Lins, M., Day, J., Ross, S., & Crist, J. (2007b, March). Stage of development in understanding Christ’s moral sayings. Paper presented at the Society for Research in Adult Development Annual Symposium, Boston, MA. Day, J. (1993). Speaking of belief: Language, performance, and narrative in the psychology of religion. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 3, 213–230. Day, J. (1998). Verhalen, identiteiten, god(en): Narratieve bemiddeling en religieus discours. In R. R. Ganzevoort (Ed.), De praxis als verhaal: Narrativiteit en praktische theologie (pp. 93–107). Kampen: Kok Verlag. Day, J. (1999a). Das Gute wissen-das Gute tun: Narrationen uber Urteil und Handeln in den moralischen Entscheidungen junger Erwachsener. In D. Garz, F. Oser, & W. Althof (Eds.), Moralisches urteil und Handeln (pp. 406–431). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag. Day, J. (1999b). Exemplary sierrans: Moral influences. In R. Mosher, D. Connor, K. Kalliel, J. Day, N. Yakota, M. Porter, & J. Whiteley, Moral action in young adulthood (pp. 145–154). National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition: University of South Carolina Press. Day, J. (1999c). The moral influence interview. In R. Mosher, D. Connor, K. Kalliel, J. Day, N. Yakota, M. Porter, & J. Whiteley (Eds.), Moral action in young adulthood. Charleston, SC: Center for the Study of the Freshman Year, University of South Carolina Press. Day, J. (2000). The social construction of morality. Archives of contemporary psychology: Voices in social constructionism. Los Angeles: Master’s Work Video Productions. Day, J. (2001a). From structuralism to eternity?: Re-imagining the psychology of religious development after the cognitive-developmental paradigm. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 11, 173–183. Day, J. (2001b). Le discours religieux en contexte: deux études auprès d’adolescents et de jeunes adultes en Bèlgique francophone. In V. Saroglou & D. Hutsebaut (Eds.), Religion et developpement humain: Questions psychologiques (pp. 57–69). Paris: L’Harmattan. Day, J. (2002). Religious development as discursive construction. In C. Hermans,

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G. Immink, A. de Jong, & J. van der Lans (Eds.), Social construction and theology. Leiden: Brill. Day, J. (2007a, November). Are there developmental trajectories for sympathetic attitudes towards terrorists and terrorist acts? Empirical evidence from a study of Belgian and English adolescents and young adults. Paper presented at Association for Moral Education International Conference, New York, NY. Day, J. (2007b). Moral reasoning, religious reasoning, and their supposed relationship: Paradigms, problems, and prospects. A brief, empirical overview. Adult Developments: The Bulletin of the Society for Research in Adult Development, 11, 6–10. Day, J. (2007c). Religious cognition and cognitive complexity: A validation study of the Religious Cognition and Complexity Measure. Internal working document: Harvard-Louvain Model of Hierarchical Complexity Research Group. Human Development Laboratory. Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium: Université Catholique de Louvain. Day, J. (2008). Human development and the model of hierarchical complexity: Learning from research in the psychology of moral and religious development. World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution, 4, 452–467. Day, J., Commons, M., Ost, C., & Bett, I. (2007). Religious cognition and cognitive complexity: A validation study of the Religious Cognition and Complexity Measure. Internal working document: Harvard-Louvain Model of Hierarchical Complexity Research Group. Human Development Laboratory. Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium: Université Catholique de Louvain. Day, J., Hargot, N., & Philippot, P. (in preparation). Mindfulness, methods, and morals: Effects of mindfulness meditation on empathy development. Day, J., & Naedts, M. (1994). Questionnaire sur la reflexion religieuse [Religious reflection questionnaire]. Louvain-la-Neuve: Psychology of Religion Research Center and Human Development Laboratory, Université Catholique de Louvain. Day, J., & Naedts, M. (1995). Convergence and conflict in the development of moral judgment and religious judgment. Journal of Education, 177, 1–30. Day, J., & Naedts, M. (1997). A reader’s guide for interpreting texts of religious experience: A hermeneutical approach. In J. A. Belzen (Ed.), Hermeneutical approaches in the psychology of religion (pp. 173–193). Amsterdam: Rodopi. Day, J., & Naedts, M. (1999). Moral and religious judgment research. In R. Mosher, D. Youngman, & J. Day (Eds.), Human development across the lifespan: Educational and psychological applications (pp. 239–264). Westport, CT: Praeger Publishing. Day, J., & Naedts, M. (2006). Constructivist and postconstructivist perspectives on moral and religious judgment research. In R. Mosher, D. Youngman, & J. Day (Eds.), Human development across the lifespan: Educational and psychological applications (2nd edn, pp. 239–264). Westport, CT: Praeger Publishing. Day, J., & Tappan, M. (1996). The narrative approach to moral development: From the epistemic subject to dialogical selves. Human Development, 39, 67–82. Day, J., & Youngman, D. (2003). Discursive practices and their interpretation in the psychology of religious development: From constructivist canons to constructionist alternatives. In J. Demmick & C. Andreoletti (Eds.), The handbook of adult development (pp. 509–532). New York: Plenum Press. Desimpelaere, P., Sulas, F., Duriez, B., & Hutsebaut, D. (1999). Psychoepistemological beliefs and religious beliefs. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 9, 125–137.

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Duriez, B. (2003). Religiosity, moral attitudes, and moral competence. A research note on the relation between religiosity and morality. Archive fuer Religionspsychologie, 25, 210–221. Duriez, B., & Hutsebaut, D. (2000). The relation between religion and racism: the role of post-critical beliefs. Mental Health, Religion, and Culture, 3, 85–102. Duriez, B., Luyten, P., Corveleyn, J., & Hutsebaut, D. (2005). Consequences of a multidimensional approach to religion for the relationship between religiosity and value priorities. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 15, 123–144. Duriez, B., & Soenens, B. (2006). Religiosity, moral attitudes and moral competence: A critical investigation of the religiosity–morality relation. International Journal for Behavioural Development, 31, 75–82. Fontaine, J., Duriez, B., Luyten, P., Corveleyn, J., & Hutsebaut, D. (2005). Consequences of a multi-dimensional approach to religion for the relationship between religiosity and value priorities. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 15, 123–143. Ganzevoort, R. (1998) (Ed.). De praxis als verhaal: narrativiteit en pratische theologie. Kampen, The Netherlands: Uitgeverij Kok. Ganzevoort, R. (2006). De hand van God en andere verhalen: Over veelkleurige vroomheid en botsende beelden. Zoetermeer, The Netherlands: Meinema. Gergen, K. (1999). Agency: Social construction and relational action. Theory and Psychology, 9, 113–115. Gergen, K. (2004). Realities and relationships: Soundings in social construction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gibbs, J., Basinger, K., & Fuller, S. (1992). Measuring the development of socio-moral reflection. The socio-moral reflection measure-revised. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Gibbs, J., Basinger, K., Grimes, R., & Snarey, J. (2007). Moral judgment development and values across cultures: Revisiting Kohlberg’s universalist claim with a new assessment method. Developmental Review, 27, 443–500. Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gilligan, C. (1996). The centrality of relationship in human development: A puzzle, some evidence, and a theory. In G. Noam & K. Fischer (Eds.), Development and vulnerability in close relationships (pp. 237–262). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Hargot, N. (2005). Partique méditative de pleine conscience sécularisée et caractéristiques individuelles de’ agréabilité et d’empathic: allers – retours entre psychologie et bouddhisme [The practice of secularized mindfulness meditation and scores of participants’ agree ability and empathy levels: Cross-fertilization between psychological science and Buddhism]. Unpublished masters thesis, Université Catholique dé Louvain, Belgium. Hunsberger, B., & Jackson, L. (2005). Religion, meaning, and prejudice. Journal of Social Issues, 61, 807–826. Hutsebaut, D. (1995). Een zekere onzekerheid: Jongeren en geloof. Leuven, Belgium: Acco. Hutsebaut, D. (1996). Post-critical belief: A new approach to the religious attitude problem. Journal of Empirical Theology, 9, 48–66. Hutsebaut, D. (1997a). Identity statuses, ego integration, God representation, and religious cognitive styles. Journal of Empirical Theology, 10, 39–54. Hutsebaut, D. (1997b). Structure of religious attitude in function of socialization

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pattern. Paper presented at the 6th European Symposium on Psychology and Religion, Barcelona, Spain. Jackson, L., & Esses, V. (1997). Of scripture and ascription. The relation between religious fundamentalism and intergroup helping. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 893–906. Kamminger, B., & Rollett, K. (1996). The Vienna religious judgment coding manual. Unpublished working document, University of Vienna, Austria. McCullough, M., & Worthington, E. (1999). Religion and the forgiving personality. Journal of Personality, 67, 1141–1164. Oser, F., & Gmunder, P. (1991). Religious judgment: A developmental approach. Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press. Oser, F., & Reich, H. (1996) (Eds.). Eingebettet ins Menschein: Beispiel Religion: Aktuelle psychologische studien zur entwicklung von religiositat. Lengerich, Germany: Pabst Scientific Publishers. Ost, C., Commons, M., Day, J., & Bett, E. (2007, March). Moral development and cognitive complexity. Paper presented at the Society for Research in Adult Development Symposium, Boston, MA. Pichon, I., Boccato, G., & Saroglou, V. (2007). Nonconscious influences of religion on prosociality: A priming study. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37, 1032–1045. Rizzuto, A-M. (2001). Religious development beyond the modern paradigm discussions: The psychoanalytic point of view. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 11, 201–214. Saroglou, V. (2002). Religion and the five factors of personality: A meta-analytic review. Personality and Individual Differences, 32, 15–25. Saroglou, V. (2004). Being religious implies being different in humour: Evidence from self and peer ratings. Mental Health, Religion, and Culture, 7, 255–267. Saroglou, V. (2006). Religion’s role in prosocial behaviour: Myth or reality? American Psychological Association Psychology of Religion Newsletter, 31, 2–9. Saroglou, V., Pichon, I., Trompette, L., Verscheuren, M., & Dernelle, R. (2005). Prosocial behaviour and religion. New evidence based on projective measures and peer ratings. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 44, 323–348. Streib, H. (1997). Religion als stilfrage. Zur revision struktureller differenzierung von religion in blick auf die analyse der pluralistisch-religionslage der gegenwart. Archiv fuer Religionpsychologie, 22, 48–69. Streib, H, Keller, B., & Csoff, R-M. (2007). The Bielefeld-based cross-cultural research on de-conversion, Volumes 1 and 2. Bielefeld, Germany: Center for Biographical Studies in Religion, University of Bielefeld. Tamminen, K., & Nurmi, K. (1995). Developmental theory and religious experience. In R. Hood, Jr. (Ed.), Handbook of religious experience (pp. 269–311). Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press.

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Like snowflakes and memories: Affective, cognitive, and conative facets of conscience in middle and later childhood Tamara J. Ferguson Department of Psychology, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA

Conscience conceptualized Like snowflakes and memories, the content of any two individuals’ conscience is not identical. But, as explained in the introductory chapter of this book, shared in common are the three facets of conscience that Broad (1973) delineated. Broad’s and Langston’s (2001) characterizations of the three conscience-related processes and the ease of identification in the English language (see Chapter 1) dovetail nicely with several, though not all, approaches to the development of morality (cf. Blasi, 1983, 1999; Hoffman, 1983, 2000; Kohlberg, 1984; Zahn-Waxler & Kochanska, 1988). In many analyses of moral development, emotions, feelings, and affect play central roles in the engagement of moral and immoral actions throughout the lifespan (e.g., Hoffman, 1982, 1998, 2000; Kochanska, Aksan, & Knaack, 2004).

Our focus on guilt and shame As with longstanding debates in philosophy contrasting the role of rational deliberation and emotion in morality (cf. Haidt, 2003), certain experts in moral development eschew the relevance of any emotion to the cultivation of moral cognition, reasoning, decision-making, behaviour, and commitment (Blasi, 2005). They deny the centrality of emotions to the moral realm because – unlike moral decisions, identities, or acts – emotions themselves are not intentional or chosen (but see De Rivera & Grinkis, 1986). Blasi argues that individuals report intense or chronic negative feelings regarding events they did not cause, events for which they do not “deserve” to feel bad, or ones that they caused purely by accident. Although people also experience these reactions regarding intentional acts, it is unwise to ground moral motivation in states that may result from pure happenstance. In our view, both intentionality criteria neglect three related and fundamentally important observations (see Ferguson, Brugman, Eyre, & White, 2007). First, people attach considerable value to various emotions (e.g.,

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anger, contempt, disgust, shame, guilt, or pride) as signals of transgressors’ efforts to be moral individuals. They value these as genuine evidence of perpetrators’ moral aspirations, precisely because of emotions’ unintentional nature. Second, certain emotions play central roles in people’s implicit conceptions of the moral person. Perpetrators and outsiders (victims and observers) can differentiate the conditions under which emotions are morally warranted. They understand that people sometimes react emotionally on various “non-moral” grounds. These include the state’s arousal when an act deviates from ideal rather than obligatory standards, or the state’s expression when helping to alleviate personal distress or to minimize punishment. These distinctions do not appear strongly until early adolescence but they are well entrenched by adulthood. Nonetheless, even very young children appreciate the moral versus non-moral grounds for feeling certain morally relevant emotions, such as guilt (e.g., Ferguson, Stegge, & Damhuis, 1991). Third, moral percepts, beliefs, and self-views are richly associated with evaluative meaning through processes of associative or instrumental conditioning, priming, exposure, accessibility, or even intuition (Haidt, 2001; Hoffman, 2000). In short, as Ferguson et al. (2007) review, emotions are central to understanding conscience when they reflect moral reasons related to the act or one’s identity after or before performing an act. Outsiders who observe certain emotional expressions will maintain or change their impressions and evaluations of the transgressor and/or the event labelled as a transgression. Relevant changes include predictions regarding the perpetrators’ future behaviour and desires to maintain a relationship with them by virtue of their imputed moral characters. These, in turn, affect the feedback that transgressors receive and may help to shape their own moral beliefs and evaluations. Moreover, the very same emotions, as experienced by transgressors, can serve to reinforce already existing cognitions regarding morally obligatory behaviour or these can signal discrepancies between their actions and values or beliefs, motivating further elaboration of these. In our research, we have concentrated on particular features of the emotional facet of conscience. Our early work focused on the conditions under which anger operated as a moral emotion and motivator. In much of that work, we observed anger to signal a victim’s or observer’s moral indignation or outrage in response to intentionally harmful and unjust treatment. In both children and adults, we demonstrated justified anger’s role in promoting reactive aggression that outsiders and transgressors believed to be warranted (Ferguson & Rule, 1982, 1983). In addition, that work identified relational, contextual, and cognitive moderators of justice perceptions and their association with anger and aggression. Explicitly framed in terms of an affective–moral–cognitive model, Brendan Rule and I analysed certain cases of anger to result from perceived discrepancies between how the self and others were obligated to behave and not to behave (Rule & Ferguson, 1984). Manipulations of moral responsibility readily exacerbated or inhibited anger and aggression. Participants also displayed

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clear signs of additional emotions, including guilt, pride, or shame, depending upon the availability of legitimate accounts of their anger and aggression. These observations stimulated my interest in a wider range of emotions, many of which can take moral or immoral actions and intentions as their objects (e.g., fear, pride, regret, anger, guilt, shame). In this chapter, I concentrate on only two of these – guilt and shame. As described in Chapter 8 (Ferguson, 2000), these two states can serve critical anticipatory and reactive roles. Anticipatorily, they can prevent engagement of immoral actions and promote pro-social ones. Reactively, they fulfil various functions, including punishing individuals for their mistakes and communicating individuals’ commitments to upholding vital standards of conduct. Of those according a central role to emotions in conscience, many nonetheless question the role of certain emotions in this process. Several clinical, social, and developmental psychologists are sceptical about the interpersonal and particularly the moral value of shame, while they imbue guilt with adaptive interpersonal or advanced moral properties (e.g., Baumeister, Stillwell, & Heatherton, 1994; Jones, Kugler, & Adams, 1995; Tangney & Dearing, 2002). Implicit or explicit in some of these arguments is an important assumption, namely, that people’s reasons for expressing guilt or for feeling guilt are interpersonally or morally more beneficial than reasons for feelings or expressions of shame. Although needing greater elaboration, and meant only as an analogy, Kohlberg’s (1984) classic analysis of moral reasoning helps to clarify the contemporary literature’s gloss of guilt and shame. One popular distinction between shame and guilt, introduced by Lewis (1971), is exemplified by the contrasting metaphors “How could I do that?” (shame) versus “How could I do that?” Because shame is self- rather than act (or victim)-focused, theorists seem to equate reasons for feeling ashamed with a preconventional form of reasoning. In contrast, they seem to align guilt’s motivation with reasoning reflecting Kohlberg’s conventional or post-conventional levels (e.g., Tangney & Dearing, 2002). Yet, some findings suggest that children and adults alike will feel or express guilt-like responses for reasons reflecting the pre-conventional level (e.g., concerns with punishment or with deviating from the dictates of authority; e.g., Krebs & Denton, 2005, 2006). Similarly, it seems plausible that people’s shame reactions sometimes reflect conventional or post-conventional levels of reasoning. Shame can convey the person’s fundamental concern with being a moral person. Shame can thus motivate moral actions, because behaving otherwise violates views of the self as an ethical or moral being. Stated differently, a very mature reason for feeling ashamed conveys that I “cannot” do otherwise, because doing so would tear at the very fabric of my moral soul (Blasi, 2005). Less advanced reasons for feelings of shame do exist (e.g., being laughed at or ridiculed; being rejected because of failures to conform). These, however, seem on par with equally less mature reasons for feeling guilty (e.g., to avoid punishment, to avoid hurting someone even though other concerns demand it).

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A second issue bears on persistent efforts to understand the functions of these two emotions in the moral (or any) realm by pitting each against the other, as though vying for the starring role in tales of moral woe or victory. Frequently, researchers first deconstruct measures of the two states by residualizing from each emotion score its shared variance with the other. Correlation coefficients of the residualized emotion scores with other indices (e.g., empathy) generally reveal results slightly favouring shame-free guilt’s moral value, but detracting from the valuable role of guilt-free shame (see Tangney & Dearing, 2002). Then, akin to putting an emotional Humpty Dumpty back together again, authors essentially restore the deconstructed emotions by inspecting the zero-order coefficients’ relation to criteria (and other comparisons). Based on these inspections, authors conclude that shame can be adaptive when co-occurring with guilt, or that guilt can be maladaptive but only when fused with shame. There are several oddities to this approach. Primarily, however, children and adults invariably report feeling both of these emotions in response to a situation (see Ferguson & Stegge, 1995, 1998). Although a wide age range of individuals can distinguish reliably when and why they feel guilty versus ashamed, the two states are highly correlated in research findings and in real-life (cf. Tangney & Dearing, 2002). We, in fact, suspect them to be correlated strongly, particularly in morally relevant situations. The issues highlighted above are central foci of this chapter. Through a series of studies described in Ferguson et al. (2007), we demonstrated the conjoint importance of shame and guilt to understanding morality in adults. In the present chapter, we explore their mutual influence during childhood by reviewing some of the relevant published findings and by featuring results of one of our studies with 5- to 13-year-old children. In that study, we examined whether shame in response to moral transgressions reflected children’s concern with their moral identity, and whether reasons for feeling ashamed differed from children’s reasons for feeling guilty. Another purpose of this study was to ascertain whether and how either or both of guilt and shame figured in children’s daily moral behaviours. Before detailing this study’s methods and results, it is important to provide readers with some background regarding extant views of the two emotions. In this regard, I concentrate on views of the two emotions in the social psychological and developmental literatures. I devote much attention to views in social psychology, because this by far comprises the larger database regarding guilt and shame, and is a source of contrasting predictions regarding these emotions’ roles in conscience functioning. Readers additionally will see that findings and measurement protocols available in this literature well reflect, and even seem to be shaping, certain American cultural constructions of the two emotions in daily life and in clinical applications (cf. Ferguson, 1999). Moreover, readers of this volume might be less familiar with that highly influential database than with the literature in developmental psychology concerning conscience and moral development. From the

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developmental literature, I will only briefly highlight influential views of, and findings regarding, guilt and its role in conscience-related processes.

Extant views of guilt and shame In this section I discuss first the social psychological concept views, then the developmental views, and finally our own conception. Social psychology There are two general “schools of thought” regarding guilt and shame in this literature. Because of its elegant simplicity, the first can be sketched in broad brush strokes (see also Ferguson, Chapter 8, this volume). The second requires greater elaboration to help readers appreciate certain predictions entertained in the “featured” study. One view of guilt and shame derives from Weiner’s (1986, 1995) well-known attributional analysis of what he terms “secondary” or “social emotions”. Primary emotions, such as happiness or sadness, arise largely because of their association with desirable or undesirable outcomes. Secondary emotions, however, are aroused and differentiated from each other based on a more extensive “cognitive” analysis of an outcome’s causal origin. Viewed regarding undesirable outcomes, guilt is aroused when people attribute an undesired outcome (e.g., their harmful behaviour or failure) to internal and controllable causes (e.g., low effort to avoid the harm or to succeed on a task). When people further perceive the internal cause to be unstable and specific (e.g., a momentary lack of effort), guilt should be all the more intense, at least in Tracy and Robins’ view (2004). In contrast, people are more likely to feel shame when they attribute the same outcome to internal and uncontrollable sources, if not also stable and global causes, such as low ability (cf. Weiner, 1986). Weiner initially conceived his attributional model of emotions in terms of achievement outcomes, and he meant to explain how different attributions for success or failure influenced individuals’ motivation to undertake or persist on achievement-related tasks. Weiner (1995) later extrapolated the model to the interpersonal realm, including moral or immoral behaviours. The primary distinction between guilt as due to internal/controllable causes contrasted with shame’s basis in internal/uncontrollable causes, especially when each is intensified by perceptions of stability or globality, implies that moral motivation will suffer more in the ashamed than in the guilty individual. Efforts of Weiner together with Graham and colleagues, as well as those of Tracy and Robins, have yielded considerable support for the model’s validity in both realms in adults and children of approximately 7–10 years of age and older. There are many criticisms of attributional models as a general class, including Weiner’s, only two of which I mention here (cf. Ferguson et al., 2007). First, the causal dimensions (e.g., internal versus external locus, stable versus unstable) are not orthogonal. Second, and of great relevance to moral

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issues, the models do not capture well people’s construal of their intentional behaviour. As Malle (2004) has shown, for example, people conceptualize intentional behaviours in terms of more dynamic reasons and their causal history. Interpersonal models of guilt (Baumeister et al., 1994; Parkinson, 1995, 1999) stress the adaptive role that guilt as a state plays in promoting behaviours conducive to healthy communal relationships. Guilt serves to relieve the victim’s distress, assure the victim of one’s commitment to the relationship, and to give more power to the usually less powerful partner in a relationship. These models ignore shame. They also do not emphasize specifically the “moral” value of guilt, but instead its general role in regulating a range of interpersonally valuable behaviours. Tangney and her associates’ (e.g., Tangney & Dearing, 2002) model also is interpersonal in nature, but it encompasses both guilt and shame. Their interest is in how both, as stable emotion dispositions, affect the quality of individual’s interpersonal (including moral) and their psychological well being. As we will see, the model of Tangney and associate’s attributes considerable value to guilt proneness, but not to shame proneness. A large body of evidence, focused particularly on adults and deriving from these interpersonal models, seems to strongly favour guilt’s basis in empathy. This evidence further supports the roles of guilt and empathy in conscientiousness or morality, including pro-social behaviour (e.g., volunteerism, withstanding painful electronic shocks for an innocent other in need), resisting temptation, and restraining aggressive or otherwise harmful impulses (cf. Tangney & Dearing, 2002). Some of this evidence accrues from studies measuring guilt and/or shame as states (cf. Baumeister et al., 1994). Other evidence derives from assessments of guilt- and shame proneness. Regarding these assessments, researchers often use self-report protocols that others have questioned as to their validity. Many question these instruments’ validity, not because they are self-reports, but because of the way in which they portray guilt and shame proneness and the statistical analyses used. Interested readers can consult reviews, and defences, of these problems (Eisenberg, 2000; Elison, 2003; Ferguson & Crowley, 1997a; Ferguson & Stegge, 1998; Ferguson et al., 2007; Harder, 1995; Harris, 2003; Kugler & Jones, 1992; Luyten, Fontaine, & Corveleyn, 2002; Paulhus, Robins, Trzesniewski, & Tracy, 2004). Briefly, these protocols never mention the word “guilt” or “shame”, a meritorious yet limited strategy. An assumption guiding these protocols’ development is that specific appraisals or cognitions and action tendencies reliably distinguish different emotions (Frijda, 1986). At first glance, this assumption seems perfectly reasonable. After all, there have been great efforts to identify the unique appraisals or cognitions associated with shame and guilt (in addition to a host of other emotions; cf. Lazarus, 1991). Moreover, the very word “emotion” derives from the Latin emovere (out + move, i.e., outward movement). Unfortunately, however, the evidence does not

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unequivocally support claims that each state is associated uniquely or necessarily with particular appraisals and cognitions (cf. Davitz, 1969; Ferguson et al., 2007). Being concerned with a wrongdoing and/or about the victim’s welfare are not exclusive proprietary rights of guilt. Self-criticism and particularly global self-denigration are not definitional of shame. Equally questionable are the action tendencies representing shame and guilt in these protocols. Intentions to “approach” the victim by offering reparation or apologies, or to strengthen one’s proactive future efforts, depict guilt. Conversely, descriptions of intentions to avoid or withdraw from the situation (thereby not offering apology or repair) represent shame. It is generally questionable to operationalize any emotion in terms of unique or necessary action tendencies. Consider, for example, the case of anger. What precisely are its action tendencies? Though sometimes associated with the actions of striking out or shaking one’s fists (and the like), these actions obviously can be associated with other emotions or with no emotions at all (cf. Ortony, Clore, & Collins, 1988). One example suffices to illustrate the problems with a particularly popular and widely used protocol, known as the Test of Self-Conscious Affect (TOSCA; Tangney, Wagner, & Gramzow, 1989), available in versions suited to different ages and even populations (cf. Tangney & Dearing, 2002). After reading a scenario depicting, for example, respondents making a big mistake at work and receiving the boss’ criticism, they endorse their likelihood of responding in different ways, including “You would feel like you wanted to hide” (shame) and “You would think: I should have recognized the problem and done a better job” (guilt). Guilt- and shame-proneness scores are the sum of these types of answers across 16 situations. Because the scores are associated anywhere from .43 to .78, researchers then often employ part correlation techniques to residualize from each emotion score the variance it shares with the other, yielding guilt-free shame and shame-free guilt scores (see Tangney & Dearing, 2002). Using correlational techniques involving the residualized and zero-order emotion scores, researchers then examine these scores’ relationship to myriad indices of personality, behaviour, and outcomes. Invariably, findings bear out the adaptive value of guilt, especially for the residual shame-free guilt scores. Findings link stronger shame-free guilt endorsements to empathy or prosocial tendencies, and the absence of antisocial tendencies (see Tangney & Dearing, 2002). In stark contrast, this empirical literature casts a dark shadow over shame. In length, the “wall of shame” rivals the Great Wall of China, with results linking guilt-free shame to many problems (including impoverished social skills, empathy, self-esteem, and deficits in morality; an abundance of anxiety, depression, hostility, aggression, criminal conduct, eating disorders, procrastination, body dysmorphic disorders, suicide, as well as narcissism and distressed relationships; cf. Tangney & Dearing, 2002). Using behavioural or observational equivalents to the TOSCA, in which avoidance represents shame and approach/repair designate guilt, research with children

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as young as 17 months of age yields similar results (see Barrett, Zahn-Waxler, & Cole, 1993). Peculiar at first glance, the analogy between the Great Wall of China and shame’s maladaptive (compared to guilt’s adaptive) properties helps to illustrate the role of norms and attitudes about emotions in their ultimate or expected value. Most psychological research regarding guilt and shame has focused on Americans (but see Mascolo, Fischer, & Li, 2003). This, of course, raises important questions regarding the extent to which culture (defined broadly) influences any emotion’s functionality. Cross-cultural studies of the two states’ evaluation have focused largely on individualism–collectivism, which is only one of several dimensions distinguishing different cultures (cf. De Rivera, 1989; Wallbott & Scherer, 1995). The primary goals of Americans are taking care of the self and one’s immediate family, which is a central facet of individualism in the USA and countries such as Australia, France, Italy, and The Netherlands. Reflecting, in part, their rugged individualism and beliefs in choice or self-determination, guilt as construed in the largely American literature seems to connote its citizens’ great optimism regarding their ability to change or improve. Interestingly, at least in individualistic cultures, people typically construe the guilt as short-lived and low to moderate in intensity. In contrast with other cultures, Americans (particularly those with a EuroCaucasian heritage) seem to harbour extremely negative attitudes towards shame (Bedford & Hwang, 2003; Ho, Fu, & Ng, 2004; Johnson, Danko, Huang, & Park, 1987; Lebra, 1983; Lutwak, Razzino, & Ferrari, 1998; Scherer, 1997). In this and other individualistic cultures, people experience shame as an extremely painful emotion, so distressing in fact that people frequently deny, repress, or bypass the feeling (Lewis, 1971). Shame’s aggrieved reputation as an “ugly” or “dark” emotion (e.g., Tangney, 1994, 1996) is perfectly understandable, since the focus of this experience is the diminished or degraded value of one’s identity. Collectivistic societies are interdependent and look after larger units in the community in exchange for loyalty. Collectivistic attitudes are prevalent in countries representing the Middle or Far East as well as Brazil, Chile, China, the Dominican Republic, Greece, Hong Kong, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. By far the most research has focused on shame’s valued role in collectivistic cultures of the Middle and Far East, as well as in Hispanic cultures (e.g., Iglesias, 1996). Shame is a valued feeling and public shaming (Iglesias, 1996) is a frequent practice of parents, or other adults, in these cultures (e.g., Cole, Bruschi, & Tamang, 2002; Kitayama & Markus, 1995). They appear more integrated or motivated by shame because of their stronger interdependence and greater desires for unity and belongingness, which contrasts greatly with America’s zeal for greater individuality and personal autonomy.1 This brief sketch of cross-cultural differences in the significance of, and sentiments regarding, guilt and shame risks stereotyping cultures in much the same way that many American researchers have compartmentalized or

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contrasted functions of the two states in individuals. It nonetheless serves the purpose of identifying wide-reaching societal contributions to the ways in which various scientists presently construe guilt and shame. Social, developmental, and clinical psychologists frequently portray guilt as the emotional arbiter of proper conduct and conscience. Guilt as a reaction to one’s misdeeds – real or imagined – presumably repairs the damage done and aids in healing the victim’s wounded feelings. In largely Western or individualistic samples, guilt may receive greater moral credit because of the very way in which researchers often operationalize the construct (as approach/repair or indications of internal/controllable attributions) in response to transgressions. Developmental psychology The longstanding and landmark model of Hoffman (2000) and, more recently, that of Kochanska and colleagues (e.g., Aksan & Kochanska, 2005) are the most explicit integrations of all three components of conscience. These models accord a role to various emotions, though generally explicitly focusing on empathy, fear, and guilt in children. Diverse affective descriptors are included as important features of qualitatively different parent–child relationships, parents’ efforts to promote pro-social behaviours, parental reactions to children’s missteps, peers’ reactions to each other’s misdeeds, and children’s reactions to their own transgressions during infancy and early childhood. Empathy and guilt purportedly influence behaviours reflecting a child’s committed or even internalized compliance with moral standards, yet they, like other emotions (e.g., fear), can motivate superficial compliance to standards meant to lessen personal distress or avoid punitive consequences (cf. Eisenberg, 2000; Gibbs, 2003; Hoffman, 1998; Kochanska, 1991, 1993, 2002; Kochanska, Gross, & Lin, 2002; Zahn-Waxler & Kochanska, 1988). Because comprehensive reviews of these models and related evidence are readily available, I draw attention to certain empirical findings only. Views of the close connection between guilt and empathy’s positive contributions abound (see Eisenberg, 2000; Hoffman, 1998, 2000; Tangney & Dearing, 2002). Hoffman (2000) discusses varieties of guilt and he recognizes empathy-based guilt as only one of many varieties. He nonetheless construes empathy-based guilt to be the “key pro-social motive in transgressions involving harm to others” (p. 113) and as an emotional cornerstone of moral internalization. Hoffman describes empathy-based guilt as constructive and involving “a painful feeling of disesteem for oneself, usually accompanied by a sense of urgency, tension, and regret, that results from empathic feelings for someone in distress, combined with awareness of being the cause of that distress” (p. 114, all of original appeared in bold). Hoffman (2000) provides an informative review of several studies and frameworks supporting this assertion, including his own early work. Of course, later work further buttresses Hoffman’s observations that empathy and what might be “guilt”

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contribute positively to pro-social behaviour and moral internalization (cf. the Bybee collection; Hoffman, 1998). Two of Kochanska and colleagues’ longitudinal studies provided behavioural evidence in toddlers favouring Hoffman’s notion of empathy-based guilt. At older ages, she indeed found a strong connection of empathy to pro-social behaviours (cf. Aksan & Kochanska, 2005). Clear, nonetheless, is that guilt is not always empathically motivated, as several authors stress in their reviews or models (Ferguson, 2000; Ferguson & Stegge, 1995; Lewis, 1971; Zahn-Waxler & Kochanska, 1988) and others have taken great pains to clarify (cf. Ferguson & Crowley, 1997b; Ferguson, Stegge, Miller, & Olsen, 1999; Krebs & Denton, 2006). For example, in a study of 21- to 60-month-old children, Kochanska has identified two components in mothers’ ratings of their children’s conscience (see Kochanska, 2002; Kochanska et al., 2004). Guilt, concern about relationships with parents, empathy, and apology characterized the “affective discomfort” component. Confession, internalized moral conduct, reparation, and concern about others’ wrongdoing comprised the component Kochanska labelled as moral regulation/vigilance or “behavioural control”. By 2 years of age, girls showed greater “affective discomfort” than boys. Kochanska has noted the consistency of these findings with earlier ones of Sears, Maccoby, and Levin (1957). They found that girls more than boys were emotionally upset after wrongdoings. Moreover, girls who were more guilt-prone also displayed highly dependent behaviours (such as apology and reassurance-seeking) and their mothers, albeit permissive, tended to reward children’s dependency. Kochanska stressed that tendencies toward guilt-infused affective discomfort could be antecedents of either self-critical and apologetic bids following transgressions or a depressive style involving self-blame and guilt (especially in girls). In her 1993 address at the Society for Research in Child Development, she referred to the latter as tendencies toward a “misplaced sense of responsibility” that may signal the “beginnings of more deep-seated, malignant guilt brought on by harsh parenting”. Yet, she also reported that reparation (an often used index of guilt) was less strongly associated with empathy-based concern or with children’s efforts to understand the moral significance or their role in problematic situations. With increasing frequency, from preschool throughout the earlier elementary school years, children’s intentional and harmful psychological or physical behaviours were accompanied by considerable “glee”, self-oriented distress, continued aggressiveness, and reparation. Though Kochanska interprets this ambivalence differently, it does seem reasonable to ask whether reparation necessarily signals guilt or empathy. Blasi (2005), in fact, reviews a larger body of similar evidence to question whether findings based on observational or parent-reported indices of early “moral” cognitive, affective, or behavioural competence actually meet the criteria for morality. Blasi’s concerns are reminiscent of those raised in the 1950s and 1960s when behavioural studies employed children’s adherence to standards of

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moral conduct in the absence of surveillance as an indicator of conscientiousness or internalization (e.g., Aronfreed, 1968). Were child (or adult) transgressors to offer confessions, apologies, or repair in others’ presence, few would grant them “moral credit”. Even outside of others’ known presence, these behavioural indices are debatable as to whether transgressors actually are feeling empathy or feeling guilty, or whether they are motivated to offer approach/repair because of these feelings. The behavioural expressions need not reflect feelings of empathy, nor do they guarantee that empathy, guilt, or a combination of them are due to the transgressor’s perceptions that he or she violated internalized standards of moral conduct (cf. Krevans & Gibbs, 1996). Obviously, and quite early, children learn that behavioural expressions of this nature quickly minimize punishment or avoid it altogether (Aronfreed, 1968). Further complicating an interpretation of approach/reparation as indices of guilt, empathy, empathy-based guilt, or internalized standards of moral conduct is that one frequently observes the same behaviours when children have not wilfully engaged in a standard violation. Specialists in moral development rightfully restrict the definition of moral conduct to variations on two general themes: (1) an intentional choice involving resisting temptation or (2) a wilful decision to engage in morally virtuous behaviour, especially when compared to a powerful temptation (Blasi, 2005). Thus restricted, one needs to collect suitable measurements allowing for comparisons of (1) and (2) to unintentional incidents. Of course, researchers have made these comparisons and have shown that children of even young ages express empathy, and will offer reparative bids, even to their (or another’s) unwilfully produced misdeed (cf. Zahn-Waxler & Kochanska, 1988). As Hoffman (2000) and many others have stressed (cf. Eisenberg, 2000), empathy is not, therefore, a unique component to “moral” behaviours. It simply remains unclear whether guilt is a unique component to “moral” casus quo intentional behaviours that fit categories (1) or (2). If one allows reparation, confession, and apologies to be proxies of guilt, then guilt even for children of a young age does appear to be a moral motivator or expression of moral internalization. If one questions, however, whether these behavioural expressions necessarily reflect more than fear of punishment or some otherprovided tangible or psychological reward, then children are expressing no more than “pseudoguilt” (Eisenberg & Murphy, 1995) or what we termed fear-based guilt (Ferguson & Stegge, 1995). A similar line of reasoning applies to shame as a subjective feeling. Regarding behavioural expressions of shame, researchers generally operationalize this construct as children’s tendencies to avert their gaze, hide, stop the task, or withdraw from the scene in response to unwittingly produced accidents, failures to resist temptation, or failures on achievement tasks (e.g., Alessandri & Lewis, 1996; Lewis, 1992). Often present in these situations is an authority figure, in the form of the parent or an unfamiliar experimenter (who also acts compassionately when the victim of children’s accidents). As Barrett and

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colleague’s research with toddlers reveals, there are vast individual differences in children’s responses, and some do engage in these avoidance behaviours (Barrett et al., 1993). I think it likely that these observable behaviours do represent the shame family of affect (Aldich, 1939; Ausubel, 1955; Thrane, 1979; Tomkins, 1963). Nonetheless unclear from the coded expressions of shame in Barrett et al.’s (1993) or other observational studies is whether they necessarily represent avoidance based on impoverished moral systems. Equally unclear is whether they involve the shame-to-anger cycle (or “humiliated fury”; Lewis, 1971) sequences attributed to them in certain research (cf. Ferguson, 2005). Some of Kochanska and colleagues’ behaviourally based findings regarding temperamentally fearful or inhibited children illustrate the interpretive problems, even though their paradigms do not distinguish guilt from shame. These children need a supportive and warm environment to engage actively in many forms of behaviour in the laboratory setting. In behavioural studies of shame, I imagine that some of the recruited children were temperamentally fearful or inhibited. Faced with their sudden accidental “beheading” of the experimenter’s doll, they might withdraw, as an effort to regain composure. Their withdrawal need not reflect moral indifference. Behaviourally observed avoidance tendencies in adults have been associated with a range of cognitive orientations, encompassing the self-imposition of strict standards of conduct to the other extreme of angry externalizations of blame (e.g., Ferguson & Barrett, 2003; Tangney, 1995). As Karen Barrett and I have planned, we need more behaviourally based studies of shame (and other reactions) that more clearly involve comparisons of wilful wrongdoings or their resistance, as alluded to in (1) and (2) above. We, nonetheless, remain doubtful that the same avoidance “behaviours” are expressions of shame exclusively when represented on self-report protocols, such as the TOSCA. In the above, I stressed research that has not well captured the relation of guilt or shame to intentional wrongdoings or the wilful resistance of temptations, yet intentionality seems one of the premier features of conscience. Of relevance are the classic studies of Piaget (1932/1965) and the years of research he inspired regarding the development of moral judgment (e.g., Lickona, 1976). Figuring prominently in these studies were manipulations of “causal” aspects of the harms (or positive outcomes), including their avoidable, foreseeable, intentional, and justifiable nature, and assessments of individuals’ moral- or emotion-related judgments. Multiple studies indicate the fine causal discriminations that children of 7–10 years or older generally make regarding their own or other individuals’ behaviours in terms of various judgments, including morality, wrongness, naughtiness, guilt, shame, and anger (e.g., Harris, 1989). Of course, individuals may be racked by guilt even for unintentional wrongdoings, or ones they did not even cause, as revealed by cases of separation guilt, survivor guilt, existential guilt, over-benefited guilt, and what Hoffman (2000) terms “responsibility guilt”. Yet, his model of “transgression

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guilt”, which is most relevant to conscience, traces its origins to parenting practices meant to promote empathy and to help children understand their causal role in producing a harmful outcome. Hoffman emphasizes the dual role of induction in promoting transgression guilt. He states, for example, “For inductive information to be understood . . . it must simply and clearly point up the victim’s distress and make the child’s role in causing it salient” (p. 159). We, too, have stressed the importance of a harmful act’s “causal origins” in arousing various feelings, including one of guilt’s complements – anger – but also guilt itself (Ferguson & Rule, 1983; Ferguson & Stegge, 1995). We recognized, however, that multiple motivations contribute to denials of guilty feelings (when people should feel guilty) or the acceptance of intense and chronic guilty feelings when they should not feel these ways (e.g., Ferguson, Stegge, Eyre, Vollmer, & Ashbaker, 2000). Over-empathy, a too ready acceptance of responsibility, and a transgressor’s sense of indebtedness to victims, or even outsiders who demand feelings of guilt, can promote chronic or pathogenic forms of guilt. One cannot easily explain these in terms of a “shame” substitute for they promote a strong and recurring felt obligation to repay debts (cf. Ferguson, Chapter 8, this volume). In these senses, too, guilty feelings may not always be equivalent to genuinely moral perceptions. Our emphasis in this section, however, is considering prevalent views of guilt and shame in relation to questions of the intentional or unintentional nature of one’s wrongdoings. We ask readers to consider these contrasts for several reasons. First, intentional wrongdoings purportedly are most relevant to conscientious behaviours, yet much of the research regarding guilt and shame has focused on unintentional mishaps. This is true of most scenarios in the self-report TOSCA protocol, but also in the behavioural studies I just reviewed. Second, knowing precisely which differences in guilt or shame arise from one’s unintentional versus intentional wrongdoings helps to further clarify differences among various models of guilt and shame, including the state-oriented interpersonal model of Baumeister et al. (1994) or Parkinson (1995), the attributional models of Weiner (1995) and others (e.g., Tracy & Robins, 2004), and the disposition-oriented model of Tangney and colleagues (cf. Tangney & Dearing, 2002). Third, this will allow introduction of one final seminal model of differences between guilt and shame (Lewis, 1971), which bears on certain gender-related predictions in our “featured” study. Fourth, the entire exercise will clarify guilt’s and shame’s specific involvement in morally relevant motivation, also thereby setting the stage for our “featured” study. Thus, let us consider two examples as “thought” experiments. Consider cases in which people know they have “hurt” someone, starting first with people knowing that their misdeed was “unwitting” because they unintentionally hit a friend in the face with a baseball or damaged their property (e.g., by dropping and breaking their property). Let us grant that individuals perceive these as foreseeably or negligently produced negative

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outcomes (as opposed to sheer accidents). Readers now should consider how guilty and how ashamed they would feel in response to these incidents. Consider the intensity of these feelings immediately after the event takes place and then later in time (e.g., one day later). Based on attributional analyses of guilt, one prediction is that the transgressor would be likely to feel initially very guilty, but much less guilty after time has passed (see Ferguson, Olthof, & Stegge, 1997). This is because the “guilty” person realizes that s/he could control future events and thereby avoid engaging in another transgression. Alternatively, interpersonal models of guilt would expect transgressors to feel initially strong guilt because of their great empathy and interpersonal sensitivity (e.g., Baumeister et al., 1994; Tangney & Dearing, 2002). Morally creditworthy transgressors presumably would immediately pay their debts “emotionally”, thereby mending the relationship and reducing guilt’s chances of lingering. Based on these models, the same essential reasoning applies to guilt regarding these events when intentionally produced, because guilt is an interpersonal device meant to repair damaged relationships, and responsibility (e.g., the foreseeable versus intentional commission of a harmful act) is relatively irrelevant from that viewpoint. As noted by Ferguson (Chapter 8, this volume), Parkinson (1999) asserts that guilt does not arise from private appraisals, but from considerations of the how the victim will respond, including how much the victim might blame the transgressor. One potential exception to the prediction of no differences in guilt as a function of the act’s intentional quality derives from attributional models, such as Tracy and Robins’ or Weiner’s. The wilful compared to foreseeable wrongdoer might be expected to feel heightened intensities of guilt, both initially and later in time, because of the stronger controllability of wilful acts. Consider, now, the case of shame, from the perspectives of attributional and interpersonal models. Attributional perspectives imply that people should feel considerable immediate, and we would presume later, shame even for foreseeable (and accidental) events, because these mean the event was due to something about the transgressor that s/he could not control. What would attribution models predict regarding shame reactions to intentional wrongdoings? Intentionality implies an internal cause that the person could control, thereby inducing feelings of guilt. Guilt and shame are aroused, however, due to opposing attributions (particularly in the realm of controllability and possibly also in the realms of globality and stability; Tracy & Robins, 2004). Perceivers, including transgressors, generally judge their intentional behaviour as controllable. The prediction of low shame for intentional misdeeds seems to follow from this perspective. Yet, this prediction strikes one as a bit odd. Although not yet unequivocally examined in extant literature, perhaps a more reasonable prediction is that the intentional wrongdoer might feel great shame if s/he attributed an intentional wrongdoing to something about the “self ” that s/he could not control (e.g., because of a weak will or unvirtuous character).

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In comparison, certain interpersonal models have not explicitly analysed shame (e.g., Parkinson, 1999) or they do not consider shame to be an important interpersonal state (e.g., Baumeister et al., 1994) and, thus, are mute regarding how intentionality would influence feelings of shame. The strongly interpersonally based model of Tangney and associates allows for any type of disturbing discrepancy from standards to elicit shame or guilt, and would not, therefore, seek to explain differences in the two states’ aroused intensity to differences in whether transgressors produced the outcome intentionally. In this view, shame is a global negative evaluation of one’s entire self as fundamentally defective. Speculative at best, it seems that this model might expect the shame-prone person to evaluate the self as even more flawed for intentional than unintentional wrongdoings, but there is no firm foundation on which to base predictions regarding how these feelings would change with time. In our view, however, shame generally reflects a focus on issues of identity (as perceived by the self and/or as inferred from others’ perceptions of the self ?. The identity at issue can be a moral one (as in these examples). In the case of moral wrongdoings, shame’s central concern is one’s moral character or virtue. One-time, isolated instances of a foreseeably produced moral wrongdoing seem unlikely to threaten the individual’s moral self-perception. To us, therefore, it seems improbable for people to feel much shame for foreseeable wrongdoings, either immediately after the incident or later in time. Although not our prime concern here, continued engagement in what people had been construing as merely foreseeable wrongdoings, to us, would lead people to doubt their “truer” intentions and motivations and to question their moral character. Regarding intentional wrongdoings, it seems likely for people to react with considerable shame both right after the event and later in time. Shame’s intensity might decrease with time, but only if the person entertains thoughts that somehow justify the event or contextualize it as an aberration and thus unthreatening to one’s moral stature. Results relevant to the above observations regarding the role of causality in arousing feelings of guilt or shame revealed fascinating trends worth close attention. Some of these derive from the Ferguson, Olthof, and Stegge (1997) study of guilt, in which they examined how guilty feelings’ intensity varied as a function of two factors, namely, the transgressors’ responsibility for a harmful outcome and the time at which those feelings were assessed (immediately following or one day after the harmful outcome had been produced). Others derive from a replication of the Ferguson et al. study that included measures of both guilt and shame. This study allowed us to examine the impact of responsibility related information on emotion judgments in two ways: (1) by virtue of the manipulated differences in responsibility presented in vignettes and (2) by virtue of correlating measures of “transgressors” perceptions of their responsibility and the victims’ anticipated perceptions and reactions. In the replication study, as in its original, transgressors reported much less

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guilt for intentional than unintentional wrongs immediately after the event. Additional data interestingly showed the opposite for immediate ratings of shame; these were higher for intentional than unintentional harms. Importantly, immediately post-transgression, transgressors reported feeling much less guilty but much more ashamed for intentionally produced outcomes. Over time, people reported feeling guiltier for the intentional misdeeds, but the intensity of their shame increased even more. In terms of unique predictors, shame’s association with perceived moral responsibility was strong immediately post-event and it became stronger with time (r = .25, .39). Importantly, at Time 2, these emotions’ links to perceived intentionality, a composite score of the victims’ reactions, and worries regarding the event’s reflection on their character (r = .32, .37, .33, respectively) were significant only for shame and not for guilt. For example, guilt at Time 1 was unrelated to moral responsibility and this link at Time 2 was only marginally significant (r = .26) and significantly lower than the coefficient of .39 found for shame. Guilt intensity’s prime correlate at Time 1 and Time 2 was perceived avoidability (r = .30 and .42, respectively). These results portray guilt and shame in a different light than prevailing views in the literature. First, there was a strong nexus of shame to moral responsibility, character, and concerns with the victims’ reactions. Second, intentional harmdoings produced stronger shame immediately and later in time, a finding inconsistent with predictions in contemporary literature. Third, turning our attention exclusively to guilt, we learned that these feelings depended greatly on transgressors’ perceived ability to account adequately for the harm’s occurrence. When caught off their “causal guard”, without a sufficient justification for the harm, transgressors reported immediate and intense guilty feelings. Given time to reflect, however, transgressors avowed the greater guilt for events they in all likelihood could not justify. Data collected from children ranging in age from 5 to 16 years of age, using the same stimuli but focusing on guilt, showed similar effects for children 13 years and older (some of which I discuss in Chapter 8, this volume). Ferguson and colleagues (2007) discuss additional replications of the time-related flip-flop in guilt based on rating studies (e.g., Treadwell, 1999, 2001) and diary studies. In these studies, guilt’s intensity varied primarily as a function of calculations of culpability, based on transgressors’ self-knowledge and, possibly later in time, based on projections of how the victim would react to, and evaluate, the transgressor. These results are fascinating in light of Parkinson’s (1999) interpersonal analysis of guilt. Parkinson is adamant that people construct any emotion, including guilt, “out” of or during an unfolding social exchange involving the transgressor and victim. Specifically regarding social exchanges arousing guilt, Parkinson stresses that the victim’s imagined reactions figure importantly in assessments of culpability or blameworthiness. One interpretation we have offered for the finding that guilt for “unjustifiable intentional” harm increases with time, but that guilt for unintentional mishaps decreases with time, is that the transgressors later realized that victims

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would hold them responsible only for the “unjustifiably intended” incident. Nonetheless, the correlational results do not support this interpretation. If anything, consideration of the victim’s reaction exerted greater influence on reactions of shame. Further complicating the interpretation are results of Treadwell’s (2001) showing that adult participants asked to adopt the victim’s perspective on similar vignettes do not predict a pattern of transgressor guilt matching the transgressors’ ratings of their own guilty feelings. Victims expect transgressors of unjustifiably intended harm to not feel guilty at Time 1 and they expect even less guilt at Time 2. The best matching profiles for guilt in Treadwell’s study were those involving the same rater, i.e., the transgressor’s self-reported guilty feelings and the guilty feelings that the transgressor thought the victim would expect (reflected appraisals). We devote greater attention in Chapter 8 (Ferguson, this volume) to additional results bearing on guilt’s supposed interpersonal origins, and will conclude the present section with an obvious caveat. Clearly, we need observational data closely tracking each action and reaction of both parties to the exchange to discern, for example, whether the victim actually is behaving in ways to exacerbate (or reduce) the transgressor’s sense of responsibility and avowals of guilt. Guilt’s apparent focus on blameworthiness fits neatly even with the very etymology of the English word guilt. Its meaning is rooted in the Germanic word “schuld” (debt) and guilt in legal nomenclature is another term for “being responsible”. To feel guilty is another way of expressing that one “feels” responsible and thereby indebted (cf. Ferguson, 1999). Most adults would recognize that to “feel” responsible is not conveying a distinct emotion on par with other emotions such as anger or shame, which have comparatively unique expressive profiles. Sabini and Silver (1997) offered a similar argument. In their view, to “feel guilty” has the same semantic status as to “feel kingly”. Clearly, both are metaphorical, and neither are ostensive references to an emotional state per se. In fact, many have raised doubts about guilt’s status as an emotion. Tomkins (1963) was one of the first to detail why guilt is not an affect, a feeling, or an emotion (Ferguson, 1999; Lewis, 1971; Ortony et al., 1988; Sabini & Silver, 1997). He conceptualized guilt, instead, as a cognitive script that focuses on moral transgressions and that can become associated with the genuine affect of shame through repeated pairing. In his view, importantly, guilt is only one of the cognitive scripts associated with the affect of shame; additional scripts associated with the affect of shame include, for example, embarrassment, humiliation, and inadequacy scripts. In her series of studies entitled “pain with a purpose”, Ferguson has shown that people perceive the pairing of high intensity guilt with equally intense shame to be most diagnostic of a person’s morally virtuous character (reviewed in Ferguson et al., 2007). Briefly, when transgressors repeatedly made the same “unintentional” mistakes, or when they had perpetrated only one serious intentional wrongdoing, any other combination of “high versus low” guilt with shame was insufficient to convince perceivers that transgressors truly had learned a moral lesson from their past behaviour or that

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transgressors would avoid similar immoral behaviour in the future. From these studies, it seems that moral adaptation is best conveyed by “feeling responsible” (guilt) while experiencing the affect of shame. In my view, this calls into question assertions that guilt becomes maladaptive only when accompanied by shame. Finally, the results I have discussed thus far regarding guilt as a relatively “affectless” state are consistent with Lewis’ (1971) seminal analysis of this state. More than anyone else’s, Lewis’ analysis of guilt and shame has inspired much of the research with adults (cf. Tangney & Dearing, 2002). Her analysis additionally represents one of the few thorough efforts to understand how gender-related expectations and socialization affected the development of guilt and shame. These ideas and her views of the origins of guilt and shame are especially interesting for the field of conscience development. Of many distinctions that Lewis drew between the two states, research has focused most frequently on her metaphorical characterization of guilt as “How could I do that?” and shame as “How could I do that?” Focusing on the act is thus salient during a guilt experience, while the self ’s role or characteristics in producing the outcome are focal during the shame experience. Importantly, tomes of research findings, measuring guilt and shame in ways reflecting the metaphorical contrast, supposedly show that guilt is largely an adaptive experience, while shame is a maladaptive one (cf. Tangney & Dearing, 2002). Lewis emphasized the constant interplay between the two states in normally functioning adults, and she was not necessarily attributing a greater adaptive role to guilt than shame. This is easiest to illustrate by comparing her descriptions of the origins, foci of attention, and defensive styles characteristic of the many people who presented to therapy suffering from debilitating problems in the realm of paranoia, obsessions, compulsions, or depression. Content analyses of therapy sessions, coupled with data deriving from her experimental work regarding field dependence and field independence, led her to identify surfeit guilt and surfeit shame prone styles that, in turn, were associated with distinct forms of psychopathology. Clients presenting with symptoms of obsessive-compulsiveness, paranoia, or certain forms of schizophrenia manifested a surfeit guilt-prone style. Characteristic of these clients were tendencies to wrestle overtly with internalized images of impending punishment for supposed moral infractions. She used the term “guilt-prone” orientation to describe the several ways in which clients attempted to manage or ward off those punitive images; conceptually, therefore, the guilt-prone style was one means to defend the self, or to defend the experience of the self in the face of punitive others. Informed by years of clinical and experimental evidence, she concluded that guilt is a relatively “affectless” emotion. Guilt-prone individuals tended to adopt a cognitive or problem-solving orientation to cope with these threatening images, and to focus instead on “. . . the rational assignment of motivation, responsibility, and consequences” (Lewis, 1971, p. 43). At the same time,

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Lewis stressed their tendencies to isolate, minimize, or compartmentalize any negative affect associated with their misdeeds, in addition to externalizing blame. Lewis traced this distinct mode of perceiving and experiencing information about the self to differences in socialization. A guilt-prone orientation, which Lewis more frequently observed in male clients, presumably derived from a stronger field-independent perceptual style, coupled with socialization agents’ tendencies to repeatedly reward them for expressing agency, competitiveness, and autonomy. This style, and these experiences, promoted the development of strong ego boundaries and the use of defences that either isolated hostile and anxious feelings or deflected them. Accumulated experiences with assertions of autonomy and competitiveness frequently put children, especially boys, in the position of hurting others, either physically or psychologically. This, in turn, provided them with many opportunities to struggle with experiences of guilt about transgressions. Lewis proposed that children (and perhaps mainly young boys) learned to cope with guilt either by isolating and encapsulating the affect by virtue of their stronger ego boundaries and field-independent orientation or, counterintuitively, by externalizing their culpability, at which time the entire ruminative cycle could start anew. Lewis painted a strikingly different portrait of individuals prone to a surfeit shame, noting this style’s affinity with severe depression. Unlike guilt-prone individuals who wrestled with whether they were to blame for presumed infractions, shame-prone individuals tended to readily accept or internalize blame, even in cases where blame seemed misplaced. By blaming the self, the person salvaged the worthiness of others (e.g., parents) from whom the individual desired continued acceptance and love. Internalizing blame heightened, however, the person’s concerns with losing these others’ love and esteem. At times, these individuals would cope with the dilemma by externalizing blame that Lewis sometimes, interestingly, referred to as arousing the guilt orientation as a defence. This affective style was more evident in the context of familial and societal experiences that, at least 35 years ago, very much resembled the ways in which American society approached girls’ socialization. In her view, American society pressures girls to manifest a “field-dependent” orientation by behaving in passive and dependent ways, but also being responsive to and responsible for others’ welfare. These attitudes impede the development of strong ego boundaries, encourage girls to internalize feelings of hostility and anxiety, render them susceptible to fears of rejection or losing others’ love, and lead girls to question their basic selfworth for violating important standards of conduct and “being” (Brody, 1999). Lewis hypothesized that girls and women are more prone to shame, by virtue of socialization experiences promoting a greater field-dependent orientation and tendencies to blame the self. Findings bearing on Lewis’ predictions regarding the relationship of dominant guilt- or shame-prone styles to psychopathology or styles of defence vary greatly as a function of the methodology and even the statistical

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techniques used (see Ferguson & Crowley, 1997b; Ferguson & Eyre, 2000; Ferguson, Eyre, & Ashbaker, 2000). As will be detailed in a later section, the discrepant findings largely arise in research employing certain scenario-based measures of the two constructs, whereas consistent findings typically are reported in studies using frequency measures of the two states (see Ferguson & Eyre, 2000; Ferguson & Stegge, 1998; Harder, 1990, 1995; Tangney, 1996). Research also shows inconsistencies in results regarding the gender differences that Lewis predicted. Though both scenario-based and frequencybased studies generally show a greater tendency toward shame and guilt in women than in men, there is evidence that men will report greater shame than women when the study examines identities that are known to be more threatening to men (e.g., physical or psychological vulnerability; see Ferguson, Eyre, & Ashbaker, 2000). Using an appropriately multivariate framework, Ferguson and Crowley (1997a) demonstrated two tendencies in women. First, we observed an exclusively shame-prone style associated with the defensive tendencies that Lewis attributed to this style. Also loading on this function were tendencies to endorse passive-dependent orientations in one’s relationships. Second, however, women also manifested a mixed style, involving both shame and guilt, correlated with tendencies to both internalize and externalize, and an admixture of communal as well as passive-dependent relational orientations. In contrast, men evidenced an exclusively guilt-prone orientation that was highly correlated with the very styles of defence Lewis predicted (e.g., rationalization, principalization) and with endorsements of agency in relationships. Finally, and of great relevance to our interest in moral development and conscience, Lewis rarely explicitly stressed in the nexus of either guilt or shame to empathy. Yet, empathy’s importance is implicit throughout her writings and seems connected most strongly with the pressures and experiences promoting a shame-prone style. A potential connection of empathy to shame would derive from the person’s keen focus on whether she has deviated from the standards of proper conduct of esteemed others, thereby risking loss of their affection. Of course, in the literature concerning moral development, scholars frequently link guilt, but they rarely connect shame, to “accurate” or positive contributions (e.g., pro-social behaviour) of empathy (e.g., Hoffman, 1982, 1998, 2000; Tangney & Dearing, 2002). In large part, this literature portrays shame as compassionate empathy’s competitor, connecting shame to personal distress or empathic over-arousal (cf. Eisenberg, 2000). Our view of guilt and shame Highlighted in this section are features of emotions generally, and features of guilt or shame specifically, with the intent to illustrate their potentially valuable roles in shaping conscience or conscientious action (e.g., Barrett, 1995; Campos, Frankel, & Camras, 2004; Davitz, 1969; Ferguson & Barrett, 2003; Ferguson & Stegge, 1995; Ferguson, Stegge, & Damhuis, 1991; Harris, 2003;

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Izard, 1991; Saarni, Mumme, & Campos, 1998; Tomkins, 1963). Viewed very generally, emotions are signals of discrepancies between one’s current, past, or anticipated state of well being, and their occurrence can disrupt ongoing ideation or behaviour (e.g., Ekman & Davidson, 1994; Keltner & Ekman, 1996). They are the signal (in the case of conscience, the “prick”) alerting individuals to pause, to pay attention to their immediate environment, and to recall from memory information needed to successfully maintain or negotiate the current situation. Emotions signal the need to discriminate which stimuli in an unfolding event are “noise” and which deserve heightened attention, or even require it for survival purposes. Not infrequently, emotions energize the person into “action” to reduce, enhance, or maintain the perceived discrepancy, or to somehow alter the experience itself (Keltner & Gross, 1999). The term “action” need not entail outwardly directed or observable behaviours, apart from relatively automatic facial or other non-verbal correlates of the experience. For centuries, formal and folk theories characterized emotions as dysregulating and the very antithesis of reasoned action (Keltner & Gross, 1999). Darwin’s seminal observations regarding emotions and the dawn of sociobiological models, however, represented a “new look” at emotions (Darwin, 1872/1965). Dysregulation is not a defining property of emotions as such and is better traced to co-occurring characteristics of the individual (e.g., impulse control, ruminative tendencies), features of the particular emotional state at hand (e.g., its intensity), and facets of the immediate situation (e.g., one’s relationship to the others involved and their known reactive tendencies). In the view of many, guilt signals a discrepancy between valued standards of conduct and the ways in which the individual either already has acted or is contemplating acting (e.g., Barrett, 1995; Lewis, 1992). Similarly, shame can bring into awareness a discrepancy between this behaviour and one’s desired self-image or another’s image of the person (Smith, Webster, Parrott, & Eyre, 2002). Unlike certain authors (e.g., Tangney & Dearing, 2002), we resist classifying guilt as necessarily a “moral” emotion. It seems likelier for each state to reflect the person’s focus on one’s behaviour as discrepant from standards, rules, or goals (Lewis, 1992) that she or he construes as standards of a particular type (e.g., conventional, prudential, moral). It is by virtue of the person’s classification of the act vis-à-vis a particular type of standard that any resulting emotion can be construed as moral or non-moral (appropriate or inappropriate, fitting or ill fitting, and so forth). Classifying an act relative to a standard as a moral issue seems to obligate people to experience any number of emotions (including guilt, pride, anger, or shame). We prefer instead, therefore, to conceptualize guilt and shame as oriented to specific untoward events or states of affairs, using these to refer broadly to any behaviour, outcome, or condition – actual or contemplated – that did or could negatively impact the self, others, or entities. What, then, are features of the act, standard, or the person’s relationship to these that differentiate guilt from shame? Distinguishing characteristics of

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these two states’ elicitors have been widely discussed and empirically scrutinized based on different theories of how emotions are aroused (e.g., appraisals, attributions, interpersonal). Though much discussion abounds regarding whether guilt is properly construed as an emotion, people do report experiencing a state called “feeling guilty”. They will characterize “feeling guilty” as a hyperactivated physiological state (e.g., Davitz, 1969). As reviewed in Ferguson et al. (2007), a person who “feels guilty” focuses intently on an untoward outcome or state of affairs and they often report feeling responsible for these (even though they need not be objectively responsible). The same untoward outcome or unwanted state of affairs can arouse shame when the person construes this as discrepant from their desired identity. People describe experiences of shame as involving a hypoactivated physiological state. In this view, people are particularly apt to feel ashamed of events for which they also perceive the self as responsible. This view deviates from well-known attribution-theoretic or other appraisal-based distinctions between the two states (e.g., Scherer, 1997; Tracy & Robins, 2004; Weiner, 1995). At first glance, our view of the two states seems to preserve the “act” versus “entire self ” contrast between guilt versus shame that H. B. Lewis introduced to the field and that also now dominates the theoretical and measurement literature (e.g., Tangney & Dearing, 2002). There is an extremely important difference between our view and that of those promoting H. B. Lewis (cf. Olthof, Ferguson, Bloemers, & Deij, 2004). Unlike Lewis’ model, or its advocates, a specific act can elicit equally specific identity concerns and be experienced as shame. Guilt’s elicitation, moreover, is not restricted to a specific act, nor is it necessarily more likely regarding voluntary actions. People can – and they clearly do – feel guilty regarding involuntary characteristics of the self (e.g., personality, ability, likeability, appearance, citizenship, heritage, financial welfare). All of these are “nonactions”, but they can nonetheless be the source of negative outcomes for others or the self. Of course, one of guilt’s purported elicitors is the person having transgressed internalized moral standards, and these transgressions frequently involve harming another. In our view, however, the terms “harm” or “transgression” do not capture the guilt experienced when one fails to achieve a standard that she or he does not consider moral in nature (e.g., failing a test, going off one’s diet). Of course, some individuals will construe an achievement failure as “immoral” in nature, but others do not. Both can feel equally guilty, however. The ways in which we are parsing guilt’s and shame’s central elicitors are meant to address stumbling blocks faced by contemporary gloss of the two states. Attributional models render infeasible the dual elicitation of the two states in the same situation, even though findings show that reports of the two are highly correlated (cf. Ferguson & Stegge, 1998). Our conceptualization allows for a rapid-fire successive experience of the two states, depending upon the perspective the person adopts (identity- versus act-focused perspectives). Allowing for the intentional objects of either shame or guilt to be acts

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or characteristics minimizes the “conceptual demand” for shame’s typecasting as the lesser “moral” emotion, or as an ugly, dark emotion in comparison to guilt. We grant that people subjectively experience shame’s initial shock as overwhelming and overpowering, as though bright lights have suddenly blinded them. However, narrative and rating studies of ours reveal that people do quickly overcome the initial shock to realize that a particular characteristic or action may be the experience’s source. In our view, post-elicitation appraisals (that occur, perhaps, only milliseconds later) of the person’s lack of control or inability to change a characteristic or action contribute to the continued experience of shame (or guilt), or to the state’s heightened intensity. Of course, the attributional appraisals readily accessible to individuals will differ depending both upon their prior experience and with situational variables. The cognitive appraisals we have suggested seem plausible – in the moral realm, guilt focuses on potentially being responsible for a “harm” done or anticipated, but that cannot be justified. Shame focuses on the discrepancy between one’s identity and, again, of potentially being unjustifiably responsible for a harmful act. These are not at all opposing appraisals in the sense of one usurping or contradicting the other. They more simply reflect propositions entertained, and that build on each other, as time unfolds. Greenspan’s (1995) notion of “perspectival appropriateness” is helpful in this regard, although we part rapid company with her analysis of shame. Certain thoughts will be inspired more rapidly than others in a given situation, by the self , and/or with the help of others. Though we can obsess only one, thoughts generally are momentary “acts of attention” on Greenspan’s account, and several can occur in rapid succession. Is there a special quality to guilt-like thoughts that render the person more likely to come to the victim’s aid than, say, shame-related or fear-related ones? In Hoffman’s, Greenspan’s, and others’ analyses, “yes” (e.g., Tangney & Dearing, 2002). This presumes, however, that victim or standard-oriented concerns are the prime focus of guilt, that they are not a central concern in shame, and/or that guilt (but not shame) is untainted by other thoughts (e.g., fearful ones). Research with adults does not bear out these unique foci (see Ferguson et al., 2007). Another important reason for guilt’s starring role in morality derives from analyses of its bases in different styles of discipline. Hoffman (1998, 2000) asserts that inductive components of disciplinary encounters uniquely associate guilt both with empathy and with one’s responsibility. The pivotal features of inductions explain why or how the child is responsible for a wrongdoing and they draw the child’s attention to the harm and distress this causes for the other. Repeated experience of this nature facilitates the child’s formation of a “transgression → induction → empathic distress and guilt → reparation” script (Hoffman, 2000, p. 159, italics added). Krevans and Gibbs (1996) have shown, however, that there are inconsistent connections of guilt indices to empathy or pro-social behaviour. Parents’ inductions additionally were not “pure” in the sense that disappointment often accompanied their

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inductive efforts. Also clear from Krevans and Gibbs’ results is that children express post-transgression emotions, including guilt, for different reasons. One set of reasons can be empathy and sincere moral concerns; the very same reactions can, however, be motivated out of fear of punishment. These inconsistencies led them to ask whether inductions necessarily, or only, promote the affective–cognitive–motivational complex connecting guilt, empathy, and responsibility. In their view, the very same inductive interventions can reinforce ideations other than the victim being hurt and needing help. Based on the incidence of disappointment in this study, it seems likely to us that repeated inductions might promote the formation of shame-oriented scripts. While attempting to deliver an induction, and masking how upset they are, parents’ facial and oral expressions often inadvertently communicate disappointment in the child. Particularly in children who understand that another’s disapproval can communicate what “type” of person the child is, induction may promote avoidance of transgressions to avoid being the type of person who does “things” like hurting others. In this example, parents will have succeeded in employing shame to shape morally motivated behaviours. We simply know too little about the scripts children form based on inductions, how these differ depending upon the exact content or delivery of the induction, or how children’s understanding of the self and relationships moderates the effect of the scripts formed. Some seem to have devalued the motivational property of shame as less developmentally advanced or “moral” than empathy-based guilt. Their argument rests, in part, on the view that shame is focused on rejection, disapproval, or the “loss of love” (cf. Lewis, 1971). Equally clearly, however, certain models of guilt in adults stress this emotion’s connection to the loss of love. Two primary roles of guilt are to re-instil the victim’s trust in, and respect for, the perpetrator, thereby avoiding the relationship’s dissolution (e.g., Baumeister et al., 1994). Moreover, and although empathy can intensify guilt and promote quicker or more sincerely intended reparative effort, empathy can be over-aroused in children or adults, leading to reparative efforts meant primarily to reduce one’s own distress (see Hoffman, 2000). Similarly, children (and adults) can over-accept responsibility, thereby engaging in repair motivated by misplaced guilt (e.g., Zahn-Waxler, Kochanska, Krupnick, & McKnew, 1990). Though shame during earlier (and even later) phases of development may reflect an externally based fear of losing a valued other’s affection, shame at later phases may highlight the individual’s desire to live up to internalized standards of proper conduct or virtue. These predictions make eminent sense in terms of children’s understanding of shame. Earlier in development, children identify shame with its external origin. At around the age of 6 years, children will not report feeling ashamed for a standard violation unless the parent witnessed this. At approximately 8 years of age, they will acknowledge feelings of shame for these violations, but they also seem thankful for the parents’ presence, because it is a “helpful

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reminder” for them to feel ashamed (cf. Harter & Whitesell, 1989). It is only much later (at around the age of 11 years) that children appreciate shame’s origin in the self and reflection on the self (e.g., Ferguson, Stegge, & Damhuis, 1990, 1991). Moreover, the earlier reported findings based on the replication of Ferguson, Olthof, and Stegge (1997) showed, even in adults, that shame was intensified by reflected appraisals of the victims’ disappointed reactions. Considered as a whole, therefore, it is clear that fearing a loss of esteem does promote shame; at the same time, however, we are seeing a steady progression with increasing age of this fear reflecting internalized values. Individuals may experience anxiety regarding a trespass, or avoid trespassing, because past experience imaginally associates the violation with a relational punishment or withdrawal of love (Hoffman, 2000). It seems dubious to propose that a feared loss of esteem motivates appropriate behaviour based only on externally imposed norms (Sabini, Siepman, & Stein, 2001; Scheff, 1988). Also dubious is whether empathy-based guilt represents a more advanced basis for compliance than a genuine desire to live up to the norms needed to sustain a mutually respectful relationship. It seems unwise to equate shame’s motivation exclusively with rejection sensitivity or to equate guilt’s motivation with an optimal degree of empathy.

Evidence linking both guilt and shame to morality in children We summarize in this section our own research. We describe the background to the featured study, the foci of the study, the method and results, the moral guilt ratings, the moral shame ratings, discrepancies between actual and desired ratings, mothers’ reactions, and a discussion of the conclusions. Background to the featured study Although the above might appear as a semantic volley meant to exasperate or fatigue readers, my purpose was to set the stage for a study investigating shame and guilt as moral emotions in children. Research concerning the emotions of guilt and shame has proliferated in the past two decades, but much of it has focused on adults. Heightened attention to guilt and shame recognizes the importance of each emotion in the regulation and dysregulation of the child’s interpersonally and mastery oriented behaviours. Unfortunately, and as readers may have discerned, studies designed to ascertain the antecedents or correlates of either emotion, at least in children, have progressed in a relatively independent fashion, typically focusing on one emotion while ignoring the other. This is particularly true of research examining each emotion’s origins in the disciplinary styles or care-giving practices of parents. For example, the guilt responses of children who intentionally transgress and/or who observe another’s transgression have been related to “authoritative” or mild power assertion combined with inductive patterns of parental discipline. Rather than reflecting hostility, these encompass a warm, responsive,

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supportive climate in which parents model appropriate behaviour, explain the reasons for resisting temptation, or curtail the child’s aggressive impulses in ways sensitive to the child’s own temperamental characteristics (Ferguson & Stegge, 1995; Hoffman, 2000; Lewis, 1992). In contrast, even regarding events for which children clearly are not responsible, pathogenically guilt-prone children, especially girls, may frequently experience guilt and anxiety inductions paired with parentally expressed feelings of disappointment, implicit if not explicit love withdrawal, and a modelling of attribution styles that inappropriately convey heightened levels of responsibility (Zahn-Waxler et al., 1990). Then again, children who fail to display high degrees of empathy-based guilt after a wilful wrongdoing, or who comply by offering reparation or apologies simply to avoid punishment, seem to experience greater rates of harsh, restrictive, and inappropriately controlling parenting charged with negative affect (cf. Zahn-Waxler & Kochanska, 1988). Relevant studies have not examined the extent to which differences in parenting reactions to children’s wilfully immoral behaviour differently affect children’s tendencies to respond with guilt in comparison to shame. Research concerning shame’s antecedents in children is far less abundant than that focusing exclusively on guilt or aggregating indices of guilt with shame. Some evidence, notably that of M. Lewis and his colleagues, suggests that shame reactions are more common in children (especially in girls) whose parents negatively evaluate or criticize their achievement failures and/or who fail to provide positive feedback for their successes (cf. Lewis, 1992). Because these lines of research have proceeded in a rather parallel manner, it is difficult to know with confidence whether the above-noted differences in parenting uniquely promote guilt or shame in response to moral transgressions. It is unclear, for example, whether socialization practices associated with pathogenic forms of guilt also do or do not promote extreme degrees of shame in children. Also unknown is whether practices conducive to appropriate degrees of guilt might additionally help children refrain from the extreme degrees of self-denigration that are purported to be characteristic of shame-prone responses (Tangney & Dearing, 2002). Moreover, the literature concerning guilt’s antecedents in parenting has focused almost exclusively on standard violations of an unintentional moral/ interpersonal nature, whereas that concerning shame has attended to standards of achievement, thereby confounding the emotion being socialized with the nature of both the child’s and the parents’ behaviours. One could argue, then, that it is not a unique guilt response to transgressions or a unique shame response to achievement failures that parents are promoting. Instead, the parents’ own behaviour might reflect context-specific (moral versus achievement) socialization practices designed to arouse undifferentiated negative affect. The latter would be a particularly reasonable hypothesis regarding children of approximately 5–7 years of age or younger, since they less well differentiate the two emotions. Instead of contrasting unintentional moral or

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interpersonal transgressions with equally unwanted failures in the achievement realm, we focused in the “featured” study on guilt and shame in relation to intentional (or, what I call “moral”) and unintentional (“non-moral”) transgressions. All events in the “featured” study were transgressions in the sense that they infringed on or went beyond the bounds of standards of behaviour. Two criteria prompted the labelling of half of the events as moral transgressions. First, they violated standards of right versus wrong (one should not hurt others or their property; one should assist others in need, especially when those others are dependent upon you). In all of these, the perpetrator did cause negative outcomes for others (e.g., by damaging another’s property or failing to help a younger child in obvious need). Though not maliciously intended, perpetrators nonetheless wilfully brought about these negative outcomes or they chose to not intervene to avoid them. The non-moral transgressions2 also were transgressions in the sense that they infringed on, or went beyond the bounds of, valued standards of conduct (hurting another physically, missing the critical pass in a final soccer match). The non-moral transgressors’ behaviour resulted in negative outcomes that indirectly affected others (e.g., the team lost a soccer match, another child was hurt). Yet, the transgressors definitely were not at all intending to bring these about. If anything, moreover, the accidentally produced negative outcomes more directly affected the transgressors themselves (e.g., reflecting the perpetrator’s incompetence), which is why we originally labelled them achievement failures. However, in contrast to many achievement failures, where the person attempts an individual task (such as a test or puzzle) but fails, the non-moral transgressions did more than negatively impact the self. The non-moral versus moral label attached to all transgressions seemed more apt than other obvious alternatives, such as intentional versus accidental or unintentional, or internally controllable versus internally uncontrollable. These alternatives do not well capture facets of the events. For example, some of the non-moral transgressions certainly were internally controllable (e.g., in the “lousy” school presentation, the child had chosen to not prepare in advance). In addition, we purposefully included information regarding external mitigating factors that children could perceive as excuses for their actions regarding both the moral (e.g., provocation in advance of the thrown drink) and non-moral (e.g., the other bike riders’ inattentiveness in the bike crash scenario) transgressions. The terms intentionality or internally controllable simply do not adequately capture actors’ tendencies to conceptualize their own actions in terms of reasons or justifications (cf. Malle, 2004). They also do not reflect accurately people’s characterizations of intent (e.g., in a scenario where the child fails to help a needy younger child, children never construed this as the intent to act non-pro-socially). Comparing the extent to which moral and non-moral transgressions elicit unique patterns of guilt and shame in children is important for an additional

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reason. There is some research contrasting guilt with shame in late elementary school-age children. None of that research has studied these emotions’ relationship to parenting practices. The bulk of research contrasting the two emotions focuses on adults; in most of these instances, studies have contrasted the two in the context of unwitting moral transgressions or achievement failures. Generally, the results support the “adaptive” quality of “guilt” (e.g., people prone to guilt also appear prone to empathy and are interpersonally sensitive, whereas shame-prone individuals in these settings appear less empathic and more selfishly focused on minimizing detection; cf. Tangney & Dearing, 2002). To many researchers, it makes eminent sense to contrast guilt with shame in these contexts. For example, these contexts allow for individual differences in interpretation, with shame-prone individuals being likelier to see the events as due to internal/uncontrollable characteristics but guilt-prone persons reasoning that they could, but did not, control the unwanted outcomes (e.g., Tracy & Robins, 2004; Weiner, 1995). Additionally, even victims of unintended harm deserve empathic attention (e.g., in the form of receiving apologies or reparation) instead of being avoided by a transgressor obsessed with self-criticism and avoiding the victim. Showing that individuals who engage in approach/reparation (a so-called guilt response) are more empathic and interpersonally sensitive than those who hide away to lick their own narcissistic wounds (purported shame responses) seems a perfectly compelling demonstration of guilt’s moral value and shame’s ugly, dark, and immoral effects. Yet such a comparison does not capture the role of shame and guilt in conscience-related settings. Foci of the featured study In this section, I present the results of one study meant to unravel, but also connect, the various claims being asserted about guilt and shame, particularly regarding their role in moral behaviour. Viewed as a whole, the measures included captured aspects of the affective, cognitive, and motivational facets of conscience. This allowed examination of the components’ interrelationships and their power in predicting children’s real-life moral behaviours. I examined the extent to which children reported feeling guilty and ashamed in response to moral and non-moral transgressions. Instead of “pitting” the two emotions against each other a priori, I asked whether there was evidence for distinct emotion profiles in children. Were there some children who responded primarily with guilt? Did those children manifest guilt reflecting empathic concerns or reflecting a focus on moral standards? Conversely, were there other children who reacted primarily with intense shame? Was this reaction focused more on a loss of love or rejection or was it, too, oriented toward clearly identifiable moral concerns? Additionally examined was the extent to which any of the distinct emotion profiles identified could be discriminated in terms of children’s history of discipline in situations where the children violated moral norms, or in terms

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of encounters with the parents after children actually upheld moral norms? For ease of exposition, I will refer to these as “negative” and “positive” socialization encounters. Hoffman’s tripartite distinction guided this component of the study. In the negative encounters, we should find support for links of induction, and to some extent power assertion, primarily to guilt as an empathically oriented response. On the other hand, and in many authors’ views, those children expressing less empathic guilt, and especially those reacting with intense shame, should do so in the context of a consistent tendency for their parents to withdraw love or to create a hostile and harsh atmosphere. In addition to these measures of parenting behaviours in negative encounters, we added exploratory scales meant to capture more explicitly the tendencies of parents to humiliate or shame their children. These seemed even likelier predictors of shame proneness in children, at least according to dominant views of this trait. In terms of the positive socialization encounters, we included measures complementing those in the negative encounters. Our predictions regarding these scales were more exploratory in nature, with one exception. We expected to replicate results from Ferguson and Stegge (1995) that the absence of positive outcomes for children would be especially likely to promote shame (according to contemporary views of shame). Finally, the study included “outcome” or adjustment measures, as well as indices of the moral standards that parents set for children and of the children’s tendencies to fall short of, meet, or exceed these in their daily behaviours. Method and results of the featured study This study involved 101 boys and 107 girls, ranging in age from 5 to 13 years old, and their mothers. Mothers in this sample were the primary caregivers. Mothers and children were drawn from heterogeneous educational and income backgrounds in the Rocky Mountain region of the USA. Almost all participants were from intact families (70% or more) and all but two were White. With the exception of Achenbach’s (1991) Child Behavior Checklist, the instruments we employed had been developed and validated in Dutch and American samples (Ferguson, 1990; Ferguson & Stegge, 1990; Stegge & Ferguson, 1990). To examine the affective component, I asked whether children manifested distinct profiles of guilt and shame reactions to moral and non-moral transgressions. Children responded to eight situations in the C-CARS (Child version – Child Attribution and Reaction Survey). Four of these were moral transgressions (e.g., breaking another’s possession, failing to help a younger child in obvious need) and four depicted non-moral ones (e.g., giving an obviously ill-prepared talk to the school class, making a fatal blunder during a soccer match). Children rated on 5-point scales the extent to which they would feel guilty or ashamed in response to each situation. They offered their ratings over three sessions and a series of 24 trials, thereby minimizing contamination between the guilt and shame answers.

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Because of my interest in intense emotional reactions, I scored children’s C-CARS responses in terms of how often they endorsed a rating of 4 or 5 on the 5-point rating scales, summed separately across the four moral and the four non-moral events. Conceptual and methodological “perils of partialing” led me to not residualize any emotion extremity score for its counterparts (Ferguson & Stegge, 1998). Cluster analyses were conducted on the extremity scores, employing various clustering algorithms to ensure convergence on a reliable set of group differences. All analyses pointed to the acceptability of a three-cluster solution. Importantly, children’s extremity scores were not as highly correlated as one might expect from the literature. Average (Fisher r-to-z) correlations of the shame to guilt ratings were significant for Cluster 1 (.35) and Cluster 3 (.52), but not for Cluster 2 (−.10). No pair-wise association (e.g., guilt-to-moral transgression correlated with shame-for-non-moral transgressions) exceeded or fell below the three just reported. The three clusters differed somewhat according to their age and gender composition. Important to note, however, is that each cluster included boys and girls spanning the entire 5- to 13-year-old range. The average age of Cluster 1 children was younger (M = 7.3), with the largest number being 6 years old and the second largest number being between 7 and 9 years old. In this cluster, there were relatively more boys (61%) than there were girls (39%). These children’s extreme guilt-to-moral transgression scores were apparent and differed significantly from the low scores for the remaining three combinations (which did not differ). An acronym best describing Cluster 1’s emotional profile is MG (moral guilt). Children in Cluster 2 were older (M = 8.3), with the modal age being 7–8 years of age, but also including several 9- to 12-year-old children. There were more girls (59.3%) than there were boys (40.7%) in this cluster. This group manifested very little guilt in reaction to the non-moral transgressions, but extremely high shame. Their guilt and shame responses to the moral transgressions also were high. Though the latter two did not differ significantly, each of these scores tended to differ significantly from the extreme shame-tonon-moral transgressions. Our primary interest being in the moral transgressions, and our desire being to identify a helpful acronym for each group, it seemed best to label this emotional profile as MSG (moral shame and guilt). The average age of children in Cluster 3 was 8.6 years, but the overwhelming majority ranged in age between 8.5 to 11.5 years. As with Cluster 2, there were more girls (60%) than there were boys in this cluster (40%). All of the four emotion extremity scores in the third cluster were very high and did not differ significantly. The acronym for this third group is NA (high negative affect). After offering each emotion rating on the C-CARS, children verbalized why they felt that way, receiving no further prompts regarding their answers. We coded these answers reliably in terms of several tendencies. These were: citing standards of appropriate conduct, expressing concern regarding how their behaviour negatively affected a victim (e.g., the helpless younger child)

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or its consequences for others involved in the situation (e.g., the soccer team), externalizing blame (explicitly blaming someone else in the situation), expressing fear about others’ negative reactions (e.g., punishment), denying the action as self-characteristic, and expressing self-reflective explanations or thoughts. Regarding the last category, we distinguished two sub-types of selfreflective statements. Some of these were matter-of-fact descriptions of children’s role in producing the negative outcome (e.g., “I didn’t help her”) or admissions of fault or self-blame (e.g., “It was my fault”). In other cases, these statements were self-oriented counterfactuals reflecting children’s evaluations that they could have or should have behaved differently (e.g., “I could have stopped to help”, “I should’ve studied lots more”). Children’s score for each category could range from 0 to 4 for each of the four types of emotion ratings. Children’s justifications for their emotions best represent information about the cognitive facet of conscience, although, as we will learn, some of their justifications better reflected children’s motivation for adhering to standards. The between-cluster mean differences for the justification indices are less revealing than the extent to which citing content reflecting each type of justification was associated with the extremity of the four emotion ratings. Of the possible 72 correlation coefficients (6 justifications × 4 emotion-event ratings × 3 clusters), the coefficients representing the relationship of each justification score to emotion ratings of the moral transgressions were the most revealing. Summarized below are the significant relationships found for the moral guilt ratings and moral shame ratings. Moral guilt ratings of the MG, MSG, and NA groups Based solely on the pattern of emotion extremity scores characterizing each cluster, one might have expected the MG group (Cluster 1) children to have expressed emotion justifications representing a mature moral orientation (i.e., one focused on standards of conduct and concern for the victim when rating guilt in response to moral transgressions). Interestingly, however, their moral guilt ratings were unrelated to concerns for the victim and they were significantly negatively related to citing standards of conduct as the reason for experiencing moral guilt. Emotion scores for children in this cluster were negatively associated with tendencies to blame others but positively associated with tendencies to self-reflect. Over 80% of their self-reflective statements were classified as matter-of-fact. Finally, these children’s guilt-tomoral transgression ratings were related positively to expressions of fear. The correlational results for children in the MSG group (Cluster 2) were strikingly different. That is, their guilt-to-moral transgression ratings related negatively to fear-based justifications, while this emotion rating related positively to justifications citing standards of conduct and those showing concern for victims. Similar to the MG children of Cluster 1, however, the MSG children in Cluster 2 gave guilt-to-moral transgression ratings that were

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positively associated with self-reflective statements but were negatively related to externalization of blame. In contrast to these two clusters, there was only one statistically significant relationship found for the guilt-to-transgression ratings of the children in Cluster 3. These children showed a slight tendency to express higher guilt-tomoral transgression in the absence of externalization. Moral shame ratings of the MG, MSG, and NA groups For children in the MG group (Cluster 1) the greater their moral transgression-based shame, the more they expressed fear, the greater their tendency to cite matter-of-fact descriptions of what happened, and the less they denied the action as self-characteristic. The latter correlation in the MSG group (Cluster 2) was far stronger. The MSG children’s moral transgression shame ratings also were strongly positively correlated with citing standards of conduct. The correlations of the NA group’s (Cluster 3) moral shame ratings to their justifications were negligible in size. Discrepancies between children’s actual and desired behaviours Additionally relevant to the motivational or conative aspects of conscience were discrepancy measures that we obtained regarding the standards of conduct that mothers stressed as obligatory and the extent to which mothers perceived children to deviate from these. To assess these, we used Ferguson’s Expectation Sort for Parents (ESP). The ESP is an ipsative measure consisting of three Q-sorts of items representing ways in which the child’s behaviours or attributes could deviate from parental standards. The ESP was modelled after Higgins’ (1987) discussion of the role of actual–ideal versus actual–ought standard discrepancies in facilitating different emotions, including shame and guilt. In different sessions, and after discarding 10 of the 70 statements as ones the parents considered least important, parents sorted the remaining 60 ESP items in terms of how much the child actually had the characteristics or performed the behaviours, as well as how much they perceived each behaviour or characteristic to be an ideal or ought. Actual–ideal and actual– ought discrepancy scores were derived for factor analytically confirmed subscales. The discrepancy scores are correlation coefficients between the actual and ideal or actual and ought items in each subscale. A stronger positive correlation coefficient indicates that the child deviates more from the standard. Because of our focus on obligatory behaviours, we restrict attention to differences among the three emotion profiles regarding the actual–ought discrepancy scores. Important to note is that an overwhelming majority of mothers most often classified immoral behaviours (e.g., lying, cheating, stealing, unprovoked aggression, failures of empathy) as oughts (or, more accurately, ought nots). We also examined between-cluster differences in the actual–ideal subscale discrepancy scores, but these discriminated in minimal

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ways among the three emotion profiles and the differences in no way change the conclusions drawn. We conducted discriminant function analyses examining how the three clusters differed in terms of mothers’ ratings of actual–ought discrepancies observable in their children. Included in these analyses were all ESP subscales, as well as an aggregate score representing a combination of children’s gender and grade. Younger boys were assigned the lowest, and older females were assigned the highest, scores on this aggregate. Two significant functions emerged. Loading on Function 1 were higher actual–ought discrepancies scores for several morally relevant subscales (e.g., antisocial, uncooperative/ callous toward peers, dishonest), indicating stronger “actual” behaviour deviations from these ought standards. Importantly, children in the MG group loaded positively on this function, those in the MSG group loaded negatively, and the NA group loaded negligibly. In essence, mothers had judged the high guilt-to-moral transgression group to deviate more from ought standards in the moral realm. They perceived the MSG children (intermediate to high on all but guilt-to-non-moral transgressions) as far less discrepant from these standards. The aggregate variable representing gender combined with grade level did not load significantly on Function 1, but it did load positively on Function 2. The subscales characterizing Function 2 were, moreover, of a very different nature in comparison to those representing Function 1. Specifically, the Function 2 subscales reflected less controllable characteristics of children (e.g., physically uncoordinated or slow, physically unattractive or weight problems, poor self-control, engaging in demand–withdraw cycles). Children in both the MG and MSG groups loaded moderately negatively on Function 2, whereas those in the NA group loaded somewhat positively. Thus, mothers perceived the NA children, who scored extremely high on all facets of the guilt and shame profile, to deviate highly from uncontrollable or more temperamental characteristics and attributes that the mothers had classified as “ought nots”. Mothers’ reactions in negative and positive encounters A measure entitled the P-CARS (Parent version – Child Attribution and Reaction Survey) was used to render mothers’ assessments of the frequency of their child’s morally discrepant and consistent behaviours, as well as their behavioural and emotional reactions to these incidents. The P-CARS is effectively the parents’ version of the children’s C-CARS. The P-CARS consisted of the eight transgressive situations that children had judged in the CCARS. In addition, the P-CARS contained eight situations identical to the negative situations with the very important exception that children in these vignettes actually upheld standards of moral conduct (e.g., they helped the needy younger child, they avoided the mishap leading to property damage, they prepared well for their class talk and the talk was a success). For each

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situation, parents offered 26 ratings (on 4-point or 7-point scales). One item represented the estimated frequency of children’s behaviours in these situations. Other items contributed to various subscale scores. There were subscales representing positive and negative variants of Hoffman’s disciplinary practices. In addition, there were subscales representing parental endorsement of their own feelings of anger/annoyance, shame/embarrassment/disappointment, or pride in the child’s actions. There were two scales reflecting tendencies to shame/criticize or to praise the child. Together, all the P-CARS scales represent an assessment of maternal efforts to promote in children cognitive scripts or schemas focusing on justice, empathy, and sympathy for others. Discriminant functions analyses of the P-CARS scales in relation to children’s membership in the three emotion clusters resulted in two statistically significant functions. Loading significantly on Function 1 were many of the Hoffman-based parenting practices in response to standard-discrepant behaviours (the “negative” situations) as well as mothers’ estimates of how often their children actually engaged in these. Also loading on Function 1 were Hoffman-like parenting reactions to standard-consistent behaviours (the “positive” situations). Estimated frequency of the child’s admirable behaviours did not load on this function. In essence, Function 1 represented the mothers’ efforts to explain standards to their children in both types of situations, and to reinforce appropriate behaviours while minimizing negative behaviours via affect and tangible outcomes. The aggregate gender- and grade-level variable did not load significantly on Function 1, but it did on Function 2. Only two of the P-CARS scales characterized Function 2 – the intensity with which mothers endorsed using love withdrawal, and shaming or child-critical attacks, when they deviated from standards. None of the parenting practices in response to the “positive” situations loaded on Function 2. Inspection of the cluster centroids revealed striking contrasts. Children in the MG cluster (Cluster 1) apparently received a great deal of attention from mothers when they misbehaved and so they misbehaved frequently. Mothers self-reported giving similar degrees of attention in situations depicting the children as behaving appropriately. Mothers’ positive attention was not contingent on how often children actually engaged in appropriate conduct. The Function 1 centroids for children in the MSG and NA groups, respectively, indicated that these parenting practices were negatively or negligibly characteristic of their environments. Furthermore, whereas children in the NA group seemed to be exposed to love withdrawal, humiliating attacks, and shaming – tendencies that were stronger for older girls in the sample – these tendencies were uncharacteristic of the treatment received by children in the MG or MSG groups. Finally, we collected the mothers’ and student-teachers’ ratings of the children on Achenbach’s (1991) Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). These results “stand for themselves” and I return to them briefly in the concluding section.

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Conclusions of the featured study The results presented based on our featured study are fascinating in several respects. First, there is a group of younger boys and girls, who strongly endorsed guilt in response to moral transgressions but did not feel strong degrees of shame for these moral transgressions, nor did they report high guilt and shame for non-moral transgressions. These struck us, at first glance, as highly conscientious children, who additionally did not suffer consistently from the pain of shame. Inspection of these children’s justifications for feeling guilty and ashamed post-transgression undermined our first impression, however. Though their higher guilt ratings were associated with increased acceptance of responsibility, these also were highly correlated with fear of punishment and they were associated negligibly or even negatively to cognitions imparting conscientious attitudes (concern for the victim/other; standards of conduct). More extreme ratings of shame-to-moral transgressions in this group additionally were associated with fear of punishment and acceptance of blame. Interestingly, the Cluster 1 children who admitted to more extreme shame for moral transgressions were less apt to deny the action as self-characteristic and there is some (albeit weak) evidence that they connected shame with proper standards of conduct; the same children were not prone to externalize blame, particularly when explaining why they would feel guilty. It is clear that their mothers report engaging in greater induction in both positive and negative encounters. The mothers of children in this group self-reported feeling greater pride and offering greater rewards for standard-consistent behaviour; they eschewed withdrawing love from or humiliating their children. Nonetheless, mothers in this group reported greater power assertion and anger or annoyance in reaction to children’s hypothetical standard violations. Furthermore, they and/or others characterized this group of children as actually engaging more frequently in standard-discrepant behaviours on two distinct measures (the ESP and the CBCL), while also depicting the children to possess valuable physical, temperamental, and certain social characteristics. There is little evidence favouring these children’s associations, especially of moral guilt, with standards of conduct or empathy. Guilt, instead, seems associated with responsibility and a resulting fear of punishment. While not defensive, and although standards did play some role in their shame reactions (albeit very weak), responsibility and fear of punishment again predominated. Expressed in terms of Hoffman’s (2000) concept of disciplinary encounter scripts, this group of primarily younger children is not manifesting the “transgression → induction → empathic distress and guilt” script expected in homes that stress induction. Instead, they seem to embrace a “responsible for transgression → fear of punishment → express guilt and shame → be let off the hook” script. The concurrent correlational nature of the design prohibits inferences regarding directionality of the effects. It does, nonetheless, seem plausible to

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partly attribute these children’s fear to mothers’ known tendencies to express anger/annoyance or power assertion in response to children’s frequent misdeeds and to the mothers’ likely quicker tendencies to react intensely because they perceive these children to deviate from obligatory standards. Conclusions reflecting the child’s influence on the quality and intensity of mothers’ reactions should not be ignored, however. It is obvious from the mothers’ and student-teachers’ reports that these children do engage in frequent misdeeds. Equally obvious, however, is that they are likeable or personable children to whom it might be more challenging to react with stricter or more responsecontingent discipline. Finally, in regard to Cluster 1, these children manifested several cooccurring negative (e.g., dishonesty, uncooperative/callous attitudes toward peers, disrespectful of family, aggressive, and antisocial behaviours) and positive (e.g., falling below the mean for anxiety and unpopularity) characteristics that are eerily disturbing and reminiscent of characteristics displayed by children typified as “Machiavellian” or callous/unemotional. Longitudinal follow-ups of these children and their home environments seem warranted to ascertain the extent to which these qualities simply reflect observers’ overly sensitive depictions of a young group of children who actually might simply be engaged in developmentally typical behaviours, and to examine their conscientiousness or involvement in immoral acts at an older age. Considering all of the results regarding children in Cluster 2, they manifested a very well-adapted pattern. Their moral transgression-based guilt obviously was based in acknowledgements of responsibility and dual foci on standards of conduct and concern for the victims. They did not manifest moral guilt out of fear, nor did they externalize blame. Compared to guilt, shame regarding the same moral transgressions was less intense, but its intensity was a function of the concern for standards and reassuring others involved in the situation that they do not aspire to be the “type” of person who engages in transgressions. They did admit intense feelings of shame while not responding defensively (e.g., by denying the action as selfcharacteristic). Stated differently, those who denied feeling intensely ashamed were the ones to vociferously deny the actions as self-characteristic. It nonetheless was very clear from the results that this group of children understood the need to explain to others one’s intentionally or wilfully produced misdeeds, in ways that acknowledged their responsibility and represented a firm commitment to avoid such actions in the future. At least for children in Cluster 2, negative outcomes that the person did not intend (e.g., the lost soccer match, a lousy class presentation) clearly elicited strong shame feelings. Though not directly impacting others in all situations, the child’s behaviour at the very least could elicit discomfort or even anger in them. Regarding these events, however, the Cluster 2 group’s ashamed feelings were more extreme the less they were concerned about the event’s impact on others or about giving the group an account of the outcome’s origins. Those children who felt greater shame regarding these non-moral

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transgressions were, to some extent, more inwardly focused on an “internal” accounting system, pondering what they should or could have done differently to avoid the outcome. Generally speaking, and compared to Cluster 1, fear of punishment was not a strong correlate of guilt or shame for children in Cluster 2, regarding either their moral or their non-moral transgressions. It seems, instead, as though the Cluster 2 children’s feelings of guilt and shame concerning moral transgressions focused on standards of moral conduct, with their feelings of guilt being associated more uniquely with concern for the victims. Moral shame in Cluster 2 appeared to be based on concerns related to their selfimage and it inspired non-defensive thoughts about how to minimize actions discrepant with that image in the future. Thus, children in Cluster 2 manifested a Hoffman-like “transgression → empathy and standard-based guilt” script. Their shame scripts might be describable as: standard violation → comparison to desired self-image → identifying ways to avoid future discrepancies. Were characteristics of the Cluster 2 children’s home environment predictive of these children’s guilt or shame scripts? If anything, it appears that mothers’ concurrent images of these children are positive. Mothers of the Cluster 2 children perceived them to behave in ways, or possess characteristics, that exceeded mothers’ ought standards. The negative weights associated with Cluster 2 regarding children’s morally discrepant behaviours, these mothers’ own parenting behaviours, and their affective reactions toward children suggest to us that mothers perceived less need to actively intervene to shape these children’s moral lives. Mothers’ and student-teachers’ CBCLrelated ratings revealed slight tendencies toward anxiety and/or depression. A scale labelled “ineptness”, which represents a mixture of tendencies such as loneliness, self-consciousness, fearfulness, and somatic complaints, also resulted in higher scores for these children compared to Cluster 1 or 3. Children in Cluster 2 are thus displaying some of the classic signs of internalization, but one should note that most of the CBCL scores fall well within the normal range. At the very least, however, we should allow seriously for the possibility that children, or adults, who manifest shy, anxious, or self-conscious tendencies are quicker or more likely to feel guilty and ashamed after behaving in ways that violate morally related standards of conduct. It is unfortunate that we have no data regarding these children’s emotion profiles or the moral atmosphere in which they lived when they were younger. Allowing some imaginary time-travel, we would have expected to see their parents scaffold children’s moral development at younger ages in ways similar to findings of the Kochanska and colleagues (cf. Aksan & Kochanska, 2005). Also interesting to have explored, moreover, is whether finer discriminations involving the mothers’ earlier interactions with children (e.g., comparing mothers who employed induction but who differed in the affective climate they helped create) would have discriminated among the more versus less anxious

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children in the present sample. Longitudinal follow-ups of these children are needed in order to discern, for example, whether a consistent lack of maternal intervention predicts later clinically significant signs of depression, anxiety, and other internalizing symptoms. Children in Cluster 3 exhibited undifferentiated and extremely high shame and guilt scores. Although rarely outside of the normal range, the CBCL ratings revealed one basis for Cluster 3’s intense distress reactions. Of the three groups, those in Cluster 3 were rated as having greater family problems, being more inattentive/hyperactive, as well as being more resistant. Their resistance reflected behaviours that could frustrate others, including being off-task, clumsy, impatient, argumentative, impatient, and defiant. Mothers of these children rated them as discrepant from several standards that many mothers in the present sample did not classify as “ought nots”. Instead, most mothers in the present sample restricted these to the “ideally not” category. It is disturbing to see mothers of the Cluster 3 children oblige them to meet standards concerning physical attractiveness, weight, physical coordination, personal habits (e.g., sloppiness at the dinner table), or physical coordination. Most of these characteristics are difficult to control and certainly impossible to “will” into perfection. Perhaps not surprisingly, placement within Cluster 3 also was associated with exposure to maternal love withdrawal and shaming or personal attacks, as revealed from the P-CARS results. Finally, although the children in Cluster 3 reacted with intense guilt and shame to the nonmoral and moral standard violations of the C-CARS, there were no consistent patterns of associations between those ratings and children’s justifications for them. It is as though these children subsist in conflicted homes that provide them with next-to-no affective or cognitive support in regulating any type of emotion. Again, however, the concurrent correlational nature of the design does not allow us to ascertain whether certain tendencies of these children also ignite some of the conflict. The children classified into Cluster 3 were primarily older and female. The group also was not a small one. This leads me to highlight a characteristic of the sample that might account, in part, for the high distress of Cluster 3, some of the conflict obviously occurring at the family level, and these children’s poorer outcomes. Though the sample in this study was relatively heterogeneous by Utah standards, the mothers of children in Cluster 3 all avowed a particular faith. Their faith is the dominant one in Utah (Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Days Saints; more commonly known as LDS, and less preferably referred to as Mormons). The emphasis on striving for perfection is a well-known facet of the LDS doctrine. Of course there are robust individual and cultural differences, orthogonal to religiosity, in orientations toward perfection and the LDS’ focus on perfection is shared with other religions. Unlike these comparisons, however, belonging to the LDS faith and strict adherence to its doctrines are all-consuming and ever-pervasive facets of daily life, especially as practiced by members living in Utah.3 Importantly, adherence to doctrine and life

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principles or values, as in many faiths, is not “formally” sanctioned until children are 8 years old and have reached the age of “responsibility”. In this regard, one should note the relatively older age of children in Cluster 3. Certain standards to which all members of the faith must adhere daily concern dress, manners, and language use; people are expected to gain a good education past high school, engage in regular volunteer work, possess cleanliness of mind and spirit; abstain from alcohol, caffeine, or illicit substances, and to earn a top salary. These expectations are not gender-specific in the LDS faith, but other standards are strongly gender-differentiated (e.g., men but not women may join the priesthood; men are to support the family financially and spiritually; women are encouraged to be the spiritual and household leaders as stay-at-home mothers).

Summary and conclusions Stressed in this chapter were relationships among the cognitive, emotional, and motivational facets of conscience, which we featured in a study of children ranging in age between 5 to 13 years old. We investigated: elements of the affective component of conscience by discerning whether children manifested distinct profiles of guilt and shame; cognitive and conative elements by examining the extent to which the obtained emotion profiles were distinguishable in terms of different reasons or concerns for feeling guilty or ashamed; and additional elements of the conative component by examining the standards that mothers set for their children, as well as children’s actual moral behaviour. The featured study bears on lively debates in the literature regarding the contrasting contribution of guilt and shame to conscientiousness. Researchers in the areas of developmental and social psychology typically operationalize guilt as a unified construct, often based in empathy and moral standards and observed in apologies, confessions, or reparative efforts. Guilt conveyed as approach or reparative actions clearly would prompt others to trust the wrongdoer’s intentions to avoid future transgressions. These expressions of guilt also acknowledge the transgressor’s concern with the victim’s plight and the relationship’s welfare. People who observe a transgressor express guilt in these ways in reaction to a wilful misdeed are more forgiving of the transgressor. In contrast, according to this literature, wrongdoers whose first and only impulse is to withdraw from the situation, or those who selfishly focus on how the event undermines their own as opposed to their victims’ welfare, are less likely to re-establish faith in the relationship. The ashamed transgressor presumably is one who does little to assure others of the valuable moral lessons learned, or to strengthen perceptions of intentions to change for the better. Viewed as such, guilt generally receives greater moral credit in comparison to the emotion of shame. This raises the thorny issue of whether guilt necessarily involves approach or reparative tendencies or shame involves

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avoidance. In fact, many generally question whether any emotion can be operationalized validly in terms of unique action tendencies. Consider, for example, the case of anger. What precisely are its action tendencies? Though sometimes associated with the actions of striking out or shaking one’s fists (and the like), these actions obviously can be associated with other emotions or with no emotions at all. Additionally disturbing are arguments and evidence suggesting that one cannot properly construe guilt as an emotion, because there are no facial or non-verbal expressions uniquely associated with this experience. This said, laypeople do conceptualize guilt as an emotion and they report feeling guilty. Even children as young as 8 years of age distinguish feelings of guilt from those of shame on various dimensions. Because we knew that individuals consider guilt to be an emotion, but also because the equation of guilt with approach or repair is doubtful, guilt was very simply operationalized in the featured study as children’s endorsements of feeling guilty. In so doing, we found evidence of moral guilt’s valuable role in one group of children (Cluster 2). Importantly, however, these children’s expressions of guilty feelings were not the sole contributors to, or reflections of, these children’s many adaptive characteristics or their non-punitive home environment. Shame also figured prominently in their reactions. Although even the very feeling of shame indeed may be temporarily immobilizing, this “freeze” may contribute positively to immediate and future behaviour. People receive the time to reflect on their mistakes and to gather information (internally or externally) regarding the corrective steps needed in the immediate situation and remembered again for the future. This seems to better depict the role that shameful feelings served for children in Cluster 2, who embraced shame as a motivation to shape or correct their future behaviour. Of course, granting any transgressor “moral credit” based on behaviours such as apology is no guarantee that guilt actually, necessarily, or only serves morally adaptive functions. Clearly, there are multiple reasons why individuals feel guilty, as revealed by even a cursory glance at the psychoanalytic, clinical, and social psychological models or methods. Obviously, and quite early, children learn that “guilt-like” behaviours quickly minimize punishment or avoid it altogether. The same guilty expression need not mean the person feels this way because of empathy or because she violated internalized standards of moral conduct. To understand precisely how guilt is functioning as an emotional facet of conscience one needs to examine guilt’s relation to conscience’s cognitive and conative components as well. Again, in this respect, there were certain children (Cluster 2) who exhibited feelings of guilt co-occurring with the very moral cognitions and motivations typically attributed to guilt in the literature. Then again, a somewhat younger group associated the feeling of guilt with cognitions and motivational statements reflecting its basis in fear of punishment. The concurrent correlational design did not allow us to discern

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whether mothers’ behaviours shaped or reflected the younger group’s orientation to guilt. Mothers of these children obviously exposed them to heavy doses of not only induction but also anger and power assertion, possibly revealing these children’s need for continued intervention, and the children’s stronger “external” moral orientations. This group was relatively young and longitudinal follow-ups are needed to discern continuity in this pattern. It is well known, however, that a small proportion of the adult population manifests patterns of “overt” guilt for purely instrumental reasons. We, in fact, have obtained results in adults similar to those of Cluster 1. An adult group scoring high only in “traditional” guilt (but low in shame) scored as the most self-defensive, most self-deceptively enhancing, most amoral, and the least concerned with victim’s plight. Considered together, there does seem to be purpose in pain. Feelings of shame encourage people to engage in critical self-evaluation, to heed and learn from their mistakes, and to improve themselves. We might do well to heed the high value that authors ranging from Cooley (1902) to Tomkins (1963) attribute to shame.

Notes 1

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3

Nonetheless, it is untrue that collectivistic cultures vale shame to the exclusion of guilt. Respondents from collectivistic cultures systematically acknowledge guilt as important. Lebra (1983) describes Japanese individuals’ strong inclinations to feel guilty regarding the plight of others. They report guilt even when not responsible for another’s suffering, even on impulse of hurting a close other, and because of strong identification with, and sense of obligation to, the group’s welfare. The Chinese exhibit a strong social orientation in which the sense of self is firmly rooted in the group’s welfare. In comparison to correlations involving the moral transgression situations, those for non-moral transgressions were far smaller in magnitude for all three clusters. Children in Cluster 1 (the moral guilt group) manifested generally the same pattern for non-moral guilt as seen previously for moral guilt, with one important exception. Fear was not significantly associated with their ratings of guilt in the non-moral situations. The correlations of Cluster 1’s non-moral shame ratings to the frequency of each were negligible in size. The more children in Cluster 2 (the moral shame and guilt group) felt non-moral guilt, the more they also denied these transgressions as self-characteristic. They also tended to offer matter-of-fact explanations of these incidents (e.g., I did not study). Children in Cluster 2 were prone, however, to less strongly externalize blame the higher their ratings of nonmoral shame. At the same time, they also expressed less concern for others, but they did offer more self-oriented counterfactuals. The latter findings are fascinating, suggesting that Cluster 2’s shame to non-moral transgressions involved a stronger private than public sense of shame. Non-moral shame was related to self-referential explanations in Cluster 3 and to a lack of concern for others. The church locates seminary buildings adjacent to every public school’s and university’s property and pupils often elect to attend seminary five days per week. Each member is welcomed, and expected to participate in age-stratified group meetings (e.g., the Young Adults Association). On a weekly basis, members devote three to four evenings and most of an entire day to church-sponsored activities, including visits that church volunteers make to each member’s home to discuss the

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scriptures, bear testimony, and to provide guidance regarding family, household, work, and spiritual matters. Each member belongs to a “ward”, which comprises all members in the local neighbourhood and provides a cohesive sense of community. Members run the church on an entirely volunteer basis and each member typically fulfils one or more “church callings” at any one moment in time (e.g., missionary work, Boy Scout or Cub Scout leader, bishop, Relief Society, community service, working weekends on the ward’s community farm).

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Part II

Moral reasoning

5

Moral reasoning competence and the moral judgment–action discrepancy in young adolescents Daniel Brugman Department of Developmental Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Introduction According to Kohlberg (1981, p. 30) Plato’s argument “He who knows the good chooses the good” has psychological reality. Virtuous action is guided by knowledge of the good. Knowledge of the good refers to justice. Justice is a moral principle for resolving competing claims and is a reason for action. Moral reasoning has been studied as moral competence and refers to the highest stage of reasoning in the domain of justice a person is capable of at the time of measurement (Colby & Kohlberg, 1987). Because of the complexity of concrete situations involving many demands, desires, and responsibilities, moral competence is assessed in hypothetical, nearly context-free situations with two conflicting moral values (Higgins, Power, & Kohlberg, 1984). Kohlberg and Candee (1984, p. 519) referred to this moral competence when they claimed “. . . that persons . . . at each higher stage of moral reasoning are more likely to act . . . in accord with choices about situations that they judged to be right when they were somewhat removed from the situation itself.” (italics added). This hypothesis reflects the idea that a person is supposed to have a better moral view on the situation when that situation can be reflected upon from a certain distance. Instead of investigating the relation between moral competence and moral action, research has focused on the relation between moral competence and behaviour, in particular on antisocial and delinquent behaviour. Antisocial behaviour is conceptualized as outward behaviour that either directly or indirectly harms others through the violation of important moral or social norms, and includes aggressive and delinquent acts (Barriga, Morrison, Liau, & Gibbs, 2001b). A recent meta-analysis including 50 studies confirmed that the moral competence of juvenile delinquents is at a lower stage when compared to their non-delinquent peers (Stams, Brugman, Dekovic, Van Rosmalen, Van der Laan, & Gibbs, 2006). Delinquent youths are characterized by a low stage of moral competence; they have a stronger egocentric bias than their peers and intrude the legal rights and well being of other persons

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to maximize their advantages and minimize their disadvantages (Gibbs, 2003). The suggestion is that low moral stage individuals act according to their own short-term interests and not on the moral values they say they subscribe to: I remember discussing moral values in the late 1980s with Joey, a 15 year old at a specialized middle school in Columbus, Ohio, for juveniles with behavioural problems. I was impressed with Joey’s apparent earnestness and sincerity as he empathically affirmed the importance of moral values such as keeping promises, telling the truth, helping others, saving lives, not stealing, and obeying the law. “And why is it so important to obey the law?” I asked Joey. “Because, [pause], like in a store, you may think no one sees you, but they could have cameras!” he replied. His other explanations were generally similar: Keeping promises to others is important because if you don’t they might find out and get even; helping others is important in case you need a favour from them later; and so forth. The more Joey justified his moral evaluations, the less impressed I came. How much could Joey be trusted to live to his moral values in situations where his fear of observers and surveillance cameras would be less salient than his egocentric motives and biases? (Gibbs, 2003, p. 136) According to Gibbs, moral competence directly influences behavioural choices, and the probability to act in favour of an antisocial behavioural choice is larger at the pre-conventional or immature level in which gains are weighed against costs than at the conventional or mature level in which the well being of others is crucial. Gibbs (2003) suggests that delinquent youths are characterized by a bigger gap between what they say should be done and what they actually do than non-delinquent youths.

Krebs and Denton’s criticism Several critics such as Krebs and Denton (2005, p. 639) have questioned Kohlberg and Candee’s hypothesis: The closer we looked at Kohlberg and Candee’s (1984) model of the relation between moral judgment and moral behaviour, the more problematic it appeared. . . . The evidence that Kohlberg and Candee (1984) adduced in support of their model stemmed from studies that showed a monotonic relation between the stage of third-person moral judgments about the hypothetical characters in Kohlberg’s test in one context and the first-person probability of engaging in a moral behaviour in another context (Blasi, 1980). Studies designed in this way fail to establish that participants engaged in the kind of reasoning they displayed on Kohlberg’s test when they made their behavioural decisions or that, if

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they did, they derived their behavioural decisions from this kind of moral reasoning. (Krebs & Denton, 2005, p. 639) We agree with Krebs and Denton (2005; cf. Kohlberg, 1984, p. 257, but see p. 515) that Kohlberg and Candee’s (1984) model about the relation between moral reasoning and moral action should not be reduced to the relation between moral reasoning and behaviour (e.g., delinquent behaviour). As was noticed already 25 years ago, a correlation between the highly abstract concept of moral competence and context-specific delinquent behaviour does not tell us anything about the nature of that relation (Blasi, 1980, 1983; Kohlberg & Candee, 1984). This is not only a matter of correlation versus causality, but also of theory: stages are characterized by formal instead of content-specific characteristics. At each stage of moral reasoning different reasons are possible pro and con a certain action. Individuals at the same moral stage may choose different actions. On the other hand, individuals at a different stage may choose the same action for different reasons. A second problem with studies on the relation between moral competence and delinquent behaviour concerns the assumption that delinquent behaviour is “immoral”. Although that assumption might seem “reasonable” (Kohlberg, 1984, p. 515), no adequate operationalization of (im)moral behaviour is presented by delinquent behaviour. Even delinquents themselves know the difference between acts that are wrong as such, mala in se, and acts that are illegal but not immoral, mala prohibita (Sykes & Matza, 1957; cf. Tisak, Tisak, & Goldstein, 2006). Third, moral action entails a moral choice and the individual’s choice about what is right is missing in the relation between moral competence and behaviour, in particular the moral choice when viewed from a more distant point of view. To summarize, the available studies do not test the hypothesized relationship between moral competence and moral action (Kohlberg & Candee, 1984); that is, individuals with a lower stage of moral competence act inconsistently in the sense that the gap between what they say should be done and what they actually do is wider than in their peers with a normal, more mature, stage of moral competence. It seems that Krebs and Denton’s (2005) rejection of Kohlberg and Candee’s (1984) hypothesis is based on the results of their own research on stage consistency between moral reasoning in abstract, hypothetical dilemmas (“competence”) and in everyday, practical moral dilemmas (“performance”) (Krebs, Denton, Vermeulen, & Carpendale, 1991; Krebs, Denton, & Wark, 1997). In our view, their observed lack of stage consistency between moral reasoning competence and moral reasoning performance does not carry evidence about the relation between moral competence and moral action – as was claimed by Kohlberg and Candee (1984). Research has reported moderate relations between moral competence and moral performance. In addition, various situational and individual characteristics have been found that affect moral performance (Brugman & Weisfelt, 2000). Rather than looking at

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consistency between moral reasoning in hypothetical Kohlbergian dilemmas and everyday moral dilemmas, we suggest scrutiny of the relation between maturity of moral competence and both the consistency between moral evaluation of behaviour in everyday moral situations and similar selfreported behaviour. The individual’s evaluation of behaviour is a prerequisite for labelling it as moral or immoral (cf. Blasi, 1999, 2005; Nucci, 2004). The notion of the monotonic relation between judgment and action should cover that with increasing moral maturity “subjects have an increasing sense of necessity of being responsible to act as one thinks right . . .” (Kohlberg & Candee, 1984, p. 530, italics added; cf. Blasi, 1983; Keller & Edelstein, 1993). Evaluation of a certain type of behaviour as moral qualifies that behaviour as “right” from the individual’s point of view. Kohlberg’s moral stage model is viewed here as a model of growing cognitive internalism; that is, knowledge of the good in itself becomes a motivator for action in the course of development (cf. Gibbs, 2003). From that viewpoint Kohlberg and Candee’s hypothesis converges with self-concept explanations of cognitive dissonance: Behavioural inconsistency threatens the individual’s self-perception as a morally reliable person only if he or she holds moral norms of some strength for this type of behaviour . . . for individuals with strong moral norms the desire to avoid cognitive dissonance creates a drive to behave consistently (Thøgerson, 2004, p. 94)

Mediators between moral competence and antisocial behaviour After more than 25 years of research the relationship between moral reasoning and behaviour still seems complex and poorly understood, as can be inferred from the recent discussion initiated by Haidt (2001). He argued that in most real-life situations moral reasoning does not precede behaviour, as cognitive developmentalists (Blasi, 1999, 2005; Gibbs, 2003; Kohlberg, 1981, 1984; Nucci, 2004; Pizarro, 2000) claim, but is used by hindsight or as rationalization to convince oneself and others about the adequacy of one’s behavioural choice. Experimental and longitudinal studies have been carried out to establish the causal relation between moral competence and antisocial behaviour (Arbuthnot & Gordon, 1986; Boom & Brugman, 2005; Raaijmakers, Engels, & Van Hoof, 2005). Intervention studies aimed at improving moral competence have successfully reduced delinquent behaviour in the long term for one case (Leeman, Gibbs, & Fuller, 1993) but not others (Kohlberg, 1985). In sum, these studies have not resulted in a straightforward conclusion about the direction of the relationship, but it seems likely that moral competence may have an influence on behaviour, just as behaviour may have an influence on moral competence.

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Other studies have identified mediators and moderators in the relation between moral reasoning and behaviour (Boom & Brugman, 2005; Higgins et al., 1984; Krebs et al., 1997; Kuther & Higgins-D’Alessandro, 2000; Stams et al., 2006). Recent research has focused in particular on moral atmosphere and cognitive distortions as mediators. In our research with Russian adolescents we found support for a model with the perceived moral atmosphere as a mediator between moral reasoning and antisocial behaviour in cross-sectional and longitudinal data (Boom & Brugman, 2005). The moral atmosphere refers to the norms, values, and meaning systems that participants in a social context (e.g., the school) share. In most studies the moral atmosphere is investigated through the perception of the participants by asking them to assess the majority perspective on those norms, values, and meaning systems, viz. students are asked how they think most students of their school or class would reason about certain schoolrelated moral dilemmas. It is often assumed that perception of moral atmosphere refers to an environmental characteristic. But it would be naïve to assume that perception of moral atmosphere reflects social reality only; the moral atmosphere is also in the eye of the beholder. Research has shown that although the social environment is more strongly represented in our measure of perception of moral atmosphere than in moral reasoning, the individual component seems even more strongly represented in the perception of moral atmosphere than the social environment (Beem, Brugman, Høst, & Tavecchio, 2004). An intervention study to change students’ perception of moral atmosphere into a more socially shared direction (which would result in a decrease in the standard deviation of perception of moral atmosphere within a class) showed that these differences cannot be reduced to a lack of information in students about each other’s opinion only. After giving students extensive opportunities to share information about what they think is going on in their class and school, more agreement was found in some aspects but not in others (Brugman, Podolskij, Heymans, Boom, Karabanova, & Idobaeva, 2003). Long-term educational interventions have shown that a high moral atmosphere can be developed in school that stimulates students’ development of moral competence and moral performance (Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg, 1989), but individual differences in perception still exist. In five different studies perception of the moral atmosphere was a better predictor of (anti)social behaviour in adolescents than moral competence, even when only one or two aspects of the complex construct of moral atmosphere was measured (Table 5.1; see also Chapter 6 of this volume). It was further expected that adolescents with a higher moral reasoning could better resist the antisocial pressures from a negative moral atmosphere (Gibbs, 2003). However, moral competence was not a moderator in the relation between moral atmosphere and delinquency in Russian adolescents (Boom & Brugman, 2005). Another important mediator in the relation between moral competence and delinquent behaviour seems to be cognitive distortions (Barriga et al.,

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Table 5.1 The relations between moral competence (operationalized by different measures) and perception of moral atmosphere (SMAQ) with antisocial behaviour in five studies Study Høst et al. (1998)

Sample; moral competence measure

Adolescents; SROM-SF Brugman et al. (1999) Adolescents; SRM-SF Brugman et al. (2003) Russian adolescents; MJST Brugman & Aleva Juvenile delinquents; (2004) SRM-SF Velden et al. (2007) Adolescents; MJST (two waves)

Moral competence

Moral atmosphere (SMAQ)

r(1553)= −.09** r (1553)= −.19*** r (144)= −.11*

r (144)= −.45***

r (749)= −.16**

r (749)= −.45***

r(37)= −.33*

r(44)= −.50** r(70)= −.33** T1: r(621)=−.02 T1: r(584)=−.29*** T2: r(609)= .06 T2: r(630)=−.36***

Note: SROM-SF: Sociomoral Reflection Objective Measure – Short Form (Basinger & Gibbs, 1987). SRM-SF: Sociomoral Reflection Measure – Short Form (Gibbs, Basinger, & Fuller, 1992). MJST: Moral Judgment Sorting Task (Boom, Brugman, & Van der Heijden, 2001). SMAQ: School Moral Atmosphere Questionnaire (Høst et al., 1998). * p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

2001b). Gibbs (1991) argued that low stage moral reasoning is important but not decisive for delinquent behaviour: “Sociomoral developmental delay may not lead to severely or criminally antisocial behaviour, however, unless certain defensive processes come into play” (Gibbs, 1991, p. 98). The idea is that also persons exhibiting Stage 2 moral competence feel guilty when committing antisocial acts: “like most individuals . . . antisocial persons . . . seek to retain and maintain a ‘good’ image” (Gibbs, 2003, p. 141). As Haan, Aerts, and Cooper (1985, p. 38) put it: “. . . even the most hardened of criminals, cling to the view that they are basically moral”. The defensive processes are cognitive distortions that “permit one to ‘disengage’ one’s unfair, harmful conduct from one’s evaluation of self ” (Gibbs, 2003, p. 141; referring to Bandura’s (2002) moral disengagement). Cognitive distortions are “inaccurate or biased ways of attending to or conferring meaning upon experiences” (Barriga, Gibbs, Potter, & Liau, 2001a, p. 1). Different theoretical models link moral competence and perception of moral atmosphere to behaviour (Colby & Kohlberg, 1987; Rest, 1986). However, no research is available that includes, in addition to moral competence, both the perception of moral atmosphere and cognitive distortions as predictors of antisocial behaviour. Because perception of moral atmosphere has an important individual quality in the sense that students in the same school and class may perceive the moral atmosphere in their school and class very differently, one might speculate that cognitive distortions also are related to the perception of moral atmosphere. Indeed, Van der Velden, Brugman,

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and Koops (2007) found a moderate relation between perception of moral atmosphere and cognitive distortions.

Moral consistency So far, however, the reviewed studies did not address moral action, that is, they did not pay attention to an individual’s mental processing accompanying his or her behaviour. We believe that the debate about the relevance of moral competence for antisocial behaviour (cf. Gibbs, 2006; Krebs & Denton, 2005, 2006) has been hampered by a lack of understanding of the relation between moral competence and moral action (i.e., what should be done and is done and why in concrete situations). Recently, we (Brugman, Ferguson, & Neven, 2006) investigated the relation between moral competence and antisocial behaviour by taking into account individuals’ moral evaluation of their antisocial behaviour. Subsequently, measures of moral consistency were created between subjects’ moral evaluation of their own antisocial behaviour or similar hypothetical behaviour and the prevalence of their antisocial behaviour. Moral evaluation was based on the criterion judgments of Turiel’s (1983) domain theory. Three types of moral consistency were distinguished using Turiel’s evaluation criteria (Turiel, 1983, 1989, 1998). In the domain theory a parallel development is proposed of a moral domain (e.g., justice, human rights and welfare, etc.), a conventional domain (e.g., social rules and conventions valid within a certain social context), and a personal domain (e.g., hygiene) already in young children. The ability to distinguish between domains appears from the way children and adolescents judge norm transgressions. Turiel (1983) designed a set of judgment criteria and justification categories to explore children’s judgments. These criteria have been applied in many studies and a broad consensus exists that children consider prototypical transgressions in the moral domain to be more serious, less acceptable, less generalizable, and less authority dependent than prototypical transgressions in the conventional and personal domain (Nucci & Nucci, 1982; Tisak, 1995). Our first type of consistency related self-reported antisocial behaviour to the evaluation of that behaviour (Figure 5.1). Adolescents were asked whether they had committed certain antisocial behaviours and subsequently evaluated these behaviours using the domain criteria. The second type of consistency related self-reported antisocial behaviour to the evaluation of similar hypothetical antisocial behaviour committed by a fictitious person (type 2). The third type of consistency related the evaluation of self-reported antisocial behaviour to the evaluation of similar hypothetical antisocial behaviour of fictitious others (type 3). In our opinion the second type presents the closest operationalization of Kohlberg and Candee’s (1984, p. 519) suggestion of linking moral competence to behaviour because the hypothetical situation is “somewhat removed from the situation itself ”. If transgressions by fictitious persons in hypothetical situations are viewed as

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Figure 5.1 Three types of consistency: between the evaluation of self-reported behaviour and the prevalence of self-reported behaviour (C1); between the evaluation of similar behaviour by a fictitious person in a hypothetical situation and the prevalence of self-reported behaviour (C2); and between the evaluation of self-reported behaviour and that of similar behaviour by a fictitious person in a hypothetical situation (C3).

full-blown moral transgressions, one expects that persons with a mature moral competence will actually carry out these transgressions less than persons with an immature moral reasoning. These three types of moral consistency were related to moral competence (Brugman et al., 2006). In line with Kohlberg and Candee, it was hypothesized and found that the relation between moral competence (measured by the Sociomoral Reflection Objective Measure – Short Form, a measure that contains two hypothetical moral dilemmas; Basinger & Gibbs, 1987) and moral consistency (in the evaluation of antisocial behaviour and the selfreport of antisocial behaviour) was stronger than the relation between moral competence and antisocial behaviour. The correlations rose from about r(172) = −.17 (p