What is Morality? Narrow and Broad Definition

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author

Notes

1 The quote is often attributed to Oscar Wilde, but there is no substantive evidence that Oscar Wilde said or wrote this statement. It was probably written by Gilbert Keith Chesterton.

2 This also relates to e.g., the problems of self-mutilations, depression, personality disorders, self-care movement like mindfulness or the process of healing during psychotherapy.

3 Win-win terminology is used in psychotherapy or management. It was introduced by Mary Parker Follett in 1920 and it reflects the situation in which two people are winning in the relationship. It is a situation by which cooperation, compromise, or group participation leads to all participants benefiting.

4 I also want to highlight that moral psychologist study animals and their morality, e.g., how they react to fairness (McAuliffe & Santos, 2018).

5 This way, I do not agree with Gray and Wegner (2009) statement: “It is difficult to be moral or immoral alone in a room” (Gray & Wegner, 2009, p. 506), and with Waytz and Young (2018) statement: “After all, the primary function of morality is to make sense of and interact with the social beings around us. Identifying an action as right or wrong matters only insofar as we are able to interpret others’ behavior as hostile or benevolent and to decide how to respond” (Waytz & Young, 2018, p. 190).

6 Or generally, feels some negative, or destructive emotions, which bring this person emotional pain. I am aware that some may state that guilt requires other people to appear. I assume that this more relates to shame, not guilt, but at the same time I do not have any strong argument to convince the reader that what this person feels is exactly the “guilt”.

7 But still, I claim that one person is enough for morality to appear.

8 Much research was done in moral psychology, when moral was understood as “good,” “right.” E.g., in research showing that morality dominates in person perception (Brambilla et al., 2021; Goodwin et al., 2014; Wojciszke et al., 1998), it is a basic psychological need (Prentice et al., 2019), and people tend to see themselves as moral, even when being in prison (Sedikides et al., 2014).

9 Some of us could have many problems with deciding if they are moral or immoral psychologists.

10 This is so-called ethical relativism, i.e., the theory that holds that morality is relative to the norms of one's culture. That is, whether an action is right or wrong depends on the moral norms of the society in which it is practiced. The same action may be morally right in one society but be morally wrong in another.

11 I understand that this is a linguistic approach introduced by Dahl (this issue), but still, I argue that it is the best possible solution in this case.

12 See Nichols (2018) for the difference. These two words have different meanings and despite that they may be used interchangeably, I agree with Nichols’ (2018) explanation.

13 Fortunate, most people agree what is moral or not, at least at some culture or country, we developed the juristically system or institution of prison. It makes us feel safe despite some of us are moral psychologists accepting the diversity in moral domain.

14 Some may say that there are some universal moral rules, and there is “one truth.” But the long line of moral research shows that people see moral domain differently, rather supporting ethical relativism. One of the most drastic examples of diversity can be the case of honor killing. For people who kill to save family’s honor, killing is a morally good behavior. Despite that I personally do not agree, I understand that for some people in this world even such things as killing (or savings human lives) may be seen differently.

Additional information

Funding

The NAWA Bekker Program supported me with a grant “Moral thinking and unethical behavior” [number PN/BEK/2020/1/00058/DEC/1].