A psychological perspective on moral reasoning, processes of decision-making, and moral resistance

ABSTRACT

This article presents a psychological approach on the development of social and moral judgments that has relevance for the topics of public justification and world politics. In contrast with approaches assuming that morality is primarily determined by emotions and non-rational, the research discussed shows that moral development involves the construction of thinking about welfare, justice, and rights. In parallel with judgments in the moral domain, individuals construct judgments about conventions in the social system and areas of personal jurisdiction. Research documents that moral and social decisions involve processes of coordination, or weighing and balancing, moral and non-moral considerations and goals, as well as different moral goals. Processes of coordination are also involved in decisions about cultural practices that include social inequalities and relationships between those in dominant and subordinate positions in social hierarchies. Judgments about the fairness of practices entailing inequalities produce social opposition and moral resistance.

KEYWORDS:

• Moral psychology
• rationality
• cognitive morality
• social judgment
• fairness
• justice
• culture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Elliot Turiel received a Ph.D. in Psychology from Yale University and has taught at Columbia, Harvard, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is currently Professor in Education at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has hold the Jerome A. Hutto Chair in Education. His research focuses on social and moral development in different cultural contexts. Among the foci of his research is study of how people in positions of inequality think about and resist the injustices in their roles. He is past president of the Jean Piaget Society and serves on several boards of journals.