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    Moral Psychology: An Introduction To The Social Psychology, Biological Psychology and Applied Psychology Of Morality: An Introductory Series
    Moral Psychology: An Introduction To The Social Psychology, Biological Psychology and Applied Psychology Of Morality: An Introductory Series
    Moral Psychology: An Introduction To The Social Psychology, Biological Psychology and Applied Psychology Of Morality: An Introductory Series
    Ebook227 pages2 hoursAn Introductory Series

    Moral Psychology: An Introduction To The Social Psychology, Biological Psychology and Applied Psychology Of Morality: An Introductory Series

    By Connor Whiteley

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    About this ebook

    People do morally right and wrong behaviours. Why?

    Serving as an engaging, easy-to-understand introduction to moral psychology, international Bestseller Connor Whiteley guides readers through a journey to understand our morality. From its basis in social psychology, group processes and biological psychology to its applied applications and morality in the real world. Connor Whiteley guides readers through it all in his engaging style that keeps readers reading.

    By the end of this book, you'll understand:

    • What Is Morality?
    • What Influences Morality?
    • Why Power Corrupts?
    • How Morality Works In The Real World?
    • And So Much More

    Don't miss this brilliant, engaging and fascinating moral psychology book.

    BUY NOW!

     

    Moral Psychology Content

    Introduction

     

    Part One: Introduction To Morality And Moral Psychology

    Introduction To Moral Reasoning, Moral Judgements And Moral Foundations Theory

    Principles And Theories Of Morality

    Introduction To Being Virtuous And Amoral

     

    Part Two: Influences On Morality

    Are Infants Moral?

    How Does Categorising Our Relationships Impact Our Moral Judgements?

    How Does Social Influence Impact Morality?

    Why People Conform?

    Controversies Of The Experiments

    How Did Morality Evolve?

    Why Is Morality Powerful?

     

    Part Three: Grey Areas Of Morality

    Introduction To Moral Grey Areas

    What Is The Social Anchoring Of Right And Wrong?

    What Is The Moral Self And How Does It Connect To Moral Grey Areas?

    The Interplay Between Thoughts And Experiences

    Why Moral Judgements Aren't Always Bad?

    How Power Corrupts?

     

    Part Four: Real World Morality

    5 Signs Of Psychopathic Personality

    Why Are We Divided On What Makes A Good Society?

    How Does Lying Evolve Across The Lifespan?

    Bystanderism And Altruism

    Why People Don't Help?

    Altruism

    Morality And The Basics Of Cult Psychology

    How Do Narcissists Use Cult Leader Tactics?

    How Lying Destroys Self-Esteem?

    Conclusion: Why We Always Need To Be Moral In Psychology And Why There Are No Excuses In This Book

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCGD Publishing
    Release dateFeb 21, 2025
    ISBN9798224219391
    Moral Psychology: An Introduction To The Social Psychology, Biological Psychology and Applied Psychology Of Morality: An Introductory Series
    Author

    Connor Whiteley

    Un autor creativo y divertido que ama la fantasía, la ciencia ficción, la psicología y los idiomas. Las historias y la creatividad es una de las cosas que hace que el mundo sea grande y quiero ayudar a compartirlo! Connor Whiteley Hola, soy Connor Whiteley, tengo 18 años y me encanta escribir creativamente, y escribí mi trilogía de Brownsea cuando tenía 14 años después de haber ido a Brownsea Island en un campamento de exploradores. En el campamento, empecé a pensar en cómo todos los mosaicos y cerámicas rotas llegaron allí y de alguna manera se creó una trilogía. Además, me encanta escribir novelas de fantasía y de ciencia ficción porque sólo estás limitado por tu imaginación. Además, fui explorador scout y me encanta acampar, navegar y otras actividades al aire libre, así como cocinar. Además, también hago bastante trabajo de caridad. Por ejemplo: a principios de 2018 yo formaba parte de un panel de jóvenes que estaba involucrado en la creación de un informe con investigación para tratar de obtener fondos del gobierno para grupos organizados de jóvenes y a través de este panel. Que fui invitado a la fiesta del 70 cumpleaños del Príncipe Carlos y cómo algunos de nosotros salimos en la foto real. Finalmente, voy a la universidad y espero obtener mi doctorado en Psicología Clínica en unos pocos años.

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      Book preview

      Moral Psychology - Connor Whiteley

      INTRODUCTION TO MORAL REASONING, MORAL JUDGEMENTS AND MORAL FOUNDATIONS THEORY

      To kick off this massive topic, I wanted to start us off by focusing on moral reasoning a little and a lot of the information in this chapter, we’ll expand out over the rest of the book as well as add to. Yet we need to start somewhere and when it comes to dealing with why people do right and wrong, we need to start with the basics.

      And emotions can certainly be basic (and everyone who has ever read Cognitive Psychology is laughing).

      Anyway, emotions are a great place to start because emotions are important in guiding our moral judgements.

      A rather brilliant example of emotions and moral judgements can be found in Haidt (2001) who got university students to read a story about a brother and sister who had sex using birth control.

      This was a great stimulus to show people because it triggers a lot of great emotions in people and it definitely triggers disgust.

      As a result, university students immediately said that the siblings having sex was wrong when they experienced disgust. Yet what was really interesting was the participants couldn’t explain why or how they had come to make their moral judgement.

      Instead the participants simply said incest was just wrong or inbreeding was wrong for genetic reasons. That’s an argument I understand because it is true, but it is a useless argument in this situation because birth control was used. Making the genetic argument null-void.

      Therefore, Haidt argued that moral reasoning is based on emotion and gut-feelings about what is right and wrong (Greene & Haidt, 2002; Haidt, 2003). Since the participants just knew that incest was wrong but they couldn’t explain their reasoning, because the emotional response of disgust probably guided moral judgements about the situation.

      Personally, I agree with the results because I was still disgusted when I first read about a brother and sister having sex. I couldn’t explain why. I think I was disgusted by it because society has told me incest is wrong, and I support the genetic argument.

      But is that objectively enough of a reason to make a moral judgement?

      No, so the research supports the argument that emotion plays a role in moral judgements.

      Emotions Guiding Moral Behaviour

      Furthermore, emotions don’t only guide our moral judgements because they play a role in our moral behaviours too, so the moral and immoral actions we perform.

      The two most studied emotions in this regard are shame and guilt, because these are associated with immoral actions. As well as people are more likely to want to make up for immoral actions when experiencing these emotions (Tangey, Miller, Flicker & Barlow, 1996; Tangney, Wagner, Hill-Barlow, Marschall & Gramzow, 1996).

      Although, it is worth noting that shame and guilt aren’t the same thing. Due to when someone is experiencing shame, they’re more concerned with how they are being seen by other people so this is associated with an externalisation of blame.

      Whereas guilt is the opposite because if I feel guilt then I’m feeling bad because I have personally acted in an immoral way.

      As a result, if we apply these findings to the real-world then it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to learn that shame-prone criminal offenders compared to guilt-prone offenders appear to be more likely to reoffend (Tangney et al., 2014).

      I don’t think this is too surprising because I know from clinical psychology that people only change their behaviour if they have a motivation. In therapy, this is a motivation to decrease their psychological distress, improve their life and want to develop more adaptive (better) coping mechanisms.

      Yet in criminal reoffending, if you don’t feel like you’re to blame and you don’t feel negatively about this blame, then you have no motivation to change. Hence, the increased risk of reoffending.

      In addition, different emotions are experienced in different moral domains. Since people tend to feel more anger when others violate morals about the freedom and rights of others (Rozin et al., 1999; Vasquez et al. 2011). Whereas people experience disgust more when people violate morals regarding the purity of a person’s character, body and mind (Haidt et al., 1993; Rozin et al., 1999).

      I would like to add that the idea of purity is a good example of social norms and constructs, an argument we’ll explore later on so keep a pin in that.

      Moral Signalling

      Another function of communicating our moral judgements is twofold. We can communicate our intense moral disapproval to other people and we can use this to signal our own moral character (Kupfer & Giner-Sorolla, 2017; Giner-Sorolla, Kupfer & Sabo, 2018).

      Which can have social benefits for us. For example, it can make us feel good because we can say we are a more moral (and better person) than them. As well as we can show our friends we’re a better person which always makes us feel good.

      Overall, the emotions of disgust and anger might be expressed differently in response to the violation of different moral principles.

      Moral Foundations Theory

      Our final theory for this chapter is a rather interesting one because on paper, it sounds great but I’ll point out a few problems near the end of the chapter.

      Moral Foundations Theory was proposed by Graham, Haidt & Nosek (2009) and Graham et al. (2013) being influenced by the work of Schweder et al. (1997).

      The theory proposes there are five key moral foundations that we use to judge a person’s behaviours.

      Purity- we should observe the sanctity or purity of the body and divine.

      Authority- people should respect and obey authority figures and leaders.

      Ingroup loyalty- people should be loyal to other people in our social group.

      Fairness- people should treat others fairly and with equality.

      Harm and care- people should care for other people and prevent harm from coming to them. This is especially true for the weak and most vulnerable in society.

      Moreover, the theory says that Harm and Care as well as Fairness factors are individualising moral foundations because they’re about the rights and welfare of an individual person. Whereas ingroup loyalty, authority and purity are seen as binding moral foundations because they’re connected to the interests and values of a society. Yet this distinction has been criticised by Janoff-Bulman and Carnes (2013).

      In addition, Graham et al. (2009) argued and showed with evidence that political liberals were more concerned with the rights and welfare of individuals than the traditional fabric of society. As well as Liberals would be especially concerned with the individualising foundations of harm and fairness, and less concerned about the violations of ingroup loyalty, purity and authority.

      In terms of criticism, Moral Foundations Theory has been heavily criticised as an explanation for moral reasoning, as well as Graham et al. (2009)’s methodology has been targeted too.

      Since Kugler et al. (2014) question whether loyalty to the ingroup, authority and to the divine should be regarded as moral at all.

      This criticism gets very interesting when we start to think about real-world applications and examples. For example, to use a slightly political example, let’s use the example of a politician resigning over their party's anti-environmental policies when they were the UK’s former Energy Minister. Technically, this is disloyalty to the ingroup because this person was very public about why they were resigning.

      So you could argue this is immoral behaviour because this person is going against the ingroup of their political party. Yet this could be deemed moral behaviour because this person was standing up for what was right. Or this has nothing to do with morality at all, because this is just a person resigning as a protest and this isn’t about whether this resignation and by extension separating from the ingroup is right or wrong.

      This is what’s so interesting about morality. There is no one answer but there are empirical findings that help to guide our knowledge.

      Also, Kugler et al. (2014) found the relationship between political orientation and moral foundations was actually fully explained by right-wing authoritarianism instead of morality.

      This is a very heavy finding against Moral Foundation Theory because it shows these five factors aren’t looking at anything new. Instead they are simply looking at constructs already studied in social psychology just with some new fancy names.

      Furthermore, Janoff-Bulman and Carnes (2013) criticised the suggestion that harm and fairness are individualising foundations that are only concerned with the individual. They can refer to harm and fairness done to groups too at a society-level group.

      One such example that springs into my head is the historical (and still present but just in a different form) abuse against black and ethnic communities. Harm and a lack of fairness was committed against the entire group on a societal-level.

      Similarly, authority, loyalty and subjective codes of purity can be as divisive as they are binding in any society that is made up of more than one group. Therefore, if this actually was a moral foundation that all human moral judgements are evaluated against. Then why is this so divisive and not binding?

      Because it isn’t a moral foundation.

      On the whole, as imperfect as this Theory is, we have to admit it has generated a lot of research and received a lot of empirical support over the years. Like, Hofmann et al. (2014) found when participants reported moral and immoral acts they had seen on their smartphone, their reports fitted well with Moral Foundations Theory. Including how liberals and conservatives focus on different moral foundations.

      Types Of Moral Thinking

      To wrap up this first introductory chapter, I want to mention how psychology doesn’t only look to itself when it comes to moral psychology, it can draw on philosophy too.

      Therefore, there is a lot of talk within psychology of different types of moral thinking. This is what we’ll focus on in this short section, because some of the results are surprising.

      Firstly, you have utilitarianism moral thinking which is where the morality of the action is determined by how much benefit and harm the action does. Consequently, the acts are deemed moral if they have a good cost-benefit ratio.

      Whereas consequentialist moral thinking is where an action’s morality depends on how they conform to moral rules that are applied regardless of the situation. Like Though shalt not kill. 

      From a consequentialist viewpoint, it is flat out wrong to kill anyone regardless of whether they’re an attacker, a rapist or someone is killed in self-defence.

      According to philosophical and some other thinkers, people use one of the two types of moral decision-making. Yet in reality, research shows people typically use a mixture of these principles by weighing up the consequences of an action against the rules it might follow or break (Conway & Gawronski, 2013; Gawronski et al., 2017).

      Although, people can find themselves in a dilemma at times when doing the right thing according to deontological rules also means doing harm.

      Which is where the trolley problem comes in.

      In case you’re managed to study psychology or showed an interest in human behaviour without coming across the trolley problem (please tell me how you achieved that). The trolley problem is a moral dilemma where you are given the choice of interfering or doing nothing to stop a runaway trolley from killing five people.

      This dilemma makes it useful in studying a range of behaviours (including the effects of hormones on behaviour from Biological Psychology) so it’s been used in a lot of psychology studies in different variations.

      Although, the reason why I’m mentioning it is because research shows that most people prefer not to act so they choose the option that kills the most people. This is because people prefer not to break a moral rule about not killing anyone and this lack of breaking moral rules makes someone seem more moral to observers (Bostyn & Roets, 2017; Brown & Sacco, 2019; Everett et al., 2016; Sacco et al., 2017).

      The reason why this doesn’t break a moral rule is because whilst the person didn’t do anything to stop the killing of the five people, they didn’t do anything at all. Therefore, they can tell themselves the deaths aren’t their fault and they didn’t kill anyone.

      Even if their actions meant more people died in the end.

      Yet observers are more empathetic towards people who pull the lever (Gleichgerrcht & Young, 2013).

      Now we understand moral judgements, moral reasoning and Moral Foundations Theory, let’s continue our introduction to morality by looking at theories and principles of morality.

      That’s going to be a fun topic for sure.

      PRINCIPLES AND THEORIES OF MORALITY

      Before the creation of this book, this chapter served as the only true reference I had made to morality in all my books. There were of course other references or morality comments made in other chapters in other books but this is the only chapter that focuses on morality.

      As a result, whilst this chapter has remained largely unchanged from its debut in Developmental Psychology, there have been updates, structural changes and more detail added in certain sections.

      So let’s continue our introduction to moral psychology and why people do what they do.

      Principles And Theories of Morality

      As a society and as humans, we like to think we exist by a moral code that protects us from doing harm to ourselves and

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