Culture and Moral Development

Miller, Joan G.; Wice, Matthew; Goyal, Namrata

doi:10.1093/oso/9780190679743.003.0010

Cited by 9 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…There is already a fruitful exchange between the field of moral psychology and the study of religion, with each field informing the other. Indeed, past research has explored many aspects of the relationship between religion and morality (Graham & Haidt, 2010;Miller, 2001;Norenzayan, 2014;Shweder, Mahapatra & Miller, 1987), including how religion influences beliefs about what actions and behaviors are right and wrong (Srinivasan, Kaplan, & Dahl, 2018), how religion influences whether mental states can be morally condemned (Cohen & Rozin, 2001), and how religion influences whether some acts are unforgivable (Cohen, Malka, Rozin, & Cherfas, 2006). Other research has looked at how religious worldviews inform moral reasoning (Jensen, 1997) and moral life course narratives (McKenzie & Jensen, 2017), whether religious individuals are more or less prosocial than non-religious individuals (McKay & Whitehouse, 2015), and the relationship between religiosity and value prioritization (Schwartz & Huismans, 1995).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Religious Affiliation and Conceptions of the Moral Domain

et al. 2021

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What is the relationship between religious affiliation and conceptions of the moral domain? Putting aside the question of whether people from different religions agree about how to answer moral questions, here we investigate a more fundamental question: How much disagreement is there across religions about which issues count as moral in the first place? That is, do people from different religions conceptualize the scope of morality differently? Using a new methodology to map out how individuals conceive of the moral domain, we find dramatic differences among adherents of different religions. Mormon and Muslim participants moralized their religious norms, while Jewish participants did not. Hindu participants in our sample did not seem to make a moral/non-moral distinction of the same kind. These results suggest a profound relationship between religious affiliation and conceptions of the scope of the moral domain.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Religious Affiliation and Conceptions of the Moral Domain

et al. 2021

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Religious Affiliation and Conceptions of the Moral Domain

Levine¹,

Rottman²,

Davis³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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How does religious affiliation impact conceptions of the moral domain? Putting aside the question of whether people from different religions agree about how to answer moral questions, here we investigate a more fundamental question: How much disagreement is there across religions about which issues count as moral in the first place? That is, do people from different religions conceptualize the scope of morality differently? Using a new methodology to map out how individuals conceive of the moral domain, we find dramatic differences among adherents of different religions. Mormons and Muslims moralize their religious norms, while Jews do not. Hindus do not seem to make a moral/non-moral distinction at all. These results suggest that religious affiliation has a profound effect on conceptions of the scope of morality.

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“…From (Miller, 2001). Yet, this close interrelationship between culture and morality has so far been neglected in quantitative research on cultural values.…”

Section: Definition Of Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…A number of cultural psychologists have, for example, pointed out that morality and culture are inextricably linked to each other (Eckensberger, 2007;Miller, 2001) so that identifying the moral values of a culture goes hand in hand with identifying its cultural values. Nevertheless, there is a lack of research regarding the assessment of moral values in different cultures.…”

Section: List Of Figuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, some theorists in moral psychology have pointed out that culture and morality are intrinsically related to each other in a way that morality is a constitutive feature of the culture concept (e.g. Eckensberger, 2007;Miller, 2001). Culture cannot be defined or investigated without taking into account morality, and morality cannot equally be understood without reference to the culture concept.…”

Section: Culture and Moralitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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What is Right? What is Wrong? and Does the Answer Tell Something about Culture? - an Investigation into Culture and Morality Using the Values Concept

Vauclair¹

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<p>Morality, or what is considered right or wrong, varies seemingly across cultures. However, the literature shows that moral psychologists have mainly investigated moral reasoning assuming a universal morality. Cross-cultural psychologists in contrast have widely neglected moral issues such as prescriptive beliefs of what people ought to do in a culture, and have predominantly measured culture through personal values. This thesis attempts to bridge this gap by focusing on the values concept. Four empirical studies were conducted to critically examine values as a measure of culture and their relationship to morality. Chapter one is an introduction into the topics morality, culture and values. Chapter two outlines the conceptual and methodological issues associated with deriving cultural values through the statistical aggregation of individuals' personal values. A value taxonomy is presented in which personal moral values and societal moral values are proposed as alternatives for measuring the cultural context. Following this critique, personal values are examined in two empirical studies in a cross-cultural context scrutinizing the validity of Schwartz' (1994) Culture-level Value Theory. Study 1 is a cross-cultural meta-analysis using the Rokeach Value Survey (Rokeach, 1973) showing that Schwartz' culture-level value structure was replicable with different samples, and a different method for assessing value priorities. Nonetheless, a set of values not included in Schwartz' analysis formed a new value type: Self-fulfilled Connectedness (SFC) which is related to the pursuit of non-material goals and endorsed in countries in which basic needs are fulfilled. Study 2 tested in a multilevel regression model whether Schwartz' cultural values predicted individuals' moral attitudes with data from more than 40 different countries. The findings indicated that the value dimension Autonomy-Embeddedness explained individuals' lenient attitude towards personal-sexual, but not towards dishonest-illegal issues. Study 3 dealt with the fundamental critique raised in chapter two that Schwartz (1994) does not operationalize micro- and macro-level constructs independently when measuring cultural values. To address this empirically, personal moral values and societal moral values were explicitly measured in student samples from eight cultures. Societal moral values showed greater cross-cultural differences than personal moral values. Furthermore, societal moral values at the culture-level conceptually replicated the multilevel findings from Study 2. This suggests that societal moral values are a valid macro-level variable for the measurement of culture. Finally, Study 4 was conducted to elicit implicit moral values. Respondents from four cultures free-listed their associations of a 'moral person'. correspondence analyses revealed that collectivistic-oriented samples mentioned more traditional moral attributes, whereas individualistic samples reported more liberal attributes. Furthermore, accessibility of implicit moral values - matched with the SVS - correlated with explicit ratings of personal moral values from Study 3, providing convergent validity for this kind of values. This multi-method finding corroborated that personal moral values and societal moral values are different concepts. In sum, these studies support the validity of Schwartz' theory and suggest that notions of right and wrong do indeed tell us something about culture, but it depends on (1) the issues studied (personal-sexual issues), and (2) the kind of values measured (societal moral values).</p>

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Culture and Moral Development

Cited by 9 publications

References 8 publications

Religious Affiliation and Conceptions of the Moral Domain

Religious Affiliation and Conceptions of the Moral Domain

Religious Affiliation and Conceptions of the Moral Domain

What is Right? What is Wrong? and Does the Answer Tell Something about Culture? - an Investigation into Culture and Morality Using the Values Concept

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