Psychology of development of moral reasoning: Problem-oriented overview of the field

Abstract

First and foremost, this paper provides a short historical reminder of the emergence of the field of psychology of development of moral reasoning. In the second part of the paper, the author offers a problem-oriented overview of the field, that is, one possible classification of particular groups of problems for empirical research. This overview does not only point out to the problems that were more and that were less studied (e.g.. evaluative moral judgment and reasoning, distinguishing between moral and extra-moral rules and norms) and to those that were relatively neglected (i.e. understanding moral situations), but also to the problems that psychologists did not even recognize as research problems. Such are the problems of development of moral concepts, meaning of moral words etc. Finally, the author also points out to the fact that this classification could be taken as one way to define the field, that is, the way to determine the boundaries of its subject of studying.

Keywords

• evaluative and non-evaluative moral reasoning
• moral concepts
• Piaget
• Kohlberg
• Turiel