Moral judgment is an evaluation of the actions and character of a person made with respect to societal norms. Although many types of vignettes have been used in previous studies on moral beliefs and judgment, what is missing is a set of standardized common vignettes based in real life. The goal of this study was to provide researchers with stimuli that have values on several dimensions pertaini...

Recognizing limitations in classic cognitive moral development theory, several scholars have drawn from theories of identity to suggest that moral behavior results from both moral judgments and moral identity. The authors conducted 2 survey-based studies with more than 500 students and managers to test this argument. Results demonstrated that moral identity and moral judgments both independentl...

OBJECTIVE The goal of this study was to determine differences in moral judgment among students in medical school. METHODS This cross-sectional study involved students currently enrolled in undergraduate medical education. Recruited via email, 192 students took an online version of the Defining Issues Test to determine their current stage of moral judgment, as well as their percentage of postc...

Key terms in research on moral development also exist in everyday language. Tafreshi and her colleagues (2014) propose that researchers should use terms in ways consistent with their usage by non-researchers. This commentary questions this claim, and argues for the importance of providing clear and explicit definitions of terms such as "morality" and "innate," of showing caution when attributin...

Moral judgments are produced through the coordinated interaction of multiple neural systems, each of which relies on a characteristic set of neurotransmitters. Genes that produce or regulate these neurotransmitters may have distinctive influences on moral judgment. Two studies examined potential genetic influences on moral judgment using dilemmas that reliably elicit competing automatic and con...

The aim of the present study was to examine (a) if athletes’ moral judgment is affected by sport type, the level of competition – in terms of the league in which one competes – and regular playing position, and (b) possible relations between moral judgment and the overall years of athletic experience, self-perception of sport ability, and achievement goal orientations. The sample comprised 170 ...

Traditional theories of moral psychology emphasize reasoning and "higher cognition," while more recent work emphasizes the role of emotion. The present fMRI data support a theory of moral judgment according to which both "cognitive" and emotional processes play crucial and sometimes mutually competitive roles. The present results indicate that brain regions associated with abstract reasoning an...

People's moods can influence moral judgment. Such influences may arise because moods affect moral emotion, or because moods affect moral thought. The present study provides evidence that, at least in the footbridge dilemma, moods affect moral thought. The results of two experiments are reported in which, after induction of positive, negative, or neutral moods and presentation of the footbridge ...