Study of the relationship between episodic or continuous moral malfunctioning and psychopathology is an undeveloped field in child and adolescent psychiatry. An empirically derived theory of conscience provides a normative base from which to launch such studies. This work reviews five normative stages of functioning within five domains of conscience: conceptualization, moralization of attachmen...

983 guishing claims of conscience from other types of claims. Certainly, if abortion providers’ conscience-based claims require scrutiny, so do conscience-based refusals, to ensure that refusals are indeed motivated by conscience and not by political beliefs, stigma, habit, erroneous understanding of medical evidence, or other factors. Despite nearly four decades of debate about conscientious r...

Imitation has long been considered a mechanism for the development of conscience. Despite the central role of imitation in theories of moral internalization, the prediction from imitation to moral behavior has not been tested using an individual differences approach. In a longitudinal design, we examined whether individual differences in toddlers' responsive imitation predict preschool-age cons...

Healthcare personnel may perceive troubled conscience when feeling inadequate and powerless. It is important to further explore healthcare personnel's descriptions of situations in daily work, which generate troubled conscience to increase the awareness of such situations. This study aimed to describe health care personnel's experiences of situations in municipal elderly care that generate trou...

The present study aimed at investigating the relationship between environmental and individual factors and Stress of Conscience among nursing staff in psychiatric in-patient care. A questionnaire involving six different instruments measuring Stress of Conscience, the ward atmosphere, the psychosocial work environment, Perceived Stress, Moral Sensitivity, and Mastery was answered by 93 nursing s...

The exercise of conscience can have far reaching effects. Poor behaviour can be fatal, as it has occurred in various medical scandals over the years. This article takes a wide definition of conscience as its starting point, and argues that the decision-making processes open to society--legal regulation and professional regulation--can serve to limit the options available to an individual and th...

This article explores the place of conscience in higher education. It begins by reconstructing the place of conscience in Augustine’s thought, drawing on Augustine’s reading of Genesis 3, the Psalms, and his own spiritual journey. Its basic aim is to clarify Augustine’s account of conscience as self-judgment, identifying the conditions under which self-judgment occurs. After identifying these c...

In Why Tolerate Religion?, Brian Leiter argues against the special legal status of religion, claiming that religion should not be the only ground for exemptions to the law and that this form of protection should be, in principle, available for the claims of secular conscience as well. However, in the last chapter of his book, he objects to a universal regime of exemptions for both religious and...

Evolutionary theories of morality, beginning with Darwin, have focused on explanations for altruism. More generally, these accounts have concentrated on conscience (self-regulatory mechanisms) to the neglect of condemnation (mechanisms for punishing others). As a result, few theoretical tools are available for understanding the rapidly accumulating data surrounding third-party judgment and puni...

In a thought-provoking paper, Schuklenk and Smalling argue that no right to conscientious objection should be granted to medical professionals. First, they hold that it is impossible to assess either the truth of conscience-based claims or the sincerity of the objectors. Second, even a fettered right to conscientious refusal inevitably has adverse effects on the rights of patients. We argue tha...