Moral competence refers to the affective orientation to perform altruistic behaviors and the ability to judge moral issues logically. A five-stage theory of moral development is proposed. Both western and Chinese perspectives are incorporated in the elaboration of the characteristics of each stage. A brief review of the antecedents of moral competence is presented. The relationship between mora...

I start with the premise that any social robot must have moral competence. I offer a framework for what moral competence is and sketch the prospects for it to be developed in artificial agents. After considering three proposals for requirements of “moral agency” I propose instead to examine moral competence as a broader set of capacities. I posit that human moral competence consists of five com...

This study investigated relationships between emphatic skills and moral judgment competence among 180 adolescents, 170 early adults, and 150 adults (N = 500). Participants completed a battery of measures including the Basic Empathy Scale, the Moral Judgment Test, and the Demographic questionnaire. Results of this crosssectional study have confirmed the expected findings. Adolescents' and early ...

This article presents the derivation of moral competence in nursing practice by identifying its attributes founded on Thai culture. In this process moral competence is formed and based on the Thai nursing value system, including personal, social and professional values. It is then defined and its three dimensions (moral perception, judgment and behavior) are also identified. Additionally, eight...

The discussion of moral dilemmas is often proposed as one way to teach ethics. But can ethics be taught to everyone? Do participants’ value orientations predict the acquisition of moral competence in an educational context? This study presents data from an evaluation of a course on the social consequences of information technology (IT). IT-related dilemma discussions were used extensively in th...

To investigate how individual differences in moral judgment competence are reflected in the human brain, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, while 23 participants made either socio-normative or grammatical judgments. Participants with lower moral judgment competence recruited the left ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the left posterior superior temporal sulcus more th...

Four studies specify how moral evaluations of the self regulate behavior aimed at restoring a moral reputation. We propose that people care about evaluations of themselves as moral or immoral because these are perceived as more consequential than other types of information. Therefore people are more inclined to restore their image after being negatively evaluated in terms of morality rather tha...