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Chapter 8 Moral Identity, Moral Functioning, and the Development of Moral Character

December 2009
Psychology of Learning and Motivation 50:237-274

DOI:10.1016/S0079-7421(08)00408-8

Authors:

Darcia Narvaez

University of Notre Dame

Daniel Lapsley

University of Notre Dame

We review how the construct of the moral self has arisen within moral development theory and discuss the search for integrative linkages with other domains of psychology, including personality. Next, we describe moral personality and then programs and approaches to developing moral identity in children. Moral schema development and moral information‐processing research is outlined, including mapping expert‐novice differences. Finally, we conclude with two emerging integrative theories, one on educational intervention for moral skill development and the other a neurobiological model of moral functioning which draws on evolutionary themes in the development of a moral brain.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

Moral Identity, Moral Functioning,

and the Development of

Moral Character

Darcia Narvaez and Daniel K. Lapsley

Contents

1. Introduction 240

2. Moral Self-Identity 241

2.1. Ethical Theory and Moral Development 241

2.2. Blasi on Moral Identity 243

2.3. Personality Theory 245

3. Development of Moral Self-Identity 250

3.1. Early Development of Moral Personality 251

3.2. Community and Context Models of Moral Identity 254

4. Schemas and Moral Information Processing 258

4.1. Moral Schemas 259

5. Moral Development as Ethical Expertise Development 260

5.1. An Integrative Framework for Moral Character Education 262

6. New Directions: Neuroscience and Moral Personality 263

6.1. Triune Ethics Theory: A Neurobiological Theory

of Moral Development 264

7. Conclusions 266

7.1. Experience Shapes Brain Biases 266

7.2. Moral Functioning is Multivariate 266

7.3. Moral Experts are Different from Novices 267

References 267

Abstract

We review how the construct of the moral self has arisen within moral develop-

ment theory and discuss the search for integrative linkages with other domains

of psychology, including personality. Next, we describe moral personality and

then programs and approaches to developing moral identity in children. Moral

schema development and moral information-processing research is outlined,

including mapping expert-novice differences. Finally, we conclude with two

emerging integrative theories, one on educational intervention for moral skill

Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Volume 50 #2009 Elsevier B.V.

239

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development and the other a neurobiological model of moral functioning which

draws on evolutionary themes in the development of a moral brain.

1. Introduction

There are few more pressing problems before psychological science

than to account for human moral functioning. This is because moral agency

is crucial to our conception of what it means to be a person (Carr, 2001 Au1

The belief in our own moral integrity is so central to our self-understanding

that often we are tempted to shield it from refutation by recourse to

sanitizing euphemisms and protective belts of denial, rationalization, and

special pleading (Bandura, 1999). Indeed, as Taylor (1989) put it, ‘‘being a

self is inseparable from existing in a space of moral issues’’ (p. 112).

The alignment of moral integrity with our sense of self-identity might be

one of those facts about ourselves that is so obvious that it hardly bears

examination — something along the lines of fish being the last to discover

water. This might go part of the way to explain the odd fact that the moral

self does not have a long research tradition in psychology; but there are

other explanations as well. These explanations point to paradigmatic doubts

about whether the self is a legitimate construct for a behavioral science, and

doubts evident in the study of moral development about how ‘‘thick’’ a self

must be to render a rationally adequate moral judgment.

It does not help that psychological research is fragmented and that

relevant fields of study, or even research programs within fields, do not

easily talk with one another. The relevance of findings on, say, motivation,

social cognition, or personality is not drawn easily for understanding moral

motivation, moral cognition, or moral personality. The literatures on

expertise, decision making, and of cognitive science more generally provide

few explicit guidelines for understanding moral expertise, moral decision

making, and moral cognition. Although self-identity has attracted signifi-

cant research attention for decades, the frameworks of developmental and

social psychologists who study it have often bypassed each other. Similarly

research on temperament, attachment, and other developmental processes

is often silent on their implications for the moral domain. Research on

moral development has availed itself rarely of the theories, constructs, and

methods of other disciplines; and these other disciplines rarely speculate on

the developmental trajectories that bring one to adult functioning. More-

over, those interested in the educational implications of the self divide on

the purpose and pedagogy of moral-character education, and on the very

terms of reference for understanding the moral dimensions of selfhood (see

Lapsley and Narvaez, 2006). What is virtue, for example, as a psychological

construct? How is character to be understood as a dimension of personality?

240 Darcia Narvaez and Daniel K. Lapsley

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Fortunately there are signs that the estrangement of the moral self from

the main currents of contemporary psychological research is coming to an

end. Although the search for integrative linkages is of longer standing (e.g.,

Lapsley and Power, 1988; Lapsley and Quintana, 1985), there is a discern-

ible increase in the pace and momentum of integrative research on moral

cognition and moral self-identity (Narvaez and Lapsley, in press). Indeed,

the ascendance of the moral self now animates integrative research at the

intersection of several provinces of psychology, and, along with increasing

research into the neuroscientific (Sinnott-Armstrong, 2008) and evolution-

ary bases of moral behavior (Narvaez, 2008b), the appearance of handbooks

on moral development (Killen and Smetana, 2005) and education (Nucci

and Narvaez, 2008), it is now clear that moral psychology is enjoying a

renascence of interest in many areas of research.

In this chapter, we review how the construct of the moral self has arisen

within developmental studies of moral judgment, and how the search for

integrative linkages with other domains of psychology, particularly with

social cognition and personality, took on a certain urgency after the mar-

ginalization or collapse of the dominant stage-and-structure (‘‘Piagetian’’)

approaches to moral development. We examine theoretical approaches to

moral self-identity and moral personality, along with their developmental

accounts, including a broader integrative theory that implicates evolution-

ary themes in the development of a moral brain.

2. Moral Self-Identity

In this section, we begin our exploration of moral self-identity by

examining briefly how it is considered in recent ethical theory. We then

trace how Augusto Blasi’s view of the moral personality has evolved out of

the problematic of moral development theory. We then describe theories of

moral personality that have arisen in recent decades.

2.1. Ethical Theory and Moral Development

On Frankfurt’s (1971, 1988) influential account a person (as opposed to a

wanton) has a self-reflective capacity to examine his or her own desires and

to form judgments with respect to them. A person cares about the desirabil-

ity of his or her desires (‘‘second-order desires’’) and wishes to conform

the will in accordance with them (‘‘second-order volitions’’). Similarly

Taylor (1989) argues that a person is one who engages in strong evaluation,

that is, makes careful ethical discriminations about what is better and worse,

higher and lower, worthy and unworthy; and these discriminations are

made against a ‘‘horizon of significance’’ that frames and constitutes our

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self-understanding (Taylor, 1989). Hence on this view our identity is

defined by reference to things that have significance for us. Moreover,

according to Taylor (1989) it is a basic human aspiration to be connected

to something of crucial importance, to something considered good, worthy,

and of fundamental value; and this orientation to the good ‘‘is essential to

being a functional moral agent’’ (Taylor, 1989, p. 42).

Hence, modern ethical theory draws a tight connection between per-

sonhood, identity, and moral agency. Moreover, the core notions of

second-order desires and the identity-defining commitments of strong

evaluation have found their way into recent psychological accounts of

moral identity (e.g., Blasi, 2005; Lapsley, 2007). How it has done so is

best considered from an historical reconstruction of Kohlberg’s influential

theory of moral development, for the stage-and-structure approach cham-

pioned by Kohlberg did not always welcome self-identity constructs into its

theoretical fold, and for a number of reasons.

First, Kohlberg’s theory appropriated the Piagetian understanding of

stage. This entailed treating the moral stage sequence as a taxonomic

classification of different kinds of sociomoral operations and not as a way

of charting individual differences. Moral stages, on this account, are not

‘‘boxes for classifying and evaluating persons’’ (Colby et al., 1983, p.11).

Instead they describe forms of thought organization of an ideal rational

moral agent, an epistemic subject, and hence cannot be ‘‘reflections upon

the self’’ (Kohlberg et al., 1983, p. 36). For this reason, it is not possible to

use moral stages as a way of making ‘‘aretaic judgments’’ about the self (or of

others), that is, of making judgments about one’s moral worthiness as a

person.

Second, Kohlberg thought that the behavioral manifestation of character

traits could not be empirically confirmed. After all, the Hartshorne and May

(1928–1930) studies appeared to show that certain dispositions (‘‘honesty’’)

did not exhibit the cross-situational consistency thought necessary for

character traits. Third, deeply personological constructs were viewed as

obstacles to mature moral deliberation, or as sources of bias and backsliding

that had to be surmounted by the rational moral agent. This follows from a

Kantian view of the person as one beset by contending forces — the force of

reason and the force of bodily desires and passions — each slugging it out for

the control of the will (Johnson, 1993). If one links moral judgment too

closely to our deeper human nature — to personality, to the self and its

desires, passions and inclinations, or to social particularities, relationships,

and identity-defining commitments, then one risks divorcing morality from

rationality. Self-identity and personality, on this view, are too adhesive to

bodily passions which can only compromise the universalizing tendencies

required of the ‘‘moral point of view’’ instantiated in the highest stages of

moral development. Finally, a focus on virtues and character traits was

thought to give aid and comfort to ethical relativism and was therefore a

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poor guide to moral education. As Kohlberg and Mayer (1972, p. 479)

famously put it:

Labeling a set of behaviors displayed by a child with positive or negative

trait terms does not signify that they are of adaptive significance or ethical

importance. It represents an appeal to particular community conventions,

since one person’s ‘integrity’ is another person’s ‘stubbornness, [one person’s]

‘honesty in expressing your true feelings’ is another person’s ‘insensitivity’to

the feelings of others.

Hence Kohlberg’s cognitive developmental approach to moral socialization

did not leave much room for dispositional factors, and required only a thin

conception of the ‘‘responsible self’’ in order to account for how moral

cognition gets translated into moral action. For Kohlberg the responsible

self is aware of the prescriptive nature of moral judgments and hence acts

upon them, though awareness of this link is most pronounced at the highest

stages of moral reasoning.

Of course, Kohlberg’s moral stage theory no longer sets the agenda in

moral development research despite the strength of empirical findings sup-

porting at least neo-Kohlbergian models of development (e.g., Rest et al.,

1999). The general decline of the Piagetian paradigm is one part of the

explanation for the marginalization of moral stage theory. Other explanations

point to factors internal to Kohlberg’s theory, such as doubts about how to

understand fundamental concepts, such as stage and structure (Lapsley, 2005).

Yet it also became clear that Kohlberg’s theory could not help us understand

the moral formation of children, nor provide guidance for parents about how

to raise children of a certain kind — children whose personalities are imbued

with a strong ethical compass. Although the strictures of moral stage theory

forbid aretaic judgments, they come easier to most everyone else; and it was

the inability of moral stage theory to engage issues of character, selfhood, and

personality that contributed to its diminishing visibility in developmental

science, and to increasing recognition that the field was at an important

crossroads (Lapsley and Narvaez, 2005).

2.2. Blasi on Moral Identity

The relative neglect of self, identity, and personality in accounts of moral

development has now come to an end. Beginning with the pioneering

work of Blasi (1984, 1985), it is now evident that moral psychology is

catching up with ethical theory in proposing thicker conceptions of moral

personhood so that talk of moral self-identity and moral personality are now

commonplace (Blasi, 2005; Lapsley, 2007; Lapsley and Narvaez, 2004a;

Narvaez and Lapsley, in press; Walker and Frimer, in press).

Blasi’s contributions to moral psychology can be described usefully in

terms of five key themes that emerged in his writings. His early writings

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focused on the Self Model of moral action and moral identity. Later he took

up the intentional self, the nature of moral character, and the development

of the moral will. Throughout this work Blasi is influenced clearly by the

notion of second-order desires (Frankfurt) and of the identity-defining

commitments of strong evaluation (Taylor).

The Self Model of moral action was developed in response to the

disappointing finding that moral judgment did not predict moral action

very strongly (Blasi, 1983). In contrast to Kohlberg’s position, Blasi argued

that moral action did not follow directly from a deontic judgment but was

instead filtered through a set of calculations that implicated the very integ-

rity of the self. According to Blasi (1983) moral structures are only indirectly

related to moral action. They serve to appraise the moral landscape, but do

not directly generate action. Just because an agent appraises the social

situation through the lens of sophisticated moral criteria does not guarantee

that the agent will also see the personal relevance of the situation, or even its

relevance for morality.

The Self Model holds that action is more likely to follow moral judg-

ment when moral considerations are deemed essential and core to one’s

personal identity. After one makes a moral judgment one must next filter

this judgment through a second set of calculations that speaks to the issue of

whether the self is responsible. Responsibility judgments attempt to sort out

the extent to which the morally good action is strictly necessary for the self.

Moreover, the criteria for reaching responsibility judgments are a matter of

individual differences insofar as it varies in accordance with one’s self-

definition. Is acting in this way so necessary for my self-understanding

that not to act is to lose the self? Are moral notions so central to my identity

that failing to act, or indulging in excusing rationalizations, is to undermine

what is core to my personhood? Blasi suggests that the cognitive motivation

for moral action springs from this sense of fidelity to oneself-in-action.

It springs from a tendency toward self-consistency, which he views as a

cognitive motive for objectivity and truth. It springs from a moral identity

that is deeply rooted in moral commitments — commitments so deeply

rooted, in fact, that to betray these commitments is also to betray the self.

Hence moral action, and inaction, implicates the self in important ways.

As McFall (1987, p. 12) put it:

We all have things we think we would never do, under any imaginable

circumstances; some part of ourselves beyond which we will never retreat,

some weakness however prevalent in others that we will not tolerate in

ourselves. And if we do that thing, betray that weakness, we are not the persons

we thought: there is nothing left that we may even in spite refer to as I.

Unconditional moral commitments that are core, deep, and essential to our

self-understanding contributes to our sense of personal integrity-in-action.

These are the ‘‘deepest most serious convictions we have; they define what

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we would not do, what we regard as outrageous and horrible; they are the

fundamental conditions for being ourselves, for the integrity of our char-

acters depends upon them’’ (Kekes, 1989, p. 167).

But moral identity is a dimension of individual differences, that is, it is

a way of talking about personality, but this time one’s moral personality

is grounded by reference to moral reasons. One has a moral identity to the

extent that moral notions, such as being good, being just, compassionate,

or fair, is judged to be central, essential, and important to one’s self-

understanding. One has a moral identity when one strives to keep faith

with identity-defining moral commitments, and when moral claims stake

out the very terms of reference for the sort of person one claims to be.

Blasi’s account of the moral personality, his elevation of the subjective

self-as-agent as an object of inquiry, his insistence on the rational, inten-

tional nature of distinctly moral functioning, and his integration of self and

identity with moral rationality and responsibility is a singular achievement

(Lapsley and Narvaez, 2004a). His theory of moral identity also has empiri-

cal consequences. It is invoked, for example, to explain the motivation of

individuals who sheltered Jews during the Nazi Holocaust (Monroe, 1994,

2001, 2003); and it underwrites a line of research on the psychological

characteristics of ‘‘moral exemplars’’ whose lives are marked by uncommon

moral commitment. For example, studies of adult (Colby and Damon,

1991) and adolescent (Hart and Fegley, 1995; Matsuba and Walker, 2004,

2005; Reimer, 2003) moral exemplars typically reveal that exemplars align

their self-conceptions with ideal moral goals and personality traits, and that

their moral action is undertaken as a matter of felt self-necessity.

Blasi returned long-forgotten concepts to the vocabulary of modern

psychology, including desire, will, and volition, and added new concepts,

such as self-appropriation and self-mastery. To date these concepts have

resisted straightforward translation into empirical research. Moreover there is

no consensus on how to measure moral identity, which is a centerpiece

of Blasian moral theory. Alternative approaches to moral identity have

emerged that while friendly toward the general Blasian framework nonetheless

have starting points other than the subjective self-as-agent.

2.3. Personality Theory

There is an emerging consensus that the study of moral rationality can no

longer be studied in isolation from the broader context of personality

(Walker and Hennig, 1998; Lapsley and Narvaez, 2004b). For too long

the study of moral judgment was pursued at the expense of studying the

moral agent as a whole person (Walker, 1999). As a corrective it seems

reasonable to insist that if moral self-identity (or ‘‘character’’) is a dimension

of individual differences, and if it is the moral dimension of personality, then

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our accounts of these constructs must be compatible with well-attested

models of personality. But which model?

Modern personality theory provides a number of options. Cervone

(1991) argues, for example, that personality psychology divides into two

disciplines on the question of how best to conceptualize the basic units of

personality. One discipline favors trait/dispositional constructs, the second

discipline favors social-cognitive constructs. The traits/disposition approach

(e.g., Costa and McCrae, 1992) accounts for the structure of personality

in terms of between-person classification of interindividual variability.

Individual differences are captured in terms of ‘‘top-down’’ dispositional

constructs as might be found in latent variable taxonomies identified

through factor analysis, such as the Big 5 taxonomy (extraversion, neuroti-

cism, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and open-to-experience).

In contrast, the social-cognitive approach understands the structure of

personality in terms of intraindividual, cognitive-affective mechanisms, and

attempts to account for individual differences from the ‘‘bottom-up,’’ that

is, in terms of specific, within-person psychological systems that are in

dynamic interaction with changing situational contexts (Cervone, 2005;

Cervone and Tripathi, in press). Scripts, schemas, episodes, plans, proto-

types, and similar constructs are the units of analysis for social-cognitive

approaches to personality.

Cervone’s ‘‘two disciplines’’ of personality has been joined by the ‘‘new

Big 5’’ conceptualization proposed by McAdams and Pals (2006) as an

integrative framework for personality science. The framework begins with

the general evolutionary design for human nature (Level 1) as it is expressed

in broadband dispositional traits that are organized early in development

(Level 2). Later personality comes to include characteristic adaptations to

specific contextual demands (Level 3), and then self-defining narratives

(Level 4) that are expressed differentially in broader social and cultural contexts

(Level 5). In this framework the personality is layered, with evolutionary

biology at the bottom and sociocultural context at the top. Of most interest

here are the three middle layers, dispositional traits, characteristic adaptations,

and self-defining narratives.

At Level 2 are dispositional traits like the Big 5 that encode those

broadband variations in human behavior that have made a difference in

human evolutionary history (McAdams, in press). These dispositional traits

show cross-situational consistency and developmental continuity. But

personality also is responsive to exigencies of specific contextual settings,

and this pattern of responsiveness is captured by Level 3 ‘‘characteristic

adaptations.’’ These include a large tool box of motivational, social-

cognitive, and developmental constructs such as favored defense mechan-

isms, coping strategies, schemas of various kinds, personal projects, beliefs,

goals, values, and ideologies. Finally, atop Level 2 dispositions and Level 3

adaptations is the construction at Level 4 of a life narrative that pulls

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together the elements of one’s biography into a story that yields ideally a

sense of unity, coherence, and purpose.

2.3.1. Personality Theory and Moral Personality

Recent research in moral psychology has appealed to both the Big 5

taxonomy (McAdams) and to social-cognitive theory (Cervone). For exam-

ple, Walker and his colleagues have attempted to understand the personality

of moral exemplars in terms of McAdams’ Big 5 taxonomy. In one study,

the personality of moral exemplars was found to orient toward conscien-

tiousness and agreeableness (Walker, 1999). Agreeableness also character-

ized young adult moral exemplars (Matsuba and Walker, 2005). In a study

of brave, caring and just exemplars (as recognized by the Canadian honors

system), Walker and Pitts (1998) found that brave exemplars aligned with a

complex of traits associated with extraversion; caring exemplars aligned

with agreeableness, and just exemplars with a mixture of conscientiousness,

emotional stability, and openness to experience. This pattern was largely

replicated by Walker and Hennig (2004).

In contrast to McAdams’ Big 5 characterizations of moral personality are

social-cognitive theories that appeal to the availability and accessibility

of social-cognitive knowledge structures, such as schemas, scripts, and pro-

totypes (Aquino and Reed, 2002; Aquino and Freeman, in press; Lapsley

and Narvaez, 2004b). From this perspective schemas (rather than traits) are

the cognitive carriers of dispositions (Cantor, 1990; Cantor and Kihlstrom,

1987). Schemas ‘‘demarcate regions of social life and domains of personal

experience to which the person is especially tuned and about which he or

she is likely to become a virtual ‘expert’’’ (Cantor, 1990, p. 738). Schemas

that are frequently activated should, over time, become chronically accessi-

ble. Moreover, there should be individual differences in the accessibility of

constructs just because of each person’s unique social developmental history

(Bargh et al., 1988).

Hence schema accessibility shows interindividual variability but also

sustains patterns of individual differences over time, and is properly consid-

ered a personality variable (Higgins, 1996). For example, if schemas are

chronically accessible, then attention is directed selectively to certain fea-

tures of experience at the expense of others. It disposes one to select

schema-relevant life tasks, goals, or settings which, in turn, canalize and

maintain dispositional tendencies (which illustrate the reciprocal relation-

ship between persons and contexts). It encourages one to develop highly

practiced behavioral routines in those areas demarcated by chronically

accessible schemas, which provide ‘‘a ready, sometimes automatically avail-

able plan of action in such life contexts’’ (Cantor, 1990, p. 738).

Lapsley and Narvaez (2004b) and others (e.g., Aquino and Freeman, in

press) have invoked the social-cognitive framework to understand moral

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personality. In this view, the moral personality is to be understood in terms

of the accessibility of moral schemas for social information processing.

A moral person, a person who has a moral character or identity, is one

for whom moral constructs is chronically accessible (moral chronicity),

where construct accessibility and availability are dimensions of individual

differences.

A social-cognitive model of moral personality has at least five attractive

features. First, it provides an explanation for the model of moral identity

favored by Blasi (1984) who argues that one has a moral identity just

when moral categories are essential, central, and important to one’s self-

understanding. A social-cognitive interpretation would add that moral

categories that are essential, central, and important for one’s self-identity

would also be ones that are chronically accessible for interpreting the social

landscape. These categories would be online, vigilant, easily primed, easily

activated, for discerning the meaning of events, for noticing the moral

dimensions of experience and, once activated, to dispose one to interpret

events in light of one’s moral commitments.

Second, this model accounts for the felt necessity of moral commitments

experienced by moral exemplars, their experience of moral clarity or felt

conviction that their decisions are evidently appropriate, justified, and true.

Typically moral exemplars report that they ‘‘just knew’’ what was required

of them, automatically as it were, without the experience of working

through an elaborate decision-making calculus (Colby and Damon, 1991).

Yet this is precisely the outcome of preconscious activation of chronically

accessible constructs that it should induce strong feelings of certainty or

conviction with respect to social judgments (Bargh, 1989; Narvaez and

Lapsley, in press).

Third, the social-cognitive framework is better able to account for the

implicit, tacit, and automatic features of moral functioning (Narvaez and

Lapsley, 2005). There is growing recognition that much of human decision

making is under nonconscious control (Bargh, 2005) and occurs with an

automaticity that belies the standard notions of rational, deliberative calcu-

lation (Bargh and Chartrand, 1999). Though this possibility offends tradi-

tional accounts of moral development, there is no reason to think that

automaticity is evident in every domain of decision making except the

moral domain. However, unlike the social intuitionist model (Haidt,

2001) which frontloads automaticity prior to judgment and reasoning as a

result of intuitions that are constitutive of human nature (and hence prior to

learning and enculturation) the social-cognitive approach to moral person-

ality locates automaticity on the backend of development as the result of

repeated experience, of instruction, intentional coaching, and socialization

(Lapsley and Hill, in press). It is the automaticity that comes from expertise

in life domains where we have vast experience and well-practiced behavioral

routines (Cantor, 1990).

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Fourth, a social-cognitive model of the moral personality can account

for situational variability in the display of a virtue (Cervone and Tripathi, in

press). The accessibility of social-cognitive schemas underwrites not only

the discriminative facility in the selection of situationally appropriate behav-

ior, but also the automaticity of schema activation that contributes to the

tacit, implicit qualities often associated with the ‘‘habits’’ of moral character

(Lapsley and Narvaez, 2006).

Fifth, social-cognitive theory accords with the paradigmatic assumptions

of ecological ‘‘systems’’ models of development (Lerner, 2006). Both devel-

opmental systems and social-cognitive theory affirm that a dispositional

behavioral signature is to be found at the intersection of Person Context

interactions. Consequently, a preference for social-cognitive theory as a

way to conceptualize the moral personality reflects a strategic bet that it is

more likely to lead to robust integrative models of moral personality

development than are approaches driven by the Big 5. Similarly, Olson

and Dweck (2008) argue that the field of ‘‘social-cognitive development’’

(SCD) has strong integrative possibilities as it straddles the domains of social,

developmental, and cognitive psychology.

Recent research has attempted to document the social-cognitive dimen-

sions of moral cognition. For example, moral chronicity (chronic activation

of moral constructs in social information processing) appears to be a dimen-

sion of individual differences that influences spontaneous trait inference and

text comprehension (Narvaez et al., 2006). In two studies Narvaez et al.

(2006) showed that moral chronics and nonchronics respond differently to

the dispositional and moral implications of social cues. In addition, research

shows that conceptions of good character (Lapsley and Lasky, 2002) and of

moral, spiritual, and religious persons (Walker and Pitts, 1998) are organized

as cognitive prototypes.

Aquino and Reed (2002) proposed a model of moral identity that is

compatible with the tenets of social-cognitive theory. They define moral

identity as a self-schema that is organized around specific moral trait associa-

tions (e.g., caring, compassionate, fair, friendly, generous, helpful, hard-

working, honest, kind) that are closely linked in memory (in the manner of

spreading activation). They argue that moral identity has both a public and

private aspect. Privately, moral identity is a cognitive representation of the

moral self that reflects the degree to which moral traits are central to one’s

self-concept. Publicly, moral identity can be projected symbolically in the

forms of actions-in-the-world, or, alternatively, the degree to which the

traits are reflected in one’s public actions. The private aspect of moral

identity is labeled Internalization; the public aspect is labeled Symbolization.

These aspects are derived as subscales on an instrument that uses the nine

moral traits as ‘‘salience induction stimuli.’’ In some studies, these nine traits

are used as an experimental manipulation to prime the accessibility of moral

identity.

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Aquino and Reed (2002) showed that both dimensions predicted self-

reported good deeds such as volunteering at a homeless shelter, organizing a

food drive, mentoring troubled youth, or visiting patients at a nursing home

‘‘in the past two years.’’ The self-importance of moral identity (‘‘Internali-

zation’’) was also a strong predictor of donating behavior in this study.

A strong sense of internalized moral identity predicts whether one will share

resources with outgroups or come to their aid (Reed and Aquino, 2003),

donate personal time for a charitable cause (Reed et al., 2007) or lie in a

business negotiation (Aquino and Freeman, in press). When individuals

with internalized moral identity do lie in a business negotiation, they are

strongly motivated to reduce its implication for the self by attempting

various strategies that serve to neutralize the sting of hypocrisy, such as

denial, denigrating the target, or minimizing the lie (Aquino and Becker,

2005). That said, when the self-importance of moral identity is high, it

undermines the effectiveness of moral disengagement mechanisms that

rationalize doing harm to others (Aquino et al., 2007).

3. Development of Moral Self-Identity

The literature on moral self-identity and the moral personality seems

largely preoccupied with sketching out what it looks like in its mature form

in adulthood. This is not inappropriate. Often it is useful, if not essential, to

get a handle on the telos of development before one can investigate the

possible developmental trajectories that gets one there (Kitchener, 1983).

Still, the relative paucity of work on the development of the moral self is

striking. This is due partly to the lack of interest in developmental ante-

cedents among personality, cognitive, and social psychologists, something

that an emergent field of SCD might remedy (Olson and Dweck, 2008).

But it is also due partly to a tendency among some development theorists

to treat moral acquisitions as a philosophical competency that must await

later stages of development. Or else to insist on such stringent and philoso-

phized conceptions of what counts as ‘‘moral’’ that extant and possibly

relevant developmental literatures are deemed unavailing and dismissed.

The moral self is isolated from other developmental processes and is treated

as some occult achievement that has a presumptive developmental history

but of which little can be said. Perhaps this is the negative side-effect of

starting with philosophical conceptions about what is ‘‘moral’’ about adult

moral personality and then trying to push this conception back in develop-

mental time in the search for antecedents. The result is a view we find

untenable, namely, that development brings a child to a tipping point at

which time he or she then becomes moralized. On this view attachment

processes, for example, or the organization of temperament or the child’s

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expanding socio-emotional and cognitive competencies are not themselves

markers of the developing moral self — nothing to see here — but rather are

developmental achievements that are in need of something else (‘‘moraliza-

tion’’) before the moral domain takes notice.

Yet many extant literatures shed light on the foundation, emergence,

and trajectory of moral self development, although often they are not

unpacked to reveal their implications for moral development. Nonetheless

these literatures are forcing a reconsideration of certain views about young

children that have become calcified in the stage development literatures, for

example, the notion that infants lack an appreciation of subjectivity (cf.,

Repacholi, 1998), that toddlers are egocentric (cf., Gelman, 1979; Light,

1983), incapable of discerning intentions (cf., Nunez and Harris, 1998) or of

engaging in prosocial behavior (cf., Bar-Tal et al., 1982; Denham, 1986;

Dunn, 2006; Warneken and Tomasello, 2007), or of describing the self in

anything other than physicalistic or demographic terms (cf., Marsh et al.,

2002), and so on. ‘‘It was not long ago,’’ Thompson (2006, p. 25) remarked,

‘‘that characterizations of young children as egocentric, concrete, precon-

ventional, and preconceptual made this developmental period seem discon-

tinuous with the conceptual achievements of middle childhood and later.’’

This now discredited view of early childhood seemed to discourage

attempts to locate the early roots of moral self, personality and character

in the infancy, toddler, and early childhood years.

Take the stance of the Kohlberg paradigm on what constitutes a moral

action. A moral action, on this view, is an action undertaken for explicit

moral reasons. Moral action, under this definition, is most likely when one

discerns the moral norm and understands its prescriptive quality, and this is

most evident to individuals who are at the postconventional stages of moral

reasoning. Kohlberg’s team never studied toddlers or children. The age

range of their influential moral stage sequence begins much later in early

adolescence and extends to adulthood. So it is silent on what early child-

hood contributes to moral development (other than to assume a blanket

moral egocentrism), but leaves the impression that toddlers do not engage in

moral action thus defined or do not feel the prescriptive weight of the moral

law. The Kohlberg moral development sequence, then, is discontinuous

with the early child development processes, mechanisms, and acquisitions

that bring a child to its first Kohlbergian stage in late childhood or early

adolescence.

3.1. Early Development of Moral Personality

We now know, of course, that an intuitive morality is an early develop-

mental achievement. Soon after 18 months of age toddlers display an

awareness and responsiveness to normative standards across a wide range

of situations that includes, for example, their reacting with self-conscious

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emotions and mark-directed behavior to a spot of rouge on their face when

looking in a mirror (Lewis and Brooks-Gunn, 1979); their expectations

about daily routines and events (Fivush et al., 1992), or for how persons

should act; or their negative reaction and concern to objects that are

disfigured, broken or marred in some way (Kagan, 2005).

What’s more toddlers have an early grasp of the different standards

of obligation that obtain in moral and conventional violations (Smetana,

1997) and for how prescriptive rules apply to different situations (Harris

and Nunez, 1996). They are aware of how things ought to be. They are

cognizant of adult standards and the notions of responsibility and account-

ability (Dunn, 1988). Clearly toddlers seem to be aware of a wide range of

conventional norms, and these serve as the foundation of an emerging

intuitive morality that belies a greater moral capacity than has been credited

to them (Thompson, in press). Indeed, the ‘‘relationships and other influ-

ences experienced in the early years set the context for the growth of an

empathic humanistic conception toward others, balanced self-concept,

capacities for relational intimacy, social sensitivity, and other capacities

conventionally viewed as achievements of middle childhood and adoles-

cence’’ (Thompson, 2006, p. 25).

The development of moral self-identity, of moral personality, and char-

acter, then, is a banal developmental achievement in the sense that it results

from ordinary developmental processes and mechanisms. The moral self

emerges in the dynamic transaction between the inductive capacities and

other personal qualities of the child and the familial and relational interac-

tions that provide the context for development. As a result theoretical

accounts of the developing moral self must take into account various person

variables, including temperament, self-regulation skills, theory of mind, and

conscience, but also contextual-relational variables, including attachment

security and the parental interactions that support it.

Kochanska and her colleagues (Kochanska, 2002a; Kochanska and

Aksan, 2004; Kochanska et al., 2004; Kochanska et al., 1995) have shown

how the moral self might emerge at the intersection of Person Context

interactions. They proposed a two-step model of emerging morality that

begins with the quality of parent–child attachment. A strong, mutually

responsive relationship with caregivers orients the child to be receptive to

parental influence (Kochanska, 1997a, 2002b).

This ‘‘mutually responsive orientation’’ (MRO) is characterized by

shared positive affect, mutually coordinated enjoyable routines (‘‘good

times’’), and a ‘‘cooperative interpersonal set’’ that describes the joint

willingness of parent and child to initiate and reciprocate relational over-

tures. It is from within the context of the MRO, and the secure attachment

that it denotes, that the child is eager to comply with parental expectations

and standards. There is ‘‘committed compliance’’ on the part of the child

to the norms and values of caregivers which, in turn, motivates moral

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internalization and the work of ‘‘conscience.’’ This was documented in a

recent longitudinal study. Children who had experienced a highly respon-

sive relationship with mothers over the first 24 months of life strongly

embraced maternal prohibitions and gave evidence of strong self-regulation

skills at preschool age (Kochanska et al., 2008).

Kochanska’s model moves, then, from security of attachment (MRO) to

committed compliance to moral internalization. This movement is also

expected to influence the child’s emerging internal representation of the

self. As Kochanska et al. (2002a) put it:

Children with a strong history of committed compliance with the parent

are likely gradually to come to view themselves as embracing the parent’s

values and rules. Such a moral self, in turn, comes to serve as the regulator of

future moral conduct and, more generally, of early morality (p. 340).

But children bring something to the interaction, too, namely, their temper-

ament. Kochanska (1991, 1993) argues that there are multiple pathways to

conscience and that one parenting style is not uniformly more effective

regardless of the temperamental dispositions of the child. In particular, she

suggests that children who are highly prone to fearful reactions would profit

from gentle, low power-assertive discipline. This ‘‘silken glove’’ approach

capitalizes on the child’s own discomfort to produce the optimal level of

anxiety that facilitates the processing and retention of parents’ socialization

messages. But for ‘‘fearless’’ children another approach is called for, not the

‘‘iron hand,’’ which would only make the fearless child angry, highly

reactive, and resistant to socialization messages (Kochanska et al., 2007),

but rather one that capitalizes on positive emotions (rather than on anxiety).

Hence there are at least two pathways to the internalization of con-

science. For fearful children, it leads through the soft touch of gentle

discipline; for fearless children, it leads through the reciprocal positive

parent–child relationship. This has now been documented in a number of

studies (Kochanska, 1997b; Kochanska et al., 2005).

How does Kochanska’s model of the emergent moral self relate to

characterizations of adult moral self-identity reviewed earlier? Recall that

Blasian moral identity requires the moralization of self-regulation (‘‘will-

power’’) and integrity by moral desires. The moral personality, at its highest

articulation, is driven by a sense of ‘‘wholeheartedness,’’ by which Blasi

(2005) means that ‘‘a general moral desire becomes the basic concern around

which the will is structured’’ (p. 82). Wholehearted commitment to a moral

desire, to the moral good, becomes an aspect of identity to the extent that not

to act in accordance with the moral will is unthinkable.

But how do children develop wholehearted commitment to moral

integrity? What is the source of moral desires? How do children develop

the proper moral desires as second-order volitions? What are the develop-

mental pathways that bring us to the moral personality envisioned by Blasi’s

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theory? We suggest that Kochanska’s model is a good place to start. The

developmental source of the moral personality lies in the shared, positive

affective relationship with caregivers. It emerges as a precipitate of the

‘‘cooperative interpersonal set’’ — the mutual responsiveness and

shared ‘‘good times’’ — that characterize the interpersonal foundation of

conscience.

This linkage is likely be resisted by Blasian moral theory because of the

presumption that Kochanska’s moral self only brings one to mere compliance

or mere internalization and therefore misses the subjective, agentic qualities

of the mature moral will. But the compliance of the emergent moral self is

not submission but rather a perceptual bias, an act of commitment that is

motivated by strongly charged, mutually shared, positive affective interper-

sonal relationships with caregivers. The desire to be moral, in other words,

is deeply social and therefore deeply emotional. There must be a develop-

mental source for the moral desires of the subjective self-as-agent, and these

arise from interpersonal relationships of a certain kind that are sustained over

time by social institutions — by families, classrooms, schools, and neighbor-

hoods, characterized by affective bonds of attachment and community.

Indeed, there is strong evidence that caring classroom environments char-

acterized by strong bonding to teachers and school, and an abiding sense of

community, is associated with prosocial behavior and many positive devel-

opmental outcomes (Lapsley and Narvaez, 2006, for a review).

3.2. Community and Context Models of Moral Identity

One limitation of Blasi’s framework is that it is does not give much attention

to the social dimensions of self-identity. Kochanska helps us understand that

the source of self-control, integrity, and of moral desires is deeply relational;

moral self-identity emerges within a history of secure attachment. If

true, such a model underscores the importance of attachment to teachers

(Watson, 2008), school bonding (Catalano et al., 2004; Libby, 2004), and

caring school communities (e.g., Payne et al., 2003; Solomon et al., 1992) as

bases for continued prosocial and moral development. For example, Payne

et al. (2003) showed that when a school is organized and experienced as a

caring community its students report higher levels of bonding to school and

greater internalization of community goals and norms which are related to

less delinquency. Elementary school children’s sense of community leads

them to adhere to the values that are most salient in the classroom (Solomon

et al., 1996). At the same time, when high school students perceive a moral

atmosphere they report more prosocial and less norms-transgressive behav-

ior (Brugman et al., 2003). These findings show that secure attachments

promote committed compliance and lead to internalization of norms and

standards at every age.

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3.2.1. Just Community

We examine two research programs to show the importance of community

beyond the family for moral identity development. First, Power (2004) and

Power and Higgins-D’Alessandro (2008) argue that the community is

critical for understanding the moral dimensions of the self insofar as the

self ‘‘does not experience a sense of obligation or responsibility to act in

isolation but with others within a cultural setting’’ (p. 52). Power brings to

the problem of self-identity a long interest in how classrooms and schools

can be transformed into ‘‘just communities’’ (Power et al., 1989). In a just

community there is a commitment to participatory, deliberative democracy

but in the service of becoming a moral community. Members of a commu-

nity — a classroom or school — commit to a common life that is regulated

by norms that reflect moral ideals. These shared norms emerge as a product

of democratic deliberation in community meetings. Here, the benefits and

burdens of shared lived experience are sorted out in a way that encourages

group solidarity and identification. One’s identification with the group and

its communal norms generate a moral atmosphere that conduces to moral

formation. Hence moral self-identity is a matter of group identification and

shared commitment to its value-laden norms. The moral self identifies with

the community by speaking on behalf of its shared norms and by taking on

its obligations as binding on the self.

Group identification is not simply awareness that one is a member of a

group, but rather that one is responsible for the group. The responsible self

is a communal self that takes on obligations and duties as result of shared

commitment to group norms. In order to illustrate a possible trajectory in

the development of the moral communal self, Power (2004) adapted Blasi’s

(1988) typology of identity (identity as observed,managed, and constructed )as

understood from the perspective of the subjective self-as-agent. In an early

phase, one simply acknowledges that one is a member of a group and is

bound thereby to group norms (identity observed ). Then, one speaks up

more actively in defense of a group norm, and urges the community to

abide by its commitments (identity managed ). Finally, one takes ‘‘legislative

responsibility for constructing group norms’’ (p. 55; identity constructed).

Power (2004) argues that the democratic process challenges members to

appropriate community group membership into one’s personal identity. He

writes:

This appropriation is rational and critical and is not a passive internalization

of group norms and values. Moreover, the appropriation of membership in

the community is to be based on the ideals of the community. In this sense

the identification with the community not only allows for but encourages a

critical stance toward its practices and commitment to change it (p. 55).

Class meetings are now a well-entrenched element of instructional

best practice, particularly at the elementary school level. Giving students

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‘‘voice-and-choice’’ about classroom practices, giving them an opportunity

to share, to cooperate, to discuss, to take joint responsibility, are recognized

as important elements of character education (Lapsley and Narvaez, 2006).

But these salutary practices are still some distance from the goal of partici-

patory democratic decision making. Indeed most schools and classrooms

who endorse caring classroom communities as a moral educational goal

could not fairly be called ‘‘just communities’’ in the sense envisioned by

Power and his colleagues.

One problem is that the demands of academic accountability and the

pressure to make adequate yearly progress on mandated state examinations

tends to squeeze intentional, deliberate approaches to moral character

education out of the curriculum. Teachers find it difficult even to reserve

the ‘‘homeroom period’’ for building moral community. For this reason,

Power and his colleagues have targeted youth sports programs as an alterna-

tive location for moral character intervention. Here children and adoles-

cents might experience teams as a moral community, and coaching as a form

of moral education. Their program, called ‘‘Play Like a Champion’’ (2008),

teaches coaches to build an engaging team climate that emphasizes moral

principles (justice, tolerance, respect, and cooperation) using child-centered

strategies to advance the full personal development of the child.

3.2.2. Moral Development in Poor Neighborhoods

We turn to a second research program that underscores the importance of

community for moral identity development. Hart and Matsuba (in press) are

concerned mostly with how the larger contextual settings, such as poor

urban neighborhoods, influence enduring personality characteristics, and

the suite of mediating factors. The influence is not encouraging. Poor urban

neighborhoods generally provide a context that works against the formation

of moral identity or the commitment to moral projects. For example, living

in high-poverty neighborhoods tends to undermine moral attitudes and

values such as tolerance for divergent viewpoints (Hart et al., 2004). It

undermines personality resilience, and is associated with family dysfunction,

stress, and increases in problem behavior (Hart et al., 2003).

Moreover, very poor neighborhoods — particularly those marked by

high levels of child saturation — are less able to provide opportunities for

productive engagement in the community. This is because poor neighbor-

hoods are relatively lacking in the rich network of organizations that

support projects with moral goals. Indeed, adolescents in poor communities

form fewer connections with these institutions than do children in affluent

communities. They report fewer affiliations with clubs, teams, and youth

organizations (Hart and Matsuba, in press), and fewer opportunities for

volunteering. Institutional density, then, is a critical factor that influences

the availability of identity-defining options for adolescents. Opportunities

to engage in projects that facilitate the formation of moral identity are not

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evenly distributed across communities, neighborhoods, and social strata,

which suggests that when it comes to the possibilities for structuring

moral identity there is an element of moral luck (Nagel, 1979; Williams,

1971) in the way one’s moral life goes (Hart, 2005).

3.2.3. Community Service and Social Capital

Of course the association between thin networks of community organiza-

tions and depressed rates of volunteering in very poor, child saturated

neighborhoods does suggest a possible intervention strategy. There is

mounting interest, for example, in providing service learning and commu-

nity service opportunities for youngsters in poor urban neighborhoods as a

way of changing moral and civic attitudes and the sense of self-identity.

These forms of community service are associated with positive develop-

mental outcomes (Hart et al., 2008). In one study, social opportunities to

interact frequently with others in the community through social institu-

tional structures (church, community meetings) predicted voluntary com-

munity service in a nationally representative sample of adults (Matsuba et al.,

2007).

Community service may be both a catalyst for moral development but

also a signal of moral identity. In a longitudinal study, Pratt et al. (2003)

constructed a moral self-ideal index that was based on participants’ endorse-

ment of a set of six personal qualities (trustworthy, honest, fair, just, shows

integrity, and good citizen). At age 19 participants who had endorsed a high

moral self-ideal were more likely to participate in community activities. But

it was the community involvement that led to subsequent endorsement of

moral self-ideals. A strong moral self-ideal did not lead to community

involvement but was its result. This suggests that the best way to influence

attitudes and values is to first change behavior — in this case in the direction of

greater community involvement (Pancer and Pratt, 1999). As Pratt et al.

(2003) put it, ‘‘community involvement by adolescents leads to the devel-

opment of some sort of sense of identity that is characterized by a greater

prominence of moral, prosocial values’’ (p. 579). And it does not seem to

matter whether youth involvement is one of service learning or simple

volunteering, or whether the service is voluntary or mandated (Hart et al.,

2008). In sum, service learning and volunteering increases social capital and

community participation, thereby deepening the connection of adolescents

to social institutions that provide a context for the construction of prosocial

commitments and moral self-identity. And this implicates institutional

density as a critical mediating variable.

Power’s work with youth sports underscores the importance of com-

munity and neighborhood effects on moral identity. This theme is pro-

nounced in Hart’s (2005) and Hart and Matsuba (in press) model of moral

identity. Hart’s model is the closest thing we have to a developmental

systems theory, one that articulates the multiple layers of influence on

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moral identity that includes the endogenous, dispositional factors of the

developing child, the family dynamics in which he or she is raised, and the

neighborhood in which the family resides. For Hart (2005) the constituents

of moral identity fall under two broad headings. Under the heading of

‘‘enduring characteristics’’ are personality and family constituents that are

relatively stable and hard to change. Under the heading of ‘‘characteristic

adaptations’’ are factors that mediate the relationship between enduring

characteristics and moral identity. One such factor, ‘‘moral orientation,’’

includes attitudes, values, and the capacity for moral deliberative compe-

tence and reflection, particularly the tendency to appreciate the prescriptive

quality of moral judgments.

We have seen that in Blasi’s theory moral identity requires that self-

regulation and integrity be infused with moral desires. How moral desires are

structured depends importantly on experience with caregivers (Kochanska),

the practice of community (Power), and on neighborhood characteristics

that influence the resources required for identity exploration (Hart). What is

clear from these research programs is that a moral self takes time and experi-

ence to develop, and requires cultivation from those with more social

experience.

Particular experiences appear to make the difference in the development

of a child’s moral identity and moral understanding. What is the mechanism

for change? How does experience influence moral decisions and choices?

Schema theory provides an answer.

4. Schemas and Moral Information Processing

According to schema theories of development and understanding,

schemas are the key structures that reflect ongoing changes in under-

standing. Schemas (generalized knowledge structures) develop first from

sensorimotor experience, forming embodied knowledge that underlies

thought and language (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999). The individual inter-

prets subsequent experience according to existing schemas (assimilation)

and modifies them in kind and number in response to new information

(accommodation) in a continuous process of growth, change, and equili-

bration (Piaget, 1970). For example, children with warm responsive parents

build positive, prosocial schemas about relating to others that they apply to

future relationships; children with community service experience build

schemas of self-efficacy in helping others, leading them to continue the

practice as adults.

Essentially, a schema is a cognitive mechanism that operates in one or

more brain systems (Neisser, 1976), including memory systems, such as

procedural or declarative knowledge (Hogarth, 2001; Kesner, 1986), and

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types of reasoning, such as analogical and/or intuitive reasoning (Ericsson

and Smith, 1991; Hogarth, 2001). Schemas organize an individual’s opera-

tional activities, processing current experience according to concurrent

goals (Piaget, 1970; Rummelhart, 1980; Taylor and Crocker, 1981), influ-

encing perception, as well as decision making and reasoning (Girgenrize

et al., 1999).

Schemas develop from experience, and different types of experience

cultivate different types of schemas. This holds true for moral schemas

as well.

4.1. Moral Schemas

Life experiences transform moral schemas of all kinds, including schemas for

moral perspective taking, moral self-efficacy, and schemas for moral action

(Narvaez, 2006). Moral judgment development involves transformations in

how an individual construes obligations to others, reorganizing moral

schemas about how it is possible to organize cooperation (Rest et al.,

1999). With greater social experience (especially experiences that increase

perspective taking), an individual’s sense of moral obligation expands,

moving from concern for self, to concern for known others, to concern

for the welfare of strangers. Research with the Defining Issues Test (DIT)

(Rest, 1979; requires a 12-year-old reading level) has compiled results from

tens of thousands of respondents showing that there is progression from a

preference for the Personal Interest Schema in junior high (Kohlberg’s

stages 2 and 3), to a preference for the Maintaining Norms Schema in

high school (similar to Kohlberg stage 4), to a preference for Postconven-

tional Schema in graduate school (similar to Kohlberg’s stages 5 and 6; Rest

et al., 1999). (For more on schemas and moral judgment see Narvaez and

Bock, 2002.) Moral judgment development is stimulated by particular

experiences, such as intense diverse social experience (Rest, 1986) and

interventions that use moral dilemma discussion (Rest and Narvaez,

1994). Some experiences can depress scores on moral judgment measures,

such as fundamentalist ideology (Narvaez et al., 1999a).

4.1.1. Measuring Effects of Moral Schemas on Information

Processing: Development and Expertise

Everyday discourse processing requires domain-specific schema activation

for comprehension to take place (e.g., Alexander et al., 1989). Lack of

appropriate background knowledge when processing information in texts

leads to poor understanding (Bransford and Johnson, 1972), misrecall and

even distortion to fit with preexisting schemas (Bartlett, 1932; Reynolds

et al., 1982; Steffensen et al., 1979). Low-knowledge readers form inade-

quate mental models of the text, which leads to erroneous elaborations and

inferences during recall (Moravcsik and Kintsch, 1993).

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Moral discourse processing is also influenced by differences in schema

development. In research examining the influence of moral judgment

schemas on moral information processing, Narvaez (1998) found that

moral judgment sophistication among adolescents over and above age

influenced what was accurately and inaccurately recalled when remember-

ing narratives about moral situations. Similarly, when tested for theme

comprehension in children’s moral stories, children did not grasp messages

as intended by the author or understood by adult readers, taking away more

simplistic, concrete messages based on limited schema development; even at

age 11 less than half of participants understood the intended theme (Narvaez

et al., 1998; Narvaez et al., 1999b). Before adulthood, life experience as

measured by age, plays a large role in moral discourse comprehension.

Among adults, life experience also matters. Extensive, coached immer-

sion in a domain increases the sophistication and organization of schemas,

usually termed ‘‘expertise’’ (Sternberg, 1998). Experts and novices have

been compared using reading tasks, distinguishing novices from experts in

multiple domains (e.g., Singer et al., 1997; Spilich et al., 1979). Schema

effects can be studied between novices and experts in moral judgment using

discourse-processing tasks, distinguishing the effects of general development

from studied expertise (Narvaez and Gleason, 2007). As an ill-structured

domain

(King and Kitchener, 1994), the complexity of moral functioning

may be better studied with discourse processing because of the variety of

schemas that can be brought to the task.

Knowledge in virtually every domain can be characterized as that in

which expertise can be developed, including domains of study in school

(Bransford et al., 1999). In the domain of morality, there are many sub-

domains beyond moral judgment; these can also be viewed as domains in

which expertise can be fostered.

5. Moral Development as Ethical

Expertise Development

Taking the view of the mind sciences today and looking back, one can

see that the ancients (e.g., Aristotle, 1988; Mencius, 1970) considered virtue

as a form of expertise. The virtuous person is like an expert who has a set

of highly cultivated skills, perceptual sensibilities, chronically accessible

schemas for moral interpretation, and rehearsed sequences for moral action.

Moral exemplars display moral wisdom (knowing the good) and practical

Domains can be parsed as ‘‘ill-structured’’ domains, characterized by uncertainty about the problem,

feasibility of actions and goodness of solution, or ‘‘well-structured’’ domains, like baseball, which are

completely specified in terms of possible actions and outcomes (Chase and Simon, 1973).

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wisdom (knowing how to carry it out in the situation). In contemporary

terms, the expert has sets of procedural, declarative, and conditional knowl-

edge that are applied in the right way at the right time. Expertise is being

used to characterize knowledge in every domain, including the moral

domain (see Narvaez, 2005, 2006, for more details and references).

Experts and novices differ from one another in several fundamental ways.

Experts have more and better organized knowledge (Sternberg, 1998) that

consists of declarative (explicit), procedural (implicit) and conditional

knowledge, much of which operates automatically. In brief, experts know

what knowledge to access, which procedures to apply, how to apply them,

and when. Expert perception picks up underlying patterns novices miss,

including affordances for action (Neisser, 1976). Adaptive experts use intui-

tion as well as explicit knowledge to come up with innovative solutions to

problems in their domain (Hatano and Inagaki, 1986).

In the realm of morality, expertise can take different forms. Using Rest’s

four-component model of moral behavior, we can map expert behavior in

the four processes required for moral action to take place: ethical sensitivity,

ethical judgment, ethical focus, and ethical action or implementation

(Narvaez and Rest, 1995; Rest, 1983). Experts in Ethical Sensitivity can

speedily and precisely discern the elements of a moral situation, to take the

perspectives of others and determine what role they might play. Experts in

Ethical Judgment access multiple tools for solving complex moral problems.

They can reason about duty and consequences, and draw up rationale for

one course of action or another. Experts in Ethical Focus cultivate ethical

identity that leads them to prioritize ethical goals. Experts in Ethical Action

know how to maintain focus and take the steps to complete the ethical

action. Experts in a particular virtue have highly tuned perceptual skills for

it, more complex and multiply organized knowledge about it, have highly

automatized responses. Expertise is a set of capacities that can be put into

effective action as skilled coping in the situation.

Expertise in moral reasoning and virtue can be cultivated like other

skills. Experts have explicit, conscious understanding of the domain as well

as intuitive, implicit knowledge. Experts in training receive instruction that

builds skills and theoretical understanding simultaneously. They are

immersed in situated practice while being coached by someone with

more expertise. They are immersed in well-functioning environments

that provide corrective feedback so that appropriate intuitions are formed.

In other words, expert-education in a particular domain cultivates delibera-

tive understanding and intuitions simultaneously (Abernathy and Hamm,

1995). During expert training, interpretive and action frameworks are

learned to automaticity, perception is honed to chronically accessed con-

structs (Hogarth, 2001).

Childrenare virtual novices in nearly every domain (Bransford et al., 1999).

In many aspects of morality, children are novices too. Novice-to-expert

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instruction for ethical development brings together virtue development,

reasoning and emotion, intuition, and deliberation.

5.1. An Integrative Framework for Moral Character Education

A framework that attempts to bring together all the elements of ethical

character development for educators, parents, and community members is

the Integrative Ethical Education model (full references and explanation in

Narvaez, 2006, 2008a).

It proposes five empirically derived steps for ethical

character development. These have been applied in school settings (Narvaez

et al., 2004) but may be applied in any setting and with any age.

First, adults establish caring relationships with the child. Human brains

are wired for emotional signaling and emotional motivation (Greenspan and

Shanker 2004; Lewis et al., 2000; Panksepp, 1998). Caring relationships

drive school and life success (Masten, 2003; Watson, 2008). Moral exem-

plars indicate an early history with supportive caregivers (Walker and

Frimer, in press).

Second, adults establish a climate supportive of excellence in achieve-

ment and in ethical character. Social climates and cultures influence percep-

tions and behavior (Power et al., 1989). Caring schools and classrooms are

associated with multiple positive outcomes for students related to achieve-

ment and prosocial development (e.g., Catalano et al., 2004; Solomon et al.,

2002).

Third, adults foster ethical skills across activities (e.g., curriculum and

extracurriculum) based on skills in ethical sensitivity, judgment, focus, and

action, as mentioned above (see Narvaez, 2006 or Narvaez et al., 2004, for

skills lists). Educators use a novice-to-expert pedagogy in which intuitions

are developed through imitation of role models and timely and appropriate

feedback, immersion in activity with mentor guidance, and the practice of

skills and procedures across multiple contexts (Narvaez et al., 2003).

Through theoretical explanation and dialogue, adults coach the child (the

deliberative mind) in selecting activities and environments that foster good

intuitions (the intuitive mind). Adults guide the child in developing a

prosocial self-narrative of positive purpose and community responsibility

(Stipek et al., 1992).

Fourth, adults encourage student self-authorship and self-regulation, the

type of self-monitoring skills experts demonstrate (Zimmerman, 1998).

The expertise development approach was initially developed in the Minnesota Community Voices and

Character Education project, 1998–2002, a collaboration between the Minnesota Department of Education

(formerly the Department of Children, Families, and Learning) and the University of Minnesota with funds

from the U.S. Department of Education (USDE OERI Grant # R215V980001). Using materials provided by

the project designers and teacher-designed lessons, the skills approach had a significant effect on students in

schools that implemented broadly over 1 year time in contrast to a comparison group and to low implementing

schools (see Narvaez et al., 2004). Project materials may be obtained from the first author.

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Adults help children understand that they themselves have to answer the

central life question, who should I be? The final responsibility for character

development lies with them. In an enriched moral environment, students

are provided with tools for self-regulation in character formation. When

solving problems, successful students learn to monitor the effectiveness of

their strategies and when necessary to alter their strategies to meet their goals

(Anderson, 1989). Aristotle believed that mentors are required for character

cultivation until the individual is able to self monitor, subsequently main-

taining virtue through the wise selection of friends and activities.

Fifth, adults work together to build communities that coordinate sup-

port and relationships across institutions to foster resiliency. Truly demo-

cratic ethical education empowers all involved — educators, community

members, and students — as they ally to learn and live together. It is in

community living that persons develop ethical skills and self-regulation for

both individual and community actualization (Rogoff et al., 2001). It is a

community who establishes and nourishes the individual’s moral voice,

providing a moral anchor, and offering moral guidance as virtues are

cultivated. When the connections among children’s life spaces of home,

school, and community are strengthened, children are adaptationally

advantaged (Benson et al., 1998).

An increasing number of scientists are realizing that adaptational advan-

tage arises early in life, at least from birth if not from conception (Gluckman

and Hanson, 2004). There appear to be epigenetically sensitive periods for

particular brain system development in which environments switch genes

on or off for life (e.g., Champagne and Meaney, 2006). The wiring of

neurobiological systems appears to matter for moral functioning as well.

6. New Directions: Neuroscience and

Moral Personality

As knowledge about human development increases, so too has interest

in the neurobiology of human behavior. For example, the neurobiology of

infant attachment is far more important than previously realized for lifetime

brain development and emotion regulation (Gross, 2007). There appear to

be critical periods for fostering the systems that lead to sociality (Karr-Morse

and Wiley, 1997). Developmental psychology finds that emotion regulation

development begins neonatally and crucially depends on the caregiver to

coregulate the infant’s emotions while the brain establishes its systems

(Lewis et al., 2000; Schore, 1994). The caregiver acts as an ‘‘external

psychobiological regulator’’ (Schore, 2001, p. 202) socially constructing

the brain (Eisenberg, 1995). The mammalian brain and nervous system

depend for their neurophysiologic stability ‘‘on a system of interactive

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coordination, wherein steadiness comes from synchronization with nearby

attachment figures’’ (Lewis et al., p. 84 Au2

). Otherwise mammals can develop

erratic systems that are easily thrown off kilter in reaction to everyday

stressors (Hofer, 1994).

The field of affective neuroscience is demonstrating the centrality of

well-wired emotions for optimal brain functioning. ‘‘Emotive circuits

change sensory, perceptual, and cognitive processing, and initiate a host of

physiological changes that are naturally synchronized with the aroused

behavioral tendencies characteristic of emotional experience’’ (Panksepp,

1998, p. 49). Evidence for the importance of infancy and early childhood to

establish a mammalian brain’s emotional circuitry has been accumulating

since Harlow’s (1986) experiments. In fact, recent research documents the

critical importance of early caregiving on cognition (Greenspan and

Shanker, 2004), personality formation (Schore, 2003a,b), as well as gene

expression in emotional circuitry (e.g., Weaver et al., 2002).

6.1. Triune Ethics Theory: A Neurobiological Theory

of Moral Development

Indications are that early experience has a bearing on moral development as

well, in particular, the propensities for compassion and appreciation of

others. Fundamental to the shaping of emotion for a moral life is the

caregiving received in early life. Triune Ethics Theory (Narvaez, 2008b)

draws on evidence from neuroscience, anthropology, and other human

sciences to postulate that three general ethical motivations arise from the

neurobiological substrates of human evolution and influenced by early

experience: Security, Engagement, and Imagination. The ’’environment

of evolutionary adaptedness’’ (EEA) (Bowlby, 1988), as anthropologists

have recently spelled out (Hewlett and Lamb, 2005), plays a large role in

framing the emerging evidence on the effects of early experience on lifelong

propensities, including moral functioning.

The Security Ethic is rooted in the oldest parts of the brain, involving

the R-complex or the extrapyramidal action nervous system (Panksepp,

1998), structures of the brain that focus on survival through safety, domi-

nance, and status (MacLean, 1990). These systems are mostly hardwired and

become the default when systems underlying the other ethics are underde-

veloped or damaged. Situationally, when a person is threatened this ethic is

likely to be activated, marshaling defense and offense (fight or flight),

suppressing capacity for empathy (Mikulincer and Shaver, 2005), and exhi-

biting less flexible thinking (Stout, 2007). Long-term dispositional effects on

personality occur as well; extensive stress, abuse or neglect in the early years

can bring about a personality dominated by the Security Ethic (Henry and

Wang, 1998; Karr-Morse and Wiley, 1997). On the positive side, the

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Security Ethic, worthwhile for occasional crises, engenders the values of

loyalty, hierarchy, self-control of softer emotions, and following precedent.

The second ethic, the Engagement Ethic, is rooted in the neurobiological

systems that Darwin (1871/1981) identified as the source for humans’ ‘‘moral

sense’’ — the visceral-emotional nervous system on the hypothalamic-limbic

axis which underlie mammalian parental care and social bonding (Panksepp,

1998). These systems rely on warm, responsive caregiving for their develop-

ment (e.g., Schore, 1994). Involving multiple limbic and subcortical struc-

tures and neurotransmitters (see Moll et al., in press), these structures underlie

values of compassion, social harmony, and togetherness. Children develop a

sense of security through intersubjectively safe and close nurturing (Field and

Reite, 1985; Schore, 1994) that allows the systems related to the Engagement

Ethic to develop properly. For example, the oxytocin that accompanies

breastfeeding and snuggling is a pacifying and bonding agent (Carter, 1998;

Perry et al., 1995; Young et al., 2001). Through a secure attachment and from

extensive experiences of reciprocity and social exchange (Kochanska and

Thompson, 1997; Laible and Thompson, 2000), children develop a sense

of engaged enactive participation in social life, rooted in sensorimotor

sensibilities for justice (Lerner, 2002). Physiologically, the Security Ethic

and the Engagement Ethic are incompatible; the former is related to increased

stress hormones (norepinephrine/adrenaline) while the latter is related to

calming hormones (e.g., oxytocin).

The Imagination Ethic, controlled primarily by the more recent com-

ponents of the brain (neocortex, especially prefrontal cortex) collaborates

with and coordinates the other two ethics. It has the capacity (when

cultivated appropriately with responsive caregiving) for valuing universality,

concern for outsiders, and conceptualizing alternative sophisticated resolu-

tions of moral problems. Although more detached from the basic emotional

drives of the other ethics, the Imagination ethic generally is motivated

implicitly by one of the other ethics. Whereas the open-heartedness of the

Engagement ethic feeds an imagination of helpfulness and altruism, the self-

protective rigidity of the Security Ethic fosters an imagination toward

defense and perhaps offense. Children develop an ethical imagination

when caregivers provide in situ modeled and guided training of prosocial

perception and action (enactive learning) in their actions and words.

In brief, TET Au3

points to what is fundamental for optimal moral develop-

ment: neonatal and early childhood experiences, similar to those of the

environment of evolutionary adaptedness (Bowlby, 1988; Hewlett and

Lamb, 2005), that shape brain structures and brain wiring for general and

for moral functioning. Moral learning involves developing unconscious

‘‘somatic markers’’ (Damasio, 1994) for what are good and not-so-good

actions: ‘‘embodied (sensorimotor) structures are the substance of experience’’

which ‘‘motivate conceptual understanding and rational thought’’ (Varela,

1992/1999, p. 16). From recurrent patterns of sensory motor activity,

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general cognitive structures, including moral cognitive structures, emerge.

In emphasizing the importance of early experience, TET advocates social

policies and practices that support children, families and communities, and

which build moral brains.

7. Conclusions

The field of moral development has traveled beyond a narrow focus

on moral judgment to include the moral self across the lifespan. No longer

relegated to an individual’s conscious moral reasoning, the scope has moved

beyond the individual and her decision making or his virtue. Moral devel-

opment and moral action are embedded in community contexts. Moral

functioning is assumed to involve the whole brain and multiple systems

inside and outside the individual. As moral psychology and the study of

moral persons expands across domains of psychology and human sciences,

the field will generate more intricate theories that offer more specific

guideposts for fostering moral persons and communities. We draw three

conclusions that bear on research into moral functioning generally.

7.1. Experience Shapes Brain Biases

First, brains are differentially shaped by experience. The processing of any

type of morally relevant information is mediated by the schemas that

individuals have developed through social experience from early life and

onward. When individuals have been immersed in social environments that

promote self-concern, especially during sensitive periods, it is likely that

their schemas for processing moral information differ from those in loving,

responsive environments. The latter build personalities that are agreeable

and conscientious. So, for example, Amish cultures who emphasize submis-

sion, solidarity and kindness (Kraybill, 1989) will also foster brains that view

the world differently from cultures that emphasize competition, dominance,

and individuality. Particular environments promote particular brain func-

tioning and biases. It is likely that most psychological studies in the United

States examine biases cultivated by the particular individualistic society in

which the participants were raised and that therefore do not represent the

full evolved palette of moral capacities.

7.2. Moral Functioning is Multivariate

Second, moral judgments comprise only one element of moral functioning

(which also includes moral perception, sensitivity, motivation/focus, and

implementation), an element that weakly predicts moral action (and what is

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morality if it is not evident in action?). Studying moral judgments in the

laboratory tap into an aspect of moral functioning that represents declarative

or semantic knowledge that is not necessarily tied to self-concept or self-

responsibility or behavior. Moral identity may provide the greatest predic-

tive power to moral behavior because it has its roots in lived relationships.

Studying moral functioning in more ecologically valid ways, such as with

moral discourse processing (Narvaez, 1999), may allow for a greater under-

standing of the range of moral performance.

7.3. Moral Experts are Different from Novices

Third, examining differences in expertise offers a promising area of research.

From long immersion in the domain (10 years or 10,000 h; Simon and

Chase, 1973), experts build schemas that become automatically accessed and

applied. Chronic schema use is linked to automatic or chronic accessibility of

a construct, as true for morality as for any domain. Community-nominated

moral exemplars demonstrate a chronic merging of personal and moral goals

(Colby and Damon, 1991). Building chronicity through immersion and

guided experience such as democratic participation (Power) or community

service (Hart) are promising paths to building moral personality and

improved moral functioning (see Narvaez, 2005). Interventions should

include the full range of moral skill development, from moral perception

and sensitivity to moral action skills.

On a precautionary note, it appears that most laboratory research of

moral functioning is conducted on college students. It is not clear that

people under the age of 30 or so have fully developed capacities in the

prefrontal cortex, a key player in moral functioning (Luna et al., 2001), so

researchers of moral functioning in college students should keep in mind

that mature adults with intact brain function likely behave differently.

Novices are easily dumbfounded and college students are fairly inexperi-

enced about life. Studying adults would provide a better look at mature

moral functioning (Blasi, in press). However, adults may have sophisticated

capacities in a specific type of moral expertise (e.g., action) and not another

(e.g., judgment), and so research should examine what brings about these

differences and what implications they have for moral functioning generally.

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