Chapter 46 - Dynamic processes underlying individual differences in moral behavior

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to (i) review and to organize the individual differences that have been explicitly proposed to explain or describe individual differences in moral behavior, (ii) review the work on dynamics of those individual differences, and (iii) consider the value of the morally exceptional for elucidating such dynamics. Many constructs have been proposed to explain or describe individual differences in moral behavior, but they are scattered across disparate literatures and do not sufficiently inform each other. Organizing these individual differences will bring the various literatures into communication with each other, facilitating work on the dynamic processes underlying such individual differences. We propose that the existing individual differences for explaining or describing moral behavior fall into six distinct categories. These six categories include perception of moral relevance, judgment of correct behavior, affective prompts and inhibitors, identification with morality or others, moral courage and follow-through, and enacted morality. These categories roughly correspond to differing psychological capacities and differing psychological steps in the process of moral behavior. There has been little research on the dynamics underlying these characteristics, but the research that does exist provides great hope that studying the dynamics of these characteristics will produce fascinating discoveries. We believe that studying the morally exceptional will accelerate such discoveries because they reveal a higher concentration of moral processes.