Moral Psychology

Abstract

Abstract Human beings confront the question of how they should live, a question posed by the gap between animal inclination and human choice. The presupposition of this gap supports the thought that human beings, unlike other animals, possess uniquely moral, or more broadly ethical, capacities: capacities of thought and feeling that equip them to act rightly or wrongly, display virtuous or vicious characters, or live morally good or bad lives. The field of moral psychology investigates these capacities. While philosophers may disagree over the precise delineation of the moral domain, philosophical work in moral psychology pursues questions whose foci include: (1) emotions and forms of regard directed toward persons as moral agents (e.g., respect and the various modes of moral approval and disapproval); (2) capacities key to moral judgment and the motivational sources that account for such judgments' practical influence (e.g., perception, reason, emotion/pleasure/desire, belief, and intention; altruism versus egoism); (3) the development and education of moral character (including the cultivation of virtue); and (4) the prerequisites of moral responsibility. Social scientific approaches to moral psychology bring experimental methods to bear on these topics. In modern parlance, “moral psychology” is a domain of study systematically pursued by a subfield of philosophy, a subfield of psychology, and a collaborative research program that draws on both disciplines.