Hostname: page-component-77f85d65b8-8wtlm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-04-19T13:11:17.122Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The space between rationalism and sentimentalism: A perspective from moral development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 September 2019

Joshua Rottman Open the ORCID record for Joshua Rottman [Opens in a new window]
Joshua Rottman*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA 17604. jrottman@fandm.eduwww.joshuarottman.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

May interprets the prevalence of non-emotional moral intuitions as indicating support for rationalism. However, research in developmental psychology indicates that the mechanisms underlying these intuitions are not always rational in nature. Specifically, automatic intuitions can emerge passively, through processes such as evolutionary preparedness and enculturation. Although these intuitions are not always emotional, they are not clearly indicative of reason.

Information

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 42 , 2019 , e165
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Alter, A. (2013) Drunk tank pink: And other unexpected forces that shape how we think, feel, and behave. Penguin.Google Scholar
Bargh, J. (2017) Before you know it: The unconscious reasons we do what we do. Touchstone.Google Scholar
Blake, P. R., McAuliffe, K. & Warneken, F. (2014) The developmental origins of fairness: The knowledge–behavior gap. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 18(11):559–61.Google Scholar
Bloom, P. (2013) Just babies: The origins of good and evil. Crown.Google Scholar
Chudek, M. & Henrich, J. (2011) Culture–gene coevolution, norm-psychology and the emergence of human prosociality. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 15(5):218–26.Google Scholar
Crockett, M. J. (2013) Models of morality. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 17(8):363–66.Google Scholar
Cummins, D. D. (1996) Evidence of deontic reasoning in 3- and 4-year-old children. Memory and Cognition 24(6):823–29.Google Scholar
Cushman, F. (2013) Action, outcome and value: A dual-system framework for morality. Personality and Social Psychology Review 17(3): 273–92.Google Scholar
Cushman, F., Young, L. & Hauser, M. (2006) The role of conscious reasoning and intuition in moral judgment: Testing three principles of harm. Psychological Science 17(12):1082–89.Google Scholar
Dunham, Y., Baron, A. S. & Banaji, M. R. (2008) The development of implicit intergroup cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 12(7):248–53.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, N. (2000) Emotion, regulation, and moral development. Annual Review of Psychology 51:665–97.Google Scholar
Engelmann, J. M., Over, H., Herrmann, E. & Tomasello, M. (2013)Young children care more about their reputation with ingroup members and potential reciprocators. Developmental Science 16(6):952–58.Google Scholar
Gopnik, A. (2012) Scientific thinking in young children: Theoretical advances, empirical research, and policy implications. Science 337(6102):1623–27.Google Scholar
Greene, J. D. (2013) Moral tribes: Emotion, reason, and the gap between us and them. Penguin.Google Scholar
Grusec, J. E. & Goodnow, J. J. (1994) Impact of parental discipline methods on the child's internalization of values: A reconceptualization of current points of view. Developmental Psychology 30(1):4–19.Google Scholar
Haidt, J. (2001) The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review 108:814–34.Google Scholar
Hamlin, J. K. (2013) Moral judgment and action in preverbal infants and toddlers: Evidence for an innate moral core. Current Directions in Psychological Science 22(3):186–93.Google Scholar
Hoffman, M. L. (1975) Developmental synthesis of affect and cognition and its implications for altruistic motivation. Developmental Psychology 11(5)607–22.Google Scholar
Holyoak, K. J. & Powell, D. (2016) Deontological coherence: A framework for commonsense moral reasoning. Psychological Bulletin 142(11):1179–1203.Google Scholar
Kagan, J. (1987) Introduction. In: The emergence of morality in young children, ed. Kagan, J. & Lamb, S., pp. ix–xx. The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kohlberg, L. (1971) From is to ought: How to commit the naturalistic fallacy and get away with it in the study of moral development. In: Cognitive development and epistemology, ed. Mischel, T., pp. 151–235. Academic Press.Google Scholar
Krebs, D. L. (2008) Morality: An evolutionary account. Perspectives on Psychological Science 3(3):149–72.Google Scholar
Leimgruber, K. L., Shaw, A., Santos, L. & Olson, K. R. (2012) Young children are more generous when others are aware of their actions. PLOS ONE 7(10):e48292.Google Scholar
Martin, A. & Olson, K. R. (2015) Beyond good and evil: What motivations underlie children's prosocial behavior? Perspectives on Psychological Science 10(2):159–75.Google Scholar
May, J. (2018) Regard for reason in the moral mind. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nisbett, R. E. & Wilson, T. D. (1977) Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review 84(3):231–59.Google Scholar
Nucci, L. P. (1984) Evaluating teachers as social agents: Students' ratings of domain appropriate and domain inappropriate teacher responses to transgressions. American Educational Research Journal 21(2):367–78.Google Scholar
Nucci, L. P. & Turiel, E. (1978) Social interactions and the development of social concepts in preschool children. Child Development 49:400–07.Google Scholar
Paxton, J. M. & Greene, J. D. (2010) Moral reasoning: Hints and allegations. Topics in Cognitive Science 2(3):511–27.Google Scholar
Piaget, J. (1932/1965) The moral judgement of the child, trans. Gabain, M.. Free Press/Harcourt. (Original work published in 1932.) [JIMC, WHBM, JR]Google Scholar
Pizarro, D. A. & Bloom, P. (2003) The intelligence of the moral intuitions: A comment on Haidt (2001) Psychological Review 110(1):193–96.Google Scholar
Rakoczy, H. & Schmidt, M. F. H. (2013) The early ontogeny of social norms. Child Development Perspectives 7(1):17–21.Google Scholar
Rhodes, M. & Wellman, H. (2017) Moral learning as intuitive theory revision. Cognition 167:191–200.Google Scholar
Rottman, J., Kelemen, D. & Young, L. (2014) Tainting the soul: Purity concerns predict moral judgments of suicide. Cognition 130(2):217–26.Google Scholar
Rottman, J. & Young, L. (2015) Mechanisms of moral development. In: The moral brain: A multidisciplinary approach, ed. Decety, J. & Wheatley, T., pp. 123–42. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rottman, J., Young, L. & Kelemen, D. (2017) The impact of testimony on children's moralization of novel actions. Emotion 17(5):811–27.Google Scholar
Saltzstein, H. D. & Kasachkoff, T. (2004) Haidt's moral intuitionist theory: A psychological and philosophical critique. Review of General Psychology 8(4):273–82.Google Scholar
Schulz, L. (2012) The origins of inquiry: Inductive inference and exploration in early childhood. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 16(7):382–89.Google Scholar
Schulz, L. E., Bonawitz, E. B. & Griffiths, T. L. (2007) Can being scared cause tummy aches? Naive theories, ambiguous evidence, and preschoolers' causal inferences. Developmental psychology 43(5):1124–39.Google Scholar
Shaw, A., Montinari, N., Piovesan, M., Olson, K. R., Gino, F. & Norton, M. I. (2014) Children develop a veil of fairness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 143(1):363–75.Google Scholar
Shweder, R. A., Turiel, E. & Much, N. C. (1981) The moral intuitions of the child. In: Social cognitive development: Frontiers and possible futures, ed. Flavell, J. H. & Ross, L., pp. 288–305. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (2011) Emotion and reliability in moral psychology. Emotion Review 3(3):288–89.Google Scholar
Smetana, J. G. (2006) Social-cognitive domain theory: Consistencies and variations in children's moral and social judgments. In: Handbook of moral development, ed. Killen, M. & Smetana, J., pp. 119–53. Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Sobel, D. M. & Kirkham, N. Z. (2006) Blickets and babies: The development of causal reasoning in toddlers and infants. Developmental Psychology 44:1103–15.Google Scholar
Sobel, D. M. & Kushnir, T. (2013) Knowledge matters: How children evaluate the reliability of testimony as a process of rational inference. Psychological Review 120(4):779–97.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2016) A natural history of human morality. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Warneken, F. & Tomasello, M. (2006) Altruistic helping in human infants and young chimpanzees. Science 311(5765):1301–303.Google Scholar
Xu, F. & Kushnir, T. (2013) Infants are rational constructivist learners. Current Directions in Psychological Science 22(1): 28–32.Google Scholar