Orlando Lourenço

The multifaceted phenomenon of 'happy victimizers': A cross-cultural comparison of moral emotions

This study examines whether German and Portuguese 5- to 6-, and 8- to 9-year-old children distinguish between the feelings attributed to a victimizer or to themselves if they were the victimizers in two hypothetical moral violations (stealing and breaking a promise), and how they morally evaluate the emotions they attribute to victimizers and the person of the victimizer. The results showed that in spite of some developmental and cultural differences, childrens attribution of negative emotions was substantively more frequent when they made attributions to themselves. Furthermore, most children judged the positive (immoral) emotions they had attributed to victimizers as not right and evaluated the person of the hypothetical victimizer negatively. The results clarify contradictory findings in the field and may provide a better understanding of the moral and developmental meaning of the positive and negative emotions attributed in acts of victimization.

Water, Air, Fire, and Earth A Developmental Study in Portugal of Environmental Moral Reasoning

This study contributes to our understanding of the origins and development of the human relationship with nature. The authors interviewed 120 participants (aged approximately 10 years, 5 months; 13 years, 6 months; 16 years, 7 months; and 19 years, 4 months) in Lisbon, Portugal, about environmental moral issues that involved water pollution, air pollution, forest fires, and logging. Results showed that participants conceived of polluting their localwaterway as a violation of a moral obligation. Participants’ justifications for these and other evaluations included both anthropocentric appeals (e.g., to personal interests, human welfare, and aesthetics) and biocentric appeals (e.g., that nature has intrinsic value or rights). Participants’ conceptions of living in harmony with nature showed a developmental trend. Finally, cross-cultural comparisons with studies conducted in the United States and the Brazilian Amazon support theproposition that therearesubstantial similarities in the environmental moral reasoning of young people across diverse cultures.

Reflections on Narrative Approaches to Moral Development

Recent narrative, contextual, and postmodern approaches to the study of moral development are examined relative to Kohlberg’s justice-based theory of moral development. The comparison proceeds along five dimensions – values relevance, legitimacy, universality, rationality, and commensurability. Contrary to Kohlberg’s alternatives, narrative approaches may lead to contradiction in terms of epistemology, to nihilism in terms of moral choices, and to opportunism in terms of psychological and social relationships. Although of value as a means for understanding human experiences of conflict and moral choice, narrative approaches run the risk of losing their contextual and nonnormative character when they become theories of moral development.

Making sense of Turiel's dispute with Kohlberg: the case of the child's moral competence

Abstract This study attempts to make conceptual and empirical sense of Turiels dispute with Kohlberg concerning the childs moral competence. Forty-eight children from two age-levels (24 6-year-olds, and 24 8-year-olds; Experiment 1), and 20 young adults aged between 17 and 21 years (Experiment 2) were confronted with hypothetical situations in which two apparently immoral acts (stealing and lying) were right if a principled or reversible exchange of perspectives were adopted. Contrary to what would be expected from Turiels claim about the childs sophisticated moral competence, children, but not young adults, judged the acts at hand more in accord with a pattern of pseudo-moral necessity or fuzzy traces of morality than with a pattern of a developing idea of principled morality or “necessary” moral knowledge. The paper also argues that one is in a better position to make sense of Turiels dispute with Kohlberg when one becomes aware of (a) Wittgensteins idea of grammatical investigations, (b) Piagets distinction between false, true, and necessary (cognitive) knowledge, and (c) Kohlbergs distinction between pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional moral reasoning as a distinction that, to an extent, corresponds in the moral domain to Piagets epistemic types of knowledge in the cognitive domain.

The danger of words: a Wittgensteinian lesson for developmentalists☆

Abstract Borrowing from Wittgensteins and Drurys ideas, this article shows that, by overlooking Wittgensteins message about the danger of words and the importance of the grammar and clarification of concepts, some developmentalists sometimes fall prey to the fallacy of the alchemists, the fallacy of Molieres doctor, the fallacy of the “missing hippopotamus”, the fallacy of Van Helmont, and the fallacy of “Pickwickian senses”. As a result of these fallacies, the field of development (and psychology) is paved with ungrounded concepts, circular explanations, untenable reifications, misleading and nonsensical conclusions, and a mix-up of language-games. We suggest that to remedy such state of affairs psychologists should not ignore or overlook Wittgensteins message about the danger of words to bewitch our thought, and should take his conceptual or grammatical investigations, not suspiciously, but as a preliminary and indispensable step to set the stage for appropriate factual and functional investigations, and for intelligible, coherent, and meaningful theoretical presumptions.

Reinstating Modernity in Social Science Research – or – The Status of Bullwinkle in a Post-Postmodern Era

In recent years, postmodern critiques have enlarged in scope, and increasingly confronted traditional social scientists with challenges: epistemic, methodological, and moral. In this article, we offer a two-pronged response. First, we speak to problems within postmodern theory itself. We argue that, when taken seriously, the theory leads to contradictions in epistemology, to fragmentation in knowledge, to opportunism in interpersonal relationships, and to nihilism in moral action and commitment. Second, we demonstrate how many of the legitimate concerns of postmodernists can and are addressed in current ‘modern’ research programs. It is our hope that postmodernity – for those who believe that that is where we are – will give way to the post-postmodern era: modernity itself, reinvigorated.

Children's appraisals of antisocial acts: A Piagetian perspective

This study examines developmental aspects of childrens appraisals of antisocial acts by integrating the two micromodels Piaget used at different points in his research programme to describe and explain the childs transition from pre-operational to operational thought. One model guided by game theory involves a cost-gain evaluation, and is mainly a functional model (Piaget, 1957); the other, based on equilibration theory, appeals to the initial priority of affirmations over negations, and is mainly a structural model (Piaget, 1975). The integration of these two models leads to the prediction that while younger children tend to perceive antisocial acts in terms of gain-perception and affirmation, older children tend to think of them in terms of cost-construction and negation. The participants were 96 children from three age levels (32 5-6-year-olds, 32 7-8-year-olds, and 32 10-11-year-olds). They were first confronted with four hypothetical antisocial scenarios and were then asked to engage in a task measuring gain-perception/cost-construction for each one. Childrens responses showed that they are more likely with age to consider prototypical antisocial acts (e.g. stealing, pushing) in terms of cost-construction and negation than gain-perception and affirmation. In addition to supporting the hypothesized prediction, this finding may turn out to be of value in the design of further research and provide a better understanding of some developmental aspects reported in the literature on childrens antisocial behaviour.

Why be moral? In defense of a Kohlbergian approach

This article revolves around the “Why be moral?” question, a fundamental ethical question raised by Kohlberg and Ryncarz (1990) in the field of moral development. The study is in three parts. In the first part, Introduction, I refer to this fundamental ethical question and the questions related to it. In the second part, I compare Kohlberg’s response to that question and the questions related to it with those given, implicitly or explicitly, by other relevant figures of developmental psychology. Contrary to other developmental psychologists, I argue that, for several reasons, Kohlberg’s response to the why be moral question is more complete and deeper than that presented by the relevant developmental figures analyzed in this article. Despite this, I recognize that, as far as the other questions associated with the why be moral question are concerned, all those figures made important contributions to a better understanding of one’s moral functioning, and that some of them explored moral issues, which, to some extent, were overlooked by Kohlberg. In the third part, Final Words, I summarize the main ideas of the paper and enumerate several reasons why Kohlberg’s answer to the why be moral question is the most complete and deepest one among those presented so far in the field of moral development.