Developing Judgments about Moral Obligation

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Morality would not be morality without obligations. Obligations prescribe moral actions that it would be wrong not to do. Obligations call on us to save lives or protest injustice, whether we want to or not. But despite the centrality of obligations to human morality, they have received little attention from moral psychologists (Tomasello, 2020). This symposium showcases recent empirical and theoretical advances addressing fundamental questions about the developmental psychology of moral obligations: How does obligation shape the way we evaluate others and judge their responsibility to help? What is the psychological difference between doing a good thing out of obligation and doing a good thing out of the kindness of one’s heart?

The first paper investigates moral judgments about obligatory and supererogatory actions (those that go above and beyond one’s moral duty), and finds that children praise morally obligatory actions more than supererogatory actions, inverting adults’ judgments. The second explores the question of cultural variation by examining how children in four countries judge the obligations of bystanders, finding that younger children universally view bystanders as obligated to intervene, but with age, judgments begin to vary across cultures. The third explores when and how children and adults make complex moral judgments that go beyond unidimensional evaluations of good-bad or right-wrong, such as separating obligation from supererogation. The discussant, an internationally recognized leader in the study of children’s moral cognition, will highlight areas of agreement and disagreement across the presentations and identify core questions for the study of how moral obligations develop.

Sub Unit

• Moral Development

Chair

• Umang Khan, University of Toronto

Discussant

• Paul Bloom, Yale University

Individual Presentations

• Going Above and Beyond? Early Reasoning About Which Moral Acts Matter Most - Presenting Author: Umang Khan, University of Toronto; Maia Jaffer-Diaz; Anahid Najafizadeh; Christina Starmans, University of Toronto

• Cross-Cultural Conceptions of Third-Party Intervention Across Childhood - Presenting Author: Julia Marshall, Boston College; Anton Gollwitzer, Yale University; Kellen Mermin-Bunnell, Yale University; Jan Retelsdorf, University of Hamburg; Paul Bloom, Yale University

• Beyond One-Dimensional Evaluations: The Case for Complex Moral Judgments Across Development - Presenting Author: Audun Dahl, University of California - Santa Cruz; Talia Waltzer, University of California - San Diego; Arvid Samuelson, University of Maryland - College Park; Rebekkah Lauren Gross; Catherine Siefert; Anjuli Corzine