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Naturalistic conceptions of moral maturity.

1998; American Psychological Association; Volume: 34; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1037/0012-1649.34.3.403

1939-0599

Lawrence J. Walker, Russell C. Pitts,

Ethics in Business and Education

By examining folk conceptions of moral maturity, this project sought a more comprehensive understanding of moral excellence than Kohlberg's emphasis on principled justice reasoning.Study 1 and 2 involved different samples of 120 adults (17-25, 35-55, and 65+ years).Study 3 involved a sample of 180 undergraduates.In Study 1, a free-listing procedure was used to generate the attributes of a "highly moral person," as well as those for two related person-concepts.In Study 2, a rating procedure for these attributes was used to generate a prototype of a highly moral person.In Study 3, a similarity-sorting task was used to uncover laypeople's implicit typology of moral maturity.The findings suggest that naturalistic notions of moral excellence not only contain themes of principled reasoning, but also reference aspects of moral character and virtue that enlarge our understanding of the psychological functioning of the mature moral agent.Rare are people who so bless our lives with kindness and care that our deepest responses become similarly fashioned.On this account it is nearly impossible to fully acknowledge all that my friend and mentor, Larry Walker, has given to me.Among other things, he has stuck with me in times of illness and despair, he has shared with me his home and family, and has demonstrated a depth and scientific rigor nonpareil.If I manage to do a measure of these things with my own students, I hope it will be seen as much Larry's legacy as my own.In a similar way, I want to acknowledge my parents' support and love.It ain't easy to have a graduate school son.Michael Chandler, too, deserves thanks for his mentorship.He has shown me that psychological science can be used to pursue fundamental problems in the human condition.Also, as a member of my thesis committee, Jim Russell, provided many helpful suggestions in this endeavor.To my friends, Karl, Chris, Andrew