Five moralities and development

Although MFT is currently actively utilised in moral psychology studies, there have not been many attempts to relate or integrate MFT with the theories of development. In other words, there have been no serious attempts to describe or conceptualise how moral thinking develops from the perspective of moral foundations, such as whether or not there are common changes in the use of foundations as individuals grow older. This likely steins from the fact that basic assumptions about the nature of morality and moral decision-making differ between the cognitive-developmental approaches (e.g., Kohlberg, 1984) and MFT (cf. Maxwell & Narvaez, 2013). In addition, MFT has a focus on the content of moral thinking and reasoning, whereas cognitive-developmental approaches focus on the structure.

However, there are actually some studies measuring the associations between moral foundations and moral schemas as measured by the Defining Issues Test (DIT). The DIT is a method used in the neo-Kohlbergian approach that corresponds to Kohlberg’s stages of moral reasoning (for the description of the stages and their relationships, see Chapter 5). Baril and Wright (2012) found an overlap between the DIT’s personal interest schema and Kohlberg’s stages 2/3 with the loyalty/betrayal foundation, and another association was found between the maintaining norms schema that corresponds to Kohlberg’s stage 4 and to the authority/ subversion foundation. In addition, in a study by Clover and colleagues (2014), the binding foundations positively predicted the maintaining nonns schema and negatively predicted the postconventional schema, which represents Kohlberg’s stages 5 and 6. However, there were no significant associations between the individualising foundations and moral schemas.

The above findings suggest that moral foundations may be more representative of conventional reasoning (Kohlberg’s stages 3 and 4) than postconventional reasoning (stages 5 and 6; Glover et al., 2014). Indirectly, these findings may also indicate that a Kohlbergian definition of morality is not as narrow as commonly assumed. This issue also warrants further research because Kohlberg’s model of moral development has been accused of favouring Western liberal traditions (e.g., Graham et al., 2013).

Furthermore, at least theoretically, it is possible to assume that developmental changes also appear within moral foundations. As presented in detail below, Jensen (2008, 2011) proposed that there appear to be developmental shifts in the use of Shwe-der’s three ethics that share similarities with moral foundations. It seems that there are developmental changes in the types of concepts used within autonomy, community, and divinity. However, again, the development of the ethic of divinity is still rather unexplored (Jensen, 2008, 2011; Jensen & McKenzie, 2016). The three ethics are conceptually very close to the five moral foundations. More precisely, the care/harm and fairness/cheating foundations share similarities with the ethics of autonomy; the loyalty/betrayal and authority/subversion foundations with the ethics of community; and finally, the sanctity/degradation foundation with the ethics of divinity (Makiniemi, 2016; Sverdlik et al., 2012) (see Table 6.1). Consequently, one could assume that moral foundations develop in similar vein given that they have so much in common with the three ethics. However, this assumption should be validated with empirical data. It is worth noting that, with this approach, it is possible to find out only how the content of moral thinking varies and changes across individuals since the three ethics and the foundations refer to the content of moral thinking.

So, are there any potential theoretical approaches for a researcher who is especially interested in a more structural development of moral thinking and wants to take into account the possibility that there are at least five different types of moral issues? As mentioned earlier, the common view is that with Kohlberg’s (1984) theory, it is possible to explore justice-based morality, which corresponds quite closely to the fairness/cheating moral foundation. Similarly, Gilligan’s (1982) model fits well for measuring the development of care-based morality, which is conceptually close to the care/harm moral foundation (cf. Chapter 5; see Table 6.1).

However, there are three other moral foundations left, and it is likely that the above-mentioned approaches are not able to cover their special aspects.

The first solution could be to develop three new models for describing the development of the remaining foundations. This assumption is in line with the existence of many domain-specific developmental models. These kinds of models imply specific development patterns relative to particular issues; in other words, morality does not necessarily develop in the same way as critical thinking or logical reasoning, for instance. The second - and likely more promising — option could be to apply more general approaches for measuring the development of morality and moral foundations. This assumption can be justified with the notion that cognitive development appears to be quite similar within many domains (Makiniemi, 2016). For example, based on the work of Kramer (1983), Kallio (2011) has suggested that, in many models, cognitive development proceeds from youth to adulthood through three phases, which are single perspective, multiperspective, and integrative thinking (see Chapter 2). In practice, thinking develops in these models from the “either-or” type of thinking, which is typical in youth, to the “both-and” type of thinking, which is assumed to be typical in adulthood. Integrative (or relativistic-dialectical) thinking combines these two types of reasoning.

Moreover, Myyry and her colleagues (Myyry & Helkama, 2007; Vartiainen, Siponen, & Myyry, 2011) examined the complexity of moral thinking in moral conflicts utilising the theory of integrative complexity, which can also be seen as a general type of approach. Integrative complexity refers to an individual’s cognitive style and ways of information processing. Integrative complexity incorporates the two cognitive structural properties of differentiation and integration. Differentiation refers to the number of characteristics or dimensions of a problem that an individual figures out, and integration refers to the development of complex connections among the characteristics (Suedfeld, Tetlock, & Streufert, 1992). Integrative complexity emphasises the structure of moral thought rather than its content, and therefore, it can be used to analyse the integrative complexity of any issue. From the

TABLE 6.1 Five types of moral issues. Adapted from Sverdlik et al. (2012) and Makiniemi (2016)

developmental point of view, it is also possible to measure how integrative complexity of moral thinking develops or changes due to aging, or for example, due to ethical training or education. In line with the previous notions, Dawson and Gabrielian (2003) have proposed that one potential approach for investigating the structural development of moral thinking would be a domain-general method called the Hierarchical Complexity Scoring System (for more information, see Commons, 2008; Commons, Gane-McCalla, Barker, & Li, 2014; Fischer, 1980; see also Makiniemi, 2016; see Chapter 2).