Moral Judgment in Autism

Abstract

Haidt (2001) defined morality as an evaluation (good or bad) of the actions or character of a person and is made with respect to a set of virtues held to be obligatory by a culture or subculture. This definition remarks its nature shortly but it does not express all aspects of morality. So what is morality? What is the role of morality in our human society? Is morality nature or nurture? There are many questions about morality. Therefore, it is needed to review the history of moral study first and list related theories. In the first period, morality is dealt as a philosophical problem. Plato was the first person to think ethics philosophically in the 4th century B.C.. In the next period, Socrates turned the philosophical/theoretical questions to the practical human questions. After that, Aristotle discussed morality in his book “Nicomachean Ethics”. As same as Socrates, Aristotle thought ethics as practical matters. In the Aristotle’s work, his main insistence was that good behavior is moderate behavior, not extreme behavior, and good life would be given by the appropriate/moderate judgment in each situation. His theory affected tons of later philosophers. In the third period, morality was treated as social philosophy. In 1759, Adam Smith wrote “The Theory of Moral Sentiments” from the view point of social philosophy. In his work, he discussed that the impartial spectator’s view makes human act as unobjectionable and judge the propriety of other’s behaviors. In the fourth period, morality is dealt from the view of development. In the 20th century, Piaget (1932) proposed his moral developmental theory that morality has been acquired through a childhood and Kohlberg (1969) improved Piaget’s theory. The contexts of their theories would be explained later. After that, Eisenberg (1979) shed the light on the positive aspect like pro-social values of moral development although prohibition is needed when a child learns morality in their theories. Moreover, Turiel (1980, 1983) proposed a new moral developmental theory that morality and social convention are different and they have different developmental processes. These almost theories are focused on moral development but Gilligan (1982) focused on the moral differences between genders that males are justice-based moral evaluations and females are care-based ones. As same as Gilligan (1982), Eisenberg (1989) gave an equivalent value to justice-based and care-based moralities and used the next six levels; self-centered reasoning, needs-oriented reasoning, stereotyped and/or approval-oriented reasoning, empathetic reasoning, partly internalized principles, and strongly internalized principles. Like these, many moral theories has been proposed.