Who cares? Generativity and the moral emotions, part 2: A "social intuitionist model" of moral motivation

Abstract

Part 1 in this three-part series proposed a new direction for theory and research in the "psychology of ultimate concerns" (Emmons, 1999) to be organized around Erik Erikson's (2000) socio-moral and motivational views of generative care (less stage- and age-related). The present article takes the next step, suggesting that further development of "project eudaimonia" (Flanagan, 2007) requires a more systematic model of the sources of moral motivation by which persons are moved to care, and processes whereby persons might "expand" (Stern, 2004) their motive and capacity for generative care, i.e., to take care of the strengths-development of cared for others (Erikson, 2000). The purpose of this article is to introduce a specific model of moral motivation, a "Social Intuitionist Model" of moral motivation (SIM motivation) that derives from Haidt's (2001) model of moral judgment. The article first describes Haidt's original model; second, it expands the SIM into a model of moral motivation; and third, it discusses the implications of the model for the relational spirituality paradigm. The SIM motivation encompasses six domains or sources of moral motivation and related developmental processes: tuning-up moral intuitions, amplifying moral emotions, expanding moral virtues, integrating moral values, sharpening moral reasoning, and strengthening moral will. In particular, this model highlights the critical roles played by three implicit-procedural domains of motivation: moral intuitions, moral emotions, and moral virtues. This article series extends the author's recent proposal for a moral motive approach to emotion and transformation in the relational spirituality paradigm (Leffel, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c).