In the first 20 years of the 21st century, research on morality grew exponentially in social sciences and related fields. A corresponding upsurge in the field of moral education has not been observed. It appears that there is a widening gap between the science of morality and the field of moral education, which once were closely interconnected…

Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is an empirically based organismic theory of human motivation, development, and well-being that shares many points of interest with the fields of moral development and moral education. Yet, SDT has been largely disconnected from these fields so far. How can we define and empirically assess autonomous moral…

This paper aims at connecting Self-Determination Theory (SDT) with research on moral identity. It is argued that SDT provides a unique and integrative framework for addressing important questions that have guided research on moral identity for many years: What is a moral identity? How is it linked to moral action? How do moral identities develop?…

Moral identity research to date has largely failed to provide evidence for developmental trends in moral identity, presumably because of restrictions in the age range of studies and the use of moral identity measures that are insensitive to age-related change. The present study investigated moral identity motivation across a broad age range (14-65…

This study examined the role of aggressiveness and parenting in the development of children's moral self-concept. Participants were 198 elementary school children and their parents (M = 8.65 years, SD = 2.44). Participants completed a structured moral self puppet interview and a questionnaire about their relationship to parents. Parents completed…

This article addresses the question of why the emotions children and adolescents anticipate in the context of hypothetical scenarios have been repeatedly found to predict actual (im)moral behavior. It argues that a common motivational account of this relationship is insufficient. Instead, three links are proposed that connect cognitive…

The present study investigates whether epistemic cognition in moral domain (dubbed "metaethical cognition") develops analogously to epistemic reasoning regarding empirical knowledge. The study's conceptual framework distinguishes two main areas of metaethical cognition (beliefs about the nature of moral judgments and conceptions of the process of…

Examined predictors of children's moral reasoning development over 4-year period. Found that parental and friend interaction during moral conflict discussions influenced development differently. Minimal moral development was predicted by friends' cognitive challenges to the target child's moral reasoning and by parents' interfering interactions.…

The study investigates adolescents' self-attributed moral emotions following a moral transgression by expanding research with children on the happy-victimizer phenomenon. In a sample of 200 German adolescents from Grades 7, 9, 11, and 13 (M=16.18 years, SD=2.41), participants were confronted with various scenarios describing different moral rule…

This longitudinal study examined effects of family socialization on sociomoral reasoning in the context of the peer and parent-child relationships. Subjects were 121 urban Icelandic children. Social class was constructed as a multinominal measure defined by the nature of work, education, authority, and responsibility of the parents in the work…