Philosophical and psychological opinion is divided over whether moral sensitivity, understood as the ability to pick out a situation's morally salient features, necessarily involves emotional engagement. This paper seeks to offer insight into this question. It reasons that if moral sensitivity does draw significantly on affective capacities of…

Heavy alcohol consumption is prevalent on many college campuses and alcohol use has been linked to suicidal behavior. The present study examined reasons for living in 287 college students with varying levels of risk for alcohol-related problems. With the exception of the moral objections subscale of the Reasons for Living Inventory, significant…

Male perpetrated sexual aggression has long been recognized as a serious problem on college campuses. The purpose of this multiple regression correlation study was to assess the relationship between levels of moral development (measured by the Defining Issues Test) and the degree to which first-year college men (N = 161) ascribed to rape…

In this brief response, Carla Payne comments on Karen Hornsby's "Developing and Assessing Undergraduate Students' Moral Reasoning Skills" (EJ1137006). Payne agrees with Hornsby's statement that the development of "moral reasoning skills" is a very desirable outcome for an ethics course, yet takes issue with Hornsby not sticking…

This paper selectively reviews the literature on the moral emotions (empathy, guilt, shame and embarrassment) and moral reasoning from the perspective of affective cognitive neuroscience. Simulation based accounts of emotional empathy based on the human mirror neuron system appear inadequate. Instead, emotional empathy may be better considered as…

We propose that social psychological findings on the intuitive bases of moral judgment have broad implications for moral education. The "five foundations theory of intuitive ethics" is applied to explain a longstanding rift in moral education as an ideological disagreement about which moral intuitions should be endorsed and cultivated.…

Recent trends in school curricula place a heavy focus on the improvement of basic skills test scores. As a result, the role of character education has been diminished. This article provides a rationale for the incorporation of a character education program within the school curricula, a working definition of character education, and the role of…

In the United States, there are approximately 244 Catholic colleges and universities that together form an "incomparable centre of creativity and dissemination of knowledge for the good of humanity." These societies of scholars and learners are not cloisters removed from civic life; they are apostolic in nature, called to "an institutional…

In 2003, the Paris-based theatre company Theatre du Soleil launched "Le Dernier Caravanserail: Odyssees", a collaborative creation based on stories that company members had collected from refugees at the Sangatte refugee camp outside Calais, among other locations. Scenes of moral reasoning dotted the six-hour spectacle, calling to mind…

Recent research in moral psychology has attempted to characterize patterns of moral judgments of actions in terms of the causal and intentional properties of those actions. The present study directly compares the roles of consequence, causation, belief and desire in determining moral judgments. Judgments of the wrongness or permissibility of…

Moral socialization of students consists of five elements: process, subject, agent, content and pattern. This paper discusses the studies of the former three: their progress and perplexities, covering the following puzzles: "Why does the youth socialization take longer time?" "Are there any critical periods in student…

A commonly accepted belief is that the violence depicted in television programs, particularly cartoons, has a negative impact on young children's behavior. However, young children may be less inclined to emulate violent actions seen on television than currently thought. Research indicates that young children have limited comprehension of…

This article examines the "back to tradition" movement in Chinese schools and its political nature. It focuses on the launch of the "education in Chinese traditional virtues" project in the 1980s and various new developments at the present time, which continue a revival of Confucianism in Chinese society and education. The…

The growing political, social and scientific attention that is being devoted to the moral aspects of teaching has implications for teacher education. This paper reports on a study of the actual moral education practices of 54 teacher educators within one institution. We encouraged these teacher educators to make their values explicit and to…

Is ethical leadership possible in the politics of this era? Had the question no specific time frame, the answer might be yes, or at least yes and no. In the 21st century, the idea that people can expect ethical leadership in American politics is to believe that hope triumphs over experience. The purpose of politics is no longer to do what is right…