Morality
- LAST REVIEWED: 26 February 2013
- LAST MODIFIED: 26 February 2013
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756384-0097
- LAST REVIEWED: 26 February 2013
- LAST MODIFIED: 26 February 2013
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756384-0097
Introduction
The study of morality was once central to social thought and a primary concern of philosophers throughout recorded history. From the dawn of the social sciences, morality was considered a primary aspect of human relations; for those writing around Adam Smith’s time, the words “social” and “moral” were often used interchangeably. Early sociologists were centrally concerned with the moral aspects of society, though the concept lost its prominence as the field turned more centrally toward issues of stratification and microinteraction. In psychology, work on morality has been scattered but has experienced a recent resurgence with the advent of neurological methods alongside a variety of different approaches to understanding prosocial behavior. The terms “prosocial” and “moral” are conceptually different, though in practice much of the work on “moral” behavior assumes a prosocial assumption of morality. This article offers an overview of the relevant sociological and psychological treatments of morality useful for developing a sociology of morality. Much of the important work is found in anthropology, developmental psychology, neuroscience, and social psychology. The study of morality is fundamentally interdisciplinary. This overview is slanted toward a focus on recent contributions.
General Overviews
The works in this section provide overviews of the theory and research on morality across sociology and psychology. They constitute a good starting point for finding the range of topics that falls under the general rubric of the social science of morality. Staub 2003, Miller 2004, and Narvaez and Lapsley 2009 are all wide-ranging psychological compilations; any one is a good entrée into the psychological literature. As mentioned, recent advances in neurology and social cognition have spurred a great deal of interest in how human minds process moral information and make choices; the volumes of Sinnott-Armstrong 2008 offer the most comprehensive collection of scholars with expertise in this area. The sociology of morality (re)emerged as a field of study only in the early 21st century; the Hitlin and Vaisey 2010 handbook is an early attempt to map out the macro- and microcomponents of a field where many of the scholars do not share a focus on a collective sociological enterprise. Finally, Abend’s two papers are excellent touchstones for this enterprise; Abend 2008 discusses problems with current sociological approaches to studying morality while Abend 2010 serves as a summary statement for what has been learned in the field, what is being studied, and how much includes a reframing of older theories in new packages.
Abend, Gabriel. 2008. Two main problems in the sociology of morality. Theory and Society 37.2: 87–125.
DOI: 10.1007/s11186-007-9044-y
Abend offers a fundamental statement of the place of sociology in the study of morality, linking perspectives to work by Durkheim and Weber. He offers the view that sociologists should effectively remain agnostic on the fundamental question as to whether moral truth exists, remaining fundamentally distinct from moral philosophers.
Abend, Gabriel. 2010. What’s new and what’s old about the new sociology of morality? In Handbook of the sociology of morality. Edited by Steven Hitlin and Stephen Vaisey, 561–584. New York: Springer.
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4419-6896-8
An excellent summary of where the field of morality studies stands within sociology, helpfully outlining where sociologists have new insights into the nature of morality, and how this newer work relates to classical theories. He addresses challenges to the field that sociologists must address, by moral philosophy (seeking moral truth) and neuroscience (seeking biological aspects of morality).
Hitlin, Steven, and Stephen Vaisey, eds. 2010. Handbook of the sociology of morality. New York: Springer.
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4419-6896-8
A wide-ranging umbrella compilation of various macro- and microsociological approaches to studying morality. An attempt to create a self-conscious field among scholars who may not be familiar with each others’ work on similar topics.
Miller, Arthur G., ed. 2004. The social psychology of good and evil. New York: Guilford.
One of the foremost compilations of the leading scholars in the psychology of morality.
Narvaez, Darcia, and Daniel K. Lapsley, eds. 2009. Personality, identity, and character: Explorations in moral psychology. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.
A wide-ranging collection of psychological approaches to understanding morality at the individual level. A very good introduction to a variety of approaches and research traditions.
Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter, ed. 2008. Moral psychology. 3 vols. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Vol. 1, The evolution of morality: Adaptations and innateness; Vol. 2, The cognitive science of morality: Intuition and diversity; Vol. 3, The neuroscience of morality: Emotion, brain disorders, and development. A comprehensive collection of works by the leading psychologists and neurologists studying morality.
Staub, Ervin. 2003. The psychology of good and evil: Why children, adults, and groups help and harm others. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Staub outlines a variety of approaches understanding why individuals and groups of all sizes help or harm one another, even to the extent of committing genocide. A good introduction to the general topic of morality in psychology.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Actor-Network Theory
- Adolescence
- African Americans
- African Societies
- Agent-Based Modeling
- Aging
- Analysis, Spatial
- Analysis, World-Systems
- Anarchism
- Anomie and Strain Theory
- Arab Spring, Mobilization, and Contentious Politics in the...
- Asian Americans
- Assimilation
- Authority and Work
- Bell, Daniel
- Biosociology
- Bourdieu, Pierre
- Careers
- Caste
- Catholicism
- Causal Inference
- Chicago School of Sociology
- Children
- Chinese Cultural Revolution
- Chinese Society
- Citizenship
- Civil Rights
- Civil Society
- Class
- Cognitive Sociology
- Cohort Analysis
- Collective Efficacy
- Collective Memory
- Community
- Comparative Historical Sociology
- Comte, Auguste
- Conflict Theory
- Conservatism
- Consumer Credit and Debt
- Consumer Culture
- Consumption
- Contemporary Family Issues
- Contingent Work
- Conversation Analysis
- Corrections
- Cosmopolitanism
- Crime, Cities and
- Criminology
- Cultural Capital
- Cultural Classification and Codes
- Cultural Economy
- Cultural Omnivorousness
- Cultural Production and Circulation
- Culture and Networks
- Culture, Sociology of
- Democracy
- Demography
- Development
- Deviance
- Discrimination
- Doing Gender
- Du Bois, W.E.B.
- Durkheim, Émile
- Economic Globalization
- Economic Institutions and Institutional Change
- Economic Sociology
- Education
- Education and Health
- Education Policy in the United States
- Educational Policy and Race
- Elites
- Emotions
- Empires and Colonialism
- Entrepreneurship
- Environmental Sociology
- Epistemology
- Ethnic Enclaves
- Ethnicity
- Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis
- Exchange Theory
- Families, Postmodern
- Family
- Family Policies
- Fascism
- Feminist Theory
- Fertility
- Field, Bourdieu's Concept of
- Food
- Forced Migration
- Foucault, Michel
- Frankfurt School
- Friendship
- Gender
- Gender and Bodies
- Gender and Crime
- Gender and Education
- Gender and Health
- Gender and Incarceration
- Gender and Professions
- Gender and Social Movements
- Gender and Work
- Gender Pay Gap
- Gender, Sexuality, and Migration
- Gender Stratification
- Gender, Welfare Policy and
- Gendered Sexuality
- Genocide
- Gentrification
- Gerontology
- Ghetto
- Global Inequalities
- Globalization and Labor
- Goffman, Erving
- Habit
- Health
- Historic Preservation
- Housework
- Human Trafficking
- Identity
- Immigration
- Indian Society, Contemporary
- Institutions
- Intellectuals
- Internet
- Intersectionalities
- Intersex
- Interview Methodology
- Job Quality
- Justice
- Knowledge, Critical Sociology of
- Labor Markets
- Latino/Latina Studies
- Law and Society
- Law, Sociology of
- Leisure
- LGBT Parenting and Family Formation
- LGBT Social Movements
- Life Course
- Lipset, S.M.
- Management
- Markets, Conventions and Categories in
- Marriage and Divorce
- Marxist Sociology
- Masculinity
- Mass Incarceration in the United States and its Collateral...
- Mass Media
- Material Culture
- Mathematical Sociology
- Mead, G.H.
- Medical Sociology
- Mental Illness
- Methodological Individualism
- Middle Classes
- Migration
- Military Sociology
- Money and Credit
- Morality
- Motherhood
- Multiculturalism
- Multilevel Models
- Multiracial, Mixed-Race, and Biracial Identities
- Nationalism
- Non-normative Sexuality Studies
- Norms
- Occupations and Professions
- Organizations
- Paid Work
- Panel Studies
- Parsons, Talcott
- Policing
- Political Culture
- Political Economy
- Political Sociology
- Popular Culture
- Positivism
- Poverty
- Power
- Proletariat (Working Class)
- Protestantism
- Public Opinion
- Public Space
- Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA)
- Race
- Race and Sexuality
- Race and Violence
- Race and Youth
- Race in Global Perspective
- Race, Organizations, and Movements
- Racism
- Rational Choice
- Relationships
- Religion
- Religion and the Public Sphere
- Residential Segregation
- Revolutions
- Role Theory
- Rural Sociology
- Scientific Networks
- Secularization
- Sequence Analysis
- Sex versus Gender
- Sexual Identity
- Sexualities
- Sexuality Across the Life Course
- Simmel, Georg
- Single Parents in Context
- Skill
- Small Cities
- Social Capital
- Social Change
- Social Closure
- Social Construction of Crime
- Social Control
- Social Darwinism
- Social Disorganization Theory
- Social Epidemiology
- Social History
- Social Indicators
- Social Mobility
- Social Movements
- Social Network Analysis
- Social Networks
- Social Policy
- Social Problems
- Social Psychology
- Social Stratification
- Social Theory
- Socialization, Sociological Perspectives on
- Sociolinguistics
- Sociological Approaches to Character
- Sociological Research on the Chinese Society
- Sociological Research, Qualitative Methods in
- Sociological Research, Quantitative Methods in
- Sociology, History of
- Sociology of Manners
- Sociology of Music
- Sociology of War, The
- Sports
- Status
- Suburbanism
- Survey Methods
- Symbolic Boundaries
- Symbolic Interactionism
- The Division of Labor after Durkheim
- The State
- Tilly, Charles
- Time Use and Childcare
- Time Use and Time Diary Research
- Tourism, Sociology of
- Transnational Adoption
- Trust
- Unions and Inequality
- Urban Ethnography
- Urban Growth Machine
- Urban Inequality in the United States
- Values
- Veblen, Thorstein
- Violence
- Visual Arts, Music, and Aesthetic Experience
- Wallerstein, Immanuel
- Wealth
- Weber, Max
- Welfare, Race, and the American Imagination
- Welfare States
- Whiteness
- Women’s Employment and Economic Inequality Between Househo...
- Work and Employment, Sociology of
- Work/Life Balance
- Workplace Flexibility
- World Society/Network Society