ABSTRACT
The Cambridge Dictionary of the English Language defines conscience as “the part of you that judges the morality of your own actions and makes you feel guilty about bad things that you have done or things you feel responsible for”. This judging, evaluating, feature of conscience is found in classical definitions across cultures, along with the notion that conscience not only judges what we have done, but prods us into action in order to act on behalf of what we esteem to be decent, and good, and to repair what we feel we may have transgressed as a value, or damaged in the social contract or compact of which we are a part. Conscience typically is thought to include notions of justice and care; principles of fairness and of concern for the vulnerable; equitable distribution of goods and consequences; and solicitude, or a concern that the welfare of all be taken into account when considering the value of a given behaviour, which may include thought and/or concrete, observable, action. This would seem an apt point of departure for this chapter, in that it provides a purview of the dimensions we might hope psychological science would have taken into account in endeavouring to better understand the structure and development of conscience, and, for our purposes, some of the ways in which psychologists have studied the question of religious elements, such as religious belief, religious experience, and religious practice (belonging to a religious group or tradition, regularly participating in religious activities, attending religious services, etc.) in relationship to how people come to be, or not, conscientious about the impact they have on the lives of others, both in the immediate spheres of their lives and in the broader context of social participation (in institutions, civic society, national life, global concerns, etc.).
As we shall see, psychologists have paid attention to these questions in at least four identifiable areas of scientific research: the role of religious elements in the development of pro-social behaviour, prejudice, empathy development, and moral decision-making. We shall briefly examine each of these in turn, before elaborating on examining a large-scale, international, and interreligious developmental study of religiously committed young people and their uses of religious elements in the making of moral decisions.
