ABSTRACT
Morality and antisocial behavior Morality is essentially concerned with the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ of social behavior, and therefore, provides a system for regulating what is permissible. But on what basis do we decide what is right or wrong? Many of the social rules we follow are arbitrary: words or gestures that cause extreme offence in one country may be harmless in another; and certain forms of dress code may be normal in one culture but deemed intolerably immodest by another. Broadly speaking, we can discriminate between two different kinds of social norms: conventional norms and moral norms (Turiel, 1983). Examples of conventional norms include not swearing or vomiting in public, dressing neatly for a job interview, and shaking hands when being introduced. Examples of moral norms include not causing deliberate mental or physical harm to others. These norms may have different origins. Conventional norms may originate via consensus or authority (relating to group conformity), whereas moral norms may ultimately depend on many of the socio-cognitive processes discussed previously, such as empathy, fairness, and mentalizing. Children as young as 4 years old have an intuitive sense of the moral-conventional distinction. For instance, they realize that there are often good reasons for breaking conventional, but not moral, norms (Smetana, 1981, 1985). However, some adults – such as murderers – do sometimes fail to make this distinction (Blair, 1995), as shown in Figure 10.1.
