Broadening the view of morality, and a study of moral development 1

This chapter analyses how the conceptualisation of what is moral has broadened in recent decades and how it influences the study of moral development. We begin with a brief discussion of the definitions of morality and moral domain, and present three key theories of morality. The first one is the Big Three model of morality by Richard Shweder and colleagues (Shweder, Much, Mahapatra, & Park, 1997) and it includes the moral codes of Autonomy, Community, and Divinity. The second key theory is Moral Foundations Theory by Jonathan Haidt and colleagues (Haidt & Kesebir, 2010), which includes five different moral foundations. The third is the cultural-developmental model by Lene Arnett Jensen (2008) and it focuses on the interaction between development and culture in moral thinking. The key conclusion is that the definitions of morality have gone through profound changes and become broader and varied. The three models address the diversity in the definitions of morality and its development. However, what they do not (yet) address is the context-dependence of moral concerns. Finally, we suggest new ways to study morality and moral development.