NATURALISTIC CONCEPTIONS OF MORALITY - A QUESTION-ANSWERING APPROACH

Psychological research on morality has been based on researchers' defi nitions of morality or on philosophical theories. The present study ex amined naturally occurring conceptions of morality by using a knowledg e-structure methodology borrowed from cognitive psychology. Subjects g enerated statements in response to a question designed to expose gener ic knowledge about their concept of morality. Answer frequency and con ceptual clustering results suggested that a variety of diverse concept s undergirded subjects' moral thinking and revealed a person-based rat her than a philosophy-based pattern for commonly held conceptions of m orality. A three-dimensional scaling solution of the responses suggest ed that conceptions of morality were characterized by individual-socia l, general-specific, and absolute-relative distinctions. These finding s raise questions about assumptions underlying previous theories of mo rality. Moreover, the present methodology offers a basis for developin g a more representative account of moral thought that depends less on the beliefs of researchers.