THE FORMS AND FUNCTIONS OF REAL-LIFE MORAL DECISION-MAKING

People rarely make the types of moral judgement evoked by Kohlberg's t est when they make moral decisions in their everyday lives. The antici pated consequences of real-life moral decisions, to self and to others , may influence moral choices and the structure of moral reasoning. To understand real-life moral judgement we must attend to its functions, which, although they occasionally involve resolving hypothetical mora l dilemmas like those on Kohlberg's test, more often involve promoting good social relations, upholding favourable self-concepts and justify ing self-interested behaviour. We argue that a functional model of mor al judgement and moral behaviour derived from evolutionary theory may supply a better account of real-life morality than the Kohlbergian mod el.