Moral Perception: A New Construct?.

What leads to the blatant incongruity between reality and perception with which individuals and groups perceive moral events in the world? This paper focuses on a few of the elements involved in the interpretation of the events that may lead to different perspectives, suggesting a new construct--moral perception. Rest (1983) expanded the psychological notion of morality by proposing a model of moral behavior based on four psychological processes--moral sensitivity, moral judgment, moral motivation, and ego strength. The paper explores the nature of the first component, moral sensitivity, by reformulating it into two parts, moral perception and moral interpretation. The paper also presents findings of a study that examined whether or not there are encoding differences for moral, social, and nonsocial perception. The study tested the hypothesis that moral interaction and social interaction enhance encoding of events. A total of 556 volunteers from introductory psychology classes responded to slides that depicted people engaged in either nonsocial, social, or moral interactions. Based on responses, the sample was divided into a highand a low-recall group. Low recallers best remembered the moral interactions, followed by the social interactions, and then by the nonsocial interactions. However, the high-recall group, who had better memories for everything, best remembered the nonsocial interactions, followed by the social, and then by the moral interactions. (Contains 12 references.) (LMI) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** MORAL PERCEPTION: A NEW CONSTRUCT? Darcia Narvaez, University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development 206 Burton Hall, 178 Pillsbury Dr. SE, Minneapolis, MN 554551 1996 American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. In the video tape involving Rodney King and Los Angeles police officers, the viewer's immediate conceptualization, based on perceptual cues and background knowledge, is that the police are beating up Mr. King. In contrast, the jury in the State case found the officers not guilty of excessive violence and other charges. The two groups of viewers had different mental models (Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978) of the situation. Why this discrepancy in viewpoints? What led to the difference? What leads to the blatant incongruity with which individuals and groups perceive moral events in the world? This paper will focus on a few of the elements involved in the interpretation of the events that may have led to different perspectives, suggesting a new construct, moral perception. A first attempt at empirically exploring these dimensions will also be described. Research in the area of automatic, unconscious processes is a frontier in cognitive science (Azar, 1996) and is demonstrating that the mind responds to environmental cues automatically before they are consciously processed (Uleman & Bargh, 1989) in both social and nonsocial situations (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). Priming studies indicate that people are unconsciously influenced in their actions and reactions by previous stimuli (ibid.). Rest (1983) has expanded the psychological notion of morality by proposing a fourcomponent model of moral behavior which postulates four psychological processes that must have occurred prior to the completion of a moral action. The first is moral sensitivity, the For a more detailed paper with a review of literature, please write the author.