The Psychology of Ethics
On the role of ethics in individual development and the require to develop a comprehensive psychology of ethics
Ethics is a quite relevant location in the study of psychology as ethical values on what is wrong and what is perfect relate directly to an individual's moral standing in society. Our ethical standards could closely associate with our moral standards although morality is far more individualistic and moral standards could vary between cultures, societies and religions. Ethical standards are yet much more general as they depend on our basic human nature and human values and ethical values are even more human and therefore more about psychological dynamics than the moral values. But ethics is regarded as as a branch of moral philosophy
In a study of the Psychology of Ethics it is valuable to distinguish in between ethics and morality and a Psychology of Ethics would be more about values of becoming human whereas Moral Psychology especially offers with concerns of morality. Moral psychology or psychology of morality is thus regarded as a component of the broader psychology of ethics. Ethics offers with morality as well as concerns of proper and wrong, moral and immoral, virtue and vice, beneficial and evil and responsibilities of becoming human.
Ethical philosophy also shows how ethical judgments and ethical statements or attitudes are formed. Ethics was studied in philosophy from the days of Socrates and Aristotle and was associated to self realization about the needs of the human condition. Performing the ideal factor at the right time and in the right manner for the proper cause is considered virtuous and ethical. But a psychology of ethics would involve way more than just understanding moral values and appreciation of the human condition. The psychology of ethics is about our simple beliefs and attitudes and the formation of these beliefs as also how our value systems are shaped in childhood via moral development. Psychoanalysis and social and developmental psychology could use a range of theories to explain ethical development in young children and adults.
Freud has made use of the ideas of Id, Ego and Superego to recommend that the superego serves as a moral filter and assists folks to choose what is right and what is wrong. The id, ego and superego are described as the 3 parts of the psychic apparatus with the id becoming the instincts and base desires, the ego is the realistic part that balances the desires and the superego is that which monitors and controls and the component that has a strict moral dimension. The superego is therefore the part of the psyche that offers moral values and triggers us towards moral justification. This indicates we seek an ethical explanation of behavior or tend to consciously or unconsciously behave in a particular way because of the underlying ethical desires.
Apart from psychoanalysis that would clarify ethics mainly as a mechanism controlled and directed by the Superego so that all dark unethical desires are somehow filtered, ethical development is also explained with social and moral psychology.
In social psychology belonging to a group would mean following simple standards of conformity and conformity determines the extent to which social behavior would be in accordance with what the society accepts or considers as typical. Regular behavior would in truth be closely related to ethical behavior thus within the context of social psychology, ethics is about conformity and doing what is right according to social standards or values. If we consider developmental psychology, individual needs are met via social conformity as following ethical standards and engaging in ethical behavior would be continually rewarding to an individual and would encourage or reinforce ethical standards. Ethics fulfils our social and recognition wants and our moral desires of regulating our desires. So psychoanalysis would take into consideration ethics as the moral aspect of our psychic structure and according to social psychology theories ethics is important to group behavior and conformity as ethics according to social theories is an necessary social developmental method in our interaction. Some of the questions that would be central to the psychology of ethics are the stages associated to the development of ethics. This would be similar to moral development while ethical values and beliefs would be distinct and in contrast to general morality can be shaped even at old age.
The slight distinction among ethics and morality apart from the reality that ethics is a component of broader moral psychology is that ethics could be changeable or related to attitudes that may perhaps adjust with time. For example euthanasia is an ethical choice and doctors or nurses who face such a scenario in their profession depends on their ethical stance and this could be affected by what they have learnt in their profession, their years of encounter and their personal upbringing or value systems.
In some situations, circumstances could decide ethical possibilities as also social systems and folks and their thoughts are influenced by other people in ethical development offering the social theory of ethics. However precise theories such as cognitive dissonance theory could explain ethics as a transform of behavior or attitudes by way of discomfort with a particular view of issues. If certain actions are basically incongruent with attitudes held then the folks will either have to adjust their actions or their attitudes and therefore private ethics would also change. Evolutionary psychology also explains our moral and ethical development as when we are regularly rewarded by society for particular behavior, we would naturally contemplate these as positive and this would then be socially acceptable and ethical. Behaviors rewarded over time are lastly noticed as ethical and ideal.
The psychology of ethics will have to encompass theories from psychoanalysis, evolutionary psychology and social and developmental psychology to give a comprehensive understanding of moral development and adjustments in the development of ethics. Ethics would be affected by the unchangeable element of simple values that we hold and the changeable element of encounter as ethics are values shaped and even changed by experience.
The stages of ethical development will have the common structure of social and moral development as folks go by way of guilt in childhood (of mischief and so on.) by means of group conformity and learns what is suitable and what is incorrect. This is developed further in adolescence which is marked by identity crisis (as suggested by psychologists including Erikson) and ethics is formed in young adulthood as part of this identity consolidation. When a 20 year old man says to himself 'I think cheating is wrong' he is suggesting that his sense of ethics is connected to his sense of identity. Finally in middle and late adulthood experiential modifications might lead to adjust of ethics and the final stage of reflection and evaluation in which there is evaluation and the will need to defend one's own ethical beliefs and attitudes. The stages of ethical development could be therefore given as guilt-group conformity-identity crisis- identity consolidation-experiential adjust-evaluation or defense.
Psychoanalysis and the role of superego could recommend why ethics are formed in humans and the general interplay in between the psychic structure and the formation of ethics. Evolutionary psychology shows the interplay of the biological structure or human body systems and ethics formation and suggest how ethics are formed more than quite a few years of evolution and social psychology shows the general interplay of social structures and formation of ethics or value systems and highlights the basis of ethics in society telling us what ethics are formed according to the demands of society. Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality with an emphasis on social systems could also present insights on the study of the formation of attitudes, values and ethics.
Along with the social, developmental, psychoanalytic and evolutionary dimensions of ethics, it is necessary to delineate the kinds of ethical choices for example ethics from a legal perspective, ethics from a moral perspective, ethics from an educational perspective, ethics from medical perspective and so on. Enterprise ethics, legal ethics, medical ethics and all branches of ethics will have to look into the psychological stages of ethical development with social, psychoanalytic, evolutionary theories.
from Reflections in Psychology - Component II - Saberi Roy (2010)
