Social Cognition and Moral Development Flashcards

Flashcards reviewing key vocabulary and concepts from the lecture on social cognition and moral development.

Social Cognition

Thinking about the perceptions, thoughts, emotions, motives, and behaviors of self, other people, groups, and even whole social systems.

Theory of Mind

Understanding that people have mental states such as desires, beliefs, and intentions, and that these mental states guide their behavior.

False Belief Task

A task that assesses the understanding that people can hold incorrect beliefs and that these beliefs, even though incorrect, can influence their behavior.

Joint Attention

The ability to share focus on an object or event with another person.

Mirror Neurons

Neurons that are activated both when we perform an action and when we observe someone else perform the same action.

Desire Psychology

Adopting the desire-behavior relation, understanding the connection.

Belief-Desire Psychology

Understanding that both desires and beliefs (even false ones) determine behavior.

Perspective Taking

Ability to adopt another person’s perspective and understand others’ thoughts and feelings.

Emotional Component of Morality

Feelings regarding right or wrong actions that motivate moral thoughts.

Cognitive Component of Morality

How we think about right and wrong and make decisions about how to behave.

Behavioral Component of Morality

How we behave when we experience the temptation to cheat or are called upon to help a needy person.

Empathy

Vicarious experiencing of another person’s feelings.

Prosocial Behavior

Positive social acts that reflect concern for the welfare of others.

Antisocial Behavior

Behavior that violates social norms, rules, laws, etc.

Moral Reasoning

The thinking process involved in deciding whether an act is right or wrong.

Preconventional Morality

Rules are external to the self rather than internalized.

Conventional Morality

Individual has internalized various moral values.

Postconventional Morality

Individual defines what is right in terms of broad principles of justice.

Moral Disengagement

Allows us to avoid condemning ourselves when we engage in immoral behavior, even though we know the difference between right and wrong.

Moral Emotions

Associating negative emotions with violating rules and learning to empathize with people in distress.

Self-Control

Being able to inhibit one’s impulses when tempted to violate internalized rules.

Moral Rules

Standards that focus on the welfare and basic rights of individuals.

Social-Conventional Rules

Standards determined by social consensus that tell us what is appropriate in particular social settings.

Induction

Discipline strategy that involves explaining to a child why their behavior is wrong and how it affects others; positively associated with moral maturity.

Hostile Attribution Bias

The tendency to interpret others' behaviors as having hostile intent, even when those behaviors are ambiguous or benign.

Coercive Family Environments

Family environments that are locked in power struggles, where family members try to control each other through negative tactics.

Ethic of Autonomy

Focuses on individual rights and not harming or violating the rights of others.

Ethic of Community

Emphasizes duty, loyalty, and concern for the welfare of family members and larger social groups.

Ethic of Divinity

Emphasizes divine law or authority, individual is to follow God’s laws and strive for spiritual purity.

Dual-Process Model of Morality

Deliberate thought and intuition/emotion play distinct roles in moral judgments; we use different parts of the brain to make intuitive and deliberative moral decisions.

Religiousness

Sharing the beliefs and participating in the practices of an organized religion.

Spirituality

Involves a quest for ultimate meaning and for a connection with something greater than oneself.