ch 18 ethics and religion

James Rest

• created the Defining Issues Test (DIT) which presents moral situations and then asks the person to choose priorities

• emerging adulthood was a crucial time for moral development

• wrote that college education may propel a shift in moral reasoning as some majors are taught a code of ethics to make ethical decisions

Defining Issues Test (DIT)

• shows that adults became less self-centered

• used in almost every nation

• depression causes score to decline

• presents correlation with how a person functions in their profession, whether they engage in political action, and how they live

National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR)

• after being introduced to religions beyond their own, many students welcomed ideas that they did not before

  • shown by higher scores than that of a control group

  • some reaffirmed their religious beliefs

Jonathan Haidt

• studied morals in different cultures and religions

• found that adults have five moral foundations

  • care for others; harm no one

  • promote freedom; avoid oppresion

  • be fair; do not cheat

  • seek purity; avoid contamination

  • respect authority; do not break religious rules

• importance of each varies based on culture and nation

• encouraged people to develop an antithesis that would help them reach a new synthesis

• noted that many people derive their moral precepts from their religious faith

• emerging adults are the least religious based on attendance

• sequence of six stages of faith (stage zero is when religion simply reflects children’s relationship with their parents

five moral foundations

established by Jonathan Haidt

• care for others; harm no one

• promote freedom; avoid oppresion

• be fair; do not cheat

• seek purity; avoid contamination

• respect authority; do not break religious rules

Stage 1 of Faith Building

intuitive projective faith

• magical, illogical, imaginative, and filled with fantasy, especially about the powers of God and the mysteries of birth and death

Stage 2 of Faith Building

Mythic — literal faith

• take stories of religion literally

• believe in the power of symbols

• god is seen as punishing or rewarding those who follow divine law

• ages 7-11 but can be seen in some adults

Stage 3 in Faith Building

Synthetic-conventional faith

• conformist stage

• faith is convetional

• favoring what feels right and concern for others

• ex: one man states that as a part of his code, he does not lie to his family not because god told him to do so but because it felt inexplicably right to him

Stage 4 of Faith Building

Individual-reflective Faith

• intellectual detachment from the values of the culture and from the approval of other other people

• college may become springboard as they question authority of others and rely on their own understanding

• faith becomes active commitment

Stage 5 of Faith Building

conjunctive faith

• incorporates emotional ideas (power of prayer and the love of God) and rational conscious values (worth of life compared with that of property)

• willing to accept contradictions

• seldom achieved before middle age

Stage 6 of Faith Building

Universalizing Faith

• powerful vision of compassion, justice, love that compels them to live their lives in a way others may think is saintly or foolish

• often manifests through a transformative experience (ex: MLK, Mohandas Gandhi, Buddha, Moses, etc)

correlation of education level

• better health

• happy marriages

• spacious homes

• long lives

• healthy children

• working digestive systems

• increase with each additional level of education

investing in college

college education can return the initial expense by more than five times

massification

idea that establishing institutions of higher learning and encouraging college enrollment can benefit everyone

possible explanations as to why more women than men have earning college degrees

1. contraception — women can postpone motherhood until later to pursue education instead

2. less sexism — most parents now encourage their daughters to go to college

3. employment — job market prefer men so women seek out extra credentials

4. brains — female brain is wired differently, possibly making them better at reading, taking notes, and studying

5. college requirements — dorm life, schedules, assignments are easier for women

6. male stress — youn men are stressed (imprisonment and drug addiction), so they cannot attend college

correlations of college debt

• major burden

• reduces quality of life

• less marriages

• fewer offsprings

• less employment in chose fields

• rates of loans and defaults are highest for students that go to for-profit colleges

First Year College Students

• simplistic dualistic understanding

• thought are in absolutes

• ex: questions should be answered with yes or no, the future will be successful or a failure

• expected professors to teach the right answers

Moving through college

• learn that many perspectives are possible

• thinking is more flexible, complicated, dynamic, and dialectical

senior year students

• moved past confusion

• become postformal thinkers

• adapting a perspective but remain flexible

• peers, professors, books, etc, all stimulated new questionsd and thoughts

twentieth vs twenty-first century college students

• 21st century students only advanced half as much as students in the late 20th

• reasons were that students socialized more, studied less, and began taking fewer classes that require extensive reading or writing and that professors were not as strict