The Psychology of Morality: A Review and Analysis of Empirical Studies Published From 1940 Through 2017 - PubMed (original) (raw)

Review

The Psychology of Morality: A Review and Analysis of Empirical Studies Published From 1940 Through 2017

Naomi Ellemers et al. Pers Soc Psychol Rev. 2019 Sep/Oct.

Abstract

We review empirical research on (social) psychology of morality to identify which issues and relations are well documented by existing data and which areas of inquiry are in need of further empirical evidence. An electronic literature search yielded a total of 1,278 relevant research articles published from 1940 through 2017. These were subjected to expert content analysis and standardized bibliometric analysis to classify research questions and relate these to (trends in) empirical approaches that characterize research on morality. We categorize the research questions addressed in this literature into five different themes and consider how empirical approaches within each of these themes have addressed psychological antecedents and implications of moral behavior. We conclude that some key features of theoretical questions relating to human morality are not systematically captured in empirical research and are in need of further investigation.

Keywords: moral behavior; moral emotions; moral judgment; moral reasoning; moral self-views.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.

Figure 1.

The psychology of morality: connections between five research themes.

Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Indexed trends and regression coefficients for social psychology as a field and morality as a specialism, WoS, 1981-2017. Note. WoS = Web of Science.

Figure 3.

Figure 3.

Trends in impact scores in morality, WoS, 1981-2017, indicating the average normalized number of citations (excluding self-citations; mncs), the average normalized citation score of the journals in which these papers are published (mnjs), and the proportion of papers belonging to the top 10% in the field where they were published (pp_top_perc). Note. WoS = Web of Science.

Figure 4.

Figure 4.

Comparative trends in the development of research themes in morality research, 2005-2017.

Figure 5.

Figure 5.

Number of studies addressing mechanisms at different levels of analysis, specified per research theme, 1940 – 2017.

Figure 6.

Figure 6.

Publications on morality, 1996-2017. Note. Clustering and interrelations based on content analysis of publication titles and abstracts.

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