Within educational research, there is a growing interest in using neuroscience methods such as electroencephalography (EEG) and event-related potentials (ERPs) to probe neural mechanisms underlying students' learning and development, in natural, school-based settings. The results of these studies are beginning to appear in educational,…

Moral disengagement is a cognitive mechanism that seeks to avoid the feeling of guilt in the face of transgressive behaviors and seems to be present in behaviors such as cyberbullying, cybergossip or bullying in adolescence. Few studies have explored this connection in the primary school years, even though gossip, bullying and cyberbullying are…

Middle childhood seems to be crucial for the emergence of a moral identity, that is, an evaluative stance of how important it is for someone's sense of self to be moral. This study investigates the effects of moral identity on the neural processing of moral content in 10-year-old children. Participants were presented with scenes portraying…

Evaluating other people's moral character is a crucial social cognitive task. However, the cognitive processes by which people seek out, prioritize, and integrate multiple pieces of character-relevant information have not been studied empirically. The first aim of this research was to examine which character traits are considered most important…

Effects of cuteness-perception on individual cognition, emotion, behavior have significant implications for moral education. On the one hand, cuteness perception will make individuals think that moral violations are more serious and lead to tougher moral judgments; on the other hand, cuteness perception can activate moral emotions such as…

The current study examined relations between distinct aspects of moral functioning, and their cognitive and emotional correlates, in preschool age children. Participants were 171 typically developing 3- to 6-year-olds. Each child completed several tasks, including (a) moral tasks assessing both performance of various moral actions and evaluations…

This study contributes to a developmental approach focusing on emotions as being of key significance in explaining the Happy Victimizer pattern (HV pattern) among adults. Based on findings from our own research on moral emotions within the Happy Victimizer paradigm, we claim that a purely cognitive approach to explain the HV is overly narrow.…

For a service-learning course focusing on poverty, students from a Hong Kong university took a 12-day trip to engage in various poverty alleviation services in Cambodia. This course was border-crossing on five dimensions: (1) urban versus rural, (2) developed versus developing world location, (3) classroom versus practical and experiential, (4)…

Social-emotional learning (SEL) and character education are important components of adolescent development. In this study, we evaluated a randomized controlled trial of CharacterStrong, a curriculum that combines SEL and character education that included 1609 students and 242 teachers across 14 schools. This study applied baseline target…

Purpose: The aim of this study is to present an approach for creating an educational process that can affect teacher trainees' moral resilience, while investigating the manner in which they -- as teachers -- perceive the concept of moral resilience. Design/methodology/approach: A study questionnaire, designed especially for the current study, was…

This study examined relationships between social perspective-taking (SPT) and the individual, group, and societal domains of socially responsible leadership. SPT is a higher-order cognitive skill linked to moral development and social coordination, but never empirically connected to leadership development. Analyses determined SPT has a strong…

The ability of a group of adults with high functioning autism (HFA) or Asperger Syndrome (AS) to distinguish moral, conventional and disgust transgressions was investigated using a set of six transgression scenarios, each of which was followed by questions about permissibility, seriousness, authority contingency and justification. The results…

Recent neuroimaging studies suggest lateralized cerebral mechanisms in the right temporal parietal junction are involved in complex social and moral reasoning, such as ascribing beliefs to others. Based on this evidence, we tested 3 anterior-resected and 3 complete callosotomy patients along with 22 normal subjects on a reasoning task that…

How do interactions with diverse peers affect moral reasoning development? Results from a longitudinal study of 171 students enrolled in an Intergroup Dialogue or Introduction to Sociology course indicate that students who experience more negative interactions with diverse peers report lower developmental gains in moral reasoning, although the…

In order to unify two major theories of moral judgment, a novel task is employed which combines elements of Kohlberg's stage theory and of the theory of information integration. In contrast to the format of Kohlberg's moral judgment interview, a nonverbal and quantitative response which makes low demands on verbal facility was used. Moral…