moral person essay

• Bipolar Disorder
• Therapy Center
• When To See a Therapist
• Types of Therapy
• Best Online Therapy
• Best Couples Therapy
• Managing Stress
• Sleep and Dreaming
• Understanding Emotions
• Self-Improvement
• Healthy Relationships
• Student Resources
• Personality Types
• Guided Meditations
• Verywell Mind Insights
• 2024 Verywell Mind 25
• Mental Health in the Classroom
• Editorial Process
• Meet Our Review Board
• Crisis Support

What Is Morality?

Societal underpinnings of "right" and "wrong"

How Morals Are Established

Morals that transcend time and culture, examples of morals, morality vs. ethics, morality and laws.

Morality refers to the set of standards that enable people to live cooperatively in groups. It’s what societies determine to be “right” and “acceptable.”

Sometimes, acting in a moral manner means individuals must sacrifice their own short-term interests to benefit society. Individuals who go against these standards may be considered immoral.

It may be helpful to differentiate between related terms, such as immoral , nonmoral , and amoral . Each has a slightly different meaning:

• Immoral : Describes someone who purposely commits an offensive act, even though they know the difference between what is right and wrong
• Nonmoral : Describes situations in which morality is not a concern
• Amoral : Describes someone who acknowledges the difference between right and wrong, but who is not concerned with morality

Morality isn’t fixed. What’s considered acceptable in your culture might not be acceptable in another culture. Geographical regions, religion, family, and life experiences all influence morals. 

Scholars don’t agree on exactly how morals are developed. However, there are several theories that have gained attention over the years:

• Freud’s morality and the superego: Sigmund Freud suggested moral development occurred as a person’s ability to set aside their selfish needs (id) to be replaced by the values of important socializing agents, such as a person’s parents, teachers, and institutions (superego).
• Piaget’s theory of moral development: Jean Piaget focused on the social-cognitive perspective of moral development. He theorized that moral development unfolds over time alongside the progressing stages of cognitive development. Early on, children learn to adopt certain moral behaviors for their own sake (it makes them feel good), rather than just abide by moral codes because they don’t want to get into trouble. By adolescence, you can think more abstractly, and begin to make moral decisions based on higher universal principles and the greater good of society.
• B.F. Skinner’s behavioral theory: B.F. Skinner focused on the power of external forces that shaped an individual’s development. For example, a child who receives praise for being kind may treat someone with kindness again out of a desire to receive more positive attention in the future.
• Kohlberg’s moral reasoning: Lawrence Kohlberg proposed six stages of moral development that went beyond Piaget’s theory. Through a series of questions or moral dilemmas, Kohlberg proposed that an adult’s stage of reasoning could be identified.
• Gilligan's perspective of gender differences in moral reasoning . Carol Gilligan criticized Kohlberg for being male-centric in his theory of moral development. She explained that men are more justice-oriented in their moral reasoning; whereas, women are more care-oriented . Within that context, moral dilemmas will have different solutions depending on which gender is doing the reasoning.

What Is the Basis of Morality?

There are different theories as to how morals are developed. However, most theories acknowledge the external factors (parents, community, etc.) that contribute to a child's moral development. These morals are intended to benefit the group that has created them.

Most morals aren’t fixed. They usually shift and change over time.

Ideas about whether certain behaviors are moral—such as engaging in pre-marital sex, entering into same-sex relationships, and using cannabis—have shifted over time. While the bulk of the population once viewed these behaviors as “wrong,” the vast majority of the population now finds these activities to be “acceptable.”

In some regions, cultures, and religions, using contraception is considered immoral. In other parts of the world, some people consider contraception the moral thing to do, as it reduces unplanned pregnancy, manages the population, and reduces the risk of sexually transmitted illnesses.

7 Universal Morals

Some morals seem to transcend across the globe and across time, however. Researchers have discovered that these seven morals seem somewhat universal:

• Defer to authority
• Help your group
• Love your family
• Return favors
• Respect others’ property

The following are common morality examples that you may have been taught growing up, and may have even passed on to younger generations:

• Have empathy
• Don't steal
• Tell the truth
• Treat others as you want to be treated

People might adhere to these principles by:

• Being an upstanding citizen
• Doing volunteer work
• Donating money to charity
• Forgiving someone
• Not gossiping about others
• Offering their time and help to others

To get a sense of the types of morality you were raised with, think about what your parents, community and/or religious leaders told you that you "should" or "ought" to do.

Some scholars don’t distinguish between morals and ethics . Both have to do with “right and wrong.”

However, some people believe morality is personal while ethics refer to the standards of a community.

For example, your community may not view premarital sex as a problem. But on a personal level, you might consider it immoral. By this definition, your morality would contradict the ethics of your community.

Both laws and morals are meant to regulate behavior in a community to allow people to live in harmony. Both have firm foundations in the concept that everyone should have autonomy and show respect to one another.

Legal thinkers interpret the relationship between laws and morality differently. Some argue that laws and morality are independent. This means that laws can’t be disregarded simply because they’re morally indefensible.

Others believe law and morality are interdependent. These thinkers believe that laws that claim to regulate behavioral expectations must be in harmony with moral norms. Therefore, all laws must secure the welfare of the individual and be in place for the good of the community.

Something like adultery may be considered immoral by some, but it’s legal in most states. Additionally, it’s illegal to drive slightly over the speed limit but it isn’t necessarily considered immoral to do so.

There may be times when some people argue that breaking the law is the “moral” thing to do. Stealing food to feed a starving person, for example, might be illegal but it also might be considered the “right thing” to do if it’s the only way to prevent someone from suffering or dying.

Think About It

It can be helpful to spend some time thinking about the morals that guide your decisions about things like friendship, money, education, and family. Understanding what’s really important to you can help you understand yourself better and it may make difficult decisions easier.

Merriam-Webster. A lesson on 'unmoral,' 'immoral,' 'nonmoral,' and 'amoral.'

Ellemers N, van der Toorn J, Paunov Y, van Leeuwen T. The psychology of morality: A review and analysis of empirical studies published from 1940 through 2017 . Pers Soc Psychol Rev. 2019;23(4):332-366. doi:10.1177/1088868318811759

Curry OS, Mullins DA, Whitehouse H. Is it good to cooperate? Testing the theory of morality-as-cooperation in 60 societies . Current Anthropology. 2019;60(1):47-69. doi:10.1086/701478

Encyclopædia Britannica.  What's the difference between morality and ethics?

Moka-Mubelo W. Law and morality . In:  Reconciling Law and Morality in Human Rights Discourse . Vol 3. Springer International Publishing; 2017:51-88. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-49496-8_3

By Amy Morin, LCSW Amy Morin, LCSW, is a psychotherapist and international bestselling author. Her books, including "13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do," have been translated into more than 40 languages. Her TEDx talk,  "The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong," is one of the most viewed talks of all time.

• About Project
• Testimonials

Business Management Ideas

Essay on Moral Values

List of essays on moral values, essay on moral values – short essay for kids and children (essay 1 – 150 words), essay on moral values – written in english (essay 2 – 250 words), essay on moral values – for school students (class 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 standard) (essay 3 – 300 words), essay on moral values (essay 4 – 400 words), essay on moral values –  importance in society and challenges (essay 5 – 500 words), essay on moral values – how to cultivate and inculcate it in human beings (essay 6 – 600 words), essay on moral values (essay 7 – 750 words), essay on moral values – long essay (essay 8 – 1000 words).

Moral values are the key essence of life and it is these values that come along with us through the journey of life. Moral values are basically the principles that guide our life in the righteous path and do not allow us to do any harm to others.

Audience: The below given essays are especially written for kids, children and school students (Class 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 Standard).

Moral values define the humankind. Moral values empower us to stand as the most unique creatures in the whole animal kingdom. These values are the basis to almost every religion. Thousands of years ago, Buddha described the essence of moral values in his sermons and spread it all over the world.

Since our childhood, we are taught about the good habits and their powers by the elders at home and school. Some of the most significant moral values are kindness, honesty, truthfulness, selflessness, compassion, and love.

The things we learn as a child mould us as an adult. That is why it is crucial to inculcate the pious values in the children. For the younger generation to be transformed into citizens with mighty characters, they must possess strong ethical and moral values. Only then, we can dream of making India great and emerge as an ethical leader in the world.

So, from where do we get these moral values?

Moral values are the first thing that every child learns from their homes . What is right and what is wrong is something that we see and learn from our parents as well as from our own experiences. Many religions preach moral values are part of their belief systems.

Importance of Moral Values

Moral values are very important to each and everyone because it is these values that transform us into better human beings.

i. Without knowing and learning moral values, we will not be able to differentiate between good and bad.

ii. Moral values define us and help us to be surrounded by good people.

iii. One who practices moral values will have courage to handle any situation in life.

Role of Parents

Parents of today think that providing all luxuries to their children is their only responsibility. But they miss to offer them the most important wealth – moral values. When parents deny this, they fail in their duty to give a good human being to the society.

Honesty, kindness, truthfulness, forgiveness, respect for others, helping others etc., are some of the moral values that every parent must teach their children.

“It is not what you do for your children , but what you have taught them to do for themselves, that will make them successful human beings” – Ann Landers.

Moral Values are the practices followed by human beings to be good and to live in a society. Moral values or ethics, are taught to us by our parents and teachers. These include being honest, kind, respecting others, helping those in need, being faithful and cooperating with others, to name a few, are good moral values.

What are Moral Values?

The norms of what is right or good and what is wrong or bad, define the moral values which are based on many factors like region, society, religious beliefs, culture etc. These defined norms tell the people how they must act or behave in different situations and expect similar behaviours form others.

Importance of Moral Values:

Moral values give an aim to life. Knowing difference between right and wrong is the foundation to imbibe moral values, which are taught from the birth, and bring out the best in individuals.

Moral Values in Workplace:

In every workplace, people look for individuals with good moral values. For a job interview, the interviewer looks for a candidate with good moral values. Every organization has a defined ethical code of conduct that the people in the organization are expected to follow, in addition to basic societal moral values. Organizations with people having good moral values runs more systematically and efficiently.

Moral Value in coming Generations:

People are not aware or conscious about moral values and have different outlook towards life. Parents and teachers are too busy to inculcate moral values in younger generations.

Conclusion:

Moral values are a type of law defined by the culture, society or other factors, to guide individuals on how to or not to behave in daily life. Sometimes, one may have different views and feel the moral guidelines too harsh or wrong. Such guidelines should be advocated for the good of the society.

Moral values are those characters or values seeded in a person’s mind and behavior towards oneself, others and on the whole. It can be the way a person consider other person’s life and space or the way they value each other’s feelings. The basic moral values like honesty, kindness, respect towards others, helpful mannerism, etc., will be the keys to be noted to judge a person’s character.

Moral values are the main characteristics that define the goodness in a person. These should be taught by the parents and teachers to the kids from their childhood. Moral values will help everyone in taking better decisions in life and attain the heights in an ethical way.

Instead of just thinking about our success and goals, moral values will give us the courage to take into account other’s happiness too. A person with better moral values is motivated and finds all possible ways to spread good vibes in and around them as well. Suppressing the people around you for attaining the goals you desire is the most dangerous violation of moral values.

Importance:

A person without moral values is considered to possess a bad character and the society will start to judge the person due to this behavior. This competitive world of ours has made every moral value in a person to die for their own development and growth. Such inhuman and unethical activities like dishonesty, telling lies for your own benefit, hurting others and even worst things, should be avoided.

Inculcating the importance of moral values in a kid from their growing age will help them in sticking to those values forever. It is a necessity of our society to bear such responsible youths and younger generations with good moral values so that they will help our nation to attain better heights.

This society of ours is filled with immoral people who find every scope to deceive others through their activities. The young ones learn more things by observing their elders and they mimic the way their elders behave. It is the responsibility of elders like parents, teachers, etc., to grow a future generation with more moral values seeded in them by improving their own behavior.

Moral values can be taught to students by making them listen and understand more moral stories and the rewards they will get if they show it to others as well. Such way of teaching will help them grab the importance easily rather than taking mere lectures on moral values.

Introduction:

The society helps individuals to grow in culture and learn through experiences of all aspects of life. Societies instill culture, religion, economy and politics in individual because as people grow up, they tend to pick something from dynamics of life and the societal opinions on certain aspects of life. Moral values are also instilled by a society. The values that a person grows up with are the values that will be displayed in his or her character. Society plays a big role in influencing moral values of individuals. Moral values are a set of principles that enable an individual to distinguish between the proper and improper things or right versus wrong. The moral values that are highly valued in the society are integrity, honesty, loyalty, respect and hard work.

Importance of Moral Values in the Society:

In a society, there is interactions among people and the possession of moral values is important in those interactions. Establishment of good relationships is reliant on good moral values. Values like honesty, trust, faithfulness and loyalty are essential in establishment and sustainability of good relationships. Lack of those values causes strained relationships and misunderstanding among members of the society.

Moral values are important in building the economy. Through determination and hard work, people are able to conduct activities that contribute largely to the economic growth of a society. Also through establishment of good relationships, trade is conducted smoothly and there is teamwork in trade and performance of business transactions. The growth of the economy is important in the life quality in the society.

Moral values also play a role in prevention of conflict and ease in conflict resolution. Good relationships seldom end in conflict and whenever conflict arises, it is minimum and can be resolved easily. In a society that peace thrives, there is growth and development which results in an improved quality of life.

Challenges:

The society is required to thrive in good moral values. Development of moral values is challenged by migration and interactions between different cultures and societies. The interactions dilute the morals of one society through adaption and assimilation of a different culture e.g., westernization in Africa.

Poverty is a challenge to the moral values because it creates vices like theft and deceit among members of the society. In poor economic status, everyone struggles to keep up with the hard times and moral values become a thing of the past due to strive for survival.

Education is both a challenge and promoter for development of moral values. Depending on the environment of education, students pick either good or bad morals. In modern education, students tend to pick immorality because of peer pressure.

Conclusion.

In conclusion, it is evident that moral value are an important consideration in the development of the society. Moral values go a long way in impacting the lives of an individual and the entire society. The development of moral values varies with the environmental exposure in societies. Each society should strive to uphold good moral values.

Moral values cultivated by human beings dignify the worth of human life. The morality existed from time immemorial and sustained among the communities. It amalgamated into the cultures which made the life of human beings secure and advanced. We can observe the ethical integrity in all the aspects of the individual as well as societal discourses. The moral values have been evolving with the inter-personal relationships between human beings as well as intra-personal relationships.

What are the moral values cultivated among us?

Religions have played a vital role in formulating and promoting moral values. The fundamental human values of love, respect, trust, tolerance, compassion, kindness are commonly practiced among people. Love and respect are significant in family relationships.

Love and respects are the cornerstones for the relationship between husband and wife, parents and children, elders and children. The sharing and caring qualities should be encouraged among children to make them compassionate personalities in the future.

The integrity and trust plays a prominent role in maintaining professional relationships. Similarly, kindness and empathy are the two powerful units to measure the gravity of human values. Patience and forgiveness are the right symbols of a human being’s dignity.

The Relevance of Moral Values:

Nowadays, humans tend to be more focused into self-centered life. Whatever happens outside the family roof is least mattered to the modern people. The social commitment of humans towards their community gets ignored for their personal conveniences.

The compassion, brotherhood, and love are hardly found. We do not have time to spend with our parents or even have time to look after our old and sick parents. Husbands leaving their wives and vice versa have become common these days. The increased number of divorces, old age homes, and orphanages clearly show where our compassion and love stay.

The social values like secularism, religious tolerance, and universal fraternity are the most threatened moral values these days. Religious fanatics have made the lives of ordinary people terrible in many places. The violence by the fanatics are the denial of the fundamental rights of people. People do not identify the fellow beings as brothers and sisters instead they seem to recognize others on racial, economic, gender, caste, and religious terms. It affects the balance of our social system.

The increasing terrorism, revolts, violence against children and gender inequalities are the instances of the denial of fundamental rights. The refugees who wander from nations to nations, the war for food and water, robbery, child labor are still prevalent in today’s civilized society. The civilization and culture acquired through education have made our lives more primitive considering the aspect of moral values.

How to inculcate the values among the children?

Although we acquired many information and knowledge, skills and technical knowledge through our education, our curriculum gives less importance to teach human values and moral values to our children. Nowadays, children become addicted to electronic gadgets, social media, and other entertainment modes.

It is our responsibility to teach our children and students human values within our family as well as through the education system. We should help grow moral values like sharing, helping, caring, and being considerate and tolerance in our children and encourage them to practice those at an early age.

Though various cultures have different perspectives towards moral values, the fundamental human values remain the same in every culture. It is relevant to project the human values and cultivate them in our daily lives.

Moral values demand to have conviction, integrity and rational sense to dissect between right and wrong. It is not just a technical understanding of right and wrong. It is more than that. In life, even if things happen against the morale of our best belief, we tend to manage the situation which may be the right decision of the occasion. We can say morally is wrong but it is morally right too, because a concession in the moral standard might have saved a situation here.

Moral values are relative. Standing firm to the moral values should be the motto in everyone’s life. It should satisfy your conscious even if it is disadvantageous. Moral values are subject to change, and it should continue to change upon the progression of society. It should reflect on what we are standing and the kind of impact it can create on others.

Moral values can be said to simply mean the values that are good that our teachers and parents taught us. Some very important moral values include being kind and honest, always trying to help those who are in need, show respect to other people, working with others when there is a need to and faithfulness to a partner or friend. When we imbibe moral values that are good, we are building ourselves to become very good humans. A very good character is synonymous to moral values that are good. Moral values can be basically defined as values that are defined by our society so that they can help in guiding people to live a life that is disciplined. Moral values that are basic like cooperative behaviour, kindness and honesty are most times constant, some other values can change or get modified over time. Other habits that portray good moral values include integrity, helpfulness, love respectfulness, compassion and hard work.

The importance of good moral values in our lives:

Life is full of many different challenges. Each day we live, morals are very necessary in helping us differentiate between things that are wrong and things that are right. Our morals and moral values affect both us and the society around us. Good moral values can help us improve our decision making in life.

Aspects of moral values:

Moral values cut across every area of our lives and even the society at large. For us to be able to have a good society and environment, it is important for each and every one of us to have solid and good moral values. It is important that we respect each other irrespective of the age or social status of the individual we are relating to. This can help in gaining good relations in every aspects and area of life whether it is in the workplace, family or the society. Good moral values can also help us in discovering our true purpose in life.

If it is true that moral values and habits are extremely important and beneficial to us humans, why then do we have a lot of people that do not have any of the moral values and do not follow the rules of morality in this world. Why do we have a lot of crimes happening all around us in the world today? Why is there so much disbelief and distrust among all of us?

The world we live in is an extremely tempting place and there are quick fixes for all of the problems facing us and this eventually turns our attention back to the main problem. Abiding to moral values in this life requires a lot of patience and also sacrifice but eventually, it helps one in analysing the difficulties and problems one faces and help in getting a solution to them.

Overall, someone who is ready and very determined to do their best in following a life that is meaningful in a patient way ends up following moral values without any fear of the person getting judged and such person ends up standing out from among the crowd.

Imbibing and inculcating good moral values:

The best time to imbibe good moral values into a person is when the person is still young and can still learn new characters and habits. Therefore, teachers and parents should endeavour to put in their best efforts into helping students and their children imbibe very solid moral values. Most children are very observant and they copy and learn habits and behaviours of their elder siblings, parents and teachers.

Children are bound to pay solid attention to the manner of action and behaviour of people older than them and they simply do the things they do. Children tend to speak only the truth if they have noticed that the elders around them are always truthful no matter the situation.

Likewise, it is important as elders to not be engaged in any form of bad behaviour as the children tend to assume they can also do these things and that they are not wrong because the elders around them are doing it. We should try to always demonstrate good and solid moral values to children around us. The best way to teach children good and solid moral values is through our own actions and habits.

It is very important for us as human beings to bear good and solid moral values like helping others, honesty , righteousness, decency, and even self-decency. People that have great moral values are very indispensable asset to others and even the society at large.

Moral values are the models of good and bad, which direct a person’s conduct and decisions. A person may adopt moral values from society and government, religion, or self. They are also inherited from the family as well.

In past ages, it was uncommon to see couples who lived respectively without the advantage of legal marriage rules. Of late, couples that set up a family without marriage are about as common as conventional wedded couples. There has been a shift in the moral values from time to time. For instance, in earlier times, the laws and ethics essentially originated from the cultures of a family and society as a whole. As society moved into the advanced time, these have largely disintegrated and people today tend to sue their own morals they want to follow.

Definition:

Moral values, as the name says, implies the significance of the moral qualities in the conduct of the kids, the youth and everyone one in life. Primarily the moral values are the qualities which one gains from life through the journey of life. They also depict the standards of what is right and what is wrong for us which we learn in the schools and in the workplace and from our surroundings as well. The beliefs which we gain from the family and the society that directs us how we lead our lives is what moral values are all about.

Moral Values in India:

India is a country which has been known for its values since the ancient times. We start to learn moral values from our family. In India, children are taught to respect their elders, greet them properly whenever they meet them. This a way of showing respect towards the elders. A child knows that he is supposed to obey whatever is asked by the elders. Such a moral value inculcates obedience in the mind of a child. Moral values are important for all of us in order to make us live a life of a good human being.

Important Moral Values in Life:

Although there are numerous moral values which one should follow in life, there are some of them which should be followed by almost everyone in the world. Firstly, always speaking the truth is one such moral value. We should never speak lies no matter what the circumstance is. Also, we should respect our elders. Our elders have seen and experienced the world better than us. It is always good for their blessings and advice in our important decisions. Loyalty towards our work and integrity are other such moral values which should be practised by one and all.

Examples from History:

There have been many examples from history which have depicted the importance and rightful following of moral values in life. One such example which we all are familiar with is from our epic Ramayana. Lord Ram was asked to go to fourteen years in exile just because his father King Dasaratha had granted a wish to the queen Kaikeyi. He could have refused it as well as it was not he who had granted the wish. But just to keep his father’s words he accepted the exile graciously and went into exile. Not only this, his wife Sita and his younger brother Laxman also followed his footsteps as they believed that it was their prime duty to follow him.

The Scenario Today:

Such was the moral value depicted during that period. But, now things are so different. People seem to have forgotten their moral values and are more focused on modern life. There are a number of instances every day where parents are left alone by their children to live a lonely old life. Many of them even die in isolation and there is no one to look after them during the last years. Apart from this, there are frequent quarrels between families over petty matters which could have been avoided if the people remembered the moral values our ancestors stood for.

Nowadays, people smoking and drinking and that too in front of their parents and children is a common sight. This is so against our moral values. We should not teach our children the evils ,such habits can do harm them in later years of their life.

The Remedy Available:

Since there has been a strong drift in the moral values of the people, the government has initiated to make the students learn about moral values in life and their importance to us. In order to execute this, schools of today teach moral values to the children in a greater sense. This is important as the students are the future of tomorrow. If the schools and the families alike teach the children such values from childhood, they shall turn into good human beings when they grow up.

Moral values depict our character to the outer world. They are of extreme importance in our lives. In earlier times, people were so determined to follow these values inherited from our ancestors. Such was their determination that once committed they never went back on their words. But with modernisation and urbanisation, we have seemed to have lost our moral values somewhere. Children disrespecting their parents are a common sight nowadays.

But, we should not blame the children for this. It is perhaps our own upbringing which has led to such immoral practices all over. It is we who should inculcate the moral values in our life first. Children will follow what they observe around them. If they shall see people living in joint families together and respecting each other, even they shall do so when they grow up. If we speak lies to our children even they shall do so. For the children imbibe the habits they see in their parents, teachers, peers at school and others around them.

So, it is we who have to take the first step forward. The children shall surely follow us. Moral values give us character and strength. If each one us practice some moral values in life, there would be peace and harmony all around. Moreover, we shall have a bright future for our next generations as well.

Moral Science , Moral Values , Values

Get FREE Work-at-Home Job Leads Delivered Weekly!

Join more than 50,000 subscribers receiving regular updates! Plus, get a FREE copy of How to Make Money Blogging!

Message from Sophia!

Like this post? Don’t forget to share it!

Here are a few recommended articles for you to read next:

• Essay on Discipline
• Which is More Important in Life: Love or Money | Essay
• Essay on My School
• Essay on Solar Energy

No comments yet.

Leave a reply click here to cancel reply..

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Billionaires

• Donald Trump
• Warren Buffett
• Email Address
• Free Stock Photos
• Keyword Research Tools
• URL Shortener Tools
• WordPress Theme

Book Summaries

• How To Win Friends
• Rich Dad Poor Dad
• The Code of the Extraordinary Mind
• The Luck Factor
• The Millionaire Fastlane
• The ONE Thing
• Think and Grow Rich
• 100 Million Dollar Business
• Business Ideas

Digital Marketing

• Mobile Addiction
• Social Media Addiction
• Computer Addiction
• Drug Addiction
• Internet Addiction
• TV Addiction
• Healthy Habits
• Morning Rituals
• Wake up Early
• Cholesterol
• Reducing Cholesterol
• Fat Loss Diet Plan
• Reducing Hair Fall
• Sleep Apnea
• Weight Loss

Internet Marketing

• Email Marketing

Law of Attraction

• Subconscious Mind
• Vision Board
• Visualization

Law of Vibration

• Professional Life

Motivational Speakers

• Bob Proctor
• Robert Kiyosaki
• Vivek Bindra
• Inner Peace

Productivity

• Not To-do List
• Project Management Software
• Negative Energies

Relationship

• Getting Back Your Ex

Self-help 21 and 14 Days Course

Self-improvement.

• Body Language
• Complainers
• Emotional Intelligence
• Personality

Social Media

• Project Management
• Anik Singal
• Baba Ramdev
• Dwayne Johnson
• Jackie Chan
• Leonardo DiCaprio
• Narendra Modi
• Nikola Tesla
• Sachin Tendulkar
• Sandeep Maheshwari
• Shaqir Hussyin

Website Development

Wisdom post, worlds most.

• Expensive Cars

Our Portals: Gulf Canada USA Italy Gulf UK

Privacy Overview

Moral character: What it is and what it does

Moral character can be conceptualized as an individual’s disposition to think, feel, and behave in an ethical versus unethical manner, or as the subset of individual differences relevant to morality. This essay provides an organizing framework for understanding moral character and its relationship to ethical and unethical work behaviors. We present a tripartite model for understanding moral character, with the idea that there are motivational, ability, and identity elements. The motivational element is consideration of others—referring to a disposition toward considering the needs and interests of others, and how one’s own actions affect other people. The ability element is self-regulation—referring to a disposition toward regulating one’s behavior effectively, specifically with reference to behaviors that have positive short-term consequences but negative long-term consequences for oneself or others. The identity element is moral identity—referring to a disposition toward valuing morality and wanting to view oneself as a moral person. After unpacking what moral character is, we turn our attention to what moral character does, with a focus on how it influences unethical behavior, situation selection, and situation creation. Our research indicates that the impact of moral character on work outcomes is significant and consequential, with important implications for research and practice in organizational behavior.

Usage metrics

• Business and Management not elsewhere classified

• Table of Contents
• Random Entry
• Chronological
• Editorial Information
• About the SEP
• Editorial Board
• How to Cite the SEP
• Special Characters
• Advanced Tools
• Support the SEP
• PDFs for SEP Friends
• Make a Donation
• SEPIA for Libraries
• Entry Contents

Bibliography

Academic tools.

• Friends PDF Preview
• Author and Citation Info
• Back to Top

The Definition of Morality

The topic of this entry is not—at least directly—moral theory ; rather, it is the definition of morality. Moral theories are large and complex things; definitions are not. The question of the definition of morality is the question of identifying the target of moral theorizing. Identifying this target enables us to see different moral theories as attempting to capture the very same thing. And it enables psychologists, anthropologists, evolutionary biologists, and other more empirically-oriented theorists to design their experiments or formulate their hypotheses without prejudicing matters too much in terms of the specific content a code, judgment, or norm must have in order to count as distinctively moral.

There does not seem to be much reason to think that a single definition of morality will be applicable to all moral discussions. One reason for this is that “morality” seems to be used in two distinct broad senses: a descriptive sense and a normative sense. More particularly, the term “morality” can be used either

• descriptively to refer to certain codes of conduct put forward by a society or a group (such as a religion), or accepted by an individual for her own behavior, or
• normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational people.

Which of these two senses of “morality” a moral philosopher is using plays a crucial, although sometimes unacknowledged, role in the development of an ethical theory. If one uses “morality” in its descriptive sense, and therefore uses it to refer to codes of conduct actually put forward by distinct groups or societies, one will almost certainly deny that there is a universal morality that applies to all human beings. The descriptive use of “morality” is the one used by anthropologists when they report on the morality of the societies that they study. Recently, some comparative and evolutionary psychologists (Haidt 2006; Hauser 2006; De Waal 1996) have taken morality, or a close anticipation of it, to be present among groups of non-human animals: primarily, but not exclusively, other primates.

Accepting that there are two uses or senses of “morality”—a descriptive sense and a normative sense—does not commit one to holding that the “distinction between descriptions and norms—between what is and what ought to be—is obvious and unbridgeable”, as some have held that it does (Churchland 2011: 185). To see this, note that it is obvious that there is a descriptive sense of morality. That is, it is obvious that one can sensibly describe the moralities of various groups without making any normative claims. And it should be equally obvious that that one might hold that a certain code of conduct would be put forward by all rational people under certain conditions without having any particular views about the nature of the is/ought gap or the possibility of crossing it.

Any definition of “morality” in the descriptive sense will need to specify which of the codes put forward by a society or group count as moral. Even in small homogeneous societies that have no written language, distinctions are sometimes made between morality, etiquette, law, and religion. And in larger and more complex societies these distinctions are often sharply marked. So “morality” cannot be taken to refer to every code of conduct put forward by a society.

In the normative sense, “morality” refers to a code of conduct that would be accepted by anyone who meets certain intellectual and volitional conditions, almost always including the condition of being rational. That a person meets these conditions is typically expressed by saying that the person counts as a moral agent . However, merely showing that a certain code would be accepted by any moral agent is not enough to show that the code is the moral code. It might well be that all moral agents would also accept a code of prudence or rationality, but this would not by itself show that prudence was part of morality. So something else must be added; for example, that the code can be understood to involve a certain kind of impartiality, or that it can be understood as having the function of making it possible for people to live together in groups.

As we’ve just seen, not all codes that are put forward by societies or groups are moral codes in the descriptive sense of morality, and not all codes that would be accepted by all moral agents are moral codes in the normative sense of morality. So any definition of morality—in either sense—will require further criteria. Still, each of these two very brief descriptions of codes might be regarded as offering some features of morality that would be included in any adequate definition. In that way they might be taken to be offering some definitional features of morality, in each of its two senses. When one has specified enough definitional features to allow one to classify all the relevant moral theories as theories of a common subject, one might then be taken to have given a definition of morality. This is the sense of “definition” at work in this entry.

Explicit attempts, by philosophers, to define morality are hard to find, at least since the beginning of the twentieth century. One possible explanation for this is the combined effect of early positivistic worries about the metaphysical status of normative properties, followed (or augmented) by Wittgensteinian worries about definitions of any significant terms whatsoever. Whatever the explanation, when definitions have been offered, they have tended to be directed at the notion of moral judgment (Hare 1952, 1981) rather than at morality itself. However, to the degree that these definitions of moral judgment are adequate, they might, without much effort, be converted into definitions of morality in the descriptive sense. For example, a particular person’s morality might be regarded as the content of the basic moral judgments that person is prepared to accept.

One might use a detailed definition of moral judgment to define morality in a descriptive sense in another way—other than simply as the content of a person’s moral judgments, or the content of the moral judgments that prevail in a certain society or group. In particular, the very features of a judgment that make it qualify as a moral judgment might be transposed from a psychological key to something more abstract. Here is one simplified example. Suppose that a negative judgment of an action only counts as a negative moral judgment if it involves the idea that there is a prima facie case for punishing that action. In that case, a definition of morality in the descriptive sense will include a corresponding idea: that the prohibitions of morality, taken in the descriptive sense, are those that are backed by the threat of punishment. Of course, if one goes this route, other conditions will need to be included, to differentiate morality from criminal law.

What counts as definitional of morality, in either sense of “morality”, is controversial. Moreover, the line between what is part of a definition, in the sense at issue, and what is part of a moral theory, is not entirely sharp. For example, some might regard it as definitional of morality, in the normative sense, that it governs only interpersonal interactions. Others, however, might take this to be a substantive theoretical claim. Some might take it as definitional of “morality” in its descriptive sense that it be a code of conduct that a person or group takes to be most important. But others might say that attention to religion casts doubt on this idea.

“Morality”, when used in a descriptive sense, has an important feature that “morality” in the normative sense does not have: a feature that stems from its relational nature. This feature is the following: that if one is not a member of the relevant society or group, or is not the relevant individual, then accepting a certain account of the content of a morality, in the descriptive sense, has no implications for how one thinks one should behave. On the other hand, if one accepts a moral theory’s account of moral agents, and of the conditions under which all moral agents would endorse a code of conduct as a moral code, then one accepts that moral theory’s normative definition of “morality”. Accepting an account of “morality” in the normative sense commits one to regarding some behavior as immoral, perhaps even behavior that one is tempted to perform. Because accepting an account of “morality” in the normative sense involves this commitment, it is not surprising that philosophers seriously disagree about which account to accept.

1. Is Morality Unified Enough to Define?

2. descriptive definitions of “morality”, 3. implicit and explicit definitions in allied fields, 4. normative definitions of “morality”, 5.1 morality as linked to norms for responses to behavior, 5.2 morality as linked to advocacy of a code, 5.3 morality as linked to acceptance of a code, 5.4 morality as linked to justification to others, other internet resources, related entries.

An assumption suggested by the very existence of this encyclopedia entry is that there is some unifying set of features in virtue of which all moral systems count as moral systems. But Sinnott-Armstrong (2016) directly argues against an analogous hypothesis in connection with moral judgments, and also seems to take this view to suggest that morality itself is not a unified domain. He points out that moral judgments cannot be unified by any appeal to the notion of harm to others, since there are such things as moral ideals, and there are harmless behaviors that a significant number of people regard as morally wrong: Sinnott-Armstrong gives example such as cannibalism and flag-burning. Whether people who condemn such behaviors morally are correct in those judgments is largely irrelevant to the question of whether they count as moral in the first place.

Sinnott-Armstrong seems right in holding that moral judgments cannot be delimited from other judgments simply by appeal to their content. It seems quite possible for someone to have been raised in such a way as to hold that it is morally wrong for adult men to wear shorts. And it also seems plausible that, as he also argues, moral judgments cannot be identified by reference to any sort of neurological feature common and peculiar to them and them alone. A third strategy might be to claim that moral judgments are those one makes as a result of having been inducted into a social practice that has a certain function. However, this function cannot simply be to help facilitate the sorts of social interactions that enable societies to flourish and persist, since too many obviously non-moral judgments do this.

Beyond the problem just described, attempts to pick out moral codes in the descriptive sense by appeal to their function often seem to be specifying the function that the theorist thinks morality, in the normative sense, would serve, rather than the function that actual moralities do serve. For example, Greene claims that

morality is a set of psychological adaptations that allow otherwise selfish individuals to reap the benefits of cooperation, (2013: 23)

and Haidt claims that

moral systems are interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, technologies, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate self-interest and make cooperative societies possible. (2011: 270)

But these claims need to deal with the existence of dysfunctional moralities that do not in fact serve these functions. Perhaps this problem could be alleviated by pointing out that many instances of a kind that have a function—for example, an actual human heart—fail to fulfill that function.

Even if Sinnott-Armstrong’s position is correct with regard to morality in the descriptive sense, there might nevertheless be a code of conduct that, given certain specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational agents. That is, even if the descriptive sense of morality is a family-resemblance notion, vaguely bordered and open-textured, or even if it is significantly disjunctive and disunified, the normative sense might not be. By way of comparison, we might think of the notion of food in two ways: as what people regard as food, and as what they would regard as food if they were rational and fully informed. Certainly there is not much that unifies the first category: not even being digestible or nutritious, since people regard various indigestible and non-nutritious substances as food, and forego much that is digestible and nutritious. But that does not mean that we cannot theorize about what it would be rational to regard as food.

An initial naïve attempt at a descriptive definition of “morality” might take it to refer to the most important code of conduct put forward by a society and accepted by the members of that society. But the existence of large and heterogeneous societies raises conceptual problems for such a descriptive definition, since there may not be any such society-wide code that is regarded as most important. As a result, a definition might be offered in which “morality” refers to the most important code of conduct put forward and accepted by any group, or even by an individual. Apart from containing some prohibitions on harming (certain) others, different moralities—when “morality” is understood in this way—can vary in content quite substantially.

Etiquette is sometimes included as a part of morality, applying to norms that are considered less serious than the kinds of norms for behavior that are more central to morality. Hobbes expresses this sort of view when he uses the term “small morals” to describe “decency of behavior, as how one man should salute another, or how a man should wash his mouth or pick his teeth before company”, and distinguishes these from “those qualities of mankind that concern their living together in peace and unity” (1660 [1994]: Chapter XI, paragraph 1). When etiquette is included as part of morality, morality is almost always being understood in the descriptive sense. One reason for this is that it is clear that the rules of etiquette are relative to a society or group. Moreover, there are no plausible conditions under which we could pick out the “correct” rules of etiquette as those that would be accepted by all rational beings.

Law is distinguished from morality by having explicit written rules, penalties, and officials who interpret the laws and apply the penalties. Although there is often considerable overlap in the conduct governed by morality and that governed by law, laws are often evaluated—and changed—on moral grounds. Some theorists, including Ronald Dworkin (1986), have even maintained that the interpretation of law must make use of morality.

Although the morality of a group or society may derive from its religion, morality and religion are not the same thing, even in that case. Morality is only a guide to conduct, whereas religion is always more than this. For example, religion includes stories about events in the past, usually about supernatural beings, that are used to explain or justify the behavior that it prohibits or requires. Although there is often a considerable overlap in the conduct prohibited or required by religion and that prohibited or required by morality, religions may prohibit or require more than is prohibited or required by guides to behavior that are explicitly labeled as moral guides, and may recommend some behavior that is prohibited by morality. Even when morality is not regarded as the code of conduct that is put forward by a formal religion, it is often thought to require some religious explanation and justification. However, just as with law, some religious practices and precepts are criticized on moral grounds, e.g., that the practice or precept involves discrimination on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation.

When “morality” is used simply to refer to a code of conduct put forward by an actual group, including a society, even if it is distinguished from etiquette, law, and religion, it is being used in a descriptive sense. It is also being used in the descriptive sense when it refers to important attitudes of individuals. Just as one can refer to the morality of the Greeks, so one can refer to the morality of a particular person. This descriptive use of “morality” is now becoming more prominent because of the work of psychologists such as Jonathan Haidt (2006), who have been influenced by the views of David Hume (1751), including his attempt to present a naturalistic account of moral judgments.

Guides to behavior that are regarded as moralities normally involve avoiding and preventing harm to others (Frankena 1980), and perhaps some norm of honesty (Strawson 1961). But all of them involve other matters as well, and Hare’s view of morality as that which is most important allows that these other matters may be more important than avoiding and preventing harm to others (Hare 1952, 1963, 1981). This view of morality as concerning that which is most important to a person or group allows matters related to religious practices and precepts, or matters related to customs and traditions, e.g., purity and sanctity, to be more important than avoiding and preventing harm.

When “morality” is used in a descriptive sense, moralities can differ from each other quite extensively in their content and in the foundation that members of the society claim their morality to have. Some societies may claim that their morality, which is more concerned with purity and sanctity, is based on the commands of God. The descriptive sense of “morality”, which allows for the view that morality is based on religion in this way, picks out codes of conduct that are often in significant conflict with all normative accounts of morality.

A society might have a morality that takes accepting its traditions and customs, including accepting the authority of certain people and emphasizing loyalty to the group, as more important than avoiding and preventing harm. Such a morality might not count as immoral any behavior that shows loyalty to the preferred group, even if that behavior causes significant harm to innocent people who are not in that group. The familiarity of this kind of morality, which makes in-group loyalty almost equivalent to morality, seems to allow some comparative and evolutionary psychologists, including Frans De Waal (1996), to regard non-human animals to be acting in ways very similar to those that are regarded as moral.

Although all societies include more than just a concern for minimizing harm to (some) human beings in their moralities, this feature of morality, unlike purity and sanctity, or accepting authority and emphasizing loyalty, is included in everything that is regarded as a morality by any society. Because minimizing harm can conflict with accepting authority and emphasizing loyalty, there can be fundamental disagreements within a society about the morally right way to behave in particular kinds of situations. Philosophers such as Bentham (1789) and Mill (1861), who accept a normative account of morality that takes the avoiding and preventing harm element of morality to be most important, criticize all actual moralities (referred to by “morality” in the descriptive sense) that give precedence to purity and loyalty when they are in conflict with avoiding and preventing harm.

Some psychologists, such as Haidt, take morality to include concern with, at least, all three of the triad of (1) harm, (2) purity, and (3) loyalty, and hold that different members of a society can and do take different features of morality to be most important. But beyond a concern with avoiding and preventing such harms to members of certain groups, there may be no common content shared by all moralities in the descriptive sense. Nor may there be any common justification that those who accept morality claim for it; some may appeal to religion, others to tradition, and others to rational human nature. Beyond the concern with harm, the only other feature that all descriptive moralities have in common is that they are put forward by an individual or a group, usually a society, in which case they provide a guide for the behavior of the people in that group or society. In the descriptive sense of “morality”, morality may not even incorporate impartiality with regard to all moral agents, and it may not be universalizable in any significant way (compare MacIntyre 1957).

Although most philosophers do not use “morality” in any of the above descriptive senses, some philosophers do. Ethical relativists such as Harman (1975), Westermarck (1960), and Prinz (2007), deny that there is any universal normative morality and claim that the actual moralities of societies or individuals are the only moralities there are. These relativists hold that only when the term “morality” is used in this descriptive sense is there something that “morality” actually refers to. They claim that it is a mistake to take “morality” to refer to a universal code of conduct that, under certain conditions, would be endorsed by all rational persons. Although ethical relativists admit that many speakers of English use “morality” to refer to such a universal code of conduct, they claim such persons are mistaken in thinking that there is anything that is the referent of the word “morality” taken in that sense.

Wong (1984, 2006, 2014) claims to be an ethical relativist because he denies that there is any universal moral code that would be endorsed by all rational people. But what seems to stand behind this claim is the idea that there are cultural variations in the relative weights given to, for example, considerations of justice and considerations of interpersonal responsibility. And he assumes that those who believe in a universal morality are committed to the idea that “if there is fundamental disagreement, someone has got it wrong” (2014: 339). But Gert (2005) is certainly not a relativist, and it is central to his moral theory that there are fundamental disagreements in the rankings of various harms and benefits, and with regard to who is protected by morality, and no unique right answer in such cases. Wong himself is willing to say that some moralities are better than others, because he thinks that the moral domain is delimited by a functional criterion: among the functions of a morality are that it promote and regulate social cooperation, help individuals rank their own motivations, and reduce harm.

When used with its descriptive sense, “morality” can refer to codes of conduct with widely differing content, and still be used unambiguously. This parallels the way in which “law” is used unambiguously even though different societies have laws with widely differing content. However, when “morality” is used in its descriptive sense, it sometimes does not refer to the code of a society, but to the code of a group or an individual. As a result, when the guide to conduct put forward by, for example, a religious group conflicts with the guide to conduct put forward by a society, it is not clear whether to say that there are conflicting moralities, conflicting elements within morality, or that the code of the religious group conflicts with morality.

In small homogeneous societies there may be a guide to behavior that is put forward by the society and that is accepted by (almost) all members of the society. For such societies there is (almost) no ambiguity about which guide “morality” refers to. However, in larger societies people often belong to groups that put forward guides to behavior that conflict with the guide put forward by their society, and members of the society do not always accept the guide put forward by their society. If they accept the conflicting guide of some other group to which they belong (often a religious group) rather than the guide put forward by their society, in cases of conflict they will regard those who follow the guide put forward by their society as acting immorally.

In the descriptive sense of “morality”, a person’s own morality cannot be a guide to behavior that that person would prefer others not to follow. However, that fact that an individual adopts a moral code of conduct for his own use does not entail that the person requires it to be adopted by anyone else. An individual may adopt for himself a very demanding moral guide that he thinks may be too difficult for most others to follow. He may judge people who do not adopt his code of conduct as not being as morally good as he is, without judging them to be immoral if they do not adopt it. However, such cases do not undermine the restriction; a guide is plausibly referred to as a morality only when the individual would be willing for others to follow it, at least if “follow” is taken to mean “successfully follow”. For it may be that the individual would not be willing for others to try to follow that code, because of worries about the bad effects of predictable failures due to partiality or lack of sufficient foresight or intelligence.

Philosophers, because they do not need to produce operational tests or criteria in the way that psychologists, biologists, and anthropologists do, often simply take for granted that everyone knows what belongs, and does not belong, to the moral domain. This attitude finds expression in the philosopher’s common appeal to intuition, or to what everyone agrees about. For example, Michael Smith (1994) provides a very detailed analysis of normative reasons, but in distinguishing specifically moral reasons from other sorts of reasons, he says only that they are picked out by appeal to a number of platitudes. And he makes no effort to provide anything like a comprehensive list of such platitudes. Moreover, it is very likely that there will be disagreement as to what counts as platitudinous. Or, if it is definitional of “platitude” that it be uncontroversial, it may be that what is platitudinous about morality will be so thin as to fail to separate morality from other domains. Failing to specify which particular criteria one takes to govern one’s own theorizing, and consequently tacitly relying on the idea that everyone already knows what counts as moral, can lead to a number of problems. One, of course, is a conflation of morality with other things (see Machery 2012 on Churchland 2011). Another is that one mistakes one’s own cultural biases for universal truths (Haidt and Kesiber 2010).

Because theorists in psychology and anthropology often need to design questionnaires and other sorts of probes of the attitudes of subjects, they might be expected to be more sensitive to the need for a reasonably clear means of separating moral judgments from other sorts of judgments. After all, examining the specifically moral judgments of individuals is one of the most direct means of determining what the moral code of a person or group might be. But despite this expectation, and roughly half a century ago, Abraham Edel (1962: 56) decried the lack of an explicit concern to delimit the domain of morality among anthropologists, writing that “morality…is taken for granted, in the sense that one can invoke it or refer to it at will; but it is not explained, depicted, or analysed”. One explanation for this that Edel suggested is the same as the explanation for the same phenomenon in Philosophy: “it is assumed that we all know what morality is and no explicit account need be given”. But the danger for those making this assumption, he points out, is that of “merging the morality concept with social control concepts”. Reinforcing this tendency was the influence, in anthropology, of the sociologist Émile Durkheim (1906 [2009]), for whom morality was simply a matter of how a given society enforces whatever social rules it happens to have.

The failure to offer an operational definition of morality or moral judgment may help explain the widespread but dubious assumption in contemporary anthropology, noted by James Laidlaw (2016: 456), that altruism is the essential and irreducible core of ethics. But Laidlaw also notes that many of the features of what Bernard Williams (1985) described as “the morality system”—features that Williams himself criticized as the parochial result of a secularization of Christian values—are in fact widely shared outside of the West. This state of affairs leads Laidlaw to ask the crucial question:

Which features, formal or substantive, are shared by the “morality system” of the modern West and those of the other major agrarian civilizations and literate religions?

This is, to a very close approximation, a request for the definition of morality in the descriptive sense.

Klenk (2019) notes that in recent years anthropology has taken what he terms an “ethical turn”, recognizing moral systems, and ethics more generally, as a distinct object of anthropological study. This is a move away from the Durkheimian paradigm, and includes the study of self-development, virtues, habits, and the role of explicit deliberation when moral breakdowns occur. However, Klenk’s survey of attempts by anthropologists to study morality as an independent domain lead him to conclude that, so far, their efforts do

not readily allow a distinction between moral considerations and other normative considerations such as prudential, epistemic, or aesthetic ones. (2019: 342)

In light of Edel’s worry about a conflation of moral systems with systems of social control, it is interesting to consider Curry (2016), who defends the hypothesis that

morality turns out to be a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation and conflict recurrent in human social life. (2016: 29)

Curry notes that rules related to kinship, mutualism, exchange, and various forms of conflict resolution appear in virtually all societies. And he argues that many of them have precursors in animal behavior, and can be explained by appeal to his central hypothesis of morality as a solution to problems of cooperation and conflict resolution. He also notes that philosophers, from Aristotle through Hume, Russell, and Rawls, all took cooperation and conflict resolution to be central ideas in understanding morality. It is unclear, however, whether Curry’s view can adequately distinguish morality from law and from other systems that aim to reduce conflict by providing solutions to coordination problems.

Turning from anthropology to psychology, one significant topic of investigation is the existence and nature of a distinction between the moral and the conventional. More specifically, the distinction at issue is between (a) acts that are judged wrong only because of a contingent convention or because they go against the dictates of some relevant authority, and (b) those that are judged to be wrong quite independently of these things, that have a seriousness to them, and that are justified by appeal to the notions of harm, rights, or justice. Elliot Turiel emphasized this distinction, and drew attention to the danger, if one overlooks it, of lumping together moral rules with non-moral “conventions that further the coordination of social interactions within social systems” (1983: 109–111). Those who accept this distinction are implicitly offering a definition of morality in the descriptive sense. Not everyone does accept the distinction, however. Edouard Machery and Ron Mallon (2010) for example, are suspicious of the idea that authority-independence, universality, justification by appeal to harm, justice, or rights, and seriousness form a cluster found together with sufficient regularity to be used to set moral norms apart from other norms. Kelly et al. (2007) are similarly skeptical, and bring empirical evidence to bear on the question.

The psychologist Kurt Gray might be seen as offering an account of moral judgment that would allow us to determine the morality of an individual or group. He and his co-authors suggest that

morality is essentially represented by a cognitive template that combines a perceived intentional agent with a perceived suffering patient. (Gray, Young, & Waytz 2012: 102)

This claim, while quite strong, is nevertheless not as implausibly strong as it might seem, since the thesis is directly concerned with the template we use when thinking about moral matters; it is not directly concerned with the nature of morality itself. In the sense of “template” at issue here, the template we use when thinking about dogs might include having four legs, a tail, and fur, among other things. But that does not mean that an animal must have these features to count as a dog, or even that we believe this.

Given the way that Gray et al. think of templates, even if their hypothesis is correct, it would not mean that our psychology requires us to think of the moral as always involving intentional agents and perceiving patients. In line with this, and despite some lapses in which they suggest that “moral acts can be defined in terms of intention and suffering”, (2012: 109) their considered view seems to be only that the dyadic template fits the majority of moral situations, as we conceive them. Moreover, the link between immoral behavior and suffering to which they appeal in defending their general view is sometimes so indirect as to undermine its significance. For example, they fit authority violations into their suffering-based template by noting that “authority structures provide a way of peacefully resolving conflict” and that “violence results when social structures are threatened”. In a similar stretch, they account for judgments that promiscuity is wrong by gesturing at the suffering involved in sexually transmitted diseases (2012: 107).

Another position in cognitive psychology that has relevance for the definition of morality in the descriptive sense takes moral judgment to be a natural kind: the product of an innate moral grammar (Mikhail 2007). If moral judgment is a natural kind in this way, then a person’s moral code might simply consist in the moral judgments that person is disposed to make. One piece of evidence that there is such a grammar is to be found in the relative universality of certain moral concepts in human cultures: concepts such as obligation, permission, and prohibition. Another is an argument similar to Chomsky’s famous “poverty of the stimulus” argument for a universal human grammar (Dwyer et al. 2010; see also Roedder and Harman 2010).

In evolutionary biology, morality is sometimes simply equated with fairness (Baumard et al. 2013: 60, 77) or reciprocal altruism (Alexander 1987: 77). But it is also sometimes identified by reference to an evolved capacity to make a certain sort of judgment and perhaps also to signal that one has made it (Hauser 2006). This also makes morality into something very much like a natural kind, that can be identified by reference to causal/historical processes. In that case, a content-based definition of morality isn’t required: certain central features are all that one needs to begin one’s theorizing, since they will be enough to draw attention to certain psychologically and biologically individuated mechanisms, and the study of morality will be a detailed inquiry into the nature and evolutionary history of these mechanisms.

Those who use “morality” normatively hold that morality is (or would be) the behavioral code that meets the following condition: all rational persons, under certain specified conditions, would endorse it. Indeed, this is a plausible basic schema for definitions of “morality” in the normative sense. Although some hold that no code could meet the condition, many theorists hold that there is one that does; we can call the former “moral skeptics” and the latter “moral realists” (see entries on LINK: moral skepticism and moral realism).

Many moral skeptics would reject the claim that there are any universal ethical truths, where the ethical is a broader category than the moral. But another interesting class of moral skeptics includes those who think that we should only abandon the narrower category of the moral—partly because of the notion of a code that is central to that category. These moral skeptics hold that we should do our ethical theorizing in terms of the good life, or the virtues. Elizabeth Anscombe (1958) gave expression to this kind of view, which also finds echoes in the work of Bernard Williams (1985). On the other hand, some virtue theorists might take perfect rationality to entail virtue, and might understand morality to be something like the code that such a person would implicitly endorse by acting in virtuous ways. In that case, even a virtue theorist might count as a moral realist in the sense above.

Consequentialist views might not seem to fit the basic schema for definitions of “morality” in the normative sense, since they do not appear to make reference to the notions of endorsement or rationality. But this appearance is deceptive. Mill himself explicitly defines morality as

the rules and precepts for human conduct, by the observance of which [a happy existence] might be, to the greatest extent possible, secured. (1861 [2002: 12])

And he thinks that the mind is not in a “right state” unless it is in “the state most conducive to the general happiness”—in which case it would certainly favor morality as just characterized. And the act-consequentialist J.J.C. Smart (1956) is also explicit that he is thinking of ethics as the study of how it is most rational to behave. His embrace of utilitarianism is the result of his belief that maximizing utility is always the rational thing to do. On reflection it is not surprising that many moral theorists implicitly hold that the codes they offer would be endorsed by all rational people, at least under certain conditions. Unless one holds this, one will have to admit that, having been shown that a certain behavior is morally required, a rational person might simply shrug and ask “So what? What is that to me?” And, though some exceptions are mentioned below, very few moral realists think that their arguments leave this option open. Even fewer think this option remains open if we are allowed to add some additional conditions beyond mere rationality: a restriction on beliefs, for example (similar to Rawls’ (1971: 118) veil of ignorance), or impartiality.

Definitions of morality in the normative sense—and, consequently, moral theories—differ in their accounts of rationality, and in their specifications of the conditions under which all rational persons would necessarily endorse the code of conduct that therefore would count as morality. These definitions and theories also differ in how they understand what it is to endorse a code in the relevant way. Related to these differences, definitions of “morality”—and moral theories—differ with regard to those to whom morality applies: that is, those whose behavior is subject to moral judgment. Some hold that morality applies only to those rational beings that have certain specific features of human beings: features that make it rational for them to endorse morality. These features might, for example, include fallibility and vulnerability. Other moral theories claim to put forward an account of morality that provides a guide to all rational beings, even if these beings do not have these human characteristics, e.g., God.

Among those who use “morality” normatively, virtually all hold that “morality” refers to a code of conduct that applies to all who can understand it and can govern their behavior by it, though many hold that it protects a larger group. Among such theorists it is also common to hold that morality should never be overridden. That is, it is common to hold that no one should ever violate a moral prohibition or requirement for non-moral reasons. This claim is trivial if “should” is taken to mean “morally should”. So the claim about moral overridingness is typically understood with “should” meaning “rationally should”, with the result that moral requirements are asserted to be rational requirements. Though common, this view is by no means always taken as definitional. Sidgwick (1874) despaired of showing that rationality required us to choose morality over egoism, though he certainly did not think rationality required egoism either. More explicitly, Gert (2005) held that though moral behavior is always rationally permissible , it is not always rationally required . Foot (1972) seems to have held that any reason—and therefore any rational requirement—to act morally would have to stem from a contingent commitment or an objective interest. And she also seems to have held that sometimes neither of these sorts of reasons might be available, so that moral behavior might not be rationally required for some agents. Finally, moral realists who hold desire-based theories of reasons and formal, means/end theories of rationality sometimes explicitly deny that moral behavior is always even rationally permissible (Goldman 2009), and in fact this seems to be a consequence of Foot’s view as well, though she does not emphasize it.

Despite the fact that theorists such as Sidgwick, Gert, Foot, and Goldman do not hold that moral behavior is rationally required, they are by no means precluded from using “morality” in the normative sense. Using “morality” in the normative sense, and holding that there is such a thing, only entails holding that rational people would put a certain system forward; it does not entail holding that rational people would always be motivated to follow that system themselves. But to the degree that a theorist would deny even the claim about endorsement, and hold instead that rational people might not only fail to act morally, but might even reject it as a public system, that theorist is either not using “morality” in a normative sense, or is denying the existence of morality in that sense. Such a theorist may also be using “morality” in a descriptive sense, or may not have any particular sense in mind.

When “morality” is used in its normative sense, it need not have either of the two formal features that are essential to moralities referred to by the descriptive sense: that it be a code of conduct that is put forward by a society, group, or individual, or that it be accepted as a guide to behavior by the members of that society or group, or by that individual. Indeed, it is possible that morality, in the normative sense, has never been put forward by any particular society, by any group at all, or even by any individual. This is partly a consequence of the fact that “morality” in the normative sense is understood in terms of a conditional that is likely to be counterfactual: it is the code that would be endorsed by any fully rational person under certain conditions.

If one is a moral realist, and one also acknowledges the descriptive sense of “morality”, one may require that descriptive moralities at least approximate, in some ways, morality in the normative sense. That is, one might claim that the guides to behavior of some societies lack so many of the essential features of morality in the normative sense, that it is incorrect to say that these societies even have a morality in a descriptive sense. This is an extreme view, however. A more moderate position would hold that all societies have something that can be regarded as their morality, but that many of these moralities—perhaps, indeed, all of them—are defective. That is, a moral realist might hold that although these actual guides to behavior have enough of the features of normative morality to be classified as descriptive moralities, they would not be endorsed in their entirety by all moral agents.

While moral realists do not claim that any actual society has or has ever had morality as its actual guide to conduct, “natural law” theories of morality claim that any rational person in any society, even one that has a defective morality, is capable of knowing what general kinds of actions morality prohibits, requires, discourages, encourages, and allows. In the theological version of natural law theories, such as that put forward by Aquinas, this is because God implanted this knowledge in the reason of all persons. In the secular version of natural law theories, such as that put forward by Hobbes (1660), natural reason is sufficient to allow all rational persons to know what morality prohibits, requires, etc. Natural law theorists also claim that morality applies to all rational persons, not only those now living, but also those who lived in the past.

In contrast to natural law theories, other moral theories do not hold quite so strong a view about the universality of knowledge of morality. Still, many hold that morality is known to all who can legitimately be judged by it. Baier (1958), Rawls (1971) and contractarians deny that there can be an esoteric morality: one that judges people even though they cannot know what it prohibits, requires, etc. For all of the above theorists, morality is what we can call a public system : a system of norms (1) that is knowable by all those to whom it applies and (2) that is not irrational for any of those to whom it applies to follow (Gert 2005: 10). Moral judgments of blame thus differ from legal or religious judgments of blame in that they cannot be made about persons who are legitimately ignorant of what they are required to do. Act consequentialists seem to hold that everyone should know that they are morally required to act so as to bring about the best consequences, but even they do not seem to think judgments of moral blame are appropriate if a person is legitimately ignorant of what action would bring about the best consequences (Singer 1993: 228). Parallel views seem to be held by rule consequentialists (Hooker 2001: 72).

The ideal situation for a legal system would be that it be a public system. But in any large society this is not possible. Games are closer to being public systems and most adults playing a game know its rules, or they know that there are judges whose interpretation determines what behavior the game prohibits, requires, etc. Although a game is often a public system, its rules apply only to those playing the game. If a person does not care enough about the game to abide by the rules, she can usually quit. Morality is the one public system that no rational person can quit. The fact that one cannot quit morality means that one can do nothing to escape being legitimately liable to sanction for violating its norms, except by ceasing to be a moral agent. Morality applies to people simply by virtue of their being rational persons who know what morality prohibits, requires, etc., and being able to guide their behavior accordingly.

Public systems can be formal or informal . To say a public system is informal is to say that it has no authoritative judges and no decision procedure that provides a unique guide to action in all situations, or that resolves all disagreements. To say that a public system is formal is to say that it has one or both of these things (Gert 2005: 9). Professional basketball is a formal public system; all the players know that what the referees call a foul determines what is a foul. Pickup basketball is an informal public system. The existence of persistent moral disagreements shows that morality is most plausibly regarded as an informal public system. This is true even for such moral theories as the Divine Command theory and act utilitarianism, inasmuch as there are no authoritative judges of God’s will, or of which act will maximize utility, and there are no decision procedures for determining these things (Scanlon 2011: 261–2). When persistent moral disagreement is recognized, those who understand that morality is an informal public system admit that how one should act is morally unresolvable, and if some resolution is required, the political or legal system can be used to resolve it. These formal systems have the means to provide unique guides, but they do not provide the uniquely correct moral guide to the action that should be performed.

An important example of a moral problem left unsettled by the informal public system of morality is whether fetuses are impartially protected by morality and so whether or under what conditions abortions are allowed. There is continuing disagreement among fully informed moral agents about this moral question, even though the legal and political system in the United States has provided fairly clear guidelines about the conditions under which abortion is legally allowed. Despite this important and controversial issue, morality, like all informal public systems, presupposes agreement on how to act in most moral situations, e.g., all agree that killing or seriously harming any moral agent requires strong justification in order to be morally allowed. No one thinks it is morally justified to cheat, deceive, injure, or kill a moral agent simply in order to gain sufficient money to take a fantastic vacation. Moral matters are often thought to be controversial because everyday decisions, about which there is no controversy, are rarely discussed. The amount of agreement concerning what rules are moral rules, and on when it is justified to violate one of these rules, explains why morality can be a public system even though it is an informal system.

By using the notion of an informal public system, we can improve the basic schema for definitions of “morality” in the normative sense. The old schema was that morality is the code that all rational persons, under certain specified conditions, would endorse. The improved schema is that morality is the informal public system that all rational persons, under certain specified conditions, would endorse. Some theorists might not regard the informal nature of the moral system as definitional, holding that morality might give knowable precise answers to every question. This would have the result that conscientious moral agents often cannot know what morality permits, requires, or allows. Some philosophers deny that this is a genuine possibility.

On any definition of “morality”, whether descriptive or normative, it is a code of conduct. However, on ethical- or group-relativist accounts or on individualistic accounts—all of which are best regarded as accounts of morality in the descriptive sense—morality often has no special content that distinguishes it from nonmoral codes of conduct, such as law or religion. Just as a legal code of conduct can have almost any content, as long as it is capable of guiding behavior, and a religious code of conduct has no limits on content, most relativist and individualist accounts of morality place few limits on the content of a moral code. Of course, actual codes do have certain minimal limits—otherwise the societies they characterize would lack the minimum required degree of social cooperation required to sustain their existence over time. On the other hand, for moral realists who explicitly hold that morality is an informal public system that all rational persons would put forward for governing the behavior of all moral agents, it has a fairly definite content. Hobbes (1660), Mill (1861), and most other non-religiously influenced philosophers in the Anglo-American tradition limit morality to behavior that, directly or indirectly, affects others.

The claim that morality only governs behavior that affects others is somewhat controversial, and so probably should not be counted as definitional of morality, even if it turns out to be entailed by the correct moral theory. Some have claimed that morality also governs behavior that affects only the agent herself, such as taking recreational drugs, masturbation, and not developing one’s talents. Kant (1785) may provide an account of this wide concept of morality. Interpreted this way, Kant’s theory still fits the basic schema, but includes these self-regarding moral requirements because of the particular account of rationality he employs. However, pace Kant, it is doubtful that all moral agents would put forward a universal guide to behavior that governs behavior that does not affect them at all. Indeed, when the concept of morality is completely distinguished from religion, moral rules do seem to limit their content to behavior that directly or indirectly causes or risks harm to others. Some behavior that seems to affect only oneself, e.g., taking recreational drugs, may have a significant indirect harmful effect on others by supporting the illegal and harmful activity of those who benefit from the sale of those drugs.

Confusion about the content of morality sometimes arises because morality is not distinguished sufficiently from religion. Regarding self-affecting behavior as governed by morality is supported by the idea that we are created by God and are obliged to obey God’s commands, and so may be a holdover from the time when morality was not clearly distinguished from religion. This religious holdover might also affect the claim that some sexual practices such as homosexuality are immoral. Those who clearly distinguish morality from religion typically do not regard sexual orientation as a moral matter.

It is possible to hold that having a certain sort of social goal is definitional of morality (Frankena 1963). Stephen Toulmin (1950) took it to be the harmony of society. Baier (1958) took it to be “the good of everyone alike”. Utilitarians sometimes claim it is the production of the greatest good. Gert (2005) took it to be the lessening of evil or harm. This latter goal may seem to be a significant narrowing of the utilitarian claim, but utilitarians always include the lessening of harm as essential to producing the greatest good and almost all of their examples involve the avoiding or preventing of harm. It is notable that the paradigm cases of moral rules are those that prohibit causing harm directly or indirectly, such as rules prohibiting killing, causing pain, deceiving, and breaking promises. Even those precepts that require or encourage positive action, such as helping the needy, are almost always related to preventing or relieving harms, rather than promoting goods such as pleasure.

Among the views of moral realists, differences in content are less significant than similarities. For all such philosophers, morality prohibits actions such as killing, causing pain, deceiving, and breaking promises. For some, morality also requires charitable actions, but failure to act charitably on every possible occasion does not require justification in the same way that any act of killing, causing pain, deceiving, and breaking promises requires justification. Both Kant (1785) and Mill (1861) distinguish between duties of perfect obligation and duties of imperfect obligation and regard not harming as the former kind of duty and helping as the latter kind of duty. For Gert (2005), morality encourages charitable action, but does not require it; it is always morally good to be charitable, but it is not immoral not to be charitable.

Even if the plausible basic schema for definitions of “morality” in the normative sense is accepted, one’s understanding of what morality is, in this sense, will still depend very significantly on how one understands rationality. As has already been mentioned, morality, in the normative sense, is sometimes taken to prohibit certain forms of consensual sexual activity, or the use of recreational drugs. But including such prohibitions in an account of morality as a universal guide that all rational persons would put forward requires a very particular view of rationality. After all, many will deny that it is irrational to favor harmless consensual sexual activities, or to favor the use of certain drugs for purely recreational purposes.

One concept of rationality that supports the exclusion of sexual matters, at least at the basic level, from the norms of morality, is that for an action to count as irrational it must be an act that harms oneself without producing a compensating benefit for someone—perhaps oneself, perhaps someone else. Such an account of rationality might be called “hybrid”, since it gives different roles to self-interest and to altruism. An account of morality based on the hybrid concept of rationality could agree with Hobbes (1660) that morality is concerned with promoting people living together in peace and harmony, which includes obeying the rules prohibiting causing harm to others. Although moral prohibitions against actions that cause harm or significantly increase the risk of harm are not absolute, in order to avoid acting immorally, justification is always needed when violating these prohibitions. Kant (1797) seems to hold that it is never justified to violate some of these prohibitions, e.g., the prohibition against lying. This is largely a result of the fact that Kant’s (1785) concept of rationality is purely formal, in contrast with the hybrid concept of rationality described above.

Most moral realists who offer moral theories do not bother to offer anything like a definition of morality. Instead, what these philosophers offer is a theory of the nature and justification of a set of norms with which they take their audience already to be acquainted. In effect, they tacitly pick morality out by reference to certain salient and relative uncontroversial bits of its content: that it prohibits killing, stealing, deceiving, cheating, and so on. In fact, this would not be a bad way of defining morality, if the point of such a definition were only to be relatively theory-neutral, and to allow theorizing to begin. We could call it “the reference-fixing definition” or “the substantive definition” (see Prinz and Nichols 2010: 122).

Some, including Hare (1952, 1963), have been tempted to argue against the possibility of a substantive definition of morality, on the basis of the claim that moral disapproval is an attitude that can be directed at anything whatsoever. Foot (1958a, 1958b), argued against this idea, but the substantive definition still has the drawback is that it does not, somehow, seem to get at the essence of morality. One might suggest that the substantive definition has the advantage of including Divine Command theories of morality, while such theories might seem to make trouble for definitions based on the plausible schema given above. But it is plausible to hold that Divine Command theories rest on Natural Law theories, which do in fact fit the schema. Divine Command theories that do not rest on Natural Law might make trouble for the schema, but one might also think that such theories rest instead on a confusion, since they seem to entail that God might have made it immoral to act beneficently.

5. Variations

As one gives more substance and detail to the general notions of endorsement, rationality, and the relevant conditions under which rational people would endorse morality, one moves further from providing a definition of morality in the normative sense, and closer to providing an actual moral theory. And a similar claim is true for definitions of morality in the descriptive sense, as one specifies in more detail what one means in claiming that a person or group endorses a system or code. In the following four subsections, four broad ways of making the definitions of morality more precise are presented. They are all sufficiently schematic to be regarded as varieties of definition, rather than as theories.

Expressivists about morality do not take there to be any objective content to morality that could underwrite what we above called “the substantive definition”. Rather, they explicitly recognize the existence of significant variation in what rules and ideals different people put forward as morality in the normative sense. And they doubt that this variation is compatible with moral realism. Consequently, they need to offer some unifying features of these different sets of rules and ideals, despite variation in their content. As a result of this pressure, some expressivists end up offering explicit accounts of a distinctively moral attitude one might hold towards an act token or type. These accounts can of course be taken to underwrite various forms of morality in the descriptive sense. But they can also be taken to provide the basis of one form of moral realism.

To see how an expressivist view can be co-opted by a moral realist of a certain sort, consider Allan Gibbard’s (1990) moral expressivism. Gibbard holds that moral judgments are expressions of the acceptance of norms for feeling the emotions of guilt and anger. One can accept Gibbard’s view of what it is to endorse a moral claim without accepting the view that, in conflicts, all disagreements are faultless. That is, even a moral realist can use Gibbard’s view of the nature of moral judgment, and extract from it a definition of morality. Used by such a theorist, Gibbard’s view entails that morality, in the normative sense, is the code that is picked out by the correct set of norms for feeling guilt and anger: that is, the norms a rational person would endorse. This is equivalent to accepting the plausible general schema for a definition of “morality” given above, and understanding endorsement in a special sense. To endorse a code in the relevant way, on this definition, is to think that violations of its norms make guilt and anger appropriate.

Closely related to Gibbard’s account is one according to which the norms of relevance are not norms for the emotions, but are norms for other reactions to behavior. For example, a person’s morality might be the set of rules and ideals they regard as picked out by appropriate norms for praise and blame, and other social sanctions (Sprigge 1964: 317). In fact, reference to praise and blame may be more adequate than reference to guilt and anger, since the latter seem only to pick out moral prohibitions, and not to make room for the idea that morality also recommends or encourages certain behaviors even if it does not require them. For example, it is plausible that there is such a thing as supererogatory action, and that the specification of what counts as supererogatory is part of morality—whether in the descriptive or normative sense. But it does not seem likely that we can account for this part of morality by appeal to norms for guilt and anger, and it is not at all clear that there are emotions that are as closely linked to supererogation as guilt and anger are to moral transgression. On the other hand, it seems plausible that norms for praising action might help to pick out what counts as supererogatory.

Another version of the present strategy would replace talk of praise and blame with talk of reward and punishment. This view would take morality to be a system that explained what kinds of actions are appropriately rewarded and—more centrally—punished. This sort of view, which remains closely related to Gibbard’s suggestion, can also be regarded as fitting the general schema given above. On this view, the notion of endorsing a code is unpacked in terms of the acceptance of norms for reward and punishment. Skorupski (1993), following Mill (1861), advocates a definition of morality along these lines, though he then understands punishment primarily in terms of blame, and understands blame as very closely linked to emotion—indeed, merely having the emotion can count as blaming—so that the resulting view is similar to Gibbard’s in one important way, at least when one focuses on moral wrongness.

It is certainly plausible that it is appropriate to feel guilt when one acts immorally, and to feel anger at those who act immorally towards those one cares about. It is even plausible that it is only appropriate, in some particular sense of “appropriate”, to feel guilt and anger in connection with moral transgressions. So norms for guilt and anger may well uniquely pick out certain moral norms. And similar claims might be made about norms for praise and blame. However, it is not equally clear that morality is properly defined in terms of emotions or other reactions to behavior. For it may be, as Skorupski emphasizes, that we need to understand guilt and anger, and praise and blame, in terms of moral concepts. This worry about direction of explanation seems less pressing for the notions of reward and punishment. These responses to behavior, at least in themselves , might simply be understood in terms of the meting out of benefits and harms. Of course they will only count as reward and punishment when they are linked to someone’s having followed or violated a rule that all rational people would want to see enforced by such responses.

One way of understanding the notion of endorsement is as advocacy. Advocating a code is a second- or third-personal matter, since one advocates a code to others. Moreover, it is consistent with advocating a code, that one does not plan on following that code oneself. Just as asserting something one believes to be false still counts as asserting it, hypocritical advocacy of a code still counts as advocacy of that code. When endorsement is understood as advocacy, it can be used in definitions of morality, in the descriptive sense, as long as it is the morality of a group or society. And advocacy can also be used as an interpretation of endorsement when providing a definition of morality in the normative sense. Of course those who accept a definition of morality in any of these senses—as the code that a group or society endorses, or as the code that would be universally advocated by all rational agents under certain conditions—do not hold that the advocacy would necessarily, or even probably, be hypocritical. But they do hold that the important thing about a moral code—what picks it out as a moral code—is that it would be put forward by all the relevant agents, not that it would be followed by all of them. The notion of advocacy has less of a place in a descriptive account of a single person’s morality, since when someone is hypocritical we often deny that they really hold the moral view that they advocate.

Mill (1861), in addition to offering a moral theory, takes pains to explain how morality differs from other normative systems. For him, norms that simply promote utility are norms of expediency. In order to qualify as morally wrong, an act must be one that ought to be punished. Thinking that an act of a certain kind ought to be punished is a third-personal matter, so it seems plausible to put Mill’s view of what is definitional of morality into the category being discussed in this section. It is worth noting that hypocrisy is, for Mill, not only a possibility, but—given the present sorry state of moral education—virtually unavoidable. That is because being motivated to advocate punishment for a certain kind of act is quite different from being motivated to refrain from that same kind of act. Advocating punishment for a certain kind of act might be one’s utility-maximizing choice, while actually performing that kind of act (trying, of course, to avoid detection) might also be utility-maximizing. And for Mill what determines what a person will advocate, and how a person will act, are the foreseeable consequences for that person .

Bernard Gert’s (2005) moral view also operates with a definition of morality that understands endorsement as advocacy, in the sense of putting forward as a guide for all rational agents. Gert offers the following two conditions as those under which all rational persons would put forward a universal guide for governing the behavior of all moral agents. The first condition is that they are seeking agreement with all other rational persons or moral agents. The second condition is that they use only those beliefs that are shared by all rational persons: for example, that they themselves are fallible and vulnerable and that all those to whom morality applies are also fallible and vulnerable. The second condition rules out both religious beliefs and scientific beliefs since there are no religious beliefs or scientific beliefs that all rational persons share. This condition is plausible because no universal guide to behavior that applies to all rational persons can be based on beliefs that some of these rational persons do not share.

Another way of understanding the notion of endorsement is as acceptance. Unlike advocating a code, accepting a code is a first-personal matter. It might include intending to conform one’s own behavior to that code, feeling guilty when one does not, and so on. One cannot hypocritically accept a code. Indeed, hypocrisy is simply a matter of advocating a code one does not accept. So this notion of endorsement is available to someone who is trying to provide a definition of morality in the descriptive sense, even when considering a single person’s morality.

Paradigmatic views in the natural law tradition starting with Aquinas hold both that the laws of morality have their source in God, and that these laws constitute the principles of human practical rationality (Finnis 1980; MacIntyre 1999). Views in this tradition may be seen as using the basic schema for definitions of morality in the normative sense, understanding endorsement as acceptance. Members of this tradition typically hold that all rational persons know what kinds of actions morality prohibits, requires, discourages, encourages, and allows. It is central to Aquinas’s view that morality is known to all those whose behavior is subject to moral judgment, even if they do not know of the revelations of Christianity. This is why Aquinas holds that knowing what morality prohibits and requires does not involve knowing why morality prohibits and requires what it does.

Those who belong to the natural law tradition also hold that reason endorses acting morally. This sort of endorsement of course has a cognitive component. But it is also motivational. Aquinas does not hold that knowledge of morality is always effective: it can be blotted out by evil persuasions or corrupt habits. But if reason is not opposed by such forces, any rational person would not only know what was prohibited and required by morality, but would follow those prohibitions and requirements. So, for natural law theorists, endorsement amounts to acceptance.

The lack of an explicit and widely accepted definition of morality may partially explain the resilience of act-consequentialist accounts of morality. Without an explicit definition, it may be easier to ignore the fact that act-consequentialist theories are not particularly concerned with interpersonal interactions, but typically apply just as well to desert island scenarios as to individuals who live in societies. In any case, it has been recognized that in order to combat consequentialism, it would be helpful to have something like a plausible definition of morality that made it clear that the subject matter of morality is something different from simply the goodness and badness of consequences. T.M. Scanlon (1982, 1998), applying this strategy, suggests that the subject matter of morality—what we are talking about, when we talk about morality—is a system of rules for the regulation of behavior that is not reasonably rejectable based on a desire for informed unforced general agreement.

Scanlon’s suggestion regarding the subject matter of morality can easily be seen as an instance of the general schema given above. His “system of rules” is a specific kind of informal public system; he understands endorsement by all rational people as non-rejection by all reasonable people; and he offers a specific account of the conditions under which moral agents would reach the relevant agreement. But Scanlon also places very heavy emphasis on the fact that if he is right about the subject matter of morality, then what compliance with moral norms allows us to do is to justify our behavior to others in ways that they cannot reasonably reject. Indeed, the ability to justify ourselves to reasonable people is a primary source of moral motivation for Scanlon (see also Sprigge 1964: 319). This might seem to suggest a somewhat different definitional claim about morality: that morality consists in the most basic norms in terms of which we justify ourselves to others. But it is plausible that this purportedly definitional claim is better thought of as a corollary of Scanlon’s particular version of the general schema, with endorsement understood as non-rejection. For, if morality is the system of norms that would be endorsed in this way, we can justify our actions to others by pointing out that even they, were they reasonable, would have endorsed rules that allowed our behavior.

Stephen Darwall’s (2006) moral view can also be seen as flowing from a version of the general schema, and yielding claims about justifiability to others. Darwall claims that morality is a matter of equal accountability among free and rational beings. On his view, I behave morally towards you to the degree that I respect the claims you have authority to make on me. Darwall also holds that I will respect those claims if I acknowledge certain assumptions to which I am committed simply in virtue of being a rational, deliberating agent. As a result, his view is that morality—or at least the morality of obligation—is a “scheme of accountability” (a certain sort of informal public system) that all rational people will endorse. Unlike Scanlon’s view, however, Darwall’s view makes use of a stronger sense of endorsement than non-rejection. Specifically, it includes the recognition of the reasons provided by the authoritative demands of other people. And that recognition is positively motivational.

Both Scanlon’s and Darwall’s views emphasize the social nature of morality, taken in the normative sense: Scanlon, by reference to justification to others; Darwall, by appeal to the relevance of second-personal reasons. But Darwall builds a responsiveness to second-personal reasons into the relevant notion of rationality, while Scanlon simply makes the empirical claim that many people are motivated by a desire to justify themselves to others, and notes that his definition of morality will yield rules that will allow one to do this, if one follows them. The sort of definition described in section 5.1 also makes the social nature of morality essential to it, since it centrally features the notion of a response to the behavior of others. The definitions described in sections 5.2 and 5.3 do not entail the social nature of morality, since it is possible to accept, and even to advocate, a code that concerns only self-regarding behavior. But on any plausible account of rationality a code that would be advocated by all moral agents will govern interpersonal interactions, and will include rules that prohibit causing harm without sufficient reason. Only the definition offered in section 5.3 therefore can be taken as realistically compatible with an egoistic morality.

• Alexander, Richard, 1987, The Biology of Moral Systems , New York: Routledge.
• Anscombe, G. E. M., 1958, “Modern Moral Philosophy”, Philosophy , 33(124): 1–19. doi:10.1017/S0031819100037943
• Aquinas, Thomas, c.1270, Summa Theologiae , Paris.
• Baier, Kurt, 1958, The Moral Point of View , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Baumard, Nicolas, Jean-Baptiste André, and Dan Sperber, 2013, “A Mutualistic Approach to Morality: The Evolution of Fairness by Partner Choice”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences , 36(1): 59–78. doi:10.1017/S0140525X11002202
• Bentham, Jeremy, 1789, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation , New York: Prometheus Books, 1988.
• Brink, David, 1997, “Kantian Rationalism: Inescapability, Authority, and Supremacy”, in Ethics and Practical Reason , Garrett Cullity and Berys Gaut (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 255–291.
• Churchland, Patricia, 2011, Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Curry, Oliver Scott, 2016, “Morality as Cooperation: A Problem-Centred Approach”, in The Evolution of Morality , Todd K. Shackelford and Ranald Hansen (eds.), Cham: Springer, pp. 27–51. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-19671-8_2
• Darwall, Stephen, 2006, The Second-person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• De Waal, Frans, 1996, Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Doris, John M. and The Moral Psychology Research Group (eds.), 2010, The Moral Psychology Handbook , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199582143.001.0001
• Durkheim, Émile, 1906 [2009], “La Détermination du fait moral”. Collected in Sociologie et Philosophie , Paris: Félix Alcan, 1924. Translated as “The Determination of Moral Facts” in Sociology and Philosophy , David Pocock (ed. and trans.), 1953, Reprinted Routledge revivals. London: Routledge, 2009, pp. 16–31.
• Dworkin, Ronald, 1986, Law’s Empire , Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
• Dwyer, Susan, Bryce Huebner, and Marc D. Hauser, 2010, “The Linguistic Analogy: Motivations, Results, and Speculations”, Topics in Cognitive Science , 2(3): 486–510. doi:10.1111/j.1756-8765.2009.01064.x
• Edel, Abraham, 1962, “Anthropology and Ethics in Common Focus”, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland , 92(1): 55–72. doi:10.2307/2844321
• Finnis, John, 1980, Natural Law and Natural Rights , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Foot, Philippa, 1958a, “Moral Beliefs”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , 59: 83–104. doi:10.1093/aristotelian/59.1.83
• –––, 1958b, “Moral Arguments”, Mind , 67(268): 502–513. doi:10.1093/mind/LXVII.268.502
• –––, 1972, “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives”, The Philosophical Review , 81(3): 305–316. doi:10.2307/2184328
• Frankena, William, 1963, “Recent Conceptions of Morality”, in G. Nakhnikian and H. Castañeda (eds.), Morality and the Language of Conduct , Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, pp. 1–24.
• –––, 1973, Ethics , Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
• –––, 1980, Thinking about Morality , Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
• Gert, Bernard, 2005, Morality: Its Nature and Justification , Revised Edition, New York: Oxford University Press.
• Gibbard, Allan, 1990, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Goldman, Alan H., 2009, Reasons from Within: Desires and Values , New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199576906.001.0001
• Gray, Kurt, Liane Young, and Adam Waytz, 2012, “Mind Perception Is the Essence of Morality”, Psychological Inquiry , 23(2): 101–124. doi:10.1080/1047840X.2012.651387
• Greene, Joshua, 2013, Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and The Gap between Us and Them , New York: Penguin.
• Haidt, Jonathan, 2006, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom , New York: Basic Books.
• –––, 2011, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion , New York: Pantheon.
• Haidt, Jonathan and Selin Kesebir, 2010, “Morality”, in S. Fiske, D. Gilbert, and G. Lindzey (eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology , 5th Edition, Hobeken, NJ: Wiley, pp. 797–832.
• Hare, R.M., 1952, The Language of Morals , New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 1963, Freedom and Reason , New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 1981, Moral Thinking , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Harman, Gilbert, 1975, “Moral Relativism Defended”, The Philosophical Review , 84(1): 3–22. doi:10.2307/2184078
• Hauser, Marc, 2006, Moral Minds: How Nature Designed our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong , New York: Harper Collins.
• Hobbes, Thomas, 1660 [1994], Leviathan , edited by Edwin Curly, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994.
• –––, 1658 and 1651 [1991], Man and Citizen , (translations of six chapters of De Homine (1658) and all of De Cive (1651)), edited by Bernard Gert, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1991.
• Hooker, Brad, 2001, Ideal Code, Real World: A Rule Consequentialist theory of Morality , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Hume, David, 1751 [1975], Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals , edited by L.A. Selby-Bigge, 3 rd edition revised by P.H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.
• Kant, Immanuel, 1785 and 1797 [1993], Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: with On a Supposed Right to Lie because of Philanthropic Concerns , 3 rd edition, translated by J. Ellington, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993.
• Kelly, Daniel, Stephen Stich, Kevin J. Haley, Serena J. Eng, and Daniel M. T. Fessler, 2007, “Harm, Affect, and the Moral/Conventional Distinction”, Mind & Language , 22(2): 117–131. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0017.2007.00302.x
• Klenk, Michael, 2019, “Moral Philosophy and the ‘Ethical Turn’ in Anthropology”, Zeitschrift Für Ethik Und Moralphilosophie , 2(2): 331–353. doi:10.1007/s42048-019-00040-9
• Laidlaw, James, 2016, “The Interactional Foundations of Ethics and the Formation and Limits of Morality Systems”, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory , 6(1): 455–461. doi:10.14318/hau6.1.024
• Liao, S. Matthew (ed.), 2016, Moral Brains. The Neuroscience of Morality , New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199357666.001.0001
• –––, 1999, Dependent Rational Animals , Chicago: Open Court.
• Machery, Edouard, 2012, “Delineating the Moral Domain”, Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition , Logic and Communication, 7(1): 1–14. doi:10.4148/biyclc.v7i0.1777
• Machery, Edouard and Ron Mallon, 2010, “The Evolution of Morality”, in Doris and The Moral Psychology Research Group 2010: 3–46.
• MacIntyre, Alasdair, 1957, “What Morality Is Not”, Philosophy , 32(123): 325–335. doi:10.1017/S0031819100051950
• Mikhail, John, 2007, “Universal Moral Grammar: Theory, Evidence and the Future”, Trends in Cognitive Sciences , 11(4): 143–152. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2006.12.007
• Mill, John Stuart, 1861 [2002], Utilitarianism , edited by G. Sher, Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002.
• Moore, G.E., 1912, Ethics , New York: H. Holt.
• –––, 1903, Principia Ethica , New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
• Prinz, Jesse, 2007, The Emotional Construction of Morals , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Prinz, Jesse and Shaun Nichols, 2010, “Moral Emotions”, in Doris and The Moral Psychology Research Group 2010: 111–146.
• Rawls, John, 1971, A Theory of Justice , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Roedder, Erica and Gilbert Harman, 2010, “Linguistics and Moral Theory”, in Doris and The Moral Psychology Research Group 2010: 273–296.
• Scanlon, T. M., 1982, “Contractualism and Utilitarianism”, in Utilitarianism and Beyond , Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 103–128. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511611964.007
• –––, 1998, What We Owe to Each Other , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• –––, 2011, “What is Morality?” in J. Shephard, S. Kosslyn, and E. Hammonds (eds.), The Harvard Sampler: Liberal Education for the Twenty-First Century , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 243–66.
• Sidgwick, Henry, 1874, Methods of Ethics , Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co., 1981.
• Singer, Peter, 1993, Practical Ethics , 2 nd Edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter (ed.), 2008, Moral Psychology Volume 1, The Evolution of Morality: Adaptations and Innateness , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• –––, 2016, “The Disunity of Morality”, in Liao 2016: 331–354.
• Skorupski, John, 1993, “The Definition of Morality”, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement , 35: 121–144. doi:10.1017/S1358246100006299
• Smart, J. J. C., 1956, “Extreme and Restricted Utilitarianism”, The Philosophical Quarterly , 6(25): 344–354. doi:10.2307/2216786
• Smith, Michael, 1994, The Moral Problem , Oxford: Blackwell.
• Sprigge, Timothy L. S., 1964, “Definition of a Moral Judgment”, Philosophy , 39(150): 301–322. doi:10.1017/S0031819100055777
• Strawson, P. F., 1961, “Social Morality and Individual Ideal”, Philosophy , 36(136): 1–17. doi:10.1017/S003181910005779X
• Thomson, J.J. and G. Dworkin (eds.), 1968, Ethics , New York: Harper & Row.
• Toulmin, Stephen, 1950, An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Turiel, Elliot, 1983, The Development of Social Knowledge: Morality and Convention , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Warnock, Geoffrey, 1971, The Object of Morality , London: Methuen.
• Westermarck, Edward, 1960, Ethical Relativity , Paterson, N.J.: Littlefield, Adams.
• Williams, Bernard, 1985, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy , London: Fontana.
• Wong, David B., 1984, Moral Relativity , Berkeley CA: University of California Press.
• –––, 2006, Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism , New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0195305396.001.0001
• –––, 2014, “Integrating Philosophy with Anthropology in an Approach to Morality”, Anthropological Theory , 14(3): 336–355. doi:10.1177/1463499614534554
• Wren, T.E. (ed.), 1990, The Moral Domain: Essays in the Ongoing Discussion Between Philosophy and the Social Sciences , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

[Please contact the author with suggestions.]

consequentialism | ethics: natural law tradition | Hobbes, Thomas: moral and political philosophy | Kant, Immanuel | Mill, John Stuart | moral realism | moral relativism | moral skepticism

Copyright © 2020 by Bernard Gert Joshua Gert < jngert @ wm . edu >

• Accessibility

Support SEP

Mirror sites.

View this site from another server:

• Info about mirror sites

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2023 by The Metaphysics Research Lab , Department of Philosophy, Stanford University

Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

• Essay Guides
• Other Essays
• How to Write an Ethics Paper: Guide & Ethical Essay Examples
• Speech Topics
• Basics of Essay Writing
• Essay Topics
• Main Academic Essays
• Research Paper Topics
• Basics of Research Paper Writing
• Miscellaneous
• Chicago/ Turabian
• Data & Statistics
• Methodology
• Admission Writing Tips
• Admission Advice
• Other Guides
• Student Life
• Studying Tips
• Understanding Plagiarism
• Academic Writing Tips
• Basics of Dissertation & Thesis Writing

• Research Paper Guides
• Formatting Guides
• Basics of Research Process
• Admission Guides
• Dissertation & Thesis Guides

How to Write an Ethics Paper: Guide & Ethical Essay Examples

Table of contents

Use our free Readability checker

An ethics essay is a type of academic writing that explores ethical issues and dilemmas. Students should evaluates them in terms of moral principles and values. The purpose of an ethics essay is to examine the moral implications of a particular issue, and provide a reasoned argument in support of an ethical perspective.

Writing an essay about ethics is a tough task for most students. The process involves creating an outline to guide your arguments about a topic and planning your ideas to convince the reader of your feelings about a difficult issue. If you still need assistance putting together your thoughts in composing a good paper, you have come to the right place. We have provided a series of steps and tips to show how you can achieve success in writing. This guide will tell you how to write an ethics paper using ethical essay examples to understand every step it takes to be proficient. In case you don’t have time for writing, get in touch with our professional essay writers for hire . Our experts work hard to supply students with excellent essays.

What Is an Ethics Essay?

An ethics essay uses moral theories to build arguments on an issue. You describe a controversial problem and examine it to determine how it affects individuals or society. Ethics papers analyze arguments on both sides of a possible dilemma, focusing on right and wrong. The analysis gained can be used to solve real-life cases. Before embarking on writing an ethical essay, keep in mind that most individuals follow moral principles. From a social context perspective, these rules define how a human behaves or acts towards another. Therefore, your theme essay on ethics needs to demonstrate how a person feels about these moral principles. More specifically, your task is to show how significant that issue is and discuss if you value or discredit it.

Purpose of an Essay on Ethics

The primary purpose of an ethics essay is to initiate an argument on a moral issue using reasoning and critical evidence. Instead of providing general information about a problem, you present solid arguments about how you view the moral concern and how it affects you or society. When writing an ethical paper, you demonstrate philosophical competence, using appropriate moral perspectives and principles.

Things to Write an Essay About Ethics On

Before you start to write ethics essays, consider a topic you can easily address. In most cases, an ethical issues essay analyzes right and wrong. This includes discussing ethics and morals and how they contribute to the right behaviors. You can also talk about work ethic, code of conduct, and how employees promote or disregard the need for change. However, you can explore other areas by asking yourself what ethics mean to you. Think about how a recent game you watched with friends started a controversial argument. Or maybe a newspaper that highlighted a story you felt was misunderstood or blown out of proportion. This way, you can come up with an excellent topic that resonates with your personal ethics and beliefs.

Ethics Paper Outline

Sometimes, you will be asked to submit an outline before writing an ethics paper. Creating an outline for an ethics paper is an essential step in creating a good essay. You can use it to arrange your points and supporting evidence before writing. It also helps organize your thoughts, enabling you to fill any gaps in your ideas. The outline for an essay should contain short and numbered sentences to cover the format and outline. Each section is structured to enable you to plan your work and include all sources in writing an ethics paper. An ethics essay outline is as follows:

• Background information
• Thesis statement
• Restate thesis statement
• Summarize key points
• Final thoughts on the topic

Using this outline will improve clarity and focus throughout your writing process.

Ethical Essay Structure

Ethics essays are similar to other essays based on their format, outline, and structure. An ethical essay should have a well-defined introduction, body, and conclusion section as its structure. When planning your ideas, make sure that the introduction and conclusion are around 20 percent of the paper, leaving the rest to the body. We will take a detailed look at what each part entails and give examples that are going to help you understand them better.  Refer to our essay structure examples to find a fitting way of organizing your writing.

Ethics Paper Introduction

An ethics essay introduction gives a synopsis of your main argument. One step on how to write an introduction for an ethics paper is telling about the topic and describing its background information. This paragraph should be brief and straight to the point. It informs readers what your position is on that issue. Start with an essay hook to generate interest from your audience. It can be a question you will address or a misunderstanding that leads up to your main argument. You can also add more perspectives to be discussed; this will inform readers on what to expect in the paper.

Ethics Essay Introduction Example

You can find many ethics essay introduction examples on the internet. In this guide, we have written an excellent extract to demonstrate how it should be structured. As you read, examine how it begins with a hook and then provides background information on an issue. 

Imagine living in a world where people only lie, and honesty is becoming a scarce commodity. Indeed, modern society is facing this reality as truth and deception can no longer be separated. Technology has facilitated a quick transmission of voluminous information, whereas it's hard separating facts from opinions.

In this example, the first sentence of the introduction makes a claim or uses a question to hook the reader.

Ethics Essay Thesis Statement

An ethics paper must contain a thesis statement in the first paragraph. Learning how to write a thesis statement for an ethics paper is necessary as readers often look at it to gauge whether the essay is worth their time.

When you deviate away from the thesis, your whole paper loses meaning. In ethics essays, your thesis statement is a roadmap in writing, stressing your position on the problem and giving reasons for taking that stance. It should focus on a specific element of the issue being discussed. When writing a thesis statement, ensure that you can easily make arguments for or against its stance.

Ethical Paper Thesis Example

Look at this example of an ethics paper thesis statement and examine how well it has been written to state a position and provide reasons for doing so:

The moral implications of dishonesty are far-reaching as they undermine trust, integrity, and other foundations of society, damaging personal and professional relationships. 

The above thesis statement example is clear and concise, indicating that this paper will highlight the effects of dishonesty in society. Moreover, it focuses on aspects of personal and professional relationships.

Ethics Essay Body

The body section is the heart of an ethics paper as it presents the author's main points. In an ethical essay, each body paragraph has several elements that should explain your main idea. These include:

• A topic sentence that is precise and reiterates your stance on the issue.
• Evidence supporting it.
• Examples that illustrate your argument.
• A thorough analysis showing how the evidence and examples relate to that issue.
• A transition sentence that connects one paragraph to another with the help of essay transitions .

When you write an ethics essay, adding relevant examples strengthens your main point and makes it easy for others to understand and comprehend your argument. 

Body Paragraph for Ethics Paper Example

A good body paragraph must have a well-defined topic sentence that makes a claim and includes evidence and examples to support it. Look at part of an example of ethics essay body paragraph below and see how its idea has been developed:

Honesty is an essential component of professional integrity. In many fields, trust and credibility are crucial for professionals to build relationships and success. For example, a doctor who is dishonest about a potential side effect of a medication is not only acting unethically but also putting the health and well-being of their patients at risk. Similarly, a dishonest businessman could achieve short-term benefits but will lose their client’s trust.

Ethics Essay Conclusion

A concluding paragraph shares the summary and overview of the author's main arguments. Many students need clarification on what should be included in the essay conclusion and how best to get a reader's attention. When writing an ethics paper conclusion, consider the following:

• Restate the thesis statement to emphasize your position.
• Summarize its main points and evidence.
• Final thoughts on the issue and any other considerations.

You can also reflect on the topic or acknowledge any possible challenges or questions that have not been answered. A closing statement should present a call to action on the problem based on your position.

Sample Ethics Paper Conclusion

The conclusion paragraph restates the thesis statement and summarizes the arguments presented in that paper. The sample conclusion for an ethical essay example below demonstrates how you should write a concluding statement.  

In conclusion, the implications of dishonesty and the importance of honesty in our lives cannot be overstated. Honesty builds solid relationships, effective communication, and better decision-making. This essay has explored how dishonesty impacts people and that we should value honesty. We hope this essay will help readers assess their behavior and work towards being more honest in their lives.

In the above extract, the writer gives final thoughts on the topic, urging readers to adopt honest behavior.

How to Write an Ethics Paper?

As you learn how to write an ethics essay, it is not advised to immediately choose a topic and begin writing. When you follow this method, you will get stuck or fail to present concrete ideas. A good writer understands the importance of planning. As a fact, you should organize your work and ensure it captures key elements that shed more light on your arguments. Hence, following the essay structure and creating an outline to guide your writing process is the best approach. In the following segment, we have highlighted step-by-step techniques on how to write a good ethics paper.

1. Pick a Topic

Before writing ethical papers, brainstorm to find ideal topics that can be easily debated. For starters, make a list, then select a title that presents a moral issue that may be explained and addressed from opposing sides. Make sure you choose one that interests you. Here are a few ideas to help you search for topics:

• Review current trends affecting people.
• Think about your personal experiences.
• Study different moral theories and principles.
• Examine classical moral dilemmas.

Once you find a suitable topic and are ready, start to write your ethics essay, conduct preliminary research, and ascertain that there are enough sources to support it.

2. Conduct In-Depth Research

Once you choose a topic for your essay, the next step is gathering sufficient information about it. Conducting in-depth research entails looking through scholarly journals to find credible material. Ensure you note down all sources you found helpful to assist you on how to write your ethics paper. Use the following steps to help you conduct your research:

• Clearly state and define a problem you want to discuss.
• This will guide your research process.
• Develop keywords that match the topic.
• Begin searching from a wide perspective. This will allow you to collect more information, then narrow it down by using the identified words above.

3. Develop an Ethics Essay Outline

An outline will ease up your writing process when developing an ethic essay. As you develop a paper on ethics, jot down factual ideas that will build your paragraphs for each section. Include the following steps in your process:

• Review the topic and information gathered to write a thesis statement.
• Identify the main arguments you want to discuss and include their evidence.
• Group them into sections, each presenting a new idea that supports the thesis.
• Write an outline.
• Review and refine it.

Examples can also be included to support your main arguments. The structure should be sequential, coherent, and with a good flow from beginning to end. When you follow all steps, you can create an engaging and organized outline that will help you write a good essay.

4. Write an Ethics Essay

Once you have selected a topic, conducted research, and outlined your main points, you can begin writing an essay . Ensure you adhere to the ethics paper format you have chosen. Start an ethics paper with an overview of your topic to capture the readers' attention. Build upon your paper by avoiding ambiguous arguments and using the outline to help you write your essay on ethics. Finish the introduction paragraph with a thesis statement that explains your main position.  Expand on your thesis statement in all essay paragraphs. Each paragraph should start with a topic sentence and provide evidence plus an example to solidify your argument, strengthen the main point, and let readers see the reasoning behind your stance. Finally, conclude the essay by restating your thesis statement and summarizing all key ideas. Your conclusion should engage the reader, posing questions or urging them to reflect on the issue and how it will impact them.

5. Proofread Your Ethics Essay

Proofreading your essay is the last step as you countercheck any grammatical or structural errors in your essay. When writing your ethic paper, typical mistakes you could encounter include the following:

• Spelling errors: e.g., there, they’re, their.
• Homophone words: such as new vs. knew.
• Inconsistencies: like mixing British and American words, e.g., color vs. color.
• Formatting issues: e.g., double spacing, different font types.

While proofreading your ethical issue essay, read it aloud to detect lexical errors or ambiguous phrases that distort its meaning. Verify your information and ensure it is relevant and up-to-date. You can ask your fellow student to read the essay and give feedback on its structure and quality.

Ethics Essay Examples

Writing an essay is challenging without the right steps. There are so many ethics paper examples on the internet, however, we have provided a list of free ethics essay examples below that are well-structured and have a solid argument to help you write your paper. Click on them and see how each writing step has been integrated. Ethics essay example 1

Ethics essay example 2

Ethics essay example 3

Ethics essay example 4

College ethics essay example 5

Ethics Essay Writing Tips

When writing papers on ethics, here are several tips to help you complete an excellent essay:

• Choose a narrow topic and avoid broad subjects, as it is easy to cover the topic in detail.
• Ensure you have background information. A good understanding of a topic can make it easy to apply all necessary moral theories and principles in writing your paper.
• State your position clearly. It is important to be sure about your stance as it will allow you to draft your arguments accordingly.
• When writing ethics essays, be mindful of your audience. Provide arguments that they can understand.
• Integrate solid examples into your essay. Morality can be hard to understand; therefore, using them will help a reader grasp these concepts.

Bottom Line on Writing an Ethics Paper

Creating this essay is a common exercise in academics that allows students to build critical skills. When you begin writing, state your stance on an issue and provide arguments to support your position. This guide gives information on how to write an ethics essay as well as examples of ethics papers. Remember to follow these points in your writing:

• Create an outline highlighting your main points.
• Write an effective introduction and provide background information on an issue.
• Include a thesis statement.
• Develop concrete arguments and their counterarguments, and use examples.
• Sum up all your key points in your conclusion and restate your thesis statement.

Contact our academic writing platform and have your challenge solved. Here, you can order essays and papers on any topic and enjoy top quality. 

Daniel Howard is an Essay Writing guru. He helps students create essays that will strike a chord with the readers.

You may also like

University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

• Home ›
• Reviews ›

My Way: Essays on Moral Responsibility

Fischer, John Martin, My Way: Essays on Moral Responsibility , Oxford University Press, 2006, 260pp, $45.00 (hbk), ISBN 0195179552.

Reviewed by Ishtiyaque Haji, University of Calgary

Moral responsibility has a number of requirements including a control (or freedom), an "authenticity" (or ownership), and an epistemic requirement. The twelve highly insightful and commandingly influential essays in My Way largely address one or more aspects of the first two requirements. The introductory essay is new; the remaining eleven, common currency in the free will literature, have been reprinted with or without minor changes. The fourth and ninth are co-authored, the former with Mark Ravizza, the latter with Eleonore Stump. Rather than give a chapter-by-chapter summary, it will be more helpful to articulate the work's central themes.

A champion of compatibilism, Fischer accepts the conclusion of the Consequence Argument that determinism is incompatible with two-way or regulative control . But he argues that responsibility does not presuppose this species of control largely (though not exclusively) by invoking Frankfurt examples. Responsibility, he proposes, demands only one-way guidance control that can be exemplified in the actual sequence of events culminating in conduct; actions, omissions, and their consequences are symmetric in not requiring alternative possibilities for responsibility. Fischer argues, in addition, against the view that causal determinism in the actual sequence directly--that is, quite apart from expunging alternatives--undermines responsibility. The conclusion of this stream of reasoning is that responsibility can be safeguarded against what some have taken to be the most serious of determinism's threat to it: "genuine" alternatives are non-existent in a determined world.

Fischer seeks to deflect two other alleged threats of determinism to responsibility. One "direct" argument for incompatibilism invokes some version of a transfer of non-responsibility principle. Letting p and q be variables that range over propositions, and taking 'NR( p )' to abbreviate ' p and no one is (now), or ever has been morally responsible for the fact that p ,' one incarnation of this principle says that if NR( p ), and NR(if p , then q ), then NR( q ). If determinism is true, the non-relational facts of the past and the laws entail all present and future truths. But owing to no one's being responsible for the past and the laws, and no one's being responsible for its being the case that the past and the laws entail all future events, it follows from an application of the transfer principle that no one is ever morally responsible for one's behavior. The argument is direct because, if sound, it secures the incompatibility of determinism and responsibility independently of any premise to the effect that responsibility requires alternative possibilities. Fischer, though, rejects this argument by producing counterexamples against various versions of the transfer principle. These examples are, roughly, Frankfurt cases involving simultaneous overdetermination. So, for instance, Betty may well be morally responsible for destroying an enemy camp at a certain time, but even without her scheming, an avalanche for which no one is responsible would still have destroyed the camp at that time.

A second direct argument draws on the thought that a person is responsible for something only if he is an ultimate originator of that thing. This condition attempts to capture the idea that if our actions originate in sources, such as the distant past and the natural laws, over which we lack any sort of control, then we are not responsible for these actions. In response, Fischer proposes that there are compatibilist and incompatibilist notions of ultimate origination. He argues that it is not obvious that moral responsibility requires a conception of origination that involves causal indeterminism, especially if one renounces the thesis that responsibility presupposes regulative control.

It is one thing to argue for responsibility's requiring only one-way guidance control, quite another to develop and defend a substantive account of such control. Rising to the task, Fischer (and his co-author Ravizza) propose that guidance control has two components, neither of which determinism impugns. A distinction is presupposed between the kind of "mechanism"--roughly, the type of process--that actually causally issues in the agent's behavior and other sorts of mechanism. The reasons-responsiveness component requires that the mechanism that produces the action be appropriately sensitive to reasons. The ownership component requires that the mechanism be the agent's own. Briefly put, an agent has guidance control in performing an action if and only if the action issues from his own, moderately reasons-responsive mechanism.

Moderate reasons-responsiveness consists in regular reasons-receptivity, and at least weak reasons-reactivity, of the actual-sequence mechanism that leads to action. Reasons-receptivity is the capacity to recognize the reasons that exist, and reasons-reactivity is the capacity to translate reasons into choices (and subsequent behavior). Regular reasons-receptivity involves an understandable pattern of actual and hypothetical reasons-receptivity. A mechanism of the agent that issues in the agent's performing some action in the actual world is weakly reasons-reactive if there is some possible world with the same laws in which a mechanism of this very kind is operative in the agent, there is sufficient reason to do otherwise, the agent recognizes this reason, and the agent does otherwise for this reason.

It is possible for an agent's actions to issue from a moderately reasons-responsive mechanism whose primary constituents have been induced externally by clandestine manipulation, hypnosis, brainwashing, and so forth. Intuitively, in cases of this sort the agent is not morally responsible for the pertinent actions. Such cases impel Fischer and Ravizza to theorize that the way in which the agent's springs of action are acquired has a pronounced bearing on responsibility; responsibility is, consequently, an essentially "historical" phenomenon. Fischer and Ravizza's prognosis is that in these troubling cases, the mechanism that issues in action is not the "agent's own", the agent having failed to take responsibility for it. Reasons sensitivity, thus, requires supplementation with the mechanism-ownership component to guard against causal springs being acquired in a manner that subverts responsibility.

Taking responsibility, measures by which an agent makes a mechanism "his own", involves three elements: the agent must regard himself as the source of consequences in the world by realizing that his choices have effects in the world; the agent must see himself as an appropriate candidate for morally reactive attitudes as a result of how he affects the world; and these beliefs about himself must be based on his evidence in an appropriate way.

The account of guidance control of actions is extended to guidance control of intentional omissions and the upshots of actions or omissions. Moral responsibility for all these items is, thus, "tied together by a unified deep theory" (17).

Recently, it has been argued that determinism undermines the truth of other pivotal moral judgments such as that of deontic judgments involving moral obligation, right, and wrong. One such argument that I have developed starts with the "ought" implies "can" principle: if one morally ought to [ought not to] do something, then one can do [can refrain from doing] that thing; and the principle: if it is morally wrong for one to do something, then one morally ought not to do it. These principles entail that if it is wrong for one to do something, then one can refrain from doing it. So there is a requirement of alternative possibilities for wrongness. The argument can be extended to show that there is such a requirement for obligation and rightness as well. As determinism effaces alternative possibilities, determinism threatens the truth of deontic judgments. Fischer submits that it would render his semicompatibilism--the view that determinism is incompatible with regulative control but compatible with responsibility--considerably less interesting if determinism undermined other moral appraisals such as deontic ones. Thus, Fischer challenges the sort of argument that I have sketched. He claims that various Frankfurt examples involving omissions give us reason to jettison the "ought" implies "can" principle. Suppose that in one instance of this sort of case, Sally fails to raise her hand, thereby ensuring that a child is not rescued from impending disaster. Sally is blameworthy for this omission even though, given her circumstances, she could not have raised her hand. Fischer reasons that since Sally is morally blameworthy for not raising her hand, "she acted wrongly in failing to raise her hand, and thus that she ought to have raised it" (25). But as she could not have raised it, "ought" does not imply "can."

On various "libertarian" accounts, metaphysically available alternative possibilities, or at least the assumption of such availability, are required for practical reasoning and deliberation. Skeptical of such accounts, Fischer proposes that the point of practical reasoning is not to make a difference in the sense of selecting from available alternatives, but to figure out what one has reason to do, all things considered. A rational agent wants to ensure that her choices conform to her all-things-considered-best judgment concerning what she should choose or do. Such an agent would still have this sort of aim even if she were aware that she lived in a causally determined world in which alternative possibilities were unavailable.

Finally, Fischer inquires into why we value morally responsible action. He proposes that when an agent exhibits guidance control and is thus morally responsible for his conduct, he need not be understood to be making a difference to the world; so the value of moral responsibility cannot be the value of making a difference. Rather, Fischer ventures that we conceive of the value of responsibility somewhat in the fashion in which we conceive of the value of artistic self-expression. Just as an artist's creative activity has value because, in engaging in such activity, he expresses himself in a certain way--the artist does or need not make a difference but he does make a statement--so the distinctive value in acting in such a way as to be morally responsible lies in a certain sort of self-expression. Fischer contends that life has a narrative structure in that "the meanings and values of the parts of our lives are affected by their narrative relationships with other parts of our lives, and the welfare value of our lives as a whole are not simple additive functions of the values of the parts" (116). In this sense, our lives are stories. In performing an action for which we are morally responsible, "we can be understood as writing a sentence in the book of our life" (116).

The essays in this volume, together with Fischer's other pieces, have played a major role in shaping the contemporary debate in the metaphysics of free will. Whether or not one ultimately agrees with the relevant positions that Fischer defends, one can ill afford to ignore the wealth of wisdom in the story of responsibility that Fischer carefully crafts. I confine critical attention to two of its elements.

Fischer concedes too much when he claims that his semicompatibilism would be far less engaging if determinism undermined other central moral assessments such as deontic ones. After all, the conditions of satisfaction for the truth of one species of moral judgment need not coincide with those of another species. Further, Fischer attempts to insulate the integrity of deontic judgments against determinism by appealing to the premise that if a person (like Sally) is morally blameworthy for an action, then it is morally wrong for her to perform that action. If one accepts this premise, and if determinism undermines wrongness, then determinism undermines blameworthiness. But I have argued that this premise is false. Blameworthiness requires not that an agent do wrong but that she perform an action on the basis of the belief that she is doing wrong in performing it.

What Fischer offers on the value of moral responsibility is both intriguing and puzzling. First, there is the rich ambiguity of the terms 'value' and 'valuable.' In their most fundamental senses, to value something is to be favorably disposed toward it, and something is valuable if it is good--if it is worthy of being something toward which one is favorably disposed. But it seems that this is not the sense of 'value' or of 'valuable' at issue. With free action, for instance, one might propose in response to why such action is valuable (in the strict sense) that it is intrinsically good. Fischer suggests another sense of 'value' which is more apt, given the context. He says that when an agent exhibits guidance control and is, hence, morally responsible, "it is unattractive to think that the explanation of his moral responsibility--the intuitive reason why we hold him morally responsible--is that he makes a difference to the world. Rather…he expresses himself in a certain way" (114). The proposal is that the sense of 'value' at issue is associated with an intuitive explanation of why the person is morally responsible when she is so responsible. Elaborating, Fischer writes:

[S]ome of the debates about whether alternative possibilities are required for moral responsibility may at some level be fueled by different intuitive pictures of moral responsibility. It may be that the proponents of the regulative control model are implicitly in the grip of the "making-a-difference" picture, whereas the proponents of the guidance control model are implicitly accepting the self-expression picture…. [P]resenting the self-expression picture can be helpful for the following reason. The debates about whether alternative possibilities are required for moral responsibility have issued in what some might consider stalemates; …I do not know of any decisive arguments (employing Frankfurt-type examples) for the conclusion that only guidance control, and not regulative control, is required for moral responsibility. My suggestion is that if one finds the self-expression picture of moral responsibility more compelling than the making-a-difference picture, then this should incline one toward the conclusion that guidance control exhausts the freedom-relevant component of moral responsibility. (119)

On this estimation of the significance of the self-expression picture, it is not transparent why the value of guidance control is tied to narrative value. Part of what it is to have narrative value, Fischer submits, is that the overall welfare value of one's life is not merely a function of adding up all the momentary levels of well-being. Suppose that one does not (as I do not) renounce "additiveness." Assuming that there are "atoms" of well-being, basic intrinsic value states whose sum in a life exhausts the welfare value of the life for the person who lives that life, why could it not be that self-expression is still tied in some fashion to the agent's "writing sentences" in the story of his life? Second, would shifting the focus of the debate on whether responsibility does in fact require alternative possibilities to the intuitive pictures to which Fischer calls our attention help to break the stalemate between the relevant rivals? I have my doubts. If the value of guidance control is analogous to that of artistic self-expression, one would expect libertarians to plump for the position that artistic creativity, including genuine artistic self-expression, presupposes the falsity of determinism; either such creativity or self-expression requires the sort of authorship or ultimate origination that determinism precludes or it requires indeterministic causation of the constellation of behavior constitutive of such creativity or self-expression.

Morality and a Meaningful Life

• November 2005
• Philosophical Papers 34(3)

• Syracuse University

Discover the world's research

• 25+ million members
• 160+ million publication pages
• 2.3+ billion citations

• J BUS ETHICS
• Christopher Michaelson

• Adnan Özbey

• Jukka Varelius
• Philosophia
• Amihud Gilead
• See George Victor
• Recruit researchers
• Join for free
• Login Email Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google Welcome back! Please log in. Email · Hint Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google No account? Sign up

• Access through  your organization
• Purchase PDF

Article preview

Introduction, section snippets, references (180), cited by (96).

Research in Organizational Behavior

Moral character: what it is and what it does, morality is rooted in social relationships, definitions, moral character: what it is, moral character: what it does, character development, conclusions, acknowledgement, the prediction of honesty–humility-related criteria by the hexaco and five-factor models of personality, journal of research in personality, lack of sleep and unethical conduct, organizational behavior and human decision processes, moral emotions and partnership, journal of economic psychology, agreement and similarity in self-other perceptions of moral character, how social class shapes thoughts and actions in organizations, introduction to personality and assessment at age 40: reflections on the legacy of the person–situation debate and the future of person–situation integration, how, when, and why bad apples spoil the barrel: negative group members and dysfunctional groups, unable to resist temptation: how self-control depletion promotes unethical behavior, moral foundations theory: the pragmatic validity of moral pluralism, advances in experimental social psychology, short horizons and tempting situations: lack of continuity to our future selves leads to unethical decision making and behavior, pillars of cooperation: honesty–humility, social value orientations, and economic behavior, character and environment: the status of virtues in organizations, journal of business ethics, moral identity in business situations: a social-cognitive framework for understanding moral functioning, testing a social-cognitive model of moral behavior: the interactive influence of situations and moral identity centrality, journal of personality and social psychology, the self-importance of moral identity, the honest truth about dishonesty: how we lie to everyone—especially ourselves, the jigsaw classroom, bad apples in bad barrels revisited: cognitive moral development, just world beliefs, rewards, and ethical decision-making, business ethics quarterly, empirical, theoretical, and practical advantages of the hexaco model of personality structure, personality and social psychology review, the hexaco model of personality structure and the importance of the h factor, social and personality psychology compass, the hexaco-60: a short measure of the major dimensions of personality, journal of personality assessment, the hexaco honesty–humility, agreeableness, and emotionality factors a review of research and theory, the evolution of cooperation, moral disengagement in the perpetuation of inhumanities, as you would have them do unto you: does imagining yourself in the other's place stimulate moral action, personality and social psychology bulletin, the strength model of self-control, current directions in psychological science, behavioral ethics: toward a deeper understanding of moral judgment and dishonesty, annual review of law and social science, blind spots: why we fail to do what's right and what to do about it, development of a measure of workplace deviance, journal of applied psychology, do other-reports of counterproductive work behavior provide an incremental contribution over self-reports a meta-analytic comparison, interpersonal deviance, organizational deviance, and their common correlates: a review and meta-analysis, moral identity: its role in moral functioning, personality predictors of citizenship performance, international journal of selection and assessment, motives for organizational citizenship behavior: personality correlates and coworker ratings of ocb, human performance, situationism in psychology: an analysis and a critique, psychological review, the good, the bad and the ugly: what behavioral business ethics researchers ought to be studying, ordinary men: reserve police battalion 101 and the final solution in poland, when cheating would make you a cheater: implicating the self prevents unethical behavior, journal of experimental psychology: general, helping versus “being a helper”: invoking the self to increase helping in young children, child development, ethnocentrism and other altruistic motives, revisiting the stanford prison experiment: could participant self-selection have led to the cruelty, studies in machiavellianism, the neuroscience of intergroup relations: an integrative review, perspectives on psychological science, moral emotions & unethical bargaining: the differential effects of empathy and perspective taking in deterring deceitful negotiation, war and peace: possible approaches to reducing intergroup conflict, group morality and intergroup relations: cross-cultural and experimental evidence, the wect project: workplace experiences and character traits [project information], guilt proneness and moral character, predicting counterproductive work behavior from guilt proneness, moral character in the workplace, a social-cognitive approach to understanding gender differences in negotiator ethics: the role of moral identity, are they among us a conceptual framework of the relationship between the dark triad personality and counterproductive work behaviors (cwbs), toward a theory of business, a meta-analytic investigation of the antecedents, theoretical correlates, and consequences of moral disengagement at work, morality and the regulation of social behavior: groups as moral anchors, stakeholder relationships and social welfare: a behavioral theory of contributions to joint value creation.

Understanding the Moral Person: Identity, Behavior, and Emotion

• Published: 25 December 2013
• Volume 34 , pages 441–452, ( 2015 )

Cite this article

• Jan E. Stets 1  

1068 Accesses

8 Citations

Explore all metrics

In this paper, the moral person is understood through the lens of identity theory in sociological social psychology. Identity theory helps identify the internal dynamics of individuals as moral persons by apprehending their self-views’, behavior, and emotions within and across situations. When the identity process is activated, the cognitive, behavioral, and affective dimensions of individuals inter-relate through a self-regulated control system. When this control system is laced with moral meanings, we see how moral persons emerge and are maintained or challenged in situations. I review studies that I carried out over 2 years that sampled over 3,000 individuals using survey and laboratory research. A series of hypothesis consistent with identity theory were tested to examine individuals’ moral identity, moral behavior, and moral emotions. The findings confirm the predictive power of identity theory in explaining the moral person. Future avenues for research are briefly discussed.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save.

• Get 10 units per month
• Download Article/Chapter or eBook
• 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
• Cancel anytime

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

The Moral Identity in Sociology

Moral Motivation and the Four Component Model

Moral motivation, responsibility and the development of the moral self, explore related subjects.

• Medical Ethics

In many ways, identity theory has an affinity with appraisal theories in affective sciences. Like identity theory, appraisal theories include an appraisal/cognitive component that evaluates one’s environment in light of one’s current concerns (goals, values, and beliefs), a motor/behavior component, and feeling component (Moors et al. 2013 ). They also consider other components such as a motivational component (action tendencies) and somatic component that are left unspecified in identity theory. While the appraisal component is central to appraisal theories, the identity standard is core to identity theory. Both an appraisal and one’ identity standard guide behavior and influence one’s emotional response in a situation.

In this way, people may behave morally or immorally for two reasons. First, their moral identity standard meanings may be set at a particular level, and they are guided by these identity standard meanings in terms of how they behave. Alternatively, the level of their moral identity meanings are inconsistent with feedback from the situation (as they interpret others’ views of themselves), and they counteract these perceptions by modifying how hard they work on the basis of the feedback.

In a typical trolley problem, a runaway trolley is traveling down a railway track at a rapid speed and will kill five people who are tied up and unable to remove themselves from the track. You are some distance from the train calamity, and you have a lever, that when you pull it, can switch the trolley to a side track, thereby circumventing the death of the five individuals. However, on this side track is an individual who will be killed by redirecting the runaway trolley to this track. What do you choose to do: 1) do nothing and let the runaway trolley kill the five people or 2) switch the trolley onto the side track that will kill the lone individual?

Aquino K, Freeman D (2009) Moral identity in business situations: a social-cognitive framework for understanding moral functioning. In: Narvaez D, Lapsley DK (eds) Personality, identity, and character: explorations in moral psychology. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp 375–395

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Aquino K, Freeman D, Reed A II, Lim VKG (2009) Testing a social-cognitive model of moral behavior: the interactive influence of situations and moral identity centrality. J Pers Soc Psychol 97:123–141

Article   Google Scholar  

Blasi A (1983) Moral cognition and moral action: a theoretical perspective. Dev Rev 3:178–210

Burke PJ, Harrod MM (2005) Too much of a good thing? Soc Psychol Q 68:359–374

Burke PJ, Stets JE (1999) Trust and commitment through self-verification. Soc Psychol Q 62:347–366

Burke PJ, Stets JE (2009) Identity theory. Oxford University Press, New York

Book   Google Scholar  

DeGrazia D (2005) Human identity and bioethics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Deonna JA, Rodogno R, Teroni F (2012) In defense of shame: the faces of an emotion. Oxford University Press, Oxford

Google Scholar  

DeScioli P, Christner J, Kurzban R (2011) The omission strategy. Psychol Sci 22:442–446

Durkheim E 1961 [1925] Moral education: a study in the theory and application of the sociology of education. Free Press, New York

Gilligan C (1982) In a different voice: psychological theory and women’s development. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA

Graham J, Nosek BA, Haidt J, Iyer R, Koleva S, Ditto PH (2011) Mapping the moral domain. J Pers Soc Psychol 101:366–385

Haidt J (2003) The moral emotions. In: Davidson RJ, Scherer KR, Goldsmith HH (eds) Handbook of affective sciences. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 852–870

Haidt J (2012) The righteous mind: why good people are divided by politics and religion. Pantheon, New York

Haidt J, Graham J (2007) When morality opposes justice: conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize. Soc Justice Res 20:98–116

Haidt J, Graham J (2009) Planet of the Durkheimians: where community, authority, and sacredness are foundations of morality. In: Jost JT, Kay AC, Thorisdottir H (eds) Social and psychological bases of ideology and system justification. Oxford, New York, pp 371–401

Heider F (1944) Social perception and phenomenal causality. Psychol Rev 51:358–374

Hogg MA (2000) Social identity and social comparison. In: Suls J, Wheeler L (eds) Handbook of social comparison: theory and research. Kluwer Academic, New York, pp 401–421

Kohlberg L (1981) The philosophy of moral development. Harper and Row, San Francisco

Lewis M (2008) Self-conscious emotions: embarrassment, pride, shame, and guilt. In: Lewis M, Haviland-Jones JM, Barrett LF (eds) Handbook of emotions. Guilford, New York, pp 742–756

Moors A, Ellsworth PC, Scherer KR, Frijda NH (2013) Appraisal theories of emotion: state of the art and future development. Emot Rev 5:119–124

Owens TJ, Robinson DT, Smith-Lovin L (2010) Three faces of identity. Annu Rev Sociol 36:477–499

Parfit D (1984) Reasons and persons. Oxford University Press, Oxford

Rozin P, Lowery L, Imada S, Haidt J (1999) The Cad triad hypothesis: a mapping between three moral emotions (contempt, anger, disgust) and three moral codes (community, autonomy, divinity). J Pers Soc Psychol 76:574–586

Schechtman M (1996) The constitution of selves. Cornell University Press, Ithaca

Scheff TJ (2000) Shame and the social bond: a sociological theory. Sociol Theory 18:84–99

Shweder RA, Much NC, Mahapatra M, Park L (1997) The big “three” of morality (autonomy, community, and divinity), and the big “three” explanations of suffering. In: Brandt A, Rozin P (eds) Morality and health. Routledge, New York, pp 119–169

Spranca M, Minsk E, Baron J (1991) Omission and commission in judgment and choice. J Exp Soc Psychol 27:76–105

Stets JE (2010) The social psychology of the moral identity. In: Hitlin S, Vaisey S (eds) Handbook of the sociology of morality. Springer, New York, pp 385–409

Stets JE (2011) Applying identity theory to moral acts of commission and omission. Adv Group Process 28:97–124

Stets JE, Burke PJ (2000) Identity theory and social identity theory. Soc Psychol Q 63:224–237

Stets JE, Burke PJ (2005) New directions in identity control theory. Adv Group Process 22:43–64

Stets JE, Carter MJ (2011) The moral self: applying identity theory. Soc Psychol Q 74:192–215

Stets JE, Carter MJ (2012) A theory of the self for the sociology of morality. Am Sociol Rev 77:120–140

Stets JE, Serpe RT (2013) Identity theory. In: DeLamater J, Ward A (eds) Handbook of social psychology. Springer, New York

Stets JE, Carter MJ, Harrod MM, Cerven C, Abrutyn S (2008) The moral identity, status, moral emotions, and the normative order. In: Robinson DT, Clay-Warner J (eds) Social structure and emotion. Elsevier, San Diego, CA, pp 227–251

Stryker S 2002 [1980] Symbolic interactionism: a social structural version. The Blackburn Press, Caldwell, NJ

Suhler CL, Churchland P (2011) Can innate, modular ‘foundations’ explain morality? Challenges for Haidt’s moral foundations theory. J Cogn Neurosci 23:2103–2116

Swann WB (2011) Self-verification theory. In: Van Lange PA, Kruglanski AW, Higgins ET (eds) Handbook of theories of social psychology, vol 2. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp 23–42

Tangney JP, Stuewig J, Mashek DJ (2007) Moral emotions and moral behavior. Annu Rev Psychol 58:345–372

Turiel E (1983) The development of social knowledge: morality and convention. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Turner JH, Stets JE (2006) Moral emotions. In: Stets JE, Turner JH (eds) Handbook of the sociology of emotions. Springer, New York, pp 544–566

Weber M (1978) Value-judgments in social science. In: Runciman WG (ed) Weber: selections in translation. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp 69–98

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Sociology, University of California, Riverside, CA, 92521-0419, USA

Jan E. Stets

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jan E. Stets .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Stets, J.E. Understanding the Moral Person: Identity, Behavior, and Emotion. Topoi 34 , 441–452 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-013-9233-4

Download citation

Published : 25 December 2013

Issue Date : October 2015

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-013-9233-4

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Moral identity
• Moral behavior
• Moral emotions
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

27 Examples of Morals & Ethics (A to Z List)

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

Learn about our Editorial Process

Examples of morals include telling the truth and using manners. We get our morals from our family, tradition, culture, society, and personal values set.

Different societies have different standards of moral values. This means there’s no clear set of rules of morals that suits every situation. But below are some moral values examples that most people adhere to across cultures and societies.

List of Morals

The following is a list of morals most of us can agree on:

• Telling the Truth
• Do Not Hurt Others’ Feelings
• Paying a Fair Price
• Respect for Others
• Do Unto Others as you would have Done to Yourself
• Forgive Others
• Admit Fault
• Use Manners
• Wait your Turn
• Express Gratitude
• Respect Yourself
• Respect your Parents
• Return Favors
• Ask for Permission
• Keep Promises
• Do Not Gossip
• Respect Difference
• Do Not be Jealous
• Do Not Swear
• Respect the Rules in Others’ Houses
• Turn the Other Cheek
• Do not Take Bribes
• Use Non-Violence

What are some Examples of Morals?

1. Telling the Truth – Lying to others is disrespectful of them. Even when telling the truth might hurt us, it’s still important to be truthful to be true to our best selves.

2. Do not Hurt Others’ Feelings – While the above moral value of telling the truth is important, sometimes the truth hurts. In these cases, we need to find ways to be truthful to others without hurting their feelings.

3. Fair Play – Fair play means making sure you don’t try to give yourself an unfair advantage against others in a head-to-head match. For example, if you are an online video game, you make sure no one is allowed to use cheat codes.

Related: Examples of Integrity

4. Hard Work – When we agree to take on a job, it’s our responsibility to put effort in and work hard for our employer. We call this work ethic . It would be wrong to sit around and not do anything all day then take a paycheck for the day.

5. Pay a Fair Price – Most of us would consider it to be immoral to underpay an employee. Someone who’s desperate for work might have to take a low-paid job, but it’s still the employer’s responsibility to pay the person a fair rate so they can eat food and pay their rent.

6. Respect for Others – Respecting others has a lot of different features. It might include asking them for permission, giving them personal space, or making sure you are not rude when you talk to them.

7. Do unto Others – This is the golden rule found in so many different religions: do unto others as you would have done unto yourself . It simply means that you should put yourself in the shoes of the people around you. You should ask yourself if you would be happy if someone treated you the way you’re treating them.

Related: 59 School Values Ideas

8. Forgive Others – Forgiveness is a central moral in many religions as well. For example, Christianity teaches people to follow the lead of Jesus, who is said to have forgiven people’s sins. In the same vein, you should forgive others if they are truly sorry for their mistakes.

9. Admit Fault – Many people choose to lie and squirm rather than confess that they did something wrong. This is, of course, not very ethical! The right thing to do is apologize and attempt to right your wrongs.

10. Use Manners – Manners includes saying please, thank you, and you’re welcome. But it also includes thinking about all the taboos and customs you need to follow, like making sure you don’t tailgate when driving or letting people leave the train before you step on.

11. Be Kind – Kindness involves making sure you make people feel welcome, trying not to be rude or judgmental, and being willing to be helpful when you’re needed. Kind people try to put out good feelings to those around them.

12. Wait your Turn – Most cultures value waiting in a line (or queue) on a first come first served basis when waiting for a service. This might include waiting for the bus or waiting to be served by the bank teller.

13. Express Gratitude – In the United States, they have a special holiday called Thanksgiving where everyone comes together to remember to express gratitude for what they have. But we don’t need to do this just one day per year. We usually consider it to be good manners and a sign of a moral person to express gratitude to people who you are thankful for.

Related: The 5 British Values

14. Respect Yourself – respecting yourself means that you set high standards for yourself in all areas of your life. You don’t go around saying degrading things about yourself or putting yourself in situations where you will be mistreated by others. Self-respect is important for your own mental health, confidence, and wellbeing.

15. Respect your Parents – in many cultures respecting your parents is a central moral principle. Respect for your parents means that you will acknowledge that they have more wisdom and life experience than you and that they have the best interest of you in their hearts. So, sometimes you may disagree with your parents but, especially as a child, you will need to respect their decisions until you are old enough to make decisions on your own.

16. Return Favors – when someone does you a favor it is usually considered the right thing to do to repay that favor. For example, if your friend helps you out by driving you to an exam, then next time they need a drive somewhere it is probably expected of you that you would help them out if you can.

17. Ask for Permission – we’re raised his children to say please and thank you as a culturally appropriate way of showing recognition and respect. When you want something that is not yours, you will need to ask for permission before taking it. In English speaking countries you’ll usually want to say please when asking for permission.

18. Keep Promises – people who do not keep promises usually find themselves without many friends. This is because those people end up being seen as unreliable and untrustworthy. If you cannot keep a promise, it is usually expected that you tell the person and apologize, and even explain why it is that you will have to go back on the promise you made.

19. Be Humble – Humility is a greatly respected trait. It doesn’t mean being passive or submissive. Instead, it means being grateful for what you have and acknowledging that your successes don’t make you a better person than others. One way to practice humility is to reflect on how many people help you in your life to get to where you are today. This will help you realize that you have a lot to be thankful for and prevent you from becoming arrogant.

Related: Examples of Moral Panic

20. Do Not Gossip – A gossip is a person who says things behind other people’s backs. For example, the gossip may get information they learned about someone and share it amongst all of their friends even though the person the information is about may not want this to happen. When you act like a gossip, the people around you will make a subconscious note that you are not trustworthy with information.

21. Respect Difference – we live in a multicultural world where we share al public spaces with people of all different backgrounds, cultures, and opinions. In this context, intolerance is increasingly being seen as a moral failing. Respecting difference means being OK with sharing a society with people who have different lives, cultures, and practices to our own.

22. Do Not be Jealous – Jealousy is a natural human emotion. You might feel jealous about a friend who makes more money than you or someone who has had more luck than you in their life. A wise person recognizes jealousy within them and makes an effort to push back against that emotion. One way to do this is to reflect on all the luck and support that you have received in your own past. This will make you realize how grateful you should be for what you have rather than being jealous of what other people have.

23. Do Not Swear – In most languages, there are words that I considered inappropriate to use in polite conversation. Using those words will make the other people in the conversation see you as being unable to maintain the moral standards set by society.

24. Respect the Rules in Others’ Houses – Everyone will have slightly different rules in their own personal space. For example, one person may have the rule not to wear shoes in their house while you might be perfectly OK with wearing shoes in your own house. This is just one small example. We need to remember to respect the rules of other people’s private spaces just like we would expect them to respect the rules in our private spaces.

25. Turn the Other Cheek – Turning the other cheek is a saying from the Bible. It means that you do not have to take revenge on people who did the wrong thing by you. In secular talk, you might use the phrase to take the higher ground. This means simply to maintain your own moral standards and don’t do immoral things just because other people around you are being immoral.

26. Do not Take Bribes – Bribery happens when someone gives you money to do something immoral or illegal. People in positions of power like police officers and politicians will find themselves in positions where they are offered bribes regularly. However, this is widely considered to be an immoral activity.

27. Use Non-Violence – When you need to take action to protect or defend people, it’s always best to use non-violence as much as possible. In democracies, there are ideally avenues to seek justice without violence. Examples include protesting, running for office, or taking an issue to the courts.

Religious Morals

Religious morals are moral principles that are written into religious codes, such as a holy text. Most major religions have moral frameworks for followers to adhere to.

The most common religious moral code that appears in nearly all religions is the golden rule: “do unto others as you would have done unto yourself.”

This moral code asks us to put ourselves in the shoes of someone else and to make sure we treat them in a way we’d want to be treated if we were in their situation.

Morals in the Abrahamic Religions (The Ten Commandments)

Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all have their own moral codes. However, one moral code that applies to all three is the ten commandments. These commandments were written in stone by the prophet Moses.

The ten commandments are:

• I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have any gods before Me.
• Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
• Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day.
• Honor thy father and mother.
• Thou shalt not kill.
• Thou shalt not commit adultery.
• Thou shalt not steal.
• Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
• Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.
• Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods.

Morals in Aesop’s Fables

Morals have also been taught in literature, movies, and other texts for millennia. We will often call a moral story for children a “fable”. This is a story that teaches a child an important lesson about how to behave.

Some of the most famous (and oldest) moral fables come from Aesop, an ancient Greek storyteller who was born in the year 620 BCE.

Today, we still read Aesop’s fables to children. Some of the morals taught by Aesop include:

• A Good friend is there when they are needed most – In The Bear and the Two Travelers , we are taught that we only know our true friends in times of need. Similarly, in The Bull and the Goat , we are taught not to take advantage of friends in need.
• Avoid a remedy that is worse than the disease – This means that you need to be careful about “making a deal with the devil” to fix something. Sometimes, the deal (or remedy) is worse than what you were trying to fix. This is the moral in the story The Hawk, the Kite, and the Pigeons .
• Do good, don’t just speak about good – In The Hunter and the Woodman we learn that deeds are more important than words.
• Do not be Proud – People who go around acting proud and boasting about their success often find themselves falling from grace. We learn this moral in the story The Fighting Cocks and the Eagle .
• Do not pretend to be something you are not – In The Crow and the Raven we learn that pretending to be something you are not will end up getting you into trouble. You will lose the respect of the people around you.
• Do not seek to injure others or you may end up being injured – In The Horse and the Stag , we learn that seeking to harm others often comes back and causing harm to ourselves instead.
• Don’t make much ado about nothing – This means not to make a fuss about something that doesn’t deserve to be fussed over. If you do so, people won’t believe you when you fuss over something important. This is the moral message in Aesop’s stories The Boy who Cried Wolf and The Mountain in Labor .
• Learn from Others’ Misfortunes – You don’t have to make mistakes. Pay attention to other people’s mistakes and learn from them. This is the moral in The Sick Lion .
• Mind your own business – Prying into other people’s business can upset others and find you in a lot of trouble. Do not pry and do not gossip. This is the moral in the story The Seagull and the Kite .
• One Lie Leads to Many, so Do Not Lie in the First Place – We often use the term “a web of lies” to explain someone who piles lies on top of lies to protect their original lie that they told. This is the moral in The Monkey and the Dolphin .
• Treat your family with respect – If you cannot respect your family, then how can you be expected to respect strangers? This is the moral in The Master and His Dogs .

There are examples of morals in literature, religious texts, and our cultural upbringing that help us to lead a good life.

By establishing a personal moral code based on our own critical thinking , learning from others, and listening to people we respect, we can ensure we are good and ethical people throughout our lives.

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 10 Reasons you’re Perpetually Single
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 20 Montessori Toddler Bedrooms (Design Inspiration)
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 21 Montessori Homeschool Setups
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 101 Hidden Talents Examples

2 thoughts on “27 Examples of Morals & Ethics (A to Z List)”

Thank you for the simplicity of your articles that carry important foundational themes. I am a life coach that serves predominantly young adults. The lists of attributes in your personal identity, personal values, and morals articles will be very helpful to my clients as they seek to understand themselves and make important decisions about their lives and futures.

Thanks for the kind words Heather and I hope your clients find value in the articles.

Best, Chris

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Why Is Morality Important? (17 Reasons)

Morality permeates the very essence of our interactions, shaping judgments and directing our hand as we pen the story of our existence. These are the unwritten rules that govern our collective behavior, a silent agreement to do no harm and to consider the welfare of others.

But as we journey through this article, consider the idea that morality is not just about adherence to a set of rules—it’s about the pursuit of a good life. Let’s explore together the profound influence of morality and why, at its core, it remains the guiding star for our shared human experience.

Table of Contents

Morality Fosters a Sense of Right and Wrong

Morality acts as an internal compass that guides individuals in decision-making processes throughout their daily lives. From childhood, people learn moral values that help distinguish beneficial actions, such as sharing and kindness, from harmful ones, like stealing or lying.

These moral judgments are not just personal preferences but are shaped by the collective conscience of a society, which instills in us what is considered acceptable or unacceptable behavior.

This internalized understanding of right and wrong helps create a cohesive community where trust can flourish. When individuals share a common set of moral values, there is a mutual expectation of right behavior, leading to societal stability.

Morality Underpins Legal Systems

The legal system of any society is a codification of moral values into rules and regulations that govern behavior. These laws are designed not only to maintain order but to protect citizens from harm and ensure a balance of interests amongst various community members.

Foundational concepts inherent in law, such as justice, equity, and the protection of rights , are derived from the broader moral values collectively held by society.

Key elements of legal systems influenced by morality include:

• Criminal law: Distinguishes between ethical and unethical behaviors, setting consequences for actions deemed harmful.
• Civil law: Reflects moral expectations in agreements and personal conduct; it governs interactions between individuals and organizations.

While laws can be seen as practical tools for achieving a moral order, they need the undercurrent of public moral sentiment for legitimacy and efficacy. At times, the law may even serve as an agent of moral change, shaping the collective conscience by formally prohibiting practices once deemed acceptable.

Morality Supports Fairness and Justice

The concepts of fairness and justice are deeply interwoven with morality. They are about ensuring that individuals receive equitable treatment and that resolution mechanisms are in place to address grievances in accordance with moral standards. Through these principles, morality upholds human dignity and fosters conditions where every individual can thrive.

Fairness and justice pertain to:

• Distributive justice: Ensuring resources are allocated in society equally or according to need.
• Procedural justice: Ensuring processes and procedures are transparent and applied consistently.
• Retributive justice: Involving fair punishment proportionate to wrongdoing, deterring harm, and promoting moral behavior.

For example, a court trial that is perceived as fair and untainted by bias can uphold public trust in the judicial system, contributing to a greater sense of social stability and order.

Moreover, when justice serves not purely to punish but also to rehabilitate and educate, it reflects a more profound understanding of morality that values human potential for change and growth.

However, it’s essential to recognize that the pursuit of fairness and justice is an ongoing process, reflective of a society’s moral maturity. Challenges arise when societal moral standards are unevenly applied or when systemic issues undermine equitable treatment.

Therefore, remaining vigilant in the promotion of fairness and justice is an active, dynamic endeavor that requires constant moral reflection and action. By striving to minimize disparities and correct injustices, morality propels society toward a more harmonious and inclusive future.

Morality Promotes Social Harmony

When people adhere to a shared moral code, it reduces conflicts and allows for more cohesive and supportive communities. This shared understanding ensures that actions are predictable and members are accountable, building a peaceful environment where everyone can coexist.

Social harmony is facilitated through:

• Cooperative efforts, such as community volunteering, are inspired by moral drives toward generosity.
• Dialogue and reconciliation processes that are founded on mutual respect and the desire for peace.

A society without an underlying moral foundation often finds itself in turmoil, with individuals pursuing their interests at the expense of others, leading to discord and fragmentation.

In contrast, social harmony, derived from shared moral values, will enable different groups to overcome their variations in opinion and background, focusing instead on the common good. This collective effort towards amicable living can even extend beyond local communities to international relationships, highlighting the global impact of morality.

Morality Guides Societal Behavior

As individuals, the need to conform to societal standards often directs our actions. These standards are dictated by the moral codes prevalent within a community.

Morality serves as the guiding light for behavior, indicating the paths that are more likely to be accepted and those that might be rejected by society. This guidance shapes every aspect of social life, from etiquette and politeness to laws and decrees.

Consider the following points where morality guides behavior:

• Personal interactions, where civility and kindness are valued
• Business conduct, steering companies toward corporate social responsibility
• Public service, directing leaders to act in the best interest of their community

Without such guidance, societal behavior would lack cohesion and could potentially become destructive. It offers a blueprint for living harmoniously with others and sets expectations for individual conduct that align with the public good. Such direction not only simplifies decision-making but also helps communities to flourish by fostering environments of care and mutual assistance.

Morality Is Intrinsic to Evaluating Character

Judgments about an individual’s character are often grounded in an assessment of their moral conduct. Indeed, moral virtues such as honesty, integrity, and trustworthiness are highly prized attributes in individuals, frequently shaping others’ perceptions and evaluations.

Here’s how morality interplays with character assessment:

• In personal relationships, traits like loyalty and empathy are highly valued, cementing bonds between friends and family members.
• Professional reputations are built not only on expertise but also on ethical behavior, with corrupt acts leading to a loss of respect and trust.
• Public figures are often scrutinized for their moral actions; a politician’s career can flourish or flounder based on their moral choices.

The link between morality and character is underscored by the importance we place on moral education. Parents and teachers strive to instill moral virtues in children, knowing that these traits are crucial for their future social interactions and relationships.

Morality as the lens through which we view character ensures that ethical behavior remains integral to social expectations and personal advancement.

Morality Is the Foundation for Trust

When individuals exhibit moral behavior—keeping promises, telling the truth, and acting with fairness—trust naturally develops among community members. Conversely, a lack of moral conduct can erode trust, leading to suspicion and conflict.

Expanding on the influence of morality on trust, consider the following:

• In Relationships:  Personal relationships rely on the integrity and honesty of those involved.
• In Commerce:  Business transactions hinge on the mutual trust that agreements will be honored.
• In Governance:  Citizens’ trust in their leaders depends on the moral actions of those in power.

This mutual reliance based on moral behavior is not only foundational but has quantifiable benefits. In economies, for instance, higher levels of trust correlate with increased trade and economic growth.

In the legal system, trust in the justice of the process is paramount for societal adherence to the rule of law. It is morality that fuels these aspects of trust binding societies together in mutually beneficial ways.

Morality Enhances Personal Responsibility

Personal responsibility is a fundamental moral virtue crucial to individual development and societal role fulfillment. It encompasses recognizing one’s duty to oneself and to others, honoring commitments, and taking ownership of one’s actions and their consequences.

Through morality, individuals come to understand their obligation to:

• Engage in self-reflection and self-improvement.
• Act with integrity and accountability.
• Contribute positively to the community.

An individual’s sense of personal responsibility can be seen in various aspects of life, such as environmental stewardship—recycling, conserving water, reducing carbon footprints—or in professional accountability, where employees fulfill their roles diligently and with ethical consideration.

Morality Aids in Conflict Resolution

Morality provides a framework through which disputes can be approached and settled in a fair and equitable manner. Whether between individuals, groups, or nations, moral guidelines aid in finding common ground and forging peaceful solutions.

In navigating conflict, parties rely on several key moral concepts:

• Justice : Ensuring that each party receives fair treatment.
• Forgiveness : Offering and accepting apologies to move beyond past grievances.
• Honesty : Communicating transparently to address the root causes of the conflict.

Through these principles, conflicting sides can engage in constructive dialogue and come to mutually acceptable agreements. The role of international laws in mediating conflicts between nations exemplifies the application of morality to larger-scale resolutions.

By adhering to moral norms, parties in conflict prioritize restorative over retributive solutions, paving the way for reconciliation and the maintenance of long-term relationships.

Morality Nurtures Compassion

Compassion is a powerful force generated by moral emotion, prompting individuals to empathize with others and take action to alleviate suffering. The role of morality in nurturing compassion is paramount—it’s through our sense of right and wrong that we feel compelled to help those in need.

Here’s how morality is intertwined with compassion:

• Individuals volunteer and provide support, guided by a moral duty to assist.
• Societies establish welfare systems to care for the less fortunate, reflecting a collective commitment to compassion.
• Global relief efforts in response to crises demonstrate the universal moral imperative to help regardless of borders.

Compassion, fueled by morality, not only benefits recipients but also enriches the lives of those who give. Acts of kindness and concern have been shown to improve individuals’ sense of well-being and can even bolster the health of communities. In this way, morality is a crucial element in the fostering of empathy and the active relief of pain and hardship.

Morality Motivates Altruism

Altruism—the selfless concern for the well-being of others—finds its roots in moral values. It drives people to act for the benefit of others, often at a personal cost or without expectation of reward. This moral behavior is essential for societal welfare, as it encapsulates the idea of giving without receiving.

The manifestations of altruism influenced by morality are evident in the following:

• Charitable giving and humanitarian work, where individuals and organizations provide resources and aid to those in need.
• Heroic actions, where everyday citizens risk their own safety to save others from harm.
• Organ and blood donation, where donors give a part of themselves to save or improve the lives of strangers.

These actions, grounded in moral conviction, contribute to the social good and are laudable examples of how individuals can make a significant impact. Altruism reflects the ideal of benevolence and generosity, showing that morality is not just about avoiding harm but actively doing good.

Morality Shapes Moral Development in Children

Moral development in children is a process during which they learn and internalize the values and behaviors considered acceptable within their culture. It’s a crucial aspect of their overall growth, preparing them for the roles and responsibilities they will assume as adults.

Morality’s presence in a child’s early years shapes their future interactions and the ethical decisions they will make throughout their lives.

• The stages of moral development, from understanding fairness to grasping societal rules, are fundamentally guided by the moral teachings they receive.
• Role models such as parents and teachers play a significant role in imparting moral values through their actions and words. Children learn by observing the behaviors that are praised or discouraged by these influential figures.
• Storytelling often serves as a medium to pass on moral lessons, with characters embodying virtues and vices, providing children with clear examples of moral and immoral conduct.

This development is not just about telling children what is right or wrong; it’s about creating an environment where moral reasoning can flourish. Children’s participation in discussions about fairness, justice, and compassion allows for a deeper understanding of moral concepts rather than superficial compliance.

Morality Drives Ethical Behavior in Business

Corporations and entrepreneurs alike are increasingly held to high moral standards by consumers, employees, and society at large. An ethical business approach creates a ripple effect of positive outcomes that extend beyond the company’s profit margins.

Consider the following business ethics pillars and their moral bases:

• Honesty : Customers expect truthful advertising and transparency about products or services.
• Integrity : Trust is gained when businesses act consistently and fairly, even when it may not be legally required.
• Social Responsibility : There is a growing demand for businesses to operate sustainably and consider the broader impact of their actions on the community and environment.

When morality drives business practices, there can be a symbiotic relationship between profitability and societal well-being. Ethical companies often see long-term success and loyalty among their customers and employees, proving that good ethics is good business.

Morality Influences Educational Curricula

The influence of morality on curricula is profound; it molds young minds to form a sense of societal duty and personal ethics. Educational systems around the world incorporate moral education to various degrees, promoting values that are deemed important by society.

Key Points:

• Curricula designed to foster critical thinking often encourage students to consider the ethical dimensions of various issues.
• Subjects like history and literature, replete with moral dilemmas and stories of ethical heroism, challenge students to form their own moral judgments.
• Schools promote moral behavior through codes of conduct, honor codes, and community service requirements.

An interactive approach towards embedding morality in education does not merely inform students about ethics but also engages them in activities that require moral decisions. Debates, ethical problem-solving tasks, and the analysis of moral questions prepare students to confront real-world issues with a developed moral compass.

Morality Refines Individual Conscience

The individual conscience is often viewed as the inner voice that guides a person’s moral decisions. It is through the continual process of self-reflection and moral reasoning that one’s conscience is refined. This personal moral compass is essential in daily decision-making, where one must navigate the complexities of right and wrong.

Consider how an individual’s morality shapes their conscience:

• Personal experiences and the internalization of societal values contribute to one’s moral judgments.
• Ethical dilemmas, when confronted, provide opportunities for individuals to reflect upon and strengthen their moral convictions.
• The ongoing development of conscience is influenced by dialogue with others, reading, and education, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of morality.

An individual with a well-developed conscience is more likely to make decisions that are consistent with ethical values, benefiting both themselves and society. The refinement of conscience is a lifelong pursuit, which is crucial for personal integrity and moral conduct.

Morality Informs Religious Teachings

Religious teachings often provide a detailed framework for understanding and practicing moral values. Although the specifics can vary greatly from one religion to another, many share common themes such as compassion, honesty, and the sanctity of life.

• Moral precepts present in religious texts influence behavior and decision-making.
• The practice of values like charity, non-violence, and humility is often promoted as pathways to spiritual growth.
• Rituals and ceremonies reinforce a community’s moral standards, acting as reminders and public affirmations of shared values.

Religious institutions and leaders play a pivotal role in interpreting moral concepts and guiding adherents in how these principles apply to contemporary issues and individual circumstances. Through religious teachings, morality gains a dimension of transcendence, linking ethical conduct with spiritual well-being.

Morality Governs Environmental Stewardship

The modern concept of environmental stewardship is steeped in moral responsibility towards the planet and its ecosystems. The choices individuals and societies make regarding the environment are deeply moral decisions, reflecting their respect for the interdependence of life and their duty to future generations.

• Sustainability practices and conservation efforts are expressions of the moral imperative to preserve natural resources.
• Policies addressing climate change and habitat protection are underpinned by an ethical understanding of humanity’s role in the biosphere.
• Ethical debates about animal rights, biodiversity loss, and ecological justice are fueled by moral considerations.

Activism and global agreements on environmental issues are further evidence of morality’s guiding influence on stewardship. Morality compels individuals, communities, and nations to look beyond immediate interests, envisioning a global ethic of care and respect for the shared home of all living beings.

Final Thoughts

Morality is the unseen yet deeply felt force that shapes how we interact with our neighbors, build our communities, and, ultimately, how we view ourselves. It’s an ongoing dialogue between our inner values and the outer world, a delicate balance between self and the collective good.

So as we move forward beyond these words, let us carry the essence of morality in our actions and thoughts. It’s our shared responsibility, our common thread in a diverse tapestry.

By honoring the principles of morality, we not only enrich our own lives but also contribute positively to the wider world.

How useful was this post?

Click on a star to rate it!

As you found this post useful...

Share it on social media!

We are sorry that this post was not useful for you!

Let us improve this post!

Tell us how we can improve this post?

Bea Mariel Saulo

Ethics and Morality

The importance of being moral, it will make you liked and respected, though perhaps not understood..

Posted July 6, 2016 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

Anna Hartley , who earned her Ph. D. in social and personality psychology at Brown University, has studied the impact of morality , competence, and sociability on different types of evaluative judgments made in everyday life. This is important stuff to know if you want to be a good and successful person, or at least be perceived as such.

Imagine your daughter Bethany brings home her new boyfriend, Brad, for you to meet. What would be the qualities that would make you feel that Brad is a good person? If you could know just two or three qualities about Brad, what are the traits that would be most informative to understanding what Brad is like as a person? Would you want to know that he’s intelligent and outgoing ? Or that he’s honest, compassionate, and kind?

As it turns out, morality is the thing we care about most when forming impressions of a person (see Goodwin, Piazza, & Rozin, 2014). We care about a person’s morality more so than nearly any other factor, including their competence, sociability (friendliness), and a variety of other personality traits. Morality is a potent factor when it comes to evaluating others on a global level.

We know less about whether morality is as important when forming more specific types of evaluations. For example, evaluating whether we like or respect someone are two forms of evaluation that we make frequently in everyday life. For example, do I respect my new co-worker who constantly “borrows” my pens but doesn’t give them back? (Err, no.) Do I like my neighbor who brought me brownies when I first moved in? (Yes. I do.)

Liking and respect are distinct forms of evaluation. Liking reflects personal interest and attraction toward a person, whereas respecting reflects high regard and deference to a person. People are often liked for their communal traits, such as being cooperative and friendly, whereas they are respected for their agentic traits, such as being competent and accomplished. It’s unknown whether morality is more important to liking or respect.

Another equally important, yet distinct form of evaluation is understanding a person. What makes me feel that I truly understand who you are as a person? Some research in this area has shown that we see morality as central to identity : Your morality is what makes you you (Strohminger & Nichols, 2014).

But little is known about morality’s relative importance to liking, respect, and understanding. Morality may be central to all three, or it may be more important to one form of evaluation than another. For example, perhaps morality is especially important when deciding whether we respect a person, but less important whether we respect or understand a person.

Morality on the whole is important, but which moral traits are most important? For example, honesty, purity, and generosity are all elements of morality, but are they all equal in their importance to evaluation? Sometimes honesty can be undesirable, such as the person who is unflinchingly honest even at the cost of feelings (No, I did not need you to tell me my new haircut looks bad). Sometimes we find people who are extremely wholesome and sincere to be insufferable goody two shoes.

My colleagues and I examined these questions through two fundamentally different tasks in this article . In one task, we had participants rate real people and their personality traits (morality, competence, sociability). In the second task, we had participants rate a variety of personality traits and their relationship to people. We used two fundamentally different tasks to examine our research questions in order to see whether the results would replicate. Replication is good.

Morality is central to liking, respecting, and understanding people . What did we find? Morality was central to evaluation. When deciding whether we like, respect, and understand a person, we care most about whether that person is moral, more so than whether he or she is sociable or competent. However, morality was equally important to liking and respecting a person, yet relatively less important to understanding a person. It may be that understanding someone is more complex than liking and respecting, and is affected by a wider variety of personality, behavioral, or relational qualities. It’s also possible that people simply do not agree on what it takes to understand someone (e.g., I care about morality, but you care more about competence when trying to understand someone).

Which moral traits do we care about? Second, not all moral traits were equally important. Across many traits, honesty, compassion, fairness, and generosity were most important to liking, respecting, and understanding. Other moral traits, such as purity and wholesomeness, were seen as less important; even less than certain competent traits (e.g., intelligence , articulate).

I find it informative (and fun) to review Table 1 in the article and examine some of the traits that are uncharacteristic of someone liked and respected: needy, defensive, indecisive, lazy, and cheap. A lesson for the next time you go to dinner with friends: proactively offer a suggestion of a place to go, be able to get there independently, and don’t be stingy when the bill comes. And if someone questions your restaurant choice, for god’s sake, don’t be defensive about it.

Why is a person’s morality so important to us? You may be wondering at this point why morality is so important when judging others. Our results show that we consider moral traits so important in others, in part, because a person’s morality can benefit us in some way. Moral traits have social value. If I know a person is honest and compassionate, then I know that I can associate with that person safely, and can perhaps begin a fruitful relationship with them. From an adaptive perspective, moral traits signal to us whether we should approach or avoid and whether we should affiliate with that person. Affiliating with moral people can increase our fitness.

Clearly, morality is important in the interpersonal domain, but it would be interesting to know how morality factors in when evaluating companies or political candidates. Recalling the Volkswagen emissions scandal, consumers perhaps care about a company’s morality quite deeply, but for different reasons than for why they care about an acquaintance’s morality. And how does morality factor into citizens' perceptions of the presumptive presidential nominees in 2016? I’ll leave that for a political scientist or sociologist to examine.

Anna Hartley is a Research Scientist at Amazon in Seattle.

Goodwin, G. P., Piazza, J., & Rozin, P. (2014). Moral character predominates in person perception and evaluation. J ournal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106, 148-168.

Hartley, A. G., Furr, R. M., Helzer, E. G., Jayawickreme, E., Velasquez, K. R., & Fleeson, W. (2016). Morality’s Centrality to Liking, Respecting, and Understanding Others. Social Psychological and Personality Science , online first. doi: 10.1177/1948550616655359.

Strohminger, N., & Nichols, S. (2014). The essential moral self. Cognition, 131 , 159–171.

Joachim I. Krueger, Ph.D. , is a social psychologist at Brown University who believes that rational thinking and socially responsible behavior are attainable goals.

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Psychiatrist
• Find a Support Group
• Find Online Therapy
• United States
• Brooklyn, NY
• Chicago, IL
• Houston, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Portland, OR
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Washington, DC
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Self Tests NEW
• Therapy Center
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

It’s increasingly common for someone to be diagnosed with a condition such as ADHD or autism as an adult. A diagnosis often brings relief, but it can also come with as many questions as answers.

• Emotional Intelligence
• Gaslighting
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience

Home — Essay Samples — Philosophy — Values of Life — My Personal Values in Life

My Personal Values in Life

• Categories: Values of Life

About this sample

Words: 773 |

Published: Jan 31, 2024

Words: 773 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, body paragraph 1: personal value 1, body paragraph 2: personal value 2, body paragraph 3: personal value 3, counterargument.

• Adler, M. J. (2000). The four dimensions of philosophy: Metaphysical, moral, objective, categorical. Routledge.
• Miller, W. R., & Thoresen, C. E. (2003). Spirituality, religion, and health: An emerging research field. American Psychologist, 58(1), 24-35.
• Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. Oxford University Press.

Cite this Essay

To export a reference to this article please select a referencing style below:

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr. Heisenberg

Verified writer

• Expert in: Philosophy

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

1 pages / 595 words

5 pages / 2230 words

3 pages / 1474 words

1 pages / 658 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Values of Life

Anderson, C. A., Berkowitz, L., Donnerstein, E., Huesmann, L. R., Johnson, J. D., Linz, D., ... & Wartella, E. (2003). The influence of media violence on youth. Psychological science in the public interest, 4(3), 81-110.Ara, R., [...]

Acland, C. (1995) Youth, Murder, Spectacle: The Cultural Politics of ‘Youth in crisis’, Boulder: Westview Press.Cohen, S. (1972/2002) Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers, London: Routledge.Travis, [...]

NST. (2018, October). Nurturing noble values: Addressing changes in lifestyle major challenges. Retrieved from [...]

Kim, H.-S. (2001). ​Organizational Structure and Ethics Attitudes of Public Officials: An Examination of State Agencies. Public Integrity, 3(1), 69–86.Foster, G. D. (1981). ​Law, Morality, and the Public Servant. Public [...]

Many of the values and beliefs I possess, I actually developed at very early age. And as I have grown, my values have also changed or gone through numerous tests. And though I have held onto most of my values and beliefs, I [...]

The "This I Believe" essay series has provided a platform for individuals to share their deeply held beliefs, values, and reflections on life. These essays offer a glimpse into the diverse perspectives and convictions that shape [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Essay on Moral Values

Moral values are the good values that our taught to us by our parents and teachers. These include being honest and kind, showing respect towards others, extending help to those in need, being faithful to ones partner and cooperating with others to name a few. Imbibing good moral values make a person a good human being. A person who sticks to his moral values is said to bear a good character.

Long and Short Essay on Moral Values in English

Here are essays on Moral Values of varying lengths to help you with the topic in your exam. You can choose any Moral Values essay as per your need:

Moral Values Essay 1 (200 words)

Moral values are good values such as compassion, generosity, honesty, kindness, integrity, politeness, perseverance, self control and respect. Individuals who possess these qualities are considered to be an asset to the society. They do not only lead a disciplined life but also help in bringing out the best in those around them. Their dedication towards work, sense of self control and helping nature is appreciated by everyone.

Every parent wants his child to bear a good moral character. Many families in India are especially strict when it comes to imbibing moral values. They stress upon its importance and try to help their children inculcate the same from an early age. However, the moral values in the society are degrading with time.

There are two schools of thoughts when it comes to moral values. As per one, a person must bear good moral values even at the cost of his/ her happiness. On the other hand as per the other one a person must not be too strict with oneself and that moral values may be altered to some extent if they become a cause of stress. The youth these days is more inclined towards seeking happiness rather than valuing moral values. This may be attributed to the growing influence of the western culture.

Moral Values Essay 2 (300 words)

Introduction

Moral values include being honest, kind, showing respect to others, helping others, having a sense of self control, treating everyone equally and imbibing other such good qualities. A person possessing such qualities is known to bear a good moral character. On the other hand, those who do not possess such qualities are looked down upon by the society.

It requires conviction to follow good habits and imbibe moral values. Not every individual is as strong willed to follow these habits. However, we must try to imbibe these.

Moral Values in Office Setting

People look forward to individuals with good moral values. One of the things that the interviewer examines during a job interview is whether the prospective employee bears good moral values. Besides the basic moral values, every organization has a defined ethical code of conduct that the employees are expected to follow. An organization with disciplined employees who possess good moral values runs more systematically compared to those where these basics things are not sorted. There is less corruption and everyone gets a fair chance to learn and grow in such an environment. This is the reason why employers give special attention to this quality while selecting an employee.

However, unfortunately, the youth today does not give much importance to the moral values. The growing competition these days is one of the reasons for the degradation of these values. In an attempt to grow professionally, people do not hesitate to lie, deceive and use other unethical and immoral practices. This disturbs the work environment. It is because of this that the deserving employees lead a lifetime on the same position while the ones who employ immoral practices reach on the top.

Our society needs more individuals that possess good moral values in order to grow and develop the right way.

Moral Values Essay 3 (400 words)

Moral values are the values defined by the society based on which a person’s character is judged. A person is said to be good or bad on the basis of these values. A person’s choices and decisions in life are dependent to a large extent on the moral values he/she bears.

Why Are Moral Values Important?

Moral values define the norms of right and wrong and good and bad. These defined norms help the people understand as how they must act in the society in order to lead a peaceful life. Decision making becomes easy to some extent as a person knows the repercussions of his behaviour based on the moral principles he has been taught since childhood.

Moral values give us an aim in life. We are grounded in reality and are motivated to do good for those around us if we bear good moral values. Helping others, caring for those around us, taking wise decisions and not hurting others are some of the examples of good moral values. These values help in bringing out the best in us.

Moral Values in Indian Society

The Indian society and culture gives high regard to the moral values. From the childhood itself, individuals are expected to behave in a manner which is morally correct. They are taught what is right and wrong as per the society. Talking with respect with the elders and with patience and love with those who are younger to us is one of the first lessons taught to us. One is also taught to bear a good moral character. Indulging in drinking, smoking and other such notorious activities is almost a taboo in the Indian society, particularly for the women. It is considered to be against the custom and tradition of the Indian society. People in India have been known to have broken family ties with those who tread on the path which is not morally correct.

However, with the changing times and growing attraction towards the western culture many people are defying these set norms of morality. Everyone these days wants freedom to live their life their own way and the strict moral values often hamper their happiness. Many people go against the society to seek freedom and happiness.

While individuals must bear good moral values, sometimes they seem too far-fetched. With the changes in the mindset and the way of living, moral values must also be altered and should not remain too stringent.

Moral Values Essay 4 (500 words)

Moral values are the good values taught to help people lead a disciplined life. Moral values include good habits such as honesty, helpfulness, integrity, respectfulness, love, hard work and compassion.

Importance of Moral Values in a Student’s Life

A student’s life is full of challenging. This is a growing age wherein a person learns several lessons each day. The lessons learned during this age stay with us for the rest of our lives. It is thus important to help the students inculcate good moral values. After all, they are the future of the nation. Children with good moral values grow up to become responsible youth. Those who are devoid of good values do not only spoil their lives as they grow older but are also a threat to the society.

Imbibing Good Moral Values in Students

Parents as well as teachers must put in special efforts to help students imbibe good moral values. Children are quite observant. Most of the things they learn in life is by observing their teachers, parents and elder siblings. They pay more heed to the way their elders act and behave and imbibe the same rather than what they are instructed to do. For instance, they will be inspired to speak the truth if they see their elders doing the same. On the other hand, if they are repeatedly asked to speak the truth but see their elders doing otherwise, they too shall be tempted to lie. It is thus the responsibility of the parents and teachers to behave properly to demonstrate good values so that the children inculcate the same. They must inspire the students to be polite, help others, speak the truth, be compassionate and take up responsibilities with pleasure.

Schools must also focus on imparting moral values to the students by way of good moral stories and lessons rather than merely lecturing them on the same. Evil practices and bad habits must be condemned so that the students stay away from them. Inculcating good moral values in students is as important as teaching them other subjects.

Moral Values and Today’s Generation

Times are changing and the mindset of people is changing with time. While it is good to move with the time however moving away from ones roots and moral values is not a good thing. Today’s generation is not as conscious about being morally and ethically correct as the earlier ones.

They have a different outlook towards life. Indulging in frivolous act, lying for their benefit, smoking, drinking and having drugs is a common sight these days. While this was considered a taboo a few decades back, youth these days indulges in the same without any inhibitions. Most of this can be attributed to the influence of the western culture. Besides, parents these days have also become extremely busy in their lives that they hardly get time to spend with their children and teach them what is right and wrong.

A person must bear good moral values such as honesty, helping nature, decency, righteousness and self-discipline. Such a person is an asset to the society.

Moral Values Essay 5 (600 words)

Moral values are the values defined by the society to guide individuals to lead a disciplined life. While the basic moral values such as honesty, kindness and cooperative behaviour remain the same some values may change or modify over the time.

Changing Moral Values in the Society

From Joint Family to Nuclear Family System

Moral values differ to some extent based on the society one lives in. They also differ from generation to generation. India is one such country that boasts of its rich moral values and deep rooted culture. Respecting our elders is the first and foremost value taught to us. Our parents emphasize its importance since our childhood. Talking ill to the elders – be it our parents, grandparents, relatives or any other elder is considered offensive. India is known for its joint family system. Children continue to live with their parents and siblings even after their marriage in our country. Until few year back, this was more of a custom. Even if the house was small or there were differences among the family members, people were still expected to stick together and live under one roof.

Sons and daughter in laws were expected to take care of their parents during their old age and anyone who urged to live separately was considered to be disrespectful towards his parents. Such young couples were talked ill about in the neighbourhood and among the relatives. Often, the family disowned their sons because of this reason. However, people these days understand that it is important to give space in relationships in order to nurture them well. Just like the western countries, people in India have also started living in nuclear families these days and the society has slowly and gradually accepted this. It is no longer considered to be morally or ethically wrong.

Arranged Marriages to Love Marriages

People in the west find our arranged marriage system rather weird however in India it is a part of our tradition. While there is a growing trend of love marriages since the last few decades, prior to that having affair and expressing the desire to have a love marriage was considered to be morally wrong. Girls who expressed their wish to marry a boy of their own choice were thrashed severely by their family members and were considered to have low moral values. Young couples in love had to struggle hard to get approval for marriage. It used to get all the more difficult if it was an inter-caste relationship. Many instances of honour killing have also come into limelight in the past owing to this reason.

However, the concept of love marriage has now become quite common in our country and a person’s moral values and character are not judged because of this.

Marriage to Live-in Relationships

Live in relationships are quite common in the western countries however in India these relationships are not considered morally correct. Here, it is advocated that a couple can live together under one roof only when they are married. While live-in relationships were considered a taboo until a few years back, many sections of the society have now begun to accept it. Many young couples these days especially those living in the metropolitan cities have started getting into such relationships. Though, a large section of the society still continues to consider it wrong.

Moral values are thus a type of law defined by the society to dictate an individual on how he should and should not behave. While moral values are important and good for the society some of these are too overrated. These must be inculcated and advocated for the good of the society and not to suffocate the individuals. It is important to alter them from time to time to match the mindset of the newer generation.

More on Moral Values:

Paragraph on Moral Values

Related Posts

Money essay, music essay, importance of education essay, education essay, newspaper essay, my hobby essay, leave a comment cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *