PubMed · 979360
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N Schnaper, H W Schnaper, L A Schnaper. 1976. Euthanasia: is there an answer?. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/979360/
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This essay argues that much of the research in moral psychology has focused on moral performance, on what people do. The study of moral competence, in contrast, has largely been ignored. I use the analogy to linguistics as a model for exploring our moral competence, and suggest that we are endowed with a moral faculty that operates over the causes and consequences of actions. This moral faculty is endowed with principles and parameters that are universal. Acquiring a particular moral system entails setting the parameters. On this model, emotions such as empathy are consequences (as opposed to causes) of unconscious but principled moral evaluations.
In this paper I differentiate among empathy, sympathy and personal distress and discuss the central role of empathy-related responding in positive (including moral) development. Empathy-related responding, especially sympathy, is likely an important source of prosocial, other-oriented motivation. In fact, empathy-related responding, especially sympathy, has been associated with prosocial behaviour (voluntary behaviour intended to benefit another, e.g. helping, sharing); this relation has been obtained for both specific instances of empathy-related responding and for dispositional sympathy. In addition, sympathy (or sometimes empathy) has been linked to relatively high levels of moral reasoning and social competence, and to low levels of aggression and antisocial behaviour. In my talk, I will review research on the relation of empathy-related responding to prosocial behaviour, the consistency of costly prosocial behaviour over time and the possible role of sympathy in its consistency, and the relation of empathy-related responding to moral reasoning, antisocial behaviour and social competence. Examples of research, including longitudinal research in our laboratory, are provided to illustrate these relations. Because of its close relations to social and prosocial responding, an understanding of empathy-related responding contributes to efforts to promote children's moral development.