Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T07:55:13.090Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Innate valuation, existential framing, and one head for multiple moral hats

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 March 2018

Bree Beal
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology & Institute of Liberal Arts, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322. bree.beal@emory.edupsypr@emory.edu
Philippe Rochat
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology & Institute of Liberal Arts, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322. bree.beal@emory.edupsypr@emory.edu

Abstract

We support John Doris's criticism of “reflectivism” but identify three shortcomings: (1) his neglect of humans' evolved predispositions and tendencies, (2) his failure to appreciate that identity and responsibility arise first from parsing our world ontologically, in a process we call “existential framing,” and (3) a potentially alarming implication of his “dialogic” model of identity formation: if identity is negotiated across diverse social situations, why isn't dissociative identity disorder more common?

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bigelow, A. E. & Rochat, P. (2006) Two-month-old infants' sensitivity to social contingency in mother–infant and stranger–infant interaction. Infancy 9(3):313–25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blake, P. R., McAuliffe, K., Corbit, J., Callaghan, T. C., Barry, O., Bowie, A., Kleutsch, L., Kramer, K. L., Ross, E., Vongsachang, H., Wrangham, R. & Warneken, F. (2015) The ontogeny of fairness in seven societies. Nature 528(7581):258–61.Google Scholar
Doris, J. M. (2002) Lack of character: Personality and moral behavior. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Doris, J. M. (2015b). Talking to our selves: Reflection, ignorance, and agency. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gazes, R. P., Hampton, R. R. & Lourenco, S. F. (2015) Transitive inference of social dominance by human infants. Developmental Science 20:e12367. doi:10.1111/desc.12367.Google ScholarPubMed
Hamlin, K. J., Wynn, K. & Bloom, P. (2010) Three-month-olds show a negativity bias in their social evaluations. Developmental Science 13(6):923–29.Google Scholar
Mascaro, O. & Csibra, G. (2012) Representation of stable social dominance relations by human infants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109(18):6862–67.Google Scholar
Peck, R. (director) (2016) I am not your Negro [motion picture]. Velvet Film.Google Scholar
Rochat, P., Dias, M. D., Liping, G., Broesch, T., Passos-Ferreira, C., Winning, A. & Berg, B. (2009) Fairness in distributive justice by 3- and 5-year-olds across seven cultures. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 40(3):416–42.Google Scholar
Rosenstein, D. & Oster, H. (1988) Differential facial responses to four basic tastes in newborns. Child Development 59:1555–68.Google Scholar
Thomsen, L., Frankenhuis, W. E., Ingold-Smith, M. & Carey, S. (2011) Big and mighty: Preverbal infants mentally represent social dominance. Science 331(6016):477–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed