Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-tn8tq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-16T01:44:12.106Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Moral disciplining provides a satisfying explanation for Chinese lay concepts of immorality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 October 2023

Emma E. Buchtel Open the ORCID record for Emma E. Buchtel [Opens in a new window]
Emma E. Buchtel*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, The Education University of Hong Kong, Tai Po, N.T., Hong Kong SAR, China buchtel@eduhk.hk; https://www.emmabuchtel.org/
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In our research on lay prototypes of immorality, we found that Chinese consider immoral behaviors to be more about showing coarse character, rather than being violent and harmful (called criminal behaviors). The target article provides a satisfying rationale for why this Chinese immorality concept, which has many similarities to the puritanical morality described here, is connected to the morality of cooperation.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 46 , 2023 , e298
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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

Buchtel, E. E. (2022). Cultural psychology and the meaning of morality in Chinese and China: Misconceptions, conceptions, and possibilities. In Nichols, R. (Ed.), The Routledge international handbook of morality, cognition, emotion, and behavior in China (pp. 215–236). Routledge.Google Scholar
Buchtel, E. E., Guan, Y., Peng, Q., Su, Y., Sang, B., Chen, S. X., & Bond, M. H. (2015). Immorality East and West: Are immoral behaviors especially harmful, or especially uncivilized? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(10), 1382–1394. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167215595606CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graham, J., Haidt, J., Koleva, S., Motyl, M., Iyer, R., Wojcik, S. P., & Ditto, P. H. (2013). Moral foundations theory. In P. Devine & A. Plants (Eds.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 47, pp. 55–130). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-407236-7.00002-4Google Scholar
Head, J. (2022). Chinese moral psychology as framed by China's legal tradition: Historical illustrations of how the friction between formal and informal specifies of law defines the “legal soul” of China. In Nichols, R. (Ed.), The Routledge international handbook of morality, cognition, emotion, and behavior in China (pp. 148–172). Routledge.Google Scholar