Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 The Moral Personality
- 2 The Moral Functioning of the Person as a Whole: On Moral Psychology and Personality Science
- 3 Moral Science? Still Metaphysical After All These Years
- 4 Cultural Pluralism and Moral Identity
- 5 Neuroscience and Morality: Moral Judgments, Sentiments, and Values
- 6 Triune Ethics Theory and Moral Personality
- 7 Early Foundations: Conscience and the Development of Moral Character
- 8 The Development of the Moral Personality
- 9 Urban Neighborhoods as Contexts for Moral Identity Development
- 10 Moral Personality Exemplified
- 11 Greatest of the Virtues? Gratitude and the Grateful Personality
- 12 The Elusive Altruist: The Psychological Study of the Altruistic Personality
- 13 Growing Toward Care: A Narrative Approach to Prosocial Moral Identity and Generativity of Personality in Emerging Adulthood
- 14 Moral Identity, Integrity, and Personal Responsibility
- 15 The Dynamic Moral Self: A Social Psychological Perspective
- 16 The Double-Edged Sword of a Moral State of Mind
- 17 Moral Identity in Business Situations: A Social-Cognitive Framework for Understanding Moral Functioning
- 18 The Moral Functioning of Mature Adults and the Possibility of Fair Moral Reasoning
- 19 Moral Personality: Themes, Questions, Futures
- Author Index
- Subject Index
6 - Triune Ethics Theory and Moral Personality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 The Moral Personality
- 2 The Moral Functioning of the Person as a Whole: On Moral Psychology and Personality Science
- 3 Moral Science? Still Metaphysical After All These Years
- 4 Cultural Pluralism and Moral Identity
- 5 Neuroscience and Morality: Moral Judgments, Sentiments, and Values
- 6 Triune Ethics Theory and Moral Personality
- 7 Early Foundations: Conscience and the Development of Moral Character
- 8 The Development of the Moral Personality
- 9 Urban Neighborhoods as Contexts for Moral Identity Development
- 10 Moral Personality Exemplified
- 11 Greatest of the Virtues? Gratitude and the Grateful Personality
- 12 The Elusive Altruist: The Psychological Study of the Altruistic Personality
- 13 Growing Toward Care: A Narrative Approach to Prosocial Moral Identity and Generativity of Personality in Emerging Adulthood
- 14 Moral Identity, Integrity, and Personal Responsibility
- 15 The Dynamic Moral Self: A Social Psychological Perspective
- 16 The Double-Edged Sword of a Moral State of Mind
- 17 Moral Identity in Business Situations: A Social-Cognitive Framework for Understanding Moral Functioning
- 18 The Moral Functioning of Mature Adults and the Possibility of Fair Moral Reasoning
- 19 Moral Personality: Themes, Questions, Futures
- Author Index
- Subject Index
Summary
Triune Ethics Theory (TET; Narvaez, 2008) is a meta-theory that draws together the findings of multiple research programs to propose three foundational ethical motivations. The three ethics – Security, Engagement, and Imagination – formed from evolved strata of the brain, are manifest in the moral lives of individuals and groups. The higher levels of moral functioning, Engagement and Imagination, depend on early nurturing for their optimal development. In this chapter, I describe the theory and its relation to moral personality, including how dispositions can be formed around one of the ethics, and situations can influence which ethic is activated.
Grounding Three Ethics
Triune Ethics Theory (TET) identifies three types of orientations that underlie human morality and that emerged from biological propensities in human evolution. Deriving its name and inspiration from MacLean's (1990) Triune Brain theory, Triune Ethics Theory identifies moral orientations that reflect in some sense MacLean's three evolutionary strata that resulted from “relatively long periods of stability in vertebrate brain evolution” (Panksepp, 1998, p. 43). Each stratum retains an identifiable mark on the brain and human behavior. TET notes their engineering of moral behavior in terms of cognitive and emotional propensities.
Emotion underlies basic functions in the brain. Emotional systems guide the animal in forming adaptive solutions to environmental demands. These systems involve “psychobehavioral potentials that are genetically ingrained in brain development” as “evolutionary operants” (Panksepp, 1998, p. 55).
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- Personality, Identity, and CharacterExplorations in Moral Psychology, pp. 136 - 158Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
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