Audun Dahl, a professor of developmental psychology at UC Santa Cruz, will be presenting a talk entitled, "The Development of Moral Reasoning from Infancy to Adulthood."
Abstract: Children and adults embrace moral principles that purport to regulate most social situations, including prohibitions against violence and obligations to help others. Yet, individuals do not automatically apply these principles to situations, sometimes appearing to violate their own views about right and wrong. In the past two decades, researchers have proposed that (a) infants make moral judgments at an age when they routinely harm others, and (b) adults' moral judgments are typically based on unconscious, emotional reactions that disregard the very principles people claim to embrace. In this talk, I will offer an alternative account of the developing application of moral principles. Based on recent work, I will propose that reasoning about moral principles - once acquired - guides judgments, emotions, and actions among children and adults in ways that powerfully shape social interactions.
About the presenter: Audun Dahl is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He received in Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2014. His research on moral development investigates young children's interactions and evaluations about helping and harming others, and the application of moral and other principles to complex situations among older children and adults. His has published in the Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, Psychological Science, and Developmental Science, and has received funding from the National Institutes of Health.
