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The Forms and Functions of Real‐life

Moral Decision‐making
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Dennis L. Krebs , Kathy Denton & Gillian Wark
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Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada
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 Journal of Moral Education, Vol. 26, No. 2, 1997 131

The Forms and Functions of

Real-life Moral Decision-making
DENNIS L. KREBS, KATHY DENTON & GILLIAN WARK
Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada
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ABSTRACT People rarely make the types of moral judgement evoked by Kohlberg's test when
they make moral decisions in their everyday lives. The anticipated consequences of real-life
moral decisions, to self and to others, may influence moral choices and the structure of moral
reasoning. To understand real-life moral judgement we must attend to its functions, which,
although they occasionally involve resolving hypothetical moral dilemmas like those on
Kohlberg's test, more often involve promoting good social relations, upholding favourable
self-concepts and justifying self-interested behaviour. We argue that a functional model of moral
judgement and moral behaviour derived from evolutionary theory may supply a better account
of real-life morality than the Kohlbergian model.

For more than three decades, Kohlberg's cognitive-developmental theory has guided
our conceptions of moral development. Research inspired by Kohlberg's theory has
made valuable contributions to our understanding of how structures of moral
reasoning develop in children and adults. However, in this paper we will argue that
the Kohlbergian model of morality does not give a good account of the ways in
which people make moral decisions in their everyday lives, and we will introduce a
more functional model that, we believe, offers a better account.

Kohlberg's Model of Morality

As implied by the name for Kohlberg's theoretical approach, Kohlberg's model of
morality focuses on the development of moral cognition, or thought. In particular,
Kohlberg defines the moral aspect of personality in terms of structures of moral
reasoning. To assess the structure of an individual's moral reasoning, Kohlberg and
his colleagues give subjects a set of philosophical moral dilemmas involving conflicts
between moral norms—for example, whether or not Heinz should steal an over-
priced drug (whether Heinz should uphold or violate the law norm) to save his dying
wife (uphold or violate the life norm). Subjects must decide which of two choices
available to the characters in the hypothetical dilemmas is the more moral, or just,
then justify their decisions. Kohlberg's test is customarily given in an academic
context in conditions conducive to optimal performance, and interviewers are
instructed to evoke "the most advanced level of moral reasoning of which the

0305-7240/97/020131-15 © 1997 The Norham Foundation

 132 D. L. Krebs, K. Denton & G. Wark

individual is capable" (Colby & Kohlberg, 1987, p 5)—the test-taker's upper level of
competence. Level (stage) of moral development is assessed in terms of people's
ability to figure out the fairest—most just—solutions to the moral problems faced by
the characters in Kohlberg's dilemmas.
Kohlberg (1984) assumes people process the information in all moral dilemmas
through the cognitive structures that define their current stage of moral develop-
ment: "Stage of moral reasoning is a filter through which ... situational forces are
perceived, interpreted, and acted upon" (p 564). For example, at Stage 2 people
view moral issues through a lens that focuses on instrumental exchanges; at Stage 3
people view moral issues through a lens that focuses on roles and interpersonal
expectations, and so on. The moral principles that define Kohlberg's stages supply
the general premises from which prepositional deductions about correct courses of
action in concrete situations are made.
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Kohlberg believes moral judgement is organised in "structures of the whole", so

he expects each individual to view all the moral problems he or she encounters in the
same basic way (cross-dilemma consistency), and people in different stages of moral
development to view moral problems in different ways (i.e. in terms of different
cognitive structures). According to Kohlberg (1984), each new cognitive structure
"transforms and displaces (i.e. integrates)" the structure that defines the previous
stage, causing stages to develop in an invariant hierarchical sequence.
Kohlberg (1984) has outlined a model of the relation between moral judgement
and moral behaviour. In this model, structures of moral reasoning give rise to moral
choices (e.g. "Yes, Heinz should steal the drug". "No, the doctor should not
perform the mercy killing".) which, when followed by appropriate judgements of
responsibility and when supported by necessary ego processes, give rise to moral
behaviour. Critics of Kohlberg's model such as Krebs and Denton (1997) have
pointed out that it is not possible to predict moral behaviour from stage of moral
development because, according to Kohlberg, people at different stages of moral
development may make the same moral choice and people at the same stage may
make different choices.
To summarise, in the Kohlbergian model of morality the moral aspect of
personality is defined in terms of the ability to consider the most just solutions to
moral dilemmas. This model focuses on moral understandings or moral knowledge.
It casts people in the role of philosophers of ethics. In Kohlberg's model, making
moral decisions is akin to figuring out a conservation task or solving a math problem;
it is a rational process. It follows that educators and other agents of socialisation who
seek to enhance moral development should practise the types of activity they are
trained to perform—teaching students how to reason in increasingly sophisticated
ways about moral issues, so the students can learn to solve increasingly complex
moral problems.
One of the most important questions we must ask about Kohlberg's model of
morality is, how representative are the forms of moral reasoning evoked by
Kohlberg's test? Imagine you gave a group of people Kohlberg's test, then followed
them around observing how they make moral decisions in their everyday lives.
Would they engage in the same types of moral thinking in the real-life contexts as
 Forms and Functions of Moral Decision-making 133

TABLE I. Six types of real-life moral dilemma and examples*

1. Philosophical dilemmas
(e.g. euthanasia, abortion)
2. Antisocial dilemmas: reacting to transgressions
(e.g. friend cheats on exams; father has affair)
3. Antisocial dilemmas: reacting to temptation
(e.g. date friend's girlfriend; lie to parents to avoid trouble)
4. Social pressure to violate one's values or identity
(e.g. being pressured to violate the law; to drink)
5. Prosocial dilemmas: reacting to conflicting demands
(e.g. mother wants honesty but brother wants secret kept; torn between divorced parents)
6. Reacting to the needs of others
(e.g. help a criminal friend; take car keys from a drunk)
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'Adapted from Wark & Krebs (1996).

they did when taking Kohlberg's test? To what extent could you predict how people
make moral decisions in their everyday lives from the way in which they make moral
decisions on Kohlberg's test?

Real-life Moral Reasoning

To answer this question, we conducted several studies on real-life moral judgement
(Krebs et al, 1995; Laird & Krebs, 1997, forthcoming; Wark & Krebs, 1996, 1997,
forthcoming). Our method is simple: we ask participants to report, to interpret and
to make moral judgements about moral dilemmas they or people they know have
experienced in their everyday lives, then we ask them to take Kohlberg's test. We
have found that university students reported the six main kinds of moral dilemma
shown in Table I (e.g. Wark & Krebs, 1996).

Philosophical Moral Dilemmas

As shown in Table I, university students sometimes ponder philosophical dilemmas
in their everyday lives similar to those on Kohlberg's test (e.g. dilemmas involving
euthanasia, abortion, capital punishment). We have found that when students
consider such dilemmas, they usually invoke essentially the same forms of moral
judgement they display on Kohlberg's test—the highest stages of moral reasoning
available to them (Bush et al, 1993; Wark & Krebs, 1996). We interpret this as
demonstrating that university students sometimes play the role of philosopher of
ethics, approaching moral dilemmas much like they approach other intellectual
exercises.
However, private rumination about abstract moral dilemmas is a relatively rare
experience, even for university students. When people consider philosophical dilem-
mas, they usually discuss or debate them with other people. When people respond
 134 D. L. Krebs, K. Demon & G. Wark

to Kohlberg's interview, they direct their moral judgements to an audience—the test

giver or interviewer. They take Kohlberg's test in a particular context, which
contains a set of implicit roles and expectations. For example, in the academic
contexts in which Kohlberg's test usually is given students are usually motivated to
do their best and to impress the test-giver with their intelligence. However, when
people make moral judgements in their everyday lives, they may direct them toward
quite different types of audience in quite different contexts, and this may affect the
types of moral judgement they make. Even in a university context, Carpendale and
Krebs (1992) found that university students displayed higher stages of moral
reasoning when they believed their responses would be read by a professor of
Philosophy than by a professor of Business Administration.
The finding that people adapt the structure of their moral reasoning to their
audiences is consistent with social psychological research on impression manage-
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ment. For example, Schlenker (1980) has adduced evidence that people are sensitive
and responsive to audiences that are present, anticipated (e.g. those they expect to
meet or to whom they will be accountable) and internal (e.g. parents, clergy). One
function of impression management is to create a public image (e.g. the self as
honest) that will be validated by the behaviour of others (e.g. being trusted), which
affirms the sense of self the person is motivated to construct. Internal audiences may
equate to Freudian-type superegos or consciences, and play an important role in
real-life morality.
We also would expect forms of moral judgement to vary when people are
debating moral issues, rather than privately presenting their point of view to an
interviewer, because debate tends to increase the salience of others' opinions and to
polarise points of view. One might argue such judgements do not validly reflect
people's conceptions of morality, and we would not necessarily disagree. Our point
is that people make moral judgements for reasons other than to resolve moral
dilemmas, and if we are to understand human morality, we must attend to the other
functions moral judgements serve.
When people make moral judgements on Kohlberg's test, they make them
about imaginary characters such as Heinz, from a third-person perspective. In real
life, most of the moral decisions people make pertain to what they, not imaginary
characters, should do. Kohlbergians assume people who actually face a moral
decision engage in the same kind of moral reasoning as they do when considering the
decision hypothetically. However, there is good reason to question this assumption.
For example, researchers such as Smetana (1982) have found that women faced
with an actual decision about abortion invoked different forms of moral judgement
from women who reasoned about abortion hypothetically.

Personal Real-life Moral Dilemmas

When we ask people to report the moral dilemmas they personally have experienced
in their everyday lives, they are much more likely to report prosocial, social pressure
and antisocial types of dilemmas such as those described in Table I than they are to
report philosophical kinds of dilemma such as those on Kohlberg's test (Wark &
 Forms and Functions of Moral Decision-making 135

Krebs, 1996). One of the main questions that has guided our research on real-life
morality has been whether people invoke the same forms of moral judgement when
considering personal types of real-life moral dilemma as they do when considering
impersonal, philosophical types of dilemma. We have found that the answer to this
question is usually no. As a general statement, university students tend to invoke
Stage 3/4 forms of moral judgement in response to Kohlbergian and other abstract
philosophical dilemmas, Stage 3 forms of moral judgement when considering
prosocial types of real-life dilemma, and Stage 2/3 judgements when considering
antisocial types of real-life dilemma (Wark & Krebs, 1996).
Such findings are problematic for Kohlberg's model of moral development.
They demonstrate that people retain old structures of moral judgement and invoke
them in response to particular types of dilemma. Our results suggest the forms of
moral judgement people display result from an interaction between the types of
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moral issue they address and the cognitive structures available to them. It is
misleading to view adults as "in" a stage of moral development (Carpendale &
Krebs, 1992). We have found that virtually all adults invoke Stage 2, Stage 3, and
Stage 4 forms of moral judgement in their everyday lives; that moral judgement is
not organised in structures of the whole; and that new structures do not transform
and displace old structures (see Krebs et al., 1989; Krebs et al, 1991; Krebs et
al., 1995, for reviews of this research). Our findings suggest structures of moral
judgement are domain-specific and that they develop in an additive-inclusive
manner.
In their latest work Colby and Kohlberg (1987) acknowledged that Kohlberg's
model applies to the development of moral competence, and that people may not
perform at their level of competence in all contexts. The results of our research are
generally consistent with this assertion. What develops in people is the capacity to
make increasingly sophisticated moral judgements, and Kohlberg's test assesses this
capacity well: participants in our studies virtually always display higher levels of
moral maturity on Kohlberg's test than on other types of moral dilemma (Bartek et
al, 1993; Demon & Krebs, 1990; Krebs et al, 1991; Carpendale & Krebs, 1992;
1995; Wark & Krebs, 1996). However, we have found that people rarely perform at
their highest level of competence, and only in ideal circumstances (see Krebs et al,
1995, for a review). It follows that Kohlberg's model accounts for only a small
domain of cognition. We need a model that explains why people fail to perform at
the level they display on Kohlberg's test when making moral decisions in their
everyday lives.
Our reaction to the limitations of Kohlberg's model was to try to buttress it with
an account of factors that induced people to perform below their level of com-
petence. Some of the performance factors we have found to be associated with
relatively low-stage performance are summarised in Table II.

Toward a New Model of Moral Decision-making

A few years ago, it occurred to us that studying performance factors in and of
themselves may be a never-ending exercise destined ultimately to produce only a
long list of variables that affect level of moral judgement. As a consequence, we
 136 D. L. Krebs, K Demon & G. Wark

TABLE n . Performance factors found to affect level of moral judgement

1. Type ofmoral dilemma (Demon & Krebs, 1990; Krebs etal, 1991;Carpendale&Krebs, 1992;Bartek
et al, 1993; Wark & Krebs, 1996)
2. Amount of probing, time for reflection (Denton & Krebs, 1990; Wark & Krebs, 1997)
3. Decntic choices (Carpendale & Krebs, 1995)
4. Incentives, desired outcomes, preferred choices (Carpendale & Krebs, 1995)
5. Moral atmosphere of context (norms, roles, reduced self-awareness) (Denton & Krebs, 1990)
6. Audiences (Carpendale & Krebs, 1992)
7. Self vs. other as object ofmoral decision (Krebs et al., 1994)
8. Anticipated consequences ofmoral decisions (Carpendale & Krebs, 1995; Wark & Krebs, 1997)
9. Affective states (Denton & Krebs, 1990; Wark & Krebs, 1997)
10. Threats to ego (Bartek et al, 1993)
11. Availability of excuses, rationalizations; denial of responsibility (Denton & Krebs, 1990; Bartek etal,
1993; Wark & Krebs, 1997)
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decided to change strategies and study moral decision-making in everyday life. The
results of this research programme are leading us toward a new model of moral
judgement (Krebs et al, 1995), part of which we would like to sketch out here.

The Multiple Meanings of "Should"

Our model begins in a manner akin to Kohlberg's model: People faced with a moral
dilemma ask themselves, "What should I do?" However, we believe the cognitive
processes involved in making behavioural decisions about the self ("What should /
do?") are significantly different from the cognitive processes involved in making
choices about the hypothetical characters in Kohlbergian dilemmas ("What should
Heinz do?"). In particular, the cognitive processes involved in real-life moral
decisions are less rational and more self-serving and pragmatic than the cognitive
processes assessed by Kohlberg's test.
When people make moral decisions in their everyday lives, they virtually always
make decisions about what they actually should do behaviourally, not what the most
moral course of action is in a hypothetical dilemma. The "should" in "what should
I do?" typically includes both moral and pragmatic components (e.g. "I should
protect myself')j which may entail considering moral and non-moral factors. We
believe the factors people consider and the effect they have on real-life moral
decision-making are influenced by functional concerns, such as those outlined in
Table III. As suggested in Table III, moral judgement may be invoked to advance
self-interest (Carpendale & Krebs, 1995) or social harmony (Carpendale & Krebs,
1992), and be influenced by motivational and affective processes (Wark & Krebs,
1997). In the remainder of this paper, we will exemplify the functional approach we
are fashioning by outlining how one of the most important pragmatic concerns—the
consequences of moral decisions—may affect forms of moral judgement.
 Forms and Functions of Moral Decision-making 137

TABLE III. Proximal functions of moral judgement

Intellectual functions
• to solve a moral dilemma, to identify and justify the most moral course of action
• to organise one's moral principles
Self-serving functions: serve self-interested outcomes; protect, enhance, validate the self
• to maximise material and physical consequences to self
• to evoke positive social reactions (enhance reputation, status, interpersonal relations)
• to manage impressions, to get others to treat the self as moral and reap the benefits
• to maintain psychological well-being, to avoid psychological tension (guilt, cognitive dissonance)
• to uphold one's moral identity
Social harmony functions
• to induce others to obey laws, rules, authority
• to uphold normative order
• to protect/promote solidarity, role relations and reputation of ingroup members
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Considering Consequences
When people are faced with real-life moral decisions, they normally anticipate and
weigh the outcomes of alternative courses of action ("If I do this, then ...")• People
may consider consequences to themselves and consequences to others in various
proportions and balances. It is useful to distinguish three types of consequence: (a)
material or physical harm or gain; (b) positive or negative social, interpersonal, or
reputational outcomes; and (c) positive or negative psychological consequences such
as guilt, threats to identity or identity enhancement. It also may be useful to
categorise moral dilemmas in terms of conflicts among anticipated consequences.
Three typical types are: approach—approach conflicts ("Should I help this friend or
that friend?"); approach—avoidance conflicts ("Should I line my pocket or avoid
feeling guilty?"); and avoidance—avoidance conflicts ("Should I pay the money back
or face her disapproval?").

Anticipating material and physical consequences to self. People often consider conse-
quences when responding to Kohlberg's hypothetical dilemmas (see Kohlberg's
Element 6-13; Colby & Kohlberg, 1987, p 42); however, there is a tremendous
difference between considering consequences to hypothetical characters and consid-
ering actual consequences to yourself and to people you know. Although many
people believe Heinz should steal the drug, most people would not in fact steal it if
they were actually faced with the decision, because they would not be willing to
suffer the consequences (Krebs et ah, 1994). This inconsistency between "should"
and "would" may create cognitive dissonance, which may be reduced by changing
one's mind about the morally obligatory course of action ("Actually, it would be
wrong for me to steal the drug"). Research on children has supported this possibil-
ity. Damon (1977) found that children made more self-serving decisions about the
fairest way to divide up resources when they stood to profit from the decisions than
 138 D. L. Krebs, K. Demon & G. Wark

when they did not, and we have observed similar effects in our research on real-life
moral decisions (Wark & Krebs, 1997).
Our research suggests self-interest (anticipated consequences to self) pulls for
moral choices that maximise benefits to the self, and the moral choices people make
affect the structures of moral judgement they invoke to justify them. For example,
Wark and Krebs (1996) found that people who succumbed to real-life temptations
often argued they had a right to satisfy their needs, then justified their selfish choices
with Stage 2 moral judgements. Kohlberg believed moral judgement gives rise to
moral choices. A spate of social psychological research on relations between atti-
tudes and behaviour suggests the order may be reversed (see McGuire, 1985, for a
review). People make choices or engage in various behaviours for whatever reason,
then invoke moral judgements to justify them.
In support of this idea, Damon (1977) found that many of the children he
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studied made selfish choices about how to divide resources, then tailored their moral
reasoning to support their self-interested decisions. Interestingly, the only children
who did not adapt the form of their reasoning to justify their choices were those at
low stages of moral development. These children justified all their decisions with
hedonistic principles. It would be ironic if the most consistent link between level of
moral reasoning and behavioural decisions were among individuals at the lowest
stages of moral development, who differ from others mainly in their tendency to tell
the simple, self-interested truth. Perhaps Haan (1983) had a point when she
characterised high-level Kohlbergian moral reasoning as:

nothing more than reified adulterations of intellectualized restatements of

interactional morality, preferred or more persistently used by problem
solvers with special intellectual training ... the Platonic moralities are the
intellectual's phobic reactions to social uncertainty (p. 246).
Thus, in contrast to Kohlberg's model of moral judgement, we believe people may
invoke moral judgements to justify the pursuit of desired consequences for them-
selves and to reduce cognitive dissonance. Anticipated outcomes may give rise to
moral choices and moral judgements, rather than follow from them.

Anticipating social consequences to self: the reaction of others. In Kohlberg's model,

perspective-taking is a necessary part of moral decision-making, enabling people to
consider the interests of all parties. In real-life, perspective-taking may serve a
different function: people may put themselves in the place of others to anti-
cipate how others will react if they make one choice or another. The function of
perspective-taking may more often be to guard against social disapproval or to
protect and enhance one's social image in the eyes of valued audiences than to
determine which outcome is fairest to everyone concerned. The research described
earlier (Carpendale & Krebs, 1992) in which people invoked significantly lower
levels of moral judgement when justifying an economic decision to a professor of
Business Administration than when justifying it to a professor of Philosophy is
consistent with this idea.
 Forms and Functions of Moral Decision-making 139

Anticipating psychological consequences to self. People's self-concepts are affected by

the feedback they receive from others and by self-evaluation (Swann, 1987). We
have found that virtually all people consider themselves to be more moral than other
people—a phenomenon we have called the self-righteous bias (Denton & Krebs,
1990). As one example, Denton and Krebs (1990) found that virtually all partici-
pants in a study on the effect of alcohol on moral judgement believed they would be
less likely to drink and drive than other people would. People have an investment in
their moral identities, which may affect their moral decisions. When people behave
in ways that are inconsistent with their identities (e.g. when they break the law) and
when these inconsistencies are made salient to them by anticipating or experiencing
guilt (self-censure) or negative reactions from others, people are motivated to reduce
the inconsistency. They may do this by justifying their behaviour, which our research
suggests often involves the use of low-stage moral structures (e.g. Denton & Krebs,
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1990; Krebs, Denton et al, 1991; Wark & Krebs, 1997). In contrast, when people
behave in ways that are consistent with their moral self-concept and reputation (e.g.
when they help others), they tend to feel good about themselves, their conception of
self as a moral person is enhanced (or, at least validated), and there is no need for
self-protective justifications. Thus, the positive and negative reactions people antici-
pate or experience from themselves and from others may affect their moral judge-
ment in ways that protect, enhance or validate their identities.

Considering consequences to others. Another major consideration when making real-

life moral decisions is the consequences that available courses of action have on
others. This is different from anticipating others' reactions to the self, which relates
to self-consequences. Our research suggests that considering real consequences to
others may affect moral judgement differently from considering hypothetical conse-
quences to others. For example, in a study on the morality of business deals,
Carpendale and Krebs (1995) found a significant difference between the amount
sellers decided to disclose to potential buyers about defects in merchandise when the
decision was hypothetical than when it was real (i.e. when real money was involved).
Interestingly, and contrary to prediction, sellers who actually stood to make money
from the deal were significantly more disclosing than those who made the decision
hypothetically. As expected, sellers who decided to disclose a great deal to buyers
justified this choice with significantly higher levels of moral judgement than those
who decided to withhold information. Apparently, the sellers oriented to the real
consequences to the buyer, not to themselves, and therefore behaved more gener-
ously than they thought they would when they considered the situation hypotheti-
cally.
In general, we would expect anticipated consequences to others to give rise to
altruistic behaviours when they pertain to recipients people like and with whom they
identify (i.e. ingroup members; see Krebs & Denton, 1997). Relations between
similarity, attraction, empathy and altruism are well established in the literature (see
Krebs & Miller, 1985, for a review). However, we believe less generous and more
 140 D. L. Krebs, K. Denton & G. Work

competitive processes are activated when people consider consequences to outgroup

members (Krebs & Denton, 1997).
To summarise, we believe one of the most important processes in which people
engage when making real-life moral decisions is to anticipate the consequences of
available courses of action to themselves and to others. The value people place on
the consequences they anticipate may influence their moral decisions, which may
influence the forms of moral judgement they invoke to justify them. Although moral
judgement may sometimes give rise to moral decisions, such as when people
consider impersonal, philosophical moral dilemmas in academic contexts, moral
decisions also may affect the structure of moral judgement (Fiske & Taylor, 1991).
Indeed, even on Kohlberg's test, subjects make a moral decision first then, in effect,
justify it. No one has yet established that the moral decisions people make on
Kohlberg's test are derived from the structures of moral reasoning they have
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acquired. The choices people make on Kohlberg's test could, for example, be
derived from social learning or prior attitudes, then justified with the highest forms
of moral judgement available to them. In this sense, the primary function of moral
judgement would be self-justification or justification of attitudes and behaviour.
People may make (moral) choices on one basis—for example, to foster their own
interest—then invoke the most appropriate forms of justification they are able to
muster (Wark & Krebs, 1997). People may also adapt the level of their justifications
to fit the demands of situations, including the expectations of the audiences to whom
they are directed (Carpendale & Krebs, 1992). Clearly, this characterisation of
moral reasoning is far from what Kohlberg envisioned, and probably more cynical
than most moral educators would like.

TTie Adaptive Functions of Moral Judgement

After working for years within Kohlberg's cognitive-developmental model, our
research on real-life moral judgement has directed us toward a more functional
model of morality. One paradigm—admittedly not the first that would occur to most
educators—is the modern synthetic theory of evolution.
At first glance, morality seems antithetical to the principles of biological evol-
ution. Moral behaviours appear to reduce biological fitness; they involve self-
restraint and self-sacrifice. However, upon examination, it turns out that systems of
morality may pay off better than less moral alternatives. Evolutionary theorists have
suggested the central function of morality is to uphold cooperative relations that are
more beneficial than selfish individualism to the individuals who practise them
(Axelrod & Hamilton, 1981; Alexander, 1987; Krebs, 1997).
From an evolutionary perspective Kohlberg's stages represent cognitive struc-
tures that were selected in ancestral environments because they upheld adaptive
systems of social interaction. For example, Stage 1 structures upheld social systems
based on obedience to authority; Stage 2 judgements upheld cooperative systems
based on instrumental, individual exchanges (e.g. tit-for-tat reciprocity) and Stage 3
judgements upheld cooperative systems based on harmonious ingroup relations.
The cognitive structures that uphold Stage 4 judgements may have evolved relatively
 Forms and Functions of Moral Decision-making 141

recently to uphold the maintenance of social structures, such as legal systems, within
more complex societies. In contemporary environments, people acquire these cogni-
tive structures ontogenetically, in an additive-inclusive way, and invoke them to
support their investment in the social systems they enter at various stages of their
lives (cf. Damon, 1977). The cognitive structures that uphold different cooperative
systems are domain-specific (as opposed to structures of the whole) and may be
activated in appropriate contexts in all people who participate in them. So, the good
news implied by evolutionary theory is that people are evolved to form and uphold
several systems of cooperation because such systems help them survive, reproduce
and propagate their genes.
The bad news is that it is also in people's interest to compete against those with
whom they have formed cooperative alliances when distributing shared resources,
and to cheat in cooperative systems when they can get away with it. We believe the
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inherent tensions within cooperative systems—to preserve the systems for the
benefits they supply versus to violate them to obtain additional benefits when one
can get away with it—provided the original impetus for the evolution of moral
judgement. More specifically, we believe the original function of moral judgement
was to induce those with whom one formed cooperative relations to uphold the
cooperative systems in order to maximise the benefits to all. Put another way, the
original function of moral judgement was to constrain others from advancing their
interests at the expense of those with whom they formed cooperative relations.
Findings from our research on real-life moral judgement are consistent with this
idea. When people discuss the moral dilemmas they have experienced in their
everyday lives, they often condemn those who exploit cooperative systems ("He puts
on a big helpless act so others will do the work for him."), and praise those who
uphold them ("He is such a nice guy, always helping other students in the class."
[see Krebs et al., 1995, for additional examples]). Moral judgements that condemn
or praise others reinforce the moral norms and values that uphold cooperative
systems and convey to others (and themselves—their internal audience) that there
are (positive and negative) social consequences of immoral behaviours.
Note that, in our model, moral judgement was originally directed toward
others, not to the self. Krebs and Denton (1997) have reviewed evidence that we
humans are evolved to process information about ourselves in more favourable ways
than we process information about others, especially those with whom we are not
allied. For example, in a recent study Laird and Krebs (1997) asked participants to
make judgements about moral transgressions they or others had committed. Laird
and Krebs found that when their participants made moral judgements about the
moral transgressions they and those with whom they identified committed, they
minimised and excused them ("It wasn't really my fault"). In contrast, when judging
the moral transgressions of those with whom they were not allied, the participants
were much more critical. They were wary of behaviours that appeared to be moral
or altruistic ("He's a little too good to be true") and they were quick to attribute the
transgressions of others to character flaws ("She's selfish").
The value in exaggerating one's morality has been explained by evolutionary
theorists in terms of the benefits of being perceived as a moral person (Alexander,
 142 D. L. Krebs, K. Denton & G. Wark

1987; Krebs & Denton, 1997). From an evolutionary perspective what counts is not
one's actual worth, but one's perceived worth: if I can convince you I am a moral
person, you will treat me accordingly, whether I actually deserve it or not.
Although self-serving displays may be bad news about human nature, they may
have some compensatory merit. First, people must display some morality to foster
the conception they are moral. Second, as social psychologists such as Snyder
(1984) have shown, beliefs, especially ideal conceptions of self, may determine
reality. The belief that one is a moral person may become a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Indeed, Colby and Damon (1992) found the most distinguishing attribute of people
who were selected as moral exemplars was the value they placed on their moral
identity. Upholding one's perception of self as moral clearly serves both immediate
and ultimate functions.
As a biologist, Piaget was aware of and sensitive to the adaptive functions of
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moral judgement and moral behaviour, which he inferred from naturalistic observa-
tions of children negotiating rights, duties and divisions of resources in a real-life
context, while playing marbles. As stated by Rest (1983), Piaget believed morality
involved "the equilibrium of individuals in society ... each reciprocating with other
individuals according to rules that balance the benefits and burdens of cooperation"
(pp 572-573). Kohlberg was attentive to the rules and to the cognitive structures
that upheld the rules, but as Youniss and Damon (1992) have pointed out, "because
of its extreme holism and cognitivism, Kohlberg's approach lost much of the
explanatory power of Piaget's original formulation" (p 276). We believe it is time to
look more carefully at the "benefits and burdens" that have given rise to the systems
of cooperation people have formed and uphold in their everyday lives, and the moral
judgements people invoke to manipulate them in adaptive ways.

Implications for Education

The model of moral development we have presented contains several theoretical and
practical implications for moral education. A common thread runs through many of
these implications: moral decisions and the cognitive structures that support them
may serve many functions, which may vary with the types of dilemma people
consider (e.g. hypothetical, real-life), their level of personal involvement and the
contexts in which they occur. Accordingly, we do not believe moral educators
should limit their interventions to efforts designed to raise children's stage of moral
development as assessed by Kohlberg's test.
Moral educators who wish to create curriculum sensitive to the functions of
moral judgement we have featured in this paper may consider some of the following
ideas. As a primary consideration, we recommend that moral educators encourage
children to discuss real-life, as opposed to Kohlbergian, dilemmas. These dilemmas
might be generated by the children as a group and reflect common problems they
face, or they might be generated by individual children. Students should be encour-
aged to debate the issues and to take different sides. After the children have had time
to discuss and debate moral dilemmas similar to those they have experienced in their
everyday lives, educators might ask them to justify their decisions to different
 Forms and Functions of Moral Decision-making 143

audiences (e.g. peers, parents, other interested parties). If inconsistencies in

justification arise, children should be made aware of them and encouraged to resolve
them, to promote perspective-taking.
It is often assumed that parents, friends and respected adults are people's most
influential internal audiences, but it might be informative to have children identify
their internal audiences ("Whose reactions do you value and respect?"). Conse-
quently, informed moral educators could direct their efforts toward changing or
expanding children's internal audiences by, for example, introducing them to
celebrities they admire (e.g. actors, athletes, musicians) and asking them to take the
perspective of people they like.
Children's sense of their own identity and values is probably their most
significant internal audience. The study by Colby and Damon (1992) discussed
earlier suggests that viewing the self as a moral person promotes commitment to
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moral values and moral behaviour. Therefore, moral educators should explore ways
to encourage students to incorporate morality into their self-concepts.
As mentioned, social psychological research (e.g. Schlenker, 1980; Fiske &
Taylor, 1991) has suggested that the self-concept may be shaped by how other
people respond to one's behaviours. To cultivate a moral identity, educators might
attribute moral behaviour to global, stable, internal dispositions (e.g. "You are a
considerate person"), which may create self-fulfilling prophesies. To reduce self-
discrepancies that stem from behaviour inconsistent with a moral identity, moral
educators might attribute moral transgressions to more specific, transient and
external factors, and encourage children to try different options in the future to
avoid transgressing. For children who already possess a moral identity, or who
believe they do, educators may increase their commitment to it by asking them how
they may make themselves more moral, or what makes them more moral than other
people.
Moral educators also may want to explore the link between moral reasoning and
moral behaviour. For example, they may wish to ask children why people sometimes
do not behave according to their moral principles, then explore the merits of the
children's explanations. Discussions of pragmatic consequences will probably enter
into children's explanations. To further enhance perspective-taking, educators may
invite students to discuss the physical, social and psychological consequences of
moral and immoral acts to all interested parties. To challenge students further,
educators may encourage children to role-play or discuss the consequences of moral
dilemmas in which the self-interest of one person conflicts with the interests of
others. Such discussions may enhance perspective-taking and alert children to
self-serving abuses of moral judgement, especially rationalisations and excuses.
Sensitising children to the possibility that moral judgement can be used to promote
self-interest may encourage them to be more critical consumers of the justifications
they and others invoke in the service of selfish pursuits.

Acknowledgements
The research reported in this paper was supported by Grant 410-94-0345 from the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
 144 D. L. Krebs, K. Denton & G. Work

Correspondence: Dr Dennis Krebs, Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser

University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5A-1S6. e-mail <krebs@sfu.ca>

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