Empathy and Moral Development - Implications for Caring and Justice

Contemporary theories have generally focused on the behavioral, cognitive, or emotional dimensions of prosocial moral development. In this volume, Martin L. Hoffman brings these three dimensions together while providing the first comprehensive account of prosocial moral development in children. The main concept is empathy -- one feels what is appropriate for another person's situation, not one's own. Hoffman discusses empathy's role in five moral situations: one harms someone, one is an innocent bystander, one blames oneself though innocent, one must choose which among several victims to help, or one is torn between contradictory caring and justice concerns. The book's focus is empathy's contribution to altruism and compassion for others in physical, psychological, or economic distress; feelings of guilt over harming someone; feelings of anger at others who do harm; feelings of injustice when others do not receive their due. Also highlighted are the psychological processes involved in empathy's interaction with certain parental behaviors that foster moral internalization in children and the psychological processes involved in empathy's relation to abstract moral principles such as caring and distributive justice. This important book is the culmination of three decades of study and research by a leading figure in the area of child and developmental psychology.