This study investigated the relationship of child abuse and neglect to academic achievement and discipline problems in a school-age population. A representative community sample of 420 maltreated children in kindergarten through Grade 12 were matched with 420 nonmaltreated children in the same community. Using social service and school records as the sources of data, we found maltreated children performed significantly below their nonmaltreated peers in standardized tests and grades and were more likely to repeat a grade. Maltreated children also had significantly more discipline referrals and suspensions. Of the maltreated children, neglected children showed the poorest outcomes on academic performance, and physically abused children showed the most discipline problems. Variations in maltreatment effects by grade level, public assistance status, and gender are also described.

Imagine a person making a call in a suburban shopping plaza. As the caller leaves the phone booth, along comes Alice, who drops a folder full of papers that scatter in the caller's path. Will the caller stop and help before the only copy of Alice's magnum opus is trampled by the bargain-hungry throngs? Perhaps it depends on the person: Jeff, an entrepreneur incessantly scheming about fattening his real estate holdings, probably won't, while Nina, a political activist who takes in stray cats, probably will. Nina is the compassionate type; Jeff isn't. In these circumstances we expect their true colors to show. But this may be a mistake, as an experiment conducted by Isen and Levin~1972! shows. There, the paper-dropper was an experimental confederate. For one group of callers, a dime was planted in the phone's coin return slot; for the other, the slot was empty. Here are the results after Isen and Levin 1972: 387!: 1 HelpedDid not help Dime 14 2 No dime 1 24If greedy Jeff finds the dime, he'll likely help; if caring Nina doesn't, she very likely won't. This finding exemplifies a 70-year "situationist" experimental tradition in social and personality psychology, a tradition which has repeatedly demonstrated that the behavioral reliability expected on standard theoretical constructions of personality is not revealed in the systematic observation of behavior. 2 I will suggest that situationist research has revisionary implications for ethical thought, particularly for the neo-Aristotelian ethical theory prominent in moral philosophy for the past quarter century. For such a claim to be fairly earned, we would have to examine decades of research and debate in social and personality psychology, a project I undertake elsewhere. 3 Here, my ambitions are modest: I hope only to produce the NOÛS 32:4~1998! 504-530

No abstract

This book is a provocative contribution to contemporary ethical theory challenging foundational conceptions of character that date back to Aristotle. John Doris draws on behavioral science, especially social psychology, to argue that we misattribute the causes of behavior to personality traits and other fixed aspects of character rather than to the situational context. More often than not it is the situation not the nature of the personality that really counts. The author elaborates the philosophical consequences of this research for a whole array of ethical theories and shows that, once rid of the misleading conception of motivation, moral psychology can support more robust ethical theories and more humane ethical practices.

When do people see self-control as a moral issue? We hypothesize that the group-focused "binding" moral values of Loyalty/betrayal, Authority/subversion, and Purity/degradation play a particularly important role in this moralization process. Nine studies provide support for this prediction. First, moralization of self-control goals (e.g., losing weight, saving money) is more strongly associated with endorsing binding moral values than with endorsing individualizing moral values (Care/harm, Fairness/cheating). Second, binding moral values mediate the effect of other group-focused predictors of self-control moralization, including conservatism, religiosity, and collectivism. Third, guiding participants to consider morality as centrally about binding moral values increases moralization of self-control more than guiding participants to consider morality as centrally about individualizing moral values. Fourth, we replicate our core finding that moralization of self-control is associated with binding moral values across studies differing in measures and design-whether we measure the relationship between moral and self-control language across time, the perceived moral relevance of self-control behaviors, or the moral condemnation of self-control failures. Taken together, our findings suggest that self-control moralization is primarily group-oriented and is sensitive to group-oriented cues. (PsycINFO Database Record