Moral Virtue and Practical Wisdom: Theme Comprehension in Children, Youth, and Adults

Abstract

Three hypotheses were tested about the relation of moral comprehension to prudential comprehension by contrasting comprehension of themes in moral stories with comprehension of themes in prudential stories among third grade, fifth grade and college students (n = 168) in Study 1, and among college students, young and middle aged adults, and older adults (n = 96) in Study 2. In both studies, all groups were statistically significantly better at moral theme comprehension than prudential theme comprehension, suggesting that moral comprehension may develop prior to prudential comprehension. In Study 2, all groups performed equally on moral theme generation whereas both adult groups were significantly better than college students on prudential theme generation. Overall, the findings of these studies provide modest evidence that moral and prudential comprehension each develop separately, and that the latter may develop more slowly.The relation of moral virtue to phronesis, or practical wisdom applied to achieving one's goals, has been a source of conjecture and reflection among moral philosophers since antiquity (Aristotle, trans. 1925(Aristotle, trans. /1988. For philosophers, this problem concerns the ways in which we conceptualize our obligations to others and our own self-interest and the developmental progression of these concepts (MacIntyre, 1981). For example, mastering practical approaches to achieving personal goals might be a prerequisite for moral behavior, but moral virtue might be necessary for wise, practical decisions. For psychologists, investigating these constructs in terms of their related cognition can inform the study of two aspects of adaptive development. First, successful social functioning is dependent upon accurate evaluation and comprehension of moral situations. Second, addressing practical problems, whether social or personal, requires comprehension of the steps necessary to arrive at constructive solutions. Consequently, by investigating the cognition underlying moral versus practical, or prudential, situations, we sought to shed empirical light on the philosophers' questions regarding the relative development of moral virtue and practical wisdom.Three views characterize the history of ethics on the relation between moral virtue and practical wisdom. One view, the identity hypothesis, considers practical wisdom as essential to, if not indistinguishable from, the virtues. For example, Plato included practical wisdom Address correspondence to Darcia Narvaez, University of Notre Dame, Department of Psychology, 112 North Notre Dame Avenue, 100 Haggar Hall, South Bend, Indiana 46556, USA; dnarvaez@nd.edu.. AUTHOR NOTES Darcia Narvaez is an associate professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Notre Dame. Tracy Gleason is an assistant professor at Wellesley College. Christyan Mitchell is a senior research associate at WestEd. NIH Public AccessAuthor Manuscript J Genet Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 October 1. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manu...

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