INTERNATIONAL UNDERSTANGING AND MORALITY PSYCHOLOGY

Fumiyuki Onishi
(Visiting Professor: Graduate School of the Univ. of the air, professor emeritus: Yokohama City Univ.)

Introduction

In my activities with moral education, I define morality as: to foster one's quality to contribute to my and other's happiness and welfare. Today's lecture will be based on the idea that morality, which is a quality to identify oneself in the relationship with others and to think of others, is the foundation of international understanding There are two methods for international understanding. One is education for international understanding and the other understands individual difference. The task of education of international understanding is to produce an adequate model for people to live together in the globalized world. That education has 4 elements:

1)Learning to know
2)Learning to do
3)Learning to live together/with others
4)Learning to be

In Japan, education of learning to know is adequate, however to do is insufficient. If your motivation for volunteer activities is the entrance examination for university, your activities are not really volunteerism. The essence of a volunteer is satisfaction to contribute to others happiness and welfare.

3 aspects of living together

There are 3 aspects in kyousei (living together). Firstly, we live together with nature. Howard Gardner proposed the concept of "interest to the nature" as one of the 8 kinds of intelligence. The second one is to live together with people of different cultures. We should know others cultures and histories. As shown in "Clash of Civilizations" (Samuel Phillips Huntington), ethnic groups have conflicts in many areas in the world. What should we think of it? The third one is living together between individuals. Do we feel happy when we are next to others? How does education contribute to promote living together? The first idea of education is a social education to educate one's ability to see the world globally based on individuals living together. The second idea is to educate one's attitude not only to see the different cultures objectively but also to become involved with different cultures.

Morality Psychology

Morality psychology aims to study morals from the psychological viewpoint in order to develop an adequate model of "living together". We can call it Moral Psychology, but we call it Morality Psychology intentionally, because we mean study on morals psychologically, philosophically, and ethically.

"Living together" itself is morally valuable. And also, in the USA, they are actively studying a model to resolve the conflict of values as a part of morality psychology..

Today we began to add B to MPEC. B means biology. It is necessary to study morals from a biological point of view. Which part of brain is working when human thinks of morals.

Democracy

What do we think of democracy? We should continue to think what kind of democracy is preferable. We have a philosophical problem: Absolutism, Relativism VS Pluralism. Absolutism is an idea to believe a universality that is beyond the difference of conditions. Pluralism is proposed by Person. Each person has a way of thinking, so we should accept the differences and try to build new values and a new society.

We also have a problem: Western vs Oriental, Non Western. American justice does not necessarily work everywhere in the world. We should continue to think of cultural and ethnic diversity.

Market economy and compliance
We tend to think of economic problems in short term period from the viewpoint of a market economy. We should think it in a long term period, too. Compliance means to obey rules or not.

Allport, who is a famous personality psychologist, focused on the becoming of personality. Mishel argues that the kind of objectives we have in each situation is important. The goal of one's life is more important economic success.

Personality

What should we think of moral personality and character? Some people emphasize Character Education in moral education. The core elements of personality are moral will or moral desire, willpower, self-control, and integrity.

Cool/Hot

Cool means to think rationally, and hot means to feel it emotionally. To have an ability to deal with things cognitively when one becomes emotional hot. Mischel, a professor of Columbia Univ., is studying it.

Moral Identity

What am I? We should do good and we should decide what is good with our own values.

Moral self -self in the relation to others

Moral self cannot work by itself but can work in relation to others. We should think that we live morally together with others.

Self-regulation

Self-control

Moral engagement & imagination

How much can we be involved in moral problems? We should control ourselves by predicting how our own actions affect others.

Tolerance

How can we be tolerant to others? How can we forgive the past sins of others. We should think of tolerance within the concept of personality.

Personal meaning

How do we give meaning to individual events in our life? Frankle said that he could survive life in the Nazi concentration camp by his will to write academic research papers on the experience in the camp. We can live by giving meaning to present suffering in relation to the future. Elderly people can continue to live as long as we can keep goals or pride.

Metapsychology

It is important to be aware of one's subconscious.

Environment

Fisher in Harvard Law School and Selman in department of Education in Harvard Univ. are studying interpersonal relations and interpersonal negotiation strategy. We should have a coping capacity with pressures from others in order to live in society. And we should have social support systems to support and assist people who try to cope with the pressures.

Media

When a big event happened, every TV program reports the event. Then the whole world of children began to be occupied with the event. Prof. Bandura (Stanford Univ.) said that it is important for parents to intervene with their children when they see an unfavorable TV program.

Cognition

Cognitive psychology is very popular in the field of moral education or morality psychology because it is easy to get good data with the methodology of cognitive psychology. For the study of Reasoning and Judgment, Kohlberg is developing a Moral Judgment Interview on judgment, Rest (Minnesota Univ.) is studying defining issue tests, Gibbs is studying Social Moral Reflection, and Lind is studying Moral Judgement Test.

We have Domain Theory in cognitive psychology. Professor Turiel(UC Berkley) says that people use different standards of judgment for personal problems, social problems, traditional problems, and moral problems. Professor Hadit studies cognitive intuition.

Metacognition

Dr. Flavell (a former professor of Stanford Univ.) is studying metacognition. Program Evaluation Review technique, behavior analysis

Cognition of Moral Values, Self, Environment: Just Community: Kohlberg

For example, teachers tell students that effort is important; on the other hand the teachers judge that the students with low points in the test are bad students. Students can notice the contradiction between the two attitudes of the teachers. This kind of society is not a good society and is not a just society.

Biological

Jerome Kagan studies Temperament. Some babies are inherently calm and some are stubborn. He says that we can change our personality by controlling the disposition.

The study of the human brain has progressed far recently. We know which part of the brain works for moral judgment. From an educational point of view, it is interesting where to activate the moral judgment part. The human body and mind have a relationship.

We can use meditation or autogenetic methods for psychosomatic disorders. Prof. Naruse (Kyusyu Univ.) studies autogenetic training. Dr. Hirai (a former professor of Sophia Univ.) studies biofeedback. Researchers of morality psychology have begun to think of biological factors not as deficits but as possibilities to improve moral ability.

Conclusion

In education, it isn't important to educate a person with a focus on him or herself, but to educate him or her in relationships with other people. It is important in education to create human networks like synapse. A person can find him or herself in some level of society such as nation, community, family, and so on; this kind of education will help international understanding.

My homepage is http://www2.tba.t-com.ne.jp/fumi/. I am making PPT that introduces the theory of morality psychology http://www2.tba.t-com.ne.jp/fumi/MP.htm.

When a Japanese sees a plum, the amount of saliva increases. Psychological reaction patterns depends on the cultures of the society that one belongs to. The aim of moral education, morality psychology, and ethics is to educate an ability to control those patterns. The mission of education is to seek something to accept and integrate the cultural differences. So education is very important for international understanding.

Q&A:

1. How to measure and evaluate morality?

Q: I have some knowledge on Kohlberg's and Rest's method for measuring and evaluating morality; however I don't know much about SMR by Gibbs and MJT by Lind. Would you please explain them?

A: Only Japan and UK in AME (Association for Moral Education) have journals. Methodologies by Kohlberg and Rest are famous. But actually few researchers are following Kohlberg method accurately because you have to read a textbook with more than 1000 pages. Rest's method is easy; you should just answer yes or no. In SMR, Gibbs at Ohio Univ. emphasizes acquiring social skills. Gibbs' group is promoting an aggression replacement training technique, which is to train one's cognitive ability to judge what kind of harm one's aggressive emotion causes in dealing with daily problems. Lind, who is a German, is using choices to evaluate one's level of development according to Kohlberg.
I have studied and tried these kinds of tests. But I don't like them so much. I prefer to analyze the whole statements of a person.
The weak point of these methods is that we can evaluate only one aspect of human morality and other aspects must be ignored. So many researchers are trying to develop a new evaluation method that can cover many aspects at once.

2. The translation of Morality Psychology

Q: Why the translation of morality psychology is "Doutokusei Shinrigaku"?

A: The main objective of morality psychology is to study morality with the methodology of personality psychology (Jinkaku Shinrigaku), so "Doutoku Shinrigaku" might also work. I wanted to indicate not only a study of moral factors from a psychological point of view, but also to study morality itself.

3. Kyousei-living together

Q: Do you think it is possible for non-Japanese to understand the concept of "Kyousei"? The direct translation of Kyousei is to live together with others. But I wonder if the translation words really represent the same concept of kyousei? A Japanse engineer, who played a very important role in re-establishing the American air company, used the word "working together". This word became the keyword in the process of reestablishing the company. I think "working together" is a similar concept as Kyousei?

A: "Be together" is sometimes mentioned concerning love. The first stage of love is being together and communicating with others. "Working together" involve sthe meaning of working together toward the same goal. In international understanding education, we should aim for being together with others without feeling bad. This is the first step.

4. The weak points of Japanese academic societies

Q: What do you think is the weak point of the Japanese academic societies that you feel when you attend academic societies in foreign countries?

A: I am attending American associations of psychology, education, and ethics. The association that I am interested in the most is the Association for Moral Education. In the association, we reserve a conference room in a hotel and have a discussion from morning to evening, and have discussions by e-mail by very often. I am sorry that we don't have these kinds of opportunities in Japan.

5. The Methodology of Morality Psychology

Q: I would like to ask about methodologies of moral education and morality psychology. The education you introduced today included interpersonal problems including international understanding, living together, negotiation, and so on. Are there any differences between the methodology you introduced today and ones that emphasize inculcation?

A: There are no methodologies that fit all students. I am proposing a methodology for students who did not adapt the education they received.

6. Biological Studies

Q: Are there any researchers who are doing biological study of morality?

A: We don't have many papers now. We can find some papers in "Science" in 2001. I think 7 papers for the biological studies in the world. It costs from ¥1,500,000,000 to ¥2,000,000,000 for the study. I recommend that researchers link to University of California or with medical schools to do research.

7. Education for Parents

Q: I had an impression that your lecture was based on educational psychology. Is morality education different from educational psychology? I think the concept of spirituality, which WHO includes in the definition of health, also should be included in morality education. I think we should place an emphasis on education for parents more than for students.

A: I have studied social education, in which I proposed to promote collaboration of social education and school education in order to establish a system in which parents can support children. I think it is important to educate children in a community. Can the members of a community have common moral goals in education? I think we should establish such a social system.

8. Prime Minister Koizumi and Moral Education

Q: I feel frustrated when Prime Minister Koizumi mentions education of morals. What should we think of it?

A: I think Prime Minister Koizumi should understand what is expected of him as the Prime Minister. He also should have the cognitive ability I mentioned.