Empathy is a human capacity by which they show emotional altruistic responses. By means of this characteristic, one can see the world from another person’s perspective and understand their feeling. Accordingly, people can understand the sufferings and pleasures of others by imagining their circumstances. Empathy plays a crucial role in morality, and in particular, it affects moral judgments. Some critics deny the usefulness of empathy for moral judgments. The critique is articulated in two different ways: there are arguments against the necessity of empathy for moral judgment, and there are arguments for the negative impact of empathy on moral judgment. In the present article, which draws on the descriptive-analytic method, we first study the arguments offered by critics, and then analyze three kinds of relations: causal, constitutive, and explanatory, to reconsider the negative impacts of empathy on moral judgment. We finally conclude that, first, empathy is justified as a constitutive element in explaining moral judgment, and second, while all types of empathy (cognitive and emotional) cannot be deemed necessary for moral judgment and its impacts cannot be seen as fully positive, we can at least show that cognitive empathy is a positive element of moral judgment.

Moral psychology for decades focused on reasoning, but recent evidence finds that emotions play a fundamental role in moral judgment. One of the models for explaining moral judgment is Greene’s Dual-process model of moral judgment. He believes that we can arrive at moral judgments either through reasoning or through emotions, according to which both automatic emotional responses and more controlled cognitive responses are involved in moral judgment. More specifically, utilitarian moral judgments are driven by cognitive processes while non-utilitarian judgments are driven by automatic emotional responses. Green tries to prove his point through experimental experiments and cognitive neuroscience. But according to the sample of violations and recent research, his view does not seem to provide a comprehensive and adequate explanation.

The aim of this study is to investigate the role of moderating of empathy in the relationship between moral judgment and moral behavior of students. For this purpose, 336 students (176 girls and 160 boys) at high school the eighth Grade students in Mashhad were selected using multistage cluster sampling. Tools used in this research were: 15 Questions Checklist Moral Behavior of Swanson and Hill (1993), the short form of Moral Stories of Rest and colleagues (1973), for Moral Judgment, and Empathy Questionnaire of Mark Davies (1994). Different analytical tests including Pearson correlation and hierarchical regression were used to examine the findings The results showed that there is a significant, direct but weak relationship between moral judgment and moral behavior. also there is a positive and significant relationship between empathy and moral behavior. Regression analysis showed empathy has a moderating effect on the relationship between moral judgment and moral behavior, also, the gender differences in two empathic concern and perspective-taking subscales was observed. According to the results, it can be said that not only students’ moral behavior is directly predictable from moral judgment, but also this relationship is being moderated through empathy.

According to Rest's decision making model, the second stage of the process of ethical decision making is moral judgment. ethical judgment is the extent to which a person accepts a specific behavior to be morally. A person's ethical judgment affects his/her perception about that why some actions preferred as moral. In this study for assessing moral judgment as the dependent variable, the following factors are considered: The code of ethical conduct, ethical environment, and individual characteristics such as age, work experience and education, according to a moral decision taken by CPAs in practice. This study was conducted on 115 of the Iranian CPAs and the data collected through questionnaires. By the use of multi nominal regression model First and second hypothesis test results suggest that the professional code of conduct adopted by the Society of CPAs and the ethical environment are variables affecting Iran’s CPAs moral judgments. The third research hypothesis testing has been done using ANOVA. The results indicate that there is no meaningful relationship between individual characteristics, moral judgments and CPAs moral judgments.

The aim of present study was detecting the difference between conscience, positive and negative affection at different levels of moral judgment, and exploring the concurrent effect of conscience and affections (positive and negative) at different levels of moral judgment. In this comparative study, 160 male and female undergraduate students of Kharazmi University in 1391-92 academic year completed the Moral Development Test "Ma", Gordon's Five-Factor Questionnaire and Positive and Negative Experience Scale. Discriminant analysis was used for data analysis. Results showed that conscience cannot distinguish different levels of moral judgment from each other and they are first negative and then positive affection which can distinguish one level of moral judgment from the others. Negative affection has greatest role at the concurrent relation of conscience and affections (positive and negative) in predicting the levels of moral judgment, and conscience and positive affections lose their diagnosis power. The above findings will be discussed based on trait perspectives, Kohlberg's theory about the characteristics of each of the levels and the role of affections in predict the behavior of judgment.

In this paper، I have tried to answer، by an analytic-critical method، to this question: What is the relation between moral intuition and justifying moral judgments from Moore''s viewpoint? For answering to this question، by distinguishing the two meanings of «Intuition» in Moore''s views، namely «Immediate and direct perception of the property ''Goodness''» and «Immediate and direct perception of the propositions containing the predicate ''Good''» - which I have called them Intuition (1) and Intuition (2) - I have shown that، according to Moore، intuition can justify moral judgments، based on the traditional definition of «knowledge». At the end of my discussion of the relation between each of the two meanings of intuition and justifying moral judgments، I have criticized Moore''s views. Following are what I finally get: a) Intuition (1) implies «emotive evaluation»; b) Intuition (1) doesn''t provide any criterion for resolving the basic moral disagreements; c) Intuition (1) can''t produce any knowledge; d) Since Moore''s claim that «the propositions containing the predicate ''Good'' are ''correspondent to reality'' and ''factual''»، it is unreasoned. Intuition (2) can''t justify moral judgments; e) since intuition (2) doesn''t provide any appropriate reason for believing in the self-evidence and necessary truth of such propositions، it can''t justify moral judgments.

The aim of present study was to investigate the effectiveness of 4 educational methods on the moral judgment of senior female students. Participants of the study were 116 female senior students which selected via cluster random sampling.Participants assigned into 4 interventional and 1 control groups. The Defining Issues Test (DIT), was used for collecting data from the level of student’s moral judgment. This test was invented by j-rest and Minnesota group. The DIT is the famousand applying test for collecting data in the moral judgment field. Analysis of covariance was used for analyzing of collected data. After 60 days education, analysis of data revealed that; educational methods can enhance the moral judgment of femalestudents, and cognitive moral education was the most effective method in enhancing of the moral judgment. The direct method was the best method. Finally the value clarification method was the worst and low influential method in enhancing moraljudgment in the female students.

ʿAllama Tabatabaʾi and Carla Bagnoli are among philosophers who believe in an integrative approach to non-realist cognitivism. In their view, the phenomenology of moral judgments indicates neither realism nor non-cognitivism. Believing that the nature of moral judgments is normative and practical, they do not deny the objectivity of moral judgments, and argue that they are cognitive, indicative, and have truth value. Tabatabaʾi presents the theory of figurative perceptions to justify his claim, and Bagnoli justifies it on the basis of constructivism. This paper will compare the two integrative views of Bagnoli and Tabatabaʾi. After exploring the problem of the nature of moral judgment, Tabatabaʾi’s and Bagnoli’s views are introduced and, in conclusion, it is argued that although Tabatabaʾi’s theory of figurative perceptions lacks the perspicuity found in Bagnoli’s works, they both have similar analyses of the phenomenology of moral judgments and they both use constructivism to justify their claims.

Mandelbaum considers moral experiences to be a form of judgment and hence, his moral discussions are focused on moral judgments. In this paper we go through Mandelbaum's explanation of direct moral judgments issued by a moral agent in a direct encounter with the situation. After an introductory word about Mandelbaum and his book, The Phenomenology of Moral Experience, we go briefly through his outlines in this regard. In the first part, we will speak of Mandelbaum's explanation of various moral judgments and their relation with each other and exclusively we proceed to analyze the concept of direct moral judgments. In the second part we formulate the conditions of phenomenology of moral action from Mandelbaum's perspective, and finally in the third part we refer to the most important feature of his moral theory, that is coordination between action and situation as the origin of moral demand and commitment and the common feature of all moral experiences.

CContrary to expectations, ethics research has shown that, accountants earn low ethical reasoning scores in the moral development tests, due to accountants focusing on agreeableness trait. However, ethical tests evaluate agreeableness trait up to the intermediate levels of the moral development model. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between five personality traits and ethical judgments of accounting students compared with management students. The big five personality traits are conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism and openness to experience. I also investigate the relationship between gender and moral judgment. Using a questionnaire and answers provided by 386 accounting and business students, from five universities located in Tehran province, in 2018, results show, accounting students have a higher priority for agreeableness personality trait. But, there is no significant difference between the ethical judgments of accounting and business students. I find that those accounting students who do prefer agreeableness trait appear to have lower levels of moral judgment. While this relationship does not exist for the business students. This means that accounting students have different personality traits, influenced by their discipline, and therefore have different moral judgment. Also, for both groups, there is a positive significant relationship between conscientiousness and extroversion with moral judgment and the relationship between neuroticism and moral judgment is negative. Finally, the study of the relationship between gender and moral judgment showed that, according to theory of gender role in socialization, female students tend to have more moral judgments than males.