Is There a Difference in the Level of Morality in Male and Female Social Sciences University Students - Dissertation Example

In essence, we are developing morality, which is a structure of cultured thoughts about social practices, traditions, and individual actions used to assess situations and behaviour as good or bad, right or wrong (Lefton 2000). However, morality is a difficult concept to define (Gert 2005). According to Quinn, Houts and Graesser, Shaffer (1994) (cited in Shaffer) college students generally agree that morality entails an ability to differentiate right from wrong and acting on this differentiation they will experience pleasure upon acting morally when they have done a moral act and experience remorse or disgrace if they act in an immoral way ( Shaffer and Kipp 2007).

The term morality is ambiguous; indeed the word morality is not used unless it has a qualification. Morality is found in contexts such as “Christian morality”, “Nazi morality” or “the morality of the Greeks”, but it is seldom used by itself (Gert 2005). One of the few philosophers such as Hobbes realizes that the moral merits honors, because of the disasters everyone avoids if people act morally. In other words, he points out that morality is principally concerned with the behavior of people insofar as that behavior affects others.

Also, that morality forbids the kind of behavior that harms others and promotes the kind of behavior that helps them (Gert 2005).Psychodynamic theorists argued that the mature personality is seen as having three mechanisms: an irrational id that seeks the instantaneous satisfaction of instinctual needs, a rational ego that devises realistic plans for meeting these needs, and a moralistic superego that screens the suitability of the ego’s thoughts and deeds. The superego is conceptualized as an individual’s center of moral standards (cited Westen and Gabbard 1999).