Norms in Human Development

The distinction between norms and facts is long-standing in providing a challenge for psychology. Norms exist as directives, commands, rules, customs and ideals, playing a constitutive role in human action and thought. Norms lay down ‘what has to be’ (the necessary, possible, or impossible) and ‘what has to be done’ (the obligatory, the permitted or the forbidden), and so go beyond the ‘is’ of causality. During two millennia, norms made an essential contribution to accounts of the mind yet the twentieth century witnessed an abrupt change in the science of psychology where norms were typically either excluded altogether or reduced to causes. The central argument in this book is twofold. Firstly, the approach in twentieth-century psychology is flawed. Secondly, norms operating interdependently with causes can be investigated empirically and theoretically in cognition, culture and morality. Human development is a norm-laden process.

• Novel focus on both theory and evidence about norms in developmental psychology and epistemology • Contributions from high-profile academics providing international expertise at the cutting-edge of research • Will appeal to graduates and researchers in developmental psychology, educational psychology, education, ethics and psychological philosophy

1. Norms in human development: introduction Leslie Smith; Part I. Norms and Development in Epistemology: 2. The implicit normativity of developmental psychology Jacques Vonèche; 3. Developmental normativity and normative development Mark H. Bickhard; 4. Genetic epistemology: naturalistic epistemology vs. normative epistemology Richard F. Kitchener; 5. Norms and normative facts in human development Leslie Smith; Part II. Norms in Moral and Social Development: 6. Contextualizing moral judgment: challenges of interrelating the normative (ought judgments) and the descriptive (knowledge of facts), the cognitive and the affective Lutz H. Eckensberger; 7. Socio-moral reasoning, moral emotions and moral self in cultural context Monika Keller; 8. The multiplicity of social norms: the case for psychological constructivism and social epistemologies Elliot Turiel; Part III. Norms in Cognitive Development: 9. Normative issues in psychometrics Peter C. M. Molenaar; 10. Norms and intuitions in the assessment of chance Vittorio Girotto and Michel Gonzalez; 11. Making conditional inferences: the interplay between knowledge and logic Henry Markovits.