The Development of Moral Imagination

Moral imagination is a reasoning process thought to counter the organizational factors that corrupt ethical judgment. We describe the psychology of moral imagination as composed of the four decision processes identified by Rest (1986), i.e., moral sensitivity, moral judgment, moral intention, and moral behavior. We examine each process in depth, distilling extant psychological research and indicating organizational implications. The conclusion offers suggestions for future research. The majority of men are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others—terribly objective sometimes—but the real task is in fact to be objective toward one’s self and subjective toward all others.