Elliot Turiel

Elliot Turiel holds the Jerome A. Hutto Chair in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also an affiliated professor in the Department of Psychology. He has served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and as Interim Dean in the Graduate School of Education. He has served as the President of the Jean Piaget Society. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a National Institute of Mental Health Fellow, and a Fellow of the Van Leer Jerusalem Foundation.

His research focuses on social and moral development. He has formulated a theory of domains of social development involving the development of moral judgments (based on concepts of welfare, justice, and rights) and their distinction, throughout development, from understandings of the conventions and customs of societies – as well as from arenas of personal jurisdiction. Social domain theory has been applied extensively in programs of moral education. He has applied the theoretical approach to the study of the relations of morality and culture. His research shows that cultures are not homogeneous and that different groups on in social hierarchies disagree on how to apply considerations of justice and equality. His research investigates social opposition and moral resistance to cultural practices perceived as unjust. He studies ways children, adolescents, and adults attempt to counter inequalities (such as those based on gender) with overt and covert activities aimed at changing and subverting practices that favor those in positions of power in the social hierarchy. Current research also is examining the development of judgments about human rights, as well social equality and inequality.

His books include The Culture of Morality: Social Development, Context, and Conflict (2002, Cambridge University Press), Social Development, Social, Inequalities, and Social Justice (edited with C. Wainryb and J. Smetana, 2007, Erlbaum Publishers), and New Directions in Human Development (edited with N. Budwig and Philip Zelazo, 2017, Cambridge University Press). His many other publications include “Thought, emotions, and social interactional processes in moral development” in Handbook of Moral Development (2006); “Morality: Epistemology, development, and social opposition” in Handbook of Moral Development, 2nd edition (2014); “Moral development” in Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science, Theory & method, 7th edition; “Snap judgment? Not so fast: Thought, reasoning, and choice as psychological realities” in Human Development (2010); Turiel, E., Chung, E., & Carr, J. A. (2016); “Struggles for equal rights and social justice as unrepresented and represented in psychological research” in Equity and Justice in Developmental Science: Advances in Child Development and Behavior (with E. Chung and J. Carr, 2016); Continuities and discontinuities in the development of moral judgments. Human Development (with L.Nucci and A. Roded, 2017); Moral reasoning about human welfare in adolescents and adults: Judging conflicts involving sacrificing and saving lives. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development (with A. Dahl, M. Gingo, and K. Uttich, 2018).