Moral values and personality

Abstract

We present an article with the objective of analyzing the concept of moral value and exposing an approach from the point of view of several psychological systems: the Behaviorism, the Psychoanalysis, the Cognitivism, the Humanism, and the Historic-cultural Approach. The moral value is defined as the good, positive social signification in contraposition to the evil, orienting the man's attitude and behavior to the well doing, ordering his prejudices on moral life and the actions resulting from them. From the point of view of the Psychology, the studies of the moral sphere have different approaches, beginning with the psychological system of precedence, dealing with the positions of the psychoanalytical, behavioral, cognitivist, and humanistic approaches. The process of values formation in the Marxist Psychology and Pedagogy emerges from the Historic-Cultural Approach, based on three principles: the one of the affective and the cognitive unity, expressing the recognition of the integral character of the human psychism; the one of the active reflection of the conscience, stating that the man in his development arrives to the moral autodetermination in a process that begins with his life, passing through different stages and assuming an active position; and the one of the relation between teaching and development that leads to the concept of proximal Development Zone, conceived as the distance between the development level, determined by the capacity of solving a problem in an independent way, and the level of potential development, determined by its resolution under the guidance of another person, more competent, extensive to the formative process.