A Trilogy Theory of Moral Intelligence

This article presents a trilogy theory of moral intelligence. The theory has three parts: the mental processes that contribute to moral intelligence; the content of moral intelligence; and the dispositional and situational/contextual factors that impinge upon the information processing during moral intelligence, leading to actions that are more or less moral. The article opens with a consideration of the importance of the issue of moral intelligence and continues with a discussion of existing theories of moral intelligence and related constructs, such as ethical intelligence. The article then presents the trilogy theory. Finally, the article discusses potential limitations of the theory and the future directions needed to construct-validate the theory.