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If multiple limitations contribute to antisocial behavior, then an adequate treatment program must be correspondingly multi-componential. Adequate social perspective-taking—perspective-taking that is profound or mature; rationalization-busting, adequately informed, and hence discerning; reciprocally ideal and balanced; and socially expansive or inclusive—should be a basic theme pervasive across the components of any effective treatment program. This chapter focuses on a multicomponent treatment program that incorporates a wide variety of social perspective-taking opportunities pertaining to the remediation of moral developmental delay, social cognitive distortions, and social skill deficiencies, namely, the EQUIP program. High-fidelity implementations of EQUIP can stimulate a positive synergy through EQUIP’s integration of mutual help (motivation, culture) and cognitive behavioral (curriculum) approaches. Chapter 8 concludes with a discussion of adaptations and outcome evaluations, and illustrates social perspective-taking treatments available for severe offenders.

This chapter describes a multi-component treatment program for antisocial behavior that incorporates a wide variety of social perspective-taking opportunities: EQUIP. More specifically, it examines the two basic approaches integrated in EQUIP to treat antisocial behavior: the mutual help approach and the cognitive behavioral approach. The chapter first considers the challenge presented by aggressive and other antisocial youths to the mutual help approach, along with the value and limitations of mutual help programs. It then explains how the mutual help and cognitive behavioral approaches induce social perspective-taking, with particular emphasis on cognitive restructuring and cultivation of a mature morality through perspective-taking in social decision-making. It also looks at issues affecting the implementation of the EQUIP and concludes with illustrations of more intensive perspective-taking treatments available for severe offenders.

This chapter introduces not only the social perspective-taking central to morality, but also our theory-based exploration of moral development, behavior, and reality. Perspective-taking relates to both “the right” (justice, reciprocity, equality; Kohlberg’s theory) and “the good” (welfare, beneficence, empathy; Hoffman’s theory) of morality. The right (condition of reversibility) provides an objective basis for morality not recognized in relativistic moral theories such as Haidt’s (Chapter 2). The good may provide the broad moral referent for differentiated intuitions (e.g., loyalty, authority, purity) specified by Haidt. Chapters 3 and 4 address “the right” or the cognitive strand of moral motivation and development, whereas Chapter 5 addresses “the good” or the affective strand. Subsequent chapters (6 through 10) relate the theories of moral development to social behavior (prosocial, antisocial) as well as to a deeper reality of human connection

This book explores the development of justice and caring, especially as seen through the theories of Lawrence Kohlberg and Martin Hoffman. It considers whether moral development, including moments of moral inspiration, reflects a deeper reality. It also examines the work of Jonathan Haidt, a prominent theorist who studies the psychological bases of morality across cultures and political ideologies. This introduction provides an overview of the chapters that follow and analyzes social perspective-taking, reversibility, and morality and suggests that there is more to the moral domain than right or wrong based on reversibility.

The referent for social behavior shifts in this chapter to antisocial behavior and how to account for it. Most offenders, from petty pranksters to ideological terrorists, fail (except for self-serving purposes) to take the perspectives of their victims. Social perspective-taking limitations pervade the “three Ds” of antisocial youth: moral developmental delay, self-serving cognitive distortions, and social skills deficiencies. The latter variables are needed to supplement Kohlberg’s and Hoffman’s emphasis on developmental delay if we are adequately to account for antisocial behavior. The chapter concludes with the powerful illustrative case of Timothy McVeigh. This case makes particularly clear how cognitive distortions can insulate a self-centered worldview (itself a primary distortion, linked to feeling superior or inadequately respected); that is, self-serving distortions can preempt or neutralize social perspective-taking, moral understanding, and veridical empathy.

This chapter examines the moral aspects of antisocial behavior. Drawing on the developmental theories of Lawrence Kohlberg and Martin Hoffman, it explores self-centration and other limitations characteristic of young people with antisocial behavior problems, taking into account the background factors of nature and nurture. Three limitations are discussed: developmental delay in moral judgment, self-serving cognitive distortions, and deficiencies in social skills. The chapter presents the case of a notoriously antisocial individual, Timothy McVeigh, with particular emphasis on his erroneous “moral” convictions and pseudo-justifications. It argues that McVeigh illustrates how cognitive distortions can preempt or neutralize social perspective-taking, moral understanding, and veridical empathy.