Gender and Moral Agent in Behaviorist Psychology

ehaviorism and its theoretical foundations are influenced by the assumption of environmental and internal factors' impact on behavior. They consider behavior as the basis for moral development, influenced by others and stimulating situations, and introduce the mechanism of acquiring it through conditioning and modeling of others. However, considering the characteristics of role models, the pattern, and the situation in which moral behavior takes shape and occurs, the influence and effectiveness of moral behavior imitation will have its own complexity. With the introduction of cognitive components, more modified perspectives of behaviorism, such as Albert Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory, exacerbate this complexity. While the analysis of learning and awareness, environmental determinism, judgment, and moral values varies among different behaviorist perspectives, from radical to more modified types, the introduction of gender as a variable may lead to changes in the process and mechanism of individuals' moral responsiveness. In this article, an attempt has been made to discuss the ethics of gender from various perspectives of behaviorist psychology with a focus on analyzing the influential factors in moral agency. According to the findings of this research, the influence of gender on moral agency is confirmed in more modified approaches to behaviorism, although this influence may be indirectly traceable in radical approaches.