MORAL INTELLIGENCE OF ADOLESCENTS IN TODAY’S SOCIAL CONTEXT

Abstract

The paper discusses moral intelligence of adolescents in today's social context. In the beginning, moral intelligence is defined and seven essential virtues are presented. Those are: empathy; conscience, self-control, respect, kindness, tolerance and fairness. Then, the characteristics of today's social context in which adolescents are developing are briefly reviewed, as well as the role of parents as the primary models of identification. Later on in the paper, the results of study about values, value orientations and models of identification of adolescent and their parents are being discussed. The results show that there is a negative shift in prosocial orientation in youth and that they also prefer less, particular values that are part of the components of moral intelligence. That condition is a consequence of this morally toxic world and systemic violence in which new generation lives and has negative influence on development of their value system. At the end of the paper, the ways parents can help their offspring are also discussed.