10. Moral Development

Question 1

Moral Judgment

Answer 1

• Judgments about how people should interact with each other
• Made based on principles concerning the distinction between right/wrong
  –> Justice
  –> Welfare
  –> Fairness

Question 2

Piaget’s Theory of Moral Reasoning

Answer 2

• Development of moral judgment relies on cognitive development
  –> Changes in understanding of rules and the importance of intentions
• Premoral Stage:
  –> 0-5 years old
  –> Little understanding of rules
• Heteronomous Stage:
  –> 5-10 years old
  –> Rules are fixed
  –> Morality = obeying the rules of authority figures, like parents
  –> Intentions don’t matter
• Autonomous Stage:
  –> 10+ years old
  –> Rules can be changed by social agreement
  –> Consider moral principles, like fairness, when deciding what is right and wrong
  –> Intentions matter

Question 3

Kohlberg’s Theory of Mind

Answer 3

• Pre-conventional moral reasoning
• Conventional moral reasoning
• Post-conventional moral reasoning

Question 4

Preconventional Moral Reasoning

Answer 4

• 3-7 years old
• Moral reasoning based on external consequences
  –> Avoiding punishment from authority figures
  –> Gaining rewards
• Similar to Piaget’s heteronomous morality
• Heinz dilemma:
  –> “Heinz should not steal the drug because stealing is illegal and he could get caught and get in trouble.”
  –> “Heinz should steal the drug, because he needs it for his wife to get better , and then he can be happy.”

Question 5

Conventional Moral Reasoning

Answer 5

• 8-13 years old
• Moral reasoning based on adhering to social rules and expectations
  –> Maintaining social order and norms
  –> Gaining approval from others by fulfilling duties
• Heinz dilemma:
  –> “Heinz should steal the drug because a good husband would do anything to save his wife’s life and people would understand why he did it.”
  –> “Heinz shouldn’t steal the drug because stealing is against the law. If everyone was stealing, society would fall apart.”

Question 6

Postconventional Moral Reasoning

Answer 6

• 13 years old +
  –> But not everyone reaches this stage
• Moral reasoning based on personal principles and values
  –> Focus on universal principles, like fairness, equality, justice
  –> Willingness to critically evaluate rules that conflict with universal principles
• Similar to Piaget’s autonomous morality*Heinz dilemma:
  –> “Heinz should steal the drug because human life must be preserved and life is worth more than money or personal property.”
  –> “While stealing is generally wrong, the intention to save someone makes it justifiable in this case. Laws should be flexible enough to account for such situations.”

Question 7

Piaget and Kohlberg’s Contributions

Answer 7

• First to acknowledge that moral reasoning changes systematically as children grow older due to cognitive development
• Recognized that children are increasingly able to take intentions into account as they age

Question 8

Theory of Mind and Morality

Answer 8

• Children are increasingly able to appreciate others’ intentions as they get older because of developments in theory of mind
• Children who fail false belief tasks are more likely to ignore intentions when making moral judgments
• Consistent with Piaget and Kohlberg’s ideas that cognitive development influences moral judgment

Question 9

Weaknesses of Piaget and Kohlberg’s Theories

Answer 9

• Underestimated children’s ability to distinguish between social conventions and morality
• Underestimated children’s ability to infer intention

Question 10

Distinguishing Between Social Conventions and Morality

Answer 10

• Study: 2.5-years-olds asked about the morality of different actions
  –> Social convention violation: stories about a child breaking a rule (e.g. talking during naptime)
  –> Moral transgression: Stories about a child causing harm (e.g. hitting, stealing)
• Results: Children differentiated between rule violations and harms
  –> Viewed both breaking rules and causing harm as bad but causing harm as worse
  –> Said that rules could be changed or not apply at a different school
  –> Causing harm is always wrong no matter what the rules said
  –> Children across the globe behaved the same way
• Suggests that very young children can distinguish between social conventions and morality, much earlier than Piaget and Kohlberg thought

Question 11

Can Infants Appreciate Intentions?

Answer 11

• Study: Can children appreciate intentions around 2 years of age?
• 21-month-olds participated in a lab task with 2 adults
  –> Infants stood at a table with both adults
  –> Both adults offered to give the infant a toy by placing it at the edge of the table but ultimately the child didn’t get the toy
  *Negative intention: adult pulled the toy away
  *Positive intention: adult watched in surprise as the toy rolled away from the infant
  –> Then, experimenter presents both adults with a single new toy
  *Toy falls to the floor and both adults reach for it
• Does the infant help? If so, which adult do they help?
  –> Evidence of selective helping
  –> Contrary to Piaget’s theory, suggests that 2 year olds are able to appreciate intentions when judging others’ actions
  –> 75% of children helped adults with positive intentions

Question 12

Two-Year-Olds Can Appreciate Intentions

Answer 12

• But what if different outcomes of actions? Will infants still base decision to help on intentions?
• Follow-up study to test this
• Same procedure except:
  –> Positive intention but negative outcome: adult clearly offered the toy to the infant and watched in surprise as the toy rolled away
  –> Positive intention and positive outcome: adult clearly offered the toy to the infant and child was able to examine it
• Then, experimenter presents both adults with a single new toy
  –> Toy falls to the floor and both adults reach for it
• 2 year olds helped the adults equally (difference is not statistically sig.) suggesting that infants care more about intentions than outcomes of actions

Question 13

Evidence for Innate Morality

Answer 13

• Study: Is moral judgment innate?
  –> 6 month-oldswatched a “morality play” in which a red puppet is trying to climb up a hill but fails
  *Helper: Yellow puppet comes and helps red puppet
  *Hinderer: Blue puppet pushes red puppet down
• Results:
  –> Depending on the study, 75-100% of babies prefer the helper vs. hinderer
  –> Follow-up with 3-month-olds using preferential looking paradigm shows that they also prefer helper over hinder
• Suggests that rudimentary moral judgment is innate

Question 14

Empathy and Morality

Answer 14

• Morality is rooted in empathy and sympathy
  –> Empathy: Understanding and sharing the emotional state of another person
  –> Sympathy: Feeling of concern for another person in response to their emotional state
• Perspective-taking -> Empathy -> Sympathy -> Prosocial behaviour

Question 15

Prosocial Behaviour in Infancy

Answer 15

• Before 18 months: children tend to react to others’ distress with self-focused distress rather than prosocial behaviour
  –> E.g.cry inreaction to hearing another infant cry because it is aversive

Question 16

Prosocial Behaviour in Toddlers

Answer 16

• 18-24 months: prosocial behaviour appears and increases throughout the 2nd year of life
  –> Toddlers show a natural tendency towards prosocial action
  *Spontaneously comfort others in distress, share belongings, and help others achieve goals
  *Actually help less if they gain a reward for it
• Due to capacity to feel empathy and sympathy
  –> Facilitated by emergence of sense of self around 18 months of age
• Suggests that prosocial behaviour is innate

Question 17

Evolutionary Roots of Prosocial Behaviour

Answer 17

• Behaving prosocially increased our chances of survival and helped pass on our genes
  –> Helping forage for food and repelling enemies is easier as a group
  –> Those who are likely to be helped when they werein need
  –> Helping a relative, even if costly, benefits individual by ensuring the continuity of their genes

Question 18

Limits to Toddler’s Prosocial Behaviour

Answer 18

• Toddlers help selectively depending on:
  –> how trustworthy, friendly, and helpful the other person is
  –> the type of help required
  *struggle to engage in helping that requires self-sacrifice
  –> whether the person is similar to them
  *E.g. More likely to help and share with a peer that is of the same gender
  *Do this even if parents insist that it’s wrong to treat people differently
• Young children tend to reason in more moral ways when asked about fictitious scenarios compared to having to behave morally themselves

Question 19

Two-Year-Olds Can Appreciate Intentions

Answer 19

• Evidence of selective helping
• Contrary to Piaget’s theory, suggests that 2 year olds are able to appreciate intentions when judging others’ action

Question 20

Prosocial Behaviour Beyond Toddlerhood

Answer 20

• Prosocial behaviour increases throughout childhood, particularly emotional helping and helping requiring self-sacrifice
  –> Due to more sophisticated moral reasoning and improved perspective-taking ability

Question 21

Cultural Differences

Answer 21

• No consistent evidence
  –> Age is more important than culture
  –> Some studies show cultural differences but the pattern of results seems to be random

Question 22

Individual Differences in Prosocial Behaviour

Answer 22

• Genetics (nature)
• Socialization by parents (nurture)

Question 23

Genetics

Answer 23

• Identical twins are more similar in their level of prosocial behaviour than fraternal twins
  –> Suggests genetic basis of prosocial behaviour
• Possible involvement of individual differences in oxytocin gene
  –> Oxytocin: neuro-hormone involved in social bonding and childbirth

Question 24

Genetics

Answer 24

• Genetic differences manifest as differences in temperament:
  –> Proneness to distress
  *Ability to experience emotion without getting overwhelmed by it is associated with greater empathy
  *Better emotion regulation is positively associated with helping
  –> Shyness
  *High level of shyness negatively associated with helping

Question 25

Socialization by Parents

Answer 25

1. Modelling of prosocial behaviour: Children tend to be similar to parents in terms of prosocial behaviour because they copy their behaviour
2. Parenting style:
   - Authoritative parenting associated with more prosocial behaviour in kids
   - Sympathy-inducing reasoning that focuses on the effect on other people most likely to lead to internalization of prosocial values
   –> “Let’s donate money, because they need it more than us and it will make them happy.”
   –> vs. “because it’s a good/nice thing to do”
3. Providing opportunities for child to engage in prosocial behaviour
   - Performing household chores
   - Community service hours in high schools
   - Increases children’s willingness to take on prosocial tasks in the future because feel competent to do it

Question 26

The Rise and Fall of Physical Aggression

Answer 26

• Physical aggression begins around 18 months and increases until about 3 years old
  –> E.g.biting, hitting, pushing, kicking
  –> Toddlers lack perspective-taking skills and resort to aggression to get what they want
  –> Most frequent is conflict with peers and siblings over possessions
  –> Declines after 3 years old due to increases in language skills and emotion regulation

Question 27

The Emergence of Relational Aggression

Answer 27

• Relational aggression emerges at 3 years old and continues into adolescence
  –> A type of nonphysical aggression in which harm is caused by hurting someone’s relationships or social status, such as by threatening to withdraw a friendship, ignoring, or excluding a peer
  –> Increases as a result of improvements in language and social cognition

Question 28

Aggression in Girls vs. Boys

Answer 28

• Similar levels of aggressions just displayed differently
  –> Girls tend to be more relationally aggressive and less physically aggressive than boys
  –> Opposite for boys
• Finding that boys are more physically aggressive is true across cultures

Question 29

Consistency of Aggressive Behaviour

Answer 29

• Consistency in individual differences in aggression over the lifespan
  –> Those who were more physically aggressive as kids had more criminal convictions at age 30

Question 30

Genetic Origins of Aggression

Answer 30

• Difficult temperament is associated with higher aggression
  –> Combination of impulsivity, difficulties with attention, and proneness to anger in childhood is especially predictive of aggression in adolescence
• BUT genetic factors are not sufficient to become highly aggressive, just may put a child at risk for developing this behaviour

Question 31

Social Cognition Contributions to Aggression

Answer 31

• Hostile attribution bias: The tendency to assume that other people’s ambiguous actions stem from malicious intent
• Child is more likely to retaliate aggressively
• More likely to elicit aggression or rejection from peers

Question 32

Family Origins of Aggression

Answer 32

1. Parents model aggression to their children
   - Parental conflict
   - Spanking
2. Authoritarian and uninvolved parenting is associated with increased risk for aggression in children
   - Very harsh physical discipline appears to lead to hostile attribution bias in children (harsh discipline -> hostile attribution bias -> aggression in children)
3. Parental monitoring reduces likelihood that teenagers will be associating with deviant, antisocial peers

Question 33

Abuse and Hostile Attribution Bias

Answer 33

• Physically abused children:
  –> Better able to recognize angry facial expressions
  –> React more quickly to angry facial expressions

Question 34

Comparing Parenting to Genetic Contributions

Answer 34

• The influence between parents and children tends to be bidirectional
  –> Parents and child’s behaviour can also be caused by shared genes
• BUT harsh parenting seems to play a larger role than genes
  –> For monozygotic twins, the twin who receives harsher parenting tends to develop higher levels of aggression than the other twin

Question 35

Peer Influences on Agression

Answer 35

• Deviancy training: negative peer pressure wherein peers model and reinforce aggression and deviance by making these behaviours seem acceptable

Question 36

Factors Contributing to Childhood Aggression

Answer 36

• Gender
• Genetics
• Parental modelling
• Harsh discipline
• Lack of monitoring
• Aggressive peers
• Hostile attribution bias
• Age