Basic Concepts of Moral And Steps of Cognitive Development

Question 1

Lawrence Kohlberg and three groups of Moral Development

Answer 1

he posited that there are six stages of moral development which can be grouped into three major groups:
1. Pre-conventional (just responds to either of these two. do the same thing for two different reasons)
1- obedience and punishment -not stealing because u dont want to go to jail
2- self interest -steal something because u want something
2. Conventional
3- conformity and interpersonal accord (wanting to fit into society)
4- authority and social order maintaining (if someone who is authority figure who wants you to do something, you do it, Milgram experiment done at Yale, how people respond to authority/people acting like teachers and shocking students when they got it wrong, typical of following orders and go against moral judgement)
3. Post-conventional
5- Social Contract- If I want to live in a society where people don’t hit each other, I can’t hit people.
6- Universal human ethics- Ghandi- it’s just wrong ethically. Justice, all that crap.

Question 2

What are the three groupings (& 6 stages within) of Moral Development?

Answer 2

1. ) Pre-conventional (1- obedience/punishment or 2- self interest)
2. ) Conventional (3- conformity and accord or 4- authority/social order)
3. ) Post-conventional (5- social contract or 6- universal human ethics)

Question 3

Heinz dilemma

Answer 3

• a famous example used to illustrate an individual’s stage of moral development.
• man would say his wife was dying of a certain cancer and he needed money. Should Heinz break in and steal the drug? What is important, is WHY he steals it, not if he should or not. You could find out their stage.

Question 4

What is the 1st Stage of Cognitive Development?

Answer 4

1. Sensorimotor (Ages 1-2)
   
   • child is strongly egocentric, everything revolves around them.
   • begins to organize ideas via schema (rule-book, way we think of things)
   • does not understand object permanence until late in this phase.

Question 5

What is the 2nd Stage of Cognitive Development?

Answer 5

Preoperational (Ages 2-7)

- Holds incorrect causal beliefs (everything happens due to them)
- Centrates (can't do more than one thing, want to focus on one thing only)
- understands symbols (symbolic reasoning, other things represent something else) 
- during late preoperational phase, child because non-egocentric uses fast-mapping (learning the meaning of new words without having to be literally taught) and understand conservation. (water trick with tall and fat glasses)

Question 6

What is the 3rd Stage of Cognitive Development?

Answer 6

Concrete Operations (Ages 7-11)

- can classify and seriate (put in order) 
- Understand multiple perspectives (where is so and so going to look for the candy bar, when they knew where it was) 
- Capable of transitive inference (If a= b, b=c, then a=c) 
- Becomes metacognitive they become aware that they are thinking.

Question 7

What is the 4th stage of Cognitive Development?

Answer 7

Formal Operations (Ages 12-18)

- Greater moral maturity
- Capable of abstract and hypothetical reasoning (what would happen if I did this thing? More sophisticated and adult-like) 
- may experience adolescent egocentrism in the form of the imaginary audience (everyone is watching ME) and the personal fable. (they are somehow special and destined to do great things so they can't be hurt.)

Question 8

What are the stages of Cognitive Development? (by age)

Answer 8

1. Sensorimotor (1-2) 
	[strongly egocentric]
2. Pre-operational (2-7) 
	[incorrect causal beliefs]
3. Concrete Operations (7-11)
	[can classify and seriate]
4. Formal Operations (12-18) 
	[moral maturity]