Developmental study - Kohlberg Flashcards
What is the psychodynamic perspective?
Explain morality in terms of development a superego which “represents the child’s internalisation of rules and prohibitions, initially imposed by parents, but later adopted by the child in the form of self-discipline independent of parental approval or displeasure”.
What is the behaviourist perspective?
Explain morality in various ways but one would be as a consequence of children “observing and emulating models who behave in a moral way. Observation of models who are punished for amoral behaviour is said to cause the child to experience vicarious punishment, resulting in the child avoiding that behaviour”.
What is Jean Piaget’s account?
As children grow up they all pass through the sae stages of moral development (i.e. it is universal).
What is stage 1 in Piaget’s account?
According to Piaget children under 8 are unable to understand intentions and believe that anyone that breaks the rules are equally bad. Morals are black and white.
What is stage 2 in Piaget’s account?
After 8 years old, Piaget said that children move to another stage of development where they learn to see things from other people’s points of view. This allows them to understand that ideas of good and bad are more complex. Morals are more grey.
What were the aims?
Kohlberg wanted to provide research that would back up his theory of moral development inspired by Piaget.
What is the research method and why?
It is a longitudinal self-report. Longitudinal is because the data was collected over 12 years and it is self-report because the boys were asked about moral dilemmas in interview.
What is the sample?
75 boys, aged between 10-16, he followed the same boys for 12 years until the boys were 22-28
What was the procedure?
Every boy was presented with moral dilemmas every 3 years during this time. Using answers the boys gave, Kohlberg ranked them in six categories ( 1=least moral developed and 6=most morally developed). If about 50% of their responses to any of these moral concepts fall into that stage. This formed his theory of stages of moral developed.
Why was Kohlberg’s study longitudinal?
Because he followed the boys for 12 years - an extended amount of time.
Strength of longitudinal studies.
Can show development of individual and how these differ by gender, culture, environment etc.
Weakness of longitudinal studies.
Very time consuming, people might drop out, effort, retention rate, generalisable sample.
What other places around the world did Kohlberg collect data in?
Malaysia, Taiwan, Mexico, Canada, Turkey, UK
Why did Kohlberg collect data in the different countries?
To see if there is any difference between the countries, to be able to generalise, increase reliability, to se it is was universal. This means that the research was cross-cultural.
Strengths of cross-cultural research.
Ability to generalise, more reliable (external)(larger sample), internal reliability, reduces ethnocentrism
