Lecture 16 - Morality Flashcards
Piaget’s approach to moral judgement and reasoning
Slow developmental process, gradual acquisition of understanding of rules across first 6-8 years
Challenges to Piagets
Early concepts of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ social agents
Children care about rules
Piaget’s stages of moral development
Premoral (up to 4 yrs) Heteronomous stage (4-10 yrs) Autonomous stage (10-11+ years)
Premoral development
No explicit awareness of rules, no moral principles
Heteronomous stage
Rules unchanging, external. Judgements based on consequences, not intentions. Little sense of what punishment is appropriate for what degree of transgression
Autonomous stage
Rules are human agreements that can be changed with parties’s consent. Judgments on intentions and punishments should be appropriate to the severity of the transgression.
Core concept of good and bad (problem with Piaget)
Young infants prefer social agents who act in good ways. Shows that there may be core moral concepts that exist prior to children’s understanding of rules
Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development
Preconventional (2-10 yrs)
Conventional (9+)
Post Conventional (13+)
Preconventional stage
Avoiding punishment, meeting personal needs
Conventional stage
Being a good person, following authority figures, laws
Post conventional stage
Laws are social contracts, moral principles, ‘golden rule’
Piaget/Kohlberg claim that for children younger than 8-10…
All rules are seen as prescriptions laid down by authority figures. All rules have equal status, but all rules are not the same
Moral rules
Universal, serious, involve victims
Conventional rules
Culturally specific, less serious, no victims
3 yr olds distinguish between moral and conventional rules by…
…seriousness (moral more serious)
…modifiability (moral not ok even if someone says so)
