Moral Development Flashcards
Moral Views of the Infant
Three Traditional Views
1. Innately evil
- Society must stamp out with proper upbringing
- Innately good
- Society corrupts - Amoral
- No sense of morality at all; must learn it all
Recent Frameworks
1. Evolutionary psychology
- Our moral sense has evolved
- Has adaptive value - inborn altruistic tendencies inspire cooperation; inborn moral judgements keep bad guys in check
- Universal constraints on what counts as good/bad reflect this common adapted base
- Cultural psychology
- No universal constraints; our culture define what’s moral
Moral Reasoning
What makes a behavior ‘moral’ or ‘immoral’ is often not its face value, but the underlying INTENTIONS and MOTIVATIONS
- Understanding moral reasoning is the key to studying morality
- No morality without explicit reasoning skills
Piaget
- Believed morality begins with rigid acceptance of rules and authority
- Bad = against the rules; punishable
- Eventually realize rules are modifiable
- Interactions with peers (vs adults) critical to this change - “morality of cooperation” versus “morality of constraint”
- General cognitive development also plays a crucial role
Evaluating Stage Theories
Equating the moral domain and other social domains: moral reasoning out of social reasoning
Domain theory: children do distinguish between domains - have a better grasp of morality than stage theorist believe
Domains
- Moral domain: right & wrong, fairness, justice
- Social-conventional domain: social customs & regulations
- Personal domain: individual preferences
Infant Morality
Everything suggests infants in the first year are likely amoral
- Stage theorist equate morality with complex reasoning
- Domain theorists distinguish domains between age 2-3, and experience adults’ differing reactions over time
- They all primarily use verbal reasoning tasks to probe moral development
Empathy
- Stability in level of empathic concern from just 3 months of age
- Infants who show more concern from 3-6 mos more prosocial toward distressed other at 18 months
- Toddlers show early attempts to comfort unhappy others
Once physically able they perform prosocial acts:
- Help other achieve goals
- Inform others of things they should know
- Share their resources
Pro-sociality in Infants
- Toddlers who have previously engaged in a social exchange with experimenter help more
- In younger but not older toddlers there is a positive relationship between prenatal praise and prosocial acts
- Toddlers with siblings more likely to give away objects
- Rewarded toddlers eventually help less (suggests intrinsic motives)
- Toddlers are happy when prosocial
- Toddlers’ pupils dilate while seeing someone in need (= arousal), shrink
post helping
Generosity + Fairness
Niceness and fairness don’t always go hand in hand - as children become increasingly concerned with/aware of fairness, they may become increasingly selfish
Guilt
Guilt when done something wrong, desire to comply with rules, evidence by age 2
Differences in Conscience
Parenting style: kids more “moral when parents deemphasize parental power, emphasize rational explanation & empathy
Temperament & environmental “fit”
- Fearful children exhibit more guilt in general, respond best to gentle discipline
- Fearless children seem motivated (only) by desire to please, may need more severe reactions
Gene-environment interaction: related to allele of serotonin transporter gene
- With “sensitive” allele, high maternal responsiveness -> high conscience; low responsiveness -> low conscience
- With “insensitive” allele, no relationship
Piaget Stages
Pre-operational (0-3)
- No explicit awareness of rules (so no morality at all)
The Morality of Constraint (3-7)
- Authority rules
- Outcomes (vs Intentions) rule
Transitional Period (8-10)
- Interactions with peers spur change toward relativism - fairness, equality, what works for the group
Moral Relativism (11 or 12+)
Conscience
Internal regulatory mechanism that increase ability to conform to societal standards
