Moral Development Flashcards
Moral Judgment & Piaget’s theory of moral reasoning
- How people should interact with each other
- Made based on principles concerning the distinction between
right/wrong - Justice
- Welfare
- Fairness
Piaget’s Theory of Moral Reasoning
* Development of moral judgment relies on cognitive
development
- Increasingly able to take intentions into account
* Children pass through 3 qualitatively different
stages of moral development
- All thinking about right and wrong is determined by
stage
- Order is fixed
* Assessed moral judgement with short stories
- Interested in explanation for why an action is viewed
as right or wrong
Piaget’s Stories to Assess Morality
* John: “A little boy who is called John is in his room. He is called to dinner. He
goes into the dining room. But behind the door there was a chair, and on
the chair there was a tray with fifteen cups on it. John couldn’t have known
that there was all this behind the door. He goes in, the door knocks against
the tray, bang go the fifteen cups, and they all get broken!”
* Henry: “Once there was a little boy whose name was Henry. One day when
his mother was out he tried to get some jam out of the cupboard. He
climbed up onto a chair and stretched out his arm. But the jam was too
high up and he couldn’t reach it and have any. But while he was trying to
get it he knocked over a cup. The cup fell down and broke.”
* Which child is naughtier?
Premoral Stage
* 0-5 years old
* Little understanding
of rules so can’t make
judgements about
right and wrong
* Behaviour is
regulated by
caregivers
Heteronomous Stage
* 5-10 years old
* Rules are fixed and can
never be broken
* Morality = obeying the
rules of authority
figures, like parents
* Outcome of an action
is more important than
the intention
- Child that broke 15
glasses is naughtier
Autonomous Stage
* 10+ years old
* Rules are not absolute and can be changed
* Consider moral
principles, like
fairness, when
deciding what is right and wrong
* Intentions matter
- Child that broke 1
glass is naughtier
because was trying
to sneak jam
Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Reasoning
Heinz Dilemma * A woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that
the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the
same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the
druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200
for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman’s
husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only
get together about $1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his
wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the
druggist said: “No, I discovered the drug and I’m going to make money from it.” So
Heinz got desperate and broke into the man’s store to steal the drug for his wife. * Should Heinz have broken into the store to steal the drug for his wife? Why
or why not?
Preconventional Moral Reasoning
* 3-7 years old
* Focus on avoiding punishment and getting rewards from authority
figures
- Intentions don’t matter
- No personal sense of right and wrong
* Rules are fixed and absolute
* Similar to Piaget’s heteronomous morality
* Heinz dilemma:
- “Heinz should not steal the drug because stealing is illegal and he could get
caught.”
- “Heinz should steal the drug, because if his wife dies, Heinz will be blamed and
will go to jail.”
Conventional Moral Reasoning
* 8-13 years old
* Focus on compliance with social expectations, conventions, and duties
- Good behaviour is doing what is approved of by the social group and
maintaining good social relationships
– Capable of considering intentions
- Good behaviour is upholding one’s duty to is follow the rules and laws of society
* Similar to Piaget’s autonomous morality
* Heinz dilemma:
- “It’s right to steal because Heinz means well by trying to help his dying wife.”
- “It’s wrong for Heinz to steal because it’s against the law. If everyone was
stealing, society would fall apart.”
Postconventional Moral Reasoning
* 13 years old +
* But not everyone reaches this stage
* Morality of an action is judged based on what’s in the best interest of
society or based on maintaining universal ethical principles
* Life, liberty, basic human rights
* Rules are viewed as social contracts that can be changed to meet the needs
of society
- People may disobey rules that are inconsistent with their moral principles
- Rules are viewed as useful but not absolute
* Heinz dilemma:
- “It’s not wrong for Heinz to steal because human life must be preserved and life
is worth more than money or personal property. “
Piaget and Kohlberg’s Contributions
* 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
* Cross-cultural universality of changes in moral reasoning
Weaknesses of Piaget and Kohlberg’s
Theories
* Assumed that infants and very young children are incapable of
judgments about right and wrong
* Underestimated children’s ability to appreciate intentions
* Children and adults show inconsistencies in their moral reasoning
- People often reason at different levels on different occasions
- More likely to reason at lower levels if can personally benefit
Is moral judgment innate or learned?
- Study: Is moral judgment innate?
- 6 month-olds watched 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 hinderer - Suggests that rudimentary moral judgment is innate!
Can Infants Appreciate Intentions?
- 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 - Test: Does the infant help? If so, which adult do they help?
*Results:
*33% did not help, 67% helped
*Who did they help?
-25% helped the adult with negative intentions
-75% helped the adult with positive intentions - Evidence of selective helping
- Contrary to Piaget’s theory, suggests that 2 year olds are able to appreciate
intentions when judging others’ actions
Two-Year-Olds Can Appreciate Intentions!
* 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
Results:
-24% didn’t help, 76% did help
-Of those who helped, 44% helped the adult with positive outcome, 56% helped the adult with negative outcome (statistically insignificant)
* 2 year olds helped the adults equally (difference is not statistically sig.) suggesting
that infants care more about intentions than outcomes of actions
Development of Appreciating Intentions
* Study: How does theory of mind influence children’s ability to take
intentions into account when making moral judgments?
* Method: Tested 3 – 8 year old children
* Standard false belief task
* Moral false belief task
- “Character is cleaning up a lunchroom and throws away a paper bag
thinking it was trash. But the bag actually contained another kid’s cupcake.”
- When the character threw out the bag, where they doing something right
or wrong?
* Results:
* Children’s attributions of positive intentions
(wasn’t doing something wrong) increased with
age
* Children who failed standard false belief tasks
interpreted the character’s intention as negative
and were more likely to recommend punishing
them
* Suggests that maturing of theory of mind
enables children to give others the benefit of
the doubt when they act out of ignorance
Social Domain Theory of Moral Development
- Current dominant theory
- As they age, children are simultaneously developing knowledge
about moral, societal, and personal domains - Implies that what children view as right and wrong depends on the
domain - Challenge to Piaget and Kohlberg who viewed children’s thinking
about right and wrong as determined by stage and consistent across
situations
Moral
domain
* Reasoning about issues related to others’ welfare
and rights, fairness, and justice
* Learned through socialization from parents
Societal
domain
* Understanding of social conventions, that these
conventions can be changed, and are
sometimes arbitrary
Personal
domain
* Actions in which individual preferences are the
main consideration
* No right or wrong choices since choices don’t
affect other people
Implications
* Children can distinguish between moral, societal, and personal
domains from a young age
- View of right and wrong depends on the domain
- Can make moral-based judgments much younger than Piaget and Kohlberg
thought
Evidence for Distinction Between Domains
* 3 and 4 year olds can distinguish between issues in 3 domains
* Generally believe that violations of moral rules are more wrong than
violations of societal conventions
- e.g. See hitting someone as more wrong, even if a teacher says it’s okay (moral rule)
- e.g. See not saying “please” as acceptable if a parent says it’s okay (societal convention)
* Believe that they should have control in personal domain but
understand that they don’t decide in moral and societal domains
* BUT struggle to make moral judgments in complex situations,
especially those involving in group identity (societal domain)
- e.g. treat strangers equally but show preference for same gender peers
in resource allocation
Social Domains Across Cultures
* All cultures distinguish between issues of morality, societal
conventions, and personal preferences
* Similarities in moral domain across cultures
- All cultures view judgments about behaviours related to fairness and
others’ welfare as in the moral domain
* Differences across cultures in what falls within moral, societal and
personal domain
- E.g., helping parents in older age is a moral judgment in collectivistic
cultures but more of a personal judgment in individualistic cultures
Summary
- Piaget:
Children go from not appreciating the intentions behind actions to appreciating that
these matter (heteronomous to autonomous stage) - Moral development tied to cognitive development
- Kohlberg:
- 3 broad sequential stages of moral development: preconventional, conventional,
postconventional - Focus on self focus on societal standards universal ethics
- Children can make moral judgments and appreciate others’ intentions much
earlier than Piaget and Kohlberg thought - Social domain theory:
- Children distinguish between domains of moral, societal and personal judgments
from a young age - Knowledge of domains develops in parallel
Development of
Prosocial Behaviour
Prosocial Behaviour
* Voluntary behaviour intended to benefit others
- Helping
- Sharing
- Comforting others
How Does Prosocial Behaviour Happen?
* Empathy and sympathy are important motivators of prosocial
behaviour
- Empathy: Understanding and sharing the emotional state of another
person
- Sympathy: Feeling of concern for another person in response to their
emotional state
Prosocial Behaviour in Infancy
* Before 18 months: children tend to react to others’ distress with self-focused distress rather than prosocial behaviour
Prosocial Behaviour in Toddlers
* 18-24 months: prosocial behaviour appears and increases
throughout the 2nd year of life
- Readily help others without need for encouragement
- Comfort others in distress
- Share belongings
- Help others achieve goals
* Due to capacity to feel empathy and sympathy
- Facilitated by emergence of sense of self around
18 months of age
* Study: How do toddlers react in an empathy-inducing situation?
* Method: 18- 24-month-olds introduced to 2 experimenters
- E1 wearing a necklace that she visibly likes and takes it off at one point
- Harm: E2 takes necklace in aggressive manner, but E1 shows no emotional
reaction
- Neutral: E2 takes another necklace that’s close by (not E1’s necklace) in a
neutral way, and E1 shows no emotional reaction
* Coded infants’ facial expression in reaction to events
- Concerned: sympathy
Results:
* Showed more sympathy in harm vs. neutral condition
- More likely to sympathize with a seemingly victimized adult
* Suggests that infants can feel sympathy even in absence of adults’ reaction of distress
* Next part of study, infants had opportunity to help E1 after
her balloon flew away
*-E1 pretends to not be able to retrieve it
* Results: Pos. correlation between sympathy and helping
- Children that showed more sympathy during necklace
portion of study were more likely to help her retrieve the
balloon
* Shows that sympathy motivates helping as young as 18-24-
months of age
Selective Helping in Toddlers
* Toddlers help selectively depending on:
* how trustworthy, friendly, and helpful the other person is
Remember:
Two-Year-Olds Can Appreciate Intentions!
* Evidence of selective helping
* Contrary to Piaget’s theory, suggests that 2 year olds are able to appreciate
intentions when judging others’ actions
* the type of help required
- struggle to engage in helping that
requires self-sacrifice
Prosocial Behaviour Beyond Toddlerhood
* Prosocial behaviour continues to increase throughout childhood,
particularly emotional helping and helping requiring self-sacrifice
* Due to more sophisticated moral reasoning and improved perspective
taking ability
Individual Differences in Prosocial Behaviour
- Genetics (nature)
- Socialization by parents (nurture)
Genetics
* 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
* Genetic differences manifest as differences in temperament:
- Emotion regulation
– Ability to experience emotion without getting overwhelmed by it is
associated with empathy
– Better emotion regulation is positively associated with helping
- Behavioural inhibition (shyness)
– High level of shyness negatively associated with helping
Socialization by Parents
1. Modelling of prosocial behaviour and teaching prosocial values
* Children tend to be similar to parents in terms of prosocial behaviour
because they copy their behaviour
* Sympathy-inducing rationales 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”
* Authoritative parenting is positively associated
with kids’ prosocial behaviour
2. 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
* Fosters perspective-taking
Summary
- Empathy and sympathy are important motivators of prosocial action
- Before 18 months: seeing someone else in distress most often leads
to self-focused distress - 18-24 months: prosocial behaviour emerges, facilitated by the
emergence of empathy and sympathy - Toddlers helping is selective based on the person and the type of
helping - Individual differences in prosocial behaviour are due to differences in
genetics and socialization
