Moral Development Flashcards
What is morality?
-Understanding the difference between right and wrong
-Intuition v reason
How does Piaget’s theory look into moral development?
-Children make judgements about relative naughtiness of two boys
-One of the boys had good intentions but large damage (went into fathers office and spilt ink but he was in there as he wanted to help tidy)
-The other boy having bad intentions but small damage (snuck into office, and poured some ink of the desk but it was only a little bit)
According to Piaget, what is the difference between moral realists and moral subjectivists?
Moral realists:
-Children below 7
-Pre-operational stage
-Judgements based on scale of damage and not the intentions
Moral subjectivists:
-Children above 7
-Concrete operational stage
-Judgements based on intention of protagonist
Describe Kohlberg’s moral dilemma
-How people categorise moral acts
-Making moral judgements all the way through to adulthood
-Studied more complex scenarios
-Level 1: Preconventional morality
-Punishment =wrong
-Reward = right
-Level 2: Conventional morality
-Consider intentions of other people
-Obedience to authority
-Level 3: Postconventional morality
-Morally vs legally right, linked to what laws we have
-Consider multiple views
What is prosocial behaviour?
-Moral dilemmas are rare in everyday life
-Deciding between selfish v selfless actions is more common
-E.g. Altruism which is helping someone at the cost of yourself, helping and sharing
Describe the study conducted by Hamlin et al. (2007) looking into infants preferring helpers
-Prosocial - video where there was an agent trying to get up the hill, and another character helps him and pushes him up the hill
-Antisocial - another condition where a character pushed the agent back down
-Asked them after which one they would prefer to play with
-Experiment 1 - 6 month old (99%) and 10 month old (84%) infants preferred the helper over the hinderer
-Experiment 2 - Preferences disappeared for both ages when the eyes of the agent were removed as they no longer looked like ‘people’
-Experiment 3 - Preference for helper and aversion to hinderer returned when compared to a neutral condition (see if they were pulled towards helper or pushed away from hinderer)
Describe the study conducted by Warneken and Tomasello (2006) looking into infants preferring helpers
-18 month olds will help an adult
-Experimenter would drop something and then make a big song and dance about not being able to pick it up
-See whether the child would help
-Infants seem to understand others’ helping behaviours before they are able to help
-They evaluate helpers positively and engage in helping behaviour by 18 months
Describe the study (procedure) conducted by Smith, Blake and Harris (2013) looking into sharing
-Norms v actions
-3-8 year old children given 4 stickers
-Asked ‘how many should you/another child share?’ as well as ‘how many will you/another child share?’
-Children say that the norm is that they should share 2 stickers, from the age of 3
-When they are asked how many they will share, it’s not until 7 years old that they complete that equal split
Describe the results of this study
-Young children understand that it’s right to share equally
-Children don’t adhere to fairness principles until 7-8 years
-Sharing may be seen as more costly than helping
-Requires more reasoned thought, whereas helping is more intuition
What did Rhee and Waldman (2002) find out about the genetic and environmental influence into anti-social behaviour?
-Meta-analysis of twin and adoption studies aimed to tease apart genetic and environmental influences on antisocial influences
-32% variation due to genetics
-43% variation due to environment
What did Eron (1987) find out about the influence of watching TV on anti-social behaviour (procedure)?
-Longitudinal study where they looked at individuals aged 8 and did follow ups age 19 and age 30
-Children reported what their favourite shows were, how lifelike they thought they were, their own violent tendencies as well as their classmates violent tendencies
Describe the findings of this study
-Findings found that 8 year old who stated they liked violent TV were rated by peers as being the most aggressive
-Most aggressive children rated violent programmes as being more life like
-Watching violent TV at age 8 correlated with aggression at age 19
-Watching violent TV at age 8 correlated with various anti-social behaviours at age 30 e.g. drink driving offences, criminal convictions and domestic violence
What did Liebert and Barron (1972) find out about the influence of watching TV on anti-social behaviour?
-5-9 year old children either watched violent TV or sporting event and then played without supervision
-Those that watched violent TV were more violent and aggressive in their play
What did Thomas et al. (1977) find out about the influence of watching TV on anti-social behaviour?
-9 year olds watched either violent or non violent TV and then witnessed a stage fight between 2 other children
-Those who watched violent TV responded less emotionally, suggesting they were desensitised
