Moral Development

Morality: Biological perspective
1. rooted in human nature
2. reciprocity and exchange
3. empathy and self-sacrifice
4. biased to help family members - continue bloodline
5. investing time and effort for own people
6. originated from hunter & gatherer societies
7. BRAIN AREAS
  1. PFC - ventromedial area
  2. orbitofrontal cortex
Milller & Bersoff: What should Ben do?
1. conflict between personal responsibility and responsibility to society
Morality: Societal Norms perspective
1. Child's characteristics
2. Parent characteristics
3. Parental style of discipline
4. Child's view of misdeed and reasonableness of parental demands
5. internalization of societal standards
Emotions drive behaviour
1. ROLE OF GUILT
  1. not the only motivation for moral behaviour tho!
  2. guilt leads us to make amends, repair damage from our actions
INDUCTIvE DISCIPLINE
1. OR harsh discipline
2. OR love withdrawal
3. induction: adult helps child notice others' feelings and effects of their own msbehaviour
4. providing reasonable and appropriate explanations
PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY (GUILT)
1. form superego by conscience
2. want to sexually possess opposite-sex parent
3. fear of being destroyed by opposite-sex parent channeled into superego
  1. leads to conformity to societal rules/moral behaviour
4. internalize rules out of fear and protection of oursevles
Morality: Behaviourism
1. we do RIGHT becuz we're REWARDED for it
2. we do WRONG becuz we're PUNISHED for it
3. reinforcement/punishment must be learnt over time
4. some behaviours we avoid even tho we've never done it before!
5. some engage in moral behaviour despite great personal risk
EFFECTS OF PUNISHMENT
1. to foster long-term goals - better to use warm but firm way of discipline
2. harsh and violent punishment only makes it more likely child will do it again
3. Spanking: only modelling aggression!
4. frequency and severity of punishment can ESCALATE over time
  1. transmit cross-generations
5. often higher for low SES families
6. African-Americans see corporal punishment differently
  1. children see it as parent caring for them
  2. it's for your own good rather than personal act of aggression
SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY
1. children learn thru modelling
2. 3 aspects of models most likely to be modelled
  1. Warm, responsiveness
  2. Competence & power
  3. Consistency between assertions & behaviour
3. models most influential in early years
ALTERNATIVES to punishment
1. warm parent-child relationship
2. consistency
3. explanations
4. Some cases: direct violation of norms is good!
5. parents are not always right!
Morality: Cognitive-Developmental
1. Heteronomous morality (5-8 yrs)
  1. see rules as handed down to them by supreme authority (adults)
  2. rules are ABSOLUTE
2. Morality of cooperation (9-10 yrs)
  1. see rules as flexible rather than fixed
  2. settle conflicts in mutually beneficial ways
  3. ideal reciprocity
3. children capable of seeing ppl's intentions as bad based on their behaviour
4. focus on punishment, consequences, concrete things
HEINZ DILEMMA
1. man wants to save wife dying from cancer
2. druggist refuses to sell drugs to him for cheaper and won't let man pay him back later
3. Man tries all other methods of raising money but no time
4. desperate - he breaks into drug store and steals drug to save his wife
5. WAS IT RIGHT OF HIM TO DO IT?
KOHLBERG'S STAGES
1. Preconventional level
  1. 1. Punishment & obedience
  2. 2. Naive-hedonistic
2. Conventional level
  1. 3. Good boy good girl
  2. 4. Social order maintaining
3. Postconventional level
  1. 5. Social contract/legalistic
  2. 6. Self-chosen ethical principles
4. ppl also use other strategies
  1. relying on institution
  2. talking with others
  3. religious beliefs
5. Influences
  1. cognitive maturity
  2. perspective-taking
  3. reorganization of thought
6. Challenges to Kohlberg's theory
  1. Pragmatic approach - each person makes moral judgments on varying levels of maturity
  2. Alot of ppl just act first then apply moral judgments later
  3. some use moral judgments for immoral purposes
Moral dumbfounding
1. feels smth is wrong but can't explain why
SEX DIFFERENCES IN MORALITY
1. Carol Gilligan argued Kohlberg underestimated girls' morality
2. girls - more sensitive, caring - more likely to have higher morality
3. most research do NOT support her claims however
Influences of Moral Reasoning
1. Personality
2. Culture
3. Childrearing practices
4. Peer interaction
5. Schooling
6. Moral Reasoning & Behavour
  1. Reasoning doesn't always translate to behaviour!
  2. More likely to take action if moral goals are personally relevant to us
  3. parenting strategies: launch conscience development + empathy early on
  4. Fear learning environments
RELIGIOUS INVOLVEMENT
1. those involved in religious communities have more opportunity to get involved in community services
2. lower levels of drug/alcohol abuse
3. EXCEPTION: religious cults
Morality: Domain approach
1. Moral vs Social Conventional
  1. know that breaking rules in moral domain is more serious than in social conventional
2. Relation of Personal & Moral domains
  1. reach adolescence: increasingly don't want parents to interfere with personal domain
  2. personal choice enhances moral understanding
  3. Personal choices in social conventional domain can have MORAL consequences
3. Enter text here
SELF-CONTROL
1. inhibiting urges that violate moral rules
2. resistance to temptation
3. COMPLIANCE
4. DELAY OF GRATIFICATION
5. Walter Mischel experiment
  1. 10 mini marshmallows later OR 2 mini marshmallows now
AGGRESSION
1. PHSYICAL
2. VERBAL
3. RELATIONAL
4. Early & Middle Childhood
  1. physical aggression gives way to verbal
  2. girls use relational tactics
5. Adolescence
  1. rise in delinquency
  2. rise in autonomy desires
  3. SES and ethnicity = strong predictors of arrests
6. STABILITY of aggression
  1. Kindergarteners - high, moderate, low levels determine stability of aggression in later years
  2. childrearing
  3. SES, environment, conflict-ridden
7. FAMILY & AGGRESSION
  1. Family = training ground for aggression (becomes vicious cycle)
  2. 1) coercive parental discipline
  3. 2) Coercive give + take between parent and child
  4. 3) Long-term consequences
  5. 4) Conflict resolution
8. Social-cog deficits
  1. overly high self-esteem
  2. cog distortion techniques to validate bad behaviour
9. Community & Cultural Influences
  1. poverty-stricken neighbourhoods
  2. high adult criminality
  3. ethnic + political prejudices
10. INTERVENTIONS
  1. parent training
  2. social-cog interventions
    1. pay more attention to social cues
    2. zero tolerance policies
  3. comprehensive approaches
    1. eg EQUIP

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Moral Development

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	Created by Helen Li over 10 years ago