Moral Development

Moral Development

1. Morality: Biological perspective

   • rooted in human nature
   • reciprocity and exchange
   • empathy and self-sacrifice
   • biased to help family members - continue bloodline
   • investing time and effort for own people
   • originated from hunter & gatherer societies
   • BRAIN AREAS
     • PFC - ventromedial area
     • orbitofrontal cortex

2. Milller & Bersoff: What should Ben do?

   • conflict between personal responsibility and responsibility to society

3. Morality: Societal Norms perspective

   • Child's characteristics
   • Parent characteristics
   • Parental style of discipline
   • Child's view of misdeed and reasonableness of parental demands
   • internalization of societal standards

4. Emotions drive behaviour

   • ROLE OF GUILT
     • not the only motivation for moral behaviour tho!
     • guilt leads us to make amends, repair damage from our actions

5. INDUCTIvE DISCIPLINE

   • OR harsh discipline
   • OR love withdrawal
   • induction: adult helps child notice others' feelings and effects of their own msbehaviour
   • providing reasonable and appropriate explanations

6. PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY (GUILT)

   • form superego by conscience
   • want to sexually possess opposite-sex parent
   • fear of being destroyed by opposite-sex parent channeled into superego
     • leads to conformity to societal rules/moral behaviour
   • internalize rules out of fear and protection of oursevles

7. Morality: Behaviourism

   • we do RIGHT becuz we're REWARDED for it
   • we do WRONG becuz we're PUNISHED for it
   • reinforcement/punishment must be learnt over time
   • some behaviours we avoid even tho we've never done it before!
   • some engage in moral behaviour despite great personal risk

8. EFFECTS OF PUNISHMENT

   • to foster long-term goals - better to use warm but firm way of discipline
   • harsh and violent punishment only makes it more likely child will do it again
   • Spanking: only modelling aggression!
   • frequency and severity of punishment can ESCALATE over time
     • transmit cross-generations
   • often higher for low SES families
   • African-Americans see corporal punishment differently
     • children see it as parent caring for them
     • it's for your own good rather than personal act of aggression

9. SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY

   • children learn thru modelling
   • 3 aspects of models most likely to be modelled
     • Warm, responsiveness
     • Competence & power
     • Consistency between assertions & behaviour
   • models most influential in early years

10. ALTERNATIVES to punishment

    • warm parent-child relationship
    • consistency
    • explanations
    • Some cases: direct violation of norms is good!
    • parents are not always right!

11. Morality: Cognitive-Developmental

    • Heteronomous morality (5-8 yrs)
      • see rules as handed down to them by supreme authority (adults)
      • rules are ABSOLUTE
    • Morality of cooperation (9-10 yrs)
      • see rules as flexible rather than fixed
      • settle conflicts in mutually beneficial ways
      • ideal reciprocity
    • children capable of seeing ppl's intentions as bad based on their behaviour
    • focus on punishment, consequences, concrete things

12. HEINZ DILEMMA

    • man wants to save wife dying from cancer
    • druggist refuses to sell drugs to him for cheaper and won't let man pay him back later
    • Man tries all other methods of raising money but no time
    • desperate - he breaks into drug store and steals drug to save his wife
    • WAS IT RIGHT OF HIM TO DO IT?

13. KOHLBERG'S STAGES

    • Preconventional level
      • 1. Punishment & obedience
      • 2. Naive-hedonistic
    • Conventional level
      • 3. Good boy good girl
      • 4. Social order maintaining
    • Postconventional level
      • 5. Social contract/legalistic
      • 6. Self-chosen ethical principles
    • ppl also use other strategies
      • relying on institution
      • talking with others
      • religious beliefs
    • Influences
      • cognitive maturity
      • perspective-taking
      • reorganization of thought
    • Challenges to Kohlberg's theory
      • Pragmatic approach - each person makes moral judgments on varying levels of maturity
      • Alot of ppl just act first then apply moral judgments later
      • some use moral judgments for immoral purposes

14. Moral dumbfounding

    • feels smth is wrong but can't explain why

15. SEX DIFFERENCES IN MORALITY

    • Carol Gilligan argued Kohlberg underestimated girls' morality
    • girls - more sensitive, caring - more likely to have higher morality
    • most research do NOT support her claims however

16. Influences of Moral Reasoning

    • Personality
    • Culture
    • Childrearing practices
    • Peer interaction
    • Schooling
    • Moral Reasoning & Behavour
      • Reasoning doesn't always translate to behaviour!
      • More likely to take action if moral goals are personally relevant to us
      • parenting strategies: launch conscience development + empathy early on
      • Fear learning environments

17. RELIGIOUS INVOLVEMENT

    • those involved in religious communities have more opportunity to get involved in community services
    • lower levels of drug/alcohol abuse
    • EXCEPTION: religious cults

18. Morality: Domain approach

    • Moral vs Social Conventional
      • know that breaking rules in moral domain is more serious than in social conventional
    • Relation of Personal & Moral domains
      • reach adolescence: increasingly don't want parents to interfere with personal domain
      • personal choice enhances moral understanding
      • Personal choices in social conventional domain can have MORAL consequences
    • Enter text here

19. SELF-CONTROL

    • inhibiting urges that violate moral rules
    • resistance to temptation
    • COMPLIANCE
    • DELAY OF GRATIFICATION
    • Walter Mischel experiment
      • 10 mini marshmallows later OR 2 mini marshmallows now

20. AGGRESSION

    • PHSYICAL
    • VERBAL
    • RELATIONAL
    • Early & Middle Childhood
      • physical aggression gives way to verbal
      • girls use relational tactics
    • Adolescence
      • rise in delinquency
      • rise in autonomy desires
      • SES and ethnicity = strong predictors of arrests
    • STABILITY of aggression
      • Kindergarteners - high, moderate, low levels determine stability of aggression in later years
      • childrearing
      • SES, environment, conflict-ridden
    • FAMILY & AGGRESSION
      • Family = training ground for aggression (becomes vicious cycle)
      • 1) coercive parental discipline
      • 2) Coercive give + take between parent and child
      • 3) Long-term consequences
      • 4) Conflict resolution
    • Social-cog deficits
      • overly high self-esteem
      • cog distortion techniques to validate bad behaviour
    • Community & Cultural Influences
      • poverty-stricken neighbourhoods
      • high adult criminality
      • ethnic + political prejudices
    • INTERVENTIONS
      • parent training
      • social-cog interventions
        • pay more attention to social cues
        • zero tolerance policies
      • comprehensive approaches
        • eg EQUIP