MORALITY

MORALITY

1. three components

   • cognitive - reasoning about right and wrong - allows in-group rules to be learnt, justified and applied flexibly
     • Nelson - cartoon stories to prompt moral reasoning in preschool children. Stories positive/negative outcome, good or bad intentions. Rate 'goodness' of actor. Children were able to act as moral RELATIVISTS and take into account different intentions.
     • Hamlin (nature) study - 6 and 10 months old can (?) reason about morality
     • 15 months - VOE - natural method, cookie distribution. Looked longer at unfairness condition - only in social context.
   • emotional - feeling right/wrong about one's actions or others' feelings - enables in-group rules to be enforced without external pressure
     • newborns - imitation - inborns predisposed for empathy?
     • emotional contagion - so sharing other people's emotions
     • Zahn-Waxler - response to witnessed distress. Measures: sympathy, helping, personal distress. Dominant reactions: 13-15m - personal distress, 18-20 - helping, 23-25 - much more helping and sympathy. MOVE FROM self focused to others-focused behaviour. So reactions to others' distress increase with age.
     • guilt and pride - self conscious emotions. guilt inhibits anti social actions, pride promotes pro-social ones.
       • guilt - when infant causes distress, more personal distress (zahn-waxler)
         • Facial/body expressions - guilt - kochanska - staged mishaps in lab. child shows averted gaze, bodily tension, negative affect
       • pride
         • 1-5 yrs, observed their reactions to success/failure at a game. 1 - do not register failure. 2 - seeking approval, learned which acts draw praise. 3 - internalised self-evaluation - full range of markers for pride and shame in response to success/failure - capacity for pride is EARLY
       • shame
     • conscious awareness - pre-requisite of conscious, internalised emotions
       • self awareness correlated with guilt in response to situation, also with self description, self evaluation, self recognition, autonomy (own will)
       • undergraduate and mirror
       • halloween and mirror
       • looking times when told not to: self-focused<neutral<de-individuated
         • reversed in prosocial condition - more altruism when focused on self (pride)
   • behavioural - acting right/wrong - results in social acceptance and cooperation. one might expect moral reasoning and moral affect predict moral behaviour????
     • recall zahn-waxler helping and also unemotional component - helping in referential communication
     • Moral dilemma story - all agreed a boy did a wrong thing. but then they acted very similarly - moral reasoning not reflected in behaviour.
     • amount of guilt shown in lab at 22, 33, 45 months predicted negatively transgression at 56 m. stronger children's discomfort - less likely to touch a toy when told not to or cheat in a ball game ---- earlier discomfort following caused distress was associated with later moral action

2. WHEN!!!!!!

   • parents
     • parenting style and individual differences in children's morality - 'POWER ASSERTIVENESS' - threatening, spanking, yelling to discipline a child - negative correlarion with level of guilt. the more shouting etc - less guilty the child feels. also neg corr between Maternal power assertion and rule following at 56 mths.
       • SOCIAL INFORMATION-PROCESSING MODEL -- punishment produces negative arousal which stimulates causal interpretations. good rationale focusing on the harm one's actions caused leads to internal attributions for negative outcome and leads to inhibition. no rationale - leads to external attributions for negative outcome leads to inhibition of that action only when detection is likely
     • abused and neglected kids - more cheating, less prosocial behaviour
     • parent-infant mutual responsiveness orientation and shared affect positivity at the route of early internalisation of moral rules
       • 3 components of morality correlated by 56 months - MRO, comitted compliance, child consience
   • what else matters?
     • child temperament, self control, TOM, social development