Morality: Knowing Right, Doing Good

Chapter 11

Morality: Knowing Right, Doing Good

Chapter Outline

MORALITY: KNOWING RIGHT, DOING GOOD

MORAL JUDGMENT

Piaget’s Cognitive Theory of Moral Judgment

Stages of Moral Reasoning

Evaluation of Piaget’s Theory

Kohlberg’s Cognitive Theory of Moral Judgment

Levels and Stages of Moral Judgment

Insights from Extremes: Moral Heroes

Limitations of Kohlberg’s Theory

New Aspects of Moral Development

Cultural Context: Justice versus Interpersonal Obligations in India and the United States

Turiel’s Social Domain Theory

Social Conventional Domain

Psychological Domain

Learning from Living Leaders: Elliot Turiel

Judgments about Complex Issues

Learning from Living Leaders: Judith G. Smetana

How Children Learn the Rules and Distinguish between Social Domains

Parents’ and Teachers’ Roles in Moral and Social Conventional Reasoning

Sibling and Peer Influences on Moral and Conventional Judgments

The Role of Culture

MORAL BEHAVIOR

Bet You Thought That ... Moral Judgment Leads to Moral Action

Self-Regulation of Behavior

Individual Differences in Self-Regulation

Into Adulthood: The Love of Money Is the Root of All Evil

Consistency of Moral Behavior across Situations and Time

Research up Close: Children Telling Lies

MORAL EMOTIONS

Development of Moral Emotions

Moral Emotions and Child Characteristics

Moral Emotions and Parents’ Behavior

Do Moral Emotions Affect Moral Behavior?

Real-World Application: Adolescents’ Competence to Stand Trial As Adults

THE WHOLE MORAL CHILD

Learning from Living Leaders: Grazyna Kochanska

PROSOCIAL AND ALTRUISTIC BEHAVIOR

How Prosocial Behavior and Reasoning Develop

Age Changes in Prosocial Behavior

Stability in Styles of Prosocial Behavior

Prosocial Reasoning

Are Girls More Prosocial Than Boys?

Learning from Living Leaders: Nancy Eisenberg

Determinants of Prosocial Development

Biological Influences

Environmental Influences

Cultural Influences

Empathy and Perspective Taking

Chapter Summary

Key Terms

At the Movies

Learning Objectives

Describe and evaluate Piaget’s theory of moral development including the premoral stage, moral realism, immanent justice and moral absolutism, and moral reciprocity.
Describe and evaluate Kohlberg’s theory of moral development including the preconventional, conventional, and postconventional levels of morality and associated stages.
Describe the revisions to Kohlberg’s theory including Gilligan’s perspective, the view that moral reasoning varies in different situations, and the expansion to include the area of civil rights and liberties.
Describe and evaluate Turiel’s social domain theory including the social conventional and psychological domains.
Discuss the role of parents and teachers in children’s development of moral and social conventional reasoning.
Describe the role of siblings and peers in children’s development of moral and conventional reasoning.
Discuss the role of culture in children’s development of moral and conventional reasoning.
Discuss the development of self-regulation including the control phase, the self-control phase, and the self-regulation phase.
Explain how delay of gratification is an indicator of self-regulation.
Describe what is known about individual differences in self-regulation.
Discuss whether children are consistent in their moral behavior over time and across situations.
In discussing guilt as a moral emotion, explain the role of the child’s characteristics in experiencing guilt as well as parents’ role in socializing the development of moral emotions.
Establish whether moral emotions matter for moral behavior.
Discuss what is meant by “the whole moral child.”
Define altruistic and prosocial behavior.
Discuss changes and stability in the development of prosocial behavior.
Describe Eisenberg’s model of prosocial reasoning including the hedonistic, needs-oriented, approval seeking, empathic, transitional, and internalized levels.
Discuss gender differences in prosocial behavior.
Describe the biological, environmental, and cultural influences on prosocial behavior development.
Discuss the role of empathy and perspective taking in prosocial behavior.

Student Handout 11-1

Chapter Summary

Three aspects of moral development are cognition, behavior, and emotion.

Moral Judgment

Piaget and Kohlberg proposed theories of moral development involving stages throughwhich children progress as their cognitive capacities increase.
In Piaget’s premoral stage, young children show little concern for rules. In the moral realismstage, children judge rightness and wrongness based on immanent justice and objectiveconsequences and believe that rules are unchanging and unquestionable. In the moralreciprocity stage, children recognize intentionality and the arbitrariness of social rules.
Piaget underestimated children’s abilities: Young children can distinguish between intentionsand consequences if material is presented in a less complex manner than he used.
In Kohlberg’s preconventional level of development, moral judgment is based on the desireto avoid punishment (Stage 1) or gain rewards (Stage 2). At the conventional level, moraljudgment is based on conformity to obtain approval (Stage 3) or to comply with society’s rules (Stage 4). At the postconventional level, moral judgment is based on society’s consensusabout human rights (Stage 5) or abstract principles of justice (Stage 6). Moral judgmentcontinues to develop in adulthood, but few individuals reach the postconventional level.
Kohlberg’s theory was criticized because it ignored the effects of cultural and historical circumstances.The theory has been expanded to include interpersonal caring and civil rights.
Turiel’s social domain theory suggested that moral reasoning is one of several domains ofsocial knowledge. Other domains include social conventions (e.g., knowledge about tablemanners) and the psychological domain (personal preferences, prudential concerns, andknowledge about self and others). Children learn quite early to distinguish among these domains. They judge violations of moral rules as being worse than violations in otherdomains because the former result in harm to another person and violate norms of justiceand fairness.
Moral reasoning often involves multiple domains. Moral considerations generally take priorityover social-conventional and personal issues.

Moral Behavior

Moral behavior is more likely to be related to moral judgment in older children and whenthe person views the issue as moral rather than social conventional or personal.
Self-regulation is the ability to inhibit impulses and behave in accord with social and moralrules in the absence of external control.
The development of self-regulation is fostered by a positive, responsive mother-child relationshipand a temperament characterized by active inhibition and effortful control.
There is a high degree of consistency in children’s moral or immoral behavior across timeand situations. However, factors such as fear of detection, peer support for deviant behavior,and the importance of the outcome for the child do influence children’s willingness tocheat, lie, or steal.

Moral Emotions

Emotions such as remorse, shame, and guilt are frequent responses to committed or anticipatedmoral transgressions.
Girls and children with fearful temperaments are more likely to experience moral emotions.
Parents encourage children’s development of moral emotions by providing a warm andsupportive climate in the home and offering emotion-charged explanations when childrenviolate a rule.
Moral emotions are related to moral behavior beginning at age 3 or 4.
Cognitive, behavioral, and emotional aspects of moral development co-occur, interact, andsometimes even conflict. Whether children define a dilemma as personal, conventional, ormoral (a cognitive process) influences how they act (behavior) and how they feel (emotion).

Prosocial and Altruistic Behavior

Helping, sharing, and empathizing appear by the time children are 2. Altruistic behaviorappears later in development.
Individual differences in styles of prosocial behavior are relatively stable over time.
Children’s prosocial reasoning develops through a number of stages before it becomes basedon internalized values and norms.
Girls tend to be kinder and more considerate than boys.
Evidence of helping and sharing in infrahuman animals suggests that evolution has preparedus for prosocial behavior. Genetic factors influence individual differences in prosocialbehavior.
Parents, peers, television, pets, and culture all influence the likelihood of children’s actingprosocially.
Empathy and perspective taking contribute to children’s capacity for prosocial and altruisticbehavior.

Student Handout 11-2

Key Terms

GLOSSARY TERMS

altruistic behavior / Intrinsically motivated conduct intended to help others without expectation of acknowledgment or reward.
conscience / Internalized values and standards of moral behavior.
conventionallevel / Kohlberg’s second phase of moral development in which moral judgment is based the motive to conform, either to get approval from others or to follow society’s rules and conventions.
delay of gratification / Putting off until a later time possessing or doing something that gives one immediate pleasure.
empathic reasoning / An advanced type of prosocial reasoning involving sympathetic responding, self-reflective role taking, concern with the other’s humanness, and guilt or positive affect related to the consequences of one’s actions.
hedonistic reasoning / Making a decision to perform a prosocial act on the basis of expected material reward.
immanent justice / The notion that any deviation from rules will inevitably result in punishment or retribution.
internalize / The process by which children acquire the rules and standards of behavior laid down by others in their culture and adopt them as their own.
internalizedreasoning / The most advanced type of prosocial reasoning in which justifications for helping are based on the importance of maintaining societal obligations or treating all people as equal.
moral absolutism / Rigid application of rules to all individuals regardless of their culture or circumstance.
moral realism / Piaget’s second stage of moral development in which children show great respect for rules and apply them quite inflexibly.
moralreciprocity / Piaget’s third stage of moral development in which children recognize that rules may be questioned and altered, consider the feelings and views of others, and believe in equal justice for all.
needs-oriented reasoning / Prosocial judgmentsin which children express concern for others’ needs although their own needs may conflict with them.
postconventional level / Kohlberg’s third phase of moral development in which judgments are controlled by an internalized ethical code that is relatively independent of the approval or disapproval of others.
preconventionallevel / Kohlberg’s first phase of moral development in which justification for behavior is based on the desire to avoid punishment and gain rewards.
premoral stage / Piaget’s first phase of moral development in which children show little concern for rules.
prosocial behavior / Conduct designed to help or benefit other people.
prosocial reasoning / Thinking and making judgments about prosocial issues.
psychological domain / An area of social judgment focused on beliefs and knowledge of self and others.
self-regulation / The ability to use strategies and plans to control one’s behavior in the absence of external surveillance including inhibiting inappropriate behavior and delaying gratification.
social conventional domain / An area of social judgment focused on social expectations, norms, and regularities that help facilitate smooth and efficient functioning in society.
sympathy / The feeling of sorrow or concern for a distressed or needy person.

OTHER IMPORTANT TERMS IN THIS CHAPTER

adolescent legal competence
care dimension of morality
equalitarianism
inhibited/uninhibited temperament
interpersonal obligations
invariant stage sequence
kin selection
mirror neuron system
moral emotions
moral self
multi-domain issues
passive /active inhibition
perspective taking
prosocial segregation
psychological domain
self-regulation phases
Williams syndrome

Student Handout 11-3

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?

Student Handout 11-4

Below are some of many examples of possible arguments that belong to Kohlberg’s six stages:

Stage one (obedience): Heinz should not steal the medicine because he will consequently be put in prison which will mean he is a bad person. Or: Heinz should steal the medicine because it is only worth $200 and not how much the druggist wanted for it; Heinz had even offered to pay for it and was not stealing anything else.

Stage two (self-interest): Heinz should steal the medicine because he will be much happier if he saves his wife, even if he will have to serve a prison sentence. Or: Heinz should not steal the medicine because prison is an awful place, and he would more likely languish in a jail cell than over his wife's death.

Stage three (conformity): Heinz should steal the medicine because his wife expects it; he wants to be a good husband. Or: Heinz should not steal the drug because stealing is bad and he is not a criminal; he has tried to do everything he can without breaking the law, you cannot blame him.

Stage four (law-and-order): Heinz should not steal the medicine because the law prohibits stealing, making it illegal. Or: Heinz should steal the drug for his wife but also take the prescribed punishment for the crime as well as paying the druggist what he is owed. Criminals cannot just run around without regard for the law; actions have consequences.

Stage five (human rights): Heinz should steal the medicine because everyone has a right to choose life, regardless of the law. Or: Heinz should not steal the medicine because the scientist has a right to fair compensation. Even if his wife is sick, it does not make his actions right.

Stage six (universal human ethics): Heinz should steal the medicine, because saving a human life is a more fundamental value than the property rights of another person. Or: Heinz should not steal the medicine, because others may need the medicine just as badly, and their lives are equally significant.

Practice Exam Questions

MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS

Piaget’s second phase of moral development in which children show great respect for rules and apply them inflexibly is known as: (a) moral absolutism (b) *moral realism (c) premoral stage (d) preconventional moral stage
Which of the following is a reason Piaget underestimated children’s moral capacities: (a) Piaget only studied Swiss children (b) Piaget only studied his own children (c) *Piaget only gave children brief outlines of moral situations (d) Piaget acted out his situations instead of reading them
According to Kohlberg, the phase of moral development in which justification for behavior is based on the desire to avoid punishment and gain rewards is: (a) postconventional (b) semi-conventional (c) conventional (d) *preconventional
Of the children Kohlberg included in his longitudinal study, most attained which stage of moral development? (a) *authority and morality (b) morality of contract (c) obedience and punishment (d) naïve hedonistic
Which of the following is an accurate finding from the research testing Kohlberg’s levels of moral development: (a) people in Taiwan and Israel explain their answers to moral dilemmas by pointing to personal standards (b) people in India downplay in their reasoning the maintenance of personal purity (c) *people in different cultures go through the stages in the same order (d) many people in other cultures skip a stage or regress to a lower stage
The rightness or wrongness of addressing a teacher by his or her first name would be an example from the: (a) moral domain (b) *social conventional domain (c) personal choice domain (d) psychological domain
Children’s moral judgments are most effectively advanced if their parents: (a) *use disciplinary techniques that involve reasoning and explanation (b) express affection freely (c) avoid harshness when disciplining (d) praise children for making moral decisions
Which of the following was shown by research on children’s lying? (a) only about half of all children lie (b) the rate of lying among children remains constant over time (c) there is no observed gender difference in lying (d) *4-year-olds lie about once every 2 hours
An advanced type of prosocial reasoning involving sympathetic responding, self-reflective role taking, and guilt or positive affect related to the consequences of one’s actions is: (a) hedonistic reasoning (b) *empathic reasoning (c) needs-oriented reasoning (d) prosocial reasoning
Gender differences in prosocial behavior are smallest when reported by: (a) peers (b) family members (c) self-reports (d) *observers
Mothers are most successful at encouraging children to respond prosocially if they: (a) teach them using angry explanations (b) teach them using physical restraint (c) *point out a peer’s distress in an affectively charged manner (d) all of the above

ESSAY QUESTIONS

1. Describe four ways in which adolescents are not fully capable of standing trial.

2. Discuss the current status of Kohlberg’s theory of moral development.

3. Describe the links between moral judgment and moral behavior in childhood.