Chapter 13A - Moral Development Flashcards
MORAL DEVELOPMENT
MORAL DEVELOPMENT is the ability to discern right from wrong and to act accordingly.
It emerges at around 7 years of age - at the beginning of Piaget’s CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE - when children’s ability of taking others’ perspectives increases. Children’s newly acquired ability to internalise society’s rules leads to significant changes - reasoning and behaviours become less dependent on external rewards and punishments, and more dependent on internal, personal sense of right or wrong.
KOHLBERG’s THEORY of MORAL DEVELOPMENT
KOHLBERG greatly contributed to research in moral development - he was influenced by Piaget’s ideas, capitalising on the concept of FORMAL OPERATIONS, which he believed to be the basis of moral development. He focused on the cognitive aspects of moral development and proposed that the shift from egocentrism to social-perspective taking is a lifelong process.
By means of the answers he received in his famous MORAL DILEMMA study, Kohlberg proposed 3, hierarchically ordered, LEVELS of MORAL REASONING:
1) PRECONVENTIONAL REASONING, which is common up to the age of 9 - in this stage, right and wrong are defined by punishment and reward. Any concern for others is motivated by selfishness;
2) CONVENTIONAL REASONING, in which most of adults and adolescents engage - in this stage, individuals take a conformist approach to morality: being good is whatever pleases others, and right and wrong are determined by the majority. Individuals behave morally by doing their duty to society and conforming to laws without questioning them;
3) POSTCONVENTIONAL REASONING, which only 10% of adults reach - in this stage right and wrong are determined by personal values, and when laws contradict one’s personal values, they might be ignored. This last stage deeply focuses on the individual perspective rather than on the group one.
KOHLBERG’s MORAL DILEMMA study
KOHLBERG’s MORAL DILEMMA study is a landmark in moral development research. He used Piaget’s interview method and asked a small sample of boys - aged 10 to 16 -years to answer specific questions related to 10 moral dilemmas. The most famous dilemma is the HEINZ DILEMMA:
“A woman was on her deathbed. 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 laboratory to steal the drug for his wife. Should Heinz have broken into the laboratory to steal the drug for his wife? Why or why not?”
Based on the answers he received, Kohlberg proposed 3, hierarchically ordered, LEVELS of MORAL REASONING.
CRITIQUES to KOHLBERG’s MODEL
Critiques to KOHLBERG’s study include:
1) Poor ECOLOGICAL VALIDITY of dilemmas - they cannot be generalised to real-life settings;
2) A BIASED SAMPLE, for he only interview teenage western boys;
3) UNDERESTIMATION of PARENTAL INFLUENCE;
4) The use of a CROSS-SECTIONAL DESIGN, which gives no information about development.
5) CULTURE is totally ignored by this model - for instance, people living in small, rural communities rarely reach the last stage: Kohlberg’s model merely reflects a moral view of Western culture and democracy;
6) Kohlberg focused the JUSTICE PERSPECTIVE, which emphasises individual rights, while neglecting the CARE PERSPECTIVE, which capitalises on interpersonal communication and concerns for others.
SOCIAL DOMAIN THEORY
Another line of research - SOCIAL DOMAIN THEORY - shows that patterns of moral reasoning are universal, whereas social conventions vary across cultures.
SOCIAL CONVENTIONS are arbitrary, and they have been established by social consensus to preserve the social system - examples are not cutting in line or raising one’s hand before speaking in classrooms.
On the other hand, MORAL REASONING focuses on ethical issues and rules of morality - violation of these rules conflict with ethical standards that exist apart from social consensus and convention.
At 4 years of age, children can differentiate between conventional rules and moral norms and consider violation of the latter more seriously.
BANDURA’s MORAL DISENGAGEMENT
BANDURA developed the concept of MORAL DISENGAGEMENT - the act of temporarily suspending the respect of values and rules - a cognitive restructuring which allows the individual to alleviate their sense of guilt deriving from the violation of the norm. Moral disengagement mechanisms include:
1) MORAL JUSTIFICATION - reconstruction of harm to others in ways that appear morally justifiable - it’s for the greater good.
2) EUPHEMISTIC LANGUAGE - use of morally neutral language to make unethical conduct seem benign;
3) ADVANTAGEOUS COMPARISON - comparison of unethical behavior to even worse behaviour to make the former appear more acceptable;
4) DISTORTION of CONSEQUENCES - minimising the consequences of unethical behaviour;
5) DIFFUSION of RESPONSIBILITY - displacing responsibility onto a group;
6) DISPLACEMENT of RESPONSIBILITY - displacing responsibility onto an authoritative figure;
7) ATTRIBUTION of BLAME - blaming the victim;
8) DEHUMANISATION - reframing victims of unethical behaviour unworthy of human treatment.
