The Development of Moral Understanding (A2)

The Development of Moral Understanding.

Moral Understanding is the state of awareness and appreciation that someone has for appropriate and desirable social behaviour.

There are wide individual and group differences in the definition of desirable behaviour and the ways in which different values and norms are appreciated.

Three aspects of the human condition apply to understanding how children’s sense of right and wrong develops as they do anything else.
What we think (Cognition);
What we feel (Affect or emotion);
What we do (Behaviour).

Piaget’s Theory of Moral Understanding

· Piaget’s theory (1932) of cognitive development can be generally applied to the development of moral reasoning.
· Just as children need contact with adults and their peers to practise existing cognitive schemas, they also need such experience to develop a sense of co-operation, of sharing and turn-taking.

· For the first five years or so the child thinks egocentrically and isn’t capable of understanding the rules that govern moral reasoning or behaviour. For example, as adults we can forgive an older child’s bad behaviour which has disastrous consequences if the motives are honourable. A child below the age of five cannot decentre and so we cannot take motives into account.

· For the next five years children can understand that rules governing moral behaviour do exist and are imposed and enforced by other people, principally mummy, daddy, and teachers. This is the stage of heteronomous morality (heteronomous meaning imposed by someone else) — sometimes called moral realism.

· Only as it enters the stage of formal operational thought will the child begin to understand that rules aren’t fixed and that infringement doesn’t automatically elicit punishment. Behaviour can be negotiated. This is the stage of autonomous morality (autonomous meaning controlled from within). It is sometimes called ‘moral relativity’.

· Piaget believed that equal status contact with peers was critical in enabling the child to understand the perspective of others to develop socially and morally.

· Children must learn to handle conflicts on an individual basis and learn who’s turn it is to play. Because peers have equal status, they must work out a compromise between themselves in order to function as a group.

· In doing this they gradually begin to see that rules are social contracts achieved in relation to context. It is critical that adults are not involved because they would only serve to re-inforce the child’s respect for authority and inflexible rules.

Piaget’s Research Studies (1932)
· Based his theory on two lines of investigation.
· First he observed children between 3 and 12 playing games of marbles, asking them about the rules of the game. He found that the youngest children used no rules at all.
· By age 5 the children were using rules but these were seen as absolute law, fixed and unchangeable. Rules must be obeyed and failure to obey a rule automatically results in punishment (“Imminent Justice”) based on the idea that someone in authority instantly punishes wrongdoing. This he called the stage of “Hetronomous Morality” or “Moral Realitivism” because of their greater cognitive maturity. They now realised that the rules would be changed
· His second source of research involved pairs of moral stories.
· In each pair there was one story where the child had good intentions but accidentally caused considerable damage, whereas in the other story there was less damage, but the child’s intentions were less good (Child behaved without due care and attention.)
o “Which of the characters is the naughtier and which should be punished the most?”
o Piaget was interested in the reasons why children gave the answers rather than the answers themselves and whether it was the consequences of the intentions that formed the basis of the moral judgement.
§ Children in the stage of moral realism focused on the consequences of the action rather than the intent.
§ Older children were able to take intention into consideration when considering the morality of an action, thereby refraining from making judgements that are purely based on the outcome or consequences of an action.

Evaluation of Piaget’s research on moral understanding.
Piaget’s methods lacked in scientific acceptability by today’s standards.
Piaget used the best methods he could at the time. Whenever new challenges and new refinements to Piaget’s ideas were presented he was always receptive to them.

Support:
· Armsby (1971) manipulated moral stories so that there was either a small amount of deliberate damage or a large amount of accidental damage. Younger children did take intention into account, but had difficulty weighing up the relative importance of value and intention which ended up meaning they made up judgements in terms of outcome alone. The conclusion must be that younger children rely more on consequences than intentions when judging right and wrong, but that moral behaviour does not follow a simple formula.
· Cross Cultural support: An important feature of Piaget’s theory is his claim that moral stages are innate and universal. This would lead us to expect cross-cultural support for his stages. Linaza (1984) found the same sequence for development of Spanish children. However, we should note that researchers used the same research methods as Piaget. Not all cross cultural evidence is as supportive.
· The Peer participation hypothesis. Piaget also claimed that peer interaction would be important in the development of moral understanding, in the same way as he suggested that cognitive challenges lead to the accommodation of existing schemas. Moreover, he suggested that adult interaction would be less valuable. Kruger (1992) found support for the peer participation hypothesis. In this experiment, female participants (average age 8 years) were paired either with a friend of the same age or with their mother. Prior to the experiment, each girl was questioned to determine her stage of moral development. Then each pair was asked to reach an agreement about two moral stories. All individuals were again assessed on a moral reasoning task, and it was found that those girls working with peers showed a greater increase in moral maturity than those working with their mothers. Presumably, the more appropriate discussions between peers assisted moral understanding, even within this short space of time.

· Moral rules and social-conventional rules — Are games of marbles an appropriate test of morality? Turiel (1983) suggested that people do use social- conventional rules as a way of making moral judgments and therefore it would be reasonable suggest a scheme of moral development based on the use and understanding of such rules. However, Turiel also pointed out that there are other social rules, such as those related to etiquette and games. Marbles would be an example of the latter and therefore not fully representative of moral behaviour.

· Consequences and intentions — The ‘moral story’ evidence has also been criticized. It is possible that the reason the younger children made judgments on the basis of consequences rather than intentions was because the consequences were much easier to identify. When intentions are made clearer, even younger children appear to be able to make decisions based on them. For example, Chandler et al. (1973) found that when the format of these stories was changed from a verbal to a videotaped presentation, then 6-year-olds recognized the intentions of the actor just as well as older children did. Likewise, Feldman et al. (1976) found that young children were able to make judgments based on intention when the intentions of the characters in the stories were evaluated separately from the outcomes, whereas in Piaget’s original stories, the intent of the child was always confused with the consequences of the action.
· The complexity of moral reasoning — Overall, more recent research suggests that Piaget may have underestimated the complexity of moral reasoning. One reason for this is that children, today, are more advanced at an earlier age due to cultural changes such as those which have led to increased IQs.

Kohlberg’s theory of Moral Understanding
Used 10 dilemma stories to gather responses from children. The idea was that a wide variety of children of both sexes should be tested and a refined explanation would emerge that would encompass any gender or cultural differences as well as differences related to age.

On the basis of this evidence Kohlberg propose a six stage model of moral reasoning comprising three distinct levels, with each level having two stages.

People generally progress through these levels in the same order. However, the stage of level each person reaches can vary greatly according to when they reach it or whether they reach it at all. It is quite likely that some people will be reasoning at the third level by the time they are 20 years old. Some 60 year olds may never have progressed beyond level 2.

Further researchers into moral reasoning including some by Kohlberg himself have found little evidence of stage 6 among the general population. It may not be a general stage at all, but accessible only to certain great thinkers. There may even be special stages beyond stage 6.

Piaget and Kohlberg’s theories stem from the cognitive developmental area within psychology and have common characteristics:
They suggest that moral development proceeds through a sequence of innately determined stages which follow an invariant sequence.
Development occurs as a consequence of maturation but also through disequilibrium. Inconsistencies that arise through experience challenge current thinking.
Each stage is defined by the kind of thought (Cognition) used to make moral judgements.
They focus more on how people think rather than what they think.
There is an underlying assumption that moral principles are linked to moral behaviour.

Refer to table 18.7 below for stages of moral development (Kohlberg 1976)


Empirical Support for Kohlberg:
Empirical means derived from observation and research, rather than theoretical speculation. Walker et al (1987) has research that broadly supports Kohlberg’s general stages and Kohlberg’s own cross cultural research findings seem to apply his stages universally.

Colby (1983) followed the original data sample of Kohlberg for a subsequent 26 years and found that by testing each sample every three years that:
children displayed stage 2 by age 10 but examples of stages 1 and 3 were also displayed.
By age 22 no one was stage 1 and stages 3 and 4 were predominant.
By age 36 very little evidence was apparent of stage 5 (Approx 5%)

In other countries: Britain, Mexico, Taiwan, Turkey, USA and Yucatan he found the same pattern of development. Also development tended to be slower in non industrialised countries.

Colby and Kohlberg (1987) reported longitudinal studies in turkey and Israel that produced similar results as Colby (1983)

Evaluation:
Has extended and refined Piaget’s (1932) original research.

Support:
Cross-Cultural Support:
Snarey et al. (1985)
Examined 44 different cross cultural studies in 26 countries, all found progression to stage 1 to 4 in same ages.
Stage 5 only occurring in urban areas.
Eckensberger (1983)
Reviewed 50 studies again lending support to the invariant progression of Kohlberg’s stages.
The importance of social interactions:
Hartshorne and May (1928) found that children who attended Sunday school were less likely to be honest.
Limitations:
How universal are universal Ethical Principles?
Stage 5 and 6 are rarely reached
Colby and Kohlberg (1987) found only 15% reached stage 5 and no evidence of stage 6. However, stage 6 represents the ideal state of moral development.
Gender Bias:
Kohlberg’s theory is Andocentric (Male centred view) and Alpha-biased (Suggests real difference between women and men).
Artificial Dilemmas:
The dilemmas like Piaget’s view are rather artificial views of morality understanding.
Cultural Bias:
In other cultures meeting family obligations and submitting to the authority of elders is regarded as reflecting the highest moral principles and yet would be scored at lower levels according to Kohlberg’s theory. Snarey et al (1985)

Eisenberg’s Theory of Pro-Social Reasoning.

Eisenberg claimed that cognitive development is too large a theme to be explained by a single theory or model.
Kohlberg’s theory being based on justice and fairness. She sees cognitive development comprising several elements apart from the notions of justice and fair play, including pro-social behaviour. We all help others at some cost to time and effort occasionally. Some people seem willing to help out others don’t as often.

Eisenberg argues that the most important element for pro-social reasoning is turn taking and role taking.

Eisenberg (1987) argues Empathy is a key feature of development of pro social moral reasoning.
Empathy differs from Sympathy;
Empathy is a person’s ability to experience the emotions of another;
Sympathy is an emotional affinity in which whatever affects one correspondingly affects the other, and its synonym is pity.

One way to learn empathy is through taking on the roles of others and seeing the world through their eyes. Children’s games therefore often involve the taking on of roles that might be vital to their moral development.
As empathy grows, children become capable of experiencing compassion or “Sympathetic distress”
There is a distinction between the cognitive understanding of the other persons condition and a younger child’s more primitive empathetic distress displayed when they are with someone who is suffering.
Cognitive awareness leads the child to go to the assistance of others, whereas distress on its own does not.

Type of Empathy
Age
Description
Global Empathy
<1 yr
Infant has not yet received vast range of emotions.
They therefore copy behaviour that they see e.g. smile when smiled at.
Egocentric Empathy
1-2 years
Ego-centric therefore they assume that everyone can be comforted the same way they can.. They behave in ways that they hope others would behave towards them.
Empathy for another
2-3 years
Children begin to experience a wide range of emotions and develop the language with which to describe them. Can show sympathy and understanding for a wider range of peoples feelings. Can be angry and frightened when they see someone else being hurt. They might be quiet and feel guilty when someone has punished them for doing something wrong.
Empathy for another’s life condition
7 / 8 years
Child can think of people belonging to large classes or categories such as unemployed, the poor, all those children without parents, the homeless, children spending xmas in hospital etc. and can have empathy with whole categories of people whose life condition makes them worse off than themselves.



Eisenberg (1983) started a longitudinal study that has followed a group of children from age 4 through to adolescence (Eisenberg et al. 1987, 1991.) asking them questions about the stories. They have found continuing support for the ‘levels theory’ outlined below.


In Eisenberg et al. (1999) the follow up study found that those children who displayed spontaneous pro-social behaviour at age 5 continued to behave this way in early adulthood, showing that there are stable individual differences in pro-social behaviour that have their origins in early childhood.


Evaluation of Eisenberg’s Approach

Primitive and Sympathetic distress:
The prediction that pro-social behaviour is motivated by ‘Sympathetic distress’ but not by the more primitive distress shown by younger children is supported by research.
Caplan and Hay (1989) found that children aged between 3 and 5 were often upset by another child’s distress, but rarely offered to help. Older children realistically think that it doesn’t have to be an adult that helps.
Empathy and Altruism:
Batson’s (1991) empathy-altruism hypothesis supports Eisenbergs view of pro-social behaviour, proposing that human altruism is motivated by experiencing the distress of another. However, Cialdini et al. (1982) have opposed this view, suggesting the negative state relief hypothesis, the view that we feel distressed when someone else is distressed and act in order to relieve our own distress.


Individual and Cultural Variations:
Gender Differences.
Carol Gilligan argued that Kohlberg’s Model is based on the assumption that morality is synonymous with concepts of fairness and justice. She argues that, while this may be (Partly) true for males, it applies much less to females. She suggests that females are more concerned with care and concern for others – the more nurturing role.

The implication here is that a dominant theme that underlies us all or most females is moral sense. However, there must be wide individual differences between these two themes. Many males are nurturing and caring, while many females exhibit a strong sense of fairness and justice

Gilligan created further evidence for gender differences in a later study (Gilligan and Attanucci – 1988) where both men and women were rated on moral dilemmas.
Here it was found that overall, men favoured a justice orientation and women favoured a care orientation, though most people displayed elements of both moralities.

Gilligan et al. (1990) have explained why such gender differences may arise. They claim that women have a stronger sense of ‘interconnectedness’ relationships and intimacy. This interconnectedness arises during early development as a result of maternal attachment.
Boys become independent from their mothers at an earlier age and develop ‘separateness.’
This means that they have to coordinate the interactions of independent individuals earlier, leading them to become more concerned with issues of justice.
Girls however, because of their continued attachment to their mothers are not as keenly aware of the demands of independent others and are, hence, less concerned with fairness as an issue.


Evaluation:
Support:

Eisenberg et al. (1987) found gender differences similar to Gilligan’s: girls between the ages of 10 and 12 tended to give more caring empathetic responses than boys of the same age. However, this may be because girls mature more quickly than boys, while boys catch up later in adolescence. It may also be a result of demand characteristics within the research (those features of an experiment which ‘invite’ particular behaviours from participants).
Eisenberg and Lennon (1983) found that, when researchers were known to be looking at empathetic behaviour, women portrayed themselves in line with their stereotypically nurturing and empathetic role. When the aim of the study was less apparent, gender differences disappeared.

Garmon et al. (1996) — Gilligan and Attanucci’s findings have received some support from Garmon et al. They conducted a study testing 500 participants and found that females were more likely to refer to issues of care when judging moral dilemmas.

Limitations:

Limited evidence of gender variations — In general, however, research has found only small gender differences. In Walker’s (1984) Meta analysis of 108 studies, there were only 8 clear indications of sex differences, but even in those cases, the effects were confounded by other sociological and scoring factors and the differences themselves were very small — less than half a stage.
Unrepresentative samples — Sommers (2000) has attacked Gilligan’s initial interviews, pointing out that they involved only a small sample of urban US women who were deciding whether to have an abortion or not. Such a small and biased sample can hardly constitute a sound basis for a universal stage theory of moral development.
Gender similarities in moral reasoning — Garmon et al. and Gilligan and Attanucci found that there were large overlaps in the moral reasoning shown by men and women. Other research (e.g. Wark and Krebs 1996) has found that men and women, when reasoning about life dilemmas they have faced, use care- and justice-orientations equally.
Shaffer (2002) concludes that ‘its quite clear that the justice and care orientations are not sex-specific moralities as Gilligan had claimed. Nevertheless, Gilligan’s theory and the studies designed to test it have broadened our view of morality by illustrating that men and women often think about moral issues… in terms of their responsibilities for the welfare of other people. Kohlberg emphasised only one way… of thinking about right and wrong.’


Culture:
Inevitably, what is regarded as morally acceptable will vary between cultures and it is illogical to assume that there is a universal concern with justice and fairness or nurture and care. Moral concerns will vary with each culture.

Individualist versus collectivist cultures:
Whiting and Whiting (1975) found that 100% of Kenyan children (Collectivist would behave altruistically compared with 8% of American (Individualist.)
Urban versus rural influences:
Hedge and Yousif (1992) found differences between rurqal and urban dwelling people in the UK.
Snarey and Keljo (1991) have found that post conventional understanding occurs mainly in more developed, industrialised societies and is much less usual in rural communities.

Different kinds of morality:
Moral transgressions involve breaking social rules.
Shweder et al. (1987) interviewed children aged 5 to 13 and adults in India and the US, asking them their views on violations of certain rules. Indian children see interpersonal morals as a post conventional form of moral reasoning whereas Americans in general see justice as the highest level of moral development
Berry et al. (1992) reports that there are more similarities than differences when you look at serious moral issues.




References of note:

Armsby (1971) - Manipulated moral stories so that
there was either a small amount of deliberate damage or a large amount of accidental damage. Younger children did take intention into account, but had difficulty weighing up the relative importance of value and intention which ended up meaning they made up judgements in terms of outcome alone. The conclusion must be that younger children rely more on consequences than intentions when judging right and wrong, but that moral behaviour does not follow a simple formula

Linaza (1984) - Cross Cultural support for Piaget’s theory.
An important feature of Piaget’s theory is his claim that moral stages are innate and universal. This would lead us to expect cross-cultural support for his stages. Here it was found that the same sequence for development of Spanish children. However, we should note that researchers used the same research methods as Piaget. Not all cross cultural evidence is as supportive.

Kruger (1992) - Found support for the peer participation
hypothesis. In this experiment, female participants (average age 8 years) were paired either with a friend of the same age or with their mother. Prior to the experiment, each girl was questioned to determine her stage of moral development. Then each pair was asked to reach an agreement about two moral stories. All individuals were again assessed on a moral reasoning task, and it was found that those girls working with peers showed a greater increase in moral maturity than those working with their mothers. Presumably, the more appropriate discussions between peers assisted moral understanding, even within this short space of time.

Turiel (1983) - Suggested that people do use social-
conventional rules as a way of making moral judgments and therefore it would be reasonable suggest a scheme of moral development based on the use and understanding of such rules.

Chandler et al. (1973) - Found that when the format of these stories
was changed from a verbal to a videotaped presentation, then 6-year-olds recognized the intentions of the actor just as well as older children did.

Feldman et al. (1976) - Found that young children were able to
make judgments based on intention when the intentions of the characters in the stories were evaluated separately from the outcomes, whereas in Piaget’s original stories, the intent of the child was always confused with the consequences of the action.
Walker et al (1987) - Has research that broadly supports
Kohlberg’s general stages and Kohlberg’s own cross cultural research findings seem to apply his stages universally.
Colby (1983) - Followed the original data sample of
Kohlberg for a subsequent 26 years and found that by testing each sample every three years that: children displayed stage 2 by age 10 but examples of stages 1 and 3 were also displayed.
By age 22 no one was stage 1 and stages 3 and 4 were predominant.
By age 36 very little evidence was apparent of stage 5 (Approx 5%)

In other countries: Britain, Mexico, Taiwan, Turkey, USA and Yucatan he found the same pattern of development. Also development tended to be slower in non industrialised countries.

Colby and Kohlberg (1987) - Reported longitudinal studies in turkey and
Israel that produced similar results as Colby (1983)

Snarey et al. (1985) - Examined 44 different cross cultural studies
in 26 countries, all found progression to stage 1 to 4 in same ages. Stage 5 only occurring in urban areas.
Eckensberger (1983) - Reviewed 50 studies again lending support
to the invariant progression of Kohlberg’s stages.
Hartshorne and May (1928) Found that children who attended Sunday
school were less likely to be honest.

Colby and Kohlberg (1987) - Found only 15% reached stage 5 and no
evidence of stage 6. However, stage 6 represents the ideal state of moral development.
Snarey et al (1985) - Argued Kohlbergs theory is not suitable
for non western cultures.

Eisenberg (1983) - Started a longitudinal study that has
followed a group of children from age 4
through to adolescence (Eisenberg et al.
1987, 1991.) asking them questions about
the stories.

Eisenberg et al. (1999) - The follow up study found that those
children who displayed spontaneous pro-
social behaviour at age 5 continued to
behave this way in early adulthood, showing
that there are stable individual differences in
pro-social behaviour that have their origins
in early childhood.
Caplan and Hay (1989) - Primitive and sympathetic distress as an
example of whether to evaluate Eisenbergs
theory in a positive light. They found that
children aged between 3 and 5 were often
upset by another child’s distress, but rarely
offered to help. Older children realistically
think that it doesn’t have to be an adult that
helps.
Batson’s (1991) - Empathy-altruism hypothesis. This supports
Eisenbergs view of pro-social behaviour,
proposing that human altruism is motivated
by experiencing the distress of another.
Cialdini et al. (1982) - Opposed the view, of suggesting the
negative state relief hypothesis, the view
that we feel distressed when someone else is distressed and act in order to relieve our own distress.

Gilligan and Attanucci (1988) - Where both men and women were rated on
moral dilemmas. Here it was found that
overall, men favoured a justice orientation
and women favoured a care orientation,
though most people displayed elements of
both moralities.

Eisenberg et al. (1987) - Provides support for Gilligans stages of
moral development. found gender
differences similar to Gilligan’s: girls
between the ages of 10 and 12 tended to
give more caring empathetic responses than
boys of the same age. However, this may be
because girls mature more quickly than
boys, while boys catch up later in
adolescence. It may also be a result of
demand characteristics within the research
(those features of an experiment which
‘invite’ particular behaviours from
participants).

Eisenberg and Lennon (1983) - Support for Gilligans stages of Moral
Development. found that, when researchers were known to be looking at empathetic behaviour, women portrayed themselves in line with their stereotypically nurturing and empathetic role. When the aim of the study was less apparent, gender differences disappeared.

Garmon et al. (1996) - Support for Gilligans stages of Moral
Development. Gilligan and Attanucci’s findings have received some support from Garmon et al. They conducted a study testing 500 participants and found that females were more likely to refer to issues of care when judging moral dilemmas.



Whiting and Whiting (1975) - Individualist versus collectivist cultures.
Found that 100% of Kenyan children (Collectivist would behave altruistically compared with 8% of American (Individualist.)
Hedge and Yousif (1992) - Urban versus rural influences. Found
differences between rural and urban dwelling people in the UK.
Snarey and Keljo (1991) - Have found that post conventional
understanding occurs mainly in more developed, industrialised societies and is much less usual in rural communities.









Concepts to note:

Imminent Justice.
Hetronomous morality
Moral Realitivism

Empathy
Sympathy
Sympathetic Distress