Hazards in Morality
· No one expects babies to moral in the sense that behavior conforms to the moral standards of social group or they will feel guilty and shame if they fail to do.
· However, a serious psychological hazard to future moral development occurs when babies discover that they get more attention when they do things to annoy and provoke others than they behave in a more socially approved way.
Morality is our ability to learn the difference between right or wrong and understand how to make the right choices. As with other facets of development, morality doesn't form independently from the previous areas we have been discussing. Children's experiences at home, the environment around them, and their physical, cognitive, emotional, and social skills influence their developing sense of right vs. wrong.
Between the ages of 2 and 5, many children start to show morally-based behaviors and beliefs. For example, Tasha may see Juan take the blocks out of Tyler's hands and say, "Juan! You're gonna get in trouble!" At this point, many young children also start to show empathy-based guilt when they break the rules. For example, if Juan from the above example sees Tyler cry because his blocks were stolen, Juan might start feeling somewhat bad that he hurt Tyler's feelings. As a younger child, however, Juan would feel badly only if he was punished for taking the blocks rather than making someone else sad.
According to Piaget, children between the ages of 5 and 10 see the world through a Heteronomous Morality. In other words, children think that authority figures such as parents and teachers have rules that young people must follow absolutely. Rules are thought of as real, unchangeable guidelines rather than evolving, negotiable, or situational. As they grow older, develop more abstract thinking, and become less self-focused, children become capable of forming more flexible rules and applying them selectively for the sake of shared objectives and a desire to co-operate.
Developmental psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg built on Piaget's work to create his theory of the Stages of Moral Understanding. According to Kohlberg, young children at this age base their morality on a punishment and obedience orientation. Much like Piaget, Kohlberg believed that young children behave morally because they fear authority and try to avoid punishment. In other words, little kids follow the rules because they don't want to get in trouble. It's too much to expect preschool-aged children to automatically "do the right thing". However, most young children can understand the difference between "good" and "bad" behavior, and this understanding provides the basis for more complicated moral thinking in the future. For more information, click here. Contemporary research has provided us with additional information about how young children understand morals. Children between the ages 5 and 6 typically think in terms of distributive justice, or the idea that material goods or "stuff" should be fairly shared. In other words, everyone should get his or her exact "fair share." For example, Sally may think that it's only fair if each child gets exactly 2 cookies and the same amount of milk in their glass. Other factors, such as need or effort, are not considered. Sally wouldn't think that Susie should get an additional cookie because her lunch fell on the floor. By age 6 or 7, children begin to consider what people have earned or worked for when thinking about distributive justice. Children can also reason that some people should get more because they worked harder. For example, Jane begins to understand that Jill should earn a bigger prize because she sold more Girl Scout cookies.
During early childhood, children also grow in their ability to tell the difference between moral rules, social norms, and personal choices. By around age 5, children see that moral rules are intended to prevent "really wrong" behavior that could potentially hurt or take away from others. In contrast, social norms are rules about socially-defined behaviors that are wrong or right; however, violating these rules will not hurt other people. For example, Kayla knows that hitting Darin is morally wrong, because it will hurt him and make him cry. In contrast, Kayla knows that playing in the mud in a new dress is wrong because it will probably make Grandma mad, but it's not something that her peers will get upset or angry about. Kayla will also be able to identify different personal choices. She'll realize that even though she doesn't like to put ketchup in her macaroni and cheese, it's okay for Frankie to eat this concoction if he likes that taste.
By ages 6 and 7, the ability to differentiate between moral rules, social norms, and personal choices matures, and children can take more circumstances and possibilities into account when thinking about the ramifications of different behavior. For example, Becky knows that it is not okay to copy her friend's homework, even if she didn't have time to complete her math problems because she was at soccer practice (e.g., a moral rule). She also knows that even though it won't hurt anyone, giggling with and tickling her sister during a religious service is inappropriate (e.g., a social norm). Finally, she can think about the consequences of going outside on a chilly day without a jacket, and choose to do so (against her father's advice) anyway (e.g., a personal choice).
During the Preoperational stage, young children also start to understand that they have a choice between "right" and "wrong" in a tempting situation. For example, Sarah realizes that when Mom says "no cookies before dinner" and there's a plate of cookies on the table, she can choose whether to grab one or not. Children's ability to understand that they can make right or wrong choices leads to more self-control. Most children will be able to start delaying self-gratification (i.e. hold off doing things that will feel good in the moment) in order to make good choices. This new moral ability can be cultivated through positive discipline. Parents can be sure to highlight children's "good choices" and "bad choices" without labeling the children themselves as "bad" or "good." More information about positive parenting styles can be found in our article on Alternative Discipline (This article is not yet complete.).
While most facets of child development have both internal factors (temperament, genetics, and characteristics) and external factors (environment and social influences), morality is largely developed through external factors. Children's environments exert influence on their moral development in many different ways. Adult and peer modeling, family and societal values, religious values and beliefs, and parenting practices can all play a part in shaping morality.
Some moral behaviors are passed on by way of verbal stories or structured lessons, such as religious parables or classroom teaching activities. However, more commonly, moral behavior is learned through direct observation and imitation. Children carefully watch the behavior of their caretakers, other adults, and older children. If they see Uncle Dan being helpful to strangers, they'll be more likely to be helpful to others as well.
Parenting practices and daily discipline have a huge effect on a child's developing sense of morality. Children who receive fair consequences every time they break a rule will learn to connect their choices with consequences. For example, if Daisy gets in trouble only periodically for taking change out of Mommy's coin jar, Daisy may learn that stealing is sometimes okay. However, if Daisy learns that she will get fair consequences every time she takes money from Mom's coin jar, she will understand that stealing is never okay. Furthermore, she will learn a lesson (hopefully) that she will carry forward as she matures into a responsible and moral young woman.
Late childhood
Moral Development: Children predominantly focused in the needs and wants of themselves, although they have developed a conscience and move from thinking in terms of “What’s in it for me?” fairness (e.g. “If you did this for me, I would do that for you.”). They now want to gain social approval and live up to the expectations of people close to emThey tend to have a”Golden Rule” morality where they can take the perspective of others and may place the needs of others over their own self-interest. However, their moral thinking abilithties are not always reflected in their behavior.
Moral development involves the formation of a system of values on which to base decisions concerning "right" and "wrong,” or "good" and "bad." Values are underlying assumptions about standards that govern moral decisions.
Although morality has been a topic of discussion since the beginning of human civilization, the scientific study of moral development did not begin in earnest until the late 1950s. Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987), an American psychologist building upon Jean Piaget 's work in cognitive reasoning, posited six stages of moral development in his 1958 doctoral thesis. Since that time, morality and moral development have become acceptable subjects of scientific research. Prior to Kohlberg's work, the prevailing positivist view claimed that science should be "value-free"--that morality had no place in scientific studies. By choosing to study moral development scientifically, Kohlberg broke through the positivist boundary and established morality as a legitimate subject of scientific research.
There are several approaches to the study of moral development, which are categorized in a variety of ways. Briefly, the social learning theory approach claims that humans develop morality by learning the rules of acceptable behavior from their external environment (an essentially behaviorist approach). Psychoanalytic theory proposes instead that morality develops through humans' conflict between their instinctual drives and the demands of society. Cognitive development theories view morality as an outgrowth of cognition, or reasoning, whereas personality theories are holistic in their approach, taking into account all the factors that contribute to human development.
The differences between these approaches rest on two questions: 1) where do humans begin on their moral journey; and 2) where do we end up? In other words, how moral are infants at birth? And how is "moral maturity" defined? What is the ideal morality to which we aspire? The contrasting philosophies at the heart of the answers to these questions determine the essential perspective of each moral development theory. Those who believe infants are born with no moral sense tend towards social learning or behaviorist theories (as all morality must therefore be learned from the external environment). Others who believe humans are innately aggressive and completely self-oriented are more likely to accept psychoanalytic theories (where morality is the learned management of socially destructive internal drives). Those who believe it is our reasoning abilities that separate us from the rest of creation will find cognitive development theories the most attractive, while those who view humans as holistic beings who are born with a full range of potentialities will most likely be drawn to personality theories.
What constitutes "mature morality" is a subject of great controversy. Each society develops its own set of norms and standards for acceptable behavior, leading many to say that morality is entirely culturally conditioned. Does this mean there are no universal truths, no cross-cultural standards for human behavior? The debate over this question fuels the critiques of many moral development theories. Kohlberg's six stages of moral development, for example, have been criticized for elevating Western, urban, intellectual (upper class) understandings of morality, while discrediting rural, tribal, working class, or Eastern moral understandings. (See Kohlberg's theory of moral reasoning. ) Feminists have pointed out potential sexist elements in moral development theories devised by male researchers using male subjects only (such as Kohlberg's early work). Because women's experience in the world is different from men's (in every culture), it would stand to reason that women's moral development might differ from men's, perhaps in significant ways.
The rise in crime, drug and alcohol abuse, gang violence, teen parenthood, and suicide in recent years in Western society has also caused a rise in concern over morality and moral development. Parents and teachers want to know how to raise moral children, and they turn to moral development theorists to find the answers. Freudian personality theories became more widely known to the Western public in the 1960s and were understood to imply that repression of a child's natural drives would lead to neuroses. Many parents and teachers were therefore afraid to discipline their children, and permissiveness became the rule. Cognitive development theories did little to change things, as they focus on reasoning and disregard behavior. (After a great deal of criticism in this regard, Kohlberg and other cognitive development theorists did begin to include moral actions in their discussions and education programs, but their emphasis is still on reasoning alone.) Behaviorist theories, with their complete denial of free will in moral decision-making, are unattractive to many and require such precise, dedicated, behavior modification techniques to succeed that few people are able to apply them in real-life situations.
The continuing breakdown of society, however, is beginning to persuade people that permissiveness is not the answer and another approach must be found. Schools are returning to "character education" programs, popular in the 1920s and 1930s, where certain "virtues" such as honesty, fairness, and loyalty, are taught to students along with the regular academic subjects. Unfortunately, there is little or no agreement as to which "virtues" are important and what exactly each "virtue" means. For example, when a student expresses dislike of another student, is she or he practicing the virtue of "fairness" or, rather, being insensitive to another's feelings? If a student refuses to salute the flag, is he or she betraying the virtue of "loyalty" or, rather, being loyal to some higher moral precept? These complex questions plague "character education" programs today, and their effectiveness remains in dispute.
Another approach to moral education that became popular in the 1960s and 1970s is known as "values clarification" or "values modification. " The purpose of these programs is to guide students to establish (or discern) their own system of values on which to base their moral decisions. Students are also taught that others may have different values systems, and that they must be tolerant of those differences. The advantages of this approach are that it promotes self-investigation and awareness and the development of internal moral motivations (which are more reliable than external motivations), and prevents fanaticism, authoritarianism, and moral coercion. The disadvantage is that it encourages moral relativism, the belief that "anything goes." Pushed to its extreme, it creates social chaos because no one can be held to any universal (or societal) moral standard. "Values clarification" is generally seen today to be a valuable component of moral education, but incomplete on its own.
Lawrence Kohlberg devised a moral education program in the 1960s based on his cognitive development theory. Called the Just Community program, it utilizes age-appropriate (or stage-appropriate) discussions of moral dilemmas, democratic rule-making, and the creation of a community context where students and teachers can act on their moral decisions. Just Community programs have been established in schools, prisons, and other institutions with a fair amount of success. Exposure to moral questions and the opportunity to practice moral behavior in a supportive community appear to foster deeper moral reasoning and more constructive behavior.
The second part of the story of moral development raises the curtain on the six stages of moral reasoning.
These stages of moral reasoning begin in the preschool years and may still be developing during adulthood. The chart (below) gives a thumbnail sketch of these stages; later I'll devote a chapter to each of them. Think of these stages as theories of right and wrong that we carry around in our heads as children, teenagers, or adults. Each stage or theory has a different idea of what's right and a different idea of the reason why a person should be good. Each new stage of moral reasoning brings a person a step closer to a fully developed morality of respect.
For each stage, the chart also indicates what I think are reasonable developmental goals: that is, the approximate age period when I think kids of normal intelligence, growing up in a supportive and stimulating moral environment, have a good chance of attaining a particular stage. Take a minute to look at this chart. You are a big part of your child's moral environment, but you're not the only influence on your child's progress through these stages of moral reasoning. Your child's general intelligence and amount and variety of social interaction (friendships, participation in groups) are also important. As kids get older, social and the intellectual experiences beyond the family are especially important in developing the society-wide "big picture" that's part of Stages 4 and 5.
What do these stages of moral reasoning tell us? They tell us, first of all, that kids are not short adults. They think differently from us. They don't see the world the way we do.
The Stages of Moral Reasoning* (Ages indicate reasonable developmental expectations for a child of normal intelligence growing up in a supportive moral environment.)
STAGE 0: EGOCENTRIC
REASONING (preschool years - around age 4) | What's Right: | I should get my own way. |
Reason to be good: | To get rewards and avoid punishments. |
STAGE 1: UNQUESTIONED
OBEDIENCE (around kindergarten age) | What's Right: | I should do what I'm told. |
Reason to be good: | To stay out of trouble. |
STAGE 2: WHAT'S-IN-IT-FOR ME FAIRNESS (early elementary grades) | What's Right: | I should look out for myself but be fair to those who are fair to me. |
Reason to be good: | Self-interest: What's in it for me? |
STAGE 3: INTERPERSONAL
CONFORMITY (middle-to-upper elementary grades and early-to-mid teens) | What's Right: | I should be a nice person and live up to the expectations of people I know and care about. |
Reason to be good: | So others will think well of me (social approval) and I can think well of myself (self-esteem) |
STAGE 4: RESPONSIBILITY TO "THE SYSTEM" (high-school years or late teens) | What's Right: | I should fulfill my responsibilities to the social or value system I feel part of. |
Reason to be good: | To keep the system from falling apart and to maintain self-respect as somebody who meets my obligations. |
STAGE 5: PRINCIPLED CONSCIENCE (young adulthood) | What's Right: | I should show the greatest possible respect for the rights and dignity of every individual person and should support a system that protects human rights. |
Reason to be good: | The obligation of conscience to act in accordance with the principle of respect for all human beings. |
*Stages 1 through 5 are adapted from Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral reasoning as described in Kohlberg (1975, 1978, 1981); Stage 0 is adapted from William Damon (1977) and Robert Selman (1980).
Parents are often surprised to learn that kids' moral reasoning is so different from their own and goes through such swings as they move through the stages. At Stage 0 (Egocentric Reasoning), which usually rules the roost at age 4 (but may start to show up even sooner), kids' moral logic is almost laughably self-centered. "Not fair! Not fair!" they say, meaning, "I'm not getting what I want!" Their moral indignation comes from a real belief that whatever they want is fair, just because they want it!
At Stage 1 (Unquestioning Obedience), often dominant at around age 5, kids do an about-face and reason, "Grown-ups have a right to be boss, and I should do what they say!" At Stage 2 (What's-in-It-for-Me Fairness), which usually breaks through between 5 1/2 and 7, kids do another flip-flop and think, "We kids have got our rights! Parents shouldn't order us around!" Stage 2 thinkers also develop a fierce but narrow sense of fairness and look at being good as kind of a tit-for-tat deal ("I'll help with the dishes, but what'll you do for me?").
I want to stress that even in the early stages of moral reasoning development, you can't be sure of a child's moral stage just from knowing his or her chronological age. One 5-year-old may be mainly Stage 0, another Stage 1. One 7-year-old may be predominantly Stage 1, another Stage 2. And the higher the moral stage, the more variation there is in when kids reach it. Many teenagers, for example, are still stuck in Stage 2 and are responsible for a lot of the me-centered behavior that we looked at earlier in the chapter. Other kids, especially if their social environment has demanded more than a what's-in-it-for-me morality, may begin to develop Stage 3 (Interpersonal Conformity) as early as the middle-to-upper elementary grades and continue to develop it through their early teens.
At Stage 3, kids are very much concerned about what people think of them. They figure, "If I want people to like me, I'd better be a nice person." By living up to other people's expectations, Stage 3 kids can also feel good about themselves. This kind of thinking can be the source of a lot of cooperative and caring behavior.
But Stage 3 has an obvious weakness: it confuses what's right with what other people want you to do. That's okay as long as the other people are presenting positive moral values (be kind, honest, respectful of others). The challenge for parents of Stage 3 teenagers is to keep them tuned into positive values and strong enough to resist the peer-group seduction to get into things like sex, drugs, and drinking because "everybody's doing it. "
Many teenagers, some during high school, some later, come to realize the shortcomings of Stage 3 reasoning and go on to develop the more independent, society-wide perspective of Stage 4 (Responsibility to the System). They keep the best of Stage 3 -- they still care about people they know personally -- but they look farther and see more. Stage 4 reasons: "There's more to being a good person than pleasing my family and friends. There's a bigger society out there, and I'm part of it. I've got certain responsibilities and obligations to think of."
The particular social system that a Stage 4 thinker feels obligated to may not be the one that most people support. A Stage 4 socialist living in a capitalistic society, for example, would be opposed to the values of the prevailing system. But regardless of their particular beliefs or values, Stage 4 thinkers share a sense of commitment and duty to some kind of a larger system beyond themselves. Most of the time, that system includes familiar social institutions: church, school, family, and country.
When Stage 4 considers irresponsible behavior, it thinks, "What if everybody did it? What if everybody shoplifted? What if everybody did as they pleased? The whole system would collapse." The great majority of Stage 4 thinkers believe that people should obey the law, pay their taxes, vote in elections, take care of their children, help their community, and serve their country. They believe in being a good and conscientious citizen. They're the backbone of any society. Teenagers and young adults who don't develop Stage 4 moral reasoning -- and, sadly, a great many do not -- lack the understanding of civic responsibilities required for good citizenship.
The major drawback of Stage 4 is that it sometimes gets carried away with the system it believes in and rides roughshod over the rights of individual people. A Stage 4 reasoner might say, for example, that people shouldn't be allowed to assemble to protest government policy if it's going to "stir up trouble" or cause problems for the government. Some societies and some individuals use Stage 4 reasoning to suppress individual freedom in the name of "law and order" or for the sake of a "cause." When Stage 4 sees a conflict between the system and individual rights, it comes down on the side of the system.
Stage 5, the stage of principled conscience, reorders the moral priorities. It says, "Look, any social system exists to benefit its individual members, not the other way around. No system should ever violate the rights of the people it was founded to protect." The founding fathers were thinking Stage 5 when they told us that if the government doesn't protect our inalienable individual rights, we should throw it out and get a new one! And yet Stage 5 has the highest respect for law, because it knows that law is the chief instrument for securing human rights. But it also knows that there's something even more basic than law which is the reason for law in the first place. And that's morality. Respect for persons.
Stage 5 also has a strong social conscience, based on the moral principle of respect for individual persons. That principle enables Stage 5 thinkers to mentally "stand outside" their social system and ask, "Are things as good as they ought to be? Is justice being served? Are individual human rights being fully protected? Is there the greatest good for the greatest number? And as I go about my personal life, do I show respect for the rights and dignity of all the individuals I deal with?"
At present, the research shows, only a minority of adults attain Stage 5. How many would attain it if homes and schools made a systematic effort to foster moral reasoning, starting in the earliest years, nobody knows.
