Social Cognition: Moral Development

How can we define morality? What comes to mind when you think of morals? Why do we care about morality?

To what degree is morality absolute or context dependent? Can it be broken down into different components? Valuable from a research perspective.

Components of morality:

Cognition: thinking about/processing information about topic Affect: Behavior: Bigger picture: culture, belief systems

Piaget and Morality

Game playing children

Preschoolers are premoral; no real sense of rule following; outcome bound rather than intention bound (early to middle childhood) School aged children are heteronomous, rigid rule followers; strict adherence to authority, rules and duties (6-7 to 10-11 years).
Adolescents and adults are autonomous and they understand that together, we in society form rules and can change rules

Kohlberg and Morality

Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987) used dilemmas to assess moral development

Stage theory

Sequence, timing

Kohlberg cont.

Tested a core sample of 72 boys from middle and lower class Chicago families; ages 10, 13 and 16; used the Heinz Dilemma Later examined other samples, including girls, people of different cultures, and delinquents Very Piagetian flavor to the work; but went beyond Piaget in this domain

Kohlbergs Stages

Pre-conventional (childhood):

Punishment-obedience orientation

Bad to steal because youll get punished Ok to steal because he asked first and it wasnt anything bighe wont get punished

Instrumental hedonism

Ok to steal because it will cure her and she can cook for him Not ok to steal because he might not be able to stand being in prison

Conventional: (adolescence):

Good boy/good girl orientation

Ok to do itpeople will think hes a good husband Not ok to do itgood people dont steal BUT some consideration of intention starts to come into play

Authority and social order maintenance

Ok to do itbut accept the consequences Not ok to do itits against the law

Post-conventional (adulthoodor not).

Morality of contracts, individual rights, and democratically accepted law.

Okeveryone has the right to life Not okthe right to fair compensation must be maintained

Morality of individual principles of conscience

Clear and broad conception of universal principles Not scored any more

Problems with theory: specific

Ignores variation in reflection: Ignores moral affect vs. behavior: we dont always behave the way that we think or feel Abstract problems vs. real-life situations: Factors besides moral thought influence behavior:

Problems with theory: general

Culture bias?

Western emphasis Isolated villages and tribal communities seldom get above Stage 3. Can we say that they are less moral?

Gender bias???

Gilligan suggests that women have.

Liberal bias?????

Another perspective: Importance of Affect/Emotion

Adapted by Josh Greene and colleagues

Outcome is the same, but people almost invariably have a problem with the second one

fMRI brain scanning reveals interesting things:

[Medial frontal gyrus vs. dorsolateral prefrontal cortex]

People take longer to make incongruent decisions.

i.e., strong emotional salience in the footbridge condition takes awhile to over-ride cognitively

What does this mean for Kohlberg?

Too much emphasis on cognition & not enough on emotion?

Additional evidence for an affective or emotional argument

Patients with prefrontal damage (where emotion centers of brain are located) :

Engage in highly immoral behaviors (lying, stealing, child neglect) with no remorse

Conclusions about processes involved in moral judgments

Not driven entirely by cognitionin fact, greater

evidence that affect/emotion plays an important role (and maybe it should!)

In many cases:

Development of morality

Amoral babies: not born with any innate sense of right or wrong Milestones in the first two years

Distress at anothers negative emotions Distress at negative outcomes

Research: Childhood

Nelsons work shows more sophistication than Piaget and Kohlberg thought 3- to 4-year-olds; 6- to 8-year-olds Given motive information and outcome information (matched or mismatched) Asked to judge actors goodness

Good motive

Bad motive

Positive Outcome

Billy wants to play ball Billy wants to hit his with friend; friend catches friend with the ball; friend ball catches ball

Negative Outcome

Billy wants to play ball Billy wants to hit his with friend; friend gets hit friend with the ball; friend by ball and cries gets hit by ball and cries

Findings: Even the 3-year-olds took into account the intention information in making judgments However, they had some trouble with mismatch; misremembered incongruent information

Older children differentiated judgments more appropriately than younger children; did not have memory difficulties

Research: Childhood

What do children consider to be fair? (Helwig & Kim, 1999). Grades 1, 3, and 5.

Older children recognize limitations in knowledge

Understanding of contracts and agreements by 3- to 10-year-olds (Keller et al., 2004)

Maxi has to keep his room clean in order to get the bike

Cleans room -> Cleans room -> Doesnt clean room -> Doesnt clean room ->

Had to reason directly about contract violations or make inferences about contract violations.
Results:

All children understood that character would feel bad if contract violated

Adolescence

More motivation to behave morally (mostly stage 3, some stage 4).

Dodges information processing model.

From encoding to enactment E.g., You are walking in the hallway, and suddenly, you trip. You look back and notice that you stumbled over the foot of a person who was sitting in the hallway. What is your interpretation of this?

Adulthood: Postconventional (not everyone)

Rigidity with age

Promotion of moral development

Social/Observational learning: Induction vs. Power assertion vs. Love withdrawal Natural cognitive growth: Social experience: