MORAL DEVELOPMENT

During the last half of the twentieth century, perceptions of increased school violence within the United States renewed public concern for children's moral development. The study of moral development includes the way individuals reason about morality, the emotions associated with morality, the actions or behavior demonstrating morality, and the socialization or teaching of morality. Morality is the level of agreement or disagreement with a system of moral rules or standards of right and wrong. Although some children as young as thirty-four months know the difference between morality and social custom, the distinction between the two concepts is often distorted. For example, many children considered flag burning to have moral consequences. Respect for a flag is a social convention or a culturally agreed upon and accepted custom, regulation, or protocol that changes with social opinion. Moral rules, however, rarely change. Considering this confusion, research concerning moral reasoning, emotionality, behavior, and socialization often overlaps with topics concerning other types of prosocial development.

Reasoning

Like Jean Piaget, the pioneer of cognitive theory, Lawrence Kohlberg, a prominent moral development researcher, believed that people's perceptions, attitudes, and actions are influenced by the way they think or reason. So, he studied the reasoning process employed to resolve ethical dilemmas, not the resulting judgments or rules that foster social justice. Through research, he discovered three progressive stages of moral reasoning: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. Each stage has two phases. All six levels reflect a type of decision that could not be made at an earlier age. Even though an elementary-school-age child has an improved understanding of others' beliefs and thoughts, children between the ages of six and eleven tend to reason in preconventional or self-focused ways. At first, they are likely to make judgments that reflect the need to obey moral rules to avoid punishment, but in later elementary grades, reasoning is likely to reflect a need for reciprocity or in-kind treatment. A person's moral reasoning ability, however, develops over a lifetime and individuals, from the age of twelve on, tend to reason in conventional or community-focused ways. First, they want to please others or receive social approval for following the community's rules. Later, they may think from a law-and-order perspective and value becoming a good citizen. The third stage, post-conventional or ideal-centered reasoning, occurs rarely.

These levels of reasoning may overrule the culture's standards and the individual's personal concerns. Initially, laws are important in ideal-centered analyses of moral dilemmas because they are agreed upon by the community, as a whole, and are created to help everyone. Infractions are accepted if the rules become harmful or if another party breaks the legal contract. Kohlberg suggested, however, that individuals would eventually reason using universal principles established through individual reflection—not legal standards or individual values—but there is little evidence to demonstrate that this stage of reasoning exists.

Evolutionary biologists criticize the validity of Kohlberg's last three stages because, unlike the first three stages, they do not foster the adaptation and cooperation necessary for species survival. Others assert that his moral reasoning levels do not reflect various religious beliefs, cultural values, economic circumstances, social situations, or individual interpretations of moral dilemmas. For example, replies to moral dilemmas frequently reflect either a care for others' perspective or a justice and rights perspective. Morality of care perspectives consider more responsibility toward, interest in, and nurturance of others. Morality of justice perspectives do not consider personal ideas of right and wrong, but reflect theoretical, visionary, and complex notions of morality. When assessing replies to moral dilemmas, some researchers have found that females more than males reflect a morality of care and that males more than females reflect a morality of justice. On the whole, however, Kohlberg's stages reflect a range of human possibility in moral reasoning and have provided a foundation for future theory and research.

Emotionality

A child's moral reasoning ability and behavior expands as emotions, other awareness, and self-awareness develop. People feeling guilt, the emotion of remorse over doing wrong, often feel empathy and are often motivated to confess and compensate. Feelings of guilt, as well as feelings of disgust, sadness, and empathic anger, also coincide with perceptions of injustice and immorality. Those with empathic and sympathetic temperaments or positive moods, in general, tend to exhibit more sharing, supporting, volunteering, helping, and less aggressive behavior, while intense negative emotions tend to lead to destructive or unproductive anger resolution. Feelings of shame that arise from situations in which the self has been challenged appear to be related to antisocial behavior. Shame and embarrassment tend to reflect others' evaluations and play a large role in conformity to social conventions.

The precursors to many emotions are self-and other awareness, which may occur as early as twelve or fifteen months of age. Guilt and other types of mental discomfort about moral and social transgressions begin to develop between fourteen and forty-six months. Additionally, empathic responding, reparative behavior, and awareness of right and wrong are first evident at twenty-four months. Children who demonstrate these feelings and behaviors also demonstrate fewer moral and social transgressions. Between ages seven and eleven the brain has adequately developed so that children can begin to understand moral issues and relate to their own feelings about moral behavior. During adolescence not only does complex moral reasoning increase, but so too does concern for others. Cognitive processing or thinking skills, however, tend to break down when people feel threatened or sad; therefore, it is understandable that adolescents may concentrate on their own needs and desires when the costs of helping others are great.

Behavior

Some people assert that society should be more concerned about moral behavior than moral reasoning. Children demonstrate prosocial and moral behavior when they share, help, cooperate, communicate sympathy, and otherwise demonstrate their ability to care about others and the community. Ideally, these behaviors are performed without the expectation of reward, as reflected in the later stages of moral reasoning. Moral behavior, however, often provides good feelings, kinship, and interconnection with others. The frequency and type of moral or pro-social behavior vary with the frequency and type of moral reasoning, the child's emotional development, the child's gender, and situational factors, including culture and religion. Human respect, concepts of success, and beliefs fostered by family and peers, as well as negative sanctions, are also related to the frequency of prosocial and antisocial behavior.

Children's ability to restrain unacceptable behavior begins to improve in toddlerhood. Children between the ages of seven and eleven, however, regard allegiance to peers as more important than cultural rules, so they often say that they would cheat, lie, or steal to help a friend in need. It is clear that children think about and make choices concerning morality and that peers have a great influence on moral behavior.

Socialization

Moral development is also fostered by the adult control and communication of cultural values, beliefs, and ethics. Less obvious types of support, such as role modeling, may also foster children's moral development. Active reflection, however, is more likely to lead to moral action than merely accepting social conventions and laws, so adult and peer discussion are necessary to foster moral development.

Political, academic, and social influences have encouraged schools to augment parent and peer influence. For example, Kohlberg was aware of increased school violence, and he believed that large schools fostered detachment and poor communication between staff and students. He also had observed high levels of moral development in Israeli kibbutzim, so he created Just Community high schools in which student-faculty groups developed their own rules of conduct through discussion, reason, and argument about fairness. Violations of the rules were subject to the group's criticism and discipline. Kohlberg asserted that moral development would occur when students shared in the responsibility of creating a moral environment. In fact, within these schools, the students' complex moral reasoning increased while antisocial behavior declined. The content of the moral issues addressed, however, was not the same from school to school and increased moral behavior did not extend beyond the school environment.

Providing children with opportunities to question their own moral reasoning and behavior will foster moral development, but discussing the intentions, perspectives, false beliefs, and judgments of characters within a moral dilemma may also foster moral development. When promoting moral and prosocial behavior, parents, teachers, and other important adults should employ activities suitable for the child's age. One study suggested that moral dilemmas should concern children doing familiar things in familiar settings so that moral issues are more easily understood. Many teachers recognize this need for age appropriate curricula; differences in age appropriateness, however, vary between cultures. Therefore, not only should maturational contexts be considered when creating moral development curricula, but so should experiential, cultural, and economic contexts.

The benefits of incorporating moral development in school curricula may extend beyond decreased antisocial and immoral behavior. Research suggests that it may also help children develop a theory of mind and enhance their social and academic success. Therefore, in an effort to prepare children for socially acceptable community involvement, schools should continue to develop and use appropriate curricula, and researchers should continue to explore the realms of moral development.

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Danae E. Roberts