Moral Development

Definition

Moral development refers to age-related changes in the thoughts and emotions that guide individuals' ideas of right and wrong and how they and others should act. In addressing this broad concept, theorists and researchers have focused on the moral cognitions, feelings, and behaviors that tend to evolve from early childhood to adulthood.

Moral Cognitions

Some researchers have emphasized the cognitive component of morality by studying the development of moral reasoning. Based on his observations of and interviews with 4to 12-year-old children, Jean Piaget proposed a two-stage model of moral development. In the first stage, young children view rules as rigid, unchangeable, and handed down by authorities. By the second stage, older children have become aware that rules and laws are established and maintained through mutual consent, and as a result, they view rules and laws as flexible and changeable rather than as absolute.

Lawrence Kohlberg revised and extended Piaget's model after extensively interviewing people of different ages about various moral dilemmas (for example, whether a man should steal from a pharmacist an extremely expensive drug that may save his wife's life). The model that Kohlberg proposed describes individuals' moral reasoning as progressing through an age-related sequence of three levels, each composed of two distinct stages. In general, Kohlberg's model describes the basis of individuals' moral judgments as evolving from externally imposed rules and laws to internally determined standards and principles.

There have been numerous criticisms of Kohlberg's conclusions concerning the development of moral judgment. For example, Carol Gilligan argued that Kohlberg's view of moral reasoning emphasizes issues of justice, law, and autonomy, which are associated with a traditionally male perspective of morality, and ignores issues such as a concern for the welfare of others and the preservation of interpersonal relationships, which are associated with a traditionally female perspective of morality. Other critics of Kohlberg's theory and research on moral judgment caution that how a person thinks about morally relevant situations may provide little insight into how that person will act in such situations.

Moral Feelings

Some individuals interested in moral development have focused on various emotions (such as guilt, shame, empathy, and sympathy) that are associated with the enactment of morally acceptable behaviors and the avoidance of morally unacceptable behaviors. For example, Sigmund Freud proposed that, through the process of identifying with the same-sex parent, children take on their parent's moral standards and experience feelings of guilt when engaging in (or anticipate engaging in) behaviors that violate those standards.

A more positive emotion than guilt that has been found to be very important in moral development is empathy. Empathy is said to occur when a person responds to another's feeling, such as sadness, with a similar emotion. Changes in the experience of empathy from infancy onward are believed to be associated with age-related changes in the individual's ability to take others' perspectives, both cognitively and emotionally. Individuals who empathize with the feelings of others have been found to be more likely to engage in positive interpersonal behaviors, and less likely to engage in negative interpersonal behaviors, than are [Page 587]individuals who do not empathize with the feelings of others.

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