Theories of Moral Development. Marc Jambon. Judith G. Smetana

Transcription

1 1 Theories of Moral Development Marc Jambon & Judith G. Smetana Contact Information: Marc Jambon Department of Clinical & Social Sciences in Psychology Meliora Hall, RC University of Rochester Rochester, NY Phone: Judith G. Smetana Department of Clinical & Social Sciences in Psychology Meliora Hall, RC University of Rochester Rochester, NY 1462 Phone: Keywords: cognitive-developmental theory, compliance, conscience, empathy, evolutionary theory, guilt, moral behavior, moral emotions, moral judgment and reasoning, moral neuroscience, prosocial behavior, social domain theory, socialization To appear in the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. CURRENT WORD COUNT: ~6,375

2 2 Abstract Socialization approaches and cognitive developmental theory have provided two major approaches to studying moral development. Socialization approaches have focused on the development of conscience through guilt and internalized behavior, typically measured in terms of compliance, whereas cognitive-developmental theories have emphasized developmental changes in moral judgments and reasoning. While important differences persist, contemporary approaches have attempted to integrate thoughts, emotions, and behaviors and have stressed the importance of social interactions. The rise of evolutionary based accounts have led to more research with infants and studies incorporating neuroscience, furthering our understanding of the complex nature of moral development.

3 3 Theories of Moral Development I. Introduction For most of the past century, much of the psychological theorizing and research on moral development has stemmed from two distinct traditions; learning, socialization, and internalization perspectives and cognitive- or structural developmental approaches. These theories differ in how they define morality and in their hypotheses regarding its origins and developmental processes. In the first section, we describe how early theorists such as Freud, Skinner, and Piaget helped to shape the assumptions, questions, and methods of later developmental research. We then discuss empirical findings from the different perspectives and examine how contemporary approaches have developed from these foundations. We emphasize that traditional divisions have become less entrenched as theorists have begun to recognize the dynamic, integrative role of emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in moral development. Finally, we briefly discuss recent trends in moral development research from an evolutionary perspective. II. Assumptions and Early Theoretical Roots Socialization Theories. Historically, socialization theories have conceptualized moral development primarily in terms of children s internalization and compliance with adult and societal rules and requests, although they differ in their view of the role of emotions and affect in this process. Approaches emphasizing morality s affective components have their roots in the psychoanalytic tradition of Sigmund Freud. In line with his broader theory of psychosexual development, Freud believed that moral development entailed the internalization of societal standards through the child s identification with parents. This process resulted in the creation of the conscience, or the super-ego in Freudian terms, which functions as an internal regulator of behavior. The conscience inhibits the innate impulses and urges towards selfishness and aggression that, if left unchecked, would otherwise prevent humans from living in society. From

4 4 this perspective, aversive emotions such as guilt, shame, and anxiety are thought to serve as the driving motivations for the child s successful inhibition of impulses and internalization of external norms. Other socialization researchers have been influenced by behaviorist and learning theory principles as exemplified in the work of B.F. Skinner. Like Freud, Skinner did not distinguish between moral norms and other types of social rules or expectations. In contrast to Freud, however, Skinner postulated that moral behaviors are learned through conditioning and reinforcement. Behaviors valued by society are rewarded, while undesirable behaviors are punished. Some social learning theorists, such as Albert Bandura, incorporated cognitive processes, such as observational learning or imitation, to account for how novel behaviors could be acquired independent of reinforcements. Additionally, affective responses like fear and empathy retained a role in other versions of learning theory, although they were interpreted as stemming from conditioned responses resulting from the pairing of feelings of pleasure and pain with external stimuli such as punishment (Eisenberg, 1986). Cognitive Developmental Theories. Rooted in the theorizing of Jean Piaget, cognitivedevelopmental approaches focus on the development of children s moral judgments. These approaches view the child as active in his or her own development and constructing moral knowledge through reciprocal interactions with the environment (termed constructivism). In Piaget s formulation, the process of moral development does not simply entail internalization of external values and standards but rather is a constructive process leading to qualitative changes in children s thinking about right and wrong. For Piaget, morality is inherently other-oriented, revolving around notions of respect, fairness, and justice, and entailing an understanding of rules as serving these moral ideals. Piaget

5 5 derived his theory from interviews with children about game rules and concepts such as stealing and lying, and his moral stage theory is closely tied to changes in children s social relationships and cognitive abilities. Initially, young children are characterized as premoral and having little concern for rules and obligations. Beginning in the preschool years, however, children enter into what Piaget referred to as a stage of heteronomous morality. Due to constraints in their cognitive abilities and their love and fear of parents, children at this stage hold an absolutist view of morality; the good is defined in terms of strict adherence to external rules and authority commands, and acts are seen as wrong based on their objective consequences rather than actors intentions. Social rules are viewed as unchangeable and absolute, leading to the belief that transgressions will be automatically punished (immanent justice). Interactions with peers and increases in cognitive and perspective-taking abilities during late childhood lead to the development of autonomous morality. Through cooperation with others, children come to separate their understanding of rules from notions of reciprocity, justice, and respect. They begin to incorporate intentions into their moral judgments and evaluate rules in terms of whether they serve to uphold moral principles. Although certain aspects of the theory have not received empirical support over the years, Piaget s attempts to define morality as distinct from rules and authority, and his emphasis on social interactions, has had a lasting influence on cognitivedevelopmental theories of moral development. III. Empirical Moral Development Research: Then and Now Socialization Theories. While psychoanalytic theory provided a conceptual basis for understanding the nature and origins of children s moral development, behaviorism and learning theory provided the rigorous empirical methods that were highly regarded during the first half of the 20 th Century. Thus, many socialization researchers integrated ideas from Freudian and

6 6 behaviorist traditions to understand how children internalized external moral norms and expectations through the creation of a conscience. Many studies examined correlations between parenting practices and measures of conscience, although experimental procedures in a laboratory setting were preferred. Moral behavior was typically operationalized as compliance with commands in forbidden toy or resistance to temptation tasks. Children were required to engage in various tedious activities without stopping, or to refrain from playing with, touching, or looking at attractive toys or objects in the absence of an authority figure. The underlying assumption was that children with an internalized conscience would willingly comply with these behavioral demands (Brody & Shaffer, 1982). The most frequently employed measure of moral affect was the extent to which children felt guilty or anxious in response to a transgression. This was typically assessed through children s verbal judgments of hypothetical transgressors feelings of guilt following a rule violation (Brody & Shaffer, 1982). Thus, conscience development was viewed primarily as the extent to which children would be able to inhibit selfish impulses, comply with societal and parental expectations--especially in the absence of authority--and experience guilt when rules were broken. Much early research attempting to integrate psychoanalytic and leaning theories examined the effects of parenting on the internalization process. Because aversive emotions were seen as the primary motivational basis for moral development, disciplinary practices particularly punishment--became the primary focus of research. Three types of parental disciplinary practices after a rule transgression were seen as relevant to children s moral development (Brody & Shaffer, 1982): power assertion (use of threats, force, removal of privileges), love withdrawal (non-physical displays of anger or disapproval, threats of

7 7 abandonment), and induction (parental explanations and reasons for why the behavior was wrong or undesirable). A consistent finding is that parents who use reasoning and induction have children with more advanced conscience development, whereas love withdrawal and power assertion were either unrelated or negatively associated with moral internalization. This was thought to be because these more punitive discipline techniques led children to develop a concern with the anticipation of rewards and punishment, which establishes an external rather than self-regulated moral orientation. In contrast, induction facilitates moral growth by focusing the child on the consequences of actions for others. In turn, this leads to a healthy sense of guilt and compliance to demands, even in the absence of an authority figure or threat of punishment. Contemporary socialization researchers have continued to define moral development as a process of internalization and self regulation, yet they have shifted their attention to underscore the bidirectional nature of the parent-child relationship and the active role of the child. For instance, Joan Grusec and her colleagues (Grusec, Goodnow, & Kuczynski, 2000) have pointed out that parents influence on children s acquisition of moral values depends on a number of additional factors, including children s characteristics and reactions to parental socialization attempts, the broader history of the relationship, and the specific socialization goals and practices parents may have in a given situation. Furthermore, while conscience continues to be defined and measured by behavioral compliance and aversive emotional reactions, Grazyna Kochanska and Ross Thompson have also incorporated positive emotions (e.g. empathy), moral cognitions (e.g. an awareness of the rules and the consequences of transgressions), and concepts such as self and identity into their conceptualizations. Toddlers who are securely attached and in relationships with parents characterized by high levels of responsiveness, warmth, and shared positive affect show greater internalization

8 8 and more advanced conscience development (Kochanska & Aksan, 2006). These early parentchild relationships are thought to provide the motivation for children to willingly and eagerly cooperate with the caregiver s socialization attempts, an orientation referred to as committed compliance. In contrast, children of insensitive parents, who share few positive and mutually enjoyable activities with their child, are more likely to induce situational compliance, or compliance that is motivated and sustained by parental pressure and fear of punishment. Likewise, mothers who elaborate more when talking with their children and who emphasize others emotions, thoughts, and perspectives rather than rules when discussing past behaviors have young children with more advanced conscience development and moral reasoning (Dunn, 2006; Laible & Thompson, 2000). Furthermore, these early relational experiences and children s committed compliance during toddlerhood are associated with more mature conscience development later in life. Researchers also have focused on the role of temperament in moral development. Negative emotional arousal (i.e., anxiety, guilt) and the ability to regulate and inhibit one s behavior are thought to be important for moral internalization and conscience development. Two different temperamental factors--fearfulness and effortful control--have been identified as critical, albeit in different ways (Kochanska & Aksan, 2006). Children who are highly fearful and shy are naturally more prone to negative emotional arousal and are more inhibited in their actions. Fearful children exhibit more guilt after wrongdoing and more compliant behavior, especially when parents use gentle, non-assertive parenting strategies that deemphasize the use of power. For these children, parenting practices that capitalize on negative emotions without causing high levels of distress are most effective for moral internalization. Fearless children, in contrast, do not exhibit feelings of discomfort after transgressions; thus, the emotional arousal

9 9 presumed to motivate moral behavior is lacking. For these children, mutually responsive relationships and secure attachments, rather than parental discipline, is important for conscience development. Thus, the effectiveness of different socialization techniques depends on the characteristics of the child. The temperamental trait of effortful control refers to children s ability to deliberately control behavioral impulses and is therefore thought to be important in the development of selfregulation. Children who are higher in inhibitory or effortful control are better able to resist temptations. As a result, they exhibit greater levels of internalized and compliant behavior throughout childhood (Kochanska & Aksan, 2006). Deficits in attentional and behavioral control also have been linked to problem behaviors, including aggression, substance use, and lower levels of moral reasoning in adolescence and adulthood (Eisenberg, 2000). Two aspects of early conscience development, guilt proneness and regulatory control, are also important for adaptive moral functioning in later childhood. For instance, Kochanksa and her colleagues (Kochanska, Barry, Jimenez, Hollatz, & Woodard, 2009) found that 2- and 3-year olds lacking guilt reactions to transgressions had higher levels of disruptive conduct (i.e. lying fighting, bullying others, and disobedience) at 6 years of age, but only if they were also low in effortful control. This suggests that there may be different paths to conscience development. Children who lack the affective requirements for moral internalization may rely on their ability to consciously regulate behavior. In extreme cases, temperamental deficits in fearfulness and guilt-proneness coupled with emotional and behavioral dysregulation may contribute to the development of psychopathy, which is characterized by chronic and extreme antisocial behavior (Eisenberg, 2000).

10 10 One explanation offered for the link between conscience development and later moral functioning is the concept of a moral self. As children learn to self-regulate and comply with parental standards (i.e. committed compliance), they may come to view themselves as good individuals who adopt their parents values and expectations (Kochanska, Koenig, Barry et al., 2010). In early childhood, the moral self has been operationalized as the extent to which children see themselves as feeling bad and wanting to make amends after wrongdoing, complying with rules, and holding prosocial attitudes towards others. This internalized sense of self is thought to serve as the motivational basis to regulate and guide future behavior. Indeed, Kochanska et al. (2010) found that the moral self at age 5 mediated the link between earlier measures of conscience and later moral conduct. Some have hypothesized that early conceptions of the moral self may provide the foundation for later moral identity development in adolescence and young adulthood (e.g. Hardy & Carlo, 2011; Kochanska et al., 2010), although these connections have yet to be tested empirically. While negative emotions such as guilt and anxiety have been accorded a central role in socialization research, others, such as Nancy Eisenberg and Martin Hoffman, have also examined the positive affective and behavioral components of morality, including empathy and prosocial behavior. They assert that tendencies towards care and cooperation are rooted in our biological make-up. In contemporary developmental research, empathy is most commonly defined as an emotional response stemming from the perception of another s condition or affective state, reflecting what the other person is feeling (Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Sadovsky, 2006; Hoffman, 2000). Empathy is typically viewed as a relatively automatic, value-neutral emotional reaction that provides the foundation for our feelings of care or concern for others, a reaction referred to as sympathy. Sympathy differs from empathy in that it does not involve

11 11 feeling what the other person feels, but instead involves concern stemming from the apprehension of another s negative or distressing experience or state. Thus, while empathy may apply to both negative and positive shared experiences (e.g. feeling happy when others are happy), sympathy specifically pertains to feelings of concern, sorrow, or sadness for others. It is considered more developmentally mature than empathy. When empathic feelings are highly intense or poorly regulated, however, they may lead to personal distress (Eisenberg et al., 2006) or empathic over-arousal (Hoffman, 2000). This highly arousing, aversive negative response focuses on alleviating one s own distress rather than another s. It is therefore not seen as contributing to children s moral development. Empathic connections to others emotions and feelings are evident at birth. Newborn infants less than 24 hours old have been shown to become upset and cry when hearing other infants cry, but not when hearing a tape recording of their own cries (Hoffman, 2000). The reflexive, global empathic reactions of infants become more sophisticated and other-oriented during childhood, aided by normative advances in perspective taking and the ability to regulate emotional reactions. This has been assessed using simulated distress procedures in which adults (usually mothers or experimenters) pretend to be hurt, and children s reactions are coded. These procedures have revealed that facial (e.g., sadness), verbal (e.g. are you ok? ), and behavioral expressions (e.g. trying to alleviate distress) of empathic concern and sympathy increase during the second and third years of life, while personal distress reactions such as crying decline with age (Eisenberg et al., 2006). Individual differences in temperament and parenting practices contribute to variations in empathy-related responding (Eisenberg, 2000; Eisenberg et al., 2006). Children and adults who are less prone to experience intense negative emotions and who are more capable of regulating

12 12 their emotions show higher levels of sympathy and lower levels of personal distress. Parental influences on children s empathy- related responding are complex, and findings differ depending on whether physiological measures, facial expressions, or self reports are measured. In general, warm and supportive parenting, including responsiveness, inductive discipline, and practices that help children understand and cope with their emotions are associated with greater sympathy and less personal distress. These dispositions towards feelings of care and concern for others are important because they provide the motivation for engaging in prosocial behavior (defined as voluntary actions aimed at helping or benefitting others) and refraining from antisocial and aggressive behavior. As this suggests, children and adults who are more prone to sympathy engage in more prosocial behavior, such as donating to charity or assisting others. Those more prone to personal distress engage in less prosocial behavior, except when doing so is likely to relieve their own negative reactions (Eisenberg et al., 2006). In keeping with its definition as a neutral emotional reaction identical to another s situation, empathy--when distinguished from sympathy and personal distress--appears to show little systematic relationship to prosocial behavior. The connections between empathy-related responding and aggression are more ambiguous (Eisenberg et al., 2006). Higher levels of empathy and sympathy are consistently associated with less aggressive and problem behaviors for older children, adolescents, and adults. However, in early childhood, greater empathic-responding (including measures of both empathy and sympathy) has sometimes been linked to higher levels of both prosocial and aggressive behavior, perhaps because aggressive children are more assertive and more likely to engage in both harmful and helpful activities when interacting with others. Indeed, aggressive preschoolers

13 13 who use both coercive and prosocial strategies for obtaining resources are also better able to appear more moral in their verbal responses (Hawley & Geldhof, 2012). Cognitive Developmental Theories. Consistent with Piaget, cognitive- or structuraldevelopmental theories view moral reasoning as central to understanding moral action. Thus, behaviors such as aggression, honesty, and rule-following (moral or otherwise) cannot be understood without knowing the thought process underlying them. As a result, researchers have adapted Piaget s clinical interview method to assess children and adolescents moral reasoning. Judgments are elicited and probed in response to hypothetical stories or real life situations to assess children s understanding. Building on Piaget, and beginning in the late 1950 s, Lawrence Kolhberg (1971) articulated a very well-known global stage theory of moral judgment development. He proposed that individuals conceptions of justice and rights develops through a series of six, qualitatively distinct stages (grouped into three broad levels), with each successive stage representing a more developmentally and logically mature form of moral reasoning. During the pre-conventional level, children s moral judgments are based on concerns with obedience, punishment, and selfinterest. The conventional level of reasoning develops during the adolescent years, and at these two stages, what is morally right is determined by interpersonal duties and societies rules and laws. Although no longer tied to punishment, conventional moral reasoning still constitutes an external orientation because it is based on the existence of external rules and expectations, sharing similarities with Piaget s heteronomous stage. Kohlberg proposed that not until late adolescence (if at all) do individuals fully distinguish between social rules and the principles of justice, rights, and mutual respect, which he referred to as post-conventional reasoning.

14 14 These stages were described as universally applicable to all people, and the ordering was believed to be invariant (that is, occurring in the same sequence). Additionally, stages were described as structured wholes, meaning that an individual s particular way of thinking about morality (e.g. as a conventional matter of rules and authority) would be the same regardless of the content or nature of the situation. Researchers from the Kohlbergian tradition presented individuals with hypothetical dilemmas involving conflicts between different moral concepts, such as life, authority, duties, and obligations. The goal was to capture the organization or structure of thought underlying children s and adolescents moral judgments and how these structures change with age and social experience. Similar to Piaget, Kohlberg believed that advances in moral thinking were tied to the development of children s logical thinking and perspective taking abilities; he described them as necessary but not sufficient for moral growth. Global stage theories were also used to examine other aspects of children s moral thinking, including distributive justice and prosocial reasoning. Kohlberg s influence on the study of moral development cannot be underestimated; many of his contributions, including the need to ground psychological conceptions of morality in philosophical definitions, remain central to many contemporary approaches to moral judgment development. However, problems identified with specifics of Kohlberg s theory led some of his contemporaries to question the validity of his assumptions. For instance, a number of critics argued that Kohlberg s prioritization of abstract notions of justice as indicating the most advanced levels of moral understanding were biased against women and individuals from non- Western cultures. While subsequent research has suggested that claims of bias may have been overstated (Walker, 2006), the notion that Kohlberg s theory does not adequately capture the

15 15 complexity of children s (and adults ) moral understanding has received substantial empirical support. The social domain perspective, as articulated by Elliot Turiel, Larry Nucci and Judith Smetana, has provided the most well known and comprehensive cognitive-developmental alternative to global stage theory accounts of children s moral judgment development. These researchers have critiqued Kohlberg s use of complex hypothetical vignettes to study morality because they underestimate children s ability to make distinctly moral judgments. The results of numerous studies with culturally diverse samples of males and females from around the world have shown that children and adolescents distinguish issues of justice, rights, and welfare from more arbitrarily defined and contextually based social conventions (e.g. how to address an authority figure; what clothes to wear to school) at much earlier ages than Kohlberg s theory suggests. In this approach, young children s judgments are typically studied in response to hypothetical stories that depict straightforward (prototypical) situations that correspond to different domains of social knowledge. For instance, moral domain events, such as one child intentionally hitting another, are presented in situations where they do not conflict with other types of goals, motivations, or events. Children make judgments about the act s generalizability (e.g. if it is ok if performed at home rather than at school or in another country) and rule and authority independence (e.g. would it be ok if there were no rules or authority forbidding it). Even preschoolers judge conventional rules and customs to be contextually relative, alterable, and dependent on authority and consensus. In contrast, moral obligations involving issues of justice, rights, and welfare are judged to be applicable across contexts and independent of the existence of authority or rules for their prescriptive force. By the early school years, children also

16 16 justify their judgments about moral events with concerns for others harm or welfare, fairness or rights, and obligations, whereas they justify conventional events with appeals to authority, tradition, social order, and cultural norms. Social domain researchers have also examined children s understanding of self, identity, the causes and motivations underlying behavior, as well as judgments of personal issues. The latter revolve around individuals control over one s body, privacy, and preferences and choices over issues such as leisure activities and friends. Personal issues are seen as outside the scope of moral and conventional regulation and are judged to be up to the individual to decide because they have no harmful consequences for others. Although the specific nature and content of the personal domain varies at different ages and across cultures, needs for autonomy and personal choice are seen as universal features of human development. As such, they are thought to serve as a foundation for children s developing understanding of rights and justice. Children s experiences as victims, observers, and perpetrators of moral transgressions generate distinctly moral judgments. Observational studies in a variety of contexts, including home, daycare, school, and free-play settings, show that parents and teachers focus on the repercussions of moral transgressions for victims. Adults emphasize the harm or unfairness of moral events and encourage transgressors to take the victim s perspective. Thus, caretakers amplify and direct children s attention toward the consequences of actions for others. Although adults are concerned with enforcing moral rules, many moral conflicts occur primarily between siblings and peers and are often resolved without adult intervention, especially as children grow older. Victims also respond with affectively charged reactions like crying, protests, and retaliation that serve to highlight the harmful nature of the transgressions. Beyond situations of conflict, Judy Dunn (2006) has shown that emotion understanding and positive sibling

17 17 relationships and friendships are linked to greater moral sensitivity and care for others during childhood. In contrast to moral events, authorities (and to a lesser extent peers and siblings) enforce conventional expectations, especially with young children. Authority figures are concerned with maintaining rules and social order and socializing children into the norms and customs of their social group. Thus, they respond to conventional violations with references to rules, authority commands, and the need for social order and decorum. By middle childhood, children also respond to others conventional transgressions. Whereas moral violations have intrinsic consequences for others and therefore evoke powerful emotional responses, violations of home and school conventions are typically judged to be affectively neutral. Observations of preschoolers at home and at school have shown that in contrast to responses to moral and conventional events, interactions regarding personal issues (e.g. clothing and food preferences) often involve more tacit forms of communication. For instance, rather than giving direct commands, caregivers may offer choices, provide different options, or solicit opinions. Thus, parents and children negotiate the boundaries of children s jurisdiction versus what authorities can legitimately regulate. Although preschoolers distinguish straightforward moral events from other types of social norms, their moral understanding continues to develop throughout childhood and adolescence. For instance, compared to preschoolers, older children more consistently apply moral criteria to more abstract moral events, such as those involving psychological harm (e.g. name calling). From early to middle childhood, moral concerns broaden from a concrete focus on harm and others welfare to include an understanding of fairness as equal treatment. Adolescents become able to take context into account, leading to an appreciation for equity, or the idea that

18 18 fair treatment entails a consideration of individuals needs and characteristics (Damon 1977; Nucci & Gingo, 2011). The social domain perspective stresses that children s moral development also must consider individuals thinking about both moral and non-moral concerns as they overlap and conflict with each other (referred to as multifaceted events). This is important because, consistent with the notion that individuals actively strive to interpret and understand their social world, many everyday situations cannot be cleanly categorized as solely matters of morality or convention. Thus, variations in the salience of different concepts and how they become coordinated in thinking help to explain individual differences in moral evaluations. Domain coordination has been examined in children s and adolescents reasoning about various social issues, such as inclusion and exclusion from social groups, the development of prejudice based on race, gender, and ethnicity, children s and adolescents understanding of rights, civil liberties, and government, the influence of cultural hierarchy and social roles on judgments of duty and obligation, parent-adolescent relationships and autonomy development, and lying and honesty in close relationships. The findings from a large and diverse body of research do not support a view of development as entailing progress towards a shared moral viewpoint, that morality overrides other types of concerns as children grow older, or that specific moral values come to be endorsed uniformly and consistently across different contexts (Nucci & Gingo, 2011). Rather, the picture that has emerged is that with age children come to hold a more complex, nuanced, and flexible understanding of morally relevant situations. They become better able to recognize and integrate conflicting moral, conventional, and personal concerns. Charles Helwig s research on individuals understanding of rights, laws, and civil liberties illustrates this point nicely (see Helwig, 2006 and, for examples in non-western

19 19 cultures, Wainryb, 2006). In one study, children s, adolescents, and college students evaluations of rights to free speech and religion were examined in different social contexts, including the family, school, and society. As early as 6 years of age, children conceived of rights as moral issues that were independent of authority and that should be upheld across cultures. However, developmental trends were found in the extent to which individuals identified and coordinated different factors in their judgments. Older adolescents and college students became more likely than younger children to believe that rights may be restricted in certain contexts. With age, children and adolescents began to consider an agent s mental competence and the possibility of negative consequences for others when deciding whether rights should be restricted. In another study, Helwig further found that older adolescents were more likely than younger participants to uphold rights to free speech and religion when they conflicted with established laws. With age, adolescents were better able to coordinate concepts of rules, social systems, and civil liberties. Thus, individuals at all ages endorse rights in some contexts but restrict them in others; there is no clear developmental trajectory towards upholding rights in all situations. Instead, there is an increased tendency with age to attend to and coordinate different factors and circumstances into moral judgments. The factual beliefs individuals hold about the world also may lead to variations in moral judgments (Turiel, Hildebrandt, & Wainryb, 1991). Informational assumptions refer to individuals descriptive understandings of reality, rather than their specific moral values or conceptsand can stem from many sources, including parents, science, and religion. They are often taken for granted (although accepted knowledge can change, such as with scientific progress), and they can vary substantially across individuals, religions, and ethnic groups or cultures. Informational assumptions are believed to lie at the heart of many moral and social

20 20 conflicts. For example, individual differences in individuals assumptions about when life begins and the definition of personhood have implications for whether abortion is seen as a moral or personal issue. Age-related changes in preschoolers understanding of others minds (referred to as theory of mind) have been examined as an important source of developmental change in children s factual assumptions about the world (Wainryb & Brehl, 2006). As an appreciation for others mental states develops, children are more able to consider the reasons, intentions, and motivations behind moral events or transgressions. This allows them to incorporate and integrate information about contexts and situations when forming moral evaluations. Mental state understanding has also been linked to children s judgments of diverse cultures and tolerant attitudes towards other groups practices. Thus, with age, children are increasingly able to take into account both moral and factual beliefs in evaluating their social experiences. IV. Recent Trends in Moral Development Research: Evolutionary Approaches There has been an increased interest in integrating other disciplines, from neuroscience to anthropology, into our understanding of moral development. As an example, recent research has drawn on evolutionary theories to examine the foundational roots of morality in the first few years of life (Hamlin, Wynn, & Bloom, 2007; Warneken & Tomasello, 2009). Specifically, researchers have focused on implicit social preferences and behavioral tendencies towards altruism and cooperation that are hypothesized to be innate. These hardwired tendencies or intuitions have been selected through evolution because of their adaptive value in promoting and maintaining harmony in social groups, affording humans the opportunity to survive and flourish within large groups and societies.

21 21 Recent methodological advances have allowed these theorists to examine early moral dispositions towards care and cooperation in infancy and early toddlerhood. For instance, recent studies have used measures of looking time and play preferences to show that infants and toddlers, some as young as 5-10 months of age, already show an affinity for prosocial actors as well as a dislike of antisocial actors, even when the victims of such actions do not display any signs of distress or negative emotion. By 14 months of age children also show proclivities towards altruistic behaviors, spontaneously giving assistance and help to others when needed, even in the absence of any tangible external rewards. Indeed, giving children tangible rewards for helping may actually lessen the likelihood that they will engage in such behaviors in the future by undermining their intrinsic motivation to help. However, this research is primarily cross-sectional and involves novel experiments in laboratory settings. Therefore, further studies are needed to understand how these early dispositions relate to moral understanding at later ages. Evolutionary theory has also played an important role in the emerging field of moral neuroscience (for extensive discussions see Young & Dungan, 2012; Zelazo, Chandler, & Crone, 2010). Recent advances in brain scanning techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fmri), have allowed researchers to explore the different brain structures and patterns of neural activation associated with different moral capabilities. In fmri studies, individuals are typically presented with experimental stimuli (e.g. depictions of intentional vs. accidental harm) and asked to give forced choice judgments (e.g. ok or not ok). Because fmri records changes in blood flow between different brain areas over time, a large number of experimental trials are needed to ensure that participants are thinking about the stimuli. Given the methodological complexity of this type of research, reaction times are often used to argue for the relative deliberateness or automaticity of a particular judgment, and reasoning and justifications are

22 22 rarely assessed. Neuroscientists have also utilized clinical populations, such as individuals with brain lesions, to examine how impairments in certain neural structures may influence moral functioning. Because of the invasiveness of neuroimaging procedures and the limited number of individuals with brain abnormalities, most moral neuroscience studies have been restricted to small samples conducted almost exclusively with adult populations. Nevertheless, this emerging body of research provides valuable insight into the underlying neural structure of morality. There is a growing consensus that moral functioning is not isolated to one specific brain structure, but instead entails a variety of different areas associated with both cognitions and emotions. As an example, fmri research has identified various areas within and related to the prefrontal cortex (PFC) as playing a crucial role in moral judgments and behavior. Paul Eslinger and Melissa Robinson-Long note that the PFC undergoes development throughout the lifespan and is a core element of a brain system that mediates diverse information processing, consolidates complex types of knowledge and experience, integrates cognitive, visceral-somatic and affective streams of processing, and significantly influences behavioral self-regulation through goal direction, inhibition, decision-making, and self-monitoring (Zelazo, et al., 2010, p. 252). Consequently, there is substantial evidence that individuals with damage to areas of the PFC often show marked impairments in their moral and social decision-making and increased rates of disruptive and antisocial behavior. PFC injury has also been tied to deficits in emotional arousal and effortful control, which socialization researchers have shown to be important for healthy conscience development. Psychopaths, who show low levels of guilt and empathy, high levels of antisocial behavior, and a reduced ability to distinguish between moral and conventional violations, also show abnormalities in PFC structure and activation.

23 23 Recent research has also begun to explore the neural underpinnings of empathy and prosocial behavior. A number of studies have shown that the same areas of the brain responsible for the experience of pain are also activated when individuals observe or imagine others being harmed. Studying children and adolescents (as well as adults), Jean Decety and Kalina Michalska (2010) also found age related changes in neural activation while watching others being harmed. This suggested that empathic sensitivity to others pain may shift with age from a basic, visceral emotional response to a more controlled, integrated process that takes into account different contextual cues and deliberative reasoning. These findings are fully in line with the developmental account of empathy offered by Martin Hoffman (2000). Similarly, prosocial behaviors, such as giving to charity, have been shown to activate regions of the brain associated with reward processing, which is consistent with the notion that evolved tendencies towards altruism and cooperation are intrinsically motivating (Warneken & Tomasello, 2009). The importance of theory of mind understanding for making moral judgments has also been highlighted by Liane Young and Rebecca Saxe. In particular, a brain region known as the right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ) has been consistently implicated in the identification and representation of mental states such as beliefs and intentions. In one study, the researchers found that individuals displaying stronger activation in the RTPJ gave greater weight to an agent s intentions when evaluating hypothetical stories involving harm, leading to more accepting judgments of accidental transgressions. In a more direct test of this link, the researchers used a procedure to temporarily disrupt activation in the RTPJ and found that disrupting activation in this region led individuals to focus more on an act s outcomes (as opposed to intentions). This led them to be more forgiving of situations where agents intentionally tried but failed to cause harm to others. Similar activation of brain regions associated with mental state understanding

24 24 was found by Decety and Michalska (2010) when participants viewed others intentionally--but not accidentally harmed. While moral neuroscience research has the potential to greatly expand our understanding of the neural processes implicated in our sense of right and wrong, the current methodological limitations preclude any strong conclusions regarding the nature of children s moral development. Additionally, much moral neuroscience research does not offer clear definitions of morality and often relies on broad or vague descriptions of rule following behavior or situations entailing life and death (see chapters in Zelazo et al., 2010). V. Summary and Conclusions While contemporary approaches draw on the early work of figures such as Freud, Skinner, Piaget, Kohlberg, and Darwin for inspiration in defining the nature and scope of morality, conceptualizations have been broadened and refined to illuminate the complex, multifaceted nature of children s moral development. Socialization approaches continue to focus on processes of internalization and behavioral regulation. However, they have expanded to incorporate both positive and negative affective experiences, highlighting the importance of interactions beyond the discipline context and embracing a more active view of the child. Similarly, structural-developmental theories continue to view judgment and reasoning as the cornerstone of children s moral development while attending to the complex interplay among emotions, cognitions, and behaviors in individuals evaluations of right and wrong. Additionally, the emergence of evolutionarily based accounts of individuals predispositions towards care and cooperation, and their underlying neural structures have provided valuable insights into the phylogentic and ontegenic roots of morality.

25 25 Considered together, research on moral development has shown that from the first years of life, children are concerned with the well being of others and are motivated towards helping and cooperating with those in their social groups. At the same time, moral development is aided and constructed through children s experiences with family members and peers. The characteristics of the child, their interpersonal relationships with others, and variations in societal and cultural assumptions about the nature of reality all further influence the process of moral development.

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