chapter 13 social cognition and moral development

CHAPTER 13SOCIAL COGNITION AND MORAL

DEVELOPMENT

Learning Objectives

• What is a theory of mind?

• What are the developmental milestones associated with the acquisition of a theory of mind?

• What developmental changes occur in the acquiring of a theory of mind and what factors affect its emergence?

Social Cognition

• Social cognition is thinking about the perceptions, thoughts, emotions, motives, and behaviors of self, other people, groups, and social systems

• A theory of mind is the understanding that people have mental states such as desires, beliefs, and intentions and that these mental states guide their behaviors

– Researchers used the false belief task to assess children’s development of a theory of mind

Caption: The false belief task involving Sally andAnne. The child who has developed atheory of mind should say that Sally willlook in the basket based on her falsebelief that the marble is there. The childwho fails this false belief task says thatSally will look in the box (where the childknows the marble has been moved).

Social Cognition

• In the false belief task, children are asked to respond to the following scenario: “A girl named Sally puts her marble in her basket and leaves the room. While she is gone, Anne moves the marble to her box. Sally returns to the room. Where will Sally look for her marble?”

Social Cognition

• Children who pass the false belief task and show evidence of having a theory of mind to explain human behavior say that Sally will look for her marble in the basket (where she falsely believes it to be) rather than in the box (where it was moved without her knowledge)– Children who have a theory of mind believe

that Sally’s behavior will be guided by her false belief about the marble’s location; they are able to set aside their own knowledge of where the marble ended up after Anne moved it

Social Cognition – Developing a Theory of Mind

• Certain abilities are considered important early signs of a theory of mind

– An infant’s ability to get involved in bouts of joint attention (by pointing at an object and then looking toward a companion to encourage the other to look at the object, too)

– In their first months of life, infants come to understand, partly from their own actions on the world, that other people have intentions, set goals, and act to achieve them


• Certain abilities are considered important early signs of a theory of mind (continued)

– Between 1 and 2 years, when infants engage in their first simple pretend play, they show a primitive understanding of the difference between pretense (a kind of false belief) and reality

– Imitation of other people in the first year of life reveals an ability to mentally represent their actions and possibly the goals or intentions behind them


– Emotional understanding (for example, comforting a playmate who is crying) reflects an understanding that other people have emotions and that these emotions can be influenced for good or bad


• Wellman (1990) theorized that children’s theories of mind develop in two phases

– Around age 2, children develop a desire psychology in which they explain their behavior and that of others in terms of wants or desires

– By age 4, children progress to a belief-desire psychology and understand that people do what they do because they desire certain things and because they believe that certain actions can help them fulfill their desires


• What are the roles of nature and nurture in the development of a theory of mind?– In support of the role of nature

• Evolutionary theorists argue that having a theory of mind was adaptive for the evolution of the human species

• Development of a theory of mind requires a certain level of biological maturation, especially neurological and cognitive development

• Researchers believe that mirror neurons – neurons that are activated both when we perform an action and when we observe someone else perform the same action – are involved in theory-of-mind understandings


• What are the roles of nature and nurture in the development of a theory of mind?– In support of the role of nurture, certain factors influence

children’s development of a theory of mind• Social interaction involving language• Parental sensitivity to children’s needs and

perspectives and the formation of secure attachments

– Especially important is parental “mind-mindedness,” which involves talking in elaborated and appropriate ways about children’s mental states

• Cultural perspectives on beliefs and thoughts


• Formulating a theory of mind has consequences for development

– Children who have mastered theory-of-mind tasks generally tend to have more advanced social skills and better social adjustment than those who have not

• They understand that others’ emotional responses might differ from their own, and they can think more maturely about moral issues

– Theory-of-mind skills also can be used for inappropriate purposes: bullies and good liars often are adept at “mind reading”

Social Cognition – Describing and Evaluating Other People

• Children younger than 7 or 8 describe themselves and others in terms of physical appearance, possessions, and activities

• Around age 7 or 8, children’s descriptions of people show that they are beginning to think about people in terms of enduring psychological traits (“nice,” “funny,” “bossy”)

Social Cognition – Describing and Evaluating Other People

• As children reach age 11 or 12, they make more use of psychological traits to explain why people behave as they do (“. . . because he is mean”)

• Compared to children, adolescents describe others in psychological terms – traits, interests, values, and feelings

– Adolescents can incorporate seeming inconsistencies into their understanding of others

• “She brags but it is because she is insecure and wants to hide her insecurities”

Learning Objectives

• How do person perception and role-taking skills develop?

• Why are these skills important?

• How do they change over the lifespan?

Social Cognition – Social Perspective-Taking

• An important aspect of social cognitive development involves outgrowing childhood egocentrism and developing social perspective-taking

– The ability to adopt another person’s perspective and understand her thoughts and feelings in relation to your own

• Social perspective-taking skills are essential in thinking about moral issues from different points of view, predicting the consequences of a person’s actions for others, and empathizing with others


• Selman (1976) described the development of social perspective-taking abilities in stages– Because children 3 to 6 years old are

egocentric; tend to assume that others share their point of view

– By age 8 to 10, as concrete-operational cognitive abilities solidify, children appreciate that two people can have different points of view even if they have access to the same information• Children are able to think about their own

thoughts and about the thoughts of another person, and they realize that their companions can do the same


• Selman (1976) described the development of social perspective-taking abilities in stages (continued)

– By age 12, adolescents who have reached the formal-operational stage of cognitive development become capable of mentally juggling multiple perspectives

• Adolescents can keep in mind simultaneously their own perspective, that of another person, and that of an abstract “generalized other,” or the broader social group


• Advances in social cognition are more likely if parents are good models of social perspective taking, consider their children’s feelings and thoughts, and rely on explanation rather than punishment in disciplining their children

• Advanced social perspective-taking skills help make children more sensitive and desirable companions– Children with advanced social perspective-

taking skills are more likely than age-mates with less advanced skills to be sociable and popular and to enjoy close relationships with peers


• The social-cognitive skills of adults may continue to improve after adolescence

– Researchers found that adults, especially those of middle age, were better able than adolescents to see both sides of an issue and to integrate multiple perspectives into a workable solution


• Some researchers have detected deficiencies in the social-cognitive skills of older adults

– Declines in basic cognitive functions such as working memory and processing speed can take a toll on social-cognitive performance


• Social cognitive skills also may be well-maintained late in life

– Hess and colleagues (2005) found that middle-aged and elderly adults were more adept than young adults at reading a person’s behavior to infer whether he possessed traits such as honesty or intelligence

• Elderly adults perform as well as young and/or middle-aged adults on many social-cognitive tasks, probably because they have accumulated expertise about the world of people


• Reasons that social-cognitive skills may be well-maintained late in life included the following– The areas of the cortex that support social

cognition and emotional understanding age more slowly than the areas that support nonsocial cognition

– It has been observed that in completing social-cognitive tasks, older adults tend to rely on cognitive strategies such as simple rules of thumb and strongly-held beliefs about people

– Social-cognitive skills may hold up well, especially in “real life” people-reading tasks, because they are used – exercised – every day


• Possibly the most important research finding on social-cognitive development in adulthood is that older adults differ greatly in their social cognitive abilities

– Those who have the sharpest social-cognitive skills tend to be socially active and involved in meaningful social roles such as spouse, grandparent, church member, and worker

– It is mainly when elderly people become socially isolated or inactive that their social cognitive skills become rusty

Learning Objectives

• What is morality?

• What are the three basic components of morality?

• How did Piaget and Kohlberg explain the development of moral reasoning?

• What are the important characteristics of each stage of Piaget’s theory?

• What are the important characteristics of each level and stage of Kohlberg’s theory?

Perspectives on Moral Development

• Developmental scientists have focused on three basic components of morality– The affective, or emotional, component

consists of the feelings (guilt, concern for others’ feelings, and so on) that surround right or wrong actions and that motivate moral thoughts and actions

– The cognitive component centers on how we conceptualize right and wrong and make decisions about how to behave

– The behavioral component reflects how we behave when, for example, we experience the temptation to cheat or are called upon to help a needy person


• Moral affect – positive and negative emotions related to matters of right and wrong – can motivate behavior– Negative emotions (shame, guilt) can keep us

from doing what we know is wrong– Positive emotions (pride, self-satisfaction) can

occur when we do the right thing

• Empathy – the vicarious experiencing of another person’s feelings – is an emotional process that is important in moral development

• Empathy can motivate prosocial behavior – positive social acts, such as helping or sharing, that reflect concern for the welfare of others


• Although aspects of Freud’s theory of moral development are not supported, researchers agree about his main themes

– Moral emotions are an important part of morality and motivate of moral behavior

– Early relationships with parents contribute to moral development

– Children must internalize moral standards if they are to behave morally even when no authority figure is present to detect and punish their misbehavior


• Cognitive developmental theorists study morality by looking at the development of moral reasoning – the thinking process involved in deciding whether an act is right or wrong

• Moral reasoning is believed to progress through an invariant sequence – a fixed and universal order of stages, each of which represents a consistent way of thinking about moral issues that is different from the stage preceding or following it


• Piaget’s theory of moral development includes three aspects – the premoral period, heteronomous morality, and autonomous morality– Premoral period

• During the preschool years, children show little awareness or understanding of rules and cannot be considered moral beings

– Heteronomous morality• Children 6 to 10 years old take rules seriously,

believing that they are handed down by parents and other authority figures and are sacred and unalterable

• They judge rule violations as wrong based on the extent of damage done, not paying much attention to whether the violator had good or bad intentions


• Piaget’s theory of moral development (continued)– Autonomous morality

• At age 10 or 11, most children enter a final stage of moral development in which they begin to appreciate that rules are agreements between individuals – agreements that can be changed through a consensus of those individuals

• In judging actions, they pay more attention to whether the person’s intentions were good or bad than to the consequences of the act


• Lawrence Kohlberg concluded that moral growth progresses through a universal and invariant sequence of three broad moral levels, each of which is composed of two distinct stages

– Each stage grows out of the preceding stage and represents a more complex way of thinking about moral issues


• Summary of Kohlberg’s theory– Level 1: preconventional morality

• Stage 1: punishment-and-obedience orientation• Stage 2: instrumental hedonism

– Level 2: conventional morality• Stage 3: “good boy” or “good girl” morality• Stage 4: authority and social order-maintaining

morality– Level 3: postconventional morality

• Stage 5: morality of contract, individual rights, and democratically accepted law

• Stage 6: morality of individual principles of conscience


• Influences on moral thinking– Freud emphasized the role of parents– Piaget and Kohlberg believed that the two main influences on

moral development are cognitive growth and social interactions with equals• Cognitive growth

– At the conventional level, the ability to take other people’s perspectives is required

– At the postconventional level, formal-operational thinking is required

• Social interactions with equals– Negotiations to work out differences in perspectives– Advanced schooling– Participation in a complex, diverse, democratic society

Learning Objectives

• How do social-learning theorists explain moral behavior?

• According to evolutionary theory, what are the functions of morality?

Moral Behavior: Social-Learning Theory

• Social-learning theorists have focused on the behavioral component of morality – what we actually do when faced with temptation or with an opportunity to behave prosocially– According to social-learning theory, moral

behavior is learned in the same way that other social behaviors are learned: through observational learning and reinforcement and punishment principles


• Social-learning theorists believe moral behavior is believed to be strongly influenced by situational– Due to situational influences, what we do

(moral performance) is not always reflective of our internalized values and standards (moral competence)


• Bandura emphasized that moral cognition is linked to moral action through self-regulatory mechanisms that involve– Monitoring and evaluating our actions– Disapproving of ourselves when we

contemplate doing wrong– Approving of ourselves when we behave

responsibly or humanely


• Bandura suggested that mechanisms of moral disengagement allow us to avoid condemning ourselves when we engage in immoral behavior even though we know right from wrong– Individuals who have perfected moral

disengagement tend to be the ones who engage in the most antisocial and unethical behaviors

Moral Behavior: Functions of Morality –Evolutionary Theory

• Evolutionary theorists focus on how moral thought, emotion, and behavior may have helped humans adapt to their environments over the course of evolution– Prosocial behaviors (cooperation, altruism)

and mechanisms for controlling and inhibiting harmful behaviors may have evolved because they enhanced survival

Moral Behavior: Functions of Morality –Evolutionary Theory

• Evolutionary theorists argue that humans have an evolved genetic makeup that predisposes them not only to behave antisocially but also to empathize with their fellow humans and to behave prosocially and morally

Learning Objectives

• How can parents provide their infants and children with moral socialization?

• What child characteristics determine how morally trainable a child is likely to be?

• How do current researchers evaluate Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s views on infants’ and children’s moral reasoning?

The Infant – Early Moral Training

• Infants are predisposed to be empathic, prosocial beings and learn many important moral lessons during their first 2 years of life

– Infants begin to learn that their actions have consequences, to associate negative emotions with violating rules, and to exert self-control when they are tempted to violate rules

The Infant – Early Moral Training

• According to Kochanska and colleagues (2009), moral socialization is based upon

– A secure parent-infant attachment

– Development of a mutually responsive orientation

• A close, emotionally positive, and cooperative relationship in which child and caregiver care about each other and are sensitive to each other’s needs

• Parents also can foster early moral development by discussing their toddlers’ behavior in an open way, expressing their feelings, and evaluating their children’s acts as good or bad

The Infant – Empathy and Prosocial Behavior

• There is evidence that empathy and prosocial behavior are part of human evolutionary heritage

– Newborns display a primitive form of empathy when they are distressed by the cries of other newborns

– From the ages of 1 to 2, infants develop a form of empathy that motivates helping, such as when a toddler tries to comfort someone in distress

– Prosocial behaviors (helping, sharing, comforting) become increasingly common from age 1 to age 2

The Child

• Both Piaget and Kohlberg underestimated children’s abilities to engage in moral reasoning

– Nelson’s (1980) study showed that young children can base their moral judgments on both a person’s intentions and the consequences of his act

The Child – Understanding Rules

• Turiel (1978, 1983, 2006) observed that children distinguish between different kinds of rules– Moral rules: standards that focus on the welfare and

basic rights of individuals• Rules against hitting, stealing, lying, and

otherwise harming others or violating their rights– Social-conventional rules: standards determined by

social consensus that tell us what is appropriate in particular social settings• Rules of social etiquette, including the rules of

games and school rules for behavior

• From their preschool years, children understand that moral rules are more compelling and unalterable than social-conventional rules

The Child – Applying Theory of Mind

• Once they develop a theory of mind, children’s moral thinking becomes more sophisticated

– Preschoolers who pass theory-of-mind tasks are able to distinguish between lying (deliberately promoting a false belief) and simply having one’s facts wrong

• Theory-of-mind skills also help young children understand people’s emotional reactions to people’s behavior, an important consideration in judging right and wrong

The Child – Moral Socialization

• Hoffman (2000) compared childrearing approaches that foster moral behavior and moral thought and affect– Love withdrawal – withholding attention,

affection, or approval after a child misbehaves (creating anxiety by threatening a loss of reinforcement from parents)

– Power assertion – using power to threaten, chastise, administer spankings, take away privileges (using punishment)

– Induction – explaining to a child why the behavior is wrong and should be changed by emphasizing how it affects other people


• Hoffman (2000) compared childrearing approaches that foster moral behavior and moral thought and affect (continued)

– Induction is more often positively associated with children’s moral maturity than either love withdrawal or power assertion

• In Hoffman’s view, induction works well because it breeds empathy


• Making a child worry that his parents’ love can be withdrawn at anytime usually is not effective

• The use of power assertion is more often associated with moral immaturity than with moral maturity– At the extreme, children whose parents are

physically abusive feel less guilt and engage in more immoral behaviors such as stealing than other children

– It is generally ineffective to use even milder power tactics such as physical restraint and commands to keep young children from engaging in prohibited acts

• However, Hoffman (2000) concluded that mild power assertion tactics such as a forceful “No,” a reprimand, or the removal of privileges can be useful occasionally


• Summary of Hoffman’s view of childrearing approaches that foster moral development– “a blend of frequent inductions, occasional

power assertions, and a lot of affection” (2000, p. 23)

• Effective parents use proactive parenting strategies

– Tactics designed to prevent misbehavior and reduce the need for correction or discipline (e.g., distraction for younger children and explicit teaching of values for older children)


• A child’s temperament is an important determinant of how morally trainable she is and what motivates her moral behavior

• Kochanska and colleagues found that children are easiest to socialize if– They are by temperament fearful or

inhibited (likely to experience guilt and distress)

– They are capable of effortful control, and therefore are able to inhibit their urges to engage in wrongdoing

Learning Objectives

• What developmental trends emerge in moral reasoning during adolescence?

• What are the forms and the origins of antisocial behavior in adolescence?

• How have scholars evaluated Kohlberg’s theory of moral reasoning?

• What roles do religion and spirituality play in the lives of adults?

The Adolescent – Changes in Moral Reasoning

• The main developmental trend in moral reasoning during adolescence is a shift from preconventional to conventional reasoning

– During this period, most individuals begin to express a genuine concern with living up to the moral standards that parents and other authorities have taught them and ensuring that laws designed to make human relations just and fair are taken seriously and maintained

– Postconventional reasoning does not emerge until adulthood, if it emerges at all

Caption: Average percentage of moral reasoning at each of Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages for males from age 10 to 36

The Adolescent – Antisocial Behavior

• In most societies, crime rates peak during adolescence

• Most severely antisocial adults begin their antisocial careers in childhood and continue into adolescence– Engage in juvenile delinquency

• Law-breaking by a minor– May have a psychiatric diagnosis of conduct

disorder that becomes a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder as an adult• Conduct disorder: a persistent pattern of

violating the rights of others or age-appropriate societal norms through such behaviors as fighting, bullying, and cruelty


• Two subgroups of antisocial youths– Early-onset group – recognizable in

childhood through acts such as torturing animals and hitting other children and is persistently antisocial across the lifespan

– Late-onset – a larger group that behaves antisocially mainly during adolescence, partly in response to peer pressures (outgrows this behavior in adulthood)


• The origins of antisocial conduct– Moral reasoning

• Juvenile delinquents are likely than nondelinquents to rely on preconventional moral reasoning (lack a well-developed sense of right and wrong)

– Moral emotions• Aggressive or conduct disordered adolescents are

less likely than other adolescents to show empathy and concern for others in distress, and they often feel little guilt and remorse about their acts

– Social information processing• Aggressive or conduct disordered adolescents

process social information differently than other adolescents do

– Dodge’s social information-processing model


• Dodge and his colleagues formulated a social information-processing model to explain aggressive behavior by an individual who is provoked (by being tripped)– Encoding of cues: taking in information– Interpretation of cues: making sense of this information

and deciding what caused the other person’s behavior– Clarification of goals: deciding what to achieve in the

situation– Response search: thinking of possible actions to

achieve the goal– Response decision: weighing the pros and cons of

these alternative actions– Behavioral enactment: doing something


• Highly aggressive youths show deficient or biased information processing at every step

• Many aggressive youths act impulsively with an automatic response based on their past experiences

• They are easily angered and quickly attribute hostile intent to whoever harms them

• Severely violent youths have often experienced abandonment, neglect, abuse, and bullying

• Their experiences may have given them a basis to view the world as a hostile place and to feel little concern for others


• Patterson and colleagues found that highly antisocial children and adolescents often grow up in coercive family environments– Family members engage in power struggles to

control each other through negative, coercive tactics

• Parents are negatively reinforced when their threatening, yelling, and hitting temporarily stops their children’s misbehavior

• Children are negatively reinforced when their difficult behavior (ignoring requests, whining, temper tantrums) successfully stops their parents’ behavior


• According to Patterson and colleagues, the coercive family environment sets in motion the next steps in the making of an antisocial adolescent– The aggressive, unpleasant child performs

poorly in school and is rejected by other children

– He then becomes involved in a peer group made up of other low-achieving, antisocial, and unpopular youths, who positively reinforce one another’s delinquency

Caption: Gerald Patterson’s model of the development of antisocial behavior starts with poor discipline and coercive cycles of family influence


• Severe antisocial behavior is the product of a complex interplay between genetic predisposition and social learning experiences– From an evolutionary perspective, male

aggression may have evolved to enable successful competition for mates and genetic contribution to the next generation

– Some individuals (female and male) are genetically predisposed to have difficult, irritable temperaments, impulsive tendencies, and other response tendencies and personality traits that contribute to aggressive, delinquent, and criminal behavior


– Through the mechanism of gene-environment interaction, children with certain genetic predispositions may become antisocial if they also grow up in a dysfunctional family and receive poor parenting or are physically abused

– According to Dodge (2009),• Children who have a variant of the

monoamine oxidase (MAOA) gene (a gene on the X chromosome that normally contributes to an ability to control our tempers) that results in low MAOA activity

• If they are abused or mistreated may attribute hostile intentions to others

• Cannot control their anger and lash out impulsively


• Through the mechanism of gene-environment correlation, children who inherit a genetic predisposition to become aggressive may actually evoke the coercive parenting that fosters aggression– This evocative gene-environment correlation effect is

evident even when aggression-prone children grow up with adoptive parents rather than with their biological parents because these children bring out negativity in their adoptive parents


– Other risk factors and protective factors can influence the outcome for a child who is genetically predisposed to be aggressive

• Prenatal environment

• Complications during delivery

• Cultural contexts

• Subcultural and neighborhood factors

• School environment


• Dodge and his colleagues (2003) have attempted to integrate the influences on antisocial behavior into a biopsychosocial model of aggression that recognizes the contributions of biological predisposition, individual psychology, and social or contextual factors


• Dodge and his colleagues (2008) also proposed a “dynamic cascade” model showing how various influences, playing out over childhood and adolescence, can result in chronic and serious violence in adolescence and beyond– Biological factors (genes) and sociocultural context

factors (a disadvantaged, violence-prone neighborhood) put certain children at risk from birth

– Then a chain of causal events plays out: experiences with harsh, inconsistent parenting in early childhood, poor readiness for school, early behavior problems, failure in elementary school (both academically and socially), lack of appropriate parental supervision in early adolescence, and affiliation with antisocial peers


• Efforts to prevent antisocial behavior should include– An emphasis on positive parenting, beginning in

infancy or toddlerhood– Comprehensive, school-based programs aimed

at children at risk• The Conduct Problems Prevention Research

Group intervention project used a multi-pronged approach involving the teaching of social information-processing and social skills, efforts to improve academic skills, and behavior management training for parents– Proven effective in reducing antisocial behavior

and preventing diagnoses of conduct disorder and related psychiatric disorders

The Adult – Changes in Moral Reasoning

• In Kohlberg’s 20-year longitudinal study (Colby et al., 1983), most adults in their 30s still reasoned at the conventional level, although many of them had shifted from stage 3 to stage 4

• There is evidence that social-cognitive skills hold up well across the lifespan– Most studies find no major age differences in

complexity of moral reasoning, at least when relatively educated adults are studied and when the age groups compared have similar levels of education

The Adult – Kohlberg’s Theory in Perspective

• Kohlberg’s idea that everyone progresses from preconventional to conventional reasoning is well supported

• However, the idea that people continue to progress from conventional to postconventional reasoning is not supported

• It has been charged that Kohlberg’s theory is biased against people who are non-Western, politically conservative, and female and that it slights moral emotion and behavior


• Is Kohlberg’s theory culture-biased?– Cross-cultural studies suggest that

postconventional moral reasoning emerges primarily in Western democracies

• People in collectivist cultures that emphasize social harmony often look like stage 3 conventional moral thinkers in Kohlberg’s system, but in fact they may have sophisticated concepts of justice that focus on the individual’s responsibility for others’ welfare


• Is Kohlberg’s theory biased against political conservatives?– Researchers find some merit in the idea that

Kohlberg’s theory favors people who support human rights and take liberal positions on issues


• Is Kohlberg’s theory gender biased?– Kohlberg’s stages were developed based on interviews

with males only and in some studies, women seemed to reason at stage 3 when men usually reasoned at stage 4

– Carol Gilligan argued that boys, who traditionally have been raised to be independent, come to view moral dilemmas as conflicts between the rights of two or more parties and to view laws as necessary for resolving these inevitable conflicts (a perspective reflected in Kohlberg’s stage 4 reasoning)

– Gilligan argued that girls are brought up to define their sense of “goodness” in terms of their concern for other people (a perspective that approximates stage 3 in Kohlberg’s scheme)


• Is Kohlberg’s theory gender biased (continued)?– Gilligan’s arguments

• A “masculine” morality of justice focused on laws and rules, individual rights, and fairness

• A “feminine” morality of care focused on an obligation to be selfless and look after the welfare of other people

• Neither morality is more “mature” than the other


– Although Gilligan’s claim that Kohlberg’s theory is systematically biased against females is not supported, her work increased our awareness that both men and women often think about moral issues in terms of their responsibilities for the welfare of other people and that Kohlberg emphasized only one way – a legalistic and abstract way – of thinking about right and wrong

The Adult – New Approaches to Morality

• Developmentalists today are trying to correct for Kohlberg's overemphasis on rational deliberation in moral reasoning by exploring the emotional component of morality

• Recently researchers have examined – The emotions and the regulation of emotions

when children and adults engage in moral or immoral behavior

– The idea that gut emotional reactions and intuitions play an important role in morality

• Some scholars have now proposed dual-process models of morality in which both deliberate thought and emotion/intuition inform decisions about moral issues and motivate behavior

The Adult – Religion and Spirituality

• Religious values and beliefs guide the moral thinking and behavior of many people

– Religiosity or religiousness has generally been defined as sharing the beliefs and participating in the practices of an organized religion

– Spirituality involves a quest for ultimate meaning and for a connection with something greater than oneself

• Spirituality may be carried out within the context of a religion (some people are both religious and spiritual) or outside it (some people say they are spiritual but not religious)


• In a longitudinal study, researchers Dillon and Wink sought to understand changes over the years in religiosity and spirituality– Religiosity was strong in adolescence,

decreased somewhat in middle age, and rose again in people’s late 60s and 70s closer to its earlier levels

– Spirituality was judged to be at lower levels than religiosity throughout adulthood and changed more dramatically with age, increasing significantly from middle age to later adulthood, especially among women


• Wink and Dillon (2003) found that individuals are highly consistent over the years in their degrees of religiosity and spirituality, probably because of their personalities

• Religiosity and spirituality contribute positively to psychosocial adjustment but in different ways


• Religiosity contributes positively to psychosocial adjustment– Religiosity in late adulthood is correlated with a

sense of well-being stemming from positive relationships with other people, involvement in social and community service activities, and the sympathetic and caring qualities associated with Erikson's concept of generativity

– Highly religious adults are very involved in their religious communities and act on their religious beliefs by serving others

– Other research suggests that religious involvement is linked to good health, good mental health, and prosocial behavior


• Spirituality contributes positively to psychosocial adjustment– Highly spiritual older adults have a sense of well-

being derived from personal growth– Spiritual adults are highly involved in activities that

allow them to express their creativity and build their knowledge and skills

– Spiritual adults display qualities associated with wisdom such as introspectiveness and insightfulness

chapter 13 social cognition and moral development

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