The ability of young children to distinguish between morality and convention

Diplomarbeit , 2001 , 87 Seiten , Note: 1,0

Psychologie - Entwicklungspsychologie

In this diploma thesis I want to consider several approaches in the area of moral development research.Given the theory of Lawrence Kohlberg, young children (younger than 10 years of age) seem to stay completely under the constraints of authorities and rules. According to Kohlberg, children’s social judgments and behaviors are determined by instrumental aims to satisfy their own needs and wishes, or to avoid punishment. In this regard, the helping of others or meeting the needs of others is only motivated by instrumental considerations. Thus, in Kohlberg’s view young children are not able to think or to act in a genuinely moral way. In reaction to Kohlberg, other researchers have suggested that young children are capable to make genuinely moral judgments and to act in a moral way. Eisenberg (e.g. 1986) has suggested that young children can have empathic or altruistic feelings which lead them to conduct prosocial acts. Other researchers (e.g. Keller, 1996; Nunner-Winkler, 1993) assert that children under the age of ten years are able to understand and feel moral emotions, which they consider as constitutive or as indicators for morality. Turiel and his associates (e.g. Turiel, 1983) suggest that even children at about 2 years of age are able to differentiate between a moral, conventional, and personal domain of social knowledge, and that children subordinate the importance of personal and conventional rules under the importance of moral rules. These approaches to the morality of young children revealed differing results to differing aspects of morality.
The aim of my work is to examine the above mentioned approaches in order to evaluate the obvious differences between their obtained results and the results of Kohlberg.
My questions are: Is Kohlberg’s approach of using authority dilemmas appropriate to investigate children’s moral reasoning? To what extent do the results of the researchers, who claim an early emergence of morality in children’s development, disprove Kohlberg’s claims of children’s dependency and moral immaturity with regard to authority rules? Where are the boundaries of the presented approaches?

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Question
• Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral development
  • The stage model
  • Structure, justice and morality
  • Investigation and scoring of moral judgments
  • Criticism of Kohlberg's theory
• The role of emotions in early morality
  • Nancy Eisenberg's investigations of altruistic and prosocial behavior
    • The definition of altruistic and prosocial behavior
    • General methodology and results
    • Conclusions
  • Other approaches regarding the relationship of emotions to morality
  • Conclusions
• Elliot Turiel's concept of social domains
  • Definition of the social domains
  • Assessment methods and results of the domain research
    • Criterion judgments
    • Justification categories
    • Ratings and rankings
  • The acquisition of social knowledge
  • Criterion judgments versus familiarity with events
  • The relation between seriousness of transgression, criterion judgments, and justification categories
  • Emotional consequences of transgressions in social domains
  • A first comparison of Turiel's and Kohlberg's assessments and results
• Domain specifities of social judgments and authority concepts
  • Domain specifities, mixed domains and moral dilemmas
    • Mixed domain events
    • Moral conflicts and dilemmas
    • Conclusions
  • Authority concepts: Differences between legitimacy and obedience
  • Conclusions
• Conclusions
  • Emotions
    • Dilemma type
    • Emotional consequences to moral transgressions
  • Domains of social knowledge
    • Conflicts
    • Justifications
    • What one would do and what one should do
    • Legitimacy and obedience
• A. Stories
  • A.1. Killen (1990)
• Literaturverzeichnis

Zielsetzung und Themenschwerpunkte

This diploma thesis aims to examine different approaches in the field of moral development research, particularly focusing on the ability of young children to distinguish between morality and convention. The work critically analyzes the theory of Lawrence Kohlberg, which suggests that young children primarily rely on authority and rules, and explores alternative perspectives that propose an earlier emergence of moral reasoning in children.

• The development of moral reasoning in young children
• The role of emotions in moral development
• The distinction between moral, conventional, and personal domains of social knowledge
• The influence of authority and rules on children's moral judgments
• The comparison of different theoretical approaches to moral development

Zusammenfassung der Kapitel

Chapter 2 provides an introduction to Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral development, outlining his stage model, the concepts of structure, justice, and morality, and the methods used to investigate and score moral judgments. It also discusses criticisms of Kohlberg's theory.

Chapter 3 explores the role of emotions in early morality, focusing on Nancy Eisenberg's research on altruistic and prosocial behavior. It defines these concepts, examines Eisenberg's methodology and results, and discusses conclusions drawn from her studies. The chapter also considers other approaches that link emotions to morality.

Chapter 4 delves into Elliot Turiel's concept of social domains, defining the moral, conventional, and personal domains and examining the assessment methods and results of domain research. It explores the acquisition of social knowledge, the relationship between transgression seriousness, criterion judgments, and justification categories, and the emotional consequences of transgressions within different domains. The chapter concludes with a comparison of Turiel's and Kohlberg's assessments and results.

Chapter 5 investigates domain specificities of social judgments and authority concepts, exploring mixed domain events, moral conflicts and dilemmas, and the differences between legitimacy and obedience. It examines how children's understanding of authority influences their moral reasoning.

Schlüsselwörter

The keywords and focus themes of the text include moral development, early morality, children's moral reasoning, Kohlberg's theory, emotions, altruism, prosocial behavior, social domains, authority, legitimacy, obedience, and the distinction between morality and convention. The text examines the ability of young children to make moral judgments and act in a moral way, exploring different theoretical perspectives and research findings. It analyzes the role of emotions, social domains, and authority in shaping children's moral development.

• Hochschule: Freie Universität Berlin
• Note: 1,0
• Autor: Dipl.-Psych. Joerg Boettcher (Autor:in)
• Erscheinungsjahr: 2001
• Seiten: 87
• Katalognummer: V115961
• ISBN (eBook): 9783640175574
• ISBN (Buch): 9783640175796
• Sprache: Englisch