Moral Development

Theory and Applications

Elizabeth C. Vozzola, Amie K. Senland

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000550160
• Edición: 2
• Categoría: Psicologia
• Categoría: Psicologia dello sviluppo

Moral Development offers a comprehensive overview of classic and current theories of moral development and applications of these theories in various counseling and educational settings. It examines changes across time and experience in how people understand right and wrong, and individual differences in moral judgements, emotions, and actions.

Elizabeth C. Vozzola and Amie K. Senland review the latest research in the field and integrate classic work with contemporary perspectives on assessment and treatment. Part 1 provides an understanding of a range of theories, explaining their strengths and challenges, and offering examples of how these theories apply to helping professionals. It covers Freud, Piaget, Kohlberg, Rest, Gilligan, Nodding, Bandura, Turiel, Nucci, Narvaez, Haidt, and Shweder. Part 2 highlights promising applications of moral development theory in education and counseling. Fully updated with new chapters on faith development and moral and prosocial development in infancy and early childhood, the text explores specific approaches to helping clients with a variety of clinical or developmental challenges and provides an excellent resource for courses addressing the CACREP program objectives for Human Growth and Development. It also integrates issues of gender, ethnicity, and culture throughout to prepare readers for practicing in a global culture and presents a new perspective: the cultural developmental approach. Illustrated throughout with examples that highlight applications of moral development concepts in today's media, it also includes interviews from some of today's leading theorists and practitioners.
Ideal as a text for advanced courses on moral development and moral psychology, as well as courses on human, child, social and personality development taught in psychology, counseling, education, human development, family studies, social work, and religion. Its applied approach also appeals to mental health and school counselors.

Part I Moral Development in the 21st Century: Theoretical Roots and New Directions

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9780429295461-2

Humans have been pondering questions of morality for as long as we have records of their queries. Meno asks Socrates, “Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice;… [or] whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?” (Plato, 380 BCE). In the relatively recent field of psychology, cognitive developmentalists have developed one set of answers, and thinkers from behavioral, psychoanalytic, social learning, and evolutionary perspectives yet others.

A second edition of this text was important because of the current paradigm shift of theory and research within the field. The earlier dominant constructionist paradigm has been challenged, and some believe, replaced, by theories from evolutionary, biological, personality, and cultural psychology. Many researchers no longer hold to classic universal theories and stress the need to look at morality through specific cultural lenses.

For the purposes of this book, we use the term morality in the general language usage of principles of right and wrong actions and judgments. This book looks at a special area of morality, the field of moral development, in two ways: (1) changes across time and experience in how people understand right and wrong; as well as (2) individual differences in moral judgments, emotions, and actions. Some perspectives stress that principles of moral conduct are set by society, others that they are actively constructed by the developing child, and still others that there is a significant biological underpinning to our moral judgments, emotions, and behavior.

Part I of this book explores not only the classic theories upon which the modern field of moral development rests, but also newer theories and directions that are rarely covered in traditional developmental textbooks. In Chapter 2, we attempt to give you a deep and broad understanding of the work of two seminal thinkers: Freud and Piaget. The cliché that “We stand on the shoulders of giants” is particularly apt when we consider that any contemporary theory must grapple with describing the emotional and cultural components of morality described by Freud, as well as the cognitive and structural components described by Piaget.

In Chapter 3, we present the theories from two of the field's most influential thinkers, Lawrence Kohlberg and James Rest, who, like Piaget, focused specifically on the rational side of morality. Although Kohlberg's theory is better known to the general public, it has been the broader conception of morality, eventually developed by Rest and his colleagues at the University of Minnesota, that has better stood the test of time and future research.

Chapters 4 and 5 fill in a major gap in the treatment of moral development found in most textbooks. Textbooks tend to present Freud, Piaget, Kohlberg, and Gilligan but neglect to cover the dynamic current state of theory and research. It's as if your knowledge of a living family came only from hearing the stories about their most famous ancestors. In Chapter 4, we look at how classic cognitive-developmental theories have faced substantive challenges not only from care theorists such as Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings, but also from a perspective called domain theory as well as from the emerging area of moral self/moral personality. In Chapter 5, we turn to the rise of important new theories from neuroscience and evolutionary perspectives. In the second edition, we made substantive additions to these sections to introduce you to cutting-edge research in the areas of emotion-based/implicit moral reasoning and Evolutionary Development (“Evo-Devo”).

The second edition also features a wholly new chapter (i.e., 6) that explores the vibrant field of research into the origins of pro-social behavior and morality in infancy and early childhood. This work extends and complements theories discussed in the previous chapter.

A unique feature of the book is to acknowledge that, although issues of gender and ethnicity now tend to be integrated into textbooks and training across the professions (diversity classes are ubiquitous in professional programs), students will be practicing in settings (and a world) in which understanding issues of global culture will be the new necessity. For example, students in the public schools in Elly's suburban American hometown of West Hartford come from homes in which 80 different languages are spoken. No professional can hope to come to a deep understanding of dozens of cultures, but Chapter 7 frames specific examples of moral development theory, research, and issues within an overarching frame of core moral values that can help the practitioner make sense of the multitude of cultural variations that she or he will face in practice. This chapter has been substantially revised to incorporate contemporary research and theory from cultural-development psychology.

The concluding chapter of Part I summarizes key points and evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of various theoretical approaches. We cover a lot of theoretical and research ground in this section, and it is important to pull back from all that exposition and ask, “So what does all this mean?” How can we make sense of all these seemingly contradictory ideas? Chapter 8 attempts to answer those questions while acknowledging the reality of ongoing controversies and gaps in our knowledge base.

In Part II, we highlight promising applications of moral development theory in the fields of education and counseling. We added a new chapter on faith development that has applications not only for religious education but also for college and university curricula and programming.

We need to acknowledge from the very beginning that we cannot conceivably present you with a comprehensive picture of the enormous field of moral education research and practice. But in Chapter 9, we do attempt to give you a Cook's Tour of past accomplishments and future directions in moral and character education that should give interested students a framework from which to pursue additional resources in more depth.

Schools, however, are not the only, or even the most powerful, source of moral messages. Certainly, families and peers play a large role but, increasingly, young people are immersed in a world of media. Thus, in Chapter 9 we also share some recent research on how media's moral messages are perceived across development. Research from a major Common Sense Census Media survey in 2015 found that 8- to 18-year-old young people are spending, on average, between 42 and 63 hours per week on various media sources from Facebook to reality TV (Rideout, 2016).

In Chapter 10, we move to a consideration of how counselors and therapists have integrated moral development theories into their practice. We briefly summarize the perspectives of practitioners who focused on “giving psychology away” through school-based interventions aimed at promoting moral development for all students and then turn to more specific individual and group counseling techniques. The chapter ends by offering Halstead's conceptual model for assessing client core issues as well as current research on promoting well-being and treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Many moral development theories (e.g., Hoffman, 2000; Selman, 1976, 2003) posit the importance of perspective-taking and/or empathy for healthy moral development. Thus, we thought it would be useful to follow the overview of developmental counseling with a chapter (Chapter 11) that shows you in some detail what can happen when moral or empathic development goes seriously awry. After presenting Martin Hoffman's theory of empathic development and Albert Bandura's theory of moral disengagement, we give you some examples of how developmental deficits play out in individuals diagnosed with conduct disorder, autism spectrum disorders, and psychopathy.

Another chapter new to this second edition brings you classic theories and contemporary research in the field of faith development. Major surveys of religious participation in the United States have shown a stark decline in religious attendance and a rise in those who identify as religiously unaffiliated, yet faith and religious participation vary widely across cultures and sub-cultures (Pew Research Center [PEW], 2015a, 2019). Faith remains an integral component of life and meaning for many people, and Chapter 12 explores its manifestations across development as well as its relationship to moral development.

The book concludes with a reflection on Tolstoy's perennial questions: How to live and what to do? Just as Chapter 8 attempted to make sense of the diverse theoretical perspectives in Part I, Chapter 13 attempts to pull out some general themes from Part II about how theory can best inform practice, not only in the areas of education and practice examined in the text, but also across the wide range of settings in which a background in moral development might help you better understand yourself and others.

William Perry (1970) proposed that college students move through a series of epistemological positions—a fancy term for the process of changes in the way they think about what knowledge is and how it is gained. In brief, many students come to college as dualistic thinkers looking for black/white right/wrong answers to questions. They believe that experts and textbooks have the answers and that their job as students is to memorize the information and give it back. We call this “learning as regurgitation.” The multiple perspectives students encounter in college, both from professors and fellow students, shake their certainty in “right” answers and move most of them into a stage of relativism in which they understand that different people may hold different perspectives. Students at this epistemological stage often drive their professors slightly crazy with their characteristic comment, “That's just your opinion.” Eventually, most students, especially in work in their major field, come to realize that all opinions are not equal and that there are guidelines for determining the strengths and weaknesses of evidence and arguments. This moves students into a stage of commitment in relativism in which they are willing to say, “Here I stand—these perspectives and interpretations make the most sense to me given the evidence we now have. I realize I need to remain open to possible future evidence, but, for now, here I stand.”

This book reflects our own “Here we stand” position on the topics presented. A central goal has been to introduce you to the foundations of the knowledge base in moral development. Roger Straughan (1985, reprinted in Puka, 1994) once wrote a critique of Kohlberg's theory, cleverly entitled “How to Reach Stage 6 and Remain a Bastard.” This text's stress on application reflects our own sincere hope that whether you are a professional reading the book to enhance your practice or a student reading it in a course, you make the connections between theory and the pressing moral issues of our time. Our goal has been to spark your interest to such an extent that you feel motivated to implement some of the field's ideas in your own professional life. In a world fraught with challenges at every level—from the struggles of stressed families to the international scourges of terrorism, genocide, bigotry, ignorance, pandemics, and war—we need a committed core of helping professionals dedicated to promoting both justice and care.

2 Classic Theories of Morality: Freud and Piaget

DOI: 10.4324/9780429295461-3

When Elly's son Peter was 7, he accidentally hit his cousin Jason in the head with a baseball bat while swinging at a pitch. The boys’ parents heard a set of yells outside the window and saw Jason, bat in hand, in hot pursuit of Peter. The grownups separated the warring parties, heard out the victim's claims, and were about to demand that Peter offer the obligatory apology when he turned to Jason and burst out: “OK, OK, just hit me back!” Someone grabbed the bat from Jason just in time, but clearly both boys would have been quite satisfied with their brand of Old Testament justice.

Through the lens of cognitive-developmental theory, this story provides a nearly perfect illustration of the type of “eye for an eye” thinking that actually indicates growth in moral reasoning. Jason and Peter's reliance on a morality informed by a tacit understanding of reciprocity represented a developmental shift from an earlier moral worldview in which they obeyed grownups in order to avoid punishment.

Context: Morality Paradigms

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1943/1971) began his beloved children's book Le Petit Prince with his childhood drawing, dessin numero 1, of a fearsome boa constrictor devouring an elephant. Saint-Exupéry attributes his career choice of aviation rather than art to the reaction of les grandes personnes (grownups) who interpreted his masterpiece as a quite un-fearsome hat. Undeterred by this cautionary tale, we begin the first chapter of this text with Elly's own dessin numero 1 (see Figure 2.1).

Figure 2.1 Morality Paradigms.

The four theoretical paradigms, or models, presented in this artistically-challenged drawing (from the low-technology days before PowerPoint) all have important implications for how you understand and intervene with future clients and students. Given our focus on application, this theoretical overview stresses the paradigms’ psychological rather than philosophical roots. Although moral theorists rely heavily on core philosophic ideas from works ranging from Aristotle, Plato, and Nietzsche to Baldwin, Mead, Dewey, and Rawls and Habermas, space limitations preclude a substantive discussion of those thinkers (Lapsley, 1996, and Reed, 1997, provide two fine discussions of the philosophic...

Índice

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures and Tables
• About the Authors
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I: Moral Development in the 21st Century: Theoretical Roots and New Directions
• Part II: Applications of Theory to Practice
• References
• Index