Moral Dilemmas and Moral Reasoning - Assignment Example

More to this, as they mature physically, the emotional and social skills they obtain serves to influence their moral development (Tsujimoto, & Nardi, 1978). According to Piaget's Theory, children of age 5-10 perceives the world as directed by others, where they perceive the rules given by other authorities such as parents, teachers and the government as final and unbreakable (Raman & Winer, 2004)). They perceive those who make such rules as all-powerful and the rules they make as being prone to no changes.

Thus, in the viewpoint of such children, such rules must be followed to the letter, since there is a zero possibility of having them altered. However, the threshold of these children upholding the rules is based upon how they appreciate the consequences that follows breaking such rules (Bowman, 1994). Since the consequences of breaking such rules are usually negative, then children to tend to obey such rules in the fear of the negative consequences. However, according the theory, this change as children approaches their middle childhood, since their perception of such rules has now changed (Tsujimoto, & Nardi, 1978).

As children learn empathy, they adopted a self-directed morality appreciation. From then on, they never view the rules as the basis of decisions made, but rather the appropriateness or inappropriateness of such decisions. Starting age 11 through to adolescent, children will have changed their perception on the rules and acknowledged that such rules were established for the common benefit of the group (Markus& Kitayama, 1991). Therefore, at this stage children learn the necessity of following such rules is not for the fear of the repercussions, but for the enhanced good of all.

Here, they perceive the rules as necessary to follow, but amenable to negotiations (Blasi, 1983). This is out of the realization that their decisions may either hurt or benefit anyone. Kohlberg's stages of moral development theory is yet another theory that explains moral development. The theory is based on six stages, which are easily grouped to three stages of moral development. The theory postulates that moral development follows these stages, starting with pre-conventional stage, where individuals at this stage judges the morality of a decision based on its consequences.

This stage is commonly exhibited in children, though also present in adulthood (Tsujimoto, & Nardi, 1978). At this stage, individuals are mostly self-centered, perceiving the morality of a decision based on how it is likely to affect them only, without any consideration of their decisions to the wider society (Raman&Winer, 2004).How an individual will be rewarded by the decision, or how negatively it might affect him, determines how he makes the decision. At the conventional stage, individuals judge the morality of a decision or action, by comparing it to society’s view and expectation.

This stage constitutes the adolescents and adults (Markus& Kitayama, 1991). The last combined stage is the post-conventional stage, where individuals realizes that they are a separate entity from the society, and as such, their needs takes preference while making a decision, at the expense of the societal views and expectations (Haidt, Koller & Dias, 1993). At this stage,