Psychology assighment - Coursework Example

This is the stage in which children see rules and punishments. Their acts depend on the fixed rules that they obey just to stay away from punishment. For example, children would not lie to their parents because they know they will get punished for it. The second stage is where children develop independent view points and start judging their actions according to their own individual needs. For example, children would start thinking that is this good for me? They will only follow those rules which they think are right for them.

Children develop their own interests and think less about others’ interests. Level 2 of moral development is known as conventional morality and deals with stage three and four. Stage three is interpersonal relationships where the individuals develop a focus to live up to the social expectations from them. For example, children form a good girl or good boy image where they focus on being nice in front of others and obeying them just for the sake of forming strong relationships. Stage four is maintaining social order where individuals start focusing on the society while making judgments.

The main consideration is to follow and obey the laws, rules, and authorities set by the society. Morality at this stage is directed by outside influences. Level 3 is post-conventional morality which deals with stage five and six. . In this stage, individuals have to follow universal principles and laws of justice, even if their personal beliefs and rules conflict with these. Problems arose with this theory of moral development when critiques questioned the levels. The first criticism was that this theory was based on the moral thinking of individuals but it failed to consider whether moral reasoning leads to moral behaviour necessarily.

Kohlberg fails to recognize that there is a difference between our actions, and what we are ought to do. The second problem with this theory was that justice was recognized as the only aspect for moral reasoning that should be considered. The concept of justice is overemphasized when talking about moral choices. Kohlberg eliminated factors such as emotions, caring, compassion, and other feelings in moral reasoning. Thirdly, Kohlberg has not considered the eastern society and overemphasized the western philosophy of individualism.

The society and community focused in this theory is the western culture while eastern society has different moral reasoning. Emotion is a complex state of feeling where physical and psychological changes take place and influence the thoughts and behaviours. The first theory of emotion is the James-Lange theory which was introduced by William James and Carl Lange; both were psychologists and independently gave out an idea challenging the commonsense belief of emotion. This theory says that people experience emotions when they identify the psychological responses of their bodies to external events.

This theory highlighted that people feel sad because of their crying, instead of crying because they feel sad. Likewise, people feel happy when they smile. The second theory is the Cannon-Bard