Understanding Moral Development in Children - Assignment Example

Running head: Review of the Role of Moral Reasoning in Burglary Offences’ Name Course name Professors’ name Date Table of content Introduction 4 Piaget’s Theory 4 Kohlberg’s theory 6 Level one. Pre-conventional 6 Stage one: Punishment and Obedience 6 Stage two: Individualism and Exchange 7 Level II. Conventional morality 7 Stage three. Good interpersonal relationships 7 Stage four. Maintaining social order 8 Level III. Post-conventional morality 8 Stage five. Social Contract and Individual Rights 9 Stage six. Universal principles 9 Social learning theory 10 Personality theory 11 Conclusion 12 Introduction 1 Piaget’s Theory 1 Kohlberg’s theory 2 Level one. Pre-conventional 3 Stage one: Punishment and Obedience 3 Stage two: Individualism and Exchange 3 Level II. Conventional morality 4 Stage three. Good interpersonal relationships 4 Stage four. Maintaining social order 5 Level III. Post-conventional morality 5 Stage five. Social Contract and Individual Rights 5 Stage six. Universal principles 6 Social learning theory 7 Personality theory 7 Conclusion 9 Introduction To understand vividly burglary in relation to moral development, it is important to review work done by great psychologist like Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, Carol Gilligan and Howitt Dennis among other renowned writers. Lawrence Kohlberg actually developed his argument from Jean Piaget’s work to illustrate maturity of moral reasoning. While Piaget explained two stage of moral development, Kohlberg gave a six stage model executed within pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional levels. From the six stages, it is obvious that moral development occurs continuously through life of an individual. This literature will start by reviewing Piaget’s work which acted as basis for Kohlberg. Piaget’s Theory Research done by Piaget contributed a lot to understanding moral development in children. Originally, Piaget focused on moral lives of young children by studying how they played with intent of comprehending child’s belief of right and wrong. Piaget made a conclusion that development starts when a child constructs and reconstructs own awareness after interacting with environment (Piaget, 1932). When children are playing, they usually integrate their own rules so that the game is fairly completed. Piaget further interviewed children on the topic of stealing and lying. Response indicated that children were able to discriminate meaning of the words and real action. This mean that children begin from heteronomous stage of moral reasoning which has the characteristic of following rules and duties to the latter while also obeying the authorities. The heteronomy emanates from a child’s cognitive structure where the thinking of young children has features of egocentrism. This means that children cannot take into consideration their own views with the perception of others. Egocentrism makes children project their individual thoughts onto others. It also has relationship with uni-directional view of regulations and command associated with moral idea. In a nutshell, moral idea values the results of an action rather than intents. A young child belief in immanent justice has close association with moral realism. It means that a child expects punishment as a result of any immoral act like burglary. Another specific factor contributing to heteronomous moral thoughts in children is socialization process with adults. Normally, power is handed down from adults to children during a socialization process. In such a case, powerless young children with their egocentrism contribute to heteronomous ethical orientation. As children look for fair play during games, they find strict heteronomous observance to rules challenging. This makes them consider those rules critically and eventually apply them with an objective of deriving respect and cooperation among participants. It then represents a shift from egocentrism to a stage of perspective thinking where reciprocity and mutual respect forms the base. From this analysis, it is apparent that Piaget viewed moral development as a product of interpersonal development. Kohlberg’s theory Kohlberg agreed with Piaget that children form approaches to thinking as a result of their daily experiences. Research done by Kohlberg went beyond the age bracket studied by Piaget to determine that moral maturity took longer time and assumes a gradual process. As a result, Kohlberg Identified Six stages of attaining moral reasoning which are discussed in subsequent paragraphs. Level one. Pre-conventional This level is common in children though it may be exhibited by some adults. Morality is judged by the consequences of an action. The level comprises of the first and second stages of moral development which is concerned with individual egocentric manner. A child who is under pre-conventional stage has not internalised society’s principles concerning what is right or wrong. On the contrary, the child is keen on external consequences of a deed. Stage one: Punishment and Obedience The first stage is similar to Piaget’s initial stage of moral thought. Children have a view that rules made by adults are unquestionable. Kohlberg termed the first stage as pre-conventional since children do not speak as a subset of a community. To substitute this, children see morality as an external factor which must be followed without questioning its relevance (Kohlberg, 1978). Children at this stage pay attention to direct consequences of an event done. Some things are perceived as morally wrong after an individual child has been punished. The intensity of punishment is directly proportional to mistakes committed. Stage two: Individualism and Exchange This is a stage where children realize existence of different opinions between individuals. A child’s frame of mind is that punishment can be avoided. Children give individual views and judge actions depending on whether it serves personal needs. It is also possible for reciprocity to take place if it fulfils own interest. Level II. Conventional morality Conventional morality captures adolescents and adults. Conventional reasoning calls upon individuals to judge morality through a process of comparing it with views and expectation of society. The third and forth stages are discussed under conventional level. It has a characteristic that people accepts societal convention of what is right and wrong. At this stage, people apparently strictly adhere to norms even in absence of adverse consequence for drifting. Stage three. Good interpersonal relationships Children at the verge of becoming teenagers see morality as more than just simple deals. The argument is that people should live up to the expectations of community and family unit. In this case, good behaviour reflects good motives and positive feelings like love, trust and concern towards other people. Similar to Piaget’s stages, there is a change from unquestioning obedience evident in initial stages to relativity and concern for others practised at the third stage. If compared with Piaget’s stages, the shift occurs in three stages instead of the two stages. It is therefore clear that reasoning is perfect during a two-person relationship where an individual makes efforts to understand how others feel and subsequently try to lend a helping hand (Kohlberg, 1978). Stage four. Maintaining social order In contradiction to stage three, an individual is now more concerned with the whole society. To maintain social order, one is under obligation to obey laws, respect authorities and conduct oneself in such a manner that social order is sustained. Any decision made takes care of societal norms thus the goal is to keep society running well. This implies that people live by abstract principle of good and bad (Kohlberg, 1978). Vices such as burglary disrupt social order and should not be seen in a character. Level III. Post-conventional morality This level encompasses stage five and six. Individuals realise that they are separate from the society and that their views may prevail over societal principles. Rules which are inconsistent with personal principles may be disobeyed. In the same vein, persons who demonstrate post-conventional morality have a view that even though rules are useful, they may be challenged. Stage five. Social Contract and Individual Rights This is a stage where people start to reason out components of a good society. Individuals move from the practical part and begin to evaluate theoretically values that should be in the society. Evaluation of present society in terms of pre-existing theoretical knowledge follows. Rules are crucial in sustaining a society but people should agree on the standards. A good society is a result of social contract into which people enter for the benefit everyone (Kohlberg, 1978). The stage clarifies that different social groups inherent in a society have varied values but if the individuals are rational, then they should agree on basic laws and democratic procedures of changing unfair laws. Stage six. Universal principles At stage five, individual rights were being protected while disputes were resolved through a democratic process. Nevertheless, democratic process may not give the supposed results. As the majority vote for a law that suites them, the majority may consequently feel segregated. The sixth stage comes in handy to describe an approach that gives rise to justice for both majority and minority. Principle of justice support a view that claims from all parties should be treated impartially. This means that the principle of justice applies to all individual irrespective of their social, political, economic, or physical orientation. According to Kohlberg, decisions can be reached by looking at a situation critically. Although universal principles such as equality, respect for human dignity, and dedication to human justice are abstract, they go beyond specific norms and rules. While taking time to consider why adolescent participate in crime, it is equally critical to consider elements that prevent others from committing crime. From the analysis of Kohlberg theory, the level of cognitive development determines whether a person will behave morally or immorally (Howitt, 2006). Both Piaget and Kohlberg intensively researched on stages followed during development of moral reasoning and processes involved when making moral decisions. The gains from offending such as material gains, peer approval, and sexual satisfaction tend to be simultaneous with crime. On the contrary, risk of being caught and punished or the possibility of loosing reputation and employment are not clear. Social learning theory Social learning theory propagated by Bandura highlight on the role of modelling instructions, reasoning process and interpersonal problem solving approach. The theory emphasizes that an individual processes information cognitively consequently responding after strict consideration of past rewards or punishment. A deficit in cognitive constructs leads to offending like burglary, where the perpetrators tend to be impulsive, self-centred, and concrete in thinking rather than assuming abstract thoughts. Furthermore, offenders are poor in problem solving due to their failure in understanding how other people feel. Some theories of aggression focus on cognitive processes where aggressive behaviour is a function of stored cognitive scripts learnt during early stages in life. While responding to environmental cues, possible cognitive scripts are recovered and placed in an evaluation process. The choice of aggressive scripts depends on rewards or punishment realized during past experiences and also the influence made by immediate gratification as opposed to long term consequences. In such a case, persisting trait of aggressiveness is a group of learnt aggressive scripts that do not respond to change. Personality theory The Eysenck personality theory states clearly that antisocial behaviour e. g burglary and other crimes are constant over a range of time. The constant behaviour is due to persistence where individual have a tendency to behave in particular ways in specific situations. The tendency is classified as personality traits including impulsiveness, excitement, and modesty. Hans Eysenck’s theory viewed crime as natural and rational after assuming that mankind is self-indulgent seeking pleasure and evading pain. Eysenck stated that delinquent activities such as burglary, and aggression were advantageous to the wrongdoer. In an attempt to illustrate why every person was not a criminal, Eysenck had a suggestion that propensity to execute a crime was opposed by the conscience which came in terms of conditioned fear response. This carries a meaning that those who have not committed crime have weak conscience which could be emanating from inherently weak conditioning. The weak ability for conditioning has connection with three dimensions of personality disseminated by Eysenck. These dimensions are Extraversion, Psychoticism, and Neuroticism. Individuals with high Extraversion do not condition appropriately due to low levels of cortical arousal. Those who have high neuroticism condition less well following their high level of anxiety which interferes with conditioning process. Finally, people who are high Psychoticism tend to be offenders as a result of underlying traits of emotional coldness, low empathy, high hostility and inhumanity. Impulsive personality theory propagates a position that impulsiveness is a good trait that forecast offending. Apart from impulsiveness other constructs that indicate poor ability to control behaviour include hyperactivity, restlessness, clumsiness, risk taking and inability to take into consideration consequences of an action. Conclusion According to cognitive development theory, behaviour like burglary is the result of how people organize thoughts about morality and law. From Kohlberg theory, the first level is based on obedience and avoidance of punishment. This happens during middle childhood and subsequently opens way for conventional level where other people’s views are significant. The third level of post convention happens during adulthood and individual gain ability to move beyond social convention to improve existing laws. If a person is not able to progress through the three levels, he or she may become arrested in their moral development as a result become delinquent. Read More