Moral and

Prosocial
Development
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYOiJnxTf8I

Wynn and her team put on puppet shows for infants, with
characters that display both pro-social and anti-social behavior.
So far, the babies almost always prefer the nicer puppets to the
mean ones, indicating we may be born with an innate
preference for pro-social behavior.
• Prosocial behavior is behavior directed toward
promoting the well-being of another.
• Includes sharing, helping, and
comforting
• Often used interchangeably with altruism - a
selfless concern for the welfare of others that is
expressed through pro-social acts.
• Morality encompasses prosocial behavior.
• One’s general standards about right and
wrong
• Includes such traits as honesty, fairness,
and respect for other people
 • Infants
• uncomfortable when others are hurt
• interest in others
• Early Childhood
• aware that harmful actions are wrong
• cooperation & negotiation begin to
develop
Growing • Middle Childhood
morality • understand fairness, capacity to feel guilt
& shame
• more influenced by peers, increasingly
prosocial
• Adolescence
• more advanced reasoning
• personal needs & self-interests affect
decisions
 • Toddlers are capable of being compassionate
towards their companions.
• Children’s early compassion depends heavily on
• temperamental variations
• behaviors children view amongst parents
• parent’s reactions to the child harming
Origins of another child

Altruism • More compassionate toddlers have parents

who discipline harm doing with affective
explanations (focuses attention on harm or
distress the child has caused) that foster
sympathy
• Mothers of uncompassionate toddlers use
coercive tactics (verbal consequences or
physical punishment) to discipline undesirable
behaviors
 Preschoolers
• More geared towards concern for
themselves
Developmental • Self serving and more self centered
Trends in
Altruism
Adolescence
• Become increasingly responsive to
the needs, wishes and concerns of
other individuals
• Less self centered - helping
someone they may dislike
 • Empathy can be better measured by the age of
the child.
• Studies have shown children appeared
Age Trends: empathetic by expressing feelings about
misfortunes of storybook characters.
Empathy- • Younger children lack role taking skills and
Altruism insight about their personal emotions in order
to understand:
Relationship
• Why others feel and act distressed;
• Why others are feeling aroused due to the
distress.
 • Empathy - sensitivity to the feelings of others;
the ability to vicariously experience another’s
emotional state or condition
Contributors • From infancy, babies cry when they hear
to the other children cry

development • May be reflexive or the start of

empathy?
of
altruistic/pros • By second year, approach others in distress
and try to help
ocial behavior • Unresponsive empathy – more
are… aggressive behavior in school years
• Mental State Understanding/Perspective-
Taking which is the ability to recognize what,
would be useful to someone else whose needs
may not mirror the child’s at the moment
 Contributors …

• Level of moral reasoning - solving

moral dilemmas
• People who exhibit more
advanced moral reasoning
behave more morally
• Personal motives
• Children’s needs and goals
come into play.
• Self-perceptions
• Commitment to moral
values is integrated into
the overall identity
Cultural and Social Influences on
Altruism

Most Altruistic
• Less industrialized societies
• Large families
• Children contribute to family matters
• Suppressed individualism

Less Altruistic
• Western Culture competition of individual rather than group goals
• Few responsibilities in family
• Lack of self care routines
 The development of altruistic
behavior
• Empathy
person’s ability to experience the emotions of other
people
Children’s interpretation of their own empathic
arousal as concern for distressed others
(sympathetic empathic arousal vs. self-oriented
distress) should eventually come to promote
altruism.
Social-cognitive development must take place for
true empathy to develop.
• Pro-social moral reasoning
the thinking that people display when deciding
whether to help, share with, or comfort others when
these actions could prove costly to themselves.
 • An emotional state triggered by another’s emotional
state or situation, in which one feels what the other
feels or would normally be expected to feel in his
situation.
empathic moral issues involve people in distress
(pain, danger, poverty),
↓
our primary concern is empathic distress
EMPATHY
• Mature empathy is metacognitive: One is aware of
empathizing
• one feels distressed but knows this is a response
to another’s misfortune, not one’s own
• has a sense of how one as well as others might
feel in the victim’s situation,
• awareness that a victim’s outward behavior and
facial expression may not reflect how he or she
feels
Influences on Prosocial Behavior
• Reinforcement of behaviors
• More positive peer response
• More affective explanations (focuses attention on
harm or distress the child has caused) to discipline
harm doing with that foster sympathy.
• Less coercive tactics (verbal consequences or
physical punishment) to discipline undesirable
behaviors.
• Responsibility
• Household chores and caring for siblings
• Observation of behaviors of peers
• Parental interactions
• Parenting style
• Gender differences
• No gender differences in children’s willingness to
engage in prosocial behavior- both boys and girls
have equal capacity to be prosocial.
• Difference in the occurrence with girls engaging
in more prosocial behavior more often than boys.
 Parenting style
• Martin Hoffman (1970) measured
different parenting style approaches
(love withdrawal, power assertion,
induction) to see which was most
effective in moral development
• neither love withdrawal or power
assertion were effective at promoting
moral maturity
• induction seemed to foster
development of morality the most
• Reason based discipline can be highly
effective with 2 to 5 year olds, by reliably
teaching them sympathy and compassion
for others
 Reinforcing Altruism

• Likable and respected adults can promote children’s pro-

social behavior by verbally reinforcing their acts of kindness.
• Children who are offered tangible rewards for their pro-
social acts are not especially altruistic because they attribute
their kind acts to a desire to earn incentives, rather than to a
concern for others’ welfare and are less likely to make
sacrifices for others when the rewards stop.
• Children who observe helpful models become more helpful
themselves, especially if the model has a warm relationship
with the child, provides a compelling rationale, and regularly
practices what he preaches.
 How Developmentalists Look at
Morality and Prosocial Behavior

• Research has centered on 3 components:

1. Affective Component: the feelings that surround right or wrong actions and that
motivate moral thoughts or actions.
2. Cognitive Component: the way we conceptualize right and wrong and make decisions
about how to behave.
3. Behavioral Component: how we actually behave when we experience the temptation to
lie, cheat, or violate other moral views.

• All contemporary theorists consider internalization to be a crucial milestone along the road to
moral maturity.
 Freud: Development of the
Conscience
• Emphasized moral affect.
• Freud’s theory of oedipal morality:
children internalize
the moral standards of the same-sex
parent during the
phallic stage as they resolve their
Oedipus or Electra
complex and form a conscience or
superego.
 Morality as a Product of
Social Learning (and Social
Information Processing)

• Moral behaviors are learned in the same way

that other social behaviors are: through the
operation of reinforcement and punishment
and through observational learning.
• Hartshorne & May (1928- 1930), conducted
longitudinal study on moral character of
children.
• Found children were inconsistent in their
moral behavior
• Ex: Child’s willingness to cheat in one
scenario did little prediction that the
child would lie, cheat or steal in other
scenarios. (school vs. peers, authority)
• Kochanska & Murray (2000) - doctrine of
specificity - social learning theory that
believes moral affect, moral reasoning, &
moral behavior depend more on situation one
faces than an internalized set of principles.
 Cognitive-Developmental Theory:
The Child as Moral Philosopher
• Cognitive-developmentalists chart the
moral reasoning that children display.
• Believe that children progress through
invariant stages
• Believe that cognitive development and
relevant social experiences underlie the
growth of moral reasoning
• Two major theorists:
• Jean Piaget
• Lawrence Kohlberg
Piaget’s Theory of Moral Development
- a three-stage model, focused on the
way children follow rules -

Premoral Period
• The first 5 years of life, when children are said to have little respect for or awareness of
socially defined rules. At times they may invent certain restricttions as part of the play – all
green blocks must be put in the same pail.
Heteronomous Morality/Moral Realism
• Rule following emerges. Children view the rules of authority figures as sacred and
unalterable.Do not think to question the purpose or correctness of a rule, even though they
may not like to follow it.
Autonomous Morality
• The 2nd stage of moral development, in which children realize that rules are arbitrary
agreements that can be challenged and changed with the consent of the people they govern.
 Piaget’s Model Continued…
Two factors play a role in the transition from heteronomous to
autonomous morality

social experience - equal-status

cognitive maturation
contact with peers

development lessens the increases self- illustrates that

decline in child’s respect respect and rules are
of role-taking for adult respect for arbitrary
egocentrism
skills authority peers agreements.

Critics have argued that Piaget’s theory underestimates

the moral capacities of preschool and grade-school
children.
 Kohlberg’s Theory of
Moral Development
(1958)

• Revised and extended

Piaget’s theory.

• As children mature, they are

faced with solving moral
dilemmas.
1.Obeying rule or
authority figure
2.Taking some action
that conflicted with
rules and commands
while serving human
needs
 • “Why” of decision is the most important, not
“what” (use of the moral dilemma).

• Kohlberg drew on Piaget’s two distinct stages of

moral reasoning.
Development • Morality of constraint: Focuses on
consequences and authority figures
of Moral • Morality of cooperation: Focuses on
Reasoning intent

• Kohlberg’s study found stage-like progression of

moral reasoning in thinking about right and
wrong that everyone goes through while
growing up
 Kohlberg’s stages of moral
development
Each stage builds on the
one before so you have
Affirm life to go through them in
order.
Create new laws You can get stuck at any
Obey laws, stage, though most
contracts make it to Stage 4.
Follow family, The first three stages
group rules
are universally human.
Obtain personal
rewards

Avoid personal
punishment
 Some situations contain a dilemma, a problem to which all
solutions are bad in one way or another. Although a mature
person may at times use different levels of reasoning, he or
she will typically tend to argue at one level.

Kohlberg loved to ask questions like „The Heinz Dilemma”:

• Heinz’s wife is dying. The druggist in town has discovered the

cure. It cost him $200 to make but offers it to Heinz for $2000.
Heinz asks everyone he knows for money but can only come
up with $1000. He promises to pay the rest later. The druggist
says no: he wants to make money from his discovery. That
night Heinz breaks into the shop and takes the medicine.
• Was Heinz right? Why or why not?
Level of preconventional morality (Right and wrong
determined by rewards/punishment)

Avoiding punishment (Stage 1.)

• authority, obedience, punishment
• small children
• Heinz was wrong: he will wind up in prison! Punishment is proof that it is
wrong
• Punishment & Obedience Training - The goodness and badness of an act
all depends on the consequences. Whatever leads to punishment is wrong.
Self-interest (Stage 2.)
• fair deal, favours, What’s in it for me?
• schoolchildren
• Heinz was right: he wanted to save his wife. After all, she takes care of his
children and maybe some day she will return the favour. Or: Maybe after a
while he will see that going to prison to save his wife was a raw deal-
• Naive Hedonism - individual conforms to rules in order to gain rewards or
satisfy personal goals.
• The right way to behave is the way that is rewarded.
 Level of conventional morality (Views of others
matter. Avoidance of blame, seeking approval)

Good boy attitude (Stage 3.)

• motive, character, doing what society expects
• anyone who lives only in a face-to-face world: early teens, people who live in
small towns or tribes cut off from the rest of the world
• Heinz was right: it is what any good husband would do! No judge with his head
screwed on right would put him in prison. If anyone should go to prison it is that
druggist!
• “Good boy” Orientation - moral behavior which is perceived to please, aid and
assist others. Behaving in ways that conform to „good behavior”.

Law and order morality (Stage 4.)

• law and order, duty to society
• late teens, most people in large, faceless societies
• Heinz was wrong: without respect for the law, society would fall apart!
• Society has to somehow work even though most people do not know each
other. You see moral action from the point of view of society as a whole.
• Social-Order Maintaining Morality - individual considers perspectives that are
generalized by others. Obedience to authority. Importence of doing one’s duty.
Level of postconventional morality (Abstract notion
of justice. Rights of others can override obedience
to laws/rules)

Social contract (Stage 5)

• rights, democracy, changing unjust laws, revolution
• Jefferson, some in their middle twenties or later
• Heinz was wrong but the judge should go easy on him. The druggist has a right to
profit from his discovery, but the wife has a right to life.
• You judge society against your own ideas of right and wrong. After all, societies can
be well-run yet evil, like Nazi Germany.
• The Social Contract Orientation - individual sees the laws as tools for expressing the
will of the majority of human welfare. Difference between moral and legal rights.
Recognition that rules sometimes can be broken.
Principle (Stage 6)
• duty to justice, civil disobedience
• Gandhi, Martin Luther King.
• No one Kohlberg tested had clearly reached this stage!
• Heinz was right. We have a duty to justice to break unjust laws.
• Morality of Individual Principles of Conscience - individual defines right and wrong on
the basis of the self chosen ethical principles of his or her conscience. Takes account of
likely views of everyone affected by a moral decision.
 • Longitudinal research conducted by
Colby et al. (1983) on Kohlberg’s original
research participants found that the
moral stages do form an invariant
sequence.

Support for
Kohlberg’s • The need for cognitive development has
also found support in the literature
Theory (Walker, 1980; Tomlinson-Keasey &
Keasey, 1974, etc.).

• Research has also shown that social-

experience that occurs with peers, in
advanced education settings, and in
diverse, democratic societies contributes
to moral development.
 • Politically and culturally biased
• Originally based only on interviews
with individuals from western
societies

Criticisms
• Post-conventional morality does not
exist in some societies – the highest
of stages reflect a Western ideal of
Kohlberg’s justice and does not account for the
values of collectivist societies
Theory
• Underestimates the moral reasoning of
young children
• Neglects moral affect and behavior
• Gender biased
• Originally only studied boys and
men
 Carol Gilligan’s criticisms
of Kohlberg’s theory
• Gilligan (1982, 1993) argues that the theory does
not
adequately represent female moral reasoning
(morality of justice vs. morality of care)
• Doesn’t include compassion and caring for those
in need as “higher development”
• Females socialized to stress interpersonal
relationships
• Morality of Justice: the predominant moral
orientation of males - focusing more on socially
defined justice as administered through law than
on compassionate concerns for human welfare.
• Morality of Care: the dominant moral orientation
of females – an orientation focusing more on
compassionate concerns for human welfare than
on socially defined justice as administered
through law.