Chapter 12: Social Cognitive and Moral Development

One rarely turns on the television or picks up a newspaper nowadays

without encountering some kind of discussion of moral decline.

Presentation By: Arsham Jamalzadeh Yari HHG4U

Presentation Time Line• Introduction

• Development of Social Cognition

• Figure 12.1 and 12.3

• Moral Development

Introduction To Presentation

• What is social cognition and how can we relate to it in the 20th century.

• Different developmental feelings and its causes• Understanding Rules and Intentions• What is Moral Development, Moral Behavior, and

Moral Reasoning• Stages of Kohlbergs Moral Development• Causes and Consequences of Moral Development

Social Cognition

• Social cognition is the understanding and development of our emotions and how we use them to interact with our environment

• A perfect example of this is when we were all young babies we were slowly building up on our ability to recognize people around us and use different expressions to communicate with them. Now a day’s we actually get to understand them for what we see and hear and express ourselves in many ways.

• John Flavell believed that social cognition has the same principles that of general cognition has.

• There are four types of basic infant/children social cognition developments:

Social Cognition Continued• Outer-Inner Characteristics: - Younger look for points (I.e color, shape,

texture) while older generations look for a reason or problem.

• Observation-Inference: - Conclusions based on what they see and not on what they know. Older is different

• Definite-Qualified: - children’s rules are definite while as adolescence grow their idea of rules change.

• Observer’s-General View: - Decrease if egoism and increase of relativism.

• Dimensions found to be related to development of thinking. Reasoning because we as humans, try to conceal everything we can about us so others may not copy or steal our identity. Therefore if someone is capable of understanding ones mind than he has a key advantage in society.

Describing People• Children in school are found to

have a higher social cognitive rate than kids who don’t attend school. (students are given guidelines to follow their entire school life thus possibly generating a higher percentage of SCS.

• Observers believe there is a major shift from observation to inference from ages 6-8 (descriptions are biased on outside interactions). Usually consists of size, gender, color, age, and connection with the child are often what they learn and enhance first.

• At age 7-8, self-steam stage begins to develop. Very critical for young children to develop properly. Dramatic shift in how they think about other people and begin to actually think about the person with a greater or-deal. Including personality, faith, future, religion and much more.

• As children grow up it is thought to be that they relate one person with another when looking or thinking about a specific characteristic of a person.

Describing People• Example: Page 340 Andy: In

the example we can see clearly that his friend is describing this boy by the name of Andy and is constantly relating himself to people and Andy to people.

• Behavioral Comparisons are when two or more people use physical features to compare one or more person’s personalities. Such that we see in the example.

• Carl Barenboim 1977-1981 Came up with the idea of Behaviorism.

• Age group is mostly between 10 to 16 and on.

• Thus Flavells point is confirmed that indeed the basic principles of Social Cognitive skills and General Cognitive skills are based upon same material

Profiling Peoples Feelings• Both Cognitive skill and social information are needed to profile• Pon Harris and de Rosnay 2004: Children build on their

knowledge of emotions over year 1 to adolescence. • 10-12 Months: Babies already have learned how to differentiate

good and bad facial expressions and tones in a voice.• Also show social referencing behavior (The ability to alter

behavior based upon an expression).• 3-4 Years: Knowledge has vastly grown to the point that they

can point out why someone feels the way they do.• Age 10: Understands emotions and can read some expressions

fully.

Figure 12.1• The graph is discussing the difference between behavioral comparisons

with organizing relationships. Study 1: Were kids between the age of 10 and 16 that were tested and received higher percentages on their organizing relationships meaning they understood what they were told better rather than the second group of children from 6 to 11 that stated they didn’t have much behavioral comparisons, therefore not being able to understand emotion in order to change how they are acting.

• Example: If a kid that got into trouble for fighting at age 14 and got yelled at and could tell that his parents were upset and mad, he would try to be a better son. However if a kid that did the same thing in another family but couldn’t tell the difference in emotions his parents were giving clearly enough than he wouldn’t be able to really change anything regarding his behavior.

Development: Empathy• Empathy is the ability to

understand and share feelings of another. It involves two parts: First part is understanding the persons emotional state, and than matching the emotional state to himself.

• Most of the time the person that is empathetic feels all or most of what the other persons emotional state is.

• Sympathy is the same however you don’t match emotions.

• Empathy is learned and developed before sympathy in children.

• Martin Hoffman: Most informatic statement suggests that there are four stages to the analysis of empathy and sympathy in children.

- Global Empathy: Environment is a big factor.

- Egocentric Empathy: 12-18 months when the child has a clear understanding of the difference between self and others.

- Empathy for others: Middle Childhood.

- Empathy for another: Inferences

Friendships• Preschoolers understand friendship as a get together at most.

• Most children believe that friendships are built with personal bonding time.

• Once elementary school starts the idea of physical bonding turns into a trust issue for most young kids.

• They understand that friendship has a temporal dimension: Meaning friends are people who have a history of connection and interaction unlike before where it was just a one time event.

• Perfect example is on page 344 Figure 12.2 and 12.3

• Around the age of 11-12: they begin to understand and talk about intimacy in friendships and by mid-adolescence they expect to have a confident supportive and trusting friend.

Rules and Intentions• Children must learn the rules of life because it is a major influence on

their emergence of social cognition.

• Conventional Rules: Arbitrary socially defined rules specific to a particular culture, sub culture or group. I.E: Don’t run in the pool zone, is used for a specific group of swimmers and there safety.

• At age 7-8 children grasp these concepts better.

• Moral Rules: The universal and obligator y rules reflecting basic principles that guarantee the rights of each other. Children judge the breaking of moral rules as far more serious and can lead to disciplinary.

Moral Development Outline• What is Moral Development and

its Dimensions.

• Moral Emotions

• Moral Behavior

• Moral Reasoning

• Kohlbergs Stages of Moral Development

• Description of Stages

• Figure 12.2 on page 351

• Age and Moral Reasoning

• Moral Reasoning across Culture

• Causes and Consequences

• Alternative views

Moral Development• Moral Development is the

process of learning to distinguish between right or wrong according to culture values.

• It is explained with the terms of psychoanalytic, learning and cognitive developmental theories.

• Dimensions include: Emotions, Behavior, Reasoning.

Moral Emotions:• Moral Emotions are based upon the Psychoanalytic theory which emphasizes

emotions in explaining moral development.

• According to Freud: A child learns moral rules by identifying with the same sex parent (mom-daughter, son-dad) during the phallic stage. Their super ego is formed during this stage and it contains two segments: Ego Model and the conscience. The Conscience tells you what’s right or wrong and what you shouldn’t do. While the ego model is a list of what's good and you should do.

• Eriksson believes that children also learn moral rules through parents. Pride is just as important as moral development as guilt and shame.

• Age 10: Connect shame to moral wrongs

• Age 9-10: Children better understand moral feelings, and make more behavioral choices based on what they might feel.

• Guilt-behavior connection is based up the temperament in a child.

Moral Behavior• Skinners operant condition model suggests that

consequences teach children to obey moral rules.

• Adults reward children for morally well behavior with praise. At the same time they punish them if they don’t follow orders.

• Bandura states that when a child sees someone rewarded for positive behavior, he will believe that he will be rewarded as well if he behaves the same way. Thus he changes his negative behavior to positive.

• Also states that children learn a lot about moral behavior both positive and negative.

Moral Reasoning• Moral reasoning is the process of making judgments about the rightness

or wrongdoing of certain acts.• Piaget claimed that the ability to use reasoning about intentions to make

judgments about the moral dimensions of behavior appear to develop along with concrete operational thinking.

• Moral Realism Stage: The first stage of Piaget’s moral development, in which children believe that rules are inflexible. *Found mostly in children younger than eight years old.

• Believed that all rule breakers will be punished.• After age eight, Piaget proposed that children begin the moral relativism

stage. It is the second stage of the stages of Moral Development in where the children understand that many rules can be changed through social agreement.

• 8-12: Know that unless you get caught you can break rules without punishment. Children older than eight understand the relationship between punishment and intentions. Piaget believes there is more on intentions than punishments.

Kohlbergs Stages• Kohlberg pioneered the practice of assessing moral reasoning by

presenting children with a series of hypothetical dilemmas in story for each with a high lighted of a specific moral. Look at example on page 350 about Heinz famous dilemma.

• Kohlberg concluded that there was three main levels of moral reasoning each with two stages. Look at Figure 12.2

• Level 1: Preconventional Morality: The moral judgments are dominated by consideration of what will be punished and what feels good. Stage one consists of the punishment and obedience orientation. The child relies on the physical consequences of action. Stage 2 is the individualism and exchange where the child begins to do things that are rewarded and not do things that he will be punished for.

• Level 2: Conventional Morality: Where a persons judgments are dominated by considering a group value and its flaws. Constructs of stage 3: The mutual interpersonal expectations and the child begins to make judgments based on intentions as well as behavior.

Kohlberg Continued• Stage 4: the second stage of conventional morality is where the child

turns to larger social groups for his or her ideal. Also known as the social system and conscience.

• Children reasoning at this stage focuses on doing their duty, respecting authority and following laws.

• There is a transition from level two to three: Principled Morality, is the several changes, more importantly the change in the source of authority. At first authority has no factor but as you age you begin to understand its meaning and use thus following the greatest authority. Eventually personal authority comes into play and you make judgments for yourself.

• In stage 5: Called the social contract orientation, people begin to show self chosen principles. The laws are still important but also their own rules are as well. Stage six is the second level in Level 3: and its just a further extension with the individualism for the highest level of moral principles. *Universal ethics.*

Kohlberg Continued.• Kohlberg argued that this sequence of moral development is both

universal and hierarchically organized just as Piaget thought it would be.

• Age n Moral Reasoning: Kohlbergs own findings confirmed may researchers. It is that Preconventional moral reasoning (stages 1&2) is dominant in elementary schools, Stage 2 is still evident in middle school stages 3 and 4 are in high school. Stages 5 and 6 are really rare.

• John Snarey noted that several things in support of Kohlbergs claim that the stages are universal. 1-Studies in children constantly increase in reasoning with age. 2-The few progressing through the stage with few reversals. 3- Cultures differ in the highest level of reasoning observed.

Causes and Consequences• MR and CD: The idea is that the grater a child's ability to look at a

sitatuaton from another's person perspective, the more advanced they are likely to be in moral reasoning. The term role-taking is the ability to look at another persons situation with different perspectives.

• MR and MB: Level of moral reasoning appears to be positively correlated with prosocial and negatively related to antisocial behavior. Schonert Reichl 1999.

• Also the connection between moral reasoning and moral behavior proposed by Kohlberg is that the higher level of moral reasoning a young person shows, the stronger the link to behavior.

Alternative Views• Eisenbergs model: He called hedonistic reasoning a form of prosocial

moral reasoning described by Eisenberg in which the child is concerned with the consequences rather than moral considerations. Aka Stage 2.

• Needs-oriented Reasoning is also another form of prosocial moral development in which the child expresses concern rather directly for the other persons need, even if it conflicts with the child's desires.

• In Adolescence, children say they will do good things because it is expected of them, a pattern highly similar to stage 3 of Kohlberg.

• In Late adolescence, young people give evidence that they have developed clear values that guide their prosocial behavior.

• Early Adolescence, hedonistic reasoning has virtually disappeared and need-oriented reasoning has become dominant form.

• Gilligans Ethic of Caring: He argues that there are at least two disticnt moral orientations: Justice and caring and each has its own central injunction; not to treat others unfairly (justice) and not to turn away from someone in need (caring).

Questions

• If Gilligan was right and adult women typically reason based on an ethic of caring and men reason based on an ethic of justice what do you think the implications of a male female relationship would be?

• Name the Difference in Moral Reasoning and Moral Behavior