• Topic: Moral Development & Cognitive Reasoning • Aim: How do humans develop a sense of right and wrong? • Do Now: You find a wallet with $1000 dollars cash - no one is around but the person’s ID is in the wallet with their address - what do you do and why?

1. The ID: instinctual and biological urges that operates on the “pleasure principle” 2. The EGO: the rational, thoughtful personality process that operates on the “reality principle” • 3. The SUPEREGO: serves to advocate what you should do, operates on the “moral principal, or conscience” According to Freud, certain personality traits & behaviors can be determined by the correct or incorrect development of the ID, EGO, and SUPEREGO

Freud’s Theory of Personality (and behavior)

Stages of Moral Development:

• Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg argued that human morality develops in 6 stages throughout life. • Used surveys with ethnical dilemmas (Heinz, e.g.) • Rationalization for responses, not the responses themselves, determines the level of moral reasoning.

Heinz Dilemma (or ‘Heinz Steals the Drug’) A woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman’s husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper to let him pay later. But the druggist said, “No, I discovered the drug and I’m going to make money from it.” Should Heinz steal the drug?

‘ Heinz’ - Survey Questions 1. Is it right or wrong for him to steal the drug?

2. Does he have an obligation to steal the drug?

3. Should he steal it if the person dying was a stranger?

4. It is against the law to steal the drug. Does that necessarily make it morally wrong?

Lawrence Kohlberg’s Moral Ladder Cognitive Development

Postconventional level Morality of abstract principles: to affirm agreed-upon rights and personal ethical principles

 Based on your own personal ethics

Conventional level Preconventional level Morality of law and social rules: to gain approval or avoid disapproval

 Based on how others see you

Morality of self-interest: to avoid punishment or gain concrete rewards

 Based on rewards and punishments

Problems with Kolhberg’s theory

Culturally Biased Only urban countries seem to progress to highest level of reasoning.

Sampling Only white middle class boys interviewed. Not a good basis for universal concept.

Stages Need to progress without skipping/ regressing.

Some evidence to suggest we move up and down at different points in our lives?

Moral/Ethical Development Discussion:

1. Where does our sense of right and wrong come from (Basically, what factors went into your answering of the Do Now)?

2. How old are humans when they start to really understand concepts of right and wrong?

3. In your opinion, what makes an action the ‘right’ or the ‘wrong’ thing to do? Does situation matter or not?

Incentives:

• “Morality, it could be argued,

represents the way that people would like the world to work -whereas economics represents how it actually does work.”

• Incentives are things that motivate us to act or not act a particular manner. Can be social, moral, or economic.

• Why cheat (tests, taxes, or anything

really)?

• Why don’t we cheat more often?

Ethical & Moral Dilemmas:

• Situations in which there are two choices to be made, neither of which resolves the situation in an ethically acceptable fashion. • Reasoning for decisions matter more than decision itself

Who do you save and why? - Reading “Justice - What’s the Right Thing to Do” excerpt

Life Boat Morality Exercise:

• The ship is sinking and the seas are rough. All but one

lifeboat has been destroyed. The lifeboat holds a maximum of 6 people. There are 8 people that want to board the lifeboat. The four individuals who do not board the boat will certainly die.

• Woman who is six weeks pregnant • Lifeguard • Two young adults who recently married • Senior citizen who has fifteen grandchildren • Elementary school teacher • Thirteen year old twins • Veteran nurse • Captain of the ship

The Prisoner’s Dilemma (Poundstone, 1992): • Two members of a criminal gang are arrested and imprisoned. Each prisoner is in solitary confinement with no means of speaking to or exchanging messages with the other. The police admit they don't have enough evidence to convict the pair on the principal charge. They plan to sentence both to a year in prison on a lesser charge. Simultaneously, the police offer each prisoner a bargain. If he testifies against his partner, he will go free while the partner will get three years in prison on the main charge. Oh, yes, there is a catch ... If both prisoners testify against each other, both will be sentenced to two years in jail.

When are the following actions ethical or unethical?

• Murder • Assault • Lying • Theft

Morality Discussion:

• Explain why you think capital punishment (the death penalty) either is or is not an ethical punishment for certain crimes.

What about… • Adults vs.. Children?

• Certain Crimes?

• Mentally retarded criminals?

• 8th Amendment (cruel & unusual punishment)?

Kitty (Catherine) Genovese:

“Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police” - NY Times, 1964

1. Why do you think the residents of Kew Gardens acted (or didn’t act) the way they did?

2. Do you think most people would act in the same way?

3. Do you think that you would act in the same way? Why or why not?

Famous Case Studies: Milgram experiment and Stanford Prison experiment

The Milgram Experiment (1963): • Social Experiment that measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts (electric shocks) that conflicted with their personal conscience.

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process… they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.”---Stanley Milgram

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Him Huy, head of guard detail at Tuol Sleng (S-21) death camp where he personally oversaw the deaths of 14,000 individuals. Huy, now 50, lives in a small village in Cambodia where he lives alongside former victims.

• “I’m not a bad person. I’m a good man. I never argue with anyone. I never fight with anyone. I have good intentions as a human being…” • “We were all prisoners, those who killed and those who were killed. We were victims too. I had no choice. If I hadn’t killed them [Cambodian citizens], I would have been killed myself.”

The Nuremberg Defense:

• Coined during the

Nazi war crimes trials at Nuremberg after World War II.

• Nazi war criminals who were charged with genocide, mass murder, torture and other atrocities used the defense "I was only following orders" so frequently that the argument became known generically as "The Nuremberg Defense".

Stanford Prison Experiment - 1971 •Psychological social experiment that intended to see what role authority plays in moral behavior (if any) •1/2 participants were ‘guards’, 1/2 were ‘prisoners’ •Study stopped after 2 weeks due to ethnical dilemmas of participants behavior – guards acting cruelly towards ‘prisoners’

The use of ID numbers was a way to make prisoners feel anonymous. Each prisoner had to be called only by his ID number and could only refer to himself and the other prisoners by number

“…our prisoners expected some harassment, to have their privacy and some of their other civil rights violated while they were in prison”

• “Blindfolded and in a state of mild shock over their surprise arrest by the city police, our prisoners were put into a car and driven to…[jail]…”

• “Push-ups were a common form of physical punishment imposed by the guards to punish infractions of the rules or displays of improper attitudes toward the guards or institution…”

• “…they carried a whistle around their neck and a billy club borrowed from the police. Guards also wore special sun-glasses, an idea I borrowed from the movie Cool Hand Luke. Mirror sunglasses prevented anyone from seeing their eyes or reading their emotions”

Discussion Questions:

1. Why do you believe the “guards” and “prisoners” at Stanford, along with the guards at Abu Ghraib prison acted as they did?

2. What do you think the experiment says about how people can change in different situations?

3. Do you believe that, put in a similar situation, you might have acted the same? Why or why not?

• The Milgram Experiment Revisited (2007)