Psych 125 Human Development

Christopher Gade Office: 1031-G Office hours: Tu 12-1:30 and by apt.

Email: [email protected]

Class: T 1:30-4:20 Room 2210

Let’s Play a Game…

• What you’re going to do in this game is choose between two different cards. The one on the left and the one on the right.

• Please don’t look ahead at the cards that are on the slides. If you do, you lose all of the games automatically.

• If you choose the higher of the two cards 3/5 times, you get 2 extra credit points.

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How does this relate to today’s topic?

How many of you “know” that nobody cheated on this because nobody got caught?

How many of you are upset with people that were here before class and possibly saw me going over the slides?

How many of you are upset with those that might have intentionally looked ahead in the slides?

How many of you are upset with me for not stating the rules clearly?

How many of you are upset with me for anything else that I might have done during this game?

Morality

• Morality – a sense or standard that determines the difference between right and wrong – Moral development – the changes and growth in the individuals: – Standards of morality – Beliefs of the outcomes for morality – Recognition of the complexity of morality – Moral related behaviors

Piaget’s Concept

• As we grow cognitively, we also develop morally as well – 4 to 7: Children perceive the world as “right or wrong”; They believe that any wrong behaviors will ultimately be punished, and that all behaviors are a product of intentionality • Heteronomous morality – the belief that rules are inherent and cannot be changed • Immanent justice – the belief that punishment will be delivered for all immoral behavior • Note: this often leads children to imply that bad things that happen to a person are a result of immoral behavior

Piaget’s Concept of Growth

• 7+: Children develop a more social perspective on morality – Autonomous morality – the belief that rules and laws, and in most cases, morality, are created by people – Fallible justice – the belief that punishment for immoral behavior will only occur if the behavior is caught – Intentionality in morality – the belief that behaviors are immoral only if the person was: 1. aware of the immorality 2. intended to commit the behavior

Testing Morality

• Rate the morality of the behaviors of these individuals on a scale of 1-10?

• Gary and Kenny stop at a gas station to pick up some sodas. They pick their own choices and bring them to the counter in order to pay for them with Gary’s credit card. The cashier then tells them that they only accept cash. Since they don’t have cash, they decide to run out of the store with the sodas. In their attempt to flea, Kenny gets caught by a police officer that happened to be outside. Gary gets away.

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Testing Morality

Rate the morality of the behaviors of these individuals on a scale of 1-10?

– Becky was concerned about the upcoming final so she spent hours studying. On the day of the exam, her professor accidentally posted the answers to the first ten questions on an overhead. She quickly memorized the answers so she could use them on the test.

– Erika was concerned about the upcoming final so she decided to steal a copy of the exam key. She copied down all of the answers on her arm before the exam. It was raining outside before the exam and she got her arm wet. So wet that she couldn’t read her answers and she was forced to take the exam without the key.

Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987)

• • • • Worked under the tutelage of Jean Piaget Chose to examine development from a moral perspective Argued that similar to cognitive development, children also go through stages of moral development throughout their lives Contended that children progress through these stages in a set order, but that people did not necessarily advance through all of these stages in their life

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The Story Of Heinz

In Europe, 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 make. He paid 2000 for the radium and charged $20,000 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 $ 10,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug-for his wife. Should the husband have done that? Why, or why not?

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But what causes the change?

Both Kohlberg and Piaget stressed the importance of social learning They argued that children needed to be exposed to higher thinking and the flaws in their current thinking in order to advance They also noted that social interaction could speed children through stages of moral development

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Concerns about Moral Development Theories

Cultural influence • Differences in focus, not moral development – Pre-Conventional - self – Conventional - others – Post-Conventional - combination • Gender differences in moral orientation?

– Carol Gilligan • The difference between behavior and moral responses

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Other Theories Of Moral Growth

Social-cognitive/behaviorist perspective: Individuals don’t grow in moral reasoning, instead they vary from each other based on what they learned about morality from their environment – Range of morality • Prosocial  antisocial – Morality conditioning – Morality learning • Identity • Character • Exemplars – Situation-specific morality • Competencies – moral capabilities and recognition of moral appropriate behaviors in situations

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Where’s the Learning Coming From?

Peers – Stressed by Kohlberg and Piaget Parents – Modeling – Empowering – Cocooning – Pre-arming Schools – Standards (cheating) – Identity (service learning, forming values & concepts)

Other Proposed Sources of Morality

• Religion • Internal Thoughts • Personal Experience – Past encounters – Exposure to prosocial/antisocial behaviors

Moving On…

• In the next class, we’ll be having our third and last exam of the semester.

• The week after that, you have your final papers due.

• That’s it for what we’ll be covering in class this semester. I hope you enjoyed the journey.