How do morals develop

Almost all of our actions and thoughts are about others or are in response to others. We cooperate with and help people who are not related to us at a level that is unmatched in the animal kingdom [ 1 ]. Since humans are, by nature, both helpful and selfish, we think that morality evolved to support our helpful social interactions with others and control our somewhat selfish tendencies. However, it would be misleading to see morality as only a result of evolution.

Although some human traits, like skin color, are determined by our genes alone, morality is quite different in that it is also determined both by our nature and the society in which we live. Many moral rules and values vary between different cultures and also change over time. For instance, bull fighting is seen as cruel form of entertainment or even as animal torture in North America and most European countries, but it is still very popular in Spain and Colombia where it is considered a form of expression, despite the obvious suffering of the animals.

An example of a shift in morality over time is our attitude toward slavery. Most people in the world today think that it is immoral to own slaves but that was not the case a century ago. Thus, our morality has been formed over thousands of years from the combination of both our genes and our culture, rather than just one or the other.

This genetic and cultural evolution has shaped our brains to care for others, react to those who try to harm us, and to create moral rules that help us to live together successfully [ 2 ]. There are three main lines of evidence that support the view that our brains are wired for morality.

For instance, many animals exhibit behaviors that benefit other members of their species. Such prosocial behaviors meaning behaviors that are good for others , like helping each other and caring for offspring, have been seen in rodents and primates.

Rats will help other distressed rats that have been soaked with water, and it will also choose to help a cage mate that is in distress before obtaining a food reward. Chimpanzees will help each other and share with each other, but only when they benefit from the sharing, as long as the costs are minimal and the needs of the other chimpanzees are clear.

Chimpanzees also collaborate and form alliances in fights or when hunting. Capuchin monkeys have even been shown to react in a negative way when they see other monkeys being treated unfairly. Humans often try to comfort or console other humans who have been hurt or are afraid.

This behavior decreases the level of stress that the victim feels. Helping behaviors have also been demonstrated in mice and rats. Importantly, with both humans and animals, these prosocial behaviors are more likely to be shown toward kin those related to the animal and members of the same social groups. Empathy does not require conscious thinking or language. Empathy originally evolved to promote parental care for their offspring, but it is now expressed by humans in many different ways and is not restricted to kin.

Of course, just because we can observe some buildings blocks of morality in non-human animals does not mean that those animals have the same sense of morality that humans do. But, it strongly suggests that morality is a product of evolution. When behaviors seen in the animal kingdom are similar to behaviors found in humans, it suggests that these behaviors have been selected, because they increase the ability of humans to prosper both as individuals and in the groups in which they live.

When we see early signs of morality in young babies, this provides strong evidence for the evolutionary roots of morality, because babies have not yet had much time to be influenced by their environment.

Psychologists who study human development have shown that human babies enter the world ready to pay attention and respond to social stimuli, such as voices and faces, and that babies begin forming social relationships during the first year of life. Young children provide comfort and assistance to both other children and adults in emotional distress. For instance, when they see their mothers in pain, month-old toddlers show comforting behaviors such as hugging, patting, and sharing toys.

As infants develop and become more able to analyze what is going on around them, they even have the ability to recognize when a person in their environment is treating another person badly. At a young age, infants are quickly able to figure out whether the consequence of a behavior is good or bad, suggesting that their genes are involved and that experience and learning are not the only causes of moral development. By 12 months of age, infants begin to understand the concept of fairness.

When these infants witness cookies being shared, they expect an equal number of cookies to be given to all of the people involved. Taken together, evidence from these laboratory studies tells us that children under the age of 2 have a very good understanding of which actions will benefit others.

However, as children get older, the expression of their morality changes. The depiction of moral development would be altered further when each domain of natural cognitive development was eventually integrated into a general theory of cognitive ego-development.

Of the more specific critiques coming from critical and cultural theory, one feminist-friendly version garnered most notice, especially outside research psychology. More noteworthy is the rare and rich alternative perspective on moral development that accompanied it: caring versus justice.

Indeed, the caring theme offers an especially promising portrait of what benevolence ethics looks like on the practical level, in everyday life. As such it poses a far superior champion for the benevolence tradition than outsized views such as utilitarianism, or dated, intuitionist virtue theories. Feminism looks to virtue theory at its peril since, among other things, traditional trait theory has garnered very poor empirical backing. And the conceptualization of traditional virtues pre-dates both research psychology and the careful introspective or depth psychology that preceded it.

The caring theme is researched as a set of interpretive skills and sensibilities, proclivities and habits, easily observed and verified.

Further, caring is not only more realistic than its main virtue alternative, agape, but shows up such unconditional love as a kind of kindness-machismo. Carol Gilligan argued that Kohlberg research, like Piagetian and Freudian research, reflected a male outlook on development.

While occurring at the theoretical level, it also greatly infected Kohlbergian research methodology, making qualitative observations the fulfillment of prior ideological prophecy. It focuses on foundational moral concepts only and on universal laws, not on a morality of social practice and interaction that its research claims to measure.. The moral orientation portrayed in Kohlbergian stages is rigid, formulaic or calculative, and legalistic.

In personal life it is cold, aloof, and impersonal, if not manipulative and punitive. Its individualism urges contentiousness with vague threat of violence. These untoward qualities show in personal judgmentalism and blaming, in both social censure and legal punishment. But they also show in the demand-quality of rights-in-conflict, and in our restive resistance toward burdensome duties.

Responsibility is seen as diminishing free self expression when in care it is an opportunity for artful relation and fulfilling mutuality. These observations on the coercive aspects of justice must strike a chord for ethicists, especially with Kantians who hold high the liberation of self-imposed moral laws.

Critical-feminist ethicists can only welcome the picture of rights and duties as clubs and shields in a battle of conflicting interests. Need ethics be designed for remote cooperation against mutually mistrustful and threatening strangers? Must it form an artificial bridge of relation where natural relational bonds are weak, and relational know how deficient? Mature caring shows great competence in attending to others, in listening and responding sensitively to others through dialogue aimed at consensus.

The inherent powers of relationship are rallied to address moral difficulties, not powers of individual ingenuity in problem solving or deliberative argumentation. As a goodness ethic, caring also emphasizes the sharing of aspirations, joys, accomplishments, and each other. Relative to the unique longevity of the Kohlbergian program, care research remains in its infancy, as does its research methodology Lyons, Brown, Argyris et.

But even as a conceptual posit a different voice hypothesis care has proven extremely influential in hosts of fields spanning literature, domestic violence, leadership counseling and legal theory.

The three developmental levels depicted exactly parallel what Gilligan herself portrays as coping strategies—particular strategic responses to particular kinds of personal crises Gilligan , ch 4.

Such phenomena differ great from general competence systems evolved for, and able at handling moral issues generally. Gilligan also depicts care levels in the format of Perryan meta-cognition, bearing more similarities to ethical and interpersonal meta-cognition than Piagetian first-order moral judgment.

Research does not show natural meta-cognitive development, apparently, in any domain, e. Gilligan also refers to care levels as cognitive orientations, not competence systems, which research also shows to be quite different cognitive phenomena Perry Indeed, they are an admitted function of masculinist, sexist socialization in part Gilligan , Intro, chs. After their initial depiction, moreover, the developmental levels of caring have rarely received mention in the care literature.

To philosophers, however, placing the depictions of caring cognition alongside Kohlbergian stages points to a progressive sequence that such a benevolence ethic might take, naturally developing or not. As such, it suggests an educational curriculum that would foster current communitarian interest and cross-disciplinary feminism.

The care ethic is of exceptional utility in the classroom, proving much more applicable for addressing real-world moral issues than any so-called applied ethic derived from moral philosophy or stage structure. For many, ethics seems too murky, and ethical problems too sparse on information to allow decisive, disjunctive solutions of a right-wrong, just-unjust variety.

Any developmental approach to education starts with this recognition: teachers are presenting ways to think to students who already have their own very competent ways to think. Moreover, many of the views being presented are intellectually refined versions of viewpoints the student has developed herself in more rudimentary forms.

Their design must appeal to student views even when attempting to enhance and challenge those views, not aiming fill up empty space or reorganize badly filled space with something new or better. For cognitive-moral developmentalists, this means presenting material that will unsettle current terms of understanding, urging students to construct new ones.

Here the teacher can only get students to teach themselves and develop their own skills, as both psychology and ethics prescribe. The stage or unified-system notion shows its power and utility most in this context. When philosophers present the range of post-conventional ethical or political theories in class, many students are processing them at a conventional level, thus systematically distorting them.

This distortion is even greater when a less educated portion of the American public encounters teachings such as democratic toleration, equality before the law, separation of church and state and other constitutional principles. Because stage structures are tightly integrated and encompassing—representing the basic meaning system of each student—class discussion also will have many students talking past each other in the same systematic sense.

Arguments won by one party, or consensus achieved by two, may not at all be what it seems. Mutual miscommunication may be the rule here, not shared understanding. The same applies to citizens or voters in public discussion. Those parts of a discussion that end in greatest confusion, disagreement, and mutual dissatisfaction may be most educationally productive. And this is not simply because they provide food for reflective thought. Rather, at a deeper level, they may help initiate or exacerbate existing cognitive disequilibrium.

If teachers are not somehow urging and testing for such confusion and anxiety—for disequilibrated rather than equilibrated writing—they are likely falling short in enhancing fundamental student understanding. Many instructors likely will recognize the above phenomena in their teaching, finding this picture of them part-illuminating, part-affirming. Most ethics instructors are struck by their ability to uncover commonsense Aristotles, John Stuart Mills, Kants, Humes and Lockes in their classroom, merely by posing moral questions.

Moral development findings provide a deep and systematic partial explanation of this phenomenon. Other who seem to get things wrong often are actually grappling at a much deeper level with the views. And most instructors can tell when some lectures or class discussions have no hope of getting anywhere. William Perry offers a quasi-developmental account of meta-cognitive thinking in the college years, including ethical reflection. Faculty find it useful for understanding special problems that students face when confronted with opposing conceptions of fact and value across the curriculum.

For the philosopher, such confrontations occur frequently within each course. But it also indicates major shifts in student epistemic perspectives ranging from initial absolutism through a kind of relativistic functionalism.

Because the account is as clinical as it is empirical in a research sense, it offers a insightful speculations on the emotions, motivations, and anxieties students experience in doing commonsense philosophy and ethics on their educational experience.

Nel Noddings poses mature caring as a model for reorganizing public schools. Students can be taught to care across the board—from the growing of plants in the classroom, through a kind of dialogue and coming to consensus with mathematical concepts, to the nurturing of friendships in class. But more, students can learn these lessons by being truly cared for by school personnel, not just respected or graded fairly.

As a hospital aims to be a care-taking institution, so a school can conceive its overall mission that way, not simply transmitting education or developing student skills and the like, but supporting, nurturing, and partnering with students in every aspect of school life. That many school personnel mistakenly believe they are already doing this indicates how crucial it is to conceive care at higher developmental levels, with many differentiations and integrations, shadings and textures of adult caring given prominence.

Conventional and post-conventional caring are quite different matters. Imagine what caring of this overall sort would look like in the usually anonymous setting of a college ethics course.

The Kohlbergian approach to moral development has yielded hosts of cross-cultural studies bringing in the more developed cultural research methods of social anthropologists and creating some controversies regarding the issue of cultural relativism and universality Sweder vol. Research on moral education, using Kohlberg research and theory, has taken several forms. The Kohlbergian approach also has spun of heretical research programs focused on the apparent development of moral conventions and traditions, independent of post-conventional reasoning development Turiel vol.

Narvaez has carried the moral perception component of this research to the classroom, assessing strategies for making students more sensitive to when morally-charged issues arise in daily life.

She also has led attempts to integrate moral-development research with related cognitive science research on problem solving. Much research attention has been paid to the age-old problem of akrasia or weakness of will, termed the judgment-action gap by cognitive psychologists.

They suspect that our self-definitions—whether we view our sense of responsibility and character as central to who we are—most determine whether we practice what we moral preach.

But many other factors seem involved, likely centered in moral emotions and attitudes, and the automaticity phenomena just noted. The important areas of moral motivation and emotion have proven the most difficult to get at empirically. While not part of developmental research or theory, other specialties in psychology and philosophy frame moral-developmental concerns. Psychoanalysts have performed many interesting clinical studies on moral emotions and their motivational effects, focusing on superego functions guilt, fear, shame, regret and the ego-ideal pride, emulation, aspiration, internalization.

Enright vol. Hoffman, as noted, has researched empathy most extensively. For decades, social psychologists such as Adorno and Sherif have looked at issues of cooperation and competition, authoritarianism and democracy in various types of organizations and groups.

They have developed an entire area of research, Pro-Social Development, which takes a basically amoral or non-moral look at all forms of socially conforming and contributing behavior. A formative, but largely abandoned research movement in this area investigated the conditions under which onlookers will help or fail to help strangers, accepting different costs or levels of risks for doing so Bickman vol.

An industrial branch of social psychology looks at fairness issues in the workplace and the effects of greater and lesser employee control there. Damon has conducted myriad studies of fairness judgments in early childhood that point to many factors not taken covered by cognitive competence systems of their development.

Related areas of personality psychology look into the motivations behind forms of moral altruism especially, trying to understand the concept of self-sacrifice and doing good for its own sake Staub vol. A very interesting program of altruism research rises directly from philosophical accounts of egoism, both psychological and ethical Batson vol. Some of the most inspiring research in moral development charts the development and reflective motivations of everyday moral exemplars and heroes.

Lawrence Blum offered important distinctions among types of extraordinarily moral individuals, which were incorporated into interview research and theory by Colby and Damon in Some Do Care. Lawrence Walker has begun a long-term research program in this area as well, which likely will help tie cognitive-moral development in education to the prominent character-education and moral-literacy movement.

Character education focuses intently on the nurturing of admirable traits, attitudes, outlooks and value commitments. Without more extensive psychological research to support its traditionalist emphases on core American values, traditional virtues, and the upholding of codes and creeds, this approach flirts with the discredited approaches of early Anglo-American public school education, rife with moralistic strictures and nationalistic indoctrination. William Puka Email: Pukab aol.

Moral Development This entry analyzes moral development as a perennial philosophical view complemented by modern empirical research programs. What it is Human nature is naturally good.

What it is for In human nature theory or axiology moral development notions convey a sense of ourselves as dynamic and progressive beings. Moral Stages of Reasoning Jean Piaget vol. But they recognized that even the most optimistic projections of such behaviorist and Freudian potential falls far short of capturing sophisticated moral deliberation and problem solving, not to mention interpersonal negotiation and relationship Piaget introduced a third factor, the cognitive schema or system, that mediated the interplay of bio-psychology and socialization.

Philosophical Research Method Drawing from the literature of moral philosophy, Kohlberg hypothesized that justice-as-fairness was the central moral concept, also that conflict resolution and fostering mutual cooperation were its chief aims and marks of adequacy.

Philosophical Interpretation of Findings Armed with these observations on developmental stages and processes, Kohlberg derived a range of overarching. Pedagogical Implications Any developmental approach to education starts with this recognition: teachers are presenting ways to think to students who already have their own very competent ways to think.

Related Research The Kohlbergian approach to moral development has yielded hosts of cross-cultural studies bringing in the more developed cultural research methods of social anthropologists and creating some controversies regarding the issue of cultural relativism and universality Sweder vol.

References and Further Reading The empirical research references above can be found in the seven volume series: Moral Development: A Compendium. Puka ed , Garland Press. Classic research by Piaget and Kohlberg is contained in vols.

Cross-cultural and updated longitudinal research is contained in vol. Kohlberg criticism is highlighted in vol. Care research by Gilligan and colleagues is highlighted in vol. Research on altruism, bystander intervention, egoism, and pro-social development is focused in vol.

Additional References: Blasi, A Lapsley and D. Narvaez Eds. Blum, L. Midwestern studies in philosophy. Boston: Routledge Kegan-Paul. Colby, A. NY: Free Press. The Analects. New York: Penguin Classics. Emler, N. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45 Fowler, J. Stages of Faith. San Francisco: Harper and Row. Gilligan, C. In a Different Voice. Kohlberg, L.

The Psychology of Moral Development. New York: Harper and Row. Narvaez, D. Noddings, N. Kohlberg asked, "Should the husband have done that? Kohlberg was not interested so much in the answer to whether Heinz was wrong or right but in the reasoning for each participant's decision. He then classified their reasoning into the stages of his theory of moral development.

Kohlberg's theory is broken down into three primary levels. At each level of moral development, there are two stages.

Similar to how Piaget believed that not all people reach the highest levels of cognitive development, Kohlberg believed not everyone progresses to the highest stages of moral development. Preconventional morality is the earliest period of moral development. It lasts until around the age of 9. At this age, children's decisions are primarily shaped by the expectations of adults and the consequences for breaking the rules.

There are two stages within this level:. The next period of moral development is marked by the acceptance of social rules regarding what is good and moral. During this time, adolescents and adults internalize the moral standards they have learned from their role models and from society. This period also focuses on the acceptance of authority and conforming to the norms of the group.

There are two stages at this level of morality:. At this level of moral development, people develop an understanding of abstract principles of morality. The two stages at this level are:. One analysis found that while stages one to four could be seen as universal in populations throughout the world, the fifth and sixth stages were extremely rare in all populations.

Kohlberg's theory played an important role in the development of moral psychology. While the theory has been highly influential, aspects of the theory have been critiqued for a number of reasons:. Gilligan instead suggested that Kohlberg's theory overemphasizes concepts such as justice and does not adequately address moral reasoning founded on the principles and ethics of caring and concern for others.

While Kohlberg's theory of moral development has been criticized, the theory played an important role in the emergence of the field of moral psychology. Researchers continue to explore how moral reasoning develops and changes through life as well as the universality of these stages.

Understanding these stages offers helpful insights into the ways that both children and adults make moral choices and how moral thinking may influence decisions and behaviors. Ever wonder what your personality type means? Sign up to find out more in our Healthy Mind newsletter.

Lapsley D. Moral agency, identity and narrative in moral development. Hum Dev. Elorrieta-Grimalt M. A critical analysis of moral education according to Lawrence Kohlberg. Scott H, Cogburn M. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Updated May 24, Govrin A. From ethics of care to psychology of care: Reconnecting ethics of care to contemporary moral psychology.