Morals offer a guide to right and wrong behavior. Children learn morals within the context of their culture based on experience, observation, teaching and their level of concept development. Cultures and religions offer guides such as the Golden Rule or the 10 Commandments. However, applying general principles to specific situations often requires an internal integration of concepts. Theories of moral development seek to understand how children reason and apply moral principles to everyday situations.
Moral Judgment
Jean Piaget provided some of the earliest research and theoretical underpinnings of the study of child development. His work, “The Moral Judgment of the Child,” remains an influential text in moral theory. According to Piaget, a child’s development results from action. Therefore, as a child’s knowledge of the world increases, that knowledge affects his view of morality. To Piaget, a very young child’s morality consists of the belief that rules are constant and breaking rules results in automatic punishment. Punished behavior becomes bad behavior. As a child matures into an adolescent, this view of morality refines to include intentions in judging morality.
Moral Development Stages
Lawrence Kohlberg, a professor in psychology at Yale University, the University of Chicago and Harvard, is an important voice in moral development theory for young children. His “The Philosophy of Moral Development,” published in 1981, explored observations of how development affects concepts of morality. Kohlberg’s writings show the influence of Piaget’s thoughts on child development, but extend the stages of moral development to include pre-conventional, with a self-only view of the world; conventional morality based on social rules; and post-conventional reasoning that seeks to apply the general principles that underlie social norms and conventional morality.
Sexual Aspects of Moral Development
Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, also had an opinion on moral development in children. Freud believed that all behavior has its roots in sexual conflict. According to Freud, the human personality has three components,:the ego, which that controls conscious thought; the id, which involves desires; and the superego, which controls the impulses of the id. The superego contains the person’s view of right and wrong, which Freud called the conscience. The conscience involves beliefs about punishments and rewards.
Domain Theory
Developed by Elliot Turiel, the domain theory of moral development distinguishes between morality and social knowledge. Modern research and thought in domain theory rests in the work of Larry Nucci, emeritus professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago and research educator in the Institute of Human Development at the University of California, Berkeley. According to Nucci, domain theorists believe that moral development reflects the child's attempts to account for the qualitative effects of actions on another person.
Fairness Research
Modern research on moral development in children has focused on the concept of fairness as that reflects moral views. According to Norwegian scientist Ingvild Almås, views of morality reflect a child’s understanding of fairness. In early childhood, fairness means equal. In adolescence, equality gives way to merit as a way to assess the moral correctness of actions.
