Lecture 8 - Peer interactions and moral reasoning

1-2 years (timeline of peer interactions)

-interact with other babies in friendly, inquisitive way

-watch each other play, engage in pretend play

-play develops from being done in parallel to more co-ordinated

3 years (timeline of peer interactions)

-more co-ordinated play

-role taking

-prefer peer to adult company

6 years (timeline of peer interactions)

-peak in imaginative play

-long play sequences

7 years (timeline of peer interactions)

-stable same gender preference

-expectations of friends develop

11 years (timeline of peer interactions)

-expect deeper foundations to friendship

-emotional support, someone to confide in and not just a play mate

13 years (timeline of peer interactions)

-emergence of cross gender relationships

-further development of conception of friendship

cooperation

-having a joint goal

-different but flexible roles

-commitments to the joint goal

development of cooperation

-1-2 years children become increasingly attuned to cooperative activities and social games

-species-specific to humans

-partner ceases to play child attempts to reengage communicatively

-ability to take a bird’s eye view of interactional scenarios

tube with handles (cooperation tasks)

-child holds handles on tube

-attempts to get adult to holds the handle on the other end

-when this is done tube opens to reach prize inside

double tube (cooperation tasks)

-two tubes

-hold cup at end of tube

-child has to drop ball in correct tube and communicate and work with the adult holding the cup to do this

cooperation as specific to humans

-chimpanzees sometimes perform one or other role in trapdoor task but don’t reengage

-no evidence of shared goals

development of peer preference

-cooperation emerges early and sets the stage for later interactions when infants start to prefer peer interaction

socialising role of peers

-peers have more in common with a child than adults

-influence behaviour by:

• modelling behaviours that a child can imitate

• reinforcing behaviour

• setting benchmarks for a child to compare themselves to → affects self-esteem

peers and ecological systems theory

-interacting with peers affords very different types of learning opportunities compared to caregiver interactions

peer acceptance

-popularity is important to children

-peer status can affect children’s happiness, social development, school attendance and future behaviour and life outcomes

-effect of peer acceptance on a child can be mitigated by close friendships

-peer status tends to be stable over time, even in new groups

sociometric techniques

-categorises children according to their popularity in the classroom

-each child is presented with pictures of all class members and asked to nominate 3 people they like a lot and 3 people they don’t like very much

-each child then scored according to how many people did or didn’t like them

sociometric categories

• popular → many positive votes, few negative votes

• controversial → many equally positive and negative votes

• average → some positive and some negative, roughly equal

• neglected → few of either kind of votes

• rejected → few positive votes, many negative votes

rejected children

-subcategorised into:

• aggressive rejected → poor self-control, behavioural problems, disruptive

• nonaggressive rejected → anxious, withdrawn,socially unskilled

factors affecting peer status

-temperament

-personality

-past experiences

-physical appearance

-social skills

social information processing

-largely automatic

-database:

• memory store

• acquired rules

• social schemas

• social knowledge

social information processing - steps

1. encode cues → own thoughts and other’s behaviours

2. interpret cues → attribute causes, intent, evaluate goal and past performance, evaluate self and others

3. clarify goals

4. review possible actions

5. decide on action → review possible outcomes, evaluate likely response and self-efficacy, select action

6. act on decision

social information processing - method

-task 1 child watched videos of social interactions involving (1a) peer group entry and (1b) peer provocation

-asked questions relating to each step in a social information processing model

-task2a child assessed on a peer group entry task -> had to join two children who were already playing together

-task 2b child provoked by peer

social information processing - results

-children’s ability on task 1a but not task 1b predicted their ability on task 2a

social information processing - average

-in peer entry task, asked questions, didn’t hover, no conflict, rated a 4 by 2 peers in task

-responded to provocation by crying but did not retaliate aggressively or blame peers

-spent 97% time in solitary appropriate activity, compared to mean of 62% → remainder in positive peer interaction

social information processing - rejected aggressive

-didn’t use presented cues, generated an incompetent response, low enactment skills score

-in peer entry task, hovered, changed physical orientation a lot, displayed numerous disconnected behaviours, incoherent verbalisations, rated 1.5/4

-responded to provocation with insults

-spent 48% time in solitary appropriate activity and 16% of time in antisocial interaction compared to mean of 4%

overcoming rejection

-to want to interact with others

-feel confident in having something to contribute to the group

-to be interested in what others in the group are like

parents’ promotion of peer acceptance

-being first partners with whom their children learn to interact

-creating opportunities for their children to interact with others

-being a role model in social interaction

-talk about social interactions and thereby developing a child’s understanding

-explicitly providing suggestions as to how to behave or advice on a way forward in a specific situation

-building up children’s confidence about their own likeability

examples of parent talk

• “if i can sense she wants to get out of a situation but wants to be polite i suggest a way out she could use”

• “show her how to make friends rather than fall out all the time, ask to play rather than forcing it , don’t try to be the boss all the time”

• “walk out of a situation if feeling of cross before he blows, shouldn’t frighten or hit other children”

teachers’ promotion of peer acceptance

-adult coach can help children to be more accepted by teaching them 3 methods of communication:

1. asking peers positively toned questions

2. offering useful suggestions and directions to peers

3. making supportive statements to peers

-children who did this showed improvements on sociometric measures compared to controls → experimenter not blind to conditions

friends’ protection from peer acceptance

-many children who are unpopular but do have a friend and are contented within that friendship

-this relationship appears to have some protective effect against low peer group acceptance

-others find themselves bullied by supposed friend

morality reasoning

-prescriptive judgements of justice, rights and welfare pertaining to how people ought to relate to each other

moral systems

-interlocking sets of values, norms, practices, identities, institutions and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible

morality

-pluralism → no unifying principle but many values - care, loyalty, purity

-relativism → no one right moral code but many viable alternatives

-morality is product of physical, psychological, cultural and institutional mechanisms

sociobiology (morality and emotions)

-morality is defined by emotive centres of hypothalamic-limbic system

-true for developmentalists like kohlberg and piaget

-only by interpreting the activity of the emotive centres as a biological adaptation can the meaning of the canons can be deciphered

trolley dilema

-trolley headed for 5 people who will be kliled if it proceeds on present course

-only way to save them is to hit a switch that will turn the trolley into an alternate set of tracks to kill 1 person instead

footbridge dilemma

-trolley threatens to kill 5 people

-standing next to fat stranger on footbridge that spans the track in between the trolley and 5 people → only way to save them is to push the stranger off the bridge and kill him

emotion meets reason

-fMRI study suggests effect of emotional engagement on moral reasoning

emotional contagion

-tendency to catch other people’s emotions

-babies cry when they hear other babies crying

-pupillary contagion in adults

mimicry

-tendency to automatically synchronise affective expressions, vocalisations, postures and movements with those of another person

-argued to lead to a causal chain whereby one adopts another’s affective facial expressions and feels the corresponding affective expression oneself

-neonates mimic facial expressions

meltzoff (like me hypothesis)

-human acts are represented within a common code that applies to the self as well as others

-newborns do this in their first interactions with people

-provides an interpretive framework for understanding the behaviour they see

happe

-our empathy for someone is critically affected by how much we identify with them

development of concern for others - method

-1-2 years old

-mothers trained to record children’s responses to the emotions of others over the year long period

-once a week mothers also simulated different emotions and recorded how their children reacted

-at 2 years children attended the research lab and their reactions to simulated emotions were again video recorded

development of concern for others - results

-children made the transition from generally being upset themselves when they saw someone in distress to increasingly attempting to comfort the person by engaging in prosocial behaviours

-by 15 months over 50% has spontaneously responded to another’s distress by engaging in prosocial behaviour

-by 25 months all but one child had done so

-with age children’s repertoire of comforting behaviours expanded to included verbal and physical comforting behaviours

-children sometimes responded to others’ distress with amusement, aggression or indifference

perspective taking and sympathy

-2 year olds can respond to those distressed

-but can they understand how other people are feeling even when their emotions are not visible

-can children infer or imagine what another person must feel given the circumstances and act appropriately

vaish - method (perspective taking and sympathy)

-18-25 month olds played with E1 and E2

-E1 engaged in an activity

-then E2 came along and E1 showed no emotion while E2 either:

• harm condition → tore up E1’s picture

• control condition → tore up a blank paper

-DV 1 → number of concerned looks made to E1

-later E1 and child played with some balloons, child had 2 balloons and E1 had 1

-DV 2 → number of children who comforted or helped E1

vaish - results (perspective taking and sympathy)

-children in harm condition:

• more likely to look at E1 with concern

• quicker to look to E1, looked at more and for longer

• more likely to help E1 when she lost her balloon

-18 months children show concern for a stranger who is in a hurtful situation but shows no emotion

piaget - stages of moral development

1. premoral → 0-5, no understanding of moral rules

2. moral realism → 5-10, rules come from higher authorities, actions are evaluated by their outcomes

3. moral subjectivism → 10+, rules can be change by mutual consent, intentions are important

kohlberg - stages of moral development

1. preconventional → 0-9, what is right is what authority figures determine to be right

2. conventional → 9+, what is right is what is generally accepted by people as right

3. postconventional → some adults, universal moral principles that can transcend the law/majority view

criticisms of kohlberg

-gender bias

-culture bias → emphasis on western values

-validity of the clinical method of the interview

-idea that can only move upwards from one stage to another and cannot be at two stages simultaneously

-didn’t acknowledge children appreciate distinction between social conventions from moral ones early on

tomasello - stages of moral development

1. second-personal morality → moral decisions revolve around specific others

2. agent-neutral morality → moral decisions involve following and enforcing group-wide social norms

-there are numerous cultural influences on the expression of agent-neutral morality e.g., collectivist cultures typically defer to the majority more

tomasello - moral development

-evolutionary and developmental approach

-social interaction drives the development of moral reasoning

-joint then collective intentionality

joint intentionality (tomasello - moral development)

-two agents having a joint goal

-goal is shared and engage in joint attention to coordinate with each other while knowing their own role

collective intentionality (tomasello - moral development)

-moving things to the group level

-taking a more objective, normative, perspective on how things are done and should be done in one’s culture

the role of peers (moral reasoning)

-developmental and evolutionary origins of reasoning are argued to be social

-reasoning skills primarily developed to persuade others with arguments

-children often first get to do this with peers → key context for early moral reasoning

facilitating moral reasoning

-interactions with peers is critical for development

-assessed 7-10 year olds moral reasoning using dilemmas

-then children talked over the situations, engaging in consensus seeking discussion with either a peer or with their mother

-children post-tested for moral reasoning

-peer condition showed greater gains in moral reasoning at post-test

-degree to which the child engaged in reflective discourse correlated positively with moral reasoning