L16: Moral and Prosocial Behaviour

What are the two stages in Piaget’s Theory of Moral Reasoning

• Heteronomous morality

• Autonomous morality

Piaget’s Theory of Moral Reasoning

• Suggested two stages in moral development 

• At the beginning children have rigid acceptance of rules which transitions to recognition that social context can change morality

• Transition period (age gap) between the two stages

  • Piaget thought there was a period between those ages where children showed elements of both types

What did Piaget use to test Moral Development

Moral dilemmas

What did Piaget find when using moral dilemmas to test moral development (and moral example)

• Found children before 10 thought Marie was clearly naughtier because she cut a bigger hole, older children (10) think about the intentions so find Margaret naughtier

What reasoning did Piaget give for his stages of moral development (evidence for and critiques)

• Parents use unilateral, coercive rules for young children

  • The idea of right and wrong and that the bigger the thing that goes wrong, the worse it is how parents deal with young children

• Cognitively, young children see rules as ‘solid things’

• Evidence in support

  • Increasing recognition of complexity with age

  • More punitive, unilateral (punishing) parents = less mature moral behaviour (Laible et al., 2008)

• Critiques

  • More accessible presentation (videos) = higher reasoning (Grueneich, 1982)

    • Idea that original dilemmas harder to read for younger children

  • Young children consider intentionality in subsequent behaviours - adults who deliberately or accidentally hurt another (Vaish et al., 2010)

    • Found that 3 year old children less likely to help adult who had intentionally hurt someone else then one who accidentally hurt someone

How many levels and stages were in Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Reasoning

3 levels and 6 stages

Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Reasoning

• Most widely followed and recognised

• Following from Piaget, more detailed understanding of the development over time

• Used moral dilemmas to understand decisions and reasoning behind them

• Interviewed boys between 10 and 16 years

• Heinz dilemma

  • Heinz’s wife is sick, he hasn’t got the money for a drug to save her. Should he steal it?

• Interested not just in the answer but the reasoning behind it

What were the levels and stages of Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Reasoning

Age and Stages of Moral Development (Colby et al., 1983)

• Longitudinal study of boys age 10 to 36 years

  • Some findings: Stage 5 only seems to develop in adulthood (18 years) and found no evidence of Stage 6, not everyone goes through every stage

  

Cultural Differences: Kohlberg’s stages of moral development (Snarey, 1985)

• Kohlberg claimed universality (research conduction in 5 settings including US, Mexico and Turkey)

  • HOWEVER, no real evidence or explanation of what he did there to back it up

• Adapted dilemmas to be more applicable (3 versions)

• Additional adaptations (e.g. fishing as work instead)

  • Originally - 14 year old jon promised he could go camping, dad changes his mind and wants to take his money to go fishing with his friends

  • However in Ghana, fishing is not leisure it is work so dilemma changes

• Cultural differences in expectations 

  • Kibbutz (communal) vs Patriarchal societies

  • Gibbs et al., 2007

    • 75 countries, same stages seen

What moral development theory moves away from stages

Social Domain Theory

What graph shows Social Domain Theory

What is Social Domain Theory

• Idea that depending on the domain that the situation is in, we are governed by different rules, factors and circumstances

  • What is right and wrong differs depending on context

• Even young children (5 years) can distinguish different types or morality and authority

A teacher hits a child when they get something wrong - what Domain is this in?

Moral (it is wrong in every context)

Teachers choose clothes allowed in hot weather - what Domain is this in?

Societal Domain (teachers are the authority so they get final say)

Cultural Differences: Social Domain Theory

• Idea of this theory is that moral domain judgements are similar across cultures

  • HOWEVER, some differences in societal and personal domain choices:

  • Indian children

    • Moral obligation to help others

  • US children

    • Personal obligation to help (Miller et al., 1990)

Social Domain Theory: Parents modelling stingy or generous behaviour (Blake et al., 2016)

• Comparison of imitation of parents in US and rural Indian children

  • Over 100 parent-child pairs from each culture

  • 3 different child age groups

• Splitting sweets for themselves and a stranger

• Parens modelled generous (9:1) or stingy (1:9) behaviour

• Children then distributed their sweets in private

• Results

  • Both groups more generous in generous condition

  • US children consistent in generous/no model, more stingy in parent model

  • Indian children followed parent modelling more

Summary - Morality

• Use of dilemmas and explanation or reasoning used to understand children’s moral development

• Stage theories form the basis of our understanding by may underestimate children’s views in different situations

• Evidence that children (even younger) can consider different domains of interactions and how these may lead to different moral decisions

• There is general universality in such development, although some factors are influenced by social experiments

Three Forms of Prosocial Behaviour seen in Childhood

1. Feeling for Others (empathy, sympathy affection)

2. Working with Others (sharing, cooperating, helping)

3. Meeting Others’ Needs (caregiving, responding to needs, donating in response to need)

Responses to Distress (Davidov et al., 2021)

• Infants followed 3-18 months

• Depictions of distress

  • Parent of experimenter hurting themselves

  • Videos of infant crying

• Coded infants’ reactions for different types of distress

  • Concerned affect (sad or sympathetic facial expressions)

  • Inquiry behaviour (social referencing and visual scanning

  • Self-distress

  • Prosocial behaviour (comforting) 

• Results

  • Infants as young as 3-months show concern for others distress

  • Increases in prosocial behaviour with age

  • Self-distress low at all ages, not significantly different to neutral event

Helping and Co-operative Behaviour (Warenken & Tomasello, 2007)

• 14 month old children 

• Tasks to help an adult (out of reach x3)

• Results

  • Showed helping behaviour in young children

Developmental Patterns of Prosocial Behaviour

• Tends to increase from early to middle childhood

• A drop in prosocial behaviour in middle adolescence 

• Prosocial behaviour increases again around late adolescence and into adulthood

• Levels of prosocial behaviour does depend on situation (personal cost, social situations) and individual differences

Evidence that prosociality shows continuity over time

• Early prosocial behaviour correlates with later prosocial behaviour

• 6 month old empathic concern predicted prosocial behaviour (comforting) and 18 months (Davidov et al., 2021)

• Prosocial behaviour between age 18 months and 3 years (Hay et al., 2021)

Continuity over time (Natal-Viver et al., 2009)

• Followed adolescents from 10-15 years in Canada and Italy

• Measures of prosocial behaviour followed a few (mostly stable) trajectories

Sources of Individual Differences in Children’s Prosocial Behaviour

• Biological Factors

  • Genetic influence, prenatal experiences, temperament 

• Cognitive Development

  • Social problem-solving, understanding of emotions, moral understanding

• Social Learning

  • Reinforcement for prosocial behaviour

  • Modelling of prosocial behaviour

  • Cultural norms and values

Twin Study of Prosocial Behaviour: Young children (Knafo et al., 2008)

• Toddlers tested longitudinally in the lab

• Mothers and examiners pretended to hurt themselves 

• Results

  • Genetic factors influence individual differences at later ages

Twin Study of Prosocial Behaviour: Older children (Gregory et al., 2009)

• Self-reported prosocial behaviour at 15 and 17 years

• Results

  • Shared environment had minimal effect

  • Moderate impact of genetic factors

  • Strong relevance of unique (nonshared) environment

How can parents encourage prosocial behaviour

• Modelling and teaching prosocial behaviour

  • Brownell et al. (2013)

    • Children more prosocial when encouraged by parents - “look, she dropped something” - 75% vs 29% 

  • Sensitive parenting (e.g. talking about emotions) associated with greater helping and sharing (Spinrad & Stifter, 2006)

• Arranging opportunities for their children to engage in prosocial behaviour 

• Disciplining their children and eliciting prosocial behaviours from them

What were the results for ‘Bidirectional Effects Between Parenting and Prosocial Behaviour’ (Padilla-Walker et al., 2012)

• Found there was an influence of the levels of authoritative parenting positively leading to increases in pro-social behaviour AND saw that it was bidirectional (the more prosocial the children were at T1 [time 1], the more likely the parents were to demonstrate authoritative parenting at T3) 

• There was continuity of that prosocial behaviour as well

• Conclusion

  • Parenting is relevant, but there’s bi-directional effects

Peer Influences on Prosocial Behaviour

• We choose our friends, evidence that people choose friends who are more similar to them therefore likely correlation in prosocial behaviour

• Level of prosocial behaviour in best friends predicts adolescent’s prosocial behaviour longitudinally

• Choukas-Bradley et al. (2015)

  • Peers influence willingness to volunteer (high vs low status peers)

  • Open chat room more prosocial regardless of peer status

  • Private chat room only wanted to demonstrate prosocial behaviour for the high status peers

Do peers in classroom setting influence prosocial behaviour? (Brusching & Krahe, 2020)

• Categorised different classes as either high or low in prosocial behaviour

• Results

  • General increase in prosocial behaviour over time but greater increase for non-prosocial individuals in prosocial classrooms

  • Greater impact for females than males

Cultural Differences in Prosocial Behaviour

• Prosocial behaviour is common regardless of culture

• Some difference in who prosocial behaviour is directed towards

Prosocial Behaviour - US vs. Philippines

• Orchid Town (USA) vs. Tarong (Philippines) prosocial behaviour

  • Small town vs Rural area

• Cultural differences

  • Independence vs Interdependence

  • Family vs. peers as companions

• Observed over one year

• Results

  • No difference in amount of prosocial behaviour

  • BUT the USA were more prosocial to non-kin, Philippines show no difference

Summary