Download School Years Moral Development

Moral Development
SCHOOL YEARS:
PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
DEVELOPMENT OF
MORALITY
What bio/cog/psycho advances are necessary for moral
development?
Prefrontal cortex maturation
Theory of mind
Capacity for empathy
Prosocial vs. antisocial behavior
KOHLBERG’S STAGES
Based on how individuals respond to scenario
Heinz went to everyone he know to borrow the money, but
he could only gather about 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.” The
husband got desperate and broke into the man’s store to
steal the drug for his wife. Should the husband have done
that? Why?
KOHLBERG’S STAGES, CONT
Preconventional
Punishment-Obedience
Personal Reward
Conventional
Good Boy/Nice Girl
Law and Order
Postconventional
Social Contract
Universal Ethical
Principle
STAGES OF WOMEN’S
MORAL DEVELOPMENT
Carol Gilligan
Androcentric bias in Kohlberg’s theory
Girls/women consistently rated at lower moral development
than men
Lower ratings for hypothetical scenarios
Suggest that culture shapes moral stages
GILLIGAN’S STAGES
Orientation to individual survival
• Transition: Selfishness to responsibility
Goodness as Caring for others
• Transition: Goodness to truth
Morality of nonviolence
A pregnant woman and her
partner both have
achondroplastic dwarfism, a
condition that affects appearance
but not intellect. They want
genetic analysis of the fetus; they
plan to abort if the child would be
of normal height.
A 30 yr old mother of 2 daughters is
a carrier for hemophilia. She
requests IVF and pre-implantation
analysis so that only male zygotes
without hemophilia-carrying X
chromosome will be implanted.
Female zygotes and the hemophiliac
half of male zygotes will be
destroyed.
A 40 yr old woman is tested and is
told that she has the BRCA1 gene,
meaning she has about an 80%
chance of developing breast cancer.
She does not believe the results and
wants no one to tell her female
relatives, some of whom may be in
the early stages of cancer.
A couple has a child with cystic
fibrosis. They want to know if they
both carry the gene, and would
therefore not have any more
children, or if the illness was the
result of spontaneous genetic
change. Test results reveal that the
couple would not have any other
children with cystic fibrosis because
the male partner is not the child’s
biological father.