Cognitive-Developmental Theory
The cognitive-developmental perspective views moral development through a cognitive lens and examines reasoning about moral issues: Is it ever right to steal even if it would help another person? Is lying ever acceptable? Similar to cognitive development, children are active in constructing their own moral understanding through social experiences with adults and peers (Smetana, 1995; Smetana & Braeges, 1990). Young children’s reasoning about moral problems changes with development as they construct concepts about justice and fairness from their interactions in the world (Gibbs, 1991, 2003).
Heteronomous Morality
Cognitive-developmental theorist Jean Piaget (Piaget, 1932) studied children’s moral development—specifically, how children understand rules. He observed children playing marbles, a common game played in every schoolyard during Piaget’s time, and asked them questions about the rules. What are the rules to the game? Where do the rules come from? Have they always been the same? Can they be changed? Piaget found that preschool-age children’s play was not guided by rules. The youngest children engaged in solitary play without regard for rules, tossing the marbles about in random ways. Piaget posited that moral thinking develops in stages similar to those in his theory of cognition.
By 6 years of age, children enter the first stage of Piaget’s theory of morality, heteronomous morality (also known as the morality of constraint). In this stage, as children first become aware of rules, they view them as sacred and unalterable. For example, the children interviewed by Piaget believed that people have always played marbles in the same way and that the rules cannot be changed. At this stage, moral behavior is behavior that is consistent with the rules set by authority figures. Young children see rules, even those created in play, as sacred, absolute, and unchangeable; they see behavior as either right or wrong; and they view the violation of rules as meriting punishment regardless of intent (DeVries & Zan, 2003; Nobes & Pawson, 2003). Young children may proclaim, without question, that there is only one way to play softball: As their coach advocates, the youngest children must be first to bat. Preschoolers will hold to this rule, explaining that it is simply the “right way” to play.
By 6 years of age, children become aware of rules, and they view them as sacred and unalterable. Children interviewed by Piaget believed that marbles are always played in the same way and that the rules cannot be changed. In the heteronomous stage, children believe that moral behavior is behavior that is consistent with the rules set by authority figures.
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Preconventional Reasoning
Lawrence Kohlberg (1969, 1976) investigated moral development by posing hypothetical dilemmas about justice, fairness, and rights that place obedience to authority and law in conflict with helping someone. For example, is stealing ever permissibl—even in order to help someone? Individuals’ responses change with development; moral reasoning progresses through a universal order of stages representing qualitative changes in conceptions of justice. Young children who display cognitive reasoning at the preoperational stage are at the lowest level of Kohlberg’s scheme: preconventional reasoning. Similar to Piaget, Kohlberg argued that young children’s behavior is governed by self-interest, avoiding punishment and gaining rewards. “Good” or moral behavior is a response to external pressure. Young children have not internalized societal norms, and their behavior is motivated by desires rather than internalized principles. We will examine Kohlberg’s perspective in greater detail when we discuss later childhood. Similar to cognitive development, children are active in constructing their own moral understanding through social experiences with adults and peers (Smetana, 1995; Smetana & Braeges, 1990).
Conceptions of Moral, Social, and Personal Issues
Social experiences—disputes with siblings over toys, for exampl—help young children develop conceptions about justice and fairness (Killen & Nucci, 1995). As early as 3 years of age, children can differentiate between moral imperatives, which concern people’s rights and welfare, and social conventions, or social customs (Smetana & Braeges, 1990). For example, they judge stealing an apple, a moral violation, more harshly than violating a social convention, such as eating with one’s fingers (Smetana, 1995; Turiel, 1998). In one study, 3- and 4½-year-old children viewed an interchange in which one puppet struggled to achieve a goal, was helped by a second puppet, and was violently hindered by a third puppet. When asked to distribute biscuits, the 4½-year-olds but not 3-year-olds were more likely to give more biscuits to the helper than the hinderer puppet. Most explained the unequal distribution by referring to the helper’s prosocial behavior or the hinderer’s antisocial behavior (Kenward & Dahl, 2011). In addition to moral and conventional issues, between ages 3 and 5, children come to differentiate personal issues, matters of personal choice that do not violate rights, across home and school settings (Turiel & Nucci, 2017). Individuals, including preschoolers, believe that they have control over matters of personal choice, unlike moral issues whose violations are inherently wrong.
Cultural Influences on Development
Culture and Theory of Mind
As children develop, they show improvements in theory of mind and get better at taking other people’s perspectives and communicating with them. Cultural differences in social norms might influence children’s emerging understanding of the mind. Collectivist cultures emphasize the community, whereas individualist cultures focus on the needs of the individual. These differing perspectives may influence how children come to understand mental states as well as their ability to take their perspectives (Taumoepeau, 2015). For example, children from Japan tend to show delayed development on false-belief tasks compared with Western children (Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001). When researchers probed children’s understanding of the false-belief task by asking them to explain why the actor searched in the wrong location for his chocolate, Japanese children failed to use thoughts as explanations. Instead of giving explanations associated with mental states, such as, “He didn’t know it was moved,” Japanese children provided justifications that referenced the physical situation (e.g., “The chocolate is now in a different place”) or interpersonal factors (e.g., “He promised to do so”). The findings suggest a cultural difference in mind reading, whereby Japanese children who are raised with collectivist values focus less on an actor’s mental states and more on his physical and social situation when answering questions about his behavior.
Culture shapes children’s thinking. A study of 8-year-old children from Peru used a culturally appropriate version of the Band-Aid box task in which a sugar bowl contained tiny potatoes (Vinden, 1996). At first the children believed the bowl contained sugar. After learning that it contained potatoes, they answered typical false-belief questions incorrectly, predicting that others would respond that the bowl contained potatoes. Even at age 8, well after Western children succeed on similar tasks, the Peruvian children responded incorrectly, unable to explain why others might initially believe that the bowl contained sugar and be surprised to learn otherwise. One explanation is that the children in this study were raised in an isolated farming village where farmers worked from dawn to dusk and there was no reason or time for deception (Vinden, 1996). The Peruvian children’s culture did not include ideas such as false belief, or deceiving others, as their