Chapter 12 Textbook notes

Children and adolescents need what level of physical activity?

60 minutes every day

Recall that in resolving real-life moral dilemmas, many people express notions of religion and spirituality. For these individuals, morality and spirituality are inseparable; their moral values, judgments, and behaviors are deeply embedded in their faith. Religion is especially important in U.S. family life. In recent national polls, nearly two-thirds of Americans reported actively practicing religion, compared with one-half of those in Canada, one-third of those in Great Britain and Italy, and even fewer elsewhere in Europe. People who are affiliated with a church, synagogue, or mosque and who regularly attend religious services include many parents with children. By middle childhood, children have begun to formulate religious and spiritual ideas that are remarkably complex and that serve as moral forces in their lives. National survey findings reveal that 81 percent of U.S. teenagers identify with one religion, and an additional 3 percent with two religions. During adolescence, formal religious involvement declines——among U.S. youths, from 55 percent at ages 13 to 15 to 40 percent at ages 17 to 18. The drop coincides with increased autonomy and efforts to construct a personally meaningful religious identity——a task usually not complete until the late teens or twenties. But adolescents who remain part of a religious community are advantages in moral values and behavior. Compared with nonaffliated youths, they are more involved in community service activities aimed at helping the less fortunate. And religious involvement promotes responsible academic and social behavior and discourages misconduct. It is associated with lower levels of drug and alcohol use, early sexual activity, and delinquency.

A variety of factors probably contribute to these favorable outcomes. In a study of inner-city high school students, religiously involved adolescents were more likely to report trusting relationships with parents, adults, and friends who hold similar worldviews. The more activities they shared with this network, the higher they scored in empathic concern and prosocial behavior. Furthermore, religious education and youth activities directly teach concern for others and provide opportunities for moral discussions and civic engagement. And adolescents who feel connected to a higher being may develop certain inner strengths, including prosocial values and a strong moral identity, that help them resolve real-life moral dilemmas maturely and translate their thinking into action. Because most teenagers, regardless of formal affiliation, identify with a religious denomination and say they believe in a higher being, religious institutions may be uniquely suited to foster moral and prosocial commitments and discourage risky behaviors. For youths in inner-city neighborhoods with few alternative sources of social support, outreach by religious institutions can lead to life-altering involvement. An exception arises in religious cults, where rigid indoctrination into the group's beliefs, suppression of individuality, and estrangement from society all work against moral maturity.

School-based social and emotional learning programs __________.

According to many researchers, effective treatment for serious, violent juvenile offenders must be multifaceted, encompassing parent training, social understanding, relating to others, and self-control. A program called EQUIP uses positive peer culture—-an adult-guided but adolescent-conducted small group approach aimed at creating a prosocial climate. By themselves, peer-culture groups do not reduce antisocial behavior. Rather, they sometimes perpetuate deviant peer influences. But in EQUIP, the approach is supplemented with training in social skills, anger management, correction of cognitive distortions, and moral reasoning. Delinquents who participated in EQUIP displayed improved social skills and conduct during the following year compared with controls receiving no intervention. Also, the more advanced moral reasoning that emerged during group meetings seemed to have a long-term impact on antisocial youths' ability to inhibit law-breaking behavior. Yet even multidimensional treatments can fall short if young people remain embedded in hostile home lives, poor-quality schools, antisocial peer groups, and violent neighborhoods. In another program, called MULTISYSTEMIC THERAPY, counselors trained parents in communication, monitoring, and discipline skills; integrated violent youths into positive school, work, and leisure activities; and disengaged them from deviant peers. Compared with individual therapy, random assignment to the intervention led to improved parent-adolescent relationships and school performance and to a dramatic drop in number of arrests that persisted for two decades after treatment and——-when participants did commit crimes——to a reduction in their severity. Multisystematic therapy also helped limit family instability in adulthood, as measured by involvement in civil suits over divorce, parternity, or child support. Efforts to create non-aggressive environments——-at the family, community, and cultural levels——are needed to help antisocial youths and to foster healthy development of all young people.

Children high in either physical or relational aggression relative to their agemates tend to remain so over time. Following more than 1,000 Canadian, New Zealand, and U.S. boys from ages 6 to 15, researchers identified four main patterns of change. Kindergarten boys high in physical aggression (4 percent of the sample) were especially likely to move to high-level adolescent aggression, becoming involved in violent delinquency. In contrast, kindergarten boys who were moderately physically aggressive usually declined in physical aggression over time. And boys who rarely physically aggressed in early childhood typically remained nonaggressive. However, a small number of boys high in oppositional behavior (such as disobedience and inconsiderateness) but not in physical aggression were prone to less violent forms of adolescent delinquency (such as theft) In other longitudinal evidence, high physical aggression that diminished over the school years was often replaced with indirect relational aggression. Although the trend applied to both genders, girls displayed it more often than boys. These children seem to deploy their improved perspective-taking capacities antisocially——-to perpetrate behind-the-scenes relational attacks. Their aggressiveness actually remains stable——just expressed in a different form. For both boys and girls, persistently high physical or relational aggression predicts later internalizing and externalizing difficulties and social skills deficits, including loneliness, anxiety, depression, poor-quality friendships, and antisocial activity.

Aggressive behavior that emerges in childhood and endures is far more likely to translate into long-term adjustment difficulties than aggression that first appears in adolescence. Although some children——-especially those who are irritable, fearless, impulsive, and overactive——are at risk for aggression, whether or not they become aggressive largely depends on child-rearing conditions. Strife-ridden families, poor parenting practices, aggressive peers, and televised violence strongly predict both antisocial activity and reduced sensitivity to others' suffering. We can also see that community and cultural influences can heighten or reduce children's risk of sustaining a hostile interpersonal style.

Ethnographic evidence indicates that corporal punishment increases in societies with autocratic political decision making and cultures of violence. Yet among countries differing widely in characteristics——including economic well-being, educational attainment of the population, and individualistic versus collectivist orientations——increased use of yelling, scolding, and corporal punishment is positively associated with child anxiety and aggression. The corporal punishment-child anxiety/ aggression associations are slightly less strong in countries where the practice is widely accepted, perhaps because parents in those nations apply it in a milder, less impulsive manner. But negative child outcomes nevertheless persist. In view of these findings, the widespread use of corporal punishment by American parents is cause for concern. A survey of a nationally representative sample of U.S. households revealed that although corporal punishment increases from infancy to age 5 and then declines, the percentage of parents who use it is high at all ages. Most parents report physically punishing their children only occasionally——-on average, once or twice per month. Still, an alarming 35 to 50 percent of U.S. infants——who are not yet capable of complying with adult directives——-get spanked or hit. And more than one-fourth of physically punishing U.S. parents report having used a hard object, such as a brush or belt. A prevailing American belief is that corporal punishment, if implemented by caring parents, is harmless, perhaps even beneficial. But as the Cultural Influences box above reveals, this assumption is valid only under conditions of limited use in certain social context.

Alternatives to criticism, slaps, and spankings can help parents avoid the undesirable effects of punishment. A technique called TIME OUT involves removing children from the immediate setting——for example, by sending them to their rooms——until they are ready to act appropriately. When a child is out of control, a few minutes in time out can be enough to change behavior while also giving angry parents time to cool off. Another approach is WITHDRAWAL OF PRIVILEGES, such as playing outside or watching a favorite TV program. Like time out, removing privileges allows parents to avoid using harsh techniques that can easily intensify into violence.

Children who are products of these family processes soon acquire a violent and callous view of the social world. Those who are high in reactive aggression often see hostile intent where it does not exist——in situations where peers' intentions are unclear, where harm is accidental, and even where peers are trying to be helpful. When such children feel threats ( for example, a researcher tells them that a peer they will work with is in a bad mood and might pick a fight), they are especially likely to interpret accidental mishaps as hostile. As a result, they make many unprovoked attacks, which trigger aggressive retaliations. Children high in proactive aggression have different social-cognitive deficits. Compared with their nonaggressive agemates, they believe there are more benefits and fewer costs for engaging in destructive acts. And they are more likely to think that aggression "works," producing material rewards and reducing others' unpleasant behaviors. Thus, they callously use aggression to advance their own goals and are relatively unconcerned about causing suffering in others——an aggressive style associated with later, more severe conduct problems, violent behavior, and delinquency. Another biased social-cognitive attribute of proactively aggressive children and youths is overly high self-esteem, even in the face of academic and social failings. When their arrogant, cocky behavior prompts others to challenge their inflated but vulnerable self-image, they lash out angrily. Their narcissism is also associated with a sense of personal entitlement, lack of empathy, and sophisticated, highly manipulative relationally aggressive tactics aimed at gaining power over others. Furthermore, aggressive young people may neutralize their basic biological capacity for empathy by using such cognitive distortion techniques as blaming their victims. As a result, they retain a positive self-evaluation after behaving aggressively. Looking back on his burglaries, one delinquent reflected, "If I started feeling bad, I'd say to myself, "Tough rocks for him. He should have had his house locked better and the alarm on"

Antisocial adolescents are delayed in maturity of moral judgment, and they tend to view aggression as within the social conventional and personal domains rather than the moral domain. In this way, they minimize the harmful impact of their antisocial acts, rationalizing their behavior as acceptable or even admirable. These youths also score low in moral identity. In a study of 16- to 19- year-olds, those whose moral reasoning was immature and who also judged moral values as personally unimportant were prone to self-serving cognitive distortions (such as blaming the victim or minimizing the harm done), which predicted high levels of aggressive behavior. Compared with boys, girls scored higher in moral identity and lower cognitive distortions—likely contributors to their lower overall aggressiveness.

The most effective forms of discipline encourage good conduct——by building a mutually respectful bond with the child, letting the child know ahead of time how to act, and praising mature behavior. When sensitivity, cooperation, and shared positive emotion are evident in joint activities between parents and their toddlers or preschoolers, children show firmer conscience development——-expressing empathy after transgressions, behaving responsibly, playing fairly in games, and considering others' welfare. An early, mutually responsive, pleasurable parent-child tie continues to predict a firmer conscience into the early school years. Parent-child closeness leads children to heed parental demands because the child feels a sense of commitment to the relationship. Consult Applying What We Know on the following page for ways to parent positively. Parents who use these strategies focus on long-term social and life skills——-cooperation, problem solving, and consideration for others. As a result, they greatly reduce the need for punishment.

As previously noted, both psychoanalytic and social learning theories view moral development as a process of adopting societal norms. Personal commitment to societal standards of good conduct is an essential aspect of moral development. Without an internalized, shared moral code and the cultivation of empathy through parental warmth and inductive discipline, people would disregard one another's rights whenever their desires conflicted and would transgress whenever they were unobserved. But theories that regard morality as entirely a matter of internalizing norms have been criticized because prevailing standards may be at odds with important ethical principles and humanitarian goals. Under these conditions, deliberate violation of norms is not immoral but justifiable and courageous. Think about historical figures who rose to greatness because they refused to accept certain societal norms. Abraham Lincoln's opposition to slavery, Susan B. Anthony's leadership in the crusade for women's suffrage, and Martin Luther King Jr.'s campaign to end racial prejudice are examples. Can you name others?

Researchers taking a domain approach to moral understanding focus on children's developing capacity to distinguish and coordinate MORAL IMPERATIVES, which protect people's rights and welfare, from two other types of social rules and expectations: SOCIAL CONVENTIONS, customs determined solely by consensus, such as table manners and rituals of social interaction (saying "hello," "please," "thank you"); and MATTERS OF PERSONAL CHOICE, such as friends, hairstyle, and leisure activities, which do not violate rights and are up to the individual. According to domain theorists, children construct these systems of social knowledge out of their experiences with three types of regularities in their social world. And research reveals that children arrive at these distinctions early, displaying more advanced moral reasoning than assumed by the externally controlled vision of Kohlberg's preconventional morality. Interviews with 3- and 4-year-olds reveal that they judge moral violations (unprovoked hitting, stealing an apple) as more wrong than violations of social conventions (eating ice cream with your fingers). They also say that moral violations would be wrong regardless of the setting—-for example, in another country or school. And they indicate that moral (but not social-conventional) transgressions would be wrong even if an authority figure did not see them and no rules existed to prohibit them. How do young children arrive at these distinctions? According to a Elliot Turiel (2006), they do so by reflecting on their everyday social relations. They observe that after a moral offense, peers respond with strong negative emotion, describe their own injury or loss, tell another child to stop, or retaliate. And an adult who intervenes is likely to call attention to the victim's rights and feelings. Violations of social convention elicit less intense peer reactions. And in these situations, adults usually demand obedience without explanation or point to the importance of keeping order. But while realizing that moral transgressions are worse than social-conventional violations, preschool and young school-age children (as Piaget pointed out) tend to reason rigidly and superficially WITHIN the moral domain, making judgments based on salient features sand consequences while neglecting other important information. They claim that stealing and lying are always wrong, even when a person has a morally sound reason for doing so. Their explanations for why hitting others is wrong, even in the absence of rules against hitting, are simplistic and centered on physical harm——for example, "When you get hit, it hurts, and you start to cry." And their focus on outcomes means that they fail to realize that a promise is still a promise, even if it is unfulfilled.

As they construct a flexible appreciation of moral rules, children clarify and link moral imperatives and social conventions. Gradually their understanding becomes more complex, taking into account an increasing number of variables, including the purpose of the rule; people's intentions, knowledge, and beliefs; and the context of people's behavior. School-age children, for example, distinguish social conventions with a clear purpose (not running in school hallways to prevent injuries) from ones with no obvious justification (crossing a "forbidden" line on the playground). They regard violations of purposeful conventions as closer to moral transgressions. With age, children also realize that people's intentions and the context of their actions affect the moral implications of violating a social convention. In a Canadian study, many 6-year-olds always disapproved or flag burning, citing its physical consequences. But 8- to 10-year-olds made subtle distinctions, stating that because of a flag's symbolic value, burning it to express disapproval of a country or to start a cooking fire is worse than burning it accidentally. They also stated that public flag burning is worse than private flag burning because it inflicts emotional harm on others. But they recognized that burning a flag is a form of freedom of expression, and most agreed that it would be acceptable in a country that treated its citizens unfairly. In addition, school-age children appreciate that people whose knowledge differs may not be equally responsible for moral transgressions. Many 7-year-olds tolerate a teacher's decision to give more snacks to girls than to boys because she thinks (incorrectly) that girls need more food. But when a teacher gives girls more snacks because she holds an IMMORAL BELIEF ("It's all right to be nicer to girls than boys"), almost all children judge her actions negatively.

Preschoolers display a budding awareness of the personal domain, conveyed through such statements as, "I'm gonna wear this shirt." As children's grasp of moral imperatives and social conventions strengthens, so does their conviction that certain choices are up to the individual. Early on, children learn that parents and teachers are willing to compromise on personal issues and, at times, on social-conventional matters but not on moral concerns. Likewise, when children and adolescents challenge adult authority, they typically do so within the personal domain. In diverse Western and non-Western cultures, concern with matters of personal choice intensifies during the teenage years——a reflection of adolescents' quest for identity and increasing independence. As, young people increasingly insist that the parent's not encroach on the personal arena (dress, hairstyle, diary records, friendships), disputes over these issues over more often. Teenagers whose parents frequently intrude into their personal affairs report greater psychological stress. In contrast, adolescents typically say that parents have a right to tell them what to do in moral and social-conventional situations. And when these issues spark disagreements, teenagers seldom challenge parental authority. Notions of personal choice, in turn, enhance children's moral understanding. As early as age 6, children view freedom of speech and religion as individual rights, even if laws exist that deny those rights. And they regard laws that discriminate against individuals——for example, laws that deny certain people access to medical care or education———as wrong and worthy of violating. In justifying their responses, children appeal to personal privileges and, by the end of middle childhood, to democratic ideals, such as the importance of individual rights for maintaining a fair society. At the same time, older school-age children place limits on individual choice, depending on circumstances. While they believe that nonacademic matters (such as where to go on field trips) are best decided democratically, they regard the academic curriculum as the province of teachers, based on teachers' superior ability to make such choices.

As they enlarge the range of issues they regard as personal, adolescents think more intently about conflicts between personal choice and community obligation——whether, and under what conditions, it is permissible to restrict speech, religion, marriage, childbearing, group membership, and other individual rights. Teenagers display more subtle thinking than school-age children on such issues. For example, when asked if it is OK to exclude a child from a friendship or peer group on the basis of race or gender, fourth graders usually say exclusion is always unfair. But by tenth grade, young people, though increasingly mindful of fairness, indicate that under certain conditions——-in intimate relationships (friendship) and private contexts (at home or in a small club), and on the basis of gender more often than race——-exclusion is OK. In explaining, they mention the right to personal choice as well as concerns about effective group functioning. Justifying her belief that members of an all-boys music club need not let a girl in, one tenth grader said, "It's not nice........ but it's their club." Another commented, "(The girls and the boys) probably wouldn't relate on very many things" As adolescents integrate personal rights with ideal reciprocity, they demand that the protections they want for themselves extend to others. For example, with age, they are more likely to defend the government's right to limit individual freedom to engage in risky health behaviors, such as smoking and drinking, in the interest of the larger public good. Similarly, they are increasingly mindful of the overlap among moral imperatives, social conventions, and personal choice. Eventually they realize that violating strongly held conventions in favor of asserting personal choices——-showing up at a wedding in a T-shirt, talking out of turn at a student council meeting——can harm others, either by inducing distress or by undermining fair treatment. Over time, as their grasp of fairness deepens, young people realize that many social conventions have moral implications: They are vital for maintaining a just and peaceful society. Notice how this understanding is central to Kohlberg's Stage 4, which is typically attained as adolescence draws to a close.

In his initial investigation, Kohlberg (1958) extended the age range Piaget studied, including participants who were well into adolescence (10-, 13-, and 16-year-old boys). Then he followed the participants longitudinally, reinterviewing them at three- to four-year intervals over the next 20 years. Analyzing age-related changes in the boys' moral judgments, Kohlberg generated his six-stage sequence. As with Piaget's progression of development, Kohlberg's first three stashes characterize children as moving from a morality focused on outcomes to one based on ideal reciprocity. Inclusion of older adolescents yielded the fourth stage, in which young people expand their notion of ideal reciprocity to encompass societal rules and laws as vital for ensuring that people treat one another justly. Relying on moral judgement responses of a small minority of adolescents, Kohlberg extended his sequence further, positing a fifth and sixth stage. As we will see, these stages have remained infrequent in subsequent research. Kohlberg organized his six stages into three general levels and made stronger claims than Piaget about a fixed order of moral change. In doing so, however, Kohlberg drew on characteristics that Piaget used to describe his cognitive stage sequence: Kohlberg regarded his moral stages as universal and invariant----a sequence of steps through which people everywhere move in a fixed order. He viewed each new stage as building on reasoning of the preceding stage, resulting in a more logically consistent and morally adequate concept of justice. He saw each stage as an organized whole——a qualitatively distinct structure of moral thought that a person applies across a wide range of situations. Furthermore, Kohlberg believed that moral understanding is promoted by the same factors Piaget thought were important for cognitive development: (1) disequilibrium, or actively grappling with moral issues and noticing weaknesses in one's current thinking; and (2) gains in perspective taking, which permit individuals to resolve moral conflicts in increasingly complex and effective ways. As we examine Kohlberg's developmental sequence and illustrate it with responses to the Heinz dilemma, look for changes in cognition and perspective taking that each stage assumes. At the preconventional level, morality is externally controlled. Children accept the rules of authority figures and judge actions by their consequences. Behaviors that result in punishment are viewed as bad, those that lead to rewards as good. Stage 1: The punishment and obedience orientation. Children at this stage while recognizing that others may have different thoughts and feelings, still find it difficult to consider two points of view in a moral dilemma. As a result, they overlook people's intentions. Instead, they focus on fear of authority and avoidance of punishment as reasons for behaving morally. Prostealing: "If you let your wife die, you will....... be blamed for not spending the money to help her, and there'll be an investigation of you and the druggist for your wife's death" Antistealing: "You shouldn't steal the drug because you'll be caught and sent to jail if you do. If you do get away, (you'd be scared that) the police would catch up with you any minute" Stage 2: The instrumental purpose orientation. Children realize that people can have different perspectives in a moral dilemma, but at first this understanding is concrete. They view right action as flowing from self-interest and understand reciprocity as equal exchange of favors: "You do this for me, and I'll do that for you." Prostealing: "If Heinz decides to risk jail to save his wife, it's his life he's risking; he can do what he wants with it. And the same goes for the druggist; it's up to him to decide what he wants to do" Antistealing: "Heinz is running more risk than it's worth ( to save a wife who is near death)"

At the conventional level, individuals continue to regard conformity to social rules as important, but not reasons of self-interest. Rather, they believe that actively maintaining the current social system ensures positive human relationships and societal order. Stage 3: The "good boy-good girl" orientation, or the morality of interpersonal cooperation. The desire to obey rules because they promote social harmony first appears in the context of close personal ties. Stage 3 individuals want to maintain the affection and approval of friends and relatives by being a "good person"———trustworthy, loyal, respectful, helpful, and nice. The capacity to view a two-person relationship from the vantage point of an impartial, outside observer supports this new approach to morality. At this stage, the individual understands ideal reciprocity, as expressed in the Golden Rule. Prostealing: "No one will think you're bad if you steal the drug, but your family will think you're an inhuman husband if you don't. If you let your wife die, you'll never be able to look anyone in the face again" Antistealing: "It isn't just the druggist who will think you're a criminal, everyone else will too...........You'll feel bad thinking how you brought dishonor on your family and yourself" Stage 4: The social-order-maintaining orientation. At this stage, the individual takes into account a larger perspective———-that of societal laws. Moral choices no longer depend on close ties to others. Instead, rules must be enforced in the same evenhanded fashion for everyone, and each member of society has a personal duty to uphold them. The Stage 4 individual believes that laws should be obeyed because they are vital for ensuring societal order and cooperation between people. Prostealing: "Heinz has a duty to protect his wife's life; it's a vow he took in marriage. But it's wrong to steal, so he would have to take the drug with the idea of paying the druggist for it and accepting the penalty for breaking the law later." Antistealing: "It's a natural thing for Heinz to want to save his wife but......Even if his wife is dying, it's still his duty as a citizen to obey the law....... If everyone starts breaking the law in a jam, there'd be no civilization, just crime and violence"

As Kohlberg anticipated, moral maturity is positively correlated with IQ, performance on a Piagetian cognitive tasks, and perspective-taking skill. Kohlberg's stage sequence also makes sense to adolescents and adults who have not studied his theory——findings that support the vital contribution of cognitive development to moral maturity. When Russian high school and a Dutch university students were asked to sort statements typical of Kohlberg's stages, they tended to rank reasoning at each consecutive stage as more sophisticated. But beyond their own current stage, they had difficulty ordering statements; the higher the stage, the more participants disagreed in their rankings.

At the same time, Kohlberg argued that cognitive and perspective-taking attainments are not sufficient to ensure moral advances, which also require reorganization of thought unique to the moral domain. But so far, the domain in which the cognitive ingredients required for more mature moral judgment first emerges——-cognitive, social, or moral——-remains unclear. In Chapters 6 and 7, we encountered a wealth of evidence indicating that children display more advanced reasoning on tasks with which they have more extensive experience. Young people who frequently grapple with social and moral issues may actually construct the cognitive supports for moral development directly——while reasoning about social or moral concerns.

Recall from Chapter 7 that metacognitive knowledge, or awareness of strategies, contributes to self-regulation. When asked about situational conditions and self-instructions likely to help delay gratification, school-age children suggested a broader array of arousal-reducing strategies with age. But not until the late elementary school years did they mention techniques involving transformations of rewards or their own arousal states. For example, one 11-year-old proposed saying, "The marshmallows are filled with an evil spell." Another said he would tell himself, "I hate marshmallows; I can't stand them. But when the grown-up gets back, I'll tell myself 'I love marshmallows' and eat it" Once this transforming ideation appears, it greatly facilitates moral self-regulation. In a series of studies, 4-year-olds who were better at delaying gratification were especially adept as adolescents in applying metacognitive skills to their behavior and in inhibiting impulsive responding. In addition, their parents saw them as more responsive to reason, as better at concentrating and planning ahead, and as coping with stress more maturely. When applying to college, those who had been self-controlled preschoolers scored higher on the Scholarstic Assessment Test (SAT), although they were no more intelligent than other individuals. Furthermore, children who are better at delaying gratification can wait long enough to interpret social cues accurately, which supports effective social problem solving and positive peer relations. Mischel proposes that the interaction of two processing systems——hot and cool——-governs the development of self-control and accounts for individual differences. With age, the emotional, reactive hot system is increasingly subordinated to the cognitive, reflective cool system, as a result of improved functioning of the prefrontal cortex, which is centrally involved in executive function. Throughout childhood and adolescence, temperament and parenting jointly influence the extent to which cool-system representations gain control over hot-system reactivity.

Beginning in late infancy, all children display aggression from time to time. As opportunities to interact with siblings and peers increase, aggressive outbursts occur more often. Although at times aggression serves prosocial ends (for example, stopping a victimizer from harming others), most human aggressive acts are clearly antisocial. As early as the preschool years, some children show abnormally high rates of hostility, assaulting others verbally and physically with little or no provocation. If allowed to continue, their belligerent behavior can lead to lasting delays in moral development, deficits in self-control, and ultimately an antisocial lifestyle. To understand this process, let's see how aggression develops during childhood and adolescence.

Although most young people decline in teacher- and peer-reported aggression in adolescence, the teenage years are accompanied by a rise in delinquent acts. Although U.S. youth crime has declined since the mid-1990s, 12-to 17-year-olds account for a substantial proportion of police arrests——14, although they constitute only 8 percent of the population. When asked directly and confidentially about lawbreaking, almost all teenagers admit to having committed some sort of offense—-usually a minor crime, such as petty stealing or disorderly conduct.

Both police arrests and self-reports show that delinquency rises over early and middle adolescence and then declines. Recall from Chapter 5 that changes in the brain's emotional/social network at puberty contribute to an increase in antisocial behavior among teenagers. Over time, decision making, emotional self-regulation, and moral reasoning improve; peers become less influential; and young people enter social contexts (such as higher education, work, career, and marriage) that are less conducive to lawbreaking. For most adolescents, a brush with the law does not forecast long-term antisocial behavior. But repeated arrests are cause for concern. Teenagers are responsible for 15 percent of violent crimes in the United States. A small percentage become recurrent offenders, who commit most of these crimes, and some enter a life of crime. In adolescence, the gender gap in physical aggression widens. Although girls account for about one in five adolescent arrests for violence, their offenses are largely limited to simple assault (such as pushing and spitting) , the least serious category. Once labeled status offenses (noncriminal behavior), today these acts are more likely to lead to arrests, especially in physical exchanges with parents, who may report the youth's behavior to the police. Serious violent crime, however, continues to be mostly the domain of boys. SES and ethnicity are strong predictors of arrests but only mildly related to teenagers' self-reports of antisocial acts. The difference is due to the tendency to arrest, charge, and punish low-SES ethnic minority youths more often than their higher-SES white and Asian counterparts. In isolation from other life circumstances, ethnicity tells us little about youths' propensity to engage in violence and other lawbreaking acts.

In the second half of the first year, infants develop the cognitive capacity to identify sources of anger and frustration and the motor skills to lash out at them. By the second year, aggressive acts with two distinct purposes emerge. Initially, the most common is PROACTIVE (or instrumental) AGGRESSION, in which children act to fulfill a need or desire——-obtain an object, privilege, space, or social reward, such as adult attention or (in older children) peer admiration——-and unemotionally attack a person to achieve their goal. The other type, REACTIVE (or hostile) AGGRESSION, is an angry, defensive response to a provocation or a blocked goal and is meant to hurt another person. Naturalistic observations of children in classrooms or at play reveal low positive correlations between proactive and reactive aggression. But when aggression is assessed using parent or teacher reports, proactive and reactive aggression are strongly correlated. Thus, the extent to which the two types of aggression represent distinct styles is unclear. At least some, and perhaps many, aggressive children engage in both, and most studies do not distinguish between them. Proactive and reactive aggression come in three forms, which are the focus of the majority of research: PHYSICAL AGGRESSION harms others through physical injury——pushing, hitting, kicking, or punching others, or destroying another's property. VERBAL AGGRESSION harms others through threats of physical aggression, name-calling, or hostile teasing RELATIONAL AGGRESSION damages another's peer relationships through social exclusion, malicious gossip, or friendship manipulation. Although verbal aggression is always direct, physical and relational aggression can be either DIRECT or INDIRECT. For example, hitting injures a person directly, whereas destroying property indirectly inflicts physical harm. Similarly, saying, "Do what I say, or I won't be your friend," conveys relational aggression directly, while spreading rumors, refusing to talk to a peer, or manipulating friendships by saying behind someone's back, "Don't play with her; she's a nerd," does so indirectly. Between ages 3 and 6, physical aggression decreases, whereas verbal aggression increases. Rapid language development contributes to this change, but it is also due to adults' and peers' strong negative reactions to physical attacks. Furthermore, proactive aggression declines as preschoolers' improved capacity to delay gratification enables them to resist grabbing others' possessions. But reactive aggression in verbal and relational forms tends tends to rise over early and middle childhood. Older children are better able to detect malicious intentions and, as a result, more often respond in hostile ways.

By age 17 months, boys are considerably more physically aggressive than girls——a difference found throughout childhood in many cultures. As we will see in Chapter 13, when we consider sex differences in aggression in greater detail, biological factors——-in particular, the effects of male sex hormones (androgens) and temperamental traits on which boys and girls differ——contribute to the early greater prevalence of physical attacks by boys. Gender-role conformity is also a factor. As soon as 2-year-olds become dimly aware of gender stereotypes——that males and females are expected to behave differently——physical aggression drops off more sharply for girls than for boys. Although girls have a reputation for being verbally and relationally more aggressive than boys, Chapter 13 will reveal that the sex difference is small. Beginning in the preschool years, girls concentrate most of their aggressive acts in the relational category. Boys inflict harm in more variable ways and, and therefore, display overall rates of aggression that are much higher than girls.' At the same time, girls more often use indirect relational tactics that—-in disrupting intimate bonds especially important to girls——can be particularly mean. Whereas physical attacks are usually brief, acts of indirect relational aggression may extend for hours, weeks, or even months. In one instance, a second-grade girl formed a "pretty-girls club" at school and—-for nearly an entire school year——convinced its members to exclude several classmates by saying they were "ugly and smelly." At least in childhood, then, it may not be meaningful to describe one sex as more aggressive than the other

With respect to children, parental concern about internalization of societal norms is often accompanied by other goals. At times, parents may accept noncompliance if the child provides a reasonable justification. Consider a boy who violates a parental prohibition by cutting a cake reserved for a family celebration and giving a piece to a hungry playmate. As the parent begins to reprimand, the boy explains that the playmate has not eaten all day and the refrigerator was nearly empty, leaving no alternative. In this instance, many parents would value the morality of the boy's claims.

Cognitive-developmental theories believe that neither identification with parents nor teaching, modeling, and reinforcement are the major means through which children become moral. The cognitive developmental approach assumes that individuals, rather than internalizing existing rules and expectations, develop morally through CONSTRUCTION——actively attending to and interrelating multiple perspectives on situations in which social conflicts arise and thereby attaining new moral understandings. In other words, children make moral evaluations and decisions on the basis of concepts they construct about justice and fairness. As these concepts become increasingly adequate with age, children arrive at a deeper understanding of morality——as something that must be true in the social world, just as conservation must be true in the physical world. In sum, the cognitive-developmental position on morality is unique in its view of the child as a thinking moral being who wonders about right and wrong and searches for moral truth. These theorists regard changes in children's reasoning as the heart of moral development.

Although much support exists for Kohlberg's theory, it continues to face challenges. The most important of these concern Kohlberg's conception of moral maturity, the applicability of his stage model to moral reasoning and behavior in everyday life, and the appropriateness of his stages for characterizing children's moral reasoning. A key controversy has to do with Kohlberg's belief that moral maturity is not achieved until the postconventional level. Yet if people had to reach Stages 5 and 6 to be truly morally mature, few individuals anywhere would measure up! John Gibbs (1991, 2010) argues that "postconventional morality" should not be viewed as the standard of maturity against which other levels are judged. Gibbs finds maturity in a revised understanding of Stages 3 and 4 that emphasizes ideal reciprocity. These stages are not "conventional," or based on social conformity, as Kohlberg assumed. Instead, they require profound moral constructions——an understanding of ideal reciprocity as the basis for relationships between people (Stage 3) and for widely accepted moral standards, set forth in rules and laws (Stage 4). According to Gibbs (2010), "postconventional" moral reasoning is part of a highly reflective, metacognitive endeavor in which people grapple with existential issues: What is the meaning of life? Why be moral? Most people who contemplate such questions have attained advanced education, usually in philosophy——which sheds light on why Stages 5 and 6 are so rare. Occasionally, however, as a result of soul-searching life crises, life-threatening events, or spiritual awakenings, adolescents and adults without formal training in philosophy generate ethical insights into the meaning of existence——-transformations that may heighten their resolve to lead a moral life. As a result, Gibbs notes, "postconventional" moral judgment is sometimes seen as early as adolescence, when young people first become capable of the formal operational and perspective-taking capacities needed to engage in it. A more radical challenge comes from Dennis Krebs and Kathy Denton (2005), who claim that Kohlberg's theory inadequately accounts for morality in everyday life. Pointing to wide variability in maturing of moral reasoning across situations, these researchers favor abandoning Kohlberg's stages for a pragmatic approach to morality. They assert that each person makes moral judgments at varying levels of maturity, depending on the individual's current context and motivations: Conflict over a business deal is likely to evoke Stage 2 (instrumental purpose) reasoning, a friendship or marital dispute Stage 3 (ideal reciprocity) reasoning, and a breach of contract Stage 4 (social-order-maintaining) reasoning. According to Krebs and Denton, everyday moral judgments——-rather than being efforts to arrive at just solutions——-are practical tools that people use to achieve their goals. To benefit personally, they often must advocate cooperation with others. But many people act first and then invoke moral judgments to rationalize their actions, regardless of whether the behavior is self-centered or altruistic. And sometimes people use moral judgments for immoral purposes——for example, to excuse their transgressions, blame others, or attract unmerited admiration. This pragmatism of moral reasoning, Krebs and Denton argue, is responsible for the lack of a strong association between moral judgment maturity and behavior.

Do people strive to resolve moral dilemmas in the fairest way possible, using the most advanced reasoning of which they are capable, only when presented with hypothetical dilemmas or real-life conflicts in which they are not personally involved? Gibbs (2006) points out that despite their mixed motives in everyday situations, people often rise above self-gratification to support others' rights. For example, moral exemplars in business——rather than yielding to Stage 2 reasoning——-endorse the importance of trust, integrity, good faith, and just laws and codes of conduct. Furthermore, the pragmatic approach fails to recognize people's awareness of the greater adequacy of higher-stage moral judgments, which some individuals act on despite highly corrupt environments. And people who engage in sudden altruistic action may have previously considered the relevant moral issues so thoroughly that their cognitive structures activate automatically, inducing an immediate response. In these instances, individuals who appear to be engaging in after-the fact rationalization are actually behaving with great forethought. Finally, Kohlberg's stages tell us much more about moral understanding in adolescence and adulthood than in early and middle childhood. Nancy Eisenberg created dilemmas relevant to children's everyday lives that pit satisfying one's own desires against acting prosocially——for example, going to a birthday party versus taking time to help an injured peer and missing the party as a result. She found that children's prosocial moral reasoning is more advanced than Kohlberg's stages suggest. Furthermore, empathic perspective taking strengthens prosocial moral thought and its realization in everyday behavior. In sum, because Kohlberg focused on young children's tendency to center on prominent external features in their social world, he underestimated their potential for deeper moral understanding. In the following sections, we consider additional evidence on both child and adolescent moral reasoning.

Many children display both heteronomous and cooperative moral reasoning, raising doubts about whether each Piagetian stage represents a general, unifying organization of moral judgment responses. But to be fair, Piaget (1932/1965) also observed this mixture in children and, therefore, regarded the two moralities as fluid, overlapping phases rather than tightly knit stages.

Finally, moral development is currently viewed as a more extended process than Piaget believed. Kohlberg's six-stage sequence, to which we turn next, identifies three stages beyond the first appearance of the morality of cooperation. Nevertheless, Kohlberg's theory is a continuation of the research begun by Piaget.

Cognitive development, gradual release from adult control, and peer interaction lead children to make the transition to the second stage, MORALITY OF COOPERATION, in which they no longer view rules as fixed but see them as flexible, socially agreed-on principles that can be revised to suit the will of the majority. Piaget regarded peer disagreements as especially facilitating. Through them, children realize that people's perspectives on moral action can differ and that intentions, not concrete consequences, should serve as the basis for judging behavior. Furthermore, as children interact as equals with peers, they learn to settle conflicts in mutually beneficial ways. Gradually, they start to use a standard of fairness called RECIPROCITY, in which they express the same concern for the welfare of others as they do for themselves. Piaget found that children start with a crude, tit-for-tat understanding of reciprocity: "You scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours." This defines the beginning of morality of cooperation. Older children and adolescents move beyond this payback morality to a grasp of the importance of mutuality of expectations, called IDEAL RECIPROCITY——-the idea expressed in the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Ideal reciprocity helps young people realize that rules can be reinterpreted and revised to take individual motives and circumstances into account, thereby ensuring just outcomes for all.

Follow-up research indicates that Piaget's theory accurately describes the general direction of change in moral judgment. With age, outer features, such as physical damage or getting punished, give way to subtler considerations, such as the actor's intentions or the needs and desires of others. Also, much evidence confirms Piaget's conclusion that moral understanding is supported by cognitive maturity, gradual release from adult control, and peer interaction——-findings we will consider when we turn to extensions of Piaget's work by Lawrence Kohlberg and his followers. Nevertheless, several aspects of Piaget's theory have been questioned because they underestimate the moral capacities of young children.

Many parents are aware that angrily yelling at, slapping, and spanking children are ineffective disciplinary tactics. A sharp reprimand or physical force to restrain or move a child is justified when immediate obedience is necessary——-for example, when a 3-year-old is about to run into the street. In fact, parents are most likely to use forceful methods under these conditions. But to foster long-term goals, such as acting kindly toward others, they tend to rely on warmth and reasoning. And in response to very serious transgressions, such as lying or stealing, they often combine power assertion with reasoning. Frequent punishment, however, promotes only immediate compliance, not lasting changes in behavior. Children who are repeatedly criticized, shouted at, or hit are likely to display the unacceptable response again as soon as adults are out of sight. The more harsh threats, angry physical control (yanking an object from the child, handling the child roughly), and physical punishment children experience, the more likely they are to develop serious, lasting mental health problems. These include weak internalization of moral rules; depression, aggression, antisocial behavior, and poor academic performance in childhood and adolescence; and depression, alcohol abuse, criminality, and partner and child abuse in adulthood

Harsh punishment has several undesirable side effects: Parents often spank in response to children's aggression. Yet the punishment itself models aggression! Harshly treated children react with anger, resentment, and a chronic sense of being personally threatened, which prompts a focus on the self's distress rather than a sympathetic orientation to others' needs. Children who are frequently punished develop a more conflict-ridden and less supportive parent-child relationship and also learn to avoid the punitive parent. Consequently, the parent has little opportunity to teach desirable behaviors. By stopping children's misbehavior temporarily, harsh punishment gives adults immediate relief, reinforcing them for using coercive discipline. For this reason, a punitive adult is likely to punish with greater frequency over time, a course of action that can spiral into serious abuse Children, adolescents, and adults whose parents used corporal punishment——-the use of physical force to inflict pain but not injury——are more accepting of such discipline. In this way, use of physical punishment may transfer to the next generation.

The same parenting behaviors that undermine moral internalization and self-control——love withdrawal, power assertion, critical remarks, physical punishment, and inconsistent discipline——are linked to aggression from early childhood through adolescence in diverse cultures, with most of these practices predicting both physical and relational forms.

Home observations of aggressive children reveal that anger and punitiveness quickly create a conflict-ridden family atmosphere and an "out-of-control" child. The pattern begins with forceful discipline, which occurs more often with stressful life experiences (such as economic hardship or marital conflict), a parent with an unstable personality, or a temperamentally difficult child. Typically, the parent threatens, criticizes, and punishes, and the child angrily resists until the parent gives in. At the end of each exchange, both parent and child get relief from stopping the other's unpleasant behavior, so the behaviors repeat and escalate. As these cycles become more frequent, they generate anxiety and irritability among other family members, who soon join in the hostile interactions. Compared with siblings in typical families, preschool siblings who have critical, punitive parents are more aggressive toward one another. Physically, verbally, and relationally destructive sibling conflict, in turn, quickly spreads to peer relationships, contributing to poor impulse control and antisocial behavior by the early school years. Boys are more likely than girls to be targets of harsh, inconsistent discipline because they are more active and impulsive and therefore harder to control. When children who are extreme in these characteristics are exposed to emotionally negative, inept parenting, their capacity for emotional self-regulation, empathic responding, and guilt after transgressions is severely disrupted. Consequently, they lash out when disappointed, frustrated, or faced with a sad or fearful victim, and aggression persists. Besides fostering aggression directly, parents can encourage it indirectly, through poor supervision of children. Unfortunately, children from conflict-ridden homes who already display serious antisocial tendencies lack a cooperative parent-child relationship, which enables adequate parental monitoring. As a result, few if any limits are placed on out-of-home activities and association with antisocial friends, who encourage their hostile style of responding.

Evolutionary theorists speculate that our unique capacity to act prosocially toward genetic strangers originated several million years ago, in the small hunting-and-gathering bands———including both kin and nonkin——in which we spent 95 percent of our evolutionary history. To limit selfishness (which can quickly undermine group functioning), humans developed informal systems of social exchange, in which they acted benevolently toward others with the expectation that others might do the same for them in the future. These reciprocal exchanges (as noted earlier) occur in other species, especially primates, but they are far more common, varied, and highly developed in humans. The willingness of many members of group to aid others and engage in self-sacrifice ensures that the majority will survive and reproduce. Under these conditions, traits that foster altruism undergo natural selection, becoming increasingly prominent in succeeding generations.

How might genes encourage prosocial acts and thereby, promote survival of the species? Many researchers believe that prewired emotional reactions are involved. In Chapter 10, we noted that newborns cry when they hear another baby cry, a possible precursor of empathy. As Figure 12.1 illustrates, 6-month-olds' reaching behaviors convey a preference for an individual who helps over one who hinders others—-an attitude present so early that the investigators speculated it is built in. As toddlers approach age 2, they show clear empathic concern, and they begin experiencing self-conscious emotions, which greatly enhance their responsiveness to social expectations.

Like Piaget, Kohlberg was interested in moral reasoning and used a clinical interviewing procedure to study its development. But whereas Piaget asked children to judge and explain which of two children in a pair of stories was naughtier, Kohlberg used a more open-ended approach: He presented people with hypothetical moral dilemmas and asked what the main actor should do and why. In Kohlberg's Moral Judgment Interview, individuals resolve dilemmas that present conflicts between two moral values and justify their decisions. The best-known of these, the "Heinz dilemma," pits the value of obeying the law (not stealing) against the value of human life (saving a dying person): In Europe, a woman was near death from cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. A druggist in the same town had discovered it, but he was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together half of what it cost. The druggist refused to sell the drug for less or let Heinz pay later. So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife. Should Heinz have done that? Why or why not?

In addition to explaining their answer, participants are asked to evaluate the conflicting moral values on which the dilemma is based. Scoring of responses is highly intricate and demanding. Kohlberg emphasized that it is the way an individual reasons about the dilemma, not the content of the response (whether or not to steal) that determines moral judgment maturity. Individuals who believe that Heinz should steal the drug and those who think he should not can be found at each of Kohlberg's first four stages. Only at the highest two stages so moral reasoning and content come together in a coherent ethical system, in which individuals agree not only on why certain actions are justified but also on what people ought to do when facing a moral dilemma. Given a choice between obeying the law and preserving individual rights, the most advanced moral thinkers support individual rights——in the Heinz dilemma, stealing the drug to save a life.

The success of induction may lie in its power to motivate active commitment to moral norms, in the following ways: Induction gives children information about how to behave that they can use in future situations By emphasizing the impact of the child's actions on others, induction encourages empathy and sympathetic concern, which motivate prosocial behavior Giving children reasons for changing their behavior encourages them to adopt moral standards because those standards make sense. Children who consistently experience induction may form a SCRIPT for the negative emotional consequences of harming others: Child causes harm, inductive message points out harm, child feels empathy for victim, child makes amends. The script deters future transgressions. Children and adolescents who view discipline as fair are more likely to listen to, accept, and internalize the parent's message. And as teenagers increasingly mention moral qualities in their self-descriptions, parental expressions of disappointed expectations may strengthen the impact of induction by highlighting the discrepancy between the young person's actions and self-definition.

In contrast, discipline that relies too heavily on threats of punishment or withdrawal of love makes children and adolescents so angry or anxious and frightened that they cannot think clearly enough to figure out what they should do. As a result, these practices do not get children to internalize moral norms, and——-as noted earlier——-also interfere with empathy and prosocial responding. Nevertheless, warnings, disapproval, and commands are sometimes necessary to get an unruly child to listen to an inductive message.

Many factors affect maturity of moral reasoning, including the young person's personality and a wide range of social experiences——child-rearing practices, peer interaction, schooling, and aspects of culture. Growing evidence suggests that, as Kohlberg believed, these experiences work in two ways: They encourage young people to take the perspective of others, and they present cognitive challenges, which stimulate young people to think about moral problems in more complex ways. A flexible, open-minded approach to new information and experiences is linked to gains in moral reasoning, just as it is to identity development. Because open-minded young people are more socially skilled, they have more opportunities for social participation. A richer social life enhances exposure to others' perspectives, and open-mindedness helps adolescents derive moral insights from that exposure. In contrast, adolescents who have difficulty adapting to new experiences are less likely to be interested in others' moral ideas and justifications. Child-reading practices associated with mature moral reasoning combine warmth, exchange of ideas, and appropriate demands for maturity. Children and adolescents who gain most in moral understanding have parents who engage in moral discussions, encourage prosocial behavior, insist that others be treated respectfully and fairly, and create a supportive atmosphere by listening sensitively, asking clarifying questions, and presenting higher-level reasoning. In one study, 11-year-olds were asked what they thought an adult would say to justify a moral rule, such as not lying, stealing, or breaking a promise. Those with warm, demanding, communicative parents were far more likely than their agemates to point to the importance of ideal reciprocity: "I trusted you," "You wouldn't like it if I did it to you" In contrast, when parents lecture, use threats, or make sarcastic remarks, children show little or no change in moral reasoning over time. In sum, parents who facilitate moral understanding are affectionate, verbal, and rational and promote a cooperative style of family life. Notice that these are the very characteristics, discussed earlier in this chapter, that foster moral internalization in young children. For the most part, moral reasoning advances in late adolescence and early adulthood only as long as a person remains in school. Higher education introduces young people to social issues that extend beyond personal relationships to entire political and cultural groups. Consistent with this idea, college students who report more perspective-taking opportunities (for example, classes that emphasize open discussion of opinions, friendships with others of different cultural backgrounds) and who indicate that they have become more aware of social diversity tend to be advanced in moral reasoning. Research supports Piaget's belief that interaction among peers who present differing viewpoints promotes moral understanding. When young people negotiate and compromise, they realize that social life can be based on cooperation between equals rather than on authority relations. Adolescents who report more close friendships and who more often participate in conversations with their friends are advanced in moral reasoning. The mutuality and intimacy of friendship, which foster decisions based on consensual agreement, may be particularly important for moral development. Furthermore, recall from a Chapter 11 that intergroup contact——-cross-race friendships and interactions in schools and communities——reduces racial and ethnic prejudice. It also affects young people morally, strengthening their conviction that race-based and other forms of peer exclusion are wrong. Peer discussions and role-playing of moral problems have provided the basis for interventions aimed at improving high school and college students' moral understanding. For these interventions to be effective, young people must be highly engaged——confronting, critiquing, and attempting to clarify one another's viewpoints. And because moral development occurs gradually, many peer interaction sessions over weeks or months typically are needed to produce moral change.

Individuals in industrialized nations move through Kohlberg's stages more rapidly and advance to a higher level than individuals in village societies, who rarely move beyond Stage 3. One explanation of these cultural differences is that in village societies, moral cooperation is based on direct relations between people and does not allow for the development of advanced moral understanding (Stages 4 to 6), which depends on appreciating the role of larger social structures, such as laws and government institutions, in resolving moral conflict. In support of this view, in cultures where young people participate in the institutions of their society at early ages, moral reasoning is advanced. For example, on KIBBUTZIM, small but technologically complex agricultural settlements in Israel, children receive training in the governance of their community in middle childhood. By third grade, they mention more concerns about societal laws and rules when discussing moral conflicts than do Israeli city-reared or U.S. children. During adolescence and adulthood, a greater percentage of kibbutz than American individuals reach Kohlberg stages 4 and 5. A second possible reason for cultural variation is that responses to moral dilemmas in collectivist cultures (including village societies) are often more other-directed than in Western Europe and North America. In both village and industrialized societies that highly value interdependency, statements portraying the individual as vitally connected to the social group are common. In one study, both male and female Japanese adolescents, who almost always integrate care- and justice-based reasoning, placed greater weight on caring, which they regarded as a communal responsibility. As one boy remarked, yasashii (kindness/gentleness) and omoiyari (empathy) are "something 'normal' that everyone shows. Similarly, in research conducted in India, even highly educated people (expected to have attained Kohlberg's Stages 4 and 5) viewed solutions to moral dilemmas as the responsibility of the entire society, not of a single person. These findings raise the question of whether Kohlberg's highest level represents a culturally specific way of thinking—one limited to Western societies that emphasize individual rights and an appeal to an inner, private conscience. At the same time, a review of over 100 studies confirmed an age-related trend consistent with Kohlberg's stages 1 to 4 in more than 40 societies. A common morality of justice and care is clearly evident in the responses of people from vastly different cultures.

heteronomous morality (Kohlberg)

Kohlberg's first stage of preconventional reasoning in which moral thinking is tied to punishment. For example, younger children state that the rules of the game of marbles cannot be changed, explaining that "God didn't teach (the new rules)," "you couldn't play any other way," or it would be cheating........A fair rule is one that is in the game.

The beginnings of self-control are supported by achievements of the second year, discussed in earlier chapters. To behave in a self-controlled fashion, children must have some ability to think of themselves as separate, autonomous beings who can direct their own actions. And they must have the representational, memory, and inhibitory skills to recall a caregiver's directive and apply it to their own behavior. As these capacities emerge between 12 and 18 months, the first glimmerings of self-control appear in the form of COMPLIANCE. Toddlers show clear awareness of caregivers' wishes and expectations and can obey simple requests and commands. But at first, self-control depends heavily on caregiver support. According to Vygotsky (1934/1986), children cannot guide their own behavior until they have integrated standards represented in adult-child dialogues into their own self-directed speech. Compliance quickly leads to toddlers' first consciencelike verbalizations——-for example, correcting the self by saying "No, can't" before touching a delicate object or jumping on the sofa. Researchers often study self-control by giving children tasks that, like the situations just mentioned, require DELAY OF GRATIFICATION——- waiting for an appropriate time and place to engage in a tempting act. Between ages 1 1/2 and 3, children show an increasing capacity to wait before eating a treat, opening a present, or playing with a toy. Children who are advanced in development of attention and language tend to be better at delaying gratification——findings that help explain why girls are typically more self-controlled than boys.

Like effortful control in general, young children's capacity to delay gratification is influenced by both biologically based temperament and quality of caregiving. Inhibited children find it easier to wait than angry, irritable children do. But toddlers who experience parental warmth and simple (as opposed to lengthy, detailed) statements that patiently redirect their behavior are more likely to be cooperative and resist temptation. Such parenting——which encourages and models patient, nonimpulsive behavior——is particularly important for temperamentally reactive children. As self-control improves, parents gradually increase the range of rules they expect toddlers to follow, from safety and respect for property and people to family routines, manners, and simple chores.

The social learning perspective does not regard morality as a special human activity with a unique course of development. Rather, moral behavior is acquired just like any other set of responses: through reinforcement and modeling. Operant conditioning——reinforcement for good behavior with approval, affection, and other rewards——is not enough for children to acquire moral responses. For a behavior to be reinforced, it must first occur spontaneously. Yet many prosocial acts, such as sharing, helping, or comforting an unhappy playmate, occur so rarely at first that reinforcement cannot explain their rapid development in early childhood. Rather, social learning theorists believe that children learn to behave morally largely through modeling——-observing and imitating adults who demonstrate appropriate behavior. Once children acquire a moral response, such as sharing or telling the truth, reinforcement in the form of praising the act ("That was a very nice thing to do") or the child's character ("You're a very kind and considerate boy") increases its frequency.

Many studies show that having helpful or generous models increases young children's prosocial responses. And certain characteristics of the model affect children's willingness to imitate: Warmth and responsiveness. Preschoolers are more likely to copy the prosocial actions of an adult who is warm and responsive than those of a cold, distant adult. Warmth seems to make children more attentive and receptive to the model and is itself an example of a prosocial response. Competence and power. Children admire and therefore tend to imitate competent, powerful models——-especially older peers and adults. Consistency between assertions and behavior. When models say one thing and do another——for example, announce that "it's important to help others" but rarely engage in helpful acts——-children generally choose the most lenient standard of behavior that adults demonstrate. Models are most influential in the early years. In one study, toddlers' eager, willing imitation of their mothers' behavior predicted moral conduct (not cheating in a game) and guilt following transgressions at age 3. At the end of early childhood, children who have had consistent exposure to caring adults tend to behave prosocially whether or not a model is present: They have internalized prosocial rules from repeated observations and encouragement by others

Preconventional level

Morality is externally controlled. Children accept the rules of authority figures and judge actions by their consequences. Behaviors that result in punishment are viewed as bad, those that lead to rewards as good.

Look back at the story about John and Henry on the previous page. Because bad intentions are paired with little damage and good intentions with a great deal of damage, Piaget's method yields a conservative picture of young children's ability to appreciate intentions. When questioned about moral issues in a way that makes a person's intention as obvious as the harm done, preschool and early school-age children are capable of judging ill-intentioned people as naughtier and more deserving of punishment than well-intentioned ones. As further evidence, by age 4, children clearly recognize the difference between two morally relevant intentional behaviors: truthfulness and lying. They approve of telling the truth and disapprove of lying, even when a lie remains undetected. And by age 7 to 8——earlier than suggested by Piaget's findings——children integrate their judgements of lying and truth telling with prosocial and antisocial intentions. They evaluate very negatively certain types of truthfulness——for example, blunt statements, particularly when made in public contexts where they are especially likely to have negative social consequences (telling a friend that you don't like her drawing) Although both Chinese and Canadian schoolchildren consider lying about antisocial acts "very naughty," Chinese children———influenced by collectivist values—-more often rate lying favorably when the intention is modesty, as when a student who has thoughtfully picked up litter from the playground says, "I didn't do it". Similarly, Chinese children are more likely than Canadian children to favor lying to support the group at the expense of the individual (saying you're sick so, as a poor singer, you won't harm your class's chances of winning a singing competition). In contrast, Canadian children more often favor lying to support the individual at the expense of the group (claiming that a friend who is a poor speller is actually a good speller because he wants to represent the class in a spelling competition)

Nevertheless, an advanced understanding of the morality of intentions does await the morality of cooperation. Younger children are more likely to CENTER, or focus on, salient features and consequences in their judgments, while neglecting and hence failing to integrate other important information. For example, preschoolers more often than older children evaluate lies as always wrong. They also judge lies that lead to punishment more negatively than lies that do not. And preschoolers tend to focus on the here-and-now, ignoring a guilt-relevant prior event. Shown a series of pictures depicting one child pushing another off a playground swing and then swinging on it himself, many young children simply declare the perpetrator to be "happy, he's swinging on the swing" Furthermore, through the early school years, children generally interpret statements of intention in a rigid, heteronomous fashion. They believe that once you say you will do something, you are obligated to follow through, even if uncontrollable circumstances (such as an accident) make it difficult or impossible to do so. By age 9 or 10, children realize that not keeping your word is much worse in some situations than in others——namely, when you are able to do so and have permitted another person to count on your actions. In sum, Piaget was partly right and partly wrong about this aspect of moral reasoning.

As we have seen, real-life moral dilemmas highlight the role of emotion in moral judgment. Return to Leisl's moral reasoning in the opening to this chapter and notice how her argument focuses on caring and commitment to others. Carol Gilligan (1982) is the best-known of those who have argued that Kohlberg's theory——originally formulated on the basis of interviews with males——does not adequately represent the morality of girls and women. Gilligan believes that feminine morality emphasizes an "ethic of care" that Kohlberg's system devalues. Leisl's reasoning falls at Kohlberg's Stage 3 because it is based on mutual trust and affection. In contrast, Stages 4 to 6 emphasize justice——-an abstract, rational commitment to moral ideals. According to Gilligan, a concern for others is a different but no less valid basis for moral judgment than a focus on impersonal rights. Many studies have tested Gilligan's claim that Kohlberg's approach underestimates the moral maturity of females, and most do not support it. On hypothetical dilemmas, everyday moral problems, and the SMR-SF, adolescent and adult females display reasoning at the same stage as their male counterparts and often at a higher stage. Themes of justice and caring appear in the responses of both sexes, and when girls do raise interpersonal concerns, they are not downgraded in Kohlberg's system. Rather, many studies report that girls shift from Stage 2 to Stage 3 reasoning earlier than boys. These findings suggest that although Kohlberg emphasized justice rather than caring as the highest of moral ideals, his theory taps both sets of values.

Nevertheless, some evidence indicates that although the morality of males and females includes both orientations, females tend to stress care, or empathic perspective taking, whereas males either stress justice or focus equally on justice and care. This difference in emphasis, which appears more often in real life than in hypothetical dilemmas, may reflect women's greater involvement in daily activities involving care and concern for others. Indeed, both cultural and situational contexts profoundly affect use of a care orientation. In one study, U.S. and Canadian 17- to 26-year-old females showed more complex reasoning about care issues than their male counterparts. But Norwegian males were just as advanced as Norwegian females in care-based understanding. Perhaps Nowergian culture, which explicitly endorses gender equality, induces boys and men to think deeply about interpersonal obligations. And in an Australian investigation, researchers presented university students with one of three versions of a moral dilemma, in which the main character varied in familiarity: (1) a close friend in class, (2) a person "known only vaguely" from class, (3) a classmate whose relationship was unspecified. When asked whether they would permit the character who was in danger of failing the course to borrow a copy of their recently completed assignment despite risk of cheating, both male and female participants gave more care responses when considering a close friend than a socially distant classmate. As figure 12.3 shows, gender differences emerged only in the unspecified condition, where women——who tend to forge closer relationships——-may have assumed greater familiarity. In sum, current evidence indicates that justice and caring are not gender-specific moralities. Perhaps Piaget (1932/1965) himself said it best: "Between the more refined forms of justice....... and love properly so called, there is no longer any real conflict"

The two perspectives we are about to discuss——-psychoanalytic theory and social learning theory———offer different accounts of how children become moral beings. Yet both regard moral development as a matter of INTERNALIZATION: adopting societal standards for right action as one's own. In other words, both focus on how morality moves from society to individual———-how children acquire norms, or prescriptions for good conduct, widely held by members of their social group. Our considers of these theories will reveal that several factors jointly affect the child's willingness to adopt societal standards: Parental style of discipline, which varies with the type of misdeed The child's characteristics, including age and temperament The parent's characteristics The child's view of both the misdeed and the reasonableness of parental demands As this list indicates, internalization results from a combination of influences within the child and the rearing environment. When the process goes well, external forces foster the child's positive inclinations and counteract the child's negative inclinations. In the following sections, we will see many examples of this idea.

Recall from Chapter 1 that according to Sigmund Freud, morality emerges between ages 3 and 6, the period of the well-known Oedipus and Electra conflicts. Young children desire to possess the parent of the other sex, but they abandon this wish because they fear punishment and loss of parental love. To maintain their parents' affection, children form a SUPEREGO, or conscience, by identifying with the same-sex parent, whose moral standards they adopt. Finally, children turn the hostility previously aimed at the same-sex parent toward themselves, which evokes painful feelings of guilt each time they disobey the superego. Moral development, Freud believed, is largely complete by age 5 to 6.

A central assumption of the cognitive-developmental perspective is that moral understanding should affect moral motivation. As young people grasp the moral "logic" of human social cooperation, they are upset when this logic is violated. As a result, they realize that behaving in line with one's thinking is vital for creating and maintaining a just social world. Consistent with this idea, higher-stage adolescents more often act prosocially by helping, sharing, and defending victims of injustice and by volunteering in their communities. Also, they less often engage in cheating, aggression, and other antisocial or delinquent behaviors. Yet the connection between more mature moral reasoning and action is only modest. As we have seen, moral behavior is influenced by many factors besides cognition, including the emotions of empathy, sympathy, and guilt; individual differences in temperament; and a long history of cultural experiences and intuitions that affect moral choice and decision making. Moral identity also affects moral behavior. When moral goals are personally important, individuals are more likely to feel obligated to act on their moral judgments. In a study of low-SES African-American and Hispanic teenagers, those who emphasized moral traits and goals in their self-descriptions displayed exceptional levels of community service, but they did not differ from their agemates in moral reasoning. That a synthesis of moral concern with sense of self can motivate moral action is also supported by a study of moral exemplars who have made outstanding contributions to such causes as civic rights, medical ethics, and religious freedom. Interview responses are revealed that their most distinguishing characteristic is "seamless integration" of moral vision with personal identity.

Researchers have begun to identify the origins of moral identity in hopes of capitalizing on it to promote moral commitment. As we saw earlier in this chapter, child-rearing practices——inductive discipline and clearly conveyed moral expectations——-augment adolescents' moral identity. Strengthening moral self-perceptions at an early age may be a powerful way to increase the chances that moral cognitions are realized in behavior. In longitudinal research, firm conscience development (as measured by internalization of parents' rules) and empathic concern to mother's distress (a hurt finger) during the preschool years predicted strong moral self-perceptions at age 5, which——in turn——positively predicted children's competent, prosocial, rule-abiding behavior at age 6 1/2. Parenting strategies that launch conscience development and empathy on an early, favorable path may contribute vitally, in the long term, to moral identity and action. Another possibility is that just educational environments——-in which teachers guide students in democratic decision making and rule setting, resolving disputes civilly, and taking responsibility for others' welfare—-enhance moral commitment. In one study, tenth graders who reported fair teacher treatment were more likely than those who had experienced unjust treatment (an unfair detention or a lower grade than they deserved) to regard excluding a peer on the basis of race as a moral transgression. A compassionate and just school climate may be particularly important for poverty-stricken ethnic minority children and adolescents. For many such students, meaningful participation in their school community may be the crucial factor that prevents them from pessimistically concluding that prejudice and diminished opportunity are pervasive in society and, therefore, insurmountable. Schools can also expand students' opportunities to experience and explore moral emotions, thoughts, and actions by promoting civic engagement. Encouraging civic responsibility in young people can help them see the connection between their personal interests and the public interest——-an insight that may foster all aspects of morality.

Individuals at the POSTCONVENTIONAL LEVEL move beyond unquestioning support for the laws and rules of their own society. They define morality in terms of abstract principles and values that apply to all situations and societies. Stage 5: The social-contract orientation. At Stage 5, individuals regard laws and rules as flexible instruments for furthering human purposes. They can imagine alternatives to their own social order, and they emphasize fair procedures for interpreting and changing the law. When laws are consistent with individual rights and the interests of the majority, each person follows them because of a social-contract orientation——-free and willing participation in the system because it brings about more good for people than if it did not exist. Prostealing: "Although there is a law against stealing, the law wasn't meant to violate a person's right to life......... If Heinz is prosecuted for stealing, the law needs to be reinterpreted to take into account situations in which it goes against people's natural right to keep on living." Antistealing: At this stage, there are no antistealing responses.

Stage 6: The universal ethical principle orientation. At this highest stage, right action is defined by self-chosen ethical principles of conscience that are valid for all humanity, regardless of law and social agreement. Stage 6 individuals typically mention such abstract principles as equal consideration of the claims of all human beings and respect for the worth and dignity of each person. Prostealing: It doesn't make sense to put respect for property above respect for life itself. (People) could live together without private property at all. Respect for human life and personality is absolute, and accordingly (people) have a mutual duty to save one another from dying" Antistealing: At this stage, there are no antistealing responses.

Children and adolescents in diverse Western and non-Western cultures use similar criteria to reason about moral, social-conventional, and personal concerns. For example, Chinese and Japanese young people, whose cultures place a high value on respect for authority, nevertheless say that adults have no right to interfere in their personal matters, such as how they spend their free time. A Columbian child illustrated this vehement defense of the right to personal control when asked if a teacher had the right to tell a student where to sit during circle time. In the absence of a moral reason from the teacher, the child emphatically declared, "She should be able to sit wherever she wants" Still, certain behaviors are classified differently across cultures. For example, East Indian Hindu children believe it is morally wrong to eat chicken the day after a father's death because, according to Hindu religious teachings, this will prevent the father's soul from reaching salvation. To American children, in contrast, this practice is an arbitrary convention. But when children are asked about acts that obviously lead to harm or violate rights——-breaking promises, destroying another's property, or kicking harmless animals——-cross-cultural similarly prevails. We are reminded, once again, that justice considerations are a universal feature of moral thought. The research reviewed in the preceding sections reveals the richness and diversity of children's moral understanding. To fully represent the development of moral thought, researchers must examine children's responses to a wide range of problems.

The study of moral judgment tells us what people think they should do, and why, when faced with a moral problem. But good people's intentions often fall short. Whether children and adults act in accord with their beliefs depends in part on characteristics we call will-power, firm resolve, or, more simply, self-control. In Chapter 10, we considered individual differences in the broad temperamental dimension of EFFORTFUL CONTROL——the extent to which children can manage their reactivity. Here we focus specifically on self-control in the moral domain: inhibiting urges to act in ways that violate moral standards, sometimes called RESISTANCE TO TEMPTATION. Earlier in this book we noted that parental warmth, reasonable expectations and limit-setting, verbal guidance in managing emotion, inductive discipline, and modeling promote self-controlled behavior. But these practices become more effective when children acquire the ability to resist temptation. When and how does this capacity develop?

Compliance

Toddlers show clear awareness of caregivers' wishes and expectations and can obey simple requests and commands

In poverty-stricken neighborhoods with a wide range of stressors, including poor-quality schools, limited recreational and employment opportunities, and high adult criminality, youth antisocial behavior is more likely. Children and adolescents have easy access to deviant peers, drugs, and (in the United States) firearms, all of which are linked to violence. And teenagers are especially likely to be recruited into antisocial gangs, whose members commit the vast majority of violent delinquent acts. Furthermore, schools in these locales typically fail to meet students' developmental needs. Large classes, weak instruction, rigid rules, and reduced academic expectations and opportunities are associated with higher rates of lawbreaking, even after other influences are controlled. Furthermore, the community conditions just described heighten in young people a hostile view of people and relationships, a preference for immediate rewards, and a cynical attitude toward social conventions and moral norms. These social-cognitive biases, in addition to others noted in the previous section, increase the chances that adolescents will interpret situations in ways that legitimize antisocial behavior. Ethnic and political prejudices further magnify the risk of angry, combative responses. In inner-city ghettos and in war-torn areas of the world, large numbers of children live in the midst of constant danger, chaos, and deprivation. These youngsters are at risk for severe emotional stress, deficits in moral reasoning, and behavior problems.

Treatment for aggressive children must break the cycle of hostilities between family members and promote effective ways of relating to others. Interventions with preschool and school-age children have been most successful. Once antisocial patterns persist into adolescence, so many factors act to sustain them that treatment is far more difficult. Parent training programs based on social learning theory have been devised to improve the parenting of preschool and school-age children with conduct problems. In one highly effective approach called Incredible Years, parents complete 18 weekly group sessions facilitated by two professionals, who teach parenting techniques for promoting children's academic, emotional, and social skills and for managing disruptive behaviors. Sessions include coaching, modeling, and practicing effective parenting behaviors——-experiences aimed at interrupting parent-child destructive interaction while promoting positive relationships and competencies. A special focus is positive parenting, including giving children positive attention, encouragement, and praise for prosocial behaviors. The coercive cycles of parents and aggressive children are so pervasive that these children often are punished even when they do behave appropriately. Incredible Years also offers a complementary six-day training program for teachers, directed at improving classroom management strategies and strengthening students' social skills, friendships, and emotional self-regulation. And a complementary, 22-week program intervenes directly with children teaching appropriate classroom behavior, self-control, and social skills. Evaluations in which families with aggressive children were randomly assigned to either Incredible Years or control groups reveal that the program is highly effective at improving parenting and reducing child behavior problems. Combining parent training with teacher and/or child intervention strengthens child outcomes. And effects of parent training endure. In one 8- to 12-year-follow-up, 75 percent of young children with serious conduct problems whose parents participated in Incredible Years were well-adjusted as teenagers. These favorable effects contrast sharply with the profound adjustment problems typically displayed by youths with early-onset conduct difficulties.

Although the capacity for self-control is in place by the third year, it is not complete. Cognitive development——in particular, gains in attention and mental representation——-enables children to use a variety of effective self-instructional strategies. As a result, resistance to temptation improves.

Walter Mischel has studied what children think and say to themselves that promotes resistance to temptation. In several studies, preschoolers were shown two rewards: a highly desirable one (10 mini-marshmallows) that they would have to wait for and a less desirable one (2 mini-marshmallows) that they could have right away. With age, performance improved. At the same time, wide individual differences emerged: The most self-controlled preschoolers used any technique they could to divert their attention from the desired objects: covering their eyes, singing, even trying to sleep! In everyday situations, preschoolers find it difficult to keep their minds off tempting activities and objects for long. When their thoughts turn to a prohibited goal, the way they mentally represent it has much to do with their success at self-control. Teaching preschoolers to transform the stimulus in ways that de-emphasize its arousing qualities——-an approach that helps children shift attention and inhibit emotional reactivity——promotes delay of gratification. In one study, preschoolers who were told to think about marshmallows as "white and puffy clouds" waited much longer before eating a marshmallow reward than those who focused on marshmallows' "sweet and chewy properties." Having something interesting to do while waiting also helps preschoolers divert attention from rewards and resist temptation (see earlier suggestions for reducing opportunities for misbehavior. In a modified delay-of-gratification task in which 3- to 5-year-olds could engage in enjoyable work (feeding marbles to a colorfully decorated, "hungry" Baby Bird), the amount of time children waited for a nearby, attractive reward more than doubled over simply waiting passively. But when the work was unappealing (sorting marbles), preschoolers were less successful. They often looked up from the boring task, which increased the likelihood that the enticing reward would capture their attention. During the school years, children become better at devising their own strategies for resisting temptation. By this time, self-control has become a flexible capacity for MORAL SELF-REGULATION——the ability to monitor one's own conduct, constantly adjusting it as circumstances present opportunities to violate inner standards.

Research on young children's understanding of authority reveals that they do not regard adults with the unquestioning respect Piaget assumed. Even preschoolers judge certain acts, such as hitting and stealing, to be wrong regardless of the opinions of authorities. When asked to explain, 3- and 4-year-olds express concerns about harming other people rather than obeying adult dictates. By age 4, children have differentiated notions about the legitimacy of authority figures, which they refine during the school years. In several studies, children in kindergarten through sixth grade were asked questions designed to assess their view of how broad an adult's authority should be. Almost all denied that adults have general authority. For example, they rejected a principal's right to set rules and issue directives in settings other than his own school.

With respect to nonmoral concerns, such as the rules of a game, children usually base the legitimacy of authority on a person's knowledge, not on social position. And when a directive is fair and caring (for example, telling children to stop fighting or to share candy), children view it as right, regardless of who states it——-a principal, a teacher, a class president, or another child. Even among Korean children, whose culture places a high value on respect for and deference to adults, 7- to 11-year-olds evaluate negatively a teacher's or principal's order to keep fighting, to steal, or to refuse to share——a response that strengthens with age. As these findings reveal, adult status is not required for preschool and school-age children to view someone as an authority. Knowledgeable peers or those who act to protect others' rights are regarded as just as legitimate. But in reasoning about authority, preschool and young elementary school children to tend to place greater weight than older children on power, status, and consequences for disobedience.

Although good discipline is crucial, ___________ is also influential in conscience development.

a child's temperament

Construction

actively attending to and interrelating multiple perspectives on situations in which social conflicts arise and thereby attaining new moral understandings

Internalization

adopting societal standards for right action as one's own

reactive (hostile) aggression

an angry, defensive response to provocation or a blocked goal and is meant to hurt another person

Like Piaget, Kohlberg emphasized that children's moral judgments build on their

cognitive development

Children and adolescents who act out their impulses toward others in destructive ways may have

conduct disorder

Social conventions

customs determined solely by consensus, such as table manners and politeness rituals. (Saying "hello," "please," "thank you")

Relational aggression

damages another's peer relationships through social exclusion, malicious gossip, or friendship manipulation

Moral identity

endorsement of moral values (such as fairness, kindness, and generosity) as central to their self-concept

Physical aggression

harms others through physical injury - pushing, hitting, kicking, or punching others or destroying another's property

Verbal aggression

harms others through threats of physical aggression, name-calling, or hostile teasing

Induction

in which an adult helps the child notice others' feelings by pointing out the effects of the child's misbehavior on others, especially noting their distress and making clear that the child caused it

proactive aggression (instrumental aggression)

in which children act to fulfill a need or desire——obtain an object, privilege, space, or social reward, such as adult attention or (in older children) peer admiration—-and unemotionally attack a person to achieve their goal

Morality of cooperation

in which they no longer view rules as fixed but see them as flexible, socially agreed-on principles that can be revised to suit the will of the majority

Conventional level

individuals continue to regard conformity to social rules as important, but not for reasons of self-interest. Rather, they believe that actively maintaining the current social system ensures positive human relationships and societal order

Time out

involves removing children from the immediate setting until they are ready to act appropriately

Boys are more likely to be sexually abused by

male non-family members

Postconventional level

move beyond unquestioning support for the laws and rules of their own society. They define morality in terms of abstract principles and values that apply to all situations and societies

Ethnographic evidence from around the world shows that postmenopausal women do all of the following EXCEPT:

not live very long.

Ethnographic evidence has revealed that traditionally, Pawnee women worked wood, and among the Hidatsa, women made boats. Cases such as these suggest that

patterns of division of labor by gender are culturally general—not universal.

Internalization

process by which a norm becomes a part of an individual's personality, thereby conditioning the individual to conform to society's expectations

The beginnings of self-control occur when children

realize that others impose demands on them and expect them to react accordingly.

Matters of personal choice

such as friends, hairstyle, and leisure activities, which do not violate rights and are up to the individual

Boys are more likely to engage in risky behaviors and experience problems at school; boys are also more likely to ____________ than girls.

take math and science AP classes and score higher

Moral self-regulation

the ability to monitor one's own conduct, constantly adjusting it as circumstances present opportunities to violate inner standards

Ideal reciprocity

the idea expressed in the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"

Realism

the tendency to view mental phenomena, including rules, as fixed external features of reality

Delay of gratification

waiting for an appropriate time and place to engage in a tempting act

Moral imperatives

which protect people's rights and welfare, from two other types of social rules and expectations