13 Moral Development

This chapter addresses theory and research on the development of morality from early childhood through adolescence. A structural-developmental-relational approach is presented proposing that children construct configurations of thinking about welfare, justice, and rights connected with emotions like affection, sympathy, and empathy. Along with the construction of moral judgments, children form systems of judgments in the domain of social convention, involving uniformities within social systems, and the personal domain, involving understandings of legitimate arenas of choice, freedoms, and autonomy. In this social domain approach, moral, conventional, and personal judgments are distinct from each other and constitute separate developmental pathways. The structural-relational domain approach is compared with other approaches to moral development and associated general psychological assumptions. A critique is offered of past and contemporary views that assume that people's decisions are most frequently nonrational or even irrational and that morality is not based on substantive concepts like welfare and justice. The critique of those approaches is followed by discussion of the relation of morality and culture, taking into account societal contexts and cultural practices in explaining development. Research is presented indicating that cultures need to be characterized as heterogeneous, and that individuals both partake in culture practices and engage in opposition to and resistance of practices entailing inequalities and domination of one group (such as males) over another (such as females). It is proposed that morality is not relative to cultural contexts, but that commonalities across cultures do not reflect absolutism in moral decision making. After considering the research on social domains, processes of decision making are discussed. Social decision making involves coordination, or weighing and balancing of different moral and social goals, or of different and competing moral goals. Processes of coordination are also central to explanations of age-related continuities and discontinuities in moral development. The body of research on distinct social domains, the development of moral judgments, and orientations to cultural practices supports a structural-constructivist and relational theory of moral development. Keywords: coordination; cultural practices; emotions; justice; morality; moral relativism and universality; moral resistance; reasoning; rights; social conventions; social domains; social hierarchy; social inequalities; social opposition; structural-relational systems; welfare