Moral Development

Type of psychology: Developmental psychology
Fields of study: Infancy and childhood; social perception and cognition
Moral development is the process of internalizing society’s rules and principles of right
and wrong. In order to maintain a stable social order, the achievement of morality is
necessary. Acquiring morals is a sequential process linked to a person’s stage of moral
reasoning and cognitive understanding.

Key concepts
• cognitive development
• empathy
• moral development
• moral rules
• morality
• social order

Morality is a set of standards that a person has about the rightness and
wrongness of various kinds of behavior. Moral development is the way in
which these sets of standards change over a period of time and experiences.
Without moral rules—obligatory social regulations based on the principles
of justice and welfare for others—society would be chaotic and without order.
Most societies, for example, agree that certain behaviors (such as murder
and theft) are wrong, and most people follow those moral principles.
Not everyone has the same way of reasoning about the morality of a situation,
however, as seen in the following two scenarios from the work of psychologist
Jean Piaget.
A little boy named John is in his room. He is called to dinner, and he goes
into the dining room. Behind the door on a chair is a tray with fifteen cups
on it. John does not know this; when he goes in, the door knocks against the
tray, and all fifteen cups are broken. There is another boy, named Henry.
One day when his mother is out, he tries to get some jam from the cupboard.
He climbs onto a chair but cannot reach it; he knocks over a cup. The cup
falls down and breaks.
When asked which of the above two boys is more naughty, most adults
would immediately reply that Henry is more guilty. Conversely, a child between
six and ten years of age usually will say that John is more guilty. The
differences between the two scenes consist of both the amount of damage
done and the intentions of the two children. It is obvious that children and
adults do not view the situations in the same way.