The ability of young children to distinguish between morality and convention

Contents

1. Question

2. Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development
2.1. The stage model
2.2. Structure, justice and morality
2.3. Investigation and scoring of moral judgments
2.4. Criticism of Kohlberg’s theory

3. The role of emotions in early morality
3.1. Nancy Eisenberg’s investigations of altruistic and prosocial behavior
3.1.1. The definition of altruistic and prosocial behavior
3.1.2. General methodology and results
3.1.3. Conclusions
3.2. Other approaches regarding the relationship of emotions to morality
3.3. Conclusions

4. Elliot Turiel’s concept of social domains
4.1. Definition of the social domains
4.2. Assessment methods and results of the domain research
4.2.1. Criterion judgments
4.2.2. Justification categories
4.2.3. Ratings and rankings
4.3. The acquisition of social knowledge
4.4. Criterion judgments versus familiarity with events
4.5. The relation between seriousness of transgression, criterion judgments, and justification categories
4.6. Emotional consequences of transgressions in social domains
4.7. A first comparison of Turiel’s and Kohlberg’s assessments and results

5. Domain specifities of social judgments and authority concepts
5.1. Domain specifities, mixed domains and moral dilemmas
5.1.1. Mixed domain events
5.1.2. Moral conflicts and dilemmas
5.1.3. Conclusions
5.2. Authority concepts: Differences between legitimacy and obedience
5.3. Conclusions

6. Conclusions
6.1. Emotions
6.1.1. Dilemma type
6.1.2. Emotional consequences to moral transgressions
6.2. Domains of social knowledge
6.2.1. Conflicts
6.2.2. Justifications
6.2.3. What one would do and what one should do
6.2.4. Legitimacy and obedience

A. Stories

A.1. Killen (1990)

1. Question

In this diploma thesis I want to consider several approaches in the area of moral development research. Given the theory of Lawrence Kohlberg, young children (younger than 10 years of age) seem to stay completely under the constraints of authorities and rules. According to Kohlberg, children’s social judgments and behaviors are determined by instrumental aims to satisfy their own needs and wishes, or to avoid punishment. In this regard, the helping of others or meeting the needs of others is only motivated by instrumental considerations. Thus, in Kohlberg’s view young children are not able to think or to act in a genuinely moral way.

In reaction to Kohlberg, other researchers have suggested that young children are capable to make genuinely moral judgments and to act in a moral way. Eisenberg (e.g. 1986) has suggested that young under the age of 10 years children can have empathic or altruistic feelings which lead them to conduct prosocial acts. Other researchers (e.g. Keller, 1996; Nunner-Winkler, 1993) assert that children under the age of ten years are able to understand and feel moral emotions, which they consider as constitutive or as indicators for morality. Turiel and his associates (e.g. Turiel, 1983) suggest that even children at about 2 years of age (Smetana, 1981) are able to differentiate between a moral, conventional, and personal domain of social knowledge, and that children subordinate the importance of personal and conventional rules under the importance of moral rules. These approaches to the morality of young children – approaches to early morality – revealed differing results to differing aspects of morality. The aim of my work is to examine the above mentioned approaches in order to evaluate the obvious differences between their obtained results and the results of Kohlberg.

My questions are: Is Kohlberg’s approach of using authority dilemmas appropriate to investigate children’s moral reasoning? To what extent do the results of the researchers, who claim an early emergence of morality in children’s development, disprove Kohlberg’s claims of children’s dependency and moral immaturity with regard to authority rules? Where are the boundaries of the presented approaches?

I will begin with an introduction to Kohlberg’s approach (chapter 2). Then, I will present the research of Eisenberg, Keller and Nunner-Winkler, who investigated the role of emotions in moral development (chapter 3). Chapter 4 and 5 deals with the domain approach of Turiel and the question, how it could be possible to bridge the gap between their results and the results of Kohlberg. In the last chapter (6) I will make several conclusions from my considerations about the research of children’s morality.

2. Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development

Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987) devised a theory of the development of moral judgment which he called cognitive developmental theory (Kohlberg, 1976, 1969). He worked out and revised his theory across a period of time of about 30 years (Heidbrink, 1991).

Kohlberg had started with the developmental theory of Piaget (1973, orig. 1932). From him he adopted the assumption of human development as a universal growing and unfolding of the appreciation of justice principles:

More broadly, however, Piaget is correct in assuming a culturally universal age development of a sense of justice, involving progressive concern for the needs and feelings of others and elaborated conceptions of reciprocity and equality. (Kohlberg, 1968, p. 489)

Kohlberg designed a model of moral development, that goes beyond Piaget’s approach. He integrated assumptions of Piaget’s moral and cognitive models of development, and combined them with Selman’s (1980) concept of perspective taking and Rawls’ (1971) reflections about justice principles.

First, I will shortly describe Kohlberg’s stage model of moral development. After that I will sketch the theoretical assumptions which lead Kohlberg to his model.

2.1. The stage model

The stage model of morality sensu Piaget consists of two moralities:

[According to Piaget] there is not one morality, but two. There is the morality of constraint and, later, as cognitive development proceeds, the morality of cooperation. (Rest, 1983, p. 571)

Kohlberg’s stage model of moral development is more differentiated than Piaget’s. It consists of six stages. These stages are divided into three main levels. That is, each main level contains two stages (see table 2.1). Kohlberg named these three levels the preconventional, the conventional, and the postconventional level.

Kohlberg describes the distribution of ages of the individuals on the different levels as follows:

Table 2.1.: Classification of Moral Judgment into Levels and Stages of Development

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Source: Kohlberg & Kramer (1969)

The preconventional moral level is the level of most children under 9, some adolescent and adult criminal offenders. The conventional level is the level of most adolescents and adults in our society and in other societies. The postconventional level is reached only after the age of 20. (Kohlberg, 1976, p. 33)

Kohlberg came to this age distribution by examining children from the age of 10 years. Since all children at 10 years of age were categorized at the preconventional level, he supposes that all children under 9 years are at the preconventional level, too.

The conventional level means conforming to and upholding the rules and expectations of society or authority. People on this stage do this, because the rules simply are the conventions, the rules, and expectations of society.

At the preconventional level individuals aren’t able to recognize or understand the expectations of society or conventional rules. An individual at this level concentrates on his needs and wishes. Although the individual knows there are expectations of authorities, these expectations are only reflected superficially, because the individual is only interested in reaching egocentric aims and wants to avoid punishment by the authority or strives for a positive recognition.

An individual at the postconventional level accepts society rules. They were accepted, because of the general moral principles behind this rules. When this moral principals come into conflict with society rules, individuals at the postconventional level decide rather for their principles than for conventional claims (Kohlberg, 1976).

Each stage will be passed by an individual in an invariant order, but not every individual reaches the sixth stage.¹ The developmental stages are universal in the sense, that in many cultures these stages could be discovered:

All individuals in all cultures use the same thirty basic moral categories, concepts, or principles, and all individuals in all cultures go through the same order or sequence of gross stage development, though they vary in rate and terminal point of development. (Kohlberg, 1971, p. 175)

Kohlberg himself administered investigations with the aim to compare different cultures in this regard (Kohlberg and Nisan, 1987, 1984; Kohlberg et al., 1987, 1984). Although Kohlberg considers moral development as universal, he does not support the assumption of a quasi-biological development. For him the social interaction with other individuals is important for stimulating the development:

It seems obvious that moral stages must primarily be the products of the child’s interaction with others, rather than the direct unfolding of biological or neurological structures. However, the emphasis on social interaction does not mean that stages of moral judgment directly represent the teaching of values by parents or direct „introjection“ of values by the child. (Kohlberg, 1968, p. 491)

And elsewhere:

It is hardly plausible to view a whole succession of logics as an evolutionary and functional program of innate wiring, particularly in light of the fact that the most mature logical structures are reached only by some adults. (Kohlberg, 1973, p. 183)

Regarding the social interactional aspect, Kohlberg’s theory of moral development is similar to Piaget’s (1958) theory of cognitive development. Piaget also considered development as an interplay of accommodation and assimilation, which is related to a combination or interaction of internal and external processes. Neither external factors (education, socialization) nor internal factors (biological, genetic) alone can provide cognitive development.

2.2. Structure, justice and morality

Structures of moral judgments are, according to Kohlberg, cognitive structures. Cognitive development is one of the absolute necessary requirements of moral development. The content of moral thoughts is not as important as the formal structure of the judgments. Two individuals can be convinced, for example, that stealing is wrong. But they may have come to this statement by reflections, which could differ in their complexity (Döbert, 1996). Cognitive abilities are necessary for the child’s growing capability of perspective taking. In Kohlberg’s stage model the concept of perspective taking (Selman, 1980), plays an important role. Selman’s model describes a growing ability for integrating perspectives of other individuals in their reflections. He devised 5 levels of perspective taking. On level 0 a child is not able to distinguish his or her own perspective from the perspective of another person. At level 1 the child is able to do this. At level 2 the child begins to see the itself with the eyes of another person. At level 3 the child is able to see his relation to another person from the perspective of a third person. Finally, at level 4 the child can see relations in a wider network of many relations. For illustration, see figure 2.1. In this figure „S“ means „Subject“, and „O“ means „Others“.

In the description of Kohlberg’s stages the growing ability to include the perspectives of others is obviously incorporated (Heidbrink, 1991). On Kohlberg’s stage 2 the needs of others were recognized. This level corresponds to level 1 of Selman. On Kohlberg’s stage 4 the social organizational perspective can be considered. This is similar to Selman’s level 4.

The different levels of perspective taking depend on the cognitive developmental abilities of the child (Kohlberg and Kramer, 1969). Cognitive development is a precondition of perspective taking, and perspective taking is a precondition for moral development. The development of logical thinking in the sense of Piaget (1958) develops from the intuitive over the concrete-operational to formaloperational thinking. This development proceeds parallel to moral thinking (Kohlberg, 1973). Thus,

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Figure 2.1.: Levels of social perspective taking by Selman et al., 1982 (from Heidbrink, 1991)

the structure of moral judgments consists of logical structures and structures of perspective taking. These preconditions are necessary, but not sufficient. As Kohlberg states:

Intelligence may be taken as a necessary, but not sufficient, cause of moral advance. All morally advanced children are bright, but not all bright children are morally advanced. (Kohlberg, 1968, p. 491)

To make moral judgments moral, there have to be added structures of justice (Kohlberg & Kramer 1969). That is, judgments have to be subordinated under principles of justice. Although Kohlberg admits, there are other moral principles, he supposes justice as a principle, which includes all other moral principles, like utilitaristic goals, orientation on an ideal self or even empathy with others. All these principles can be reduced to the principle of justice:

While all orientations may be used by an individual, we claim that the most essential structure of morality is a justice structure. (Kohlberg, 1976, p. 40)

Justice is the fundamental principle of morality. For Kohlberg it’s impossible acting morally and injustice at the same time (Kohlberg & Kramer, 1969).

The individual passes the six stages one after another. The final point and „aim“ of this development is stage 6. At this point an individual applies justice principles to societal and authority expectations. These expectation have to fulfill the norms of justice, otherwise they were rejected by an individual at this stage. Stage 6 is therefore the fulfillment of morality. All other stages below this stage are insufficient with regard to justice. On stage 6 justice principles are completely unfolded (Kohlberg & Kramer, 1969). To say it in Puka’s words: „No single stage can be defined without a preceding definition of stage 6.“ (Puka, 1996, p. 241).

By the application of justice principles the individual is more and more prepared for providing social equilibrium (Kohlberg, 1973). Rest (1983) describes this aspect of Kohlberg’s justice conception as follows:

[T]he central problem of morality is to determine the legitimate claims of people in a situation and to prioritize and balance those claims according to principles that impartial, rational people could accept as governing principles for cooperative interaction. (Rest, 1983, p. 571)

Kohlberg names the resulting developmental structure of moral judgment, which integrates perspective taking and justice principles, the sociomoral perspective, „which refers to the point of view the individual takes in defining both social facts and sociomoral values, or oughts.“ (Kohlberg 1976, p. 33)

2.3. Investigation and scoring of moral judgments

Kohlberg began with an investigation of 10 to 20 year old boys/adults from Chicago (N = 72), who had to resolve 10 moral dilemmas (Kohlberg, 1958). In these dilemmas conflicting moral claims were pitted against each other and the subjects had to decide, which action the protagonist should choose. In the famous Heinz dilemma, for example, a man has to steal a medicine from a pharmacist for saving the life of his wife. Kohlberg was not interested in the decisions themselves, the content of the judgment, but in their reasoning about the dilemmas, that is the structure of moral judgment. He assumed, that reasoning in the course of unstandardized interviews reflects the deeper structure of the individuals cognitive structures and the available justice principles (Kohlberg, 1973). Until today, these standard dilemmas have been used within Kohlbergian research. In the following 30 years of investigation, Kohlberg applied his dilemmas to adolescent and adult subjects in varying countries. (Snarey (1985) presents a comprehensive meta review of all conducted studies using Kohlberg’s dilemmas.)

The expressions of subjects during their reasoning about the dilemmas are scored with a very extensive and differentiated scoring system. The last revision of the scoring system resulted in a 800-page scoring manual (Colby and Kohlberg, 1987). In the course of investigation by Kohlberg and his colleagues the scoring guide has been changed several times for achieving a better differentiation of structure and content of moral judgments. The changes have not been trivial. Rest (1983) reports an only small correlation of .39 between subjects’ scores using the scoring systems from 1958 and from the 1978 system.

The structure of moral judgments develops with the growing cognitive capacities of the child. One can ask, in which sense exactly is a higher stage better than a lower stage, that is, which dimensions were actually scored with Kohlberg’s manual. Rest (1983) summarizes the progressive structures of moral judgment in the sense of Kohlberg:

1. Each stage in the sequence is progressively more differentiated and integrated.
2. With development, each new stage employs cognitive operations that are more reversible and equilibrated.
3. With development, each new stage has a more encompassing perspective on society.

With these assumptions Kohlberg refers to the stage concept of Piaget (1960). The scoring system of Kohlberg aims to capture these structural transformations. Because every stage is a structured whole, a given stage response represents the whole stage. It „represents an underlying thought-organization.“ (Kohlberg, 1973, p. 181) Moreover, because individuals try to solve problems – in this case moral dilemmas – on their highest available cognitive level, the obtained answers in the interviews are likely to represent the individuals highest stage in his moral reasoning.

According to the last scoring manual (Colby & Kohlberg, 1987), it is required that 25% of a person’s reasoning has to be at a certain stage to be included in the subject’s global stage score. So, the global stage score is the finally obtained measure of a person’s morality in the scoring system of Kohlberg.

I will not further describe Kohlberg’s scoring system. For the purpose of comparing Kohlberg’s theory and results with alternative approaches it is sufficient to have a rough idea, how the extent or maturity of moral development within Kohlberg’s theory is conceptualized and measured.

2.4. Criticism of Kohlberg’s theory

Actually, one of the main purposes of this thesis is to criticize Kohlberg’s claims with regard to the morality of young children by presenting alternative approaches to morality. For this reason, I will not describe the whole criticism to Kohlberg’s theory at this place.

I only want to mention one of the main objections against Kohlberg’s statements about young children’s morality, the fact that he had never investigated children, who were younger than 10 years of age (Snarey, 1985). If one accepts Kohlberg’s definition of morality in terms of a growing ability of social perspective taking and the integration of justice principles, this objection is not a strong one, because one could question: Why should one investigate at which moral stage children younger than 10 years of age should be classified, if children at 10 years of age and older are located at the lowest stage? However, approaches of other researchers, like the investigations of Elliot Turiel and associates, or approaches to the emotional aspects of morality, like Nancy Eisenberg’s research and research of Monika Keller (e.g. 1996), showed, that young children can understand or act morally. And even researchers, who applied Kohlberg’s system to children under 10 years of age, sometimes revealed moral thinking at the conventional level. In Snarey’s (1985) review the studies of Lei (1980, 1981), Lei and Cheng (1984), and Saadatmand (1970), revealed such results.

The following sections of this work can be seen as a further examination of investigations, which present alternative approaches to Kohlberg’s theory of moral development.

3. The role of emotions in early morality

3.1. Nancy Eisenberg’s investigations of altruistic and prosocial behavior

Nancy Eisenberg had begun a research program in the middle 70s, which comprises several longitudinal and cross-sectional investigations of the development of children’s and adults’ prosocial or altruistic judgments and behavior. The initial question of Eisenberg and her colleagues was, whether Kohlberg’s approach to moral development was able to capture children’s reasoning about prosocial dilemmas. Eisenberg et al. considered Kohlberg’s dilemmas as entailing only prohibitional aspects. Following from this, it would not be surprising that children use authority/punishment justifications for their decisions (Eisenberg, 1986; Eisenberg-Berg, 1979). Eisenberg proposes to investigate children’s judgments and behavior in prosocial dilemmas.

According to Eisenberg, Kohlberg’s justice principles capture only the cognitive aspects of moral reasoning and miss emotional aspects, which are necessary to act in an empathic way (Eisenberg, 1986; Hoffman, 1982). One of the central emotional aspects in Eisenberg’s research is prosocial behavior and it’s sources in altruistic and empathic emotions as motivational factors.

3.1.1. The definition of altruistic and prosocial behavior

First, it is important to understand the differences between prosocial and altruistic reasoning and behavior. According to Eisenberg, these differences have to be located in the motivational sources of the related behavior. These motivations can be emotional and/or cognitive in nature. Eisenberg defines altruistic behavior as motivated by at least one of the following factors (Eisenberg, 1986, p. 210):

- Sympathy
- Self-evaluative emotions (or anticipation of these emotions) associated with specific internalized moral values and norms or one’s responsibility to act in accordance with these values or norms.
- Cognitions concerning values, norms, responsibilities, and duties unaccompanied by discernible self-evaluative emotions
- Cognitions and accompanying affect (e.g., feeling of discomfort due to inconsistencies in one’s self-image) related to self-evaluation compared with one’s self-image

Prosocial behavior has a positive effect to other individuals, independent of the motivation for this behavior. That is, helping someone in need could be motivated by fear of punishment, by striving for acknowledgment, by instrumentalistic reasons (like direct reciprocity), by the wish to make new friends, or by the feeling of sympathy with someone in need.

The main focus of Eisenberg’s research lies in the latter aspect, sympathy, which she considers as relevant for prosocial/altruistic emotions and behavior (Eisenberg, 2000, 1986). According to her, it is important to differentiate three different forms of emotions that have been labeled as „empathy“ within research literature, although in her view only a certain type of emotional reaction should be called empathy or better: sympathy.

In order to avoid a confound and to increase the clarity of the different aspects of „empathy“, she differentiates the following forms:

1. If the individual feels the same emotion as the other, and is not able to differentiate between the own feeling and the feeling of the other, Eisenberg speaks of „emotional contagion“ (1986, p. 31), which occurs most frequently among very young children. This responding is purely empathic.
2. Another form of empathy is sympathy. This term is used, if an individual feels an emotion, which „is not identical, but is congruent with the other’s emotional state and his or her welfare.“ (1986, p. 31) Sympathy stems „from the apprehension or comprehension of another’s emotional state or condition, which is not the same as what the other persons is feeling (or is expected to feel) but consists of feelings of sorrow or concern for the other.“ (2000, p. 672) Eisenberg assumes that especially this feeling is likely to motivate altruistic behavior.
3. A third type of emotion should not be called empathy, because it is a self-concerned feeling and not an other-concerned one. A person, who feels anxiety in view of the sadness of another, is not empathic or sympathetic but feels personal distress. Personal distress is a self-focused, aversive, affective reaction to the apprehensions of another’s emotional state (Eisenberg, 2000). Personal distress and sympathy in Eisenberg’s definition comprise more cognitive elements than pure empathy. Sympathy is most likely to initiate altruistic behavior. Personal distress only leads to prosocial behavior if this is the easiest way to reduce one’s own aversive state (Eisenberg, 2000).

Making these differentiations, Eisenberg (e.g. 2000) supposes that feeling personal distress, when confronted with someone in need, leads only to prosocial behavior if it is not possible to „escape“ from this situation by another action. In contrast, feeling sympathy/empathy leads even to prosocial behavior, if it would be possible for the helper, to escape from this situation.

Eisenberg and colleagues investigated these assumptions by examining interdependencies between children’s naturally occurring empathic emotions, experimentally induced empathic emotions, and prosocial behavior. Particularly, they were interested in differences between distress and sympathy.

In a study by Eisenberg et al. (1990a), for example, a multidimensional approach was used (table 3.5 on page 23). Empathic emotions were experimentally induced by showing subjects films entailing interviews with children, who experienced accidents. Subjects’ heart rate data and facial expressions were measured. Afterwards, subjects had the opportunity to „help“ the children, who were presented in the film, by putting crayons in a box. Subjects expected to be unobserved, because the experimenter left the room for several minutes. The number of crayons served as a measure for the willingness to help. Also, subjects’ behavior was naturally observed over several weeks in their school. The researchers were particularly interested in subjects’ compliant and assertive behavior in situations, in which other children requested them to give or to share their toys with them.

Eisenberg et al. (1990a) considered dispositional compliant individuals as typically experiencing high levels of personal distress in terms of a personal trait. These individuals seek to avoid conflicts, and therefore they are relatively compliant and nonassertive when they are confronted with others’ distress. Dispositional assertive children are conceptualized as being relatively undaunted and assertive in the face of another’s distress.

The results showed that personal distress, which was measured by subjects’ facial expressions during the film, was negatively correlated to helping (putting crayons in a box), positively correlated to dispositional compliant behavior in the school, and negatively related to dispositional assertive behavior. In contrast, sympathy was positively correlated to helping, negatively correlated to dispositional compliant behavior, and positively correlated to dispositional assertive behavior.

This study shows that it is important to differentiate between the different aspects of „empathy“, especially between personal distress and sympathy as motivational sources of prosocial behavior. According to the study of Eisenberg et al. (1990a), dispositional compliant behavior, which is motivated by personal distress, can not be considered as moral behavior. Children, who typically experience personal distress, are only motivated to help in situations, where helping is the best way in order to cope with their aversive feelings. In the part of the study, where such children supposed to be unobserved, they did not help. In contrast, sympathetically motivated children even helped in situations, where escaping would be easy. In the study, they helped although seemingly nobody would recognize it.

According to Eisenberg (1986), there are also other emotional factors, which can motivate prosocial behavior, are self-evaluative processes which could lead to emotions such as pride or guilt. These emotions require norms and values, which the individual wants to follow. Helping in this sense can be motivated by guilt feelings, if a norm is not fulfilled. Or by feelings of pride, when one has fulfilled the norms. These self-evaluative feelings have a large cognitive contribution, because the individual has to recognize the situation as relevant to his/her own norms and values. Different social perspectives have to be evaluated, one has to discern oneself as potentially responsible or capable for a certain outcome, etc. Although Eisenberg also considers these cognitive factors as important predictors for prosocial behavior (Eisenberg, 1986), her central aim was the investigation of sympathetic emotions as motivational factors for moral reasoning and behavior.

3.1.2. General methodology and results

Eisenberg wanted to examine, if young children are only motivated by avoiding punishment and/or meeting their own needs in their moral reasoning, or if children are capable to act because of genuine moral/altruistic considerations. She devised moral dilemmas, which entailed no prohibitions, rules, or threats of punishment (Eisenberg et al., 1995, 1987, 1983; Eisenberg-Berg and Roth, 1980). In the birthday dilemma, for example, personal needs were pitted against prosocial behavior (see box on the next page). As mentioned, Eisenberg criticized Kohlberg for his focus on justice in his conceptualization of morality. As Eisenberg stated, Kohlberg assumed that his moral stages could be applied to all kinds of moral judgments, although he used only a few dilemmas.

. . . most of [Kohlberg’s] research has dealt with only one domain of moral judgment, that of prohibition-oriented reasoning. In nearly all of Kohlberg’s dilemmas, laws, rules, authorities, and formal obligations are salient concerns and frequently dominate the individual’s reasoning about the conflicts. (Eisenberg-Berg, 1979, p. 128)

She wanted to apply dilemmas, which entailed prosocial motives. Prosocial conflicts in the view of Eisenberg are

. . . moral dilemmas in which the desires or needs of the story protagonist are in conflict with the needs of another in a context in which explicit rules, authorities, laws, punishments, and formal obligations are irrelevant or deemphasized. (Eisenberg-Berg, 1979)

Although, according to Eisenberg, prosocial motives could also be found in research with Kohlberg dilemmas (Heinz dilemma), altruistic emotions are – in comparison to other motives – not very relevant to solve these dilemmas. She considers Kohlberg’s Heinz-dilemma as having a „life-or-death nature“ (Eisenberg, 1986, p. 123). Justification categories, „such as affiliated relationships, the value of life, moral law, and conscience“ are more relevant in order to solve these dilemmas, than altruistic reasons.

Some of Eisenberg’s dilemmas (like the birthday dilemma, for example) are also more familiar to children than Kohlberg’s dilemmas.

I do not agree with this view of Eisenberg. Not all Kohlberg dilemmas have a life-or-death nature.²

But, Eisenberg is right in stating that Kohlbergian dilemmas entail authoritarian and prohibitional elements. In Kohlberg’s dilemmas, the relationships are institutionalized, whereas non-hierarchical relationships, like friendships do not occur (Keller, 1996).

Usually, the subjects in Eisenberg’s studies have to decide, what they should do in these dilemmas, and to justify their decisions (see table 3.2 on page 19 and table 3.5). Answers were categorized into content categories and finally, the categories were computed into a stage system.³

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Based on her assumptions about emotional influences concerning moral judgments her stage system aims to comprise both cognitive aspects of perspective taking and emotional factors. It is somewhat similar to the stage system of Kohlberg (see table 3.3). Stage 1 comprises children, whose reasoning depends on hedonistic or self-focused categories.

Also, Eisenberg’s stage 5 is comparable with Kohlberg’s stage 5. Individuals at Eisenberg’s stage 5 are considered as having „societal contractual obligations“, and they are believing „in the dignity, rights, and equality of all individuals“ (table 3.3). Kohlberg considers individuals at stage 5 as having a „contractual legalistic orientation“. They try to avoid the „violation of the will or rights of others“ (table 2.1 on page 7).

Table 3.1.: Prosocial moral-reasoning categories

1. Obsessive and/or magical view of authority and/or punishments.

Avoidance of punishment and unquestioning deference to power are valued in their own right. The physical consequences of action determine its goodness regardless of human values and needs.

2. Hedonistic reasoning.

(a) Pragmatic, hedonistic gain to the self: Orientation to gain for oneself (besides gain resulting from direct reciprocity).

(b) Direct reciprocity: Orientation to personal gain due to direct reciprocity (or lack of it) from the recipient of an act.

(c) Affectional relationship: Individual’s identification with another, their liking for the other, and the other’s relation to one’s own needs are important considerations in the individuals’s moral reasoning.

3. Nonhedonistic pragmatism.

Orientation to practical concerns that are not directly related to either selfish considerations or the other’s need. Example: „I’d help because I’m strong.“

4. Concern for other’s needs (needs-oriented reasoning).

(a) Concern for other’s physical and material needs: Orientation to the physical and material needs of the other person. Examples: „He needs blood.“

(b) Concern for other’s psychological needs: Orientation to the psychological needs and affective stated of the other person. Example: „They’d be happy if they had food.“

5. Reference to and concern with humanness.

Orientation to the fact that the other is human, living, a person.

6. Stereotyped reasoning.

(a) Stereotypes of a good or bad person: Orientation to stereotyped images of a good or bad person.

(b) Stereotyped images of majority behavior: Orientation to „natural“ behavior and what most people would do.

(c) Stereotyped images of others and their roles: Orientation to stereotyped images of others and what others do. Example:

„I’d help because farmers are nice people.“

7. Approval and interpersonal orientation.

Orientation to others’ approval and acceptance in deciding what is the correct behavior.

8. Overt empathic orientations.

(a) Sympathetic orientation: Expression of sympathetic concern and caring for others. Examples: „He would feel sorry for them.“ or „She’d be concerned.“

(b) Role taking: The individual takes the perspective of the other and explicitly uses this perspective in personal reasoning. Examples: „I’m trying to put myself in her shoes.“ or „She’d know how it feels.“

9. Internalized affect.

(a) Simple internalized positive affect and positive affect related to consequences: The individual simply states that he or she would „feel good“ as a result of a particular course of action without giving a reason, or says that the consequences of his or her act for the other person would inspire good feelings. The affect must be used in a context that appears internalized. Example: „She’d help because seeing the villagers fed would make her feel good.“

(b) Internalzed positive affect from self-respect and living up to one’s values: Orientation to feeling good as the result of living up to internalized values.

(c) Internalized negative affect over consequences of behavior: Concern with feeling bad or guilty due to the consequences of an act.

(d) Internalized negative affect due to loss of self-respect and/or not living up to one’s values: Orientation to feeling bad as the result of not living up to internalized values.

10. Other abstract and/or internalized types of reasoning.

(a) Internalized law, norm, and value orientation: Orientation to an internalized responsibility, duty, or need to uphold the laws and accepted norms or values.

(b) Concerns with the rights of others: Orientation to protecting individual rights and preventing injustices that violate another’s rights.

(c) Generalized reciprocity: Orientation to indirect reciprocity in a society (i.e., exchange that is not one-to-one but eventually benefits all). Example: „If everyone helps one another, we’d all better off.“

(d) Concern with the condition of society: Orientation to improving the society or community as a whole.

Source: Eisenberg-Berg (1979)

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The difference between Eisenberg’s stage 2 (Needs of others) and stage 4a (Empathic) lies in the ability of role taking of individuals at stage 4a. Subjects at stage 2 are cognitively not able for a selfreflective role taking. They express their empathy in simple terms, like „She’s hurt.“ or „He needs blood.“ (table 3.1 on page 18). That is, they argue rather in an intuitive than in a way of cognitive role-taking.

Eisenberg (1985) considers the stages of her longitudinal data not as universally applicable as Kohlberg did with regard to his stage system. Rather, she claims that her stages of moral development represent „only“ the development of american children from middle class. But, in later studies she revealed confirming results in other cultures, like Israel and Germany (Eisenberg et al., 1990b, 1985a). In addition, she considers moral development through the stages not as invariant. That is, both backsteps from a higher to a lower stage and skipping of stages are possible within her system.

The results of Eisenberg’s longitudinal studies (Eisenberg et al., 1995, 1987, 1983, 1980; see also table 3.2 on page 19) revealed that subjects (from preschoolers to adolescents at high school) used almost no reasons which were related to fear of punishment. The punishment orientation category reveals no significant age effect (table 3.4). Considering the range of age groups from 2rd graders to 12th graders, this result is particularly remarkable. Moreover, even young children used empathic jus-

Table 3.4.: Prosocial reasoning categories with significant age effects (Eisenberg-Berg, 1979).

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tifications for their judgments (see stage 2 at table 3.3 on page 20). Eisenberg called these justifications primitive modes of empathic reasoning. These children were oriented to the needs of other children. The label primitive refers to the fact that these children are not supposed to be empathic on the basis of their ability of perspective taking in the sense of Kohlberg. They rather feel empathic. They do this without much reasoning. There are several reasons for considering needs-oriented reasoning as an indicator or a prerequisite for further developed sympathetic/empathic reasoning.

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Figure 3.1.: Means of used hedonistic and needs-oriented reasoning categories across four prosocial dilemmas (Eisenberg et al., 1987)

1. Eisenberg (Eisenberg-Berg, 1979) computed a factor analysis of her reasoning categories. The use of needs-oriented reasoning intercorrelated and loaded on the same factor as empathic reasoning.
2. Measuring of empathy with the scale of Bryant (1982) correlated with needs-oriented reasoning (Eisenberg et al., 1995, 1987, 1983, 1980; see also table 3.2 on page 19). Also, this scale correlated negatively with hedonistic reasoning (figure 3.1).
3. In a real life study of Eisenberg (Eisenberg-Berg & Hand, 1979) naturally occurring sharingwas correlated positively to needs-oriented reasoning (table 3.5 on the next page).

That is, contrasting to Kohlberg’s assumptions, even preschool children used non-hedonistic, prosocial reasons. In the administered hypothetical dilemmas, they were not oriented to punishment or authority commands within their moral reasoning.

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¹There has been a long debate concerning the existence or non-existence of a sixth stage (e.g. Puka, 1996), because in Kohlberg’s own data this stage appears rarely. I will not follow this discussion here, because it is not relevant for the problems I want to discuss in this work.

² The Joe/Judy-dilemma, for example, entails conflicts between the norm of promise keeping, authority, property, and not lying.

³ Eisenberg only mentioned that she and her colleagues „have delineated an age-related sequence of development of prosocial moral judgment.“ (1986, p. 143) Within my literature research, I found no further explanation of the exact way of constructing this sequence. One step towards this construction seemingly was the computing of a factor analysis of subjects’ justification categories (Eisenberg, 1986; Eisenberg-Berg, 1979).