A child may be able to think abstractly about mathematics, but remain limited to concrete thought when reasoning about human relationships.
Perhaps Piaget's most enduring contribution is his insight that people actively construct their understanding through a self-regulatory process.
Piaget proposed a developmental theory of moral reasoning in which children progress from a naive understanding of morality based on behavior and outcomes to a more advanced understanding based on intentions.
Piaget's views of moral development were elaborated by Kohlberg into a stage theory of moral development. There is evidence that the moral reasoning described in stage theories is not sufficient to account for moral behavior. These four types of measures were used in all stories. This procedure was applied for proportional weighting of the use of multiple categories thus proportions reflect the total sample. Analyses were conducted on proportional usage. As the attributed emotions and the corresponding justifications are not independent Nunner-Winkler, , both indices combine attributed emotions with the corresponding reasoning.
In a first step, both types of indices were calculated separately for each story and in a second step, the scores were aggregated over all four stories resulting in two different sum scores of emotion attribution to self as victimizer and moral reasoning in the context of self-attributed emotions.
Strength of moral motivation. First, strength of moral motivation was calculated for each story separately. The scoring procedure follows the theoretical conceptualization of moral motivation as presented in the introduction. A score of 0 indicates attribution of a positive emotion justified by sanction-oriented, hedonistic or undifferentiated reasons.
A score of 1 indicates attribution of a negative emotion justified by any reason that is not considered moral hedonistic, sanction-oriented, undifferentiated. And a score of 2 indicates attribution of a negative emotion justified by moral reasons. Following Nunner-Winkler and Sodian , a justification was considered moral as soon as a moral argument was mentioned.
The mean scores for moral motivation range from 1. Thus, the score had a range from 0 to 8 and a higher score indicates stronger moral motivation. The mean of moral motivation sum score was 5. Negatively valenced moral emotions NVME. Again, justifications were considered moral as soon as any moral argument was mentioned. The mean scores for NVME range from 0. A higher score indicates stronger NVMEs. The mean of NVME sum score was 3. Multiple regression analyses and rank correlations were used to test hypotheses related to the relationship between intelligence and moral developmental status.
The act evaluation question was a control question in order to test if all children know the underlying moral rule and to exclude the possibility that the differences in emotion attribution are due to lack of moral knowledge.
Therefore, all reasoning about act evaluation reference justifications why the act was wrong. Proportions standard deviations of justifications for act evaluations and emotion attribution. In a first step, correlation analyses were conducted in order to test whether there is a relation between intelligence and the use of moral reasoning. In a second step, we followed the convention established by Turiel to use ANOVA-based procedures for reasoning analyses because they have been shown to be more appropriate for analyzing this type of data.
Means are proportions of use of the respective category. For the oldest age group, the 8 year olds, there were no differences between girls and boys. However, for the current research question, the crucial results are those including intelligence as a covariate. More specifically, we expected intelligence-related differences in moral reasoning. Further, there was no significant interaction between intelligence and justifications. Thus, in the following analyses moral development indices are used which combine both — emotion attribution and justification.
Since the results on age and gender are not relevant for the current research question, they are not further considered. Correlation analyses revealed no significant correlation coefficients between moral development and intelligence in any of the stories. The purpose of the current study was to investigate whether intelligence affects moral development as assessed across a range of different moral transgressions.
By including moral emotions, a broader conceptualization of moral development was chosen than in prior research in the field which has often been restricted to moral judgments or moral reasoning about those judgments.
Altogether, children aged between 6 years; 4 months and 8 years; 10 months were interviewed using four different moral transgression stories. Given our results, findings from prior research with adolescents or adults cannot simply be extended to younger participants. We found no significant correlations between moral development and intelligence in any of the stories. Neither for moral cognitions, nor for moral emotions, did we find any evidence for intelligence-related differences. More specifically, there were no significant correlations between moral motivation and intelligence and no correlations between NVMEs and intelligence, either.
Neither did we find any intelligence-related differences in moral reasoning about act evaluations. Therefore, our findings indicate that for children aged between 6 years; 4 months and 8 years; 10 months, inductive reasoning competencies, i.
At a first glance, this seems to contradict prior findings which demonstrated strong connections between intelligence and morality. How did prior research differ from ours, and why do we expect our study to be more apt than prior ones?
Firstly, as we have illustrated in the introduction, research that examined the association of morality and intelligence, typically used a different approach to measure morality. Our concern is that traditional measures like the DIT or the Moral Judgment Interview are quite disconnected to everyday life and the results of these instruments rather represent an ability to evaluate different moral principles in a prescriptive way, i. It could be assumed that this ability — which can rather be considered as philosophizing about moral problems — is stronger connected to intellectual abilities than the attribution of emotions or the reasoning about act evaluations in the type of moral transgression stories we used in the current study.
Especially, as the dilemmas used in the DIT or in the Moral Judgment Interview are very complex and abstract, and remote from the kind of moral problems faced by people in their everyday lives. Correspondingly, Malti et al. Some authors go even further and claim that the DIT is not conceptually distinct from measures of verbal ability, meaning that DIT scores are reducible to intellectual ability Sanders et al.
In other words, it is even questionable if prior results really show a connection between morality and intelligence or if they can be considered an artifact that is produced because the instrument is confounded with intelligence. Furthermore, many prior studies relied on pre-selected groups of gifted children e. It is often unclear which criteria the classification of giftedness is based on in these programs. Baudson, Thus, it is unclear whether the findings are really due to intelligence or whether they might be caused by other factors which are typical for some gifted children.
In the current study, we did not rely on such a pre-selection. We recruited children from regular elementary schools as well as from a program for gifted children, but we directly measured intelligence in all children who participated and found no relationship between intelligence and our measures of morality.
This aligns with research from the field of prosocial development which is closely related to moral development. For example Paulus et al. However, some points remain to be mentioned and discussed. First of all, we interviewed children at elementary school age.
Needless to say, we cannot rule out the possibility that intelligence does matter in even younger children. It is conceivable that in younger age groups, intelligence leads to differences in moral development and in our sample the influence of intelligence just does not come into effect due to a threshold effect, meaning that above a certain degree of intelligence there might be no relation to moral development. In terms of information processing, this could mean that a certain degree of intelligence is necessary to adequately process the extent of information that is at play in morally relevant situations.
Accordingly, it is plausible to assume that for the normal range of intelligence as well as for the higher range, there is no relation between intelligence and moral development. Thus, to address this question, future studies should include even younger children and children with lower intelligence scores.
Secondly, further research needs to replicate the current findings with other samples and multiple measures. For example, it is conceivable that moral reasoning ability is more related to verbal intelligence than to general intelligence measured with a non-verbal instrument. However, the aim of the current study was to examine the relationship between moral development and inductive reasoning independently of verbal abilities. Further, it was surprising that we did not find any age-related differences for the emotion attribution questions and for the moral motivation sum score, and only a small but significant correlation with the NVME sum score.
So, one might think that the children were too old and did not differ in their answers at all. Moreover, some researchers might question the procedure of considering a justification to be moral as soon as one moral argument is mentioned.
Some authors argue that it is better to use the first, spontaneous, answer Ongley and Malti, Accordingly, a justification is only considered moral if the first answer is a moral one. But we assume that the spontaneous answer is not necessarily the most important argument for the child, because the order of reasons that children provide can also be influenced by other things, e. Thus, we argue that when a child is able to express a moral argument, this argument does have certain significance for the child and therefore can be understood in the sense of moral motivation.
Of course, it cannot be denied, that children need a certain amount of cognitive abilities in morally relevant situations to coordinate perspectives, select and process relevant information, anticipate consequences, and interpret the whole situation Dentici and Pagnin, ; Derryberry et al. But given our findings, it can be assumed that young children already have a sufficient minimum level of cognitive abilities to successfully manage morally relevant situations. Nonetheless, the current findings still need to be replicated in further studies.
Both authors contributed substantially to the conception and design of the study as well as to the planning of the analyses and interpretation of data. HB drafted the manuscript, and it was critically revised by MH. Both authors approve the final version to be published, and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. We are grateful to the children, parents, and institutions who supported this study. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U.
To develop ethical principles that reliably avoid mistakes like these require further stages of moral development. The new focus constitutes Stage 5, the ethics of social contract. Now an action, belief, or practice is morally good if it has been created through fair, democratic processes that respect the rights of the people affected. Consider, for example, the laws in some areas that require motorcyclists to wear helmets.
In what sense are the laws about this behavior ethical? Was it created by consulting with and gaining the consent of the relevant people? Were cyclists consulted, and did they give consent? Reasonable, thoughtful individuals disagree about how thoroughly and fairly these consultation processes should be. In focusing on the processes by which the law was created; however, individuals are thinking according to Stage 5, the ethics of social contract, regardless of the position they take about wearing helmets.
In this sense, beliefs on both sides of a debate about an issue can sometimes be morally sound, even if they contradict each other. Paying attention to due process certainly seems like it should help to avoid mindless conformity to conventional moral beliefs. As an ethical strategy, though, it too can sometimes fail. The problem is that an ethics of social contract places more faith in the democratic process than the process sometimes deserves, and does not pay enough attention to the content of what gets decided.
In principle and occasionally in practice , a society could decide democratically to kill off every member of a racial minority, but would deciding this by due process make it ethical? The realization that ethical means can sometimes serve unethical ends leads some individuals toward Stage 6, the ethics of self-chosen, universal principles. The universal principles may include a belief in democratic due process Stage 5 ethics , but also other principles, such as a belief in the dignity of all human life or the sacredness of the natural environment.
Video 3. How would you answer this dilemma? Kohlberg was not interested in whether you answer yes or no to the dilemma: Instead, he was interested in the reasoning behind your answer. In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer.
There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. Should the husband have done that?
Kohlberg, , p. From a theoretical point of view, it is not important what the participant thinks that Heinz should do. Below are some of many examples of possible arguments that belong to the six stages:. Consider your decision-making processes. What guides your decisions?
Are you primarily concerned with your personal well-being? Do you make choices based on what other people will think about your decision? Or are you guided by other principles? To what extent is this approach guided by your culture? Kohlberg continued to explore his theory after he published his research. He postulated that there could be other stages and that there could be transitions into each stage. One thing that Kohlberg never fully addressed was his use of nearly all-male samples.
Men and women tend to have very different styles of moral decision making; men tend to be very justice-oriented, while women tend to be more compassion oriented. In contrast, women focus on caring for others and relationships. Gilligan was clear that she did not believe neither male nor female moral development was better, but rather that they were equally important. To see why, suppose that you have a student who asks for an extension of the deadline for an assignment.
Would the late student be able to put more effort into the assignment than other students? Would the extension place a difficult demand on you, since you would have less time to mark the assignments?
These are important considerations related to the rights of the students and the teacher. In addition to these, however, are considerations having to do with the responsibilities that you and the requesting student have for each other and others. Does the student have a valid personal reason illness, death in the family, etc.
Will the assignment lose its educational value if the student has to turn it in prematurely? These latter questions have less to do with fairness and rights and more to do with taking care of and responsibility for students. One such framework has been developed by Carol Gilligan, whose ideas center on a morality of care , or system of beliefs about human responsibilities, care, and consideration for others.
Gilligan proposed three moral positions that represent different extents or breadth of ethical care. Unlike Kohlberg or Piaget, she does not claim that the positions form a strictly developmental sequence, but only that they can be ranked hierarchically according to their depth or subtlety. Table 9.
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