MORALITY

What is Morality



What is Morality?

Introduction

The term moralities refers to the notion that economic processes and particularly actions in the marketplace have social and cultural foundations that yield ethical and moral questions, without which economic conduct and consumption cannot be properly understood. The following observations depict this problem from a sociological perspective.

Discussion

Over the past 70 years, morality has been examined by developmental psychologists beginning with Jean Piaget's classic book, The Moral Judgment of the Child (1932). Piaget focused on morality in the child's world and interviewed children about rules of fairness in the game of marbles as well as the relationship between intentions and consequences. His major contribution was to focus research on children's underlying reasoning (not rote responses) and to develop methodologies for interviewing children about concepts of distribution justice, harm, and rights.

Piaget's (1932) theory of moral development was composed of two different types of morality, that based on constraint and that based on cooperation. Children then progress through these two stages of development. From the ages of 3 to 8, children have a heteronomous orientation in which they are constrained by conventions in their social environment. It is also at this level that children judge transgressions to be wrong because they are concerned with respecting authority. Through increased interactions with their peers and cognitive growth, children move to an autonomous orientation toward morality, in which there is cooperation in their social relationships. In the equal status relationship among peers, children develop a sense of morality that is based on reciprocity and justice. Children's ability to make moral judgments based on issues of fairness and justice does not evolve until middle childhood and is developed through interactions with peer culture and an increase in nonsocial cognitive skills.

In the 1960s, Lawrence Kohlberg (1969) reformulated Piaget's theory and proposed a three-level, six-stage sequence of moral judgment, using Piaget's structural-developmental approach to morality. Level I was referred to as pre-conventional and reflected changes between the ages of 6 and 11. During this level, children's development is characterized in two stages: first, children have a punishment and obedience orientation, and second, their moral judgments are focused on an instrumental purpose and exchange. Level II, composed of stages three and four, occurs during early adolescence, between the ages of 12 and 17, and is defined as the conventional level.

In stage three, adolescents begin to formulate criteria of a morally good person. In stage four, they come to respect authority and social order. Level III, referred to as post-conventional, is composed of stages five and six, and does not emerge until late adolescence or early adulthood. In stage five, individuals have an understanding of mutual agreements and social contracts that are beneficial to social welfare. Finally, in stage six, individuals make moral decisions based on mutual respect, justice, and universal rights (see Colby & Kohlberg, 1987, for an indepth description of the stages). In Kohlberg's theory, the concepts of justice and fairness emerge much later than in Piaget's ...