Level of Moral Reasoning and Cognitive Distortions

11 Key excerpts on "Level of Moral Reasoning and Cognitive Distortions"

• 

  eBook - PDF

  Handbook of Educational Theories

  • Beverly Irby, Genevieve H. Brown, Rafael Lara-Aiecio(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Information Age Publishing

    (Publisher)

  This means that cogni-tive development lays the foundation for social role-taking and social cognition. In turn, social cognition becomes a prerequisite to moral understanding, think-ing, and judgment. However, moral development in this context is not moral action. Individuals do not nec-essarily act in accord to the way that they think. While cognitive development is necessary for moral development and action, it does not necessarily guar-antee moral action. A person’s stage of cognitive devel-opment is necessary to conceptualize and understand the reasoning in a specific stage of moral development, but it is not enough to assure that the individual is within that stage of moral reasoning. The person easily could be in a lower developmental stage of moral rea-soning. On the other hand, individuals cannot be in a higher stage of moral development than what they can understand cognitively. Furthermore, Kohlberg’s (1971a) cognitive moral development theory was primarily justice-based, meaning that the highest level and stages are the high-est measure of morality, based upon justice. The con-cept of justice is grounded in the principles of respect, equality, and autonomy of the dignity of all human beings as individuals (Self, Baldwin, & Wolinsky, 1992). Therefore, measuring moral development essentially assesses the individual’s use of “justice” reasoning. Kohlberg’s theory maintains that individuals will develop through three levels of moral development, with two stages within each level (Kohlberg, 1984). These stages occur as a result of role-taking opportuni-ties that give individuals the chance to consider other viewpoints and perspectives. As with the properties of stage theories, his stages are qualitatively different ways of thinking, are structured wholes (general pat-terns of thought), progress in an invariant sequence (no skipping of stages) and are cross-cultural universals (the same for all cultures) (Magun-Jackson, 2004).

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Child Psychology

  A Canadian Perspective

  • Alastair Younger, Scott A. Adler, Ross Vasta(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Moral reasoning is based on the assumption that individuals must serve their own needs. Conventional level Kohlberg’s third and fourth stages of moral development. Moral reasoning is based on the view that a social system must be based on laws and regulations. Postconventional level Kohlberg’s final stages of moral development. Moral reasoning is based on the assumption that the value, dignity, and rights of each individual person must be maintained. 525 Theories of Moral Development the moral content component, which is assumed to be more strongly influenced by the child’s experiences with moral situations. Kohlberg’s theory thus resembles Piaget’s in assuming that mor- al development results from a combination of improving cognitive skills and repeated encounters with moral issues. Movement from stage to stage in Kohlberg’s model closely follows the Piagetian process of accommodation. Movement occurs when the child can no longer handle new information with- in his or her current view of the world—or, in Piagetian terms, when the child can no longer assimilate new information within his or her existing structure of schemes. Kohlberg’s model TABLE 14.1 KOHLBERG’S STAGE MODEL OF MORAL REASONING Social Perspective Moral Content LEVEL I PRECONVENTIONAL Stage 1: Heteronomous morality (“Morality derives from power and authority.”) Children cannot consider more than one person’s perspective. They tend to be egocentric, assuming that their feelings are shared by everyone. This stage is equivalent to Piaget’s moral realism. Evaluations of morality are absolute and focus on physical and objective characteristics of a situation. Morality is defined only by authority figures, whose rules must be obeyed. Stage 2: Individualism and instrumental purpose (“Morality means looking out for yourself.”) Children understand that people have different needs and points of view, although they cannot yet put themselves in the other’s place.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Business Ethics

  • David Wasieleski, James Weber, David Wasieleski, James Weber, David M. Wasieleski, James Weber(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  The model suggests that dilemmas that are more impersonal involve cognitive processing and dilemmas that are more personal for the individual involve emotional processing. Their studies showed that response times were longer for dilemmas that had certain characteristics of personal harm where an emotional response had to be overridden before a cognitive judgment could be made. By incorporating intuition, reasoning, and interaction with others, a more synthesized ethical judgment is reached. Interestingly, it is now widely accepted in cognitive moral psychology that two processing systems are used when individuals make judgments or solve problems. The use of these dual-process models suggest that reasoning and intuition are both at play in the process (Chaiken & Trope, 1999) and that moral judgments are similar to other types of judgments in which much of the process is intuitive (Gibbs, 1991 ; Greene, 2009 ; Haidt, 2001). 1 Behavioral Ethics Behavioral ethics is the study of how human beings actually behave in moral contexts. As a result, this research is descriptive rather than normative. This is a significant distinction from the earlier work in cognitive moral development which is based on a normative structure of the different levels and stages of reasoning or the recent research in moral psychology noted above. Behavioral ethicists and experimental philosophers have increasingly been studying how people actually behave when faced with an ethical dilemma. Application of Kohlberg and Rest’s stage theory is the identification of moral principles being used. The progress through the levels is based on the argument that the moral theory underlying the reasoning used is more sophisticated and therefore “better.” Both models have been criticized for making the assumption that certain moral philosophies (e.g., Rawl’s theory of justice for the later stages) provide better reasoning than philosophies of earlier stages (e.g., egoism and utilitarianism)

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Social Problem Solving and Offending

  Evidence, Evaluation and Evolution

  • Mary McMurran, James McGuire, Mary McMurran, James McGuire(Authors)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  At this level of moral reasoning we can expect individuals to have an egocentric and pragmatic world-view with little understanding of the needs of others. For example, Palmer and Hollin (1996, 1997) found a strong association between immature levels of moral reasoning (in terms of Kohlberg’s stages) and self-reported delinquency in young offenders. Similarly, Lee and Prentice (1988) found a significant correla-tion between the capacity to take the perspective of others and stages of moral reasoning among a group of male offenders. A meta-analysis by Nelson, Smith, and Dodd (1990) confirms this view, concluding that young aggressive offenders were delayed in social moral development, using preconventional reasoning as a basis for their moral decision making compared with matched non-offending peers (who used conventional reasoning). Stage 1: Moral reasoning is based on the avoidance of punishment and obedience to perceived authority figures. Level One: Preconventional reasoning Stage 2: Moral reasoning is egocentric and based on the needs of the individual after consideration of rewards and punishment. Stage 3: Moral reasoning begins to be grounded by recognition of the needs of others and recognition of the importance of relationships. Level Two: Conventional reasoning Stage 4: Moral reasoning becomes concerned with upholding society’s rules and laws for the sake of maintaining society itself. Stage 5: The individual understands that under certain circumstances laws can be broken. This is underpinned by a belief that society’s laws are a contract between each individual and society. Level Three: Post-conventional reasoning Stage 6 : Self chosen ethical principles guide behaviour and these are consistent over situations and time. These principles may overrule society’s laws when they come into conflict. Figure 14.1 Kohlberg’s stages of moral reasoning MORAL REASONING 269

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Offending Behaviour

  • Emma J Palmer(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Willan

    (Publisher)

  Moral reasoning is egocentric, with the person’s own needs being of greatest importance. Reasoning is based on the perceived balance of rewards and punishment. Level 2: Conventional reasoning Stage 3 Moral reasoning is determined by other people’s needs, with personal relationships assuming importance. Stage 4 Moral reasoning is based on maintaining society’s rules and laws in order to keep society in order. Level 3: Postconventional reasoning Stage 5 Moral reasoning is underpinned by an understanding that society’s laws are a contract between the individual and society. However, under certain circumstances these laws can be broken. Stage 6 Moral reasoning is determined by self-chosen ethical principles that are consistent over time and situations, and these may over-rule society’s laws if they come into conflict with each other.

  At the conventional level, reasoning moves on to reflect an understanding of society’s conventions and the need to maintain them. The predominant social perspective at Stage 3 is of the individual existing within a network of relationships with other people (e.g. family and friends). Behaviour is therefore justified in terms of maintaining these relationships, with reference made to the needs of these people, and the shared expectations and mutual trust between people within these relationships. Stage 4 reasoning moves beyond the individual’s per sonal relationships, to a social perspective based on the wider social system in which people live. Moral reasoning becomes concerned with justifying behaviour in terms of ensuring that the social system is fair and just to all people within it.

  Finally, the postconventional level (Stages 5 and 6) represents an understanding that behaviour within a society is based on underlying moral principles. Individuals reasoning at this level have a social perspective that is based on their own set of coherent moral and ethical principles. If these principles come into conflict with those of society, they are likely to overrule those of society to ensure consistency within the individual’s behaviour.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Moral Development and Reality

  Beyond the Theories of Kohlberg and Hoffman

  • John C. Gibbs(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  2 The Right and Moral Development Fundamental Themes of Kohlberg's Cognitive-Developmental Approach I n the last chapter, we noted that young children might be so taken with a mentally retarded man's (Edward's) colorful reaction to a prank that they might not perceive his suffering and the pranksters' self-centered unfairness. Generally, young children overattend to or center upon one or another salient feature of a situation and accordingly fail to infer under-lying realities. What does it mean in a cognitive sense to say that children grow beyond the superficial in morality? Does the construction of a deeper understanding of fairness or moral reciprocity contribute to one's moral motivation? For example, would an older person's grasp of an unfairness, a violation of how people should treat one another, generate a desire to right the wrong? Lawrence Kohlberg called his theoretical approach to morality and moral motivation cognitive developmental to describe his contextualiza-tion of moral development within social and nonsocial (or physical) cogni-tive development. One of Kohlberg's chief sources of inspiration, Jean Piaget, considered mature morality to be a logic or rationality inherent in social relations. Morality in the cognitive-developmental approach refers 16 The Right and Moral Development 17 mainly to the moral judgment (or cognitive evaluation and justification) of the prescriptive values of right and wrong. 1 In this chapter, we articulate the fundamental themes of the cognitive-developmental approach to morality. We have already hinted at them in the use of certain words in our opening paragraph, among them superficial, center upon or self-centered, social perspective taking, construction, and moral reciprocity. To be explicit, we will discuss these themes: Superficiality, Self-Centration.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Social Cognitive Theory

  An Agentic Perspective on Human Nature

  • Albert Bandura, Daniel Cervone(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  A per- son’s level of moral development may indicate the types of reasons likely to be most persuasive to that person, but it does not ensure any particular kind of con- duct. The implications of the stage theory of moral maturity for human conduct are difficult to test empirically because conflicting claims are made about how moral reasoning is linked to behavior. On the one hand, it is contended that the level of moral reasoning does not sponsor a particular kind of behavior (Kohlberg, 1971a). The theory is concerned with the form of the reasoning, not with the mor- alness of the conduct. Hence, in studies designed to alter moral perspectives through exposure to moral argument, the same level of reasoning is used, for example, for and against stealing (Rest, Turiel, & Kohlberg, 1969). On the other hand, a positive relationship is claimed between level of moral reasoning and moral conduct—the higher the moral reasoning, the more likely is moral conduct, and the greater is the consistency between moral judgment and conduct (Kohlberg & Candee, 1984). Studies on whether stages of moral reasoning are linked to characteristic types of conduct are inconsistent in their findings (Blasi, 1980; Kurtines & Greif, 1974). Some researchers report that moral conduct is related to the level of moral reason- ing, but others have failed to find strong evidence of such a relationship. Some of the studies routinely cited as corroborating such a link have not withstood replica- tion. Others are seen under close scrutiny as contradicting it or as uninterpretable because of methodological deficiencies (Kupfersmid & Wonderly, 1980). Moreover, relationships may disappear when controls are applied for other differences between persons at varying levels of moral reasoning, such as general intelligence (Rushton, 1975). Efforts to verify the link between moral thought and action have raised disputes about the designation of moral conduct.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  The New Reflectionism in Cognitive Psychology

  Why Reason Matters

  • Gordon Pennycook(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Such trait-level research is obviously important, but more experimental research would strengthen the claim that reasoning plays a causal role in producing moral judgments. Second, research is needed that examines what specific aspects of what we have called “good reasoning” reliably affect moral judgment. For simplicity’s sake, we have treated many different psychological constructs (e.g., cognitive reflectivity, IQ, cognitive style, etc.) as measures of “good reasoning.” But, in the wider literature, these are treated as at least somewhat distinct, which raises interesting questions about which aspects of cognition are related to which aspects of moral judgment. The finding by Pennycook et al. (2014) that cognitive reflectivity, but not cognitive ability, uniquely predicts condemnation of harmless purity offenses is a promising first step in this direction. Our aim in this chapter has been to review the often disparate findings on the role of reasoning in moral judgment and to provide a coherent theoretical account of these findings. We have therefore deliberately not discussed the relationship between reasoning and moral behavior. At the present time, the literature that we have reviewed here and the literature on prosociality and cooperation have had surprisingly little influence on one another, but we see the potential for fruitful cross-pollination between them. In particular, we think that the Social Heuristics Hypothesis (Rand, 2016; Rand et al., 2014) has much to offer the study of moral judgment. On this view, cooperation with others is generally rewarded, and therefore becomes the default, intuitive response, while self-interested non-cooperative behavior relies on deliberate thinking. As we mentioned above (see Note 1), we think that moral judgments can be “intuitive” (i.e., fast and automatic) while still being rooted in reasoning

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Character Psychology And Character Education

  • Daniel K. Lapsley, F. Clark Power, Daniel K. Lapsley, F. Clark Power(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • University of Notre Dame Press

    (Publisher)

  As a result the study of moral development is now largely marginalized within the broader context of cognitive and social developmental research. The debates and issues that once swirled around the moral stage theory, and that once provided an exciting momentum to research, now hold little interest, and not simply because all of the old scores have been settled. Rather, the structural developmental tradition Moral Psycholog y at the Crossroads 19 20 da n i e l k . l a p s l e y a n d da rc i a na rva e z does not seem very relevant to crucial contemporary concerns about the nature of moral character and the manner of its inculcation and development. It provides little guidance for parents, let alone educators, for how morally crucial dispositions are to be encouraged in young children, and, indeed, provides only a slight framework for un-derstanding moral behavior in young children more generally. Moreover, the cognitive developmental tradition does not provide much help in understanding how moral reasoning folds into the broad trends of development across other domains. Indeed, the cognitive developmental account of the moral agent, at any stage of development, is one that is not well-suited for integration with other domains of psychological research, largely because its core assumptions and philosophical commitments resist easy commerce with contemporary psychological research. As a result we get little sense of how moral reasoning is related to a full range of psychological processes and constructs, including memory, metacognitive, or mo-tivational processes, either by the emergence and elaboration of self-regulation and self-identity or by mechanisms of cognitive learning. We get little sense of how moral behavior is influenced by personological and situational variables. It is also true, of course, that researchers in these other domains rarely draw out the implications of their work for understanding moral functioning.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Advancing Business Ethics Education

  • Diane L. Swanson, Dann G. Fisher(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Information Age Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Moral Imagining 179 Morality is a complex metaphor and moral reasoning is, thus, both enabled and constrained. Moral reasoning is constrained because it is embodied; moral reasoning is enabled because it is imaginative and goes beyond direct sensorimotor experience. At this point, we need to describe what Lakoff and Johnson (1999) refer to as an “empirically responsible” moral philosophy. 9 Reason is embodied and the means by which reason is accomplished are metaphorical. An embodied, cognitive science recog-nizes that the human conceptual system is directly connected to and enabled by our physical perceptual, imaging, and sensorimotor systems. The concepts by which we frame our reality, therefore, are shaped by our embodied systems; the mind cannot be separate and distinct from the body. Base-level concepts are the primary level at which we engage the real-ity of our environments and, therefore, are the primary concepts used in the optimal framing of, and reasoning about, everyday life. Rational infer-ences are primarily instances of sensorimotor inference grounded in sub-jective experience and judgments. Truth and knowledge are the result of understanding emerging from ideas framed in terms of the primarily unconscious conceptual systems using experientially grounded reasoning structures. Abstract reasoning allows us to project beyond our base level experience, and occurs when we apply conceptual metaphors that facilitate our application of sensorimotor inference to, for example, prototypes, dis-cussed later as models or standard examples exhibiting the essential fea-tures of a class or group. Next, we consider the implications of “empirically responsible” moral philosophy. Morality is seen as enhancing human well being and includes such ideas as justice, fairness, compassion, virtue, tolerance, freedom, and rights. An extensive metaphorical mapping system enables us to conceive, reason about, and communicate moral ideas though a range of basic met-aphors.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Cognitive Development and Epistemology

  • Theodore Mischel(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  Many highly sophisticated theologians, for example, have espoused a subjection-to-the-will-of-God morality that I suppose would be classed by Kohlberg as stage 4. What is Kohlberg to say about such cases? He might suggest that the moral philosophy of these people does not accurately reflect their actual moral reasoning, which would be classi- fied as stage 6. Or he might treat them as cases of "culturally induced regression," that is, cases that had reached stage 6 in both respects (con- 276 WILLIAM P. ALSTON cepts and habits of reasoning), and then had regressed to stage 4 in habits of reasoning because of cultural pressure or emotional needs. It would certainly be interesting to test such suggestions. Suppose it could be shown that, with appropriate subsidiary explanations of deviant cases, conceptual development does proceed in tandem with the dominance of modes of reasoning. Stage 6 moral reasoning would then, by hypothesis, "involve" the most finely articulated conceptual scheme. Is this a moral recommendation? Does the cognitive superiority of a more elaborate conceptual scheme imply the moral superiority of the associated mode of resolving moral problems? Kohlberg's argument for the moral superiority of the more differentiated stage is tied to his account of what makes a moral judgment a moral judgment, as distinguished from factual judgments, as well as from other species of value judgments. He seems to be of two minds about this, but one of his inclinations is to take a "formalist" approach and separate out moral judgments in terms of their prescriptivity and universality, and it is this view that plays a role in the "is" to "ought" argument. The increasingly prescriptive nature of more mature moral judgments is reflected in the series of differentiations we have described, which is a series of increased differ- entiations of "is" and "ought" (or of morality as internal principles from external events and expectations).

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book