PSY 250 Unit 4 (Text chapters 6-9, selected portions) -- Childhood and adolescence

Cognitive development (Piaget, continued):  The concrete operations stage

The concrete operations child largely transcends the intellectual limitations of the preoperational child, and hence is far more adultlike in her/his thinking.  But s/he retains one clear liability, namely, the inability to think in abstract terms:  her/his thought is generally bounded by immediate, concrete experience.  As a result, concrete operations children usually experience difficulties like the following:

• Inability to deal with hypothetical or contrary-to-fact information:  a question that the child can answer easily if posed in terms of her/his own life experience may suddenly seem uninterpretable if asked in a different way that is logically equivalent but factually wrong.  Asked "if a 3-headed fish flew 2 miles on Monday and 3 miles on Tuesday, how far did it fly altogether?" the child may resist, saying that since fish don't have three heads and can't fly, there is no answer... not seeing that the abstract principle (what is 2 + 3?) is the same regardless of the contrafactual elements in the story problem.
• Inability to utilize conservative focusing, which means the ability to solve problems systematically by changing one element of the problem at a time.  A good way to test this ability is the parlor game of "Twenty Questions":  prior to a certain age, children will just start guessing names at random, or will ask a few general questions but fail to narrow down their guesses based on the answers to those questions.
• Inability to utilize algorithms:  an algorithm is a general solution strategy (such as an algebraic formula) that can be used to solve an entire class of problems with the same inherent logical structure.  Adults faced with a novel problem may not know what the right algorithm is, but usually recognize that there must be one, or attempt to search for one;  concrete operations children generally do not.

Can you see what educational limitations this indicates (why certain kinds of school subjects cannot successfully be taught to preadolescents)?

Socioemotional development (Erikson, cont'd):  The fourth and fifth stages

4.  Industry (5-14 yr.)

Developmental crisis:  Am I good at anything, and if so, what?  Do I have a realistic basis for self-esteem?

Extreme resolutions:  (1) Unrealistic sense of superiority (I falsely think I'm the best at everything;  I have to win at everything, I can't take second place);  (2) Unrealistic sense of inferiority (I falsely think I'm the worst at everything;  I think of myself as no good or as valueless, or give up on life).

Balanced resolution:  A realistic sense of self-worth based on an honest assessment of strengths and weaknesses.  I know and like myself and know what I do well, but also can admit what I do poorly without shattering my self-esteem.

Dependence on previous stage:  The only way I can discover my competencies is to try new activities, which means taking risks.

5.  Identity (14-21 yr.)

Developmental crisis:  Who am I?  What is my niche or place in the world?  In what social roles do I want to invest my time and my life?  Where do I fit in?  

Extreme resolutions:  (1) Premature role commitment, or deciding on an identity too quickly;  bypassing the exploration phase entirely and jumping immediately to the commitment phase;  being too convergent;  (2) Role diffusion, or delaying identity decisions too long;  staying stuck in the exploration phase and never really moving to the commitment phase;  being too divergent.

Balanced resolution:  Devoting an appropriate amount of time to each of the two phases above;  allowing yourself to divergently explore role possibilities in the course of a psychological moratorium, but then narrowing down, committing, and implementing a decision.

Dependence on previous stage:  Hopefully, good identity decisions are based on accurate self-knowledge about competencies (strengths and weaknesses, as well as likes and dislikes).

The family milieu revisited:  Impacts on childhood

Models of parenting

An influential model of parenting styles is that of Diana Baumrind, who classifies parents along two dimensions:

• Warmth:  How emotionally involved (in terms of caring, closeness, affirmation, emotional self-expression) parents are with their children;
• Control:  How many limits parents set on their children (in terms of discipline, rules, accountability within the family system).

Again (no surprise) we end up with a 2 x 2 system of four quadrants:

• Authoritative parents are high Warmth, high Control (both love and limits)
• Authoritarian parents are low Warmth, high Control (limits but no love)
• Permissive parents are high Warmth, low Control (love but no limits)
• Indifferent or Uninvolved parents are low Warmth, low Control (don't really seem to interact with the child at all, either by way of love or limits)

Baumrind argues forcefully that children of Authoritative parents fare far better than those raised by parents of other types.  While her model has some biases (cultural and otherwise) and is partially confounded with some of the variables above, she has garnered some impressive empirical support for her point of view (which unfortunately may hold true only for some, not all, generational cohorts since she has probably not paid sufficient attention to that class of variables).  She argues that children of overly Authoritarian parents tend to become overcontrolled (rigid, repressed, turning frustration inward) while children of overly Permissive parents tend to become undercontrolled (irresponsible, acting out, turning frustrating outward).  

One well known study that examines Baumrind's model looks at responses to peer pressure among middle-schoolers, with the children categorized as having been raised by either Authoritative, Authoritarian, or Permissive parents.  (Many of these studies ignore -- or can't locate any -- children of Indifferent parents, for the same reason that studies using the Ainsworth paradigm often ignore or can't identify any children with the type D attachment pattern.)  The tendency of children to cave into negative peer pressure (to engage in behavior that adult authority figures would proscribe or dislike) was measured in two settings:  (1) adult authority (teacher) present, (2) adult authority absent (children were viewed through a one-way mirror apparatus).  Results (with higher scores = more socially deviant behavior, or in other words, more compliance with negative peer pressure) are illustrated on the graph below:

Can you see what the graph means?  (Hopefully you can!)  Children of Authoritative parents resist peer pressure in all situations;  those of Permissive parents cave into peer pressure in all situations;  those of Authoritarian parents behave in a situationally dependent way (defer to the highest authority present, whether adult or peer).

Again, as noted in the material on generational cohorts, it's likely that Permissive parenting styles reach their peak when parents are Idealists (children are Reactives), while Authoritarian parenting styles reach their peak when parents are Civics (children are Adaptives).  Whether the proportion of Authoritative parents shifts from one generation to another is debatable, but parenting "mistakes" tend to be of opposite types from one generation to the next.

Birth order

The influence of birth order on personality is a hotly debated topic.  Some psychologists firmly believe that birth order effects are real and pronounced;  others just as firmly believe them to be illusory and largely a cultural myth.  The truth probably lies somewhere in between, but following are some of the expected birth order effects which proponents, at least, believe exist, using the Big Five model as a backdrop.  Of course this is mediated by -- sometimes confounded with -- generational cohort effects;  we would expect the results below to be most pronounced when both birth order and generational cohort variables point in the same direction.  In larger families or in those with longer gaps between children, siblings may not belong to the same generational cohort (for instance, I'm an Idealist but my brother, born six years later, is an early-stage Reactive).

• Earlier borns tend to be more E-, later borns more E+.  Presumably what mediates this is the presence or absence of near-age siblings with whom one can (and must) learn to interact.  Obviously, firstborn children spend at least some of their formative years by themselves (no siblings) and must learn to "amuse themselves" or become more self-reliant to some extent;  laterborns never experience being the "only" child and must learn to interact, negotiate, get along with others.
• Earlier borns tend to be more C+, later borns more C-.  Presumably this is because (especially in "responsibility driven", that is, Civic and Adaptive, eras) older children are given the responsibility of being "surrogate parents" or "secondary authority figures" for their younger siblings, while younger children (especially in "freedom driven", that is, Idealist and Reactive, eras) are treated as "babies" for a long period of time.
• Earlier borns tend to be more N+, later borns more N-.  Presumably this is because parents are growing and changing too, becoming less "uptight" and more relaxed with the birth of each succeeding child, and also because firstborns often are clothed with a mantle of parental expectations that later children do not experience.
• Few effects are seen for dimensions O and A, though older children may be slightly more conservative (O-) and slightly more compliant (A+) on average;  these are weak trends, however.
• A slight (though much disputed in the literature) effect on intelligence can also be noted.  Older children tend to be slightly more intelligent or at least slightly more "academic".  Some of this effect is due to differences in dimension C (C+ children tend to be overachievers, C- to be underachievers), but some is also likely due to the "mean intellectual level" of the family:  if we average the "mental age" (hence the level of intellectual stimulation) of the family, obviously with the addition of each new young child the mean age of the family drops.  Hence earlier borns (who interact primarily with adults, that is, their parents) receive more intellectual stimulation than later borns (who interact primarily with peers, that is, siblings).  Also, parents have more time and perhaps more energy and inclination to provide intellectual stimulation to earlier borns.

Peer interactions and friendship 

This model is "something less than a theory" for two reasons.  (1) It discusses the "what" (observed differences in how children defend, explain, or justify their friendship choices) but not the "why" (a coherent theoretical explanation of these age trends/patterns).  (2) It emphasizes how children talk about friendship - which may or may not correlate all that well what their actual friendship behaviors.  You may have noticed in your own life that talking and doing aren't  the same thing.  

Stage 1:  Commonality of activity (ages 1-3)

"A friend is someone who's doing what I'm doing"

Obviously, this suggests that friendship patterns at this age are highly labile (subject to change without notice) - a child's "best friend" may change from hour to hour.

Stage 2:  Propinquity (ages 4-6)

"A friend is someone who shares my world" (is nearby or "in the neighborhood")

"Propinquity" means nearness or geographic closeness.  Children at this age build friendships on the accidents of geographic location, but even in the age of the Internet, this variable influences adult relationships as well - just not to the same extent.

Stage 3:  Acceptance and admiration (ages 7-9)

"A friend is someone who thinks well of me"

Note the generally egocentric or narcissistic aspect of this stage (corresponds to Piagetian egocentrism?).  The child wants to be liked and admired;  if s/he returns the favor, it is probably incidental.

Here, for the first time, clear gender differences in friendship patterns become noticeable (see below).

Stage 4:  Commitment and obligation (ages 10-12)

"A friend is someone who keeps her/his promises to me"

Here, mutuality of obligation is in view (less egocentric).  The notion is one of relational equity - each side gives and receives the same amount (sometimes in starkly literal terms).  Loyalty is paramount (note the overwhelming concern with betrayal in children at this stage).

Stage 5:  Genuineness and reciprocity (ages 13-15)

"A friend is someone who is real"

A shift from an outward (behavioral/activity) to an inward (mental/verbal) focus begins at this stage (particularly for girls).  Friendship now involves self-disclosure.  Gender differences in friendship patterns become still more evident (see below).

Stage 6:  Similarity and intimacy (ages 16-101)

"A friend is someone whom I can get to know in depth"  (because we share sufficient similarities)

See below for the rather paradoxical relationship between similarity (seeking a friend who is alike) and complementarity (seeking a friend who is unlike). The notion that friendships are not static, but must continue evolving and growing over time, becomes a paramount consideration.  The focus is less on the immediate present and more on the projected future course of the friendship.

Some observations about gender differences in friendship patterns

Reliable gender differences can be observed as early as the second stage, but become determinative by the third stage.  Girls tend to form smaller, more close-knit relationship patterns (seeking "best friends"), even though paradoxically they have more friends on average than boys at any age (but at certain stages become much more concerned with issues of "popularity" or inclusion).  Boys tend to form larger relational/activity groups, but paradoxically are less likely to identify any close friends.  This is probably a correlate of girls' propensity to form friendships through talk, boys through shared action.  Note that because of this fact, the model above may contain a hidden gender bias ("higher" stages present more "feminine" patterns - friendship through verbal self-disclosure).  Male relationship patterns tend to orient around a vertical hierarchy (superiority-inferiority or dominance-submission), while female relationship patterns tend to orient around a horizontal hierarchy (acceptance-rejection or inclusion-exclusion).

The similarity-complementarity paradox

Particularly in the early stages of a relationship, direct conscious concerns about similarity dominate, and probably have to do with shared interests, values, experiences, and lifestyle.  (Question:  how do people discover these things about each other?)  As the friendship deepens, however, underlying (probably somewhat less than conscious) concerns about role complementarity take on increasing significance, and are probably predictable in terms of models of personality diversity such as the Big Five.

Moral development (Kohlberg)

Throughout the history of public education in America, the question of what role (if any) the public schools should have in fostering children's moral development has been a hotly debated one, for a variety of reasons.  One of the most difficult issues has to do with the handling of moral issues in a diverse, pluralistic, and increasingly multicultural society.  Since there is no clear-cut value consensus on many moral issues in society, how do we foster ethical and moral maturity in children without running afoul of the First Amendment, and/or of the right of parents to promote whatever set of moral values they choose vis-a-vis their own children?  My guess is that in the next 10-15 years, our society is going to have to come to terms with that question (the present solution has not worked well in the minds of many).  The generational model of history suggests possible cyclic changes in approaches to such matters:  adult consensus about moral issues is presumably highest in Civic eras, lowest in Idealist eras;  child compliance with adult standards is presumably highest in Adaptive eras, lowest in Reactive eras.  (Concerns about "social breakdown" or rampant anomie in society tend to recur mostly during Reactive eras, for instance, as aging Idealists despair about the seeming amorality of the upcoming Reactive generation.  Idealists who, as adolescents, bemoaned the moral conventionality and complacency of their Adaptive elders may, paradoxically, look back two generations with nostalgia -- or forward, two generations ahead to the very young -- to the orderly, predictable world of the Civics.)

Kohlberg's model makes a sharp distinction between content and process that needs to be explained at the outset.  Moral content is what you believe to be right or wrong in a given situation or with regard to a given behavior.  While this is the usual focus of conventional moral education, Kohlberg is not particularly interested in that question as such.  His interest is in an exploration of moral process, that is, how (the means by which) people come to make moral judgments -- how they arrive at, and/or how they justify or defend, their moral conclusions. 

Kohlberg claims (though, later in this unit, we'll critique this claim, because one can without too much difficulty poke holes in it) that content and process are, or can be seen as, independent.  That is, in his view, what one believes (mental content) tells you nothing about how s/he came to that view;  and knowing how a person thinks (mental processes) tells you nothing about what conclusions s/he has drawn or will draw by means of those processes.  Thus, it's impossible to classify a person into one of Kohlberg's stages (see below) by knowing what their moral values are;  the classification is based on an analysis of how they arrived at those values, the ways in which they think about morality.

Kohlberg studies moral process by posing what he calls moral dilemmas to subjects.  A moral dilemma is a situation that pits two sets of moral values against one another, making it difficult to know what the obviously right choice would be.  A classic example is that of the man whose wife was deathly ill with a very rare disease.  The only possible cure was the administration of an expensive experimental drug.  Because the drug was so new, his insurance company would not pay for it.  The local pharmacist agreed to provide him with a sufficient supply of the drug, but only at the price of $50,000 (an exorbitant price far above the actual cost, most of which would line the pockets of the pharmacist).  The man didn't have that kind of money and wasn't able to borrow it, so finally in desperation he broke into the pharmacy and stole the drug.  Was he morally justified or not?  Again Kohlberg is not interested in whether people answer "yes" or "no" (content), but only in how they justify the correctness of their answer (process).  Based on the kind of justifications they offer, Kohlberg attempts to classify subjects into one of six stages of moral development.

Each grouping of two adjacent stages (1st and 2nd, 3rd and 4th, 5th and 6th) can be grouped into larger, more superordinate categories called preconventional, conventional, and postconventional moral reasoning respectively.  Preconventional moral reasoners are not yet aware of (or, at least, have not yet gotten to the point of factoring in or being governed by) social, legal, and moral conventions.  Conventional moral reasoners are governed by them, but have not yet realized that (sometimes) they can and should be questioned.  Postconventional moral reasoners are governed by an ethic that is higher than mere social convention (though at times it can and does lead to the same behaviors as the social conventions).

Here is a snapshot summary of the six stages and how a person might argue for, or against, stealing the drug (in the moral dilemma outlined above) on the basis of moral reasoning drawn from that stage.

Preconventional Stages

(unaware of, or not at all governed by, social conventions)

Stage 1:  Hedonistic Orientation

Morality = what I want or what makes me feel good

Pro:  The man should steal the drug because he wants it.

Con:  The man should not steal the drug because he will feel bad later (and feeling bad is something he does not want).

Stage 2:  Punishment Orientation

Morality = What will not be punished

Pro:  The man should steal the drug because if he doesn't his wife will hate (punish) him.

Con:  The man should not steal the drug because he might get caught (punished) by the police.

Conventional Stages

(governed by social conventions)

Stage 3:  Naive Reciprocity Orientation

Morality = What leads to a personal exchange of favors

Pro:  The man should steal the drug because when he needs something from his wife later on she will do that for him.

Con:  The man should not steal the drug because he might need a favor from the druggist later.

Stage 4:  Law and Order Orientation

Morality = What is legal or socially conventional

Pro:  The man should steal the drug because men are supposed to take care of their wives no matter what.

Con:  The man should not steal the drug because stealing is against the law.  [Note:  at this level, stealing would not be wrong if there were no law against it.  The reference is not to a higher, transcendent or superordinate moral authority as it would be at higher levels, only to what society says is right or wrong.  However, unlike at Level 2, if stealing is illegal, it is wrong even if one can get away with it -- even if one can avoid punishment.]

Postconventional Stages

(aware of social conventions, but evaluates them in terms of a higher standard of some kind)

As a test of your understanding, find a copy of the Declaration of Independence and see if you can spot the level 5 and level 6 arguments contained in that document.  Most of the arguments are at level 5 (which is, Kohlberg says, the "official" philosophical basis for the legal system of the United States), but there are a few level 6 arguments contained in that document as well.  Can you find them?  

Stage 5:  Social Contract Orientation

Morality = What free human beings have mutually agreed it should be, to mutually benefit society

(laws that are no longer mutually beneficial are not morally binding, hence social conventions can be criticized on this basis)

Pro:  The man should steal the drug because most people would agree that family relationships (the wife) are more important than purely economic or business ones (the pharmacist).  Society depends on the family more.

Con:  The man should not steal the drug because society would ultimately fall apart if everyone just took what they wanted when they wanted it.  Society relies on a foundation of respect for private property even when this leads to excesses in individual situations.

Stage 6:  Universal or Internalized Moral Principles

Morality = Universal, transcultural, or transcendent ethical standards, such as religious or philosophical absolutes, or intrinsic morality (to be at level 6, not level 4, the person must subscribe to these standards for reasons other than the fact that "society says they are correct", if those standards happen to agree with the existing social conventions of the society -- as they often do to some extent)

(social conventions that contravene a higher moral law are not morally binding, though an ethical person will still submit to the social sanctions associated with them;  hence social conventions can be criticized on this basis)

Pro:  The man should steal the drug because the value of a human life is infinite.  The priceless worth of his wife far exceeds the merely finite and replaceable financial cost to the pharmacist.  (A level 6 reasoner would probably argue that the man, having saved his wife's life, should then turn himself in and accept the legal penalty for his actions after the fact.)

Con:  The man should not steal the drug because ultimately our integrity is all we have.  It is best to act in a principled way and not cheat others, even if we suffer for it and even if they are unjust, because integrity is more important than short-term happiness.

Make sure that you are able to classify moral arguments into one of the six stages (or, at least, into one of the three "superstages") for the exam.  Sometimes this is hard to do (interrater reliability in a typical Kohlbergian experiment is deucedly low), but I'll try to make it crystal-clear on the exam.

As you exercise patience with me (as I type in these notes), pick a reason for being patient that fits your stage in Kohlberg's theory:

• because you feel like it (level 1)
• because if I catch you being impatient, I'll give you a bad grade (level 2)
• because you might need a favor from me later (level 3)
• because society says that patience is a virtue (level 4)
• because positive human relations would be impossible if people were habitually impatient with one another (level 5)
• because patience, kindness, and empathy are moral imperatives in their own right, even if you gain nothing tangibly or directly from pursuing those virtues (level 6)

A constructive critique of Kohlberg's model

Kohlberg's model has been extremely influential in recent decades, and has revolutionized the study of moral development.  But it's not without its critics.  Here are some of the most frequent criticisms.

• The model somewhat confounds content and process despite Kohlberg's claims that it does not.  For instance, "liberals" tend to score, on average, about half a stage higher in Kohlberg's scheme than do "conservatives".  This should not happen if content (what you think about moral issues) is irrelevant... but it does happen.  It probably reflects a bias in the rating scheme, or problems associated with the fact that, in the research lab,  people can only defend their moral arguments with words (what else, global thermonuclear war?), and liberal and conservatives tend to use different terminologies to express themselves. So, raters who are more familiar with a subject's terminology are more likely to rate her/him favorably (because they understand more, can relate better, and so forth);  if psychologists tend as a group to be more liberal, then this would lead to an implicit liberal bias in the schema.  (The alternate hypothesis is that liberals are genuinely more likely to be postconventional moral reasoners, but this vitiates Kohlberg's basic assumption about the independence of content and process).  For similar reasons, religious thinkers (if sufficiently sophisticated in their use of terminology) are likely to score slightly higher than irreligious thinkers (note that level 5 is a "secular" morality, while level 6 is a "transcendent" morality).

• The model may, in some indirect way, be biased against women in that female subjects tend on average to score about half a stage lower than male subjects.  Why?  Possibly because males tend to couch their arguments in more impersonal terms, while females tend to couch their arguments more in personal terms.  Again a language bias may cause male terminology to sound more "sophisticated" (at least to male raters) for reasons outlined above.  See later material in the course for differences in male vs. female communication and interaction patterns.  (Hence, a religious male Democrat might end up scoring significantly higher on Kohlberg's schema than an irreligious female Republican, but the system is supposed to be content-neutral or viewpoint-neutral.)

• The model is inherently elitist because, unlike the stage theories we've encountered earlier in this course (e.g., Piaget, Erikson), not everyone reaches the last stage(s).  Kohlberg's research shows clearly that a large proportion of American adults never move beyond stage 4, and that only a vanishingly small percentage reach stage 6.  (In fact, in his earliest formulations, Kohlberg postulated a seventh stage which only a handful of persons in all of human history -- including, of course, himself -- had reached.)  Like similar models (Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs comes to mind), a theory that posits that most adults never reach the pinnacle is inherently elitist.  For more on the dangers of intellectual elitism, read anything by Christopher Lasch.

• The system lacks objectivity -- for instance, inter-rater reliabilities are notoriously low.  A system that can't be applied objectively and consistently, or that is notoriously cumbersome, is not the most useful and practical system that could be devised.

• The system focuses on moral reasoning, not moral behavior, yet in the real world our concern surely is focused on the latter -- not what people think, but what they do.  Unfortunately, correlations between Kohlberg's stages and real-world moral behavior are notoriously low.  It is true that preconventional reasoners (stages 1 and 2) do tend to act in self-serving, morally questionable ways;  few adults stay stuck in these childlike patterns of thought and action.  But it's difficult, if not impossible, to differentiate conventional from postconventional reasoners in terms of their outward behavior alone.  So does the distinction really matter in a practical way?

• The content-process distinction may hide a philosophical bias, namely, that content does not matter (or that "one set of moral values is just as good as another").  Time prohibits a full discussion of postmodernism and its links to moral relativism here, but since 09/11/01, most Americans are suddenly much less willing to say that all moral systems are equivalent or that "imposing" morality on others is inherently objectionable.

For further thoughts about religion and postconventionality (from one who happens to be a person of faith, that's me -- doesn't have to be you), click here.

Without meaning to give you an overdose of Strauss and Howe's model, I think it's important to reiterate (again) that one of the weaknesses of many of the stage theories discussed in this class is that they were developed during a particular time in history -- and mostly tested on individuals of a particular generational cohort.  Thus, they may lack generalizability across generations.  For instance, Erikson was a Civic, so his model works best in describing the life course of Civics.  Kohlberg was an early-stage Idealist, so his model may best fit the moral development of Idealists.  And so forth.

Study Guide

1.  Summarize Piaget's and Erikson's theories as related to childhood and adolescence.

2.  Discuss familial (parental and sibling) influences on childhood personality development, including birth order effects.

3.  Summarize the stage theory of friendship patterns, including gender differences.

4.  Summarize and critique Kohlberg's model of moral development.

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