Ch 13 – Social cognition and Moral Dev – Life Span Human Development – Flashcards

1. affective or emotional component- consisting of the feelings (pride, guilt, concern for others' feelings) that surround right or wrong actions and that motivate moral thoughts or actions 2. a cognitive component, centering on the way we conceptualize right or wrong and make decisions and reason about how to behave; this component involves social cognitive skills such as role taking 3. a behavioral component that reflects how we actually behave when we experience the temptation to cheat or are called upon to help a needy person.

1. generally we are motivated to avoid negative moral emotions and to seek positive ones by acting in moral ways. 2. Empathy - vicarious experiencing anothers feelings, is example of moral affect.

1. want to understand "how" we decide what to do, not what we decide or what we actually do. 2. what is the thinking process when we decide whether an act is right or wrong. 3. believes moral development progresses through a set of universal, invariant sequence of stages.

1. highest stages reflect a western ideal of justice centered on individual rights, making stage theory biased against people who live in non-western societies 2. a person must hold liberal values in order to be classified as a post conventional moral reasoner (oppose capital punishment, supporting civil disobedience in the name of human rights. 3. this theory is biased against women since his stages were based on interviews with males.[gender bias] Gilligan proposed another theory that illustrates a feminine point of view. pg443 a legalistic and abstract way----thinking about right and wrong

SELFISHNESS (Morality of justice) - focus on taking care of oneself and one individual survival. Transitional conflict occurs when a woman sees the conflict between her own needs and her responsibility for doing the "right thing" RESPONSIBILITY TO OTHERS (morality of care) focus on "doing the right by others" and if at all possible avoiding hurting them; acceptance by others is a primary concern. Transitional conflict occurs when a woman questions whether self sacrifice is right. "is it appropriate to hurt myself in order to avoid hurting others?" Concern begins to shift from being good to seeking truth. RESPONSIBILITY TO SELF AND OTHERS - focus is not hurting anyone, including oneself; looking after the welfare of all persons.

primarily interested in the behavioral component of morality - what we "actually do" when faced with a moral dilemma. moral behavior is learned through observational learning and reinforcement and punishment principles. They consider moral behavior to be strongly influences by the nature of the specific situations in which people find themselves. They emphasize the importance of cognition that help people adhere to more standards and gain control over their emotions and feel capable of regulating their moral behavior.

1. preconventional reasoning involves egocentric perspective of moral issues. in order to move to conventional reasoning your need to be able to take other people's perspective into consideration. need empathy too. to achieve post conventional reasoning your must have formal operational thought to reason about abstract principles.

thinking about perceptions, thoughts, emotions, motives and behaviors of self, other people, groups and even whole social systems.

assesses the understanding that people can hold incorrect beliefs and that these beliefs, even though incorrect, can influence their behavior. some research shows infants as young as 15 months understand that people can hold false beliefs

the understanding that people have mental states such as desires, beliefs and intentions and that these mental states guide (or cause, if you like) their behavior AKA mind reading skills. 85% of 4 year olds of normal intelligence and older children with down syndrome passed the false belief task. 80% with autism failed. age 2 theory of mind starts to develop. acquiring requires a normal human brain but also experiences interacting with others. children with siblings acquire theory of mind sooner. parents contribute to theory of mind development, culture influences as well. children who have mastered theory of mind tasks have more advanced social skills and better social adjustment.

joint attention - starting around 9 months. infant and caregiver looking at same object. in first months infants understand people have intentions, set goals and achieve them. pretend play between 1 and 2 show primitive understanding difference between pretense adn reality. Imitation of other people in the first year reveals an ability to mentally represent their actions. Emotional understanding is evidenced by comforting a playmate who is crying.

giacomo rizzolatti neurons that are activated both when we perform an action and when we observe someone else perform the same action. implicated not only in imitation but also language, empathy and theory of mind.

fMRI - used to determine which areas of the brain are active while a person completes a task. Saxe and Kanwisher found that areas of adults brains that respond strongly to during false belief tasks do not respond when people are asked questions about "false photographs"

piaget during the preschool years, children show little awareness or understanding of rules and cannot be considered moral beings

piaget kids 6-10 take rules seriously, believing they are handed down by parents and other authority figures and are sacred and unalterable

piaget kids 10 or 11 enter final stage of moral development they begin to appreciate rules are agreements between individuals, that can be changed through a consensus. in judging actions they pay more attention to whether the person's intentions were good or bad than to the consequences of his act.

Argues that humans have an evolved genetic makeup that predisposes them not only to behave antisocially but also to emphasize with fellow humans and to behave pro socially and morally.

Bandura devised mechanisms that allow us to avoid condemning ourselves whewe engage in immoral behavior, even. Though we know the difference between bright and wrong. Store clerk stealing.

Lacking n morality

Infants become capable of a truer form of empathy that motivates helping and other forms of moral behavior. Toddlers begin to understand that someone else's distress is different than their own.

More than half of the 13 to 15 month olds engaged in at least one act of prosocial behavior, helping, sharing, expressing concern, comforting

Research suggests that a capacity to evaluate other people's social behavior may be evident so early in life because it is part of our evolutionary heritage. It may have evolved because it helps us distinguish between individuals.

3 year olds listened to stories about a boy throwing a ball to a playmate. Motive was described as good or bd and the consequences of his act we positive or negative. Even young child can base moral judgements on both a persons intention and the consequences of his act.

Observed that young children distinguish sharply between different kinds of rules. Moral rules and social conventional rules

Turiel standards that focus on the welfare and basic rights of individuals. Rules against hitting, stealing,, lying, harming others or violating their rights.

Turiel Standards determined by social consensus that tell us what is appropriate in particular social setting. Rules of social etiquette, rules of games and school rulers like not eating food in class or using the restroom.

Children as young as 2 regaRd moral transgressions such as hitting, stealing, or refusing to share as more serious and deserving of punishment than social conventional violations.

Believes empathy is a key motivator of moral behavior and that the key task in moral socialization is to foster empathy. Three approaches to discipline, love withdrawal, power assertion and induction. Winning formula is blend of frequent inductions, occasional power assertions and a lot of affection.

Hoffman Withholding affection, attention or approval after a child misbehaves, creating anxiety by threatening a loss of reinforcement from parents

Hoffman Using power to threaten, chastise, Administer spanking, taking away privileges and so on, using punishment

Hoffman Explaining to a child why the Behavior is wrong and should be changed by emphasizing how it affects other people

Dodge Encoding of cues, taking in information. Interpretation of cues, making sense of this information and deciding what caused the ore persons behavior. Clarification of goals, deciding what to achieve in the situation. response search, Thinking of possible actions to achieve the goal. Response decision, weighing pros and cons of these alternative actions. Behavioral enactment, doing something. Aggressive youth, if tripped, would focus on cues suggesting it was hostile.infer it was hostile, make goal to retaliate, generate few option, most aggressive. See advantages in responding Aggressively and then behave aggressively.

Patterson Family members are locked in power struggles. Parents learn through negative reinforcements that they can top their children misbehavior, temporarily, by threatening, yelling and hitting. Kids learn, thro negative reinforcements, they can get parents to lay off by whining, tantrums, ignoring requests, being difficult.

Kids with genetic predispositions may become anti social if they also grow up in a dysfunctiona family and receive poor parenting or worse are physically abused.

Kid who inherit a genetic predisposition to become aggressive may actually evoke the coercive parenting that Patterson and colleagues find breeds aggression.

This effect is evident even when aggression prone kids grow up with adoptive parents rather then with biological parents because these kids bring out negativity in adoptive parents.

Equal give and take between the parties in a relationship that make us ask whether what looks fair or just from our own point of view would look equally fair from other people's point of view

the cognitive component of morality; the thinking that occurs when people decided whether acts are right or wrong

The parent child relationship are sensitive to each other's needs. Contributor to moral development

Tactics designed to prevent misbehavior and therefore reduce the need for correction or discipline (distracting from temptation)