However, it must be noted that there are other arguments that do not view altruism as argued above. Aronfreed (1968) originally did observe empathic reactions to the sight of others in obvious distress – as long as there was little or no mitigating or contrary evidence. Simner (1971) actually viewed babies as young as a day old crying when exposed to the stimulus of a newborn’s crying (although not to other sounds of a similar nature and volume). This was argued to show that the older child has innate response to ensure attention is not completely removed over to the newborn. If this is in fact the case, it could be seen for providing evidence for moral behaviour over moral thinking – it is merely an innate reaction, not a thought ‘process’ as we understand it.
Kohlberg (1969) developed a very rounded theory of moral behaviour and thinking, in which subjects were posed moral dilemmas in mostly laboratory settings, and their reactions noted. Most of these situations involved a simple yes/no response to a moralistic story involving a morally questionable solution to a situation. Furthermore, the subjects were then asked to evaluate the solution, giving reasons why it was a sound or debatable decision to take in the particular circumstances. From this line of questioning, Kohlberg devised a theory of moral behaviour development, from early childhood throughout the individual’s moral career. The first two stages are classed as preconventional morality – avoiding punishment, and then gaining rewards. Then follows conventional morality, in which the individual seeks to gain the approval of and avoid the disapproval of others, before they seek to comply with their society’s codes of ‘law and order’. Finally comes postconventional morality, where the individual attempts to comply with a ‘social contract’ (generally meaning for the good of all), and very finally moral behaviour that is based on one’s own ethical principles (Kohlberg, 1969, cited in Gleitman, 1999).
The proposition involved here was that, based on their responses, children attempt of progress through these six stages, but, in fact, rarely reach the very highest levels of morality (which, it could be argued, were only included to account for the virtually totally prosocial behaviour of the most outstanding members of society. Using an example from Kohlberg’s own research, a simple story containing moral conflict was produced, where the subject was told to consider a situation where a man is told his wife will die without a specific drug, the cost of which cannot be covered by any other means other than by breaking into a chemist and illegally taking it. In this situation, the younger subjects would generally decide that the man would get into ‘trouble’ if he lest his wife die; later stages can be characterised by socially-aware answers, with the man being viewed as ‘heartless’ or ‘cruel’. However, the postconventional morality stages are rarely reached – they are answers that involve betraying your own ethical standards. Such progression through several different ‘stages’ is not uncommon in developmental psychology, as well as psychology as a whole. What marks Kohlberg’s theory out from other theories of morality is that it can be applied, with success, to adults, as well as children.
One test for such a theory is to see if it could predict an individual’s actions on the basis of their response. To a certain extent this is possible here. For example, a delinquent is more likely to show a lower level of morality on Kohlberg’s scale than an individual of similar IQ and age. Experiments have also concluded that subjects perceived at higher levels are less likely to cheat in tests, as well as retain their own views in a confrontation.
Although this theory could be argued to ‘support’ a view of moral behaviour being a direct cause of moral actions, it is rather weak. Kohlberg’s experiments, it could be argued, show what people would like to believe that they would do in a given situation, and their methods for moralising such actions. This is defined by Gleitman et al. (1999) as “metamorality” – and it is not very useful in helping us actually construct or reject a theory. However, this is manifestly different from what people actually do in a given situation. It’s major weakness is that the experimenter has to be able to place a value judgement on what is “right” or “wrong” for the ‘normal’ individual: quite frankly, a ridiculous task. This leaves just two options available; firstly, reject the hypothesis, and view there as being only moral actions over moral thinking. This could be flawed as usually evidence is required to discard a thermo, and no evidence has been come across (this could be through a lack of constructive looking, as well…). Otherwise, we have to accept that moral theory is specifically intertwined with moral actions, and that sometimes the actions are governed by standardised theory, whilst on other occasions, moral actions occurs alone, on some sort of ‘feedback’ circuit, bypassing the usual moral circuits in the brain.
Bibliography
Aronfreed, J. (1968) Conduct and Conscience, New York: Academic Press.
Blasi, L. (1980) Bridging Moral Cognition And Moral Action: A Critical Review Of The Literature, Psychological Bulletin 88: 1-41
Gleitman, H., Fridlund, A.J., Reisberg, D. (1999) Psychology: Fifth Edition pp. 594-600, London: W.W. Norton & Co.
Kohlberg, L. (1969) Stage And Sequence: The Cognitive Developmental Approach To Socialization in Goslin, D.A. (ed.) Handbook Of Socialization Theory Of Research, pp. 347-480, Chicago: Rand McNally.
Simner, M.L. (1971) Newborn’s Response To The Crying Of Another Infant, Developmental Psychology 5: 136-150.
