Nucci, L (2003) - Education in The Moral Domain PDF

Education in the Moral Domain
Education in the Moral Domain brings together the results of twenty-five years of
research on the domain theory of social cognitive development. On the basis of
that research which shows that morality is a domain distinct from other social
values the author provides concrete suggestions for creating a moral class-
room climate, dealing with student discipline and integrating moral values
within the curriculum.
Among questions addressed are the following: Is morality a set of rules we
acquire like any other? Are there universal aspects to morality, or is it culture
specific? Is there such a thing as moral character? How best can teachers make
use of our knowledge about childrens moral and social growth in their every-
day classroom practices?
Integrated answers to these questions result in a comprehensive approach
that does not reduce moral education to a process of induction or inculcation,
but rather harnesses childrens intrinsic motivation to comprehend and master
their social worlds.
Larry P. Nucci is Professor of Education and Psychology at the University of

Illinois at Chicago, where he is also director of the Office for Studies in Moral
Development and Character Formation. He is editor of Moral Development
and Character Education: A Dialogue, and he is coeditor of Culture, Thought, and
Development (with Geoffrey Saxe and Elliot Turiel).
Education in the Moral Domain
LARRY P. NUCCI
University of Illinois at Chicago
PUBLISHED BY CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS (VIRTUAL PUBLISHING)
FOR AND ON BEHALF OF THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF
CAMBRIDGE
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 IRP
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA
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http://www.cambridge.org
Cambridge University Press 2001

This edition Cambridge University Press (Virtual Publishing) 2003
First published in printed format 2001
A catalogue record for the original printed book is available

from the British Library and from the Library of Congress
Original ISBN 0 521 65232 4 hardback
Original ISBN 0 521 65549 8 paperback
ISBN 0 511 01298 5 virtual (eBooks.com Edition)

In loving memory of my father,
Salvatore Nucci
Contents
Foreword by Elliot Turiel page ix

Acknowledgments xv
Introduction xvii
PART ONE . THE NATURE OF MORALITY AND THE

DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL VALUES
1 Morality and Domains of Social Knowledge 3

2 Morality and Religious Rules 20
3 Morality and the Personal Domain 52
4 Morality in Context: Issues of Development 76
5 Morality in Context: Issues of Culture 94
6 Morality and Emotion 107
7 Reconceptualizing Moral Character 124
PART TWO . CLASSROOM APPLICATIONS
8 Creating a Moral Atmosphere 141

9 Integrating Values Education into the Curriculum:
A Domain Approach 169
10 Fostering the Moral Self 196
Conclusion: Keeping Things in Perspective 215
Additional Resources 217

References 219
Index of Names 237
Index of Subjects 240
vii
Foreword
Engaging in education in the moral domain is hard to fault. Almost every-

one agrees that it should be done, that it must be done. Most everyone
wants the children of their society to be, at least, guided in the process of
becoming less aggressive, less violent, more altruistic, more fair, more
charitable, more civil, and much more. To be sure, some have argued that
education in the moral domain is not appropriate for schools because it
should be left to the family and/or religious training. Regardless of where
it occurs, educating children morally is generally considered good, virtu-
ous, and a necessity.
Beyond the general agreement that children should be educated
morally, there has been, and continues to be, a great deal of controversy
and debate over how it should be conducted. These debates are often
intense and emotional, to the point that it is argued that certain types
of moral education should not occur at all because, it is thought, they can
do more harm than good. In the early part of the twentieth century, the
debate included two very influential social-scientific thinkers, Emile
Durkheim and Jean Piaget. Each presented elaborate and well-articulated
views representing two sides of the issue.
For Durkheim, an eminent sociologist, moral education occurs most ef-
fectively in schools where children can participate in groups more formal
and less flexible than the family. Through participation in group life, chil-
dren form an emotional attachment to society, coming to respect its rules,
norms, and authority. Children also form what Durkheim referred to as a
spirit of discipline, needed to control behavior and channel it into socie-
tal expectations.
For Piaget, an eminent psychologist, Durkheims approach was lack-
ing in two key ways. One was that he failed to recognize that morality in-
volves respect for persons and judgments of justice and equality. The sec-
ix
x foreword
ond was that Durkheim failed to recognize that development involves,

through childrens social interactions, a progressive construction of ways
of understanding the world, and not solely an accommodation to the so-
cial environment. The development of morality is best facilitated if chil-
dren participate in cooperative relationships, especially with their equals
(their peers). The educational implications of these approaches were ar-
ticulated by Piaget (1932, p. 342) in the following way:
Durkheim regards all morality as imposed by the group upon the in-
dividual and by the adult upon the child. Consequently, from the ped-
agogic point of view, whereas we would be inclined to see in the Ac-
tivity School, self-government, and in the autonomy of the child the
only form of education likely to produce a rational morality, Durkheim
upholds a system of education which is based on the traditional model
and relies on methods that are fundamentally those of authority, in
spite of the tempering features he introduced into it in order to allow
for inner liberty of conscience.
This debate, which has been played out through the twentieth century,
put briefly and in rather simple terms, is between the idea that the acqui-
sition of morality involves an acceptance of societal standards and norms
and the idea that it involves the development of ways of thinking about
right and wrong or good and bad. In the latter part of the century, the de-
bate included somewhat different terms and concepts. On the side of the
incorporation of societal values are proponents of character development
and character education. In that view, moral conduct comes about
through the formation of traits of character valued by the society and
within its long-standing traditions. Education involves firmly transmit-
ting these virtues and traits through discipline, examples of good acts, and
the telling of stories exemplifying traditional values.
One of the best-known and most vocal proponents of the character-
education approach is William Bennett, who has compiled stories for the
public to narrate for purposes of moral education (Bennett 1993). Bennett
also stridently criticizes those who would educate children to judge, ex-
amine, and critically evaluate moral matters. In particular, Bennett con-
siders moral-education programs based on the theories and research of
Lawrence Kohlberg, who followed and extended Piagets work, as en-
tailing miseducation because of the emphasis on childrens choices, deci-
sions, deliberations, and judgments. Here, too, the debate has been over
whether the acquisition of morality involves the transmission of tradi-
tions, rooted in society, or the development of ways of relating to others,
foreword xi
rooted in understandings of justice, rights, equal consideration of per-

sons, and the welfare of people.
One of the real strengths of Kohlbergs approach to moral education in
the schools was that it was grounded in research on moral development
and in associated philosophical analyses. In this regard, Kohlberg made a
deceptively simple but, I believe, very important point about moral teach-
ing that highlights a crucial shortcoming in most efforts at moral educa-
tion, including the character-education approach. Kohlberg noted that all
too often, psychology is expected to provide only knowledge about meth-
ods for moral teaching. He argued, however, that we cannot know about
methods or means of teaching and learning in the absence of knowledge
about the substance of that which is taught and learned. As he put it
(Kohlberg 1970, pp. 578):
If I could not define virtue or the ends of moral education, could I re-
ally offer advice as to the means by which virtue could be taught?
Could it really be argued that the means for teaching obedience to au-
thority are the same as the means for teaching freedom of moral opin-
ion, that the means for teaching altruism are the same as the means for
teaching competitive striving, that the making of a good storm trooper
involves the same procedures as the making of the philosopher-king?
It appears, then, that either we must be totally silent about moral edu-
cation or else speak to the nature of virtue.
What Kohlberg meant by speaking to the nature of virtue is that it is

necessary to provide substantive definitions and analyses of morality. In
part, this is a philosophical enterprise. The nature of morality, then, has a
bearing on how it develops, which in turn has a bearing on how it might
be taught. Analyses of the philosophical bases of morality also tell us
about the ends to which we educate. In too many cases, I would argue,
the ends or goals of moral education are to have children become good,
with only vague conceptions held as to what it means to be good. As ex-
amples, to be good involves possessing certain traits of character, or ac-
quiring a conscience that incorporates societys standards, or behaving in
particular ways, such as avoiding violence, helping, sharing, caring for
others, and being unselfish. I believe that Kohlberg was correct in stating
that methods of teaching the good are used in ways disconnected to what
is being taught. We see, as a consequence, a number of such disembodied
recommendations for teaching morality: Read children stories about peo-
ple who do good, provide them with adults who model good acts, use
consistent punishments, be firm in discipline, and so on. If you know the
xii foreword
appropriate methods and want to make a good storm trooper, then it is

simply a matter of implementing the teaching methods appropriately.
Societies, cultures, social relationships, and personal lives are more
complicated than that in at least two respects. One is that people, in-
cluding children, do have conceptions of the moral. Kohlberg and Piaget
attempted to account for peoples conceptions of the moral (and for defi-
nitions of the substance of the domain) by basing educational methods on
research informative of childrens moral judgments and changes in such
judgments. However, their theories of development and the moral-edu-
cational applications did not account for a second complication in social
lives which is that people make nontrivial social and personal judg-
ments of a nonmoral nature. These, too, must be taken into account, both
in explanations of social and moral development and in viable educa-
tional applications.
To put it another way, a problem in most efforts at moral education is
that the only or main concern is with morality. In this book, Larry Nucci
insightfully and deeply discusses the complex and multifaceted issues
that need to be taken into account in moral education. Nuccis analyses
go well beyond education in the moral domain. His analyses are centrally
on moral education, but he is also concerned with education in realms that
are in the purview of the personal. People the world over are deeply con-
cerned with moral goals. They are also concerned with the interests and
goals of their society. And they are concerned with personal goals and ar-
eas of personal jurisdiction. Moral decisions often require considering and
coordinating each of these domains of development. Nucci connects the
different domains, which are each very important in peoples lives, to the
education of children.
The scope and depth of Larry Nuccis analyses and recommendations
for education make contributions that are new, that further the field sig-
nificantly, and that can be effective by their very lack of simplicity. It is eas-
ier to implement educational recommendations that are simple and
straightforward. It is, however, more difficult to be effective in making a
difference in childrens lives when implementing simple and straightfor-
ward recommendations. The research on moral, social, and personal de-
velopment tells us that the straightforward recommendations are not
likely to work very well.
It is not, by the way, that I think that with this book Larry Nucci will
quell the controversies and debates about moral education. This is not
likely, though it is to be hoped that many will resonate to what he has to
say since Nucci takes a clear point of view on morality and its develop-
foreword xiii
ment. Nuccis point of view, in a general sense, is aligned with the side
that views morality as entailing the construction of judgments about wel-
fare, justice, and rights. In keeping with the injunction that it is necessary
to ground psychological and educational methods of teaching and learn-
ing in substantive analyses of the domain of morality, Nucci carefully
spells out his positions. As I already noted, an additional feature of his for-
mulations is that it is also necessary to spell out other domains impor-
tantly related to moral lives in order to engage in moral education. Nucci
carefully, insightfully, and perceptively presents two interrelated stories.
One is a theory and research story. (I must note that it is a point of view I
share, and about which he and I have collaborated.) The second is an ed-
ucational story.
The order of presentation of the two parts of the book is not at all arbi-
trary. Nucci lays out the issues and research findings in great detail in the
first part which provides empirical and theoretical grounding for the
second part of the book on classroom applications. As we can see just from
the table of contents, the first part of the book is comprehensive. Both parts
of the book are also quite comprehensible. This is a book that provides
ideas for researchers and is accessible to the educated public (of course,
especially teachers). In the first part of the book, Nucci makes an excellent
case for the point of view on domains by articulating the theoretical posi-
tion, supporting it with evidence, and considering key issues. These in-
clude the relations of morality to religion, culture, social contexts, and
emotions. Moreover, he contrasts the approach with the common view of
morality as character.
In the work on domains of development, Larry Nucci has been instru-
mental in providing rich formulations of the place of the personal how
people think about issues of autonomy, privacy, and choice. These ideas
contribute to our knowledge about childrens development and add
greatly to our thinking about moral education. In his early work, Nucci
conducted precise and innovative research showing that children make
judgments about areas of activity they consider out of the realm of moral
or conventional regulation and within the jurisdiction of individual
choice. Childrens judgments about the personal realm do not preclude
moral judgments. Morality, as well as convention, are domains that coex-
ist in childrens thinking.
In later work, including this book, he has extended this line of work to
include analyses of the role of the personal in the context of childrens in-
teractions and negotiations with parents. He has also provided elaborate
formulations of the significance of the personal in psychological devel-
xiv foreword
opment. An arena of personal jurisdiction is part of an individuals social

identity and is necessary for adequate psychological development along
with connections to others through participation in the social system and
consideration of their welfare and rights. Moreover, the inclusion of the
personal domain in peoples psyches, in conjunction with their societal
and moral attachments, provides a richer and more accurate account of
the place of individuals in culture than do stereotypical characterizations
of people and cultures as individualistic or collectivistic.
The importance of the idea of a personal domain to our thinking about
moral education is that it separates selfishness from the personal and
forces us to include personal considerations in the context of teaching
about morality. I (or Nucci) do not mean to say that people never act self-
ishly. Rather, this is to say that there is a legitimate realm of personal ju-
risdiction that must be taken into account in communicating with young
people. It will not do simply to implore them to give up their personal in-
terests for the good of others or society. Perhaps even more importantly,
personal freedom is not in opposition to morality. A sense of identity and
personal agency contributes to the nature of social relationships, includ-
ing those of reciprocity and cooperation.
All of this makes for not-so-easy tasks for educators concerned with the
welfare of children and their moral development. Larry Nucci, I believe,
is well aware that he makes life a little more difficult for the moral edu-
cator. Those who are persuaded by his point of view will find the diffi-
culties intellectually enriching and pedagogically informative. In this
book, Larry Nucci has combined a rigorous approach to theory and re-
search on social and moral development with great sensitivity to practices
in classrooms and schools. This is one of those rare works that intelligently
moves between the worlds of research and educational practice.
Elliot Turiel
University of California, Berkeley
Bennett, W. J. 1993. The book of virtues. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Kohlberg, L. 1970. Education for justice: A modern statement of the Pla-
tonic view. In N. F. Sizer and T. R. Sizer, eds., Moral education: Five lectures,
pp. 5683. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Piaget, J. 1932. The moral judgment of the child. London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul.
Acknowledgments
A number of scholars have read and commented on chapters or on drafts

of the book as a whole. I wish to thank William Arsenio, Marvin
Berkowitz, Melanie Killen, Ann Marie Ryan, Judith Smetana, Cecilia
Wainryb, and Elliot Turiel for their comments and suggestions through-
out the writing of the book. I wish also to thank Terrance Brown, Daniel
Hart, James Leming, Gil Noam, and Theodore Sarbin for providing me
with information or materials on selected topics. Students in my under-
graduate and graduate courses also read portions, or in some cases, all of
the manuscript. I wish to thank them for keeping me grounded and for
helping me to make the book accessible to professional educators. I am
grateful for the suggestions, information, and advice each of these people
has given me. If there are errors or lacunae in the final product, it is only
because of my own limitations.
My wife Maria helped to edit the manuscript and provided encour-
agement as this project moved forward. More importantly, she has been
central to the development of many of the ideas that made their way into
this book through the exchanges we have had over the past twenty-five
years. This book could not have been written without her presence.
Finally, I wish to thank my editor, Julia Hough, for believing in this
project and for helping to bring this book to fruition.
xv
Introduction
Few areas of education are as central to the purposes of public schooling

as the formation of childrens social values. For members of the multicul-
tural democracies, none is more controversial. At the core of current con-
troversies is how we are going to define what we mean by morality.
Among the questions we need to answer are the following: Is morality a
set of rules we acquire like any other, or does morality constitute a set of
understandings that are in some way distinct from other areas of social
knowledge? Does morality involve or even rely on cognition, or is it sim-
ply an emotion like empathy or guilt that guides our conduct? Are there
universal or transcultural aspects to morality, or is morality culture spe-
cific? If there are universals in morality, does this mean there are moral ab-
solutes? Does morality rest on religious norms, or are moral and religious
concepts distinct from one another? Do moral understandings change
over the course of history, or is morality ahistorical and transcendent? Can
morality be taught, or does it have to be caught? Is there such a thing
as moral character? If not, how do we account for and foster the develop-
ment of people who act in accordance with a set of moral principles? Fi-
nally, how best can teachers make use of our knowledge about childrens
moral and social growth in their everyday classroom practices?
This two-part book addresses those questions by bringing together the
basic findings from what has been referred to as the domain theory of
social development, and the related work that has been done on class-
room practice. The discoveries that have emerged from domain theory
permit us to do several things essential to moral education within a plu-
ralist democracy. First, as the title of this book suggests, it allows us to de-
fine what is meant by the moral domain in a manner that transcends cul-
tural and religious boundaries. The book opens with a discussion of the
basic scope and definition of the moral domain. The initial chapter pro-
xvii
xviii introduction
vides an overview of the research evidence gathered within the United

States and across the globe that accounts for the emergence of morality in
early childhood as a domain distinct from matters of social convention or
personal preference. With the discussion of the moral domain as a back-
drop, the focus moves to research involving devout religious children and
adolescents that examines whether their views of moral issues are deter-
mined by religious rules or the word of God.
Domain theory also permits us to understand cultural and contextual
variations in peoples social values. Although the basic underpinnings of
all human morality have a common conceptual core, most real life so-
cial judgments are complex and involve the use of knowledge from more
than one conceptual framework. As a result, one cannot reduce contextu-
alized moral issues to a simple formula or set of absolute norms. The par-
adox, then, is that morality is both based on a set of nonrelative univer-
sals and yet ultimately plural in its application.
One issue that seems to divide the worlds cultures is the relative de-
gree to which people are accorded personal freedom and privacy. This set
of concerns is addressed through a discussion of the personal domain of
social values. Evidence is presented that human beings strive to maintain
a zone of privacy and personal choice around issues that pertain to their
sense of self and unique personal identity. This striving for a personal do-
main comprises a fundamental element in establishing the dynamic rela-
tion between the individual and society. For educators and parents, the is-
sues dealt with touch on central themes of the limits of legitimate social
authority, and the interplay between development and parental control
over their children. The discussion also begins the analysis of cross-
domain interactions through a consideration of how the interplay among
morality, societal convention, and the personal result in cultural differ-
ences in the definition of personal rights and freedoms. This marks the be-
ginning of an ongoing discussion throughout the book regarding the
sources of tension between morality and the normative structures of so-
cial systems.
This discussion opens by focusing on the age-related shifts in the struc-
ture of knowledge within each domain, and the features of age-typical
cross-domain interactions. Teachers are provided with a framework for
understanding how to match the level of complexity of sociomoral issues
with the developmental levels of their students. The examination of
age-related cross-domain interactions also provides for an account of the
contradictions that have arisen as a result of research on traditional
developmental (i.e., Kohlbergian) accounts of moral psychology. This last
introduction xix
contribution provides a new way to look at the developmental aims of

moral education so that we can meaningfully engage children at all grade
levels in the act of principled moral reflection.
We then move to an examination of the ways in which interactions
among morality, the conventions of society, and peoples culturally based
assumptions about the nature of the world generate cultural and histori-
cal variations in values. This discussion provides insights into how seem-
ingly incommensurate cultural worldviews can share the same universal
moral core. It also provides a basis for understanding how members
within a culture can be impervious to the moral contradictions within
their own existing social system, and how ethnocentric interpretations of
cultural values can mask the principled moral perspectives of other cul-
tural groups. Finally, the resulting analysis provides a basis from which
individuals can engage in moral reflection and moral critique of their own
cultural practices and social structure.
A comprehensive account of moral psychology entails more than an ex-
planation of the emergence of sociomoral knowledge and reasoning. It
must also connect with the affective and motivational bases for moral ac-
tion. Consequently, we next address the motivational and characterolog-
ical elements that enter into a persons moral actions. We begin by look-
ing at the role of emotion in selecting and energizing ones actions. The
rich emerging literature on childrens emotional development eliminates
the false dichotomy between emotion and cognition in moral experience.
Moral experience is not a matter of either cognition or emotion, but rather
an inevitable integration between thought and feelings. This work helps
us to understand the nature of moral motivation and some of the sources
of moral pathology.
Finally, we take up the issue of moral character. This entails a critique
of traditional notions of character currently in vogue in certain educational
programs. The argument moves toward a contemporary reconceptualiza-
tion of the issue in terms of self-construction and self-consistency. The
work addressed here draws from narrative views of self that recognize
people as multifaceted rather than defined in terms of traits or virtues.
The overview of domain theory and research presented in Part One of
the book provides the foundation for Part Two, which offers concrete il-
lustrations of how one might use domain theory as a guide to educational
practice. This section deals with three interrelated aspects of sociomoral
education: establishing a moral climate or atmosphere (issues of class-
room management and structure), integrating values education into the
curriculum, and fostering the moral self (personal character).
xx introduction
The educational practices introduced are designed to stimulate stu-

dents development into socially competent adults who are able to fit into
their sociomoral worlds, but who also take a critical moral perspective to-
ward themselves and the social worlds they inherit. As outlined in Part
One of the book, the moral domain forms a universal core set of values
around issues of human welfare and justice. It is the development of these
moral concepts that anchors sociomoral education. The social world,
however, is multifaceted. Issues of right and wrong are determined not
only by morality but also by the conventions and factual assumptions
shared by the larger society. Enabling students to negotiate the sociomoral
world, and to arrive at moral positions in complex situations, involves not
only stimulating their moral reasoning but also developing their concepts
of convention and personal rights.
The second section of the book provides teachers with tools for how to
stimulate conceptual development within the moral, conventional, and
personal domains and for how to engage students in critical moral reflec-
tion on issues involving overlap between morality and nonmoral social
values or norms. Teachers are shown how to analyze the domain-related
features of school norms, practices, and curricula. Through the use of ac-
tual classroom examples, teachers are provided with suggestions for how
to integrate attention to domain into classroom management, classroom
climate, student discipline, and uses of the academic curriculum.
Running throughout is the unifying theme that education in the moral
domain should challenge the students sense of what is right and fair, and
ask that the student apply those understandings to his or her everyday
life. On this account, moral education is not a matter of induction or in-
culcation, but a process that harnesses childrens intrinsic motivation to
comprehend and master their social worlds.
part one
The Nature of Morality and the Development

of Social Values
chapter one
Morality and Domains of Social Knowledge
In my education classes, I often start off by asking students to state what

they would consider to be the highest, most moral act. Invariably, stu-
dents propose risking ones life to save the life of another as the most
moral thing a person could do. I then present them with the following sce-
nario and ask whether it is similar to what they had in mind.
A man is waiting at a train station. On his right, about twenty feet away, stands
a woman reading a magazine. The man glances to his left to check if a train is
coming and sees to his horror that another man, about twenty feet from him,
is in a crouched position clearly aiming a gun at the woman. The man is too
far away to either push the woman or stop the shooter. So he yells out duck
as he steps between the shooter and the woman just as the gun is fired. As a
result, the bullet intended for the woman strikes him in the arm, saving the
womans life.
Generally, my students accept this scenario as a rather dramatic in-

stance of what they had in mind. I then ask them to consider the follow-
ing alternative scene.
The same people are on the train platform in the same relative positions as in
the first version. However, the man in the middle is in this case unaware of
the presence of the gunman. While waiting for the train, he notices that his
shoe is untied. Just at the moment that our hero bends forward to tie his shoe,
the gunman fires at the woman. The bullet hits him in the arm, and the
womans life is saved.
Despite the fact that the behavior of the hero (moving in between the
shooter and the woman) and outcome (woman is saved) are the same, my
students do not consider the second scenario as a depiction of a moral ac-
3
4 morality & development of social values
tion. This is because there was no element of moral choice involved in the
second set of events. The decision to move forward was unrelated to the
moral elements of the situation, and the moral outcome (preservation of
life) occurred quite by accident. On the basis of this example, my students
conclude that moral action as opposed to an accidental or reflexive be-
havior requires moral judgment.
Now some objections may be raised to the interpretation the students
offer with regard to this example. First, it may be argued that the act of
saving someones life is an instance of supererogation (performing be-
yond the call of duty) and is not an example of action based on moral ob-
ligation (e.g., to refrain from harming another). This objection does not,
however, negate the importance that the students placed on volition as a
necessary element of moral action, and no one would argue that the act of
saving someones life is without moral meaning. A second, and more
pointed, objection would be to accept the example as portraying a moral
action, but to argue that even in the first instance the person was not act-
ing on the basis of rational choice, but did so out of instinct or emotion.
This position makes clear that emotion plays an important role in moral-
ity. Moreover, this interpretation reminds us of how many everyday
moral actions seem to take place automatically without reflection.
In fact, some recent writers have placed great emphasis on the apparent
lack of reflection in everyday moral activity, and have argued that moral-
ity is guided by an inherited emotional moral sense (Wilson 1993). The
role of affect and emotion in the selection and motivation of moral action
will be taken up again more thoroughly in a later chapter. For our purposes
here, it is enough to recognize that the fact that a judgment is made quickly,
and seemingly without reflection, does not necessarily mean that it was
made unthinkingly. It takes little reflection, for example, for an adult to
answer the question, How much is one plus one? The seeming auto-
maticity of the response does not negate the answer as a product of
thought, however quickly done. Similarly, while moral actions may be mo-
tivated by emotion, and take place with very little conscious reflection,
they always involve an element of thought. This is why we dont consider
the prosocial behavior of animals (e.g., placing their own lives at risk in
order to protect their young) to be truly moral. We attribute such behavior
to instinct rather than to the animals morality. Indeed, if our hero were act-
ing solely out of instinct or automatic emotional processing, my students
would not consider his behavior to have had any more moral status than
that of the man who saved the womans life by accident.
At the core of what we mean by morality, then, is knowledge of right
morality and domains of social knowledge 5
and wrong. Conduct is moral if it involves selection of particular courses

of action that are deemed to be right. In the above example, if we were to
shift our focus from the hero to the shooter, we would quickly see that
the persons moral culpability stems from his choice to harm another per-
son. If it were to turn out that the shooter were delusional and incapable
of understanding the meaning of his actions, we would view the events
as tragic rather than in moral terms. Thus, while the human experience of
morality may contain many things, such as emotions (which may be
rooted in our evolutionary history), the defining element of morality is
moral cognition. Moreover, our deliberations about right and wrong are
not confined simply to those things we do seemingly automatically out of
habit, or out of an emotional sense that a course of action is right. Moral
issues are among the most engaging things that people think about. It
isnt just philosophers who reflect on moral issues. Just about everyone
has pondered the morality of various courses of action and reflected upon
the moral meaning of personal decisions. This begins very early in life in
the context of deciding on issues of fairness among playmates and sib-
lings, and continues into the twilight concerns over death with dignity.
identifying the moral domain

One of the central questions raised by philosophy and psychology is
whether morality constitutes a domain or category of understanding dis-
tinct from other aspects of our knowledge. The behaviorist theories of
learning, which at one time dominated American educational practice,
made no distinctions among types or forms of knowledge and saw all
learning as simply the acquisition of content or procedures resulting from
environmental consequences experienced as reinforcements or punish-
ments (Skinner 1971). From that perspective there was no particular dif-
ference between an academic subject like arithmetic and morality, and the
issue of moral education became simply the application of educational
technology to generate a set of socially defined and desired behaviors.
More recently, however, as a consequence of what has been called the
cognitive revolution, there has been a recognition that knowledge is not
uniform but is structured within different domains or conceptual frame-
works. Verbal and mathematical knowledge, for example, are not reduced
to one another, and the teaching of reading and arithmetic call upon dif-
ferent curricula and teaching strategies.
While it may seem fairly obvious that moral cognition is something dif-
ferent from mathematics or text comprehension (reading), it has been less
apparent that morality is a domain apart from knowledge of other social

values. For the most part, researchers and educators have accepted the
everyday usage of the term morality (standards of social right and wrong)
as defining the field of inquiry or instruction. Moral education, according
to this conventional view, involves the socializing of students into socially
accepted standards of behavior so that they learn to know right from
wrong (Ryan 1996). This global approach draws no distinctions among
very disparate forms of social right and wrong, and it offers no criteria for
inclusion or exclusion within the moral category of social norms. Behav-
iors as different as harm to another person and failure to wear conven-
tional dress are both considered wrong and, therefore, subject to moral
socialization. Thus, there is no sense in which morality is viewed in this
conventional perspective as something apart from knowledge of social
norms in general.
Within philosophy, however, attempts have been made to establish cri-
teria for determining what ought to count as a moral value. According to
formalist ethics1 (e.g., Dworkin 1977; Frankena 1978; Gewirth 1978;
Habermas 1991), this notion of ought carries with it two related ideas. One
is that what is morally right is not something that is simply subject to in-
dividual opinion but carries with it an objective prescriptive force. The
second, related idea, is that what is morally right, because it is objec-
tively prescriptive, holds generally and can be universalized across peo-
ple. These two criteria, prescriptivity and universality, are linked together
in philosophical analyses to issues of human welfare, justice, and rights.2
What we have learned through research over the past twenty-five years
is that people in general, and not just philosophers, also do not hold global
conceptions of social right and wrong, but reason very differently about
matters of morality, convention, and personal choice (Nucci 1977, 1996;
Turiel 1983). More specifically, these conceptual differences become ap-
parent when people are asked to evaluate different actions in terms of cri-
teria similar to those set out in formalist ethics.
1 Formalist ethics is not the only philosophical system to be concerned with definitions
of morality. I bring in formal criteria here as a way of illustrating the basic distinctions
that can be made between morality and the conventions of society. These same kinds of
distinctions are also made by children and adults in their own natural reasoning about
social and moral issues. People also combine formalist with nonformalist ideas in their
moral cognition. Some of these nonformalist aspects of everyday morality will be
brought into the discussions in later chapters about emotion and moral character.
2 Carol Gilligan (1982) has made a strong case for care as an alternative moral orientation
to a morality of justice. I will take up the issue of care and morality in the Chapter 6 dis-
cussion of the role of affect in morality.
Within the domain theory of social development, morality refers to

conceptions of human welfare, justice, and rights, which are a function of
the inherent features of interpersonal relations (Turiel 1983). As such, pre-
scriptions pertaining to the right and wrong of moral actions are not sim-
ply the function of consensus or the views of authority. For example, it is
not possible to hit another person with force and not hurt that other per-
son. That is because hurting is an inherent consequence of hitting. A moral
judgment about unprovoked harm (It is wrong to hit.) would not be de-
pendent on the existence of a socially agreed-upon norm or standard but
could be generated solely from the intrinsic effects of the act (i.e., hitting
hurts). In this example, the prescriptive force of the moral standard It is
wrong to hit. is objective in the sense that the effects of the act are inde-
pendent of the views of the observer, prescriptive in the sense that the is-
sue of wrong stems from the objective features of the act, and generaliz-
able in the sense that the effects of the act hold across people irrespective
of background. Similar analyses could be done regarding a broader range
of issues pertaining to human welfare that would extend beyond harm to
concerns for what it means to be just, compassionate, and considerate of
the rights of others. In studies on reasoning about a broad range of issues,
it has been found that moral judgments are structured by the persons un-
derstandings of fairness and human welfare (Turiel 1983).
In contrast with issues of morality are matters of social convention.
Conventions are the agreed-upon uniformities in social behavior deter-
mined by the social system in which they are formed (Turiel 1983). Unlike
moral prescriptions, conventions are arbitrary because there are no in-
herent interpersonal effects of the actions they regulate. For example,
among the many conventions children in our society are expected to learn
is that certain classes of adults (e.g., teachers, physicians) are addressed
by their titles. Since there are no inherently positive or negative effects of
forms of address, society could just as easily have set things up differently
(e.g., had children refer to their teachers by first names). Through ac-
cepted usage, however, these standards serve to coordinate the interac-
tions of individuals participating within a social system by providing
them with a set of expectations regarding appropriate behavior. In turn,
the matrix of social conventions and customs is an element in the struc-
turing and maintenance of the general social order (Searle 1969).
These two forms of social regulation, morality and convention, are both
a part of the social order. Conceptually, however, they are not reducible
one to another and are understood within distinct conceptual frameworks
or domains. This distinction between morality and convention is nicely il-
lustrated by the following example (collected in the U.S. Virgin Islands

during the research for Nucci, Turiel, and Encarnacion-Gawrych 1983)
taken from an interview with a 4-year-old girl regarding her perceptions
of spontaneously occurring transgressions at her preschool.
MORAL ISSUE: Did you see what happened? Yes. They were playing and John
hit him too hard. Is that something you are supposed to do or not supposed to
do? Not so hard to hurt. Is there a rule about that? Yes. What is the rule? Youre
not to hit hard. What if there were no rule about hitting hard, would it be all
right to do then? No. Why not? Because he could get hurt and start to cry.
CONVENTIONAL ISSUE: Did you see what just happened? Yes. They were
noisy. Is that something you are supposed to or not supposed to do? Not do.
Is there a rule about that? Yes. We have to be quiet. What if there were no
rule, would it be all right to do then? Yes. Why? Because there is no rule.
As I stated earlier, the distinction between morality and nonmoral

norms of social regulation, such as convention, has not been generally
made in values education. Traditional values educators, such as Kevin
Ryan (1996) and Edward Wynne (1989), hold that moral values are estab-
lished by society. They treat all values including morality as matters of
custom and convention to be inculcated in children as a part of what they
refer to as character education. The kind of distinction drawn here is also
at variance with accounts that have had the greatest impact on develop-
mental approaches to moral education. In contrast with behaviorism and
traditional approaches to moral education, the accounts of moral devel-
opment offered by Piaget (1932) and Kohlberg (1984) were informed by
and included philosophical distinctions between morality and conven-
tion. However, while differing in their interpretations of the ages at which
such changes take place, both Piaget (1932) and Kohlberg (1984) main-
tained that only at the highest stages of moral development can morality
be differentiated from and displace convention as the basis for moral
judgments.
Over the past twenty-five years, however, more than sixty published
articles have reported research demonstrating that morality and conven-
tion emerge as distinct conceptual frameworks at very early ages and un-
dergo distinct patterns of age-related developmental changes. This re-
search is reviewed in detail in Helwig, Tisak and Turiel 1990; Smetana
1995a; Tisak 1995; and Turiel 1998a. Three main forms of evidence have
been offered in support of the contention that morality is a conceptual sys-
tem distinct from understandings of nonmoral social norms. The first con-
sists of studies examining whether or not individuals make conceptual
distinctions between moral and nonmoral social issues on the basis of a
number of formal criteria. The second form of research consists of obser-
vational studies of childrens social interactions to determine if the pat-
tern of social interactions associated with moral issues is different from
the form of social interactions around nonmoral issues. The third form of
research has examined the age-related changes in the ways in which peo-
ple reason about moral and nonmoral concerns. Most of the attention of
each of these three forms of research has been upon the distinction be-
tween matters of morality and social convention. Other work has looked
at the development of understandings of personal prerogative and issues
of self-harm (prudence). Those latter issues will be dealt with in detail in
chapter 3. What follows is an overview of the research on the moralcon-
ventional distinction.
research on the moral and conventional domains
Studies of the MoralConventional Distinction

The way in which researchers have determined whether or not people
make a conceptual distinction between morality and convention has been
by asking people to evaluate various actions in terms of one or more of
the following criteria:
Rule contingency: Does the wrongness of a given action depend upon

the existence of a governing rule or social norm? (The reader will rec-
ognize this criterion from the interview with the 4-year-old child de-
scribed above.)
Rule alterability: Is it wrong or all right to remove or alter the existing
norm or standard?
Rule generalizability: Is it wrong or all right for members of another so-
ciety or culture not to have a given rule or norm?
Act generalizability: Is it wrong or all right for a member of another so-
ciety or culture to engage in the act if that society/culture does not
have a rule about the act?
Act severity: How wrong (usually on a 5-point scale) is a given action?
For the most part, these criteria map onto the formal criteria for morality
presented by formalist ethics. Rule contingency and rule alterability both
refer to the philosophical criterion that a moral norm be prescriptive. Rule

and act generalizability both refer to the philosophical criterion that the
moral norm apply universally to all persons.
In addition to being asked to make criterion judgments, people are also
asked to provide justifications for the answers they give. These justifica-
tions allow researchers to determine which substantive bases people em-
ploy to make their criterion judgments. In the example presented earlier,
the young girl responded to the rule contingency question about hitting
by responding that it would be wrong to hit, whether or not a governing
rule were in effect. The substantive justification for judging hitting as
wrong was that hitting has harmful effects on another person.
In order to gain clear-cut answers to whether or not people make dis-
tinctions between morality and convention, researchers have asked peo-
ple to make judgments that would constitute prototypical examples of
moral or conventional issues. Issues have been presented in contexts in
which the acts in question are generally not in conflict with other types of
goals or events. More complex issues involving conflict and overlap have
also been studied, and I will discuss that work in Chapters 4 and 5. In
studies which have involved observations of childrens interactions, chil-
dren have been asked to evaluate real situations they had just witnessed
(as in the previous example). In most cases, however, issues have been
presented in story or pictorial form. The types of issues used as moral
stimuli have had to do with welfare and physical harm (for instance,
pushing, shoving, hitting, and killing), psychological harm (such as teas-
ing, hurting feelings, ridiculing, or name calling), fairness and rights (such
things as stealing, breaking a promise, not sharing a toy, or destroying
others property), and positive behaviors (things like helping another in
need, sharing, or donating to charity).
Consistent with the assumptions of domain theory, children and adults
distinguish between morality and convention on the basis of these crite-
ria. Moral issues are viewed to be independent of the existence of social
norms and generalizable across contexts, societies, and cultures. Social
conventions, on the other hand, are rule dependent, and their normative
force holds only within the social system within which the rule was
formed. Justifications people give for their criterion judgments are also in
line with the distinctions that have been drawn between the moral and
conventional domains. Judgments of moral issues are justified in terms of
the harm or unfairness that actions would cause, while judgments of con-
ventions are justified in terms of norms and the expectations of authority.
There are, as one would expect, age and experience effects on the abil-
ity of people to make these domain distinctions. The youngest age at

which children have been reported to differentiate consistently between
morality and convention is 2 1/2 years (Smetana and Braeges 1990). The
toddlers in the Smetana and Braeges (1990) study were more likely to gen-
eralize moral issues across contexts (view such issues as unprovoked hit-
ting of another child as wrong both at home and at another day-care set-
ting) than they were to generalize conventions (putting toys away). They
did not, however, make distinctions based on any of the other dimensions
used in that study. By about age 3 1/2, however, children treated moral
and conventional issues differently on the basis of several criteria, in-
cluding seriousness and rule contingency, as well as generalizability.
The same study demonstrated that children are capable of making rudi-
mentary distinctions between issues of morality and convention during
the third year of life. This study and other work (Nucci and Turiel 1978;
Smetana 1981) have demonstrated that by age 4, children have developed
fairly consistent and firm differentiations between familiar moral and con-
ventional issues encountered in home or preschool settings. As children
become older, their understandings of moral and conventional issues are
extended beyond events with which the children have had direct personal
experience to include the broad range of issues, familiar and unfamiliar
alike, which constitute moral and conventional forms of social events
(Davidson, Turiel, and Black 1983). Moreover, as children develop, they
become better able to apply more abstract criteria, such as cross-cultural
generalizability, to differentiate between issues within the two domains.
Studies that examine whether children differentiate between morality
and convention have not been limited to the United States or Western con-
texts, but have been conducted across a wide range of the worlds cul-
tures. Such studies have been conducted with children and adolescents in
northeastern Brazil; preschool children in St. Croix, the Virgin Islands;
Christian and Moslem children in Indonesia; urban and kibbutz Jewish
children and traditional village Arab children in Israel; children and
adults in India; children and adolescents in Korea; Ijo children in Nigeria;
and children in Zambia. (For a complete listing of these studies see
Smetana 1995a or Turiel 1998a.) With some variations in specific findings
regarding convention, the distinction between morality and convention
has been reported in each of the cultures examined. Only one study
(Shweder et al. 1987) has claimed to have obtained data indicating that in-
dividuals within a non-Western culture (members of a temple village in
India) make no distinction between morality and convention, and that re-
sult has been disputed by findings from a subsequent study (Madden
1992). In all cases, children and adolescents have been found to treat moral
issues entailing harm and injustice in much the same way. Children across
cultural groups and social classes have been found to treat moral trans-
gressions, such as unprovoked harm, as wrong regardless of the presence
or absence of rules, and have viewed the wrongness of such moral trans-
gressions as holding universally for children in other cultures or settings,
and not just for their own group. This is a rather remarkable set of find-
ings, and has to stand as one of the more robust phenomena to have been
uncovered by psychological research.
Some cultural differences have been reported, however, in findings re-
garding childrens treatment of social conventions. In some respects, this
has been due to differences in methods employed by researchers from dif-
ferent investigative groups in framing questions posed to children. For
example, in a study conducted in northeastern Brazil (Haidt, Koller, and
Dias 1994), children were presented with descriptions of rules from two
cultures. In each case, one culture had a rule just like the childs own cul-
ture, and the other did not. Children were asked to indicate whether one
of the cultures was doing the better thing. Overwhelmingly, children in-
dicated that the culture whose rule was like their own was doing the bet-
ter thing. This form of question, however, does not differentiate between
what children view as universally obligatory from what they view as pre-
ferred. The fact that children in the study preferred their own rules to
other ones may or may not mean that they saw it as wrong for other cul-
tures to do things differently. Indeed, when children from the same area
of Brazil were directly asked to evaluate whether it would be wrong or all
right for people of another culture to engage in a given act if the other cul-
ture had no rule about the act, children universalized moral prescriptions
(e.g., it would be wrong to hit). They did not, however, tend to universal-
ize their own conventions (e.g., eat chicken with a fork instead of with
ones hands) (Nucci et al. 1996).
Failure to employ methods that directly and clearly assess criteria peo-
ple use to evaluate moral and conventional acts accounts for studies fail-
ing to observe distinctions between morality and convention (Haidt et al.
1994; Shweder et al. 1987). When such methodological issues are taken
into account, however, some cultural differences in treatment of social
conventions still remain. For instance, Korean children and adolescents
made much greater use of justifications pertaining to social status, social
roles, appropriate behavior, and courtesy than is commonly observed in
American childrens reasoning about conventions (Song et al. 1987). Ijo
children and adolescents in Nigeria (Hollos et al. 1986), Arab children in
Israel (Nisan 1987), and lower class children in northeastern Brazil (Nucci
et al. 1996) affirmed the importance of customs and tradition to a greater
degree than did American children. In each of these latter studies, how-
ever, issues of culture were confounded with social class. A general find-
ing is that middle-class children worldwide appear to be more willing
than lower-class children to view conventions as alterable and culture or
context specific. Untangling what aspect of observed cross-country dif-
ferences in childrens treatment of convention is due to culture, and what
is due to cross-cultural effects of social-class hierarchy, is an issue for fu-
ture research.
In sum, the overwhelming body of research evidence is consistent with
the proposal that morality is conceptualized differently from convention.
As I noted earlier, this finding has been used by some writers on moral
development (viz., Wilson 1993) to sustain the view that morality is based
on an innate moral sense. That is not the view being presented here. On
the contrary, the observed emergence of morality and convention as dis-
tinct conceptual systems is to be accounted for in terms of the qualitatively
differing forms of social interaction children experience in the context of
these two forms of social regulation. Lets turn, then, to an overview of
the research that has looked at those patterns of social interaction.
Origins of the Childs Construction of Morality and Convention

Morality and convention may both be thought of as rule-governed be-
haviors. What distinguishes them, according to domain theory, is that in
the case of morality, the source of the rule is reflection upon the effects of
the act, whereas in the case of convention, the status of the act is a func-
tion of the presence or absence of a governing rule. We should expect,
then, that social experiences and interactions associated with moral trans-
gressions would revolve around the effects of acts upon the self and oth-
ers as victims. On the other hand, given the arbitrary nature and consen-
sual basis of conventions, we would expect social experiences concerning
conventions to come in the form of external social messages focusing on
normative expectations, rules, and efforts to achieve social conformity.
A good way to get a sense of whether morality and convention are as-
sociated with different patterns of social interaction is to observe what
takes place in the context of transgressions. Morality and convention both
define social right and wrong. By observing breaches of social norms, it is
possible to learn whether or not an officially stated norm is actually re-
sponded to as such. In a study of childrens social interactions in free-play
settings, for example, we discovered that middle-class suburban children

almost never respond to another childs use of profanity (Nucci and Nucci
1982a). Within the context of that peer culture, adult-generated norms
regulating profanity were simply not in play. When transgressions are re-
sponded to, the social give-and-take both indicates the responsibilities of
participants and affords a way to discern whether patterns of exchange
are associated with particular kinds of acts. Such interactions have been
characterized as entailing a kind of social grammar in which children ne-
gotiate, test, employ, and clarify social norms (Much and Shweder 1978).
Childrens responses to one anothers transgressions have also been
viewed as efforts to repair the social fabric (Sedlak and Walton 1982) and
to negotiate social responsibility. A number of studies, therefore, have
looked at patterns of interaction in the context of moral and conventional
transgressions.
The patterns of peer interactions surrounding moral and conventional
transgressions are illustrated in the following events observed in a study
of children in free-play settings (Nucci and Nucci 1982a). In each case, the
transgression is italicized.
Social Convention
1. A boy and a girl are sitting together on the grass, away from the other chil-
dren, tying their shoes. Another boy (2) sings out to them, Bobby and
Alison sittin in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G, etc.
2. A girl (1) is sucking on a piece of grass. Girl (2) says to girl (3), Thats what
she does, she sucks on weeds and spits them out. Girl (3) says,
Gross! Girl (2) says, Thats disgusting! Girl (1) then places the piece
of grass down and ceases placing grass in her mouth.
Moral
1. Two boys (1 and 2) are throwing sand at a smaller boy (3). Boy 3 says,
Dammit you got it in my eyes. It hurts like hell. Next time Im gonna
kick your heads in. Boy (1) says to boy (2), Hey, did you hear that?
Next time hes gonna kick our heads in. They both laugh and throw
more sand in the face of boy (3). Boy (3) then spits at boy (1) and runs
away.
2. Two boys have forcibly taken a sled away from a younger boy and are playing
with it. A girl who was watching says to the boys, Hey, give it back,
a holes. Thats really even odds, the two of you against one little
kid. The girl then pulls the sled away from one of the older boys,
pushes him to the ground, and hands the sled back to the younger boy.
He takes the sled and the incident ends.
As can be seen in these examples, the social experiences of children dif-

fer by domain. In the case of moral events, children experience such is-
sues as victims as well as perpetrators or third-person observers. The
transgression (such as hitting, stealing, or damaging property) is followed
by peer reactions focusing on the intrinsic effects of the act (that is, by
statements of injury or loss, or by evaluations of the act as unjust or hurt-
ful). Generally, these reactions have a high degree of emotion. In the case
of very young children, the reaction may consist solely of crying. In addi-
tion, children tend to avenge moral transgressions or avert further actions
through attempts at retaliation or, in the case of young children, by in-
volving adults. Peer reactions are, in turn, generally followed by trans-
gressor responses. For the most part, these reactions either attempt to re-
pair social relations (a) through direct apology for the act, (b) by efforts at
restitution, or (c) by simple cessation of the behavior; or they attempt to
explain or excuse the act by (a) claiming that it was justifiable retribution
for a prior harm (You hit me first.), (b) claiming that no harm was in-
tended, or (c) claiming that no substantial harm or injustice resulted from
the act (Oh, youre all right. I just tapped you.). Transgressor reactions
in a minority of cases (see moral example 1) also include derision of the
respondent and/or continued engagement in the transgression. This last
form of reaction, however, is more common in the context of conventional
events.
In contrast to the pattern of interactions observed in moral events, peer
interactions involving breaches of convention tend to arouse relatively lit-
tle emotion and focus on the normative status of the acts. The transgres-
sion (such as engaging in sex-role counterbehavior, violating dress norms,
or using an improper form of greeting) is followed by peer responses fo-
cusing on social norms and social expectations. Respondents state gov-
erning rules, evaluate the acts as odd or disruptive, and attempt to achieve
conformity through ridicule (see conventional example 1). Transgressor
reactions to these peer responses include attempts to conform through
compliance with the norm or defense of their conduct through challenges
of the rule (We dont have to do that. Who made up that dumb rule?).
Finally, because conventions achieve their force through social consensus
and/or imposition by authority, transgressors sometimes react to peer re-
spondents by challenging their authority to uphold the norm (Youre not
my mother.) or by ignoring the respondent and continuing to engage in

the behavior.
These patterns of child response to transgression have been observed
in emergent form among toddlers (Dunn and Munn 1985, 1987; Dunn and
Slomkowski 1992; Smetana 1984, 1989) and preschool children in home
and school contexts (Much and Shweder 1978; Nucci and Turiel 1978;
Nucci and Weber 1985; Ross 1996). Beginning in toddlerhood, children re-
spond to violations of moral transgressions generally as victims. Their re-
sponses indicate that they have experienced such acts as hurtful. In turn,
their reactions provide information to peer transgressors about the hurt-
ful effects of the actions. Very young children generally do not respond to
violations of conventions. This finding is not surprising in that conven-
tional acts are not in themselves prescriptive. By preschool, however, chil-
dren begin to respond to peer violations of generally held conventions,
such as dresses for girls and not boys, but do not as yet respond to peer
violations of conventions particular to the school setting (e.g., norms re-
garding classroom cleanup), which are left to the adults to worry about
(Nucci et al. 1983).
The pattern of adult responses to childrens transgressions is also dif-
ferent by domain. Adult responses to moral transgressions complement
those of children and often follow them in time (Smetana 1984). Mothers
of toddlers provide social messages focusing on the hurtful effects of
moral transgressions, and also attempt to persuade children to engage in
prosocial behaviors and share or be nice (Gralinski and Kopp 1993). As
children grow older, these adult responses become more elaborated as
children are provided more explicit social messages regarding the harm-
ful impact of their actions and are asked by teachers and parents to con-
sider the perspective of the other person (Mary, how do you feel when
people lie to you?), as well as to reflect on their own motivations for act-
ing as they did (Why did you do that?). Adult responses to convention
also complement those of children. Mothers responses to toddlers viola-
tions of convention generally focus on commands to cease the behavior,
and less frequently include statements that address the conventional fea-
tures of the acts (e.g., the underlying rules or the disorder caused by the
action)(Smetana, 1984). As children develop, mothers and teachers pro-
vide more comprehensive statements regarding the underlying social
rules and social expectations.
By elementary school, adult feedback about violations of convention
take the form of direct rule statements or reminders of rules and expecta-
tions (Raise your hand before talking.), as well as statements labeling

the transgressions as unruly; disorderly (Its getting too noisy in here.);
unmannerly (Chew with your mouth closed. Where are your man-
ners?); inappropriate for the context (Dan, those ripped jeans are okay
for play, but not for school.); and generally inconsistent with conven-
tional expectations (Thats not the way for a Hawthorne student to act.
Susan, act your age.).
In early adolescence, as children begin to struggle with the functions and
meaning of conventions within the larger social order, adult messages to
children sometimes contain explanations of these more abstract connec-
tions. As will be outlined later in the book, the effectiveness of these more
abstract messages is a function of the developmental level of the child.
In sum, the pattern of adult responses to moral and conventional
events complements those of children. It is interesting to note however,
that the relative proportion of child transgressions involving adult or
child respondents differs by domain. Adults respond less often to chil-
drens moral transgressions than do other children. Conversely, adults are
more likely than children to respond to violations of conventions. For ex-
ample, a study of 2- and 3-year-old childrens social interactions (Smetana
1989) reported that conflicts with peers occurred primarily over issues of
possessions, rights, taking turns, aggression, and unkindness (all moral
issues), whereas childrens conflicts with mothers occurred primarily
over manners and politeness, rules of the house, and cultural norms (all
conventional issues). Similar findings were reported for somewhat older
(3- and 4-year-old) children in a study looking at naturally occurring
events in the home (Nucci and Weber 1995). This study found that the ma-
jority of childrens moral events took place in free-play settings and in-
volved feedback from children more often than from the mothers. Viola-
tions of convention, on the other hand, were more generally responded to
by mothers than by young children.
These patterns also carry over to school settings. Children are more
likely than teachers to respond to other childrens moral transgressions,
whereas teachers are the primary respondents to violations of school con-
vention (Nucci and Nucci 1982b; Nucci and Turiel 1978). These findings
are consistent with the view that childrens moral understandings de-
velop primarily out of peer interactions (Damon 1977; Piaget 1932).
Part of the explanation of the differences in rate of responding to moral
transgressions is due to the fact that moral transgressions often take place
and are resolved out of the view of parents or teachers. This factor alone,
however, does not account for the rate with which parents and teachers
engage in responses to childrens moral transgressions. It also seems that
adults and children both appear to prefer to allow children to resolve their
own moral disputes, a trend that increases as children get older. For ex-
ample, one study reported that while parental responses to childrens
moral events increase during toddlerhood, adult intervention appears to
decrease from preschool years to middle childhood (Gralinski and Kopp
1993). Similarly, it has been found that the rate of teacher responses to chil-
drens moral transgressions at school gradually decreases from grades
three to five, and by grade seven is so infrequent that the researchers were
unable to apply statistical analyses to the patterns of adult response
(Nucci and Nucci 1982b). For their part, preschool-age children would
rather work out conflicts on their own without adult intervention as the
preferred means of resolving moral disputes (Killen and Turiel 1991), and
beginning in middle childhood, children gradually ask for less help from
adults in resolving moral conflicts (Nucci and Nucci 1982a, b).
These trends say nothing about the importance or effectiveness of adult
as opposed to peer responses to moral issues. However, these findings are
consistent with the characterization of morality as emerging out of in-
trinsic features of social interactions, features that are accessible even to
young children. These findings sit in contrast with traditional views of
children as the passive recipients of adult morality. The arbitrary nature
and relative opaqueness of conventions, on the other hand, may help to
explain why children are less likely than adults to respond to social con-
vention. While young children do respond to violations of peer conven-
tions of dress, speech, and play patterns (Corsaro 1985; Killen 1989; Nucci
and Nucci 1982a; Nucci, Turiel, and Gawrych 1983), it is not until middle
childhood that children respond to peer breaches of the norms of adult-
structured institutions, such as school (Nucci and Nucci 1982b). The emer-
gence of such peer responses with age may be related to developmental
changes in childrens conceptions of the social organizational functions of
convention. I will take up these developmental issues in Chapter 4 when
we look at how moral and social judgments are made in context. For now,
the important point is to recognize that childrens constructions of their
notions of morality and of the conventions of society are emerging out of
different aspects of their social experiences. It is the qualitatively different
nature of moral and conventional events and interactions children expe-
rience that accounts for the fact that children think about morality and
convention in such different ways.
conclusions
In this chapter we have seen that a core component of moral action is
moral judgment. We have also seen that contemporary research on chil-
drens moral and social judgments indicates that morality constitutes a
domain of understandings and judgments distinct from other social
norms and values, such as social conventions or personal preferences and
tastes. Perhaps the most powerful and important part of these research
findings for educators in pluralist democracies is that the domain of
morality is structured around issues that are universal and nonarbitrary.
The core of human morality is a concern for fairness and human welfare.
Thus, there is a basic core of morality around which educators can con-
struct their educational practices without imposing arbitrary standards or
retreating into value relativism.
The origins of moral knowledge can be traced to the early exchanges
children have around actions that affect the rights or well-being of them-
selves or other people. Young children are not simply learning the rules
of adult society but are coming to conclusions about the ways in which
particular kinds of (moral) actions affect the very ability of people to get
along with one another. This is not to say that morality and childrens
moral judgments are not affected by other social norms and values.
Morality coexists with other domains and dimensions of values and as-
sumptions that people maintain about the nature of the world and peo-
ples place within it. Thus, educators need to be cognizant of the ways in
which children construct their understandings of these other normative
frames, and the ways in which moral and nonmoral values interact as chil-
dren generate actions in their everyday lives. In the chapters that follow I
will take up some of those relations to other values in more detail. The
first issue I want to address is the relation between morality and religious
norms. I take that up in Chapter 2.
chapter two
Morality and Religious Rules
Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To at-

tack the first is not to assail the last (Charlotte Bront, 1977, 1847, p. 3).
One question frequently asked by those concerned with moral or charac-

ter education is whether morality can be addressed independently of re-
ligious values. Responding to that question is timely and relevant to
teachers and parents alike. The current plea for God and prayer to be put
back into the classroom derives from an old and enduring belief that
morality and religion are inseparable. This belief extends beyond the
parochial scope of specific religious groups. The problem this point of
view presents to teachers and administrators of any pluralist democracy,
however, is that it forces school personnel to choose among the values of
differing religious groups. For schools in the United States this issue pres-
ents teachers and administrators with the particular legal dilemma of
teaching about morality without, at the same time, violating First Amend-
ment freedoms and constitutional provisions regarding the separation of
church and state. In the 1970s, many schools dealt with this issue by re-
treating into the value relativism of values-clarification programs (Simon,
Howe, and Kirschenbaum 1972). Other schools and districts have simply
attempted to avoid the issue entirely by not engaging in any purposeful
effort at moral or character education. From the perspective of funda-
mentalist and nonreligious parents alike, the promotion of value rela-
tivism and the purposeful avoidance of moral teaching in public schools
is a cause for alarm. Moreover, assumptions about the inseparability of re-
ligion and morality raise concerns among fundamentalists that the teach-
ing of values within public schools without Bible study and prayer will
undermine the moral beliefs of their children. In the 1980s and 1990s, par-
ents of fundamentalist children in the United States have responded to
20
morality and religious rules 21
such concerns by withdrawing their children from public schools and, in

increasing numbers, engaging in the practice of home schooling (Lyman
1998).
For civil society in the United States or any other pluralist democracy,
the ramifications of a failure to resolve such educational concerns satis-
factorily are self-evident. One index of the complexity of questions re-
garding the relation between morality and religion is the fact that this has
been an enduring area of controversy debated by philosophers since
Platos time (Crittenden 1990). At least one aspect of these issues, how-
ever, has been resolved by research that has examined whether children
and adolescents make a distinction between the rules and practices spe-
cific to their religion, and those moral issues that ought to be common to
religions other than their own and to secular society as well. In that re-
search, we applied the distinction we have drawn between moral and
nonmoral areas of social regulation to examine how Christian and Jewish
children conceptualize the rules of their respective religions.
morality and religious norms as seen by catholics

The first of these studies focused on traditional Roman Catholics for two
main reasons: (1) Catholicism has a clearly designated authority and pro-
cedure for interpreting and determining what constitutes sinful behavior
(i.e., the pope, usually after consultation with other bishops, has the ulti-
mate authority to interpret and hence determine matters of doctrine), and
(2) Catholicism, as one of the worlds largest and oldest organized reli-
gions, has become an integral part of many sociocultural systems.
In the study (Nucci 1985), Catholic adolescents and young adults were
asked to make a number of judgments about actions considered sins by
the Catholic Church. Some of the actions, such as stealing, killing, rape,
slander, and so forth, entailed harm or injustice toward another and were
classified by us as matters of morality. Other actions, such as failure to at-
tend religious services on Easter or Christmas, fasting prior to commun-
ion, the use of contraceptives, masturbation, premarital sex between con-
senting adults, divorce, and ordaining women, entailed violations of
worship patterns or social behavior prescribed by Catholicism as an in-
stitution. These actions were classified as nonmoral and akin to matters
of social convention. Items were presented in questionnaire form and all
were randomized to control for response bias. The items used in the study
are listed in Table 2.1 (one item, homosexuality, is not listed since it was
the focus of a subsequent study to be discussed in Chapter 5). It should
be pointed out that nonmoral religious prescriptions are not, strictly

speaking, conventions, since they are presumably derived from scripture
and are not considered by the devout to be the products of social con-
sensus. With Catholicism this issue is complicated by the existence of
church authorities (i.e., the pope and the bishops) who are empowered to
determine such issues for members of the Catholic faith. It was yet our
view that such issues would not be treated as matters of morality by
Catholics.
Participants in the study were asked to make three kinds of judgments.
First, they were asked to rate the seriousness of each transgression using
a 4-point scale on which 1 = not wrong at all and 4 = very seriously wrong.
The remaining two judgments required subjects to employ criteria for
identifying the moral (i.e., prescriptivity, universality) as set out in do-
main theory. Judgments of the prescriptivity of various actions was
evoked by asking (1) whether it would be wrong or all right for the pope
in conjunction with the bishops to remove the attendant moral and con-
ventional rules, and (2) if it would be wrong or all right for a Catholic to
engage in a given behavior once the rule was removed. Judgments of the
universality of acts as constituting wrongful behavior were evoked by
asking whether it would be all right or wrong for members of another re-
ligion to engage in the behavior if the other religion had no rules or stan-
dards regarding the acts.
Participants in the study were 100 sophomores attending religion
classes at two Chicago Catholic high schools and equal numbers of un-
dergraduates attending a Chicago-area university. A preliminary set of
questions determined that both groups were devout, practicing church-
goers (92% of the university Catholics and 95.3% of the high school stu-
dents received communion at least monthly). In addition, nearly all of the
participants in both groups adhered to the traditional Catholic beliefs that
Mary remained a virgin at the time of Christs conception, that Christ is
God and rose from the dead, and that Peter was the first head of the
church.
With regard to subjects judgments of the seriousness of transgressions,
we found that both the high school and college-age Catholics rated the
moral transgressions as more serious than violations of Catholic conven-
tions. This finding occurred despite the fact that according to church
dogma, engagement in a number of the prohibited conventional behav-
iors entail the same severe penalty (i.e., damnation) as engagement in the
prohibited moral acts. These data are consistent with findings from other
research in secular settings indicating that children and adolescents tend
to rate moral transgressions as more serious than violations of convention

(Tisak and Turiel, 1988), and indicate that the Catholic adolescents and
young adults in our study based their judgments of the greater serious-
ness of moral transgressions on criteria other than the punishments as-
sumed by Catholic dogma. It is our view that these Catholics judged the
moral transgressions to be more serious because of the intrinsic effects
such actions as hitting, stealing, slander and rape have on the recipient of
the act.
Findings for the high school and college-age Catholics responses to
questions regarding the removal of Church rules are presented in the
table. As can be seen there, the overwhelming majority of the participants
(on average 91.6% high school, 98% university) viewed it as wrong for
church authorities to remove rules governing moral transgressions, such
as hitting and stealing. In contrast, on average, less than half of the high
school (40.8%) and university (32.7%) Catholics viewed it as wrong for the
pope to remove the church rules regarding nonmoral (conventional) be-
haviors, such as fasting prior to communion, the ordination of women,
the use of contraceptives, or engaging in premarital sex. Responses to
questions regarding whether or not it would be wrong to engage in the
various actions once religious prohibitions were removed essentially par-
alleled the findings regarding the removal of the rules themselves. It
would appear that to the extent that devout American Catholics grant the
pope and other religious leaders the authority to alter the standards for
good or right Catholic conduct, this authority extends only to actions
in the nonmoral (conventional) domain.
One possible explanation for this finding is that the majority of Amer-
ican Catholics, contrary to Church dogma, do not view the pope as infal-
lible in matters of faith. Our own data would tend to bear that out. Only
23% of our university sample and 28% of our high school participants ad-
hered to the belief in papal infallibility. These findings are in line with
other surveys of American Catholic attitudes dating back to the 1970s (cf.
NBC News Poll 122, 1979). For the remaining quarter of our subjects, who
professed a belief in papal infallibility, our findings may reflect an in-
credulity on their part that the pope would make the error of removing
church rules governing moral actions. In either case, these results are in
line with the view that people may generate ideas about the prescriptiv-
ity of moral actions independent of the rules or pronouncements of reli-
gious authorities.
With respect to relativity questions (i.e., questions about other reli-
gions), we found that Catholics tended to universalize only the moral is-
TABLE 2.1. Percentages of High School and University Catholics

Responding It Would Be Wrong to Questions Regarding Religious Rules
Would it be wrong or Suppose that another

all right for the pope religion, religion B, has
and cardinals to drop no rule or law about the
the rule about the act? act. Would it be wrong or
all right for a member of
religion B to do the act?
High High
Type of Rule School University School University
Moral
Hitting and hurting 93 100 92 98
Rape 98 100 98 100
Murder 98 100 98 98
Kidnap and ransom 97 100 94 98
Stealing 98 100 92 100
Damaging anothers
home 90 100 94 98
Sell dangerous
defective car to
unsuspecting
buyer 79 96 83 94
Slander 90 98 82 98
Betray anothers
personal secrets 90 96 92 94
Racial discrimination
in hiring 72 89 75 84
Ridiculing a cripple 97 100 90 98
Allowing another to
be punished for
ones own misdeeds 97 100 96 98
Church convention
Not attending
services on Sunday 46 42 39 12
Eating 15 minutes
before communion 38 34 19 12
Receiving communion
without confession 50 47 45 35
Year without
communion 57 38 36 14
Not attend mass on
Easter or Christmas 62 54 48 31
Ordaining women 39 16 29 08
TABLE 2.1 (continued)
Would it be wrong or Suppose that another

all right for the pope religion, religion B, has
and cardinals to drop no rule or law about the
the rule about the act? act. Would it be wrong or
all right for a member of
religion B to do the act?
High High
Type of Rule School University School University
Sexual conventions
Premarital sex 29 32 17 12
Masturbation 43 18 25 14
Birth control
(the pill) 22 16 27 08
Divorce 18 31 22 27
Marital sex for
pleasure 21 12 25 06
sues. The findings are also summarized in Table 2.1. On average, 91% of
the high school participants and 97% of the university students viewed it
as wrong for members of another religion to engage in acts that were
moral transgressions (e.g., stealing, harm to another) even if the other re-
ligion had no rules regarding the acts. In contrast to moral issues, fewer
than half of the Catholics (on average 33.8% high school, 18.2% univer-
sity) were willing to universalize Catholic conventions and treat as wrong
engagement in such conventional actions by members of religions that do
not regulate those behaviors. The tendency of the participants in the study
to acknowledge the relativism of their churchs conventions is highlighted
by findings that the percentages of participants viewing acts as wrong for
members of another religion were significantly less than the percentages
of participants who viewed it as wrong for Catholics themselves to en-
gage in the behaviors if the pope removed the governing rules. In sum,
these findings indicate that Catholics distinguish between church con-
ventions, which serve to organize and regulate the behaviors of persons
who define themselves as Catholics, and those moral acts that have an in-
trinsic effect upon the rights and well-being of others, Catholic and non-
Catholic alike.
Our study of Catholics provided very strong support for our hypothe-
ses regarding morality and religion. It must be said, however, that
Catholicism, because of its organizational structure, seems ideally suited
for the type of question we posed. Catholics, particularly since Vatican II,
have become accustomed to the notion that church regulations may be al-
tered by the hierarchy, and therefore relative to the historical period. As
our research has shown, Catholics extend this relativity only to church
regulations that refer to matters of convention. Nonetheless, one might
ask whether members of fundamentalist or orthodox groups, which es-
chew the notion of a temporal Church hierarchy and presumably derive
their rules directly from scripture, would react in a similar fashion when
asked about the alterability or universality of their religious conventions.
To address these issues we conducted subsequent studies with
Amish/Mennonite and Dutch Reform Calvinist Christian, and with Con-
servative and Orthodox Jewish children and adolescents.
morality and religious norms as seen by

fundamentalist christians and jews
The findings I will be discussing came from several different studies
(Nucci 1985; Nucci and Turiel 1993). The results from these studies, how-
ever, present a fairly consistent picture, and so to keep from being repet-
itive, I will talk about them together. We modified our methods from the
study with Catholics and employed extensive interviews rather than
questionnaires. This allowed us to get a better sense of the reasons chil-
dren had for the responses they gave to individual questions. Before I get
into the details of our methods, let me say something about the back-
grounds of the children and adolescents who participated in the research.
Christian participants. The Christian children who participated in the
research were conservative Mennonites from a rural area of Indiana and
a subgroup of Amish/Mennonite children from the same area. The Men-
nonites constitute a religious denomination within the larger Anabaptist
community, which had its origins in the Swiss reformation. Historically,
the Amish are an offshoot of the Mennonite community, which itself has
branches that are relatively liberal in comparison with the group that
participated in our study. Within the particular Indiana locale where we
conducted our research, the Amish and Conservative Mennonites shared
the same parochial school overseen by congregational pastors and ad-
ministered by an Amish principal. The beliefs and lifestyle of the Conser-
vative Mennonites and Amish in this population were essentially the
same, with very minor differences in the dress of women within each
group.
The group as a whole is distinguished by their isolation from much of
contemporary society and their rejection of most aspects of modern tech-
nology. With regard to the latter, the lifestyle of this population was a bit
less restrictive than the lifestyle adopted by their relatives in Pennsylva-
nia (e.g., families within this community were permitted to own cars, most
homes had electricity, and the school was very proud of its one Apple com-
puter). These accommodations to modernity were justified as serving the
ability of the community to effectively conduct their work. As explained
by the Amish school principal, the group remained committed, despite
these accommodations, to serving as a witness to Christ by remaining out-
side the mainstream of American customs and maintaining themselves as
a queer people. One of the children humorously quipped to me regard-
ing their lifestyle, If you think were weird you ought to go to Pennsyl-
vania. Among the beliefs and practices held by these children and their
families were a number common to other Anabaptist groups, such as the
rejection of infant baptism and papal authority. In addition, they adhered
to a prohibition against radio or television in the home and to a prescribed
plain mode of dress, the latter being more marked among the women than
the men. Women, for example, were all required to wear a prescribed head
covering following baptism, and were prohibited from wearing trousers.
In most cases, the girls in the study wore solid-color, calf-length home-
made dresses patterned after those of their seventeenth-century ancestors.
A total of 64 Amish/Mennonite children participated in the study. Half of
the children were girls and half boys distributed across four age groups
(10 to 11, 12 to 13, 14 to 15, and 16 to 17 years of age).
Jewish participants. To expand our investigation within the Judeo-
Christian tradition, we followed our study with the Amish/Mennonites
with one focusing on Jewish children. Two groups of Jewish children from
the Chicago metropolitan area participated in our interviews. The first
group was 64 Conservative Jewish children, with equal numbers of boys
and girls at ages 10 to 11, 12 to 13, 14 to 15, and 16 to 17 years. These chil-
dren (and their families) were all active members of Conservative syna-
gogues and attended parochial, private religious schools. The second
group was 32 Orthodox Jewish children, with equal numbers of boys and
girls at ages 14 to 15, and 16 to 17 years. The Orthodox children attended
an Orthodox Jewish academy (high school) and followed Jewish dietary
laws, dress customs, and holiday rituals. Many of the Conservative chil-
dren followed these same practices, but with less consistency than did the
Orthodox. For example, the Orthodox boys wore head coverings at all
times, while most of the Conservative boys wore theirs only at school or
during prayer. In addition, the Conservative children tended to observe
few of the dietary laws (such as prohibitions against eating pork) pre-
scribed by Orthodox Judaism, and came from homes that purchased
foods from nonkosher producers. We chose to interview children from
these two groups because they were representative of the two branches of
traditional Judaism. None of the Orthodox children, for example, was part
of a fundamentalist sect, such as the Hassidic.
The schism between the Orthodox and Conservatives had its historical
origins in the Enlightenment as a response to Spinozas critiques of tradi-
tional Judaic teachings. The Orthodox rejected Spinoza and the Enlight-
enment out of hand. Others, however, were deeply influenced by Spin-
oza, and later Hegel, to formulate the philosophy of the Reform
movement. The Conservatives took a middle position between the Re-
form movement and the Orthodox. Like the Reform movement, they ac-
cepted the idea that aspects of Jewish scripture were to be understood as
historical products, rather than solely a record of divine revelation. Like
the Orthodox, however, they found the Reform movements rejection of
traditional ritual unacceptable. The Conservatives view rituals and reli-
gious norms as fundamental connections to historical Jewish experience
(Borowitz 1968).
The Interview
Each of the Christian and Jewish children was individually interviewed
for approximately ninety minutes (spread over several sessions) regard-
ing his or her conceptions of moral and nonmoral religious prescriptions.
AmishMennonite children were asked about four moral issues (stealing,
hitting, slander, damaging anothers personal property) and seven non-
moral religious issues (day of worship, work on the Sabbath, baptism,
women wearing head coverings, women preaching, interfaith marriage,
premarital sex between consenting adults). The premarital sex questions
were only asked of children 14 years of age and older. The interview used
with Jewish children included the same moral issues (stealing, hitting,
slander, and damage to personal property) that were used with the
Amish/Mennonites. The nonmoral religious issues discussed with Jew-
ish children matched those we had used with the Christians, but were
modified to make them appropriate for Jewish subjects. The nonmoral is-
sues were day of worship, work on the Sabbath, men wearing head cov-
erings, male circumcision, women reading from the Torah, interfaith mar-
riage, maintaining kosher dietary laws, and premarital sex between con-
senting adults. Three issues (dietary laws, interfaith marriage, and pre-
marital sex between consenting adults) were presented only to children
above the age of 13.
Interviews for both sets of children asked three main sets of questions.
Each question set was designed to generate a specific criterion judgment
and corresponding justification. The first dealt with the alterability of re-
ligious rules. The children were asked: Suppose all the members of the
congregation and the ministers(rabbis) agreed to [alter/eliminate] the
rule about [the act], would it be wrong or all right for them to do that?
Why/why not? The second question dealt with the childrens views of
the universality of the status of the acts as transgressions. The issue here
was not whether children believed that an act was universally considered
to be wrong, but whether in their minds the acts should be considered
wrong. Children were asked: Suppose that in another religion they dont
have a rule about [the act], would it be wrong or all right for them to [en-
gage in the act] in that case? Why/why not? Inasmuch as the groups
in these studies, unlike the Catholics in our initial research, do not ac-
knowledge a final earthly authority (i.e., the pope and bishops) over scrip-
tural interpretation, we included a third set of questions aimed at deter-
mining whether the status of acts as transgressions was contingent on
Gods word as recorded in scripture. Each child was asked: Suppose Je-
sus[God] had not given us a law about the act, the Bible [Torah] didnt say
anything one way or another about [the act]. Would it be wrong or all right
for a Christian [Jew] to do [the act] in that case? Why/why not?
Interview outcomes
Let us begin discussion of the results of those interviews by considering
the findings presented on Table 2.2 regarding childrens (alterability)
judgments of whether it would be wrong or all right for religious author-
ities to remove or alter the rules governing various actions. As shown in
the table, all three groups of children consistently stated that it would be
wrong for the authorities or the collective membership of the congrega-
tion to remove rules prohibiting actions in the moral domain. These find-
ings are in line with what we would predict on the basis of domain the-
ory, and are consistent with what we found with Catholics. The childrens
responses to the same question with respect to what we had considered
nonmoral issues, however, were not consistent with a distinction between
TABLE 2.2. Percentages of Amish/Mennonite (A), Conservative Jewish

(C), and Orthodox Jewish (O) Children Responding
It Would Be Wrong to Criterion Judgment Questions
Alterability Generalizability Gods Word

Issue A C O A C O A C O
Nonmoral
Day of worship 42 86 94 20 1 0 0 0 0
Work on Sabbath 92 80 100 50 0 0 0 0 0
Baptism/
Circumcision 77 81 81 31 0 6 0 0 2
Wearing head
coverings 67 48 69 16 0 6 0 0 0
Women preaching/
reading from
the Torah 56 41 63 19 0 0 6 0 0
Interfaith marriage 42 42 88 19 14 25 0 14 9
Keeping kosher 20 91 0 09 0 2
Premarital sex 41 23 81 34 11 47 12 06 38
Nonmoral average 60 53 83 27 03 12 03 03 06
Moral
Stealing 92 94 94 100 92 91 84 94 97
Hitting 94 88 91 91 92 94 88 97 100
Slander 92 94 88 97 97 91 84 91 100
Property damage 95 95 97 89 98 97 91 97 97
93 93 93 94 95 93 87 93 98
morality and nonmoral issues, and were clearly different from the pattern
of answers provided by Catholics. For example, nearly as many
Amish/Mennonite children said it would be wrong for religious author-
ities or the congregation to alter the prohibition against work on Sunday
as said it would be wrong to remove the rules against moral transgres-
sions, such as hitting and hurting others or damaging anothers personal
property. Orthodox Jewish children were even more reluctant than the
Amish/Mennonites or Conservative Jews to grant their religious author-
ities power to alter or remove nonmoral religious rules. There was no sta-
tistical difference between the overall percentages of alterability judg-
ments that Orthodox Jewish children made of moral and nonmoral issues.
These outcomes appear to embody the assumptions shared by funda-

mentalist Christians and Conservative or Orthodox Jews that religious
norms are established through scripture, rather than by earthly authority.
For the Amish, this is consistent with their historical rejection of papal au-
thority and their reliance on literal interpretations of the Bible for guid-
ance in their daily lives. The justifications children from each of these
three denominations provided in explaining their judgments about the
nonmoral issues tended to bear that out. The most common reason given
for objecting to the notion of religious authorities altering such rules was
that the rules were a part of Gods law. In the case of the Amish/Men-
nonites and Orthodox, this justification was given 80% of the time in sup-
port of judgments that it would be wrong to alter such rules.
Looking at the complete set of justifications, however, indicated to us
that a revealed truth orientation was not all that was operating in the
alterability judgments of these Christian and Jewish children. Between
30% and 40% of the justifications Jewish children gave for their judgments
regarding the alterability of nonmoral religious norms focused on the or-
ganizational, historical, or symbolic functions such norms provided in
terms of structuring the religion as a social system. In the case of
Amish/Mennonites and Conservative Jews, such reasons were generally
given in support of the notion that religious authorities could, in fact, al-
ter or remove some religious rules. However, such judgments were also
offered in support of the notion that it would be wrong to change existing
rules. This was particularly the case with Jewish children who were keen
on the notion of maintaining such rules to sustain links with the past. With
respect to moral issues, it was apparent that children had reasons beyond
Gods law to object to alterations in the governing rules. Approximately
40% of the justifications provided by Amish/Mennonites and 75% of the
justifications provided by Jewish children for objecting to alterations in
the rules governing moral actions focused on the intrinsic features of the
acts as hurtful or unjust.
If we turn from the alterability results to a consideration of our find-
ings with respect to the childrens responses to generalizabilty questions,
we find an increased differentiation between moral and nonmoral issues.
As can be seen in Table 2.2, actions that entail moral transgressions were
judged by over 90% of the children to be wrong even for members of an-
other religion that had no rules governing the acts. There were no de-
nominational differences in these findings; Christians and Jews treated
these issues in the same way. In contrast, far fewer children from any of
the three denominations we examined responded that it would be wrong
for members of another religion to engage in actions we had identified as

nonmoral, if the other religion had no rules governing the acts. It would
appear then that, as in the case with Catholics, the Amish/Mennonite and
Jewish children we interviewed universalized moral issues, but viewed
as relative to their religious prescriptions many nonmoral actions.
There were denominational differences associated with these judg-
ments, with the Amish somewhat more willing than Jewish children to
universalize the nonmoral rules of their religion, and Orthodox Jews more
willing to universalize Jewish norms than were Conservative Jews. This
observed difference between Christians and Jews is not surprising, given
the proselytizing nature of Christianity sustained by the belief that Christ
came to save mankind and that each Christian should serve as a witness
to this and spread the good news. While both Judaism and Christianity
contain natural-law perspectives within their religious traditions that
would support generalizing moral rules, Jews make an explicit differen-
tiation between moral laws that any human being should be able to con-
struct from direct experience, and those rules that can only be known
through God. The latter set of rules are thought to constitute a special set
of obligations for Jews. In effect, one can be a good person without being
Jewish, but one cannot be a good Jew without adhering to this second
(nonmoral) set of rules (Danon 1972).
The justifications children provided across the denominations help to
explain their generalizability judgments. Across denominations, there
was a tendency for children to contextualize nonmoral religious rules as
relative to particular religious systems. This is somewhat surprising with
respect to the Amish/Mennonites, given the Gods law justification
provided for their alterability judgments and the requirement to bear wit-
ness to Christ. The Amish, however, bear witness in a much less intrusive
way than is done by many other Christian sects. It is through their lifestyle
itself that they bear witness. Through their distinctiveness, they hope to
draw attention to the Christian gospel, as well as protect themselves from
the temptations of the world. The reasons provided by Amish/Men-
nonite children for not generalizing their nonmoral rules include an as-
sumption that such rules are subject to interpretation, and that members
of other religions might simply be ignorant of Gods law. Both justifica-
tions are concordant with two other values held by this denomination: (1)
One should not sit in judgment of others, and (2) one can make a distinc-
tion between those who are saved (chosen) and those who are not. Thus,
the ignorant may be excused and the deviant tolerated, but they are
nonetheless not part of the community (i.e., Mennonites) closest to God.
In this latter attitude, the Amish/Mennonites and the Jewish children

we studied would seem to be of similar minds. What is interesting in this
context is that in contrast to the relative tolerance shown regarding non-
moral issues, the Amish/Mennonite and Conservative and Orthodox
Jews we interviewed, like the Catholics in our questionnaire study,
viewed it as wrong for members of other religions to engage in actions
(e.g., slander) constituting transgressions in the moral domain. Instead of
evoking Gods law as a basis for such judgments, the majority of our
Amish/Mennonite and Jewish subjects were expecting even the nonbe-
liever to view such actions as wrong because of their intrinsic effects upon
the rights and welfare of others.
The last set of questions in this part of the interview was intended to
examine directly whether or not the children viewed morality as de-
pendent on Gods word. Childrens responses to the Gods word ques-
tions are summarized in Table 2.2. As can be seen there, few children at
any age and of any denomination felt it would be wrong to engage in any
of the nonmoral behaviors if God (as indicated in scripture) had not pro-
vided any prescription or statement governing the act. These judgments
were mirrored in the justifications they provided. In nearly all cases, the
children explained that such actions would be all right essentially because
there was no longer any law from God regulating the acts. The only ex-
ceptions to this predominant trend were in relation to sexual and gender-
based issues in which some prudential (personal safety/risk) and natu-
ral-order justifications (e.g., women are not suited by nature to lead a
congregation) were provided. Prudence and natural-order reasons were
also offered by some Orthodox children as a basis for maintaining kosher
dietary laws.
In contrast, between 80% and 100% of children across denominations
stated that engagement in any of the acts entailing a moral transgression
would continue to be wrong even if there were no biblical prescription or
statement by God concerning the act. The justifications children provided
in support of such judgments all dealt with the intrinsic features of the
acts as hurtful or unjust. This last set of findings suggests that even for
deeply religious children from fundamentalist or orthodox backgrounds,
morality stems from criteria independent of Gods word.
The following excerpts (edited for length) from our interviews with
Amish/Conservative Mennonite and Conservative and Orthodox Jewish
children illustrate the thinking of these children regarding the relation-
ship between religious prescription and the regulation of moral and non-
moral(conventional) behavior. The first is from an interview with an
11-year-old Amish boy, Sam (a pseudonym). The first portion of the in-
terview deals with the Amish convention that women wear head cover-
ings. The biblical source of this convention is Pauls Letter to the Corinthi-
ans (I:11). The boys responses are given in the context of a story that tells
of a Conservative Mennonite girl who attends a local public junior high
school where none of the other girls wears a head covering. In order not
to be different, the Mennonite girl, Mary, decides not to wear her head
covering to school.
The second excerpt presents this same childs responses to questions
regarding a moral issue, stealing. The excerpts are as follows:
SAM, Conservative Mennonite boy (11 years, 11 months)

Religious Convention: Women wearing head coverings.
I: Was Mary right or wrong not to wear a head covering at school?
S: Wrong, because the Bible says you should, the women should have their
hair long and have it covered with a covering and the men should have
their hair short.
I: Do you think it really matters whether or not a Mennonite girl wears a head
covering?
S: It depends on if you are baptized or not. If you are baptized, you should.
I: How come?
S: Because thats the way God wants it.
I: Can that rule about head coverings be changed?
S: Yes, I suppose it could.
I: Would it be all right for the ministers to remove the rule about women
wearing head coverings?
S: No.
I: Why not?
S: Because God said thats how He wants it, and thats how He wants it.
I: If the ministers did remove the rule about head coverings, then would it
be all right for girls not to wear the head coverings?
S: If they were obeying the minister and not God, it would be, but if they
were obeying God and not the ministers, then it wouldnt.
I: Suppose it wasnt written in the Bible that women are supposed to
wear head coverings, God hadnt said anything about head coverings one
way or the other. Would it be all right for women not to wear head cover-
ings then?
S: Yeah, it would be okay then, because if God didnt say so, it wouldnt mat-
ter.
I: The other girls at Marys school belong to religions that dont have the rule
about head coverings. Is it okay that those religions dont have the rule?
S: Its all right if thats the way their church believes.

I: Well, then is it okay for those girls not to wear head coverings?
S: Yeah.
I: Why is it okay for them but not for Mary?
S: Because she goes to a Mennonite Christian church, she should obey the
Mennonite Christian laws.
I: Could a woman still be a good Christian and not wear a head covering?
S: It depends on her, it depends on if she is really a good Christian and has
accepted Christ.
I: Well, then, why wear a head covering?
S: Because if you are around people more often, like if one person doesnt
have one and the other one does and they are both good Christians, and
they are both walking and a guy comes up and says, man, I can tell which
ones a Christian out of them. This one over here has a covering and I can
tell she is, but over here I dont know for sure because she doesnt wear
one. I would have to do some questioning before I know for sure.
Moral Issue: Stealing

I: Is it okay to steal?
S: No.
I: Why not?
S: Because that is one of the Ten Commandments that God put in the law and
gave to Moses and He expects us to obey these laws and if we dont obey
these laws, we can know for sure that we will not go to heaven, we will
absolutely go to hell.
I: Whats wrong with stealing?
S: Having something that does not belong to us and taking it from someone
else, it would just irritate you. Like, one time my sister stole my radio bat-
teries. I didnt know that they were and then I found out that she had them
in her tape recorder and I thought that these were the exact ones so I took
them back. Actually, she had them in her drawer and she saw these were
missing so she came back four hours later while I was in bed sleeping and
she just grabbed them right out of there and put mine back in. By this time,
she had worn mine down and they werent working so I thought for sure
that she had just wore hers out and so I went and stole mine back which
were really hers. My conscience just bothered me until I returned them
and took the other ones and I found out that these were the correct ones
to be having anyway.
I: Should the rule about stealing be followed?
S: Yes, or else we will go to hell. And all of those will know, and those who
are on earth already know that hell is a bad place. Theres fire and brim-
stone and you could die down there! And everybody that goes there, they
know that they are a sinful person.
I: Suppose all the ministers decided to drop the rule about stealing so that
there was no rule about stealing. would that be all right?
S: No.
I: Why not?
S: Because God said that it wouldnt be expected of us and he expects us to
obey him.
I: Would it be all right for a Christian to steal if the ministers dropped the rule?
S: No, because you still wouldnt be able to go to heaven, youd have to go
to hell.
I: Suppose the people of another religion dont have a rule about stealing. Is
that all right?
S: No.
I: Why not?
S: Because if they have their Bible, then they know about the law.
I: Suppose they dont use our Bible, they have a different religion and it
doesnt have a rule about stealing. Is that all right?
S: No, because God said that thou shalt not steal and that goes for everybody.
I: If they didnt know about the rule, would it be okay for them to steal?
S: No, because it would still make everybody unhappy.
I: If God hadnt said anything about stealing one way or the other, would it
be okay to steal then?
S: No.
I: Why Not?
S: Because if people would steal, then the world wouldnt be very happy.
I: Could you say more about that?
S: Like when my sister stole my batteries, it really irritated me. If everybodys
stuff kept getting stolen, everyone would be mad and say, Hey, wheres
my stuff? It would be terrible; nobody could keep anything that was theirs.
I wouldnt like it.
As we have seen, Sam makes a distinction between issues of morality

(i.e., stealing) and matters of religious convention. Now, lets place Sams
interview into context with the following excerpts from an interview with
a 9-year-old Conservative Jewish girl we will call Marsha. Marsha was
also interviewed about stealing and the Jewish norm that requires boys to
wear head coverings (kippot).
MARSHA, Conservative Jewish girl (9 years, 7 months)

Religious Convention: Men wearing head coverings.
I: Was Jonathan right or wrong not to wear his kippah to the public school?
M: It was wrong because hes not showing his, uh, his, like his religion. You
should always show how good your religion is, and you should always
keep the mitzvah. And also, hes probably disobeying his parents.
I: Okay. Do you think it matters whether or not Jewish boys wear kippot?
M: I think it matters. For one thing, you can never tell if its a Jewish man or
not a Jewish man and you could say, Can I, uh, can I have, can you give
charity to the people, to the poor people? And they would say, No, Im
not Jewish. How would I know? Like youd get really embarrassed, be-
cause you dont really know, and also like, when you are trying to do
something really good and you find out hes not wearing a kippah and
also it shows that he doesnt, like, go in the laws of HaShem[God].
I: But why do Jewish boys dress differently? Why do they wear kippot?
M: Because its a law of HaShem, and theyre just supposed to.
I: Suppose that the rabbis got together and removed the rule about wearing
kippot. Would that be all right?
M: No.
I: Why not?
M: Because its been that way and thats a rule.
I: Well, if they did agree and removed the rule, then would it be all right for
Jewish boys not to wear kippot?
M: No.
I: Why not?
M: Because the rule is there and it was meant to stay there.
I: The Christians dont require boys to wear kippot, is that all right?
M: Yeah.
I: Why?
M: Because, well, because thats not one of their rules. They dont respect
God in the same way.
I: Is it okay that they respect god in a different way?
M: Yes. The religion is different. What they do is not our business, and if they
want to do that they can.
I: Suppose that it never said in the Talmud or anywhere else in scripture any-
thing about wearing kippot, then would it be all right for Jewish boys to
read the Torah or pray without wearing a kippah?
M: Yeah. I mean why would anybody need to do it if it wasnt there? How
would anybody know?
Moral Issue: Stealing.

I: Is it okay to steal?
M: No, because its a law in the Torah, and its also one of the Ten Com-
mandments.
I: Does that rule have to be followed?
M: Yeah.
I: Why?
M: Because HaShem said so in the Torah, and, uh, you should follow all the
mitzvahs of HaShem. The Torah has 613 mitzvahs.
I: Suppose all the rabbis got together and decided not to have a rule about
stealing. Would that be okay?
M: No.
I: Why?
M: Because like I said before in some of the other questions, its a rule of
HaShem. They cant like change it cause like once when Moishe was
walking, his sons wanted, there was a law and they wanted to change it,
and they changed it and their punishment was to die.
I: Suppose that people of another religion do not have a rule about stealing.
Is that all right?
M: Probably yes but no. So, its like half yes and half no.
I: Could you explain that to me?
M: Well, like if they dont have a rule they might think that its okay to steal,
and no because it still wouldnt be.
I: Why would it still be wrong?
M: Because youre taking something from another person. And the other per-
son lets say it was a real gold pen or something and you really love it,
like it was a present or something from your bar mitzvah or something, or
bat mitzvah, and it would be really wrong for the other people. Because
its like a treasure to them. Like on a Peanuts show, Linus cant live with-
out his blanket. Its like a beautiful present to him and he really needs it.
Its like a treasure. Without it he probably cant live. And another thing is
because, say theres one person and he steals from another person who
steals from the first person who stole things. Well, he would feel, both,
like one that got stealed from would get real angry and the one that al-
ready stole with the first stealer also would get angry because his stuff was
stolen. That he already stole, probably.
I: Suppose that there was never a law in the Torah. God never made it one
of the Ten Commandments or one of the 613. He just didnt say anything
about stealing. Would it be okay to steal then?
M: No. Still I dont think its right because youre taking something from some-
body else. But to some people probably yes, because they think its fair
because, well, they might say, Finders keepers, losers weepers.
I: I see. Is it right to say that?
M: No, because they really took it and they didnt just find it, and the other
people didnt lose it. Its not fair. And besides, its also a lie. So there are
two wrong things in that then.
What is evident in the excerpts of both of these Christian and Jewish

children is that they acknowledge that the rule about head coverings is
based on the word of authority (God), that it is relative to a particular in-
terpretation or view of that authoritys norms, and that it serves the con-
crete, social, organizational function of distinguishing girls from boys and
members of their particular religious community from others. In contrast
with their views about head coverings, both children treated stealing as
universally wrong, and wrong even if God did not have a rule about it.
The wrongness of stealing, according to both children, is that it leads to
hurtful and unjust consequences. According to both children, engage-
ment in such actions has a tendency to generate acts of retaliation, which
themselves tend to evolve into a vicious circle of self-perpetuating harm
and injustice. Each child employed evidence from his and her own per-
sonal experience as a touchstone from which to evaluate these moral
transgressions. As I suggested in Chapter 1, children construct their ini-
tial understandings of morality out of their experiences as victims, ob-
servers, or perpetrators of unjust or hurtful actions. Those experiences
provide children with an understanding of the intrinsic elements of
morality, elements that exist as a part of human relations apart from the
particulars of their religious faith.
A few of the Jewish children made an effort in their interviews to ar-
ticulate the connection between these inherent, rational features of moral-
ity and the distinction drawn in Jewish theology between the norms that
express particular obligations for Jews and moral obligations that hold for
all people. In the following excerpt, David, a 14-year-old Orthodox Jew-
ish boy, employs the distinction made in Judaism between the laws be-
tween man and man and those between man and God in order to address
the distinction he made between breaking the rules of the Sabbath and en-
gaging in slander.
DAVID, Orthodox Jewish boy (14 years, 6 months)

I: David, is it okay to slander someone?
D: No.
I: Why not?
D: The definition of slander means that you are damaging someone elses rep-
utation. Thats probably one of the worst things that you can do.
I: Suppose that the rabbis got together and agreed that there should be no
rule about slander, would that be all right?
D: No. Thats like saying whats wrong with ruining this mans life?
I: Is it like breaking the Sabbath?
D: No. Its not like breaking the Sabbath. Sabbath is a law between man and
God, and this is a law between man and man. It would be more like steal-
ing. Okay It is a law clearly stated in the Torah and besides that, I mean,
just because of what it does to other people.
I: Suppose nothing was written in the Torah about slander, God hadnt said
anything about it. Would it be right to slander in that case?
D: Well, I suppose some people might do it then, but I wouldnt. It still
wouldnt be right. All the laws between man and man are rules that are
just necessary for society to exist. If you know what an act does to other
people then you wouldnt do that.
I: You wouldnt or shouldnt?
D: Shouldnt.
I: So, you differentiate between laws between God and man, and man and
man?
D: Yes. When you ask the questions if God hadnt said anything about it, then
would it be all right. The way I answered that was if it was a command-
ment between God and man, then if He had not said anything it would be
fine. Because, uh, the only purpose of it was because God said so. Well,
He mightve had some ulterior motive, but we dont know what it is. But,
between man and man, those are rules that, um, that you need to live a
healthy life and not run around anything like wild animals.
I: So, now with the laws between man and man, do you think that they are
wrong because they were forbidden by God, or were they forbidden, be-
cause they are wrong?
D: I guess both are true. I mean having it forbidden makes it officially wrong,
but being morally wrong was the cause for the prohibition.
In Davids interview, he made a distinction between actions in the

moral domain that have an inherent moral basis and rules established by
religious authority that appear to be arbitrary. As children become older,
their understandings of the purposes of the nonmoral norms of their reli-
gion deepens as they are better able to comprehend the symbolic or orga-
nizational functions of such norms. We can see some of these changes
within the following excerpt from an interview with a 17-year-old Amish
youth whom I will refer to as Joseph. He is responding to the same vi-
gnette regarding head coverings as the previous children.
JOSEPH, Amish (17 years, 10 months)

Religious Convention: Women wearing head coverings
I: Was Mary right or wrong not to wear a head covering at school?
J: She was wrong.
I: How come?
J: Because a head covering, usually, symbolizes that she is a member of the
church and she is to wear it all the time.
I: Do you think it really matters whether or not Mennonite girls wear head
coverings?
J: I think it matters.
I: And why is that?
J: I guess it is a symbol of what God has done for them and they are then un-
der submission. I guess, to be honest, as a boy, I dont know about that in
detail, but I know one thing, that it is a sign of submission.
I: Why does a head covering mean that?
J: Well, in the Bible it says that the woman is supposed to keep her head cov-
ered and I think that if a girl is going by the standards of the Bible, then
she should wear it.
I: What do you mean by submission in this case?
J: For a married lady, it means that she is under submission to her husband
and to God. For a girl, I guess it would be under her parents submission
and to God also.
[At another point in the interview, Joseph had this to say.]
I: When you say identifying with the world, what do you mean?
J: Well, like, you want to look like them, you dont want to be different.
I: Why should a Mennonite look different?
J: I dont know that she would have to, she is really considered different. And,
she would dress different, of course.
I: Why should they dress different?
J: So that people can see that they are not associated with the world. It is a
witness to the power of God, rather than identifying with the world.
In this excerpt from the interview with Joseph, we can see that many of
the nonmoral norms prescribed by religion serve similar functions in terms
of structuring worship patterns and community that secular conventions
do. This suggests that a part of childrens religious development rests upon
their developing conceptions of convention, custom, and tradition. In
Josephs interview regarding womens head coverings, he goes well be-
yond the concrete understanding that head coverings distinguish mem-
bers of ones own group from others, evidenced in the interviews with
Sarah and Sam, to explain how such rules regarding head coverings func-
tion as a symbol of the hierarchical, sex-typed order of Amish and Con-
servative Mennonite society, and the subordinate relationship of that soci-
ety to God. Joseph extends his interpretation of head coverings to the more
general symbolic function of Amish dress in order to express the funda-
mental perspective of his religious community and this particular way of
discharging its obligation to serve witness to Gods authority and majesty.
What became clear from these interviews, however, was that children and
adolescents do not base their interpretation of the importance of such reli-
gious norms on the same criteria as their views about morality. The force
of such nonmoral norms rests ultimately in their connection to religious

authority, whereas the force of moral norms derives from their connection
to the impact that moral transgressions have upon human welfare.
Morality and Gods word. The relation between morality and reli-
gious authority as understood by Jewish and Christian children was made
even more clear in answers to a subsequent set of questions, which looked
more specifically at the role of Gods commands in determining the per-
sons moral concepts. Our use of these questions emerged serendipitously
out of an interview done early on in our conversations with Jewish chil-
dren. The event occurred in the context of an interview with an 11-year-
old Conservative Jewish migr from the thenSoviet Union, whom we
referred to as Michael. In responding to questions regarding whether it
would be all right for Jews to hit and hurt others if God had no rule re-
garding such behavior, Michael spontaneously brought up the biblical
story of Abraham and Isaac. In Michaels version of the biblical account,
an angel of God conveyed a message to Abraham that he should kill his
son, Isaac. Abraham, recognizing the command as a test of his faith, re-
luctantly prepared to sacrifice his son. As Abraham was about to slay
Isaac, an angel of the Lord took hold of Abrahams arm to prevent him
from cutting his sons throat. When asked what he thought about this,
Michaels reply was Had to. When asked what he meant, Michael ex-
plained, Look, God is perfect, He couldnt allow Abraham to kill his son.
Killing is wrong. It was only a test. At this point, the interviewer began
to pursue further the general issue of the relation between Gods com-
mands and morality:
I: Michael, how do we know that what is written in the Torah is really the
right thing to do?
M: He doesnt harm us, do bad for us. We believe in God. We think God wrote
the Torah, and we think God likes us if we do those things and we think
we are giving presents to God, by praying and by following His rules.
I: Okay, but how can we be sure that what God is telling us is really the right
thing?
M: Weve tried it. Weve tried every rule in the Torah and we know.
I: Suppose God had written in the Torah that Jews should steal, would it then
be right for Jews to steal?
M: No.
I: Why not?
M: Even if God says it, we know He cant mean it, because we know it is a
very bad thing to steal. We know He cant mean it. Maybe its a test, but
we just know He cant mean it.
I: Why wouldnt God mean it?

M: Because we think of God as very good absolutely perfect person.
I: And because Hes perfect, He wouldnt say to steal? Why not?
M: Well, because we people are not perfect, but we still understand. We are
not dumb either. We still understand that stealing is a bad thing.
Michaels spontaneous comments captured features of a centuries-old

philosophical debate. Beginning with Platos account of Socrates dia-
logue with Euthyphro, philosophical arguments suggesting that Gods
commands in and of themselves cannot determine what is moral have
turned on what is known as the open question. Put simply, the open
question asks the following: God commands X, but is X right? To an-
swer, one must invoke criteria for the good that are independent of Gods
word. In Nielsens (1973) treatment of this issue, the case is made that in
order for Gods commands to be moral, it must at least be the case that
God is good. From this premise, Nielsen argues that Judeo-Christian con-
ceptions of God presuppose prior, independent conceptions of goodness
that serve as criteria for differentiating God from Satan or other preter-
natural forces.
Though it was not our purpose to analyze or test those philosophical
positions, our research on religious conceptions of the relations between
morality and Gods word were informed by such discussions of the open
question. Michaels interview had suggested to us that such questions
were ones that children would find interesting and well within their con-
ceptual abilities. Following our interview with Michael, we added a sec-
tion of questions in which children were asked whether Gods commands
could make right something that most children treated as morally wrong.
These questions were asked of all of the Jewish participants in the re-
search. The Amish religious authorities, however, found these questions
to be ones which they thought might cause their children to question their
faith. Therefore, we asked these questions of a second group of 32 Chris-
tian children who were members of the Dutch Reform Calvinist commu-
nity in the Chicago metropolitan area.
These children all attended a parochial school that emphasized reli-
gious teaching. This group, like the Amish and Mennonites, has its origins
in the Swiss reformation. Unlike the Amish and Conservative Mennon-
ites, the Dutch Reform Calvinists do not take a literal view of the Bible and
have an organized church structure and theology to help guide their in-
terpretation of scripture. Like the Amish and Conservative Mennonites,
however, the Dutch Reform Calvinist community, from which our study
participants were drawn, hold the word of God to be compelling. We

chose to interview children from this community because of their strong
belief in the compelling nature of Gods commands, stemming from an
acceptance of Gods perfection and omniscience, which extends to a be-
lief in predestination.
Children were asked: Suppose God had commanded (written in the
Bible) that Christians/Jews should steal. Would it then be right for a Chris-
tian/Jew to steal? We also asked children whether they thought God
would make such a command, and if so, why or why not? It was our hy-
pothesis, informed by Michaels interview and results from our other
questions, that childrens answers would reflect their efforts to coordinate
conceptions of moral issues in terms of the intrinsic effects of such actions
on others with their conceptions of God as omniscient, omnipotent, and
perfect. In particular, we expected that children would (1) reject the no-
tion that Gods command to steal would make stealing morally right and
(2) reject the notion that God would command Christians or Jews to steal
as a normative behavior.
Our analyses of the childrens responses revealed that the majority of
children from each denomination and at each age rejected the notion that
Gods command to steal would make it right to steal: 75% of the Dutch
Reform Calvinists, 86% of the Conservative Jewish, and 84% of the Or-
thodox Jewish children responded this way. The apparent overall differ-
ence between the Christian and Jewish groups was due to the responses
of younger children within the Christian community: 69% of Dutch Re-
form Calvinist children under the age of 13 rejected the notion that Gods
command would make it right to steal, while 81% of the children above
age 13 responded that way.
The following excerpts from an interview with a 15-year-old Dutch Re-
form Calvinist girl (Margaret) and from an interview with a 9-year-old
Conservative Jewish girl (Marsha) are typical of responses provided by
children who rejected the notion that Gods command to steal would
make stealing right:
MARGARET, Dutch Reform Calvinist female (15 years, 7 months)

I: Suppose that God had written in the Bible that Christians should steal.
Would it then be right for Christians to steal?
M: Probably, I think people would maybe do it. Because if it was written in
the Bible and thats what God said that we should do, then people would
probably do it. I mean more often. Cause thats what God said, and its
easier to do than to go against God.
I: So, if God said it, people would do it. But would they be right to do it?
M: No. It still wouldnt be right.
I: Why not?
M: Cause youre taking from somebody else, and it still wouldnt be right. Af-
ter all, who would want this to happen to them?
I: Do you think God would command us to steal?
M: No.
I: Why not?
M: Because its not the right thing to do, and Hes perfect, and if Hes stealing,
He cant be perfect.
MARSHA, Conservative Jewish female (9 years, 7 months)

I: When we were talking before, you said that God had provided 613 rules
in the Torah, but I have a question. How do we know that what is written
in the Torah is really the right thing to do?
M: Because HaShem [God] chooses the right things.
I: How do you know that HaShem chooses the right things for us to do?
M: Thats a hard question. I guess I trust Him. Im afraid of Him, that means I
trust Him, probably. Probably cause He helps me. He helps me do my
stuff. I mean like He takes care of me sort of. Whenever I should deserve
a punishment, He gives it to me.
I: Suppose that God had written in the Torah that Jews should steal; God
commanded all Jews to steal. Would it be okay then for Jews to steal?
M: No.
I: Why not?
M: Because they know, they have a brain. They know its really bothering the
person they take it from.
I: Do you think God would ever command us to steal?
M: No.
I: Why not?
M: Because Hes good. Like Hes strict as a teacher, and Hes nice as a, whats
the nicest person in the world? I dont know what the nicest person in the
world is. Hes as nice as the nicest person in the world, or animal.
In the responses of these two children, we see that although there is

both fear and awe of Gods power, neither child accepts the notion that
Gods command to steal would make it right to do so. According to both
children, such action would continue to be morally wrong because of its
effects upon the victim. The Conservative Jewish girl, Marsha, like her
counterpart, Michael, points to the irrationality of such a norm, and the
assumption that rational beings Because they know, they have a brain
would recognize a norm condoning theft as inherently counter to the
needs and interests of people. Furthermore, in a manner matching

Michaels responses to similar questions, both girls coordinated their
moral positions with an assumption of Gods goodness. In the case of the
15-year-old Dutch Reform Calvinist girl, Margaret, this extends to the
conclusion that if God were to make such a command, it would negate his
status as a perfect being. In the following excerpts, we see evidence that
such thinking for some of the children we interviewed constitutes the very
criteria for worshipping God:
MARK, Dutch Reform Calvinist male (15 years, 4 months)

I: Do you think God would say that we should steal?
M: No.
I: Why not?
M: Because Hes good in every way, and He wouldnt encourage people to
do wrong.
I: But if God said to steal, would it make it right?
M: Well Id still have doubts about it. If you knew it was from God, then you
might think it was right. But, I really I probably wouldnt ah worship
God if He said if He encouraged us to do bad things.
I: How do we know that what is written in the Bible is the word of God and
not the word of the devil?
M: Well, because we realize that many parts of the Bible are just good com-
mon sense, and that they are things that we would normally think. Like the
Ten Commandments, thats right to you even before you understand the
Ten Commandments. So, if a person told you to do what was right, youd
realize that this was a person who was good.
I: I see, and does God have to be good?
M: Well, yes. Because worshipping an evil being would not be a very intelli-
gent thing to do.
NORM, Dutch Reform Calvinist male (16 years, 6 months)

would it then be right for Christians to steal?)
N: No, then He wouldnt be a just God. And there are, Im sure there are peo-
ple who would go against Him, then, if He were an unjust God, even
though He had absolute power.
We see in the thinking of these two adolescents a rejection of the Nietz-

schean dictum that might makes right, as well as Euthyphros position
that morality is determined by Gods commands. Instead, what appears
to be evidenced in these interviews is an attempt by children to coordi-
nate their notion of the just Judeo-Christian God with what they know to
be morally right.
While such was the case among the majority of children, a significant
minority (between 15% and 20%) stated that Gods command to steal
would make stealing morally right. Such responses were of two types. The
first type, provided by three of the Christian and three Conservative Jew-
ish children under the age of 13, reflected a failure to coordinate concep-
tions of Gods perfection with conceptions of God as omnipotent. The fol-
lowing set of excerpts from a Dutch Reform Calvinist girl, Cathy, serves
as an illustrative example:
CATHY, Dutch Reform Calvinist female (10 years, 8 months)

I: How do we know that what the Bible tells us to do is really the right thing?
C: You have to believe.
I: Suppose God had made a commandment that we should steal. Would it
then be morally right to steal?
C: Yes.
I: So, who would be the better people then, the ones who stole or the ones
who didnt steal?
C: The ones who stole.
I: Why would they be the better people?
C: Because they were obeying Gods law.
I: Why should people obey Gods law?
C: Because God is the only God. He made us, and He made the world, and
He rules the world, and we are supposed to do what He says.
In this first portion of the interview, Cathy focused on Gods power and
authority as the criterion for her judgment of the right or wrong of steal-
ing. In the very next section of the interview, however, her focus shifted
to Gods goodness and an evaluation of moral actions in terms of their
consequences:
I: Do you think that God would tell us to steal?

C: No.
I: Why not?
C: Because God is Hes supposed to be good.
I: Is stealing good?
C: No.
I: Why not?
C: Cause its bad. Its not right. Youre taking another persons stuff and they
would probably get upset. I dont want my stuff stolen.
In this transcript we see two seemingly contradictory positions coex-

isting in the thinking of this 10-year-old girl. One the one hand, she eval-
uated the wrongness of stealing on the basis of its effects on the victim and
coordinated that evaluation with her expectation that God would not con-
done stealing since God is good. On the other hand, she evaluated the
right or wrong of stealing in terms of Gods commands. She did not con-
join her notion of Gods goodness with his omnipotence, but simply fo-
cused on the latter criterion to the exclusion of the former when evaluat-
ing the morality of actions commanded by God. This mode of thinking
was continued in the remaining portion of her interview:
I: Do you think it would be right if the children at school hit and hurt each
other?
C: No.
I: Why not?
C: Because hitting hurts!
I: Suppose that God said that children should hit one another. Do you think
it would be right then for children to do that?
C: Yes.
I: How come?
C: Because God said.
I: But wouldnt it still hurt to hit?
C: Yes.
I: Then would it be right or wrong to hit?
C: It would be right.
I: How come?
C: Like I told you, because God said.
The thinking of this 10-year-old girl was not seen in the interviews of
any of our participants over age 13. However, since only three Christian
and three Conservative Jewish children provided responses of the form
just described, we cannot conclude whether such reasoning is a function
of developmental level or if it simply reflects an alternative mode of con-
ceptualizing the relationship between morality and Gods word.
A second, and more sophisticated, type of reasoning provided by ado-
lescents who felt that Gods command to steal would make stealing
morally right resulted from efforts to coordinate notions of Gods perfec-
tion with conceptions of Gods omniscience. In this form of reasoning, the
assumption is maintained that God is good, and that his command to steal
(or to engage in some other apparently hurtful or unjust act) would reflect
good intentions and an ultimately good outcome. Since God is all-know-
ing, only He can anticipate and comprehend an outcome that may simply
be beyond the grasp of temporal consciousness. In reasoning of this type,
one sustains faith in the goodness of God without requiring that His ends
be comprehensible to the faithful. Such thinking is provided in the fol-
lowing excerpt from an interview with a 17-year-old Dutch Reform
Calvinist girl we refer to as Faith:
FAITH, Dutch Reform Calvinist female (17 years, 6 months)

I: Faith, how do we know that what is in the Bible is really the right thing to
do?
F: I believe that the Bible is the word of God and that God knows everything
and God made us, so what He said must be true.
I: It may be true, but how do we know that what God is saying is really
morally right, if He says act a certain way that thats the morally right way
to act?
F: He created us, so He knows whats best for us, so whatever He says must
be the best thing to do.
Would it then be right for Christians to steal?
F: If God said so, I guess it would be, yes.
I: How come? What would make it right?
F: Because God is the author of everything and Hes holy, and whatever He
would say has to be right.
I: Suppose God had said that Christians should murder. Would it then be
right for Christians to murder?
F: It would be the same as with stealing. If He said it, it would be all right be-
cause Hes God and He knows everything. He knows the end of every-
thing, and if He said that it was all right [Faith sighs and laughs nervously],
I guess it would be.
I: You seem a little bit conflicted.
F: Well, I mean, I know it would be hard for me to be able to handle it, be-
cause theres things in His word that I already dont understand. But, you
just have to take it by faith and believe that He is God and He knows what
He is saying.
Faiths thinking nicely illustrates how a deep conviction and faith in

Gods goodness, coordinated with a belief in Gods omniscience, can lead
a person to accept conclusions about the moral rectitude of actions com-
manded by God that run counter to the persons own intuitions about the
actions. The reasoning of such individuals, however, is not structured by
an unreflective acceptance of Gods authority. On the contrary, the notions
of Gods moral authority, held by the participants in this study, stemmed
from their assumptions about the inherent goodness of the Judeo-Christ-

ian God. Should that assumption be challenged, then Gods authority in
moral matters would be called into question. This reasoning is reflected
in the remainder of Faiths interview:
FAITH (continued)
I: How do we know that when we are hearing the word of God that we
are hearing Gods word and not the devil?
F: Well, the Bible is the only test you could give it, and the Holy Spirit inside
you.
I: What do you mean, the Holy Spirit inside you? How does that help?
F: I believe the Holy Spirit leads me and convicts me. If I dont believe some-
thing is goes along with, or is part of Gods character, then Ill check it
out in the Bible and pray about it, and ask for guidance.
I: Do you think murder is part of Gods character?
F: No, but if it said in His word that it was all right to kill, then God must be
a different kind of God.
I: So, if He were a different kind of God, would it be all right to do it to
kill?
F: Well, I dont know. That changes the whole thing. So, I dont know.
In summary, there was clear evidence in this study that Christian and
Jewish children evaluate moral issues on the basis of criteria independent
of the word of God. Consonant with research done in secular contexts, the
childrens concepts of morality focused on the intrinsic justice and wel-
fare outcomes of actions. On the basis of such objective criteria, the chil-
dren established a moral position from which they apprehended the
moral aspect of the just and compassionate Judeo-Christian God. In each
of the interviews (with the exception of six with young children), we saw
evidence that religiously engaged children attempted to bring together
their notions of God as perfect with their own conceptions of the morally
good. Thus, for these children, concepts of God, the word of God, and
morality are not one and the same thing.
conclusions
The studies described in this chapter indicate that childrens moral un-
derstandings are independent of specific religious rules, and that moral-
ity is conceptually distinct from ones religious concepts. These studies
also mean that morality for the secular child, as well as for the devout
Christian or Jew, focuses on the same set of interpersonal issues: those per-
taining to justice, human welfare and compassion. While we did not re-
port specifically on the beliefs of children from other religions, findings
from cross-cultural studies discussed in Chapter 2 are consistent with the
assumption that such basic moral concerns are shared across the range of
human societies and groups. For the public schools, this means that there
can be moral education compatible with, and yet independent from, reli-
gious moral doctrine. There is, then, considerable common ground on
which deeply religious people from different religious perspectives, along
with nonreligious people, can come to terms regarding the central con-
cerns of their childrens moral development. That common ground, how-
ever, requires a more constrained use of moral language to refer to the do-
main of issues that pertain to the inherent and universal features of
human social interaction. By focusing on this moral core, public schools
can forthrightly meet their obligations, rather than hide behind a smoke
screen of value relativism.
At the same time, these findings point to the wisdom of keeping the
teaching of particular doctrinal values out of the hands of public schools,
and keeping it in the families, churches, synagogues, mosques, and tem-
ples where the particularistic values of different faiths can be celebrated
without conflict. It was clear that in the minds of the religious children we
interviewed, those particularistic values (e.g., day of worship, women
leading worship services) stem from their relation to religious rather than
temporal authority. Their connection to a particular faith community
means that such values and norms are likely to be incommensurate across
faiths. This is a source of tension that exists within all pluralist societies.
As such, an attitude of tolerance based on the moral principles of mutual
respect and fairness must prevail. Those principles of fairness, mutual re-
spect, and concern for the welfare of others are the content of the moral
domain and, as such, should be the core values fostered through moral
education.
chapter three
Morality and the Personal Domain
I do not like broccoli. And I havent liked it since I was a little kid and
my mother made me eat it. Im President of the United States, and I am
not going to eat any more broccoli (George Bush, April, 1990).
Autonomy . . . appears only with reciprocity, when mutual respect is

strong enough to make the individual feel from within the desire to
treat others as he himself would wish to be treated (Jean Piaget, The
Moral Judgment of the Child).
Up to this point we have been focusing on the ways in which people con-
ceptualize morality and nonmoral (conventional and religious) norms. In
order to have a complete picture of the nature of morality and moral de-
velopment, we also need to consider whether and in what ways people
bracket off some areas of their behavior as matters of privacy and personal
choice. The relationship between morality and personal freedom is a com-
plex one that has been the subject of sometimes heated debate within phi-
losophy and the social sciences, as well as at the level of public policy.
Morality and personal freedom are often thought of as being in oppo-
sition. Some philosophers (e.g., Augustine 401/1963; Kant 1785/1959)
and psychologists (e.g., Freud 1923/1960, 1930/1961) have viewed moral-
ity as the struggle between the egoistic and selfish desires of the self and
the rational and legitimate concerns for the treatment of others. From
these views, morality is the achievement of the suppression of the pas-
sions and destructive impulses of the self-interested individual. This di-
chotomy between personal freedom and morality has a counterpart in the
writings of some contemporary students of culture who tend to classify
the morality of various societies on a continuum, from the individualis-
tic/permissive to the collectivistic/traditional (Miller and Bersoff 1992;
52
morality and the personal domain 53
Shweder 1990). According to this analysis, there are basically two kinds
of moral cultures: one (Western culture), which is based on rights, and an-
other (primarily non-Western cultures), based on duties (Shweder, Maha-
patra, and Miller 1987). This oppositional view of personal freedom and
autonomy on the one hand and morality on the other has also been em-
ployed by some contemporary American social scientists (e.g., Bellah et
al. 1985; Sampson 1977) and commentators (Bennett 1992; Etzioni 1993;
Kirkpatrick 1992) as a basis from which to critique the moral status of con-
temporary American society. According to these analyses, contemporary
American culture is characterized by self-contained individualism
(Sampson 1977), an overemphasis on rights (Etzioni 1993), and too little
attention to collective norms and traditions (Bennett 1992; Kirkpatrick
1992; Wynne 1986). These views of culture have been criticized, however,
as overly simplistic (Wainryb and Turiel 1995), and the related judgments
of the contemporary American scene found to be biased and historically
inaccurate (Turiel, 1998b).
Leaving characterizations of the morality of American society to the
side, let us turn toward an alternative way of looking at things in which
personal freedom, morality, and social norms interact in the social devel-
opment of children. The position that will be explored is that morality and
personal autonomy are interrelated, coexisting aspects of social life
among individuals in all cultures. People are simultaneously individual-
istic and other directed, autonomous and interdependent.
the personal domain and formation of the individual

As a way of introducing the research we are about to discuss, let me ask
you, the reader, to consider the following questions:
1. Who should be able to determine who your best friends are?

2. If you keep a personal diary, who should be able to read it, and who
should be the person who makes that determination?
3. Who should decide how you style your hair?
In terms of the previous questions, why did you answer the way that
you did? Or, to put it another way, why does it matter who determines
or decides such things for you?
When I have asked these things of my undergraduates, they have invari-

ably answered that they, and they alone, should be the ones to determine
or decide such things for themselves. In our work on values formation
and social reasoning, we have labeled such issues as content for what we
refer to as the personal domain.
The personal refers to the set of actions that the individual considers to
pertain primarily to oneself and, therefore, to be outside the area of justi-
fiable social regulation. These actions are not matters of right and wrong
but of preference and choice (Nucci 1995). While there is considerable cul-
tural variation in the specific things that are considered personal, al-
lowance for some area of personal choice appears to be culturally univer-
sal. These cultural issues are discussed in more detail later in this chapter.
Examples of personal issues within American culture include the content
of ones correspondence and self-expressive creative works, ones recre-
ational activities, ones choice of friends or intimates, and actions that fo-
cus on the state of ones own body (Nucci 1981; Nucci, Guerra, and Lee
1991; Smetana 1982; Smetana, Bridgeman, and Turiel 1983).
By their very nature, personal issues are a circumscribed set of actions
that define the boundaries of individual authority. If you responded in
ways similar to my students, then you justified claims to control over the
issues presented in my questions by asserting their importance to your
ability to maintain personal integrity, agency, and individuality. Identify-
ing and controlling what is personal serves to establish the social border
between the self and the group. Making choices about personal things al-
lows us to create what is socially individual or unique about ourselves.
This is something different from the unique features due to our biological
inheritance, such as our fingerprints or facial image. Identical twins, for
example, who share the same DNA will nonetheless have a unique sense
of self because of the choices that they make within the personal domain.
It is control over the personal that serves to confirm a persons sense of
himself or herself as having agency instead of being a martinet scripted
by socially inherited roles and contexts. In sum, the personal represents
the set of social actions that permit the person to construct both a sense of
the self as a unique social being, what the classical American psychologist
William James (1899) called the me, and the subjective sense of agency
and authorship, or what James referred to as the I.
This view of the personal is compatible with psychological theories of-
fered by writers of diverse perspectives who also see a close link between
personal autonomy and the formation of the individual (Baldwin 1897,
1906; Damon and Hart 1988; Erikson 1963, 1968; Kohut 1978; Mahler 1979;
Selman 1980), and the work of researchers and clinicians who see striv-
ings for control over a personal sphere of actions present in early child-
hood and perhaps even in infancy (Mahler 1979; Stern 1985). As I noted
in the introduction to this chapter, however, the view of the self as au-
tonomous has been criticized as reflecting a particular Western cultural
construction, in which the self as individual is decontextualized from
the social, cultural milieu (Cushman 1991; Sampson 1985; Shweder and
Bourne 1984). These critiques are justified as a counterpoint to idyllic
characterizations of the individual as an entirely self-generated and self-
contained system. After all, none of us determines our own parentage, or
the historical and cultural settings of our childhoods. On the other hand,
such critiques are themselves oversimplifications, which run the risk of
stereotyping by dividing cultures into those that recognize autonomous
selves and those that do not (Greenfield and Cocking 1994; Turiel 1994).
For one thing, it is not the case that conceptions of self as autonomous
are restricted to Western culture. Although notions of self, like beliefs
about the personal, are highly variable, all observed cultures contain some
differentiated view of self, and people in all cultures appear to hold idio-
syncratic, individual views of themselves as distinct persons with partic-
ular interests (Spiro 1993). In addition, there is reason to believe that es-
tablishment of a personal domain of privacy and behavioral discretion is
itself a psychological necessity (Nucci 1995). A wealth of clinical data has
demonstrated that disruption in the formation of personal boundaries
damages individual psychological health (Kernberg 1975; Kohut 1978;
Mahler 1979; Masterson 1981), and suggests that there are basic psycho-
logical limits to the extent that others (including society) can impinge on
the private lives of individuals.
emergence of the personal in childhood

The view of the individual being presented here is consistent with char-
acterizations of self as heterogeneous rather than simply individualistic.
The personal that is constructed is always situated and in dialogue with
others, with social norms and cultural metaphors (Hermans, Kempen,
and van Loon 1992; Sarbin 1986). Thus, the particular expression of the
personal will be a function of the historical and cultural context. With re-
gard to individual development, this is not simply a process of society
shaping and molding the person, nor is it simply a matter of the child re-
constructing at an individual level the social messages provided by soci-
ety or socializing agents, such as parents or teachers. The child establishes
personal borders through a process of interpersonal negotiation. The
child is active not only in the sense of interpreting input but also of seek-
ing to establish areas of choice and personal control within which to op-
erate as an individual. The childs exercise of choice, however, often takes
place in the context of relationships that are inherently asymmetrical.
Since children are dependent on adult protection, nurturance, and teach-
ing, a childs freedom of action is almost always at the mercy of adults.
This is especially the case in relations between children and parents,
where issues of adult authority and responsibility are intertwined with
parental tendencies to invest their own familial and personal identities in
their children. A number of studies have examined these issues within the
family context, and it is to those studies that we will turn next.
Family Interactions and Childrens Personal Domain

The emergence of childrens autonomy involves two interrelated factors.
One is the development of the childs competencies, and the other is the
childs establishment of boundaries between what is within the childs
area of privacy and personal discretion and what falls within the purview
of adult authority and social norms. With regard to the former, it is easy
to see how newfound competencies, such as the ability to walk, provide
the toddler with greater possibilities for autonomy than exist for the in-
fant. Erikson (1963) was one of the first theorists to connect the emergence
of competencies in early childhood with the childs assertion of personal
authority over the self. The prevalence of childrens noncompliance to
parental authority within the terrible twos, as Gesell (1928) referred to
this period in development, was explained by Erikson (1963) as an ex-
pression of the childs efforts to establish bounded control over the self.
This becomes paramount for the 2-year-old as an extension of the childs
emerging abilities, especially the ability to communicate his or her desires
through speech.
The key aspect of this period for Erikson (1963) was the childs negoti-
ation of authority with the parent. According to Erikson (1963), failure to
establish a balance between the childs areas of discretion and the parents
enforcement of social regulation resulted in problems of psychological ad-
justment with far-reaching significance. Eriksons (1963) observations
predated more recent descriptions of the strivings for control over a per-
sonal sphere of actions as evident in early infancy (Mahler 1973; Stern
1985). It also preceded other work characterizing early- and middle-child-
hood noncompliance as evidence of a continuing exchange between chil-
dren and adult authority regarding childrens assertions of control over
their own lives (Brehm and Brehm 1981; Crockenberg and Litman 1990;
Stipek, Gralinski, and Kopp 1993).
Running through all of this research and theory is a depiction of nego-
tiation between children and adults while children are striving to estab-
lish themselves as autonomous individuals. Yet, what is being negotiated
is left unspecified in these accounts of individuation and the development
of childrens autonomy. From our point of view, we would expect parents
of young children to exert considerable control over childrens moral be-
havior, their conventional conduct, and actions that put the child at risk
of personal harm. It would be in the process of establishing the childs area
of personal discretion that we would expect to see most parentchild
negotiation.
These issues were initially explored in an observational study (Nucci
and Weber 1995) of the at-home interactions between 20 middle-class sub-
urban mothers and their 3- or 4-year-old children. The parenting styles of
the mothers fell within what Baumrind (1971) described as authoritative
parenting. These mothers had a set of firmly established behavioral ex-
pectations, but were flexible in their disciplining of children.
Pairs of mothers and children were observed during four activity peri-
ods over a span of three days. Among the things that we discovered was
that mothers almost never negotiated with children regarding moral, con-
ventional, or prudential forms of conduct. On the other hand, nearly one-
quarter of the observed interactions around personal issues involved ne-
gotiation and concession on the part of the mothers. What is also interesting
is the degree to which negotiations took place in the context of mixed
events. A mixed event is one in which there is overlap among the domain
characteristics of the action. Over 90 percent of the observed mixed events
involved overlap between conventions or prudential concerns about the
childs safety and the personal domain. Mothers engaged in negotiation
with their children about such mixed events about half of the time. This
type of interaction over a mixed issue is illustrated in the following:
Mother: Evan, its your last day of nursery school. Why dont you wear
your nursery sweatshirt?
Child: I dont want to wear that one.
Mother: This is the last day of nursery school, thats why we wear it. You
want to wear that one?
Child: Another one.
Mother: Are you going to get it, or should I?
Child: I will. First I got to get a shirt.
Mother: [Goes to the childs dresser and starts picking out shirts.] This
one? This one? Do you know which one you have in mind? Here, this
is a new one.
Child: No, its too big.
Mother: Oh, Evan, just wear one, and when you get home, you can pick
whatever you want, and I wont even help you. [Child puts on shirt.]
This case presents a conflict between a dress convention (wearing a

particular shirt on the last day of school) and the childs view that dress
is a personal choice. The mother acknowledges the childs resistance and
attempts to negotiate, finally offering the child a free choice once school
is over. This example illustrates several things. For one, the mother pro-
vided direct information to the child about the convention in question:
This is the last day of nursery school, thats why we wear it. At the same
time, she displayed an interest in fostering the childs autonomy and de-
cision making around the issue. The childs resistance conveyed that his
personal interest was not simply cut off but was guided by the mother,
who linked it to his autonomy: Are you going to get it, or should I? . . .
you can pick whatever you want, and I wont even help you. In the end,
there is compromise. The child got to choose, but within a more general,
conventional demand (enforced by the mother) that he wear a shirt.
The verbal dance engaged in by the mother and child in this example
illustrates that the mothers in this study acted in ways that indicated an
understanding that children should have areas of discretion and personal
control. The excerpt also illustrates ways in which children, through their
resistances, provided mothers with information about the childs desires
and needs for personal choice. Analyses of the childrens responses
showed that assertions of prerogative and personal choice did not occur
to the same degree across all forms of social interaction, but were dispro-
portionately associated with events involving personal issues. Assertions
of prerogative and choice comprised 88% of childrens responses in the
context of mixed events and 98% of their responses in the case of pre-
dominantly personal events. In contrast, such responses comprised less
than 10% of childrens statements in the context of moral or prudential
events and about 25% of their responses to conventional events. These be-
havioral measures indicate that middle-class preschool-age children are
able to distinguish the personal from matters of social regulation. Inter-
views conducted with the children revealed that they viewed personal,
but not moral or conventional, behaviors as ones that should be up to the
self and not the mother to decide.
This (Nucci and Weber 1995) observational study also provided evi-
dence that middle-class mothers provide children areas of personal choice
without requiring a process of negotiation. Mothers generally do not ex-
plicitly tell young children that a particular behavior is something that is
a matter of the childs personal choice. When they do give such explicit
statements, they resemble the following discussion between a mother and
her daughter over the girls hair style:
Mother: If you want, we can get your hair cut. Its your choice.
Child: I only want it that long down to here. [Child points to where she
wants her hair cut.]
More typically, the social messages mothers directed to children about

personal issues were in the indirect form of offered choices, such as illus-
trated in the following exchange:
Mother: You need to decide what you want to wear to school today.
Child: [Opens a drawer.] Pants. Pants. Pants.
Mother: Have you decided what to wear today?
Child: I wear these.
Mother: Okay, thats a good choice. How would you like your hair to-
day?
Child: Down. [Child stands by the bed, and her mother carefully combs
her hair.]
In the latter interaction, the mother, through a set of offered choices,

conveys the idea that dress and hairstyle are matters for the child to de-
cide. The child might then infer that such behavior is personal. Through
both the direct and indirect forms of communication, mothers show a
willingness to provide children areas of personal discretion. The fact that
mothers are more likely to tell children what to do in the context of moral,
conventional, and prudential behaviors than in the context of personal
ones is in itself an indication that mothers view the former as issues in
which the child needs to accommodate to specific, external, social de-
mands and meanings, while the personal issues are for the child to inter-
pret and control.
In sum, mothers displayed systematic differences in their responses to
children when the issues in question were ones within the childs personal
domain. The study also provided evidence that children play an active
role in relation to their mothers, and provide feedback in the form of re-
quests and resistances to their mothers that afford mothers information
regarding the childs claims to areas of personal control. This feedback is

not simply a generalized resistance to adult authority (Brehm and Brehm
1981; Kuczinski et al. 1987), but is a limited set of claims to choice over a
personal sphere. This is most evident in cases of mixed events, and it sug-
gests that mothers open to their childrens feedback have direct access to
information about their own childrens needs for a personal domain.
Smetanas (1989b) work on adolescentparent conflicts indicates that sim-
ilar child resistance to adult control over personal issues continues and in-
creases as children grow up. We will take up these issues of adolescent de-
velopment at later points in this chapter.
As already stated, the childs construction of the personal is not ac-
complished solely at the individual level, nor determined by the culture,
but through reciprocal interaction between the child and members of
society. For this to occur, there must also be some understanding on the
part of adults that children should be accorded an area of personal dis-
cretion. We have already seen evidence of this in the observations of
motherchild interactions. This issue was examined directly in an inter-
view study with middle- and working-class mothers of young children
conducted within the same community and a neighboring suburb (Nucci
and Smetana 1996).
The interview focused on the mothers views of whether and around
what sorts of issues children should be given decision-making authority,
and around which issues mothers should exert their authority. They were
asked to explain how they determined which behaviors to leave up to
their children, and why they allowed or encouraged children to determine
those things for themselves. Mothers were also asked about their sense of
the kinds of issues that generated conflicts between themselves and their
children, how these conflicts were resolved, and what role they saw them-
selves playing in those motherchild exchanges.
All of the mothers interviewed in this study supported the notion that
children 4 to 7 years of age should be allowed choice over some things and
that children should be allowed to hold their own opinions. Mothers jus-
tified allowing children to exercise choice on the grounds that decision
making fostered competence and that allowing children to hold opinions
of their own fostered the development of the childs agency and self-
esteem. Thus, these mothers appeared to value permitting their children
areas of freedom in order to foster their personal development and au-
tonomy. Mothers placed boundaries, however, around those actions that
they left up to children to determine. Mothers stated that their children
were allowed to exercise choice over such personal issues as play activi-
ties, playmates, amount and type of food, and choice of clothes. On the
other hand, mothers stated that they placed limits on childrens actions
when they went counter to family or societal conventions and when they
posed risks to the child or others.
In addition to limiting childrens activities when they conflicted with
conventional, moral, or prudential considerations, mothers stated that
they occasionally limited their childrens activities in the very areas they
had stated they allowed children to determine or control. As we had seen
in the observational study (Nucci and Weber 1995), motherchild conflicts
over these personal issues often resulted in compromise by the mother. In
their interviews (Nucci and Smetana 1996), mothers expressed a willing-
ness to compromise over such issues in order to support the childs agency,
self-esteem, and competence. Mothers viewed themselves as acting ra-
tionally and pragmatically in response to their perceptions of the childs
personal competence and the risks a given act posed to the child. In the
context of motherchild disagreements, mothers tended to see themselves
primarily as educators, and less often as controllers or nurturers.
When placed together with the results of at-home observations (Nucci
and Weber 1995), these interviews with mothers provide an integrated
portrait of how mothers and preschool-age children establish and foster
the emergence of the childs autonomy and sense of a personal domain of
privacy and choice. The picture that emerges is not one of across-the-
board struggle and conflict, but rather of a shared and differentiated
worldview in which autonomy and choice coexist with obedience and
conformity to common norms and rational moral and prudential con-
straints. Those conflicts that do arise are not random in nature, but gen-
erally fall within the range of issues at the edge of the childs personal do-
main and what the mother views as matters of social convention or the
childs safety.
culture and class effects on childrens and mothers

beliefs about the personal
The fact that both of the studies in the previous section were conducted
in the United States limits their generality. Research across cultures and
social classes must be conducted before we can make definitive state-
ments about childrens early experiences in the development of their un-
derstandings of the personal realm. Recent work that has begun to exam-
ine the social judgments of children and mothers from different social
class and cultural backgrounds has provided evidence that concerns for
the provision of an area of personal choice and privacy is not exclusive to

the Western middle class.
Before examining that research, however, let us take a moment to re-
view some of the issues pertaining to assumptions about the relations
among culture, class, and parental authority. Research on parental au-
thority prior to the 1980s tended to frame the issue as a question of degree
along a single dimension. For example, the most influential system for
looking at parental tendencies to control childrens actions has been
Baumrinds (1971) division of parenting types into the permissive, author-
itative, and authoritarian, in which permissive and authoritarian represent
the polar extremes of parental control. Applications of this typology to
groups that differ from the U.S. white middle class have proven to be rid-
dled with bias and misunderstanding.
Baumrind (1972), however, was herself one of the first to caution
against simplistic applications of her typology. In a study examining the
child-rearing practices of African American parents, Baumrind discov-
ered that parental actions that fit in the authoritarian pattern within white
families did not result in an authoritarian syndrome among African
American girls. Instead, the apparently authoritarian parental practices
were ones that fostered toughness and self-sufficiency in the girls and
were perceived by the daughters as nurturant care-taking (Baumrind
1972, pp. 266). In line with Baumrinds interpretation, Bartz and Levine
(1978) found that African Americans, relative to whites, expected children
to overcome childhood dependency as soon as possible. This held true
with educational level of parents controlled for. African Americans and
whites in the Bartz and Levine (1978) study did not differ, however, in
their tendencies to emphasize childrens general rights and their right to
have input into family decisions.
The mismatch between white American views of parental authoritari-
anism and views of parenting in other cultures was perhaps best captured
by Chao (1993), who argued that depictions of parental behaviors as au-
thoritarian, controlling, and restrictive have been ethnocentric and mis-
leading. Asian families, for example, have been found to obtain among
the highest scores of unquestioning obedience to parents on the Baumrind
measure. Labeling such tendencies as authoritarian, according to Chao, is
to misread as authoritarian those behaviors that are based on Confucian
conceptions of respect for elders. According to Chao, parental concern
and love are equated in Asian cultures with firm control and governance.
In related research, Rohner and Pettengill (1985) reported that Korean
childrens perceptions of parental warmth tend to increase as overall
parental control increases. According to Rohner and Pettengill, this re-

flects a more general cultural view of the individual as a fractional part
of the family. Consequently, decisions that are usually considered to be
individual matters in the United States are often the subject of family
scrutiny and approval in Korea.
Just as it is an error to apply a unidimensional American conception of
parental authority on others, it is an oversimplification to accept unidi-
mensional descriptions of parental authority generated by members of
other cultures as descriptive of themselves. In a study of Chinese adoles-
cents, Lau and Ping (1987), for example, found that the positive relation
between parental control and childrens self-esteem and perceptions of
parental warmth held only for parental behaviors that served organiza-
tional needs and not simply parental efforts to dominate or restrict the
child. According to Lau and Ping (1987), it is important to distinguish or-
ganizational from dominance or power-assertion forms of control. Jung
and Turiel (1994) found that Korean children do not hold an uncritical
view of parental authority, but instead evaluate authority in terms of their
independent judgments of the act and the context. For example, Korean
children were found to reject the legitimacy of a parental command to
commit harm. Similarly, Yau and Smetana (1995) reported that Chinese
adolescentparent relations were not without conflict (although less so
than in the United States), and that conflicts were over the same types of
issues as their American counterparts. Most interesting for our purposes
here is that the adolescents in their study positioned their arguments in
terms of exercising personal jurisdiction.
In sum, cross-cultural studies of parental authority provide a complex
picture that mitigates against the assignment of simple global labels, such
as authoritarian or permissive, individualistic or collectivistic, to the par-
enting practices of cultures or groups. Parenting practices that appear on
the surface to be authoritarian or permissive from the perspective of an
outsider may have a very different meaning to members within a cultural
group. In addition, there is little evidence that the parenting practices of
the majority of members of a culture fit within any single typology. As the
Lau and Ping (1987) research on Chinese families demonstrated, there are
variations in parental behavior even within what on the surface appeared
to be a single dimension of restrictive parenting. What is more, the Yau
and Smetana (1995) findings argue against simplistic views of
parentchild relations within so-called collectivistic societies as harmo-
nious or conflict free (Baumrind 1973). Given the complex picture of par-
enting and parentchild relations, it is clear that caution needs to be exer-
cised in any effort to extend research about mothers beliefs about chil-
drens areas of personal choice to members of non-Western or traditional
cultures. In taking these cultural factors into account, however, it is im-
portant to resist tendencies to view cultures as homogeneous and to as-
sume that personhood and the individual are concepts of concern only to
what are referred to as individualistic cultures.
With these cautionary thoughts in mind, we turn now to research that
has begun a direct investigation of culture and class effects on childrens
and mothers beliefs about the personal in children. I will report on two
studies, both of which we conducted in Brazil.
The first of these studies (Nucci, Camino, and Sapiro 1996) was con-
ducted in the northeastern coastal city of Joao Pessoa. This region of Brazil
has been characterized as a collectivistic culture in comparison with the
United States and Europe (Triandis et al. 1988). In the study, we inter-
viewed children and adolescents from two social classes about which
matters children should be able to control themselves, and which should
be regulated by parents or the social group. The items used in the study
were selected by the Brazilian researchers in the project as ones that fit the
theoretical definitions of the moral, conventional, and personal cate-
gories. These items were presented in a brief scenario in which the childs
behavioral choice was objected to by authority. Following the reading of
the scenario, the child was asked whether it would be all right for the child
to do the act in question, and why or why not. For example: Carolina
likes to write her secrets in a diary which she keeps hidden from other
people. Imagine that one day Carolinas mother has discovered that she
has this diary, and tells Carolina to show her what she has written. In this
case, do you think it is wrong or all right for the mother to read her daugh-
ters secret diary? Should it be all right or not for Carolina to keep her di-
ary secret from her mother? Why/why not?
We found that Brazilian children treated moral, conventional, and per-
sonal issues differently. However, we also found social-class differences
in the age at which the majority of children consistently identified a set of
issues as personal. Middle-class children tended to treat personal issues
as up to them to decide at an earlier age than did lower-class children. By
adolescence (age 14 to 16), however, there were no social-class differences
in childrens judgments of items as ones that should be up to the children
to control. Nor were there class differences in the reasons given for why
an action should be up to the child to decide. By adolescence, across so-
cial classes, the majority of subjects justified control over personal issues
figure 3.1. Mean proportion of personal and norms/authority responses by

middle-class and lower-class subjects as a function of age.
in terms of personal rights and the need for personal privacy. These de-
velopmental shifts are illustrated in Figure 3.1.
In a second study (Nucci and Milnitsky Sapiro 1995), we interviewed
Brazilian mothers about their views of such issues. Half of the mothers
were from northeastern Brazil, and the other half were from a large in-
dustrial city in the southern region of the country that is culturally simi-
lar in many respects to the United States and western Europe. In their in-
terviews, Brazilian mothers from both regions of the country and from
both social classes tended to treat personal items as matters that should
be left up to children. Compliance with moral and conventional norms,
on the other hand, were seen as matters that the mother should not sim-
ply leave up to the child. Thus, the Brazilian mothers, like their U.S. coun-
terparts, acknowledged an area of personal behavioral choice for their
children. The Brazilian findings, however, also revealed regional and class
differences within these broad overall trends. Mothers from southern
Brazil and middle-class mothers from both regions were less likely to treat
things as up to the parent, and more likely to treat them as negotiable, than
were mothers from northeastern Brazil or lower-class mothers from either
region. That is to say that the northeastern and lower-class mothers
seemed somewhat more authoritarian than the southern and middle-class

mothers.
Conversations with mothers during the interviews helped to explain
these differences. When asked whether there were some things that chil-
dren should be allowed to make decisions about, the majority of lower-
class Brazilian mothers of adolescents and middle-class mothers of children
as well as adolescents responded affirmatively. When they were asked to give
reasons for their responses, lower-class Brazilian mothers of young children
tended to say that they felt it would be either too dangerous or impracti-
cal to give young children decision-making authority over their actions. In
contrast, lower-class mothers of adolescents gave reasons supporting their
childs emerging autonomy, agency, and personal competence. Similar
statements supporting autonomy, agency, and competence were offered by
Brazilian middle-class mothers of children as well as adolescents.
Similarly, the majority of lower-class mothers of 6- to 8-year-old chil-
dren did not think that parents should allow a child that age to have his
or her own opinion about things, while a majority of all other mothers felt
that children were entitled to opinions of their own. In the view of the
lower-class mothers of young children, their youngsters had not matured
sufficiently to have the reasoning capacity to form opinions.
Brazilian mothers who thought that children should have choice about
some things spontaneously listed activities or issues similar to those listed
by U.S. mothers. The list of things that mothers left up to the child in-
creased as children got older to include some things that mothers had pre-
viously viewed as matters of safety. In adolescence, mothers extended the
childs personal areas of choice to include academic and occupational de-
cisions, places where the child is permitted to be without seeking parental
permission, and staying up late at night. The criteria mothers used to de-
cide whether an issue should be left up to the child were the same across
region and social class. These criteria included concerns for the childs
safety, their contribution to the childs competence, their appropriateness
developmentally, and matters of the childs private or personal domain.
It is interesting to note that Brazilian mothers from all of the groups, in-
cluding lower-class mothers of young children, responded affirmatively
to the question of whether it was important for a child to develop a sense
of individuality. Indeed, during the interviews, language referring to in-
dividual autonomy was spontaneously employed by the Brazilian moth-
ers irrespective of region or class. They regarded the fostering of individ-
uality as important for the establishment of their childs uniqueness,
autonomy, competence, and agency. In other words, the Brazilian moth-

ers expressed essentially the same concerns in this regard as did the moth-
ers we had interviewed in the United States (Nucci and Smetana 1996).
This (Nucci and Milnitsky Sapiro 1995) study with Brazilian mothers
demonstrated that beliefs about childrens personal choice are not con-
fined to mothers from individualistic cultures. Across social classes and
geographic regions, the Brazilian mothers expressed beliefs that children
require areas of choice for their personal growth. The manner in which
these beliefs were expressed, however, varied as a function of the moth-
ers underlying assumptions about the nature of their childrens needs
and capacities. Middle-class mothers, particularly from the southern
modern region of the country, held views of young children essentially
like those of mothers of the U.S. middle class. According to their view,
children are to be treated as individuals from infancy and given opportu-
nities to exercise choice to enhance their individual talents and personal-
ities. That middle-class view was different from that of the more tradi-
tional lower-class mothers, who thought that the limited cognitive
capacity of infants and young children meant that they were not yet ready
to make choices or hold opinions of their own. Nonetheless, even these
traditional mothers valued the eventual emergence of individuality and
agency in adolescence, and they distinguished the adolescents rights to
personal behavioral control from those moral or conventional zones of be-
havior that are the shared responsibility of parents and others.
In sum, the findings from these two Brazilian studies demonstrate that
children raised outside of the United States or European society develop
a sense of what is personal, and that parental beliefs about childrens per-
sonal choice are not confined to mothers from individualistic cultures.
Across social classes and geographic regions, the Brazilian mothers ex-
pressed beliefs that children require areas of personal discretion for their
personal growth. These studies also show that there are culture and class
differences in the age at which the personal is fully accorded to children.
These differences appear to stem from cultural assumptions about the na-
ture of childrens needs and capacities. As demonstrated in other research
(Wainryb 1991), the assumptions that parents have about the nature of
children, such as whether children benefit from corporal punishment,
have a powerful impact on the ways parents treat their children. Never-
theless, we found in our study of Brazilian mothers that even the moth-
ers from the more traditional regions of Brazil valued the eventual emer-
gence of individuality and agency in adolescence.
the personal and values conflicts in adolescence

The trends toward an increase in claims of personal discretion and pri-
vacy that were observed among Brazilian adolescents point to a general
feature of development. As children grow up, they seek greater autonomy
and independence from parents. That move toward autonomy requires
shifts in the relations between children and adults as young people begin
to lay claim to decisions and areas of activity that had been determined
by parents or other adults. The revealing quotation from former President
George Bush, at the opening of this chapter, illustrates how long such
seemingly minor issues of control linger with us even if, as in the case of
George Bush, we assume considerable stature and power. The quotation
also illustrates another facet of such parentchild issues, namely, that par-
ents generally attempt to exert control and authority in the interests of
their children. One can almost hear Mrs. Bush explaining to her son the
nutritional value of broccoli and the need for a growing boy to eat his
green vegetables.
One of the more interesting and fruitful lines of recent research on chil-
drens value formation has examined the pattern of changes that take place
in terms of the types of issues and zones of behavior children appropriate
as personal matters as they move into adolescence. The work by Judith
Smetana and her colleagues at the University of Rochester has helped us
to understand the appropriate role of adult authority and the sources of
much of what transpires in the form of adolescentparent conflict.
As we had observed in Brazil, the shift toward greater autonomy for
adolescents is not simply the result of actions taken by children. It is due
to a series of reciprocal adultchild exchanges. The shifts that do take
place are not across the board, however, but are linked to the identifica-
tion of actions as personal matters. In general, adolescents view adults as
retaining authority over moral issues (Smetana 1989b; Smetana, Braeges,
and Yau 1991; Smetana et al. 1991). Moreover, adolescents view parents as
having a duty or obligation to regulate moral behavior, and see them-
selves as obliged to obey parental moral rules (Smetana, Killen, and Turiel
1991). Accordingly, the Smetana group has found that moral issues are an
infrequent source of conflict in adolescentparent relationships. Adoles-
cents also typically hold the view that parents have a duty or obligation
to regulate the conventions within the family (Smetana and Asquith 1994).
However, the endorsement of obedience to convention appears to decline
with age. A similar pattern appears to hold for prudential matters that
touch on issues of the adolescents health or safety. Younger adolescents

(under the age of 15) generally maintain that parents have the authority,
and even the obligation, to regulate behaviors that impinge on the ado-
lescents safety or well-being (Tisak 1986). As they grow older, however,
adolescents tend to view such issues of personal welfare as falling within
their own sphere of responsibility and personal jurisdiction (Smetana and
Asquith 1994).
As you might expect, adolescentparent conflicts generally arise in the
context of these areas of change. Conflicts tend to occur over issues par-
ents perceive as important to the conventions that serve to organize and
structure family and household organization, and which adolescents see
as interfering in their personal lives. The kinds of issues that generate most
conflicts in American households are such things as preferences for tele-
vision programs or music, spending decisions (e.g., whether to spend al-
lowance money on games), appearance (dress, makeup), activities (time
spent talking on the phone), schedules (bedtimes, curfews), and places the
adolescent is permitted to go without seeking specific parental permission
(Smetana and Asquith 1994). Parents justify their perspective by appeal-
ing to family or cultural norms, parental authority, the adolescents role-
related responsibilities in the family (e.g., cleaning up their room, mow-
ing the lawn, etc.), the need for politeness and manners, and the perceived
social cost of adolescent nonconformity (e.g., the parents embarrassment,
concern about others misperceptions of the child). Adolescents, in turn,
understand but reject their parents social-conventional interpretations of
disputes and appeal instead to the exercise or maintenance of personal ju-
risdiction (Smetana 1989b; Smetana, Brages, and Yau 1991).
Far fewer family disputes arise over issues that concern risks to the
adolescents health or safety. This is because such prudential issues have
an objective quality to them that is obvious to both parties. Nevertheless,
the tendency of adolescents to engage in risk taking, and to believe in their
own invulnerability, is a potential source of aggravation and alarm to par-
ents. In the case of prudential issues, there is a self-evident overlap be-
tween the parents role as nurturer and protector and the adolescents po-
sition as master of his(her) own house. Matters of personal safety are by
definition self-referential, and parents of adolescents often find them-
selves in the position of shaking their heads as they watch their offspring
engage in relatively harmless but foolish actions (e.g., going to school
without headgear in subzero winter weather) that are emblematic of their
childrens desire to take control of their own lives. For the most part, such
issues are conflict free, owing to the fact that most adolescents do not en-
gage in high-risk behaviors. In other cases, however, adolescents do make
foolish choices with long-term negative consequences.
One measure of personal maturity is the degree to which one can make
intelligent costbenefit analyses of behaviors, such as drug use, that may
bring momentary pleasure but long-term damage to the user. Studies of
adolescent concepts of drug use have reported a strong relationship be-
tween self-reported drug use and the tendency to see the behavior as sim-
ply a matter of personal choice (Nucci, Guerra, and Lee 1991). Adolescents
who are not involved in drug use tend to see such behavior as wrong be-
cause of the potential harm such behavior can cause to oneself. In addi-
tion, high drug users are much more likely than low drug users to endorse
themselves, rather than parents or others, as having legitimate authority
over decisions to engage in drug use (Nucci et al. 1991). However, even
when adolescents view prudential issues, such as drug and alcohol use,
as legitimately regulated by parents or teachers, adolescents view parents
as having significantly less authority over these issues than their parents
do (Smetana and Asquith 1994).
The general pattern that emerges from this work on adolescentparent
relations is that there is a gradual increase in the range of issues that ado-
lescents assume as matters of personal choice, rather than remain subject
to parental authority. Parents generally lag behind in their recognition of
areas within which adolescents should have decision making, but
nonetheless give adolescents a wider degree of freedom than they give to
younger children (Nucci et al. 1996; Smetana and Asquith 1994). This shift
is also accompanied by a degree of adolescentparent conflict. Smetana
(1995b) has recently pooled the data from her series of studies on adoles-
centparent conflict to examine the overall patterns that emerge within
normal families. Her analysis looked at more than 300 families, and it in-
cluded findings from her work with Chinese adolescents and parents in
Hong Kong. In her report, Smetana (1995b) notes that in addition to her
own findings of prototypical and, in some cases, intense adolescentpar-
ent conflicts within her Hong Kong families, anthropological accounts of
adolescentparent conflicts in 160 cultures provide evidence that such
conflicts are widespread (Schlegel and Barry 1991). Smetanas work in-
cluded observations of family interactions, as well as interviews with in-
dividual family members.
On the basis of a statistical procedure called cluster analysis, Smetana
identified three basic patterns of dealing with adolescentparent conflict.
The most prevalent pattern, labeled frequent squabblers, is one in which
adolescents and parents engage in frequent, low-intensity conflicts over

everyday details of family life. A second, smaller group comprised the
placid families, who reported rare conflicts, and whose conflicts were of
low or moderate intensity. The third group, labeled tumultuous families,
had frequent conflicts (though fewer than squabblers), which were very
intense.
In terms of parenting patterns, these three family patterns did not dif-
fer in their rate of regulation of moral, conventional, or prudential issues.
The differences that emerged were over the regulation of multifaceted and
personal issues. Tumultuous and squabbling families had more rules than
placid families over multifaceted issues. Parents from tumultuous families
were more likely to be divorced or remarried, and were lower Social Eco-
nomic Status (SES) than other parents. Parents in tumultuous families were
more authoritarian, had more rules, were more restrictive of their adoles-
cents personal jurisdiction, and less likely to engage in compromise or ne-
gotiation than either of the other two family types. In these families, par-
ents felt more of an obligation to regulate personal issues, and were less
likely to view personal issues as within the adolescents jurisdiction.
Smetana (1995b, 1996) concluded that these families appeared to intrude
more deeply than is developmentally or culturally appropriate in their
adolescents personal domains. In other work, we have found that
parental overintrusion into adolescents personal area is associated with
symptoms of depression and hostility in the children (Nucci, Hasebe, and
Nucci 1999).
Placid families reported fewer conflicts but were not conflict free. These
tended to be higher SES families in which parents were professionally
employed. They engaged in more joint decision making than did other
parents, were less restrictive, and were rated by their children as higher
in warmth.
Squabbling families were in many ways similar to placid families in their
willingness to engage in negotiation and compromise with their adoles-
cent children. Like the placid families, they displayed more warmth than
the parents in tumultuous families. Relative to placid families, however,
frequent squabblers tended to use a greater number of social-conventional
rationales.
These findings indicate that a certain degree of adolescentparent con-
flict is to be expected, and that it most likely reflects the normal process of
realignment between parents and children as children move toward adult
status. What is important and of interest is that this realignment is not in
the form of an across-the-board negotiation of all moral and societal val-
ues, but the very specific adjustment of locus of responsibility for decision
making in the personal domain. This shift is not an invention of liberal
parenting, or of Western democratic culture, but is a basic part of human
development.
the role of the personal in the formation

of moral concepts of rights
As we have seen, the establishment of a personal sphere is essential to the
formation of a sense of personal agency and identity. Throughout devel-
opment, children try to carve out a set of actions that are personal and out-
side of the context of moral and conventional regulation. Thus, it would
appear that the personal sits in conflict or at least apart from morality. As
was noted at the beginning of the chapter, that dichotomous view of in-
dividual interests and moral sentiment is one that is held by a number of
writers, including some who bemoan the rise of individualism and the
supposed decline of moral standards within American society. What such
hand-wringing and dichotomous thinking downplays, however, is the es-
sential role that personal autonomy plays in the moral functioning of peo-
ple, as well as in the content of morality itself.
While it is true that morality is other directed in the sense that moral-
ity is concerned with the impact of actions on others, moral sentiments
and moral judgments are themselves the products of agency. Formation
of the social individual is necessary for the person to engage in the very
acts of reciprocity and cooperation that comprise human morality. The in-
terpersonal requires a personal. As Piaget (1932) put it, in his sole reference
to the role of individuality in moral development: It is only by knowing
our individual nature with its limitations as well as its resources that we
grow capable of coming out of ourselves and collaborating with other in-
dividual natures (p. 393). As has been documented in this chapter, the
construction of such individual boundaries is not a proprietary accom-
plishment of the Western Enlightenment, but a manifestation of funda-
mental human psychological needs.
In addition to providing the breathing room within which people
construct their sense of agency and distinctiveness, the personal con-
tributes to a persons morality by providing the experiential basis from
which to construct a moral conception of rights (Nucci 1996). While moral
structures of reciprocity require that rights and protections granted one-
self be extended to others, moral conceptions of justice and beneficence
do not in and of themselves provide us with a way to identify personal
rights and freedoms. The linking of personal concepts with rights claims
is consistent with philosophical perspectives that ground the notion of
rights in the establishment and maintenance of personal agency (Dworkin
1977; Gewirth 1978, 1982). For example, Gewirth argues that agents
value their freedom or voluntariness as a necessary good as long as the
possibility remains of purposive action that is, of action that is able to
fulfill and maintain at least those purposes required for the continuation
of agency (1978, p. 53). Later he adds: Since the agent regards as neces-
sary goods the freedom and well-being that constitute the generic features
of his successful action, he logically must also hold that he has rights to
these generic features, and he implicitly makes a corresponding rights
claim (p. 63).
Personal concepts serve to identify freedom as a necessary good for
maintaining agency and uniqueness. The content of the personal domain
is the content of the individuals identified freedoms. This specific content
will be influenced by cultural norms and reflect individual idiosyncrasies.
Thus, no claim may be made for a universal collection of specific personal
rights. In addition, many of the specific actions people consider personal
are trivial in nature and would not in and of themselves comprise core val-
ues. For example, one can hardly imagine anyone claiming a moral right
to have green hair. However, these specifics can be seen as manifestations
of broader core requirements for establishing personal boundaries for the
self and for fulfilling related needs for personal agency, continuity, and
uniqueness (Damon and Hart 1988). These basic elements are ones body
and the claims to freedom of expression, communication, and association.
These generic claims are obviously influenced by culture, and variations
in the degree and form that these freedoms take in turn establish the ob-
served cultural variations in moral content.
The function of the personal, then, is to provide the source and the con-
ceptual justification for the individuals claims to freedom. Such claims to
personal liberty do not in and of themselves constitute a moral concep-
tion of rights. The function of such personal concepts is to provide the ba-
sic information (i.e., the psychological necessity of the personal sphere)
needed to extend the moral conceptions of justice and beneficence to in-
clude a moral conception of rights.
The formation of the personal and the individuals claims to freedom
are necessary for the individual to engage as an individual in the discourse
(both public and internal) that leads to moral reciprocity, mutual respect,
and cooperation. Moral discourse transforms individual claims to free-
dom into mutually shared moral obligations. Without such mutuality, as
Piaget (1932) correctly pointed out in his discussion of the relation be-
tween egocentrism and heteronomous morality, personal claims to free-
dom can also serve as the source of narcissistic or exploitative orienta-
tions. On the other hand, in the absence of claims to freedom emerging
from the personal, there can be no moral conception of rights. Thus,
morality and personal freedom are interdependent rather than opposi-
tional features of human development.
It should be self-evident from what was just stated that beyond the
most abstract categories, we cannot, however, anticipate the content of
such discourse. Nor can we anticipate with certainty whether the claims
of individuals will be viewed as touching upon mutual transpersonal con-
cerns. It is the historically situated generation of individual claims to free-
dom reflecting ahistorical basic psychological needs that both stimulates
moral discourse and provides the potential for critique of the status quo.
Thus, moral development from this perspective is to be seen as universal
yet plural, individual yet social. Ultimately, it also recognizes that while
individual moral understandings reflect inherent and unavoidable fea-
tures of human interaction and individual psychological requirements,
the morality of human rights in its most mature and principled forms will
always be the product of collective efforts.
education and the personal domain

Education, like parenting, sits at the crossroads of the childs construction
of areas of personal choice in relation to societal convention and morality.
Schools, even more than individual families, carry the institutional bur-
den of socializing the young into the broader norms of the culture
(Durkheim 1925/1961; Ryan 1989). In addition, schools are being increas-
ingly called upon to educate children in areas of personal behavior, such
as drug use and sexuality, that have individual prudential as well as so-
cietal ramifications. For the teacher and school administrator, these issues
bring up a host of concerns regarding appropriate school structure and
approaches and methods of discipline, as well as curricular issues. It is lit-
tle wonder, then, that critics of public schools, whether of the political left
(Illich 1971) or right (Bennett 1992; Wynne 1986), focus so heavily on the
ways in which schools approach issues of personal freedom and societal
authority. As is evident from the information presented in this chapter, the
balance between what is personal as opposed to societal is a complex and
interwoven mixture of societal values (which are themselves heteroge-
neous and contradictory) and the course of individual development.
Up to this point, however, the focus of this book has been on domain
distinctions and the forms of reasoning associated with each domain. In
order to understand the ways in which morality, convention, and the per-
sonal overlap and interact, we need to look more closely at how people
reason about such issues in a variety of contexts. We take up such issues
of overlap and mixture in Chapters 4 and 5.
chapter four
Morality in Context: Issues of Development
In the preceding chapters we reviewed the three main conceptual frame-

works or domains in which people structure their ways of thinking about
social values. The existence of distinct knowledge systems does not, how-
ever, preclude their conjoining or interaction in context (Piaget 1980,
1985). On the contrary, we often make use of knowledge from more than
one conceptual system when dealing with issues in the context of every-
day events. For example, deciding the best way to divide ten dollars
among four people is simultaneously a moral problem, involving the fair
distribution of goods, and a mathematical problem, entailing the calcula-
tion of proportions, fractions, and sums. Few ethicists or mathematicians
would reduce these areas of knowledge to one another. Yet, in this exam-
ple, we see an instance where mathematics and morality are interwoven,
and where an adequate resolution of the problem requires coordination
of knowledge from both domains.
Similar situations arise with regard to the three domains of social
knowledge discussed in this book. Such overlap is inevitable given that
all social interactions take place within societal systems framed by con-
ventions. Thus, although many everyday issues are straightforward in-
stances of either morality, convention, or personal choice, many others
contain aspects from more than one domain. In such cases, people may
differ from one another in terms of the information they may bring to a
situation, the weight they may give to one or another feature of a given
issue, and their level of development within each relevant conceptual do-
main. Understanding the nature of such interactions is crucial to any ac-
count of individual and cultural differences in value orientations, as well
as to explanations of the inconsistencies in moral judgments people seem
to display across varying situations. From an educational standpoint, un-
derstanding the nature of potential overlaps and interactions between
76
in context: issues of development 77
morality and other social values is central to the construction of curricula

and educational practices.
interactions between morality and convention

Two basic forms of overlap occur between morality and convention. In
one form, called domain mixture, conventional norms sustaining a partic-
ular organizational structure are either in harmony or conflict with what
would objectively be seen as concerns for fairness or rights. For example,
most Americans have stood in line to buy movie tickets. This behavior is
clearly a social convention in that one can well imagine an alternative
arrangement that would meet the same purposes. On the other hand, any-
one who has lined up only to have someone cut in recognizes that queu-
ing, by establishing a procedure for turn taking, serves the moral function
of distributive justice. A second example of domain mixture is provided
by gender norms, which differentially define the roles which men and
women can assume within the social system. In general, such norms serve
important organizational functions, such as structuring family systems,
but sometimes in such a way as to accord members of one gender (usu-
ally men, Okin 1996) greater authority and privilege than the other.
The second type of morality/convention overlap, labeled second order
moral events, occurs when the violation of a strongly held convention is
seen as causing psychological harm (insult, distress) to persons main-
taining the convention. In our culture, for example, attending a funeral in
a bathing suit would generally be seen as disrespectful of the deceased
and insensitive toward the grieving family, and not merely an instance of
unconventional conduct.
There are three basic ways in which such instances of domain interac-
tion and overlap may be dealt with (Smetana 1982; Turiel and Smetana
1984). In one form there is a predominant emphasis on one domain, with
subordination of the other. For example, in the recent controversy over the
role of women in Catholic worship services, some women have framed
the issue as a moral matter of fairness and rights. Pope John Paul II, how-
ever, argued in the late 1970s that the ordination of women was not an is-
sue of justice or human rights, but rather one of custom and tradition.
A second response to instances of domain interaction or overlap is
characterized by conflict regarding how best to conceptualize a particu-
lar issue, with inconsistencies and the absence of resolution or reconcilia-
tion among components. An illustrative example is provided in Smetanas
(1982) research on womens reasoning about abortion, in which she de-
scribes the agonizing cases of pregnant women contemplating abortion,

who shift between viewing abortion as a matter of personal discretion,
privacy, and choice, and viewing the act of abortion as the immoral tak-
ing of another persons life.
A third way of responding to instances of domain overlap involves the
coordination of the various domain components, so that each is taken into
account in the solution of the problem. A commonplace illustrative ex-
ample of such domain coordination would be the resolution of gender-
based inequities resulting from outdated norms for the assignment of
household tasks. This has entailed restructuring family norms for how
child care and other domestic responsibilities are distributed among fam-
ily members so that both the husband and wife can fulfill career obliga-
tions while also maintaining an orderly and functioning household.
factors influencing moral and social

reasoning in context
There are several factors that affect which form domain interactions will
take, and the outcomes that will result from the persons moral and social
judgments. Two of these factors, emotion and personal character, will be
discussed in separate chapters that conclude Part One of the book. At this
point, and in Chapter 5, I will take up a discussion of the other major fac-
tors influencing contextualized social and moral judgments. These factors
are the persons level of development, the cultural setting, and the per-
sons assumptions about the facts of the situation.
Domain Interactions and Moral Development

A central factor influencing peoples responses to the moral and nonmoral
components of social situations is development. It is self-evident that a
childs moral and social judgments will be different from those of an adult.
Because all people, regardless of gender, culture, or social class back-
ground, develop with age, development has been viewed as an important
route through which to focus moral education curricula (Kohlberg 1984;
Lapsley 1996). In fact, a great deal of optimism was generated in the late
1960s and 1970s around the role that development could play in educa-
tional programs aimed at rearing moral children. While there is no
question that development plays an important role in an individuals
moral reasoning, the weight accorded to developmental factors was over-
stated. As we will see, this misplaced optimism stemmed in large part
from the incorrect assumption that development alone could account for
the ways in which people weigh moral and nonmoral concerns (especially
the laws and conventions of society) in generating decisions about a
morally right course of action. This assumption stemmed from an account
of development in which the relations between morality and convention
were determined by progression within a single developmental system
(Kohlberg 1984).
What we have learned from more recent work is that differences in so-
cial judgments, attributable to development, can be seen in the age-related
changes that occur in the understandings people have about issues within
each domain. Development within the moral domain entails shifts in the
ways in which people conceptualize what it means to be fair, along with
attendant changes in conceptions of the obligations that follow from
moral concerns for the welfare of others. Development in the personal do-
main involves shifts in concepts of the function that control over personal
choice and privacy has for developing and maintaining individuality and
personal integrity. Finally, development of concepts of convention follows
an oscillating pattern of affirmations and negations tied to shifts in un-
derstandings of the role that conventional norms play in structuring pre-
dictable patterns of conduct among members of a social group.
When individuals reason about issues that require them to draw
knowledge from more than one domain, the resulting judgments will be
affected not only by the degree to which aspects from given domains
achieve salience, but also by the level of conceptual development the in-
dividual has reached within each domain. A little-researched issue is the
extent to which natural development within the moral, personal, and con-
ventional domains occurs in synchrony. To the extent that development
occurs at roughly the same rate across domains, we can describe within
very broad limits the structure of age-related shifts in reasoning corre-
sponding to prototypical cross-domain interactions. As I will discuss in
greater detail in this chapter, this appears to be what has been captured
by Kohlbergs (1984) description of stages of moral development. There is
however, experimental evidence that demonstrates that development
within the moral and conventional domains can occur separately and at
different rates.
As part of an educational intervention within the context of an eighth-
grade American history class (Nucci and Weber 1991), we set up condi-
tions so that students either focused the content of their group discussions
around moral issues of fairness and harm to others, or matters of social
convention and social organization. At the end of the four-week instruc-
tional unit, we assessed both groups for their levels of reasoning in both
the moral and conventional domains. As one might expect, the group that
focused on moral issues had higher levels of moral judgment than the
group that focused on matters of convention. Conversely, the group that
focused discussions around convention had attained higher levels of un-
derstanding in the conventional domain. This relatively short-term inter-
vention demonstrated that differential social experiences can result in dif-
ferent rates of development in these two domains, and provides
additional evidence that morality and convention comprise distinct con-
ceptual and developmental systems.
The likelihood of developmental asynchrony adds to the factors that
would help explain individual variations in contextualized moral judg-
ments. An individual who is at Level 1 in Domain A and Level 1 in Do-
main B will exhibit a different pattern of reasoning in the context of mul-
tidomain issues than will a person who reasons at Level 2 in Domain A
and Level 1 in Domain B, and so forth. Given the rates of change that take
place in intellectual and physical growth during childhood and adoles-
cence, we would expect asynchrony to be fairly common in the moral and
social judgments of school-age children. Analyses of the sociomoral rea-
soning of children and adolescents have provided findings that age-re-
lated changes in the elements of sociomoral judgment assessed by the Kol-
hberg interview do not occur in synchrony. Instead, the evidence
provided by this global measure indicates that a mixture of elements from
different phases of development, rather than synchronous shifts, charac-
terizes sociomoral development throughout childhood (Colby, et al. 1983;
Turiel 1975). Developmental lags and advances in one area relative to an-
other are part of the normal pattern teachers observe in student progress.
Such asynchronies in the development of social judgments may help ex-
plain how two students with seemingly similar levels of understanding
of the function of social norms can appear so different in terms of their
sense of fairness or moral obligation.
With respect to social growth, cross-domain interactions may serve as
an important source of input for stimulation of change in the concepts
maintained in related conceptual systems. Development of moral con-
ceptions of rights, for example, may be stimulated by preceding ad-
vances in the childs conceptions in the personal domain regarding the
nature of personhood and the importance of personal choice (Nucci
1996). Similarly, the emergence of principled moral positions may be
stimulated in early adulthood by the prior construction in the conven-
tional domain of a relativistic negation of convention as simply the arbi-
trarily established norms of a particular society. This moral equation of

societies as conventional systems may stimulate a search for moral moor-
ings independent of ones particular cultural frame. On the other hand,
it may also simply allow for the adoption of a relativistic political ideol-
ogy in which such moral questions are left unresolved. The possibility
of cross-domain interaction, thus, does not imply a deterministic set of
developmental outcomes.
Having gotten a flavor of how development might impact the form of
interdomain interactions associated with moral growth, let us turn to a
more detailed description of age-related changes in concepts of morality
and convention, and the age-typical patterns of interaction that emerge
between these two domains. We will do so with reference to Kohlbergs
stages of moral development. This will allow us to get an overview of the
major age-related changes that occur within each domain, and also to ac-
count for the basic findings and observed contradictions that have arisen
in research employing the Kohlberg stages. The Kohlberg sequence is the
most widely researched description of moral development available. It
has also served as the basis for a number of influential educational inno-
vations (DeVries 1995; Power, Higgins, and Kohlberg 1989a). Despite this
widespread influence, Kohlbergs (1984) standard account of stages of
moral development does not represent the full range of sociomoral deci-
sion-making patterns that individuals present (Rest et al. 1999). For one
thing, there is considerable within-person variation in the moral reason-
ing patterns that individuals exhibit across contexts (Bandura 1991). This
variation is inconsistent with the assumption that the Kohlberg stages
capture the structure of a persons moral reasoning.
In the process of conducting their careful and extensive research aimed
at standardizing moral-stage scoring, the Kohlberg group (Colby and
Kohlberg 1987; Colby et al. 1983) discovered that individuals at all points
in development may respond to Kohlbergs moral dilemmas by reason-
ing from a perspective of either rules and authority (Type A reasoning) or
justice and human welfare (Type B reasoning). In addition, individuals at
all ages and levels may present what the Kohlberg group has referred to
as a relativistic metaethical orientation. From the vantage point of our
current understanding of the domain-related heterogeneity in peoples
social cognition, such within-stage variation can be accounted for by rec-
ognizing that the Kohlberg tasks generate reasoning employing knowl-
edge from more than one conceptual system.
This variation occurred because the methods Kohlberg (1984) em-
ployed to study moral judgment used stimulus materials that combined
the presentation of moral dilemmas with moral conflicts. A moral

dilemma pits one moral consideration (e.g., stealing) against another (e.g.,
harm to persons). A moral conflict pits a moral consideration (e.g., steal-
ing) against a nonmoral factor or norm, such as obedience toward au-
thority or the law. The moral dilemmas that comprise the primary as-
sessment tool for measuring moral stage as defined by Lawrence
Kohlbergs (1984) influential theory combine both dilemmatic and con-
flictual elements. Kohlberg (1958) set out in his original research to study
whether there was a developmental progression in the ways in which peo-
ple at various ages weigh the needs of persons against the conventions
and norms of society. His purpose was to uncover whether development
led to the kinds of principled moral positions posited by rationalist
philosophers, such as Kant, and suggested by the developmental research
of Piaget (1932).
As was alluded to in Chapter 2, Kohlbergs (1984) standard account de-
scribes moral development as moving from early stages in which moral
understandings of fairness are intertwined with prudential self-interest
and concrete concerns for social authority, to conventional moral under-
standings in which morality (fairness) is intertwined with concerns for
maintaining social organization defined by normative regulation. Finally,
at the highest, principled stages of morality attained by a minority of the
general population, morality as fairness is fully differentiated from non-
moral prudential or conventional considerations, and morality serves as
the basis from which the individual not only guides personal actions but
also is able to evaluate the morality of the conventional normative system
of society.
Kohlberg (1984) appears to have described the sequence of age-related
changes in the ways in which moral and nonmoral (especially conven-
tional) concerns are typically integrated in overlapping contexts. For ex-
ample, Stage 4 (conventional) moral reasoning, as described in the
Kohlberg system, reflects the emergence in middle to late adolescence of
understandings in the conventional domain that social norms are con-
stituent elements of social systems (Turiel 1983). This reinterpretation of
the Kohlberg stage progression is set out in Table 4.1. It presents the ma-
jor age-related changes (levels) in peoples thinking within the moral and
conventional domains, alongside the age-typical stage described by
Kohlbergs (1984) theory. The descriptions of moral development are pro-
vided in the left-hand column of the table. The sequence of changes in con-
cepts of social convention (Turiel 1983) is presented in the middle column.
The Kohlberg stage sequence is presented in the right-hand column. The
TABLE 4.1. Levels of Moral and Conventional Development in Relation to Kohlbergs Stages
Conceptual Framework
Approximate Ages Moral Domain Conventional Domain Kohlberg Stage
57 years Recognition of prima facie Conventions are reified as de- Stage 1
obligations (e.g., not to hit scriptions of empirical regularities Rules are to be obeyed. One
and hurt others). However, (e.g., women are supposed to should avoid physical damage to
beyond those basic require- wear dresses because women persons and property. Inability to
ments, fairness is prioritized wear dresses and men dont). coordinate perspectives of self
in terms of self-interest. and others; thus, favoring the self
is seen as right.
810 years Fairness is now coordinated Negation of the conception of con- Stage 2
with conceptions of just ventions as empirical regularities. Morality as instrumental ex-
reciprocity defined primarily Exceptions to conventions (e.g., change You scratch my back,
in terms of strict equality, some women wear pants) taken as Ill scratch yours; Act to meet
with some beginning evidence that conventions are ones own interests and needs
concerns for equity. arbitrary. The mere existence of a and let others do the same.
norm not a sufficient basis for Rules followed only when in
compliance. someones interest.
1012 years Fairness seen as requiring Concrete understanding that Stage 3
more than strict equality. conventional rules maintain order Being good means living up to
Concerns for equity (taking (e.g., prevent people from run- what is expected by people
into account the special needs, ning in the halls). Top-down around you, and by ones role
situations, or contributions conception of social authority and (e.g., good brother/sister). Fair-
(continued)Ma
TABLE 4.1 (continued)
Conceptual Framework
Approximate Ages Moral Domain Conventional Domain Kohlberg Stage
of others) are now coordi- rules. People in charge make rules ness is the golden rule. One
nated with reciprocity in that preserve order. Rules may should be caring of others.
structuring moral decisions. be changed and vary by context.
1214 years Consolidation of the relations Conventions are now viewed as Stage 3B (Pseudo Stage 6)
between equity and equality nothing but social expectations. Moral decisions based on the fair-
in conceptions of what is fair The arbitrary nature of convention ness or harmful impact of actions
and caring in social relations. is viewed as undercutting the independent of governing rules,
force of a rule. Acts are evaluated or role expectations. Morality
independent of rules. prioritized over convention. No
evidence of a prior to society
orientation.
1417 years Continuation of Emergence of systematic concepts Stage 4
consolidation. of social structure. conventions as Morality as codified in the laws of
normative and binding within a the governing system. Adherence
social system of fixed roles and to law provides an objective basis
static hierarchical organization. for what is right. Maintaining
social-system basis for moral order
and equal protection from harm.
Notions of equity and equality
same as in Stage 3.
1720 years Transition to adult morality. Negation of view that uniform Stage 4
norms serve to maintain social Morality is relative to systems of
systems. Conventions are laws and norms. No system may
nothing but societal standards lay claim to moral superiority.
that have become codified What is right is a function of what
through habitual use. Systems seems most right for the person in
of norms are arbitrary. his/her situation.
Adulthood (Moral Domain Extrapolation) Conventions as uniformities that Stage 5
Application of conceptions are functional in coordinating Prior to society perspective:
of fairness and beneficence social interactions. Shared know- What is moral are values and
to reasoning about ones ledge of conventions among rights that exist prior to social
social system. Morality members of social groups facili- attachments and contracts. Such
understood to be indepen- tate interaction and operation of values and rights are those which
dent of norms of particular the system. any rational being would want to
systems. Coordination of see reflected in a moral society.
universal and prescriptive
features of morality with
incommensurate/intrinsic
worth of all persons. Logical
extension of moral obliga-
tions to treatment of human-
kind.
ages presented at the far left hand side of the table are approximations and
are intended as markers of development, rather than as fixed points of
maturation.
Age 5 to 7 Years
As was described in Chapter 2, morality begins in early childhood with a
focus upon issues of harm to the self and others. Preschool-aged children
are very concerned with their own safety, and understand that it is objec-
tively wrong to hurt others. Three-year-olds, for example, understand
that it is wrong to hit and hurt someone, even in the absence of a rule
against hitting, because When you get hit, it hurts, and you start to cry.
In research on age-related changes within the moral domain, Davidson,
Turiel, and Black (1983) found that up to about age 7, moral judgment is
primarily regulated by concerns for maintaining welfare and avoiding
harm and is limited to directly accessible acts. Young childrens morality,
however, is not yet structured by understandings of fairness as reciproc-
ity. Fairness for the young child is often expressed in terms of personal
needs and the sense that one isnt getting ones just desserts. Its not fair
often means I didnt get what I want, or that someones actions caused
the child to experience harm.
While young childrens conceptions of morality can be drawn from
direct experience with the effects of moral actions, their conceptions of
social convention need to be constructed out of their experiences with the
norms or expectations that regulate such acts, rather than from any fea-
tures of the acts themselves. In attempting to make sense out of this con-
ventional aspect of their social world, children search for patterns or reg-
ularities that would allow them to predict the right course of action. For
children approximately 5 to 7 years of age, the regularities and patterns
they observe combine with the explicit information they are told (e.g., par-
ent or teacher statements of rules or expectations) to form a conception of
conventions as upholding a set of empirical regularities. For example,
children observe that women and not men generally wear dresses. From
this empirical regularity, children construct a straightforward set of con-
clusions: Men dont wear dresses because men arent women; therefore,
only women should wear dresses. For a man to wear a dress would be to
violate this empirically established regularity of the social world.
As can be seen in Table 4.1, Stage 1 of the Kohlberg scheme contains el-
ements from the rule-following orientation of young childrens conven-
tional domain understandings and from the concerns for concrete effects
of actions on others that characterize young childrens moral concepts. Al-

though this mixture of convention and morality maps onto occasions
when young children refer to rules and social expectations when consid-
ering a moral course of action (Ooh, youre going to get in trouble.), it
does not account for the content of reasoning exhibited when young chil-
dren spontaneously share with others or object to the actions of a bully. In
such cases, the childs morality is operating independent of the conven-
tional norms of the setting, focusing instead on the salient moral features
of the situation.
Age 8 to 10 Years
The moral intuitions of early childhood allow children to consider the im-
pact of actions on others. In settings where the childs own interests are
not importantly at stake, young children can be touchingly generous and
benevolent (Eisenberg 1986; Staub 1971). At the same time, however,
young children have difficulty balancing the needs of more than one per-
son at a time. In the absence of some clear procedure for resolving com-
peting moral needs, young children appear to use arbitrary standards for
assigning value to persons (e.g., age, gender), and have particular diffi-
culty in weighing the needs of others against their own desires (Damon
1975, 1977). Thus, we witness the contradiction of the generosity and
openness of young children, and an arbitrariness and selfishness charac-
teristic of the age. Resolving these contradictions involves changes in the
childs conceptions of persons, in their understandings of what is required
to maintain interpersonal relations, and in their general intellectual ca-
pacity to comprehend the logical implications for the self of ones actions
on others. This is a tall order. And, these issues are revisited throughout
the course of moral development.
The great accomplishment of early-childhood moral development is
the construction of notions of moral action tied to structures of just rec-
iprocity (Damon 1975, 1977; Turiel and Davidson 1986;). The web of re-
ciprocal interpersonal interactions takes the child beyond the minimal
moral requirements of concerns about prima facie harm to what Piaget
(1932) referred to as the social logic of justice. By approximately 6 to 8
years of age, children begin to construct a set of moral understandings
that compellingly tie the actions of one person to the reactions or re-
sponses of the other. By age 10, these notions of reciprocity are generally
consolidated into notions of moral necessity resulting from a moral
logic that requires equal treatment of persons. This strict reading of
equal treatment, however, may allow for a kind of tit-for-tat morality in

which moral obligation extends only to those from whom one can expect
something in return, and only to the extent that actions maintain a bal-
anced moral ledger.
With regard to convention, development shifts the ways in which chil-
dren interpret instances in which people deviate from typical patterns of
conventionally regulated behavior. At the earliest level, children treat
such exceptions from observed regularities as error. By age 8 to 10 years,
children view such exceptions to empirical regularities as evidence that
conventions dont really have much normative force and dont matter. For
example, 5- to 7-year-old children generally respond that it would be
wrong for a man to accept a job as an infant nurse because nurses are
women (Turiel 1983). Their knowledge of counterexamples of sex-typed
behavior, such as women serving in the armed forces, are not seen as ev-
idence that their position is an overgeneralization. In contrast, 8 to 10 year
olds employ counter-examples, such as girls playing on baseball teams,
as evidence that all gender-related conventions (and by extension all con-
ventions) may be ignored.
Kohlbergs Stage 2 captures the morality of direct reciprocity typical of
this age group. According to the Kohlberg account, morality at this stage
is characterized by instrumental exchange. Individuals act on the basis of
meeting their own interests and letting others do the same. The negation
of convention typical of this age is associated in the Kohlberg account with
an instrumental approach to rules, such that rules are followed only when
they are in someones self-interest (e.g., to stay out of trouble).
Age 10 to 12 Years
Beginning around age 8, children show signs of an awareness that differ-
ences in the capacities and needs of individuals should be met with spe-
cial considerations. For example, children will generally adjust their phys-
ical play when interacting with physically handicapped peers. These
intuitions are coordinated between the ages of 10 and 12 years into a no-
tion of fairness as requiring more than strict equality. Concerns for equity
(taking into account the special needs, situations, or contributions of oth-
ers) are now coordinated with reciprocity in structuring moral decisions
(Damon 1975, 1977). Treating others fairly may mean treating people un-
equally in the sense that equity requires adjustments that bring people
into more comparable statuses. In concrete terms, children begin to real-
ize, for instance, the fairness inherent in the unequal treatment that par-
ents provide to siblings who are at different ages when it comes to privi-
leges and responsibilities.
This expansion of morality frees the child from considering what is fair
solely in terms of direct reciprocal exchange, and it allows for extensions of
moral (fair) treatment to those from whom one has no expected repayment
and to those who have even been ungracious or unfair to the self. With re-
spect to this latter point, it allows the child to go beyond a tit-for-tat moral-
ity of retribution to deal with transgressors without resorting to the same
kinds of hurtful acts employed by the transgressor (Lapsley 1996).
In terms of convention, the negations of the previous level are replaced
by a concrete affirmation of the functional value of conventions as serv-
ing to maintain social order. Children recognize that conventions vary by
context and that exceptions exist within contexts. However, they also
maintain that things work better when there is some organization es-
tablished by rules. For example, rules are needed in order to keep every-
one from running in the school hallways and creating chaos. Along with
this concrete conception of social order is a concrete notion of social hier-
archy. People in charge make the rules, which others are expected to fol-
low. There is, however, no understanding of societies as systems and,
thus, no way of justifying particular social norms beyond very obvious
concrete givens. For example, children at this level do not understand the
functional significance of titles (e.g., Mr., Mrs., Dr.) in forms of address as
reflecting hierarchical social position. Children often state that one should
use titles as a sign of respect for the person being addressed. When asked
why use of the title is more respectful than use of a first name, the chil-
dren are unable to answer, other than to say that the authorities who have
organized things favor the rule.
Within the Kohlberg typology, the overlap between these age-typical
forms of moral and conventional thinking are combined to form the Stage
3 good boy/girl form of conventional morality. At Stage 3 within the
Kohlberg system, being good means living up to what is expected by peo-
ple around you and by ones conventionally defined role (e.g., good
brother/sister). Fairness is no longer the instrumental reciprocity of Stage
2, but rather an equitable rendering of the golden rule. Fairness means go-
ing beyond raw justice toward a view that one should be caring of others.
Age 12 to 14 Years
During early adolescence, there is further consolidation of the relations
between equity and equality constructed in late childhood. Efforts to
bring these two aspects of fairness into relation, combined with the pre-
scriptive and universalizable elements of morality, open adolescents to
consideration of the moral meaning of their relations with others beyond
their own group.
With respect to conventions, adolescent reflection on their earlier con-
crete understandings of norms leads to a negation of their earlier position
in which norms are justified in terms of their relation to social authority.
The adolescent stands this childhood conception on its head, and con-
ventions are negated as being nothing but the dictates of authority (Turiel
1983). Since the acts being governed by convention are arbitrary, the rules
have no meaning. Thus, the issue of whether or not titles are more re-
spectful than first names is answered in the negative. First names and ti-
tles have equal moral value. Whether to call a teacher by Mr. or Mrs. rather
than his/her first name is therefore a matter of (a) prudence (i.e., violation
of the rule about titles could have sanctions), (b) moral consideration (i.e.,
some teachers feel strongly about the rule and are hurt when addressed
by first name), or (c) personal preference.
The Kohlberg system has no stage that would correspond to these de-
scriptions of moral and conventional thought. However, the descriptions
do help to take into account some of the anomalous findings with ado-
lescent subjects reported within the Kohlberg literature. In Kohlbergs
(1958, 1963) original report of research results regarding the moral-stage
sequence, he identified principled moral reasoning among adolescent
subjects. In their subsequent reanalysis of these data in conjunction with
their longitudinal studies, the Kohlberg group determined that principled
moral reasoning does not occur in adolescence but is a rare achievement
of adult moral reasoners. The earlier Kohlberg adolescent findings were
recoded as Stage 3 (Type B, autonomous) reasoning (Colby et al. 1983).
The Type B assignment was a post hoc attempt to account for the fact
that the adolescents provided moral justifications that focused upon uni-
versal requirements for attention to fairness and compassion, and they
prioritized these concerns over issues of law or convention when such is-
sues were raised by the interviewers. These adolescent subjects did not
employ the typical Stage 3 references to group normative expectations.
In the reanalysis of their reasoning, their judgments were assigned a Stage
3 score because the subjects did not evidence an understanding of society
as a system, and thus could not provide a prior to society orientation
requisite for a Stage 5 or 6 designation.
A domain-theory interpretation of these same results would be that the
negation of convention typical of this age group would make it unlikely
that their moral reasoning would make reference to social norms. More-
over, moral judgments typical of this age group (as assessed by Damons
distributive justice 1975, 1977, and Lapsleys 1982 retributive justice
interviews) have many of the formal features associated with principled
moral reasoning. Thus, the reasoning presented by morally sensitive ado-
lescents might well look like principled morality. In our use of Kohlberg
interviews with eighth-grade honors students, we found that we could
distinguish the reasoning of these students from postconventional adults
only by specifically asking questions that would demonstrate that they
did not have a conception of societies as systems, and thus could not pro-
vide an articulated prior to society perspective (Nucci and Weber 1991).
Age 14 to 17 Years
The moral reasoning associated with middle to late adolescence has not
been studied from a developmental perspective outside of the Kohlberg
framework. However, one can extrapolate from the existing work with
younger adolescents and children that the course of moral development
would be toward deepening the understandings of fairness that emerged
in earlier developmental periods. A significant aspect of this deepening
would stem from the persons construction of more comprehensive con-
ceptions of society and people.
It is in middle adolescence that children first construct an understand-
ing of conventions as constituent elements of societies as systems (Turiel
1983). The younger adolescents dismissal of convention as simply the
dictates of authority is replaced by an understanding that conventions
have meaning within a larger social framework. Thus, conventions are
viewed as normative and binding within a social system of fixed roles and
hierarchical organization. This hierarchy is not the concrete differentia-
tion of people in power from others of lower status, as was the case in mid-
dle childhood, but rather a differentiated conceptualization of the associ-
ations among differing social roles and social positions in relation to one
another within a conventional system of norms. At this point in develop-
ment, violations of convention are viewed as potentially disruptive of the
normative system. Thus, participants within a system are expected to
abide by the norms and conventions of that system.
The construction of the conception of societies as normative systems al-
lows for the emergence of what Kohlberg identified as Stage 4 moral rea-
soning. At Stage 4, according to the Kohlberg position, morality is codi-
fied in the laws of the governing system. Adherence to the law in a moral
context provides for a shared and impersonal objective basis for the right.
Maintaining the social system is viewed as a way of preserving the moral
order and of providing unbiased and equal protection from harm. The un-
derlying moral conceptions of equity and equality are the same as those
of Kohlberg Stage 3.
Development in Adulthood: Age 17 to 20 Years

During early adulthood, there is additional reflection on the relation be-
tween specific conventions and the organizational functions they serve.
The arbitrariness of convention once again becomes a basis from which to
negate their normative force. Specific conventions (e.g., use of titles in ad-
dressing people in authority) are not viewed as necessary to the mainte-
nance of the social functions (e.g., conveying respect within a set of hier-
archical social positions) they are presumed to serve. Whereas young
adolescents negate convention as simply the dictates of people in author-
ity, young adults negate convention as nothing but the expectations of
society (Turiel 1983). Systems of norms are now viewed as arbitrary.
In their longitudinal studies (Colby et al. 1983), the Kohlberg group re-
ported evidence for a transitional stage (4 1/2) between conventional
(Stage 4) and postconventional (Stage 5) moral reasoning. This transition,
found among some college-age individuals, is characterized by value rel-
ativism and situational ethics. Moral positions espoused by these
sophomoric relativists rest on the justification that morality stems from
societal norms that have force only within the context of particular social
systems. Systems of norms are themselves arbitrary; thus, morality is a
matter of what seems right to the person in his/her situation. One can see,
in this description of the moral relativism captured by the Kohlberg
group, a subordination of moral justifications to the negation of conven-
tion characteristic of individuals at that same general age. This is not to
say that all young adults enter a period of moral relativism, but simply to
point out how a conflation of conventional concepts with morality can re-
sult in such reasoning. The fact that these young relativists hold onto a set
of criteria independent of societal norms as the ultimate basis for their
moral justifications points toward a latent recognition that morality stems
from sources other than conventional norms.
Adulthood: Age 20 and Above

The recognition that conventions do not in and of themselves constitute
the defining elements of social systems is maintained at the final point in
the development of conceptions of social convention. However, there is
an additional understanding at this level that conventions serve to coor-

dinate the interactions of people in ongoing social systems and, thus, that
conventions serve the important function of facilitating the operation of
social systems. Conventions provide individual members with pre-
dictable sets of mutual behavioral expectations within a particular social
frame and, thus, allow for the smooth and normalized flow of social in-
teraction among members of a social group.
The final empirically supported stage of moral development as defined
by the Kohlberg system appears only in the reasoning of a minority of
adults (Colby et al. 1983; Lapsley 1996; Snarey 1985). As can be seen in
Table 4.1, Stage 5 reasoning is characterized by a prior to society per-
spective in which what is moral are those values and rights that transcend
particular social attachments and contracts. Such values and rights are
those which any rational being would want to see reflected in the norms
and mores of a moral society. From a domain theory perspective, this prin-
cipled moral position is one that can be constructed once the individual
has gained some distance from the conventional system conceptualiza-
tion of adolescence. It represents a particular coordination between ones
conceptions of conventional systems and morality, such that morality is
structured not simply by a capacity to judge actions in terms of their ap-
plication to personal interactions, absent concerns for the structure of the
social system, but to provision universalizable principles for human in-
teractions with application to a contextualized sociohistorical frame. Even
though the antecedents of principled moral judgment are evident in child-
hood (e.g., adolescents are capable of evaluating the morality of social
practices in terms of their concordance with formal moral criteria; Nucci
and Weber 1991), the requirements for moral judgment, so defined, would
appear to be ones that are beyond the normal life-space of most adults.
The factors or conditions that would stimulate development of principled
moral reasoning as defined by Kohlberg are likely to be multifaceted and
to go beyond the mere interplay between conventional and moral con-
cepts. Among the factors likely to be involved are sociohistorical context
(Habermas 1991; Snarey 1985) and educational level (Lind, Hartman, and
Wakenhut 1985).
On that note, I will now leave the discussion of developmental factors
in cross-domain interactions to take up some of the issues regarding the
impact of culture on sociomoral judgment.
chapter five
Morality in Context: Issues of Culture
As we saw in Chapter 4, people at any given level of development may

read the moral and nonmoral components of complex social situations in
different ways. One of the primary influences upon the ways in which
people read social situations is the cultural frame in which they live. In
their simplest form, these cultural influences result from the mere pres-
ence or absence of particular nonmoral rules or norms. For example,
queuing in line to buy movie tickets can have moral implications only in
a cultural setting where the convention of standing in line is in effect. Of
more interest, however, is the manner in which cultures emphasize the
importance of maintaining the existing social order, and the degree to
which that social order emphasizes hierarchy and social stratification.
Cultures, like individuals, are complex and multifaceted, and it is sim-
plistic and even stereotypic to characterize cultures in global terms.
The discussion that follows begins with an examination of some gen-
eral trends that can be observed emerging from the relative emphasis on
tradition and hierarchy in cultural value systems. It moves on toward a
discussion of how the heterogeneous nature of culture may lead to con-
flicting and even oppositional viewpoints in value orientations within a
given society.
cultural emphasis on tradition

With regard to the first point in the discussion, it is the case that all cul-
tural groups endeavor to maintain their traditions and customs and pass
them on to the next generation. Without such conservative tendencies, the
very existence of culture and society would be hard to envision. Cultures
differ, however, in the degree to which adherence to custom and tradition
is emphasized. It is generally recognized that the so-called modern soci-
94
in context: issues of culture 95
eties change their customs and conventions more readily than so-called
traditional societies. One consequence of these differences is that mem-
bers of traditional societies are more likely to moralize their conven-
tions. For example, as was mentioned in Chapter 1, Ijo children and ado-
lescents in Nigeria (Hollos et al. 1986), Arab children in Israel (Nisan
1987), and lower-class children in northeastern Brazil (Nucci et al. 1996)
tend to affirm the importance of customs and tradition to a greater degree
than do American children. Children within the more traditional cultures
were less likely to view the conventional norms of their society as alter-
able, and more likely to generalize their conventions to other cultural set-
tings than were American children.
One probable consequence of these differences is that individuals in
more traditional cultures would be more sensitive to the salience of cus-
tom and convention in contexts where convention and morality overlap.
There is some indirect evidence that this is the case. It comes from the
cross-cultural work done using the Kohlberg stage sequence (Snarey
1985). One of the striking findings of this cross-cultural work is that post-
conventional reasoning (as defined within the Kohlberg framework) is al-
most absent among the adult population of traditional cultural groups.
The usual explanation for these findings is that traditional cultures do not
provide the kinds of disequilibrating social experiences that would move
individuals to higher levels of moral reasoning. This explanation is con-
cordant with sociohistorical analyses of the impact of modernity on moral
discourse (Habermas 1996).
Without denying the role of history in shaping the context of moral dis-
course, we may offer an alternative explanation for the dynamics result-
ing in the apparent absence of postconventional reasoning among mem-
bers of traditional cultures. The alternative being suggested here is that
the traditional social/cultural context is one that places a very high value
on societal continuity, thereby raising the salience of convention relative
to moral considerations of fairness and welfare in many social situations.
Thus, it is not surprising that adults from such cultures tend to bring in
concerns for social organization, custom, and tradition when making
moral judgments about multifaceted social situations.
It is entirely possible, however, that the moral concepts of adults in
such cultural settings have been underestimated by methodologies that
define moral development in terms of reasoning about mixed-domain is-
sues (Shweder, et al. 1987; Snarey 1985). We should keep in mind that there
is considerable cross-cultural evidence that children and adults across a
wide range of the worlds cultures conceptualize prototypical moral is-
sues pertaining to fairness and others welfare in ways very similar to chil-
dren and adults in Western contexts, and differentiate such issues from
prototypical matters of convention. By assessing moral reasoning in the
context of multidomain issues, we may be looking at how members of tra-
ditional cultures coordinate morality and convention, rather than assess-
ing their levels of moral understanding. John Snarey (1985) has made a
rather compelling case for the likelihood that methodologies, such as the
Kohlberg interview, developed to measure moral judgment in Western
settings, may be inappropriate for analyzing the reflective postconven-
tional reasoning of members of societies that emphasize attachment to
the social group, and who couch their moral judgments of fairness within
language that emphasizes group membership.
The power of social/cultural context as a factor in altering the mixed-
domain judgments of sophisticated moral reasoners is not limited to tra-
ditional cultural settings. This was vividly demonstrated by findings from
the famous Milgram (1963) study on obedience. In that study, American
subjects were told that they were participating in a scientific study of the
impact of punishment on learning, and were required to administer what
the subjects were led to believe were increasingly painful electric shocks
to learners each time the learner made an error. In point of fact, the learn-
ers were actors hired by the experimenters, and no electrical shocks were
actually administered. The finding that is of particular interest for this dis-
cussion is that some subjects assessed as principled moral reasoners (on
the basis of their responses to standardized Kohlberg dilemmas) nonethe-
less complied with the commands of the scientific authority in the
learning situation. In fact, they continued to administer electrical
shocks right up to the point where the level of shock was said to be dan-
gerous and very painful.
The willingness of principled moral reasoners to inflict pain and to en-
danger another person requires some explanation. One possible explana-
tion is that these subjects did not have the character to follow through
with what they knew to be morally right. (We will look critically at this
conception of character in Chapter 7.) A more plausible account, which is
in line with reports of subjects experiences in the study, is that the situa-
tion created genuine conflict between two competing, important sets of
values: (1) to not cause harm, and (2) to contribute to scientific progress.
At the time of the Milgram studies, scientific authority was held at a level
of esteem few can imagine at this point in history. American cultural ideals
of social progress were enmeshed with the achievements of science. Few
lay people, however, had any real conception of the conventions of scien-
tific inquiry. Thus, they were at the mercy of scientific authorities for in-
formation regarding appropriate conduct in the experimental situation.
Adding to the mix was the fact that the learner/victim was located in an
adjacent room away from the subject, while the scientific authority hov-
ered close to the subject supervising his/her actions. Under these condi-
tions, even for some of the principled reasoners (as assessed by Kohlberg
stage), the salience of the social-conventional elements of this particular
cultural context outweighed the moral components. As a result, in this
particular cultural situation, some of the American subjects who had been
assessed as principled moral reasoners responded to this mixed-domain
conflict by prioritizing obedience to convention and authority over their
moral concerns about harm. (For a more detailed discussion of these is-
sues within the Milgram study, see Turiel 1983, pp. 20310).
the impact of hierarchy and social stratification

As we have just seen, the degree of emphasis that cultures place on ad-
herence to custom and convention can impact upon the tendencies of in-
dividuals to prioritize moral and nonmoral factors in multifaceted social
situations. Even within the so-called modern societies, certain aspects of
the social order (such as scientific authority) can take on a level of impor-
tance that rivals that of moral concern. A second cultural factor that affects
how individuals construct the relation between morality and convention
is the degree of social stratification within a society, as well as the indi-
viduals place within it.
The notion of social hierarchy may seem anathema to democracy and
social equity and, thus, inherently at odds with morality. But some degree
of social stratification and hierarchy is needed for social organizations to
function. Even within the most equitable of social arrangements, some de-
gree of stratification will arise as a function of variations in expertise and
the need for at least a practical (if not optimal) level of efficiency and or-
ganization. Moreover, there are contexts in everyday life where concerns
for social coordination override the unfairness that may be generated by
the maintenance of hierarchy and differential authority.
For example, members of an orchestra or players on a football team
render greater power and authority to the coach or conductor than to
other members of the group. These inequalities are viewed as essential to
the successful conduct of the groups activities. In such situations, how-
ever, in addition to shared understandings of the connections between hi-

erarchy and group purposes, there is an element of voluntariness on the
part of participants, and there is the option of exiting the situation.
This is not the case, however, with regard to the hierarchical structures
of the broader societal and cultural context within which people live out
the course of their daily lives. Even within an open society, one cannot
generally take oneself out of ones cultural and social context without a
great deal of effort and personal cost. Thus, within the broader social con-
text, there is an inherent tension associated with social hierarchy between
the needs for social organization and efficiency, on the one hand, and fair-
ness and equity, on the other.
Within the modern democracies, this tension between hierarchy and
morality is often played out in the public arena. In the United States, for
example, we are currently in the midst of a cultural struggle to establish
family patterns and structures that allow for women, as well as men, to
establish autonomous adult lives while contributing equitably and effec-
tively to the necessary tasks of child rearing and household organization
(Okin 1996).
Within traditional hierarchical societies, such tensions between moral-
ity and hierarchy have been less obvious to outside observers (Turiel
1996). Recent anthropological (Geertz 1984; Shweder, et al. 1987) and cul-
tural psychology accounts (Triandis 1988) have tended to depict patterns
of living and expressions of values that reflect the dominant ideologies
and belief systems of cultures. The resulting portraits of culture, while rich
in detail and oftentimes breathtaking in their ethnographic sensitivity (cf.
Geertz 1984), do not generally capture the dissident undercurrents hid-
den in the beliefs of individuals, or in the surreptitious practices of sub-
ordinate groups (Abu-Lughod 1993; Spiro 1993). As a result, the picture
that emerges of traditional societies is of predominantly conflict-free
commitment to tradition, custom, and respect for authority. This picture
has been so compelling that the anthropologist Richard Shweder (1990)
has characterized such hierarchical cultures as having a second moral
code of respect for authority and tradition in addition to the morality of
justice and human welfare.
There is no question that traditional, hierarchical systems tend to fos-
ter adherence to convention. It is a mistake, however, to assume that com-
pliance with convention reflects a homogeneous reading of society by its
members. In fact, there are marked differences in the ways in which indi-
viduals within a culture read the morality of conventional norms that as-
sign privilege and power to classes of people. These differences in per-
ception are systematically related to an individuals status within the so-

cial hierarchy. This set of issues has been most carefully investigated with
respect to the power and freedom men enjoy relative to women in most
of the worlds cultures (Abu-Lughod 1993; Okin 1996; Turiel 1998b; Wain-
ryb and Turiel 1994).
One such series of studies (Wainryb and Turiel 1994) looked at how
Arab Druze villagers thought about issues of fairness and duty with re-
gard to gender relationships. Adolescent males and females were inter-
viewed about decision making regarding everyday types of activities pit-
ting husbands or fathers desires or wishes against those of their wives,
sons, or daughters. Scenarios included such things as choices of occupa-
tional and educational activities, household tasks, and leisure activities.
Conflicts were presented in such a way that half depicted situations in
which the person in the culturally defined dominant position objects to
the choices or activities of a person in a subordinate position (e.g., a hus-
band objects to his wifes decision to take a job), while the other half pre-
sented the person in a culturally defined subordinate position objecting
to a dominant persons choices (e.g., a wife objects to her husbands deci-
sion to change jobs).
The results of the study with regard to the responses of the males (hus-
bands and fathers) are not surprising. In virtually all situations, including
those in which the female objected to the behavior of the male, the males
decisions and choices were judged to be the position that should prevail.
The adolescent and adult males in the study viewed it as not only the right
of men to decide such things for themselves but also as both fair and a
matter of personal rights for husbands and fathers to decide such things
for their wives and daughters as well. Wives and daughters were expected
to comply with the wishes of husbands and fathers as a matter of tradi-
tion and duty. Within this traditional family structure, the roles of women
were defined as dependent upon the corollary and inverse roles of men
acting within their responsibilities of husband and father. In other words,
from the perspective of the Arab Druze males, the customs and conven-
tions structuring the hierarchical relations between men and women con-
formed to a moral order.
Interviews with Arab Druze females showed that they also saw daugh-
ters and wives as bound by culturally defined role obligations and, there-
fore, obliged not to act contrary to the mans wishes. Unlike the males in
the study, however, the women did not simply justify their answers in
terms of obligations to the existing normative order. Instead, they often
referred to the need for women to comply out of pragmatic concerns for
the possible consequences of not accepting the mens choices, including

physical violence, abandonment, or divorce. Furthermore, Wainryb and
Turiel (1994) reported that a large majority (78%) of the Druze females in
their study thought that it was unfair for a husband or father to interfere
with the choices of activities on the part of the wife or daughter depicted
within the study scenarios.
The almost inverse responses of the Druze Arab men and women in-
dicate that perceptions of the morality of hierarchical systems depend
upon where you sit within the hierarchy (Turiel 2000). The compliance
of the women was not the simple result of commitment to a moral code
of respect for authority and tradition (Shweder 1990), but also included a
pragmatic response to power and the attendant potential for negative
consequences. The mens sense of right was offset by the womens sense
of injustice. The picture of oppositional points of view that emerges from
this study of gender relations within the Druze Arab family sits in stark
contrast with the pacific depiction of traditional culture offered up by cul-
tural anthropology (Geertz 1984; Shweder, et al. 1987). Turiel (1996) is
quick to point out, however, that it would be equally simplistic to cast tra-
ditional cultures simply in terms of oppositional perspectives maintained
by persons at different points within the hierarchy. Members of a culture
(such as the Arab Druze men and women we have been referring to) have
many commonalties and shared values. Thus, the tensions that exist
within their hierarchical family system sit within a relatively stable and
enduring cultural system.
Cultures, like individuals, are multifaceted and complex. For our pur-
poses, the lesson to be gained from such cross-cultural research is that so-
cial structure may have considerable impact on the ways in which moral-
ity is experienced and thought about in everyday life. Such research
should serve to shake us out of our own complacency with regard to the
morality of our societys conventions, customs, and hierarchical structure.
Individuals steeped in a culture are often incapable of perceiving the
moral impact that their way of life has upon its members.
Like the Arab Druze men and women, we, too, are participants in a so-
ciety that assigns different roles and scripts to people in different social
stations.
The ways in which cultures structure the conventions and customs of
society are often the accidents of history, resulting from collective efforts
to structure and coordinate the social interactions of a particular group of
people. But, in many cases, these norms are also informed by the factual
assumptions people make about the world, and/or the presumed rela-
tions between humanity and the cosmos. For example, some of the norms
people establish to structure male/female relations are based on factual
assumptions made about the differing nature and capacities of members
of each gender. We will close out this discussion of the ways in which our
understandings of morality, convention, and personal choice may inter-
act in contextualized social reasoning by looking at the ways in which fac-
tual assumptions may enter the picture.
Factual Assumptions and Moral Reasoning

Imagine, if you will, the following set of cultural practices. They are a set
of purification rituals that would take place as the necessary precursors
to another set of activities. In general, the roles played by participants are
defined by gender, although this is not always the case. Typically, the cen-
tral figure is an adult male. This male begins by cleansing his hands and
forearms using a prescribed liquid and washing himself carefully for no
less than ten minutes. He is then robed by female attendants who are care-
ful not to allow their bodies to come into contact with and thereby con-
taminate either the male or the outer part of his garment. The female at-
tendants hold his garment open so that he may slip his arms through the
sleeves. The attendants then tie the garment together with strings that are
themselves covered over by an extending flap of material, such that the
exterior of the garment remains pure. The female attendants then provide
the male with uncontaminated coverings for his head, feet, hands, and
face. Only after the male has been so cleansed and covered may he then
move to the next series of culturally defined activities.
Of course, what I have just described are the procedures surgeons in
our society go through prior to engaging in surgery. Surgeons go through
all of this in order to reduce the likelihood of the patient contracting in-
fection caused by microorganisms, commonly known as germs. Now
some of you reading this book may have actually seen germs through a
microscope, but most of us have not. Certainly none of us, not even the
biologists, has ever seen a living virus. Nonetheless, virtually all of us who
live in modern society believe that there are such things as germs and that
they may cause infection and disease. We believe there are germs because
the experts in our culture whose job it is to inform us about the facts of bi-
ological phenomena have assured us that they have evidence that germs
exist. Moreover, through the years of following the advice of biologists
and medical experts, we have a set of shared, practical experiences that

seem to conform to what their germ theory has to say about the preven-
tion and cure of infection and disease.
Having this knowledge, we would judge as morally wrong any sur-
geon who conducted nonemergency abdominal surgery, such as an ap-
pendectomy, without first going through the cleansing procedures just
described. However, it is interesting to note that around the turn of the
twentieth century, prior to germ theory, surgeons did not follow these
carefully prescribed cleansing practices. In fact, surgeons, in an attempt
to deliver service as efficiently as possible, would sometimes move from
completion of one surgical procedure to the start of another without
changing their clothes or thoroughly cleaning up in between. This prac-
tice resulted in the surgeons themselves being the source of sometimes fa-
tal infections.
When I raise this example in my education classes, I never encounter a
student who believes that the doctors who acted prior to knowledge of
germ theory were engaging in conduct that was immoral. Nor have I had
a student take the position that todays surgeons, by following cleansing
procedures, are morally superior to the surgeons of the nineteenth cen-
tury. From my students point of view, the morality of doctors hasnt
changed but, rather, their knowledge of what actions can cause or prevent
harm.
The issues raised in this illustration may help us to account for some of
the findings of apparent cultural variability in morality reported by an-
thropologists. As an example, lets consider the rather shocking findings
reported in an anthropological study of the moral values of devout Hin-
dus living in the temple community of Bhubaneswar, Orisa, India
(Shweder et al. 1987). In one part of this study, Shweder and his colleagues
presented their subjects with descriptions of thirty-nine different behav-
iors that entailed breaches of their community norms and asked them to
judge each in terms of its seriousness. The act rated as the most serious
breach was the eldest son in a family getting a haircut and eating chicken
the day after his father died. Rated thirty-fifth in seriousness among the
thirty-nine behaviors was a man beating his disobedient wife black and
blue!
Certainly, on the face of it, these data would appear to be evidence that
this community of Hindus has a very different way of conceptualizing
morality from what is generally considered moral in the West. Shweder
and his colleagues (1987), however, provide additional information in
their report that helps to account for the ways in which the subjects in their
study reasoned about these issues. As it turns out, the Hindu judgments
of the actions of the eldest son getting a haircut and eating chicken the day
after his fathers death, while morally neutral from a Western point of
view, take on a different meaning within the context of the Hindu sub-
jects beliefs about the impact of these actions upon the father. In particu-
lar, the judgments of these subjects must be seen from within the context
of their beliefs about the ways in which events in the natural world oper-
ate in relation to unobserved entities, such as souls and spirits of deceased
ancestors. In this case, the fathers soul would not receive salvation if the
norm prohibiting the eating of chicken is not observed.
If we allow ourselves to role-take for a moment, and imagine that we
are in the sons position, we can see how the act of eating chicken becomes
a serious matter of causing grave harm to another being. We dont need
to assume a new set of moral understandings but, rather, to apply our
moral conceptions of harm and fairness to this situation once the facts of
the matter are understood. Our relation to Shweders Hindu subjects is
quite analogous to that of the twentieth-century surgeon to his nine-
teenth-century counterpart with respect to germ theory and the morality
of maintaining a sterile environment for surgical procedures. Now, it
might be argued that knowledge derived from science has a different epis-
temic claim to validity than knowledge provided by religious belief. What
cannot be argued, however, is that the assumptions one has about the nat-
ural world, however arrived at, have an impact on our moral evaluations
of actions.
Within our own culture, for example, people hold different views
about whether it is morally wrong or all right to engage in the physical
punishment of children. In her research on this issue, Wainryb (1991)
found that procorporal punishment parents held the view that this be-
havior was all right because it was a highly effective, educative act, rather
than one of unprovoked harm or abuse of the child. When such parents
were presented with information that spanking is no more effective than
other methods of disciplining children, significant numbers of parents
shifted in their view of corporal punishment and maintained that it was
not all right for parents to engage in the behavior. Conversely, when par-
ents who maintained that it was wrong to engage in corporal punishment
were presented with information that experts had found spanking to be
the most efficient method of teaching young children, there was a ten-
dency for such parents to shift toward a view that corporal punishment
would be all right.
In this example, the morality of an action shifted as a function of the in-
formational assumptions people had regarding the effect of the act. In

other cases, informational assumptions can alter peoples views of the
moral culpability of the actor. Many people in our culture, for example,
have been found to hold the view that homosexuality is an immoral
lifestyle choice (Turiel, Hildebrandt, and Wainryb 1991). From that per-
spective, being a homosexual entails a conscious decision to engage in be-
havior that they consider to be offensive and indecent. Leaving aside such
questions as to whether homosexuality should be viewed in such norma-
tive terms or as a matter of private, personal conduct, the issue of choice
is central to whether the individual may be held accountable for his or her
sexual orientation. Information that would bear on that issue (e.g., find-
ings of a substantial genetic component in determining sexual orienta-
tion) would undoubtedly impact the moral evaluation many people
would make of homosexuals, even if it had no impact on their view of ho-
mosexual acts.
education, context, and controversy

The analysis of moral and social reasoning afforded by domain theory has
allowed us to identify the nature and sources of moral understandings
and to differentiate morality from other basic normative frameworks.
That differentiation provides an invaluable tool for educators by center-
ing the core focus of moral education around the development of stu-
dents conceptions of fairness and concern for the welfare of others.
In this chapter, we have explored some of the sources of variation that
enter into the application of our moral understandings in our daily lives.
A part of that variation arises from the inevitable overlap that exists be-
tween morality and the cultural framework in which we operate. Even
though conventions are not in themselves moral norms, the frames es-
tablished by the conventions of our culture often influence the ways in
which we interact with others, along with our ability to see the moral im-
pact of those interactions. As we become socialized within a cultural
framework, we adopt the conventions of our social class, gender, and eth-
nic group. For those members of a culture for whom the conventional sys-
tem ascribes status and privilege (e.g., males in most cultures), the im-
moral features of those aspects of the conventional system (e.g., relative
subjugation of women) are generally unrecognized. On the other hand,
members of a culture for whom the conventional system ascribes subor-
dinate roles (e.g., women) are generally more aware of and sensitive to the
immoral features of their societys norms as they impact them personally,
but are also cognizant of the risks inherent in challenging the status quo.
As we have also seen, the emphasis that a culture places on the mainte-
nance of tradition and social hierarchy influences whether its members,
whatever their social position, will even be open to reflection upon the po-
tentially immoral features of the social system.
Added to the variations in moral meaning of acts that result from over-
laps with the conventional system are the variations that emerge from dif-
ferences in the informational assumptions people hold about the natural
world. Informational assumptions are at the heart of the childs construc-
tion of basic moral understandings. The childs early moral intuitions
emerge out of attempts to assign meaning to the consequences of directly
accessible acts. For example, the childs earliest concepts of harm emerge
from their direct experiences with the impact of hitting another person.
As children are socialized, however, they are exposed to sources of infor-
mation for which they have no personal means of independent verifica-
tion. If the information provided by the culture indicates that a given ac-
tion will result in harm or unfairness to others, the child will extend their
moral understandings to include the particular action as an issue of moral
concern. Thus, while the morality of children appears very similar across
cultures, the morality of adult members of a culture may appear to be
quite divergent in content from that of adult members of a different cul-
ture or historical period (Shweder et al. 1987).
From an educational perspective, these interactions among cultural
normative systems, informational assumptions, and morality make the
task of engaging in moral and character education a considerable chal-
lenge. Educating a good person entails the teaching of someone within
a particular cultural context. As we have just seen, those cultural factors
may or may not be concordant with what is morally right. The conven-
tions that structure the social order may establish systematic biases fa-
voring the rights of one group of persons over another. The factual as-
sumptions maintained by a cultures basic belief systems may lead to
mischaracterizations of actions and of classes of people and, in turn, be
the sources of harm and injustice. Finally, the interpretation of the moral
impact of these nonmoral cultural factors may vary as a function of the
social position and ideological perspective of the person reading the situ-
ation. One cannot, therefore, simply inculcate children in the norms of a
culture without thereby recapitulating the immoral features of the exist-
ing social system. On the other hand, it is a great deal to ask of individual
educators to set themselves up as the arbiters of cultural moral discord.
The educators task requires a degree of detachment and neutrality that
sets this profession apart from others, as well as from other facets of the
educators own lived experience. For the educator needs to recognize and
respect the diversity that exists within moral orientations without suc-
cumbing to the nihilistic relativism inherent in the postmodern retreat
from the core insights of Enlightenment philosophy, and to the doctrinaire
chauvinism that reduces moral differences to a falling away from or de-
cay of traditional Western values. The position of neutrality being sug-
gested here is not value free but, rather, centered around the identification
of a universal domain of moral cognition around which the educator may
construct a meaningful educative process that enables students to engage
as moral beings in a world filled with contradiction and controversy.
In the second part of this book I will take up specific suggestions for
educational practice that will flesh out the approach being suggested here.
But, before doing so, we need to examine two more pieces of the puzzle
that will help us understand the factors that enter into the formation of in-
dividual morality and character. The first of these is the role of affect and
emotion in moral decision making and action. The second is the emer-
gence of personal characteristics, in addition to moral development, that
form an individuals character.
chapter six
Morality and Emotion
If we were to ask the protagonist in the train platform scenario from Chap-
ter 2 to explain what he was thinking about when he stepped in front of
the gunman, it is unlikely that he would have provided an articulated,
thorough-going analysis of the practical and moral aspects of the situa-
tion. He would probably have said something along the lines of: I didnt
really have time to think about it. I simply reacted. It felt right. I think any-
body else would have done the same thing. While the drama and seri-
ousness of that particular scenario is not an everyday occurrence, the act
of unreflectively doing something because it feels right is fairly com-
monplace. Such simple acts of kindness as giving a homeless person some
spare change, giving a stranger directions, or helping someone up who
has fallen on an icy pavement dont generally involve careful reflection
and analysis. Instead, they seem to involve a feeling, perhaps of sympa-
thy, empathy, care, or an unidentifiable sense of the right thing to do,
and a corresponding action that seems to flow automatically.
The commonality of these latter experiences in the everyday lives of
people raises some interesting questions about the role of cognition and
rationality in everyday morality, and the role of habit and moral feelings.
To understand these relationships in the moral domain, we need to begin
with a more general examination of the role of affect and emotion in rela-
tion to cognition.
the relation between thought and emotion

Only intelligent living systems have feelings. Artificial systems of intelli-
gence, such as computers, do not. This is not simply an aesthetic or meta-
physical distinction, but one that gets at the heart (if you will) of what
makes living systems more intelligent than their artificial analogs. Within
107
intelligent living systems there is no cognition without affect. Jean Piaget

(1981), the Swiss developmentalist most generally known for his work on
cognition, rejected the dualism that is usually maintained between intel-
ligence and affectivity. As Bearison and Zimiles (1986) summarize, for
Piaget, the dichotomy between intelligence and affectivity has been arti-
ficially created by analytic abstractions to serve as an axiomatic device for
the convenience of exposition, whereas in reality, neither can function
without the other (p. 4). The construction of any cognitive scheme, such
as the simple meansend relationships involved in reaching and grasping
a ball, doesnt only involve the generation of computational subroutines
(as would be employed by a computer) but also incorporate the associ-
ated affect (e.g., desire for the ball, joy at grasping it).
These coextant feelings serve two functions for living systems of intel-
ligence. In Piagets analysis (1981), affect provides the energetics of be-
havior, while cognitive structure provides the directive framework. The
desire and joy are what move the child to grasp the ball. The cognitive
structure directs the movements of the arm, fingers, head and eyes to ac-
complish the task. This energetic aspect of affect carries along with it a sec-
ond and perhaps even more critical function. Terrance Brown (1996),
building from Piaget and the work of the cognitive scientist George Pugh
(1977), has argued that the affects incorporated within cognitive schemes
and schematic structures comprise a system of valences or values that
weight them relative to one another. The significance of these values is
that they prime given schemes or schematic sequences (procedures) for
selection by the overall cognitive system within a particular problem
space. One need not experience these remembered affects as conscious
feelings in order for them to operate. But it is their integral presence that
gives even the coolest human cognitive activity, such as performing a
logical proof, its flesh-and-blood nature.
The importance of affective tags for the cognitive system is that with-
out some such value heuristic, there wouldnt be enough cognitive ca-
pacity or time for the most capable person to examine exhaustively all
possibilities and arrive at optimal solutions that arise in common situa-
tions. Writing in 1987, Brown (Brown and Weiss 1987) illustrated this
point by noting that it would take a computer a thousand years to calcu-
late all of the moves and outcomes that would result from six turns within
a chess game. Any living cognitive system would certainly be maladap-
tive if it attempted to operate in such a hyperrational manner. Instead, liv-
ing systems have evolved to generate good enough rather than optimal
solutions to lifes problems. Selecting the good enough option is ac-
morality and emotion 109
complished by living systems, according to the BrownPugh hypothesis,

through the heuristic of the affective values or weights integrated
within the construction of cognitive schemes and procedures. Our feel-
ings, then, not only accompany our thoughts but also have a role in di-
recting our decisions. With the evolution of the frontal cortex, the human
capacity for reflection afforded our species the capacity to generate struc-
tures of logic that constitute a second, more exact way of knowing than
can be achieved through the good enough heuristics guided by affect.
With respect to morality, we see an analog to logical analysis in our de-
liberations over what constitutes a necessarily right thing to do. For ex-
ample, a childs statement that the act of unprovoked harm is wrong, even
if there is no social or religious rule about the action, stems from the childs
rational conclusion that the act of hitting requires a particular nonarbi-
trary moral evaluation. The child judges the moral right or wrong of the
action not simply on the basis of what feels right but on the basis of what
the child rationally concludes must be the moral evaluation of the act.
However, even logic is accompanied by feelings (e.g., certainty, necessity),
and the procedures that are generated in the service of logic operate
through the cognitive-affective heuristic apparatus.
The efficiency gained for living intelligent systems by integrating af-
fective value within cognitive processes and structure should not be
misunderstood as giving primacy to affect in psychological functioning.
Affect does not substitute for cognitive structure (feelings are not knowl-
edge); rather, affect is part and parcel of adaptive intelligence. The obser-
vation that we approach problems with interest or disinterest and appear
to generate solutions to problems on the basis of hunches, intuitions, and
feelings of certainty or uncertainty comports with views, such as those of-
fered by Pugh (1977) and Brown (1996), that affect is involved in the se-
lection of procedures employed in solving problems or directing our be-
havior. But the structures of those procedures, as well as superordinate
structures of logic or domain-specific knowledge, are not contained
within, nor reducible to, their attendant feeling states. As Piaget (1981) put
it with respect to math, irrespective of a childs feelings about the subject,
the structure of mathematical operations will not be changed (p. 6).
While this functional differentiation may seem fairly uncontroversial
with respect to logical-mathematical knowledge, it is not as obvious with
respect to issues of morality. Questions of morality are fundamentally
about human relations and the coordination of human desires, wants, and
needs. Emotions and feelings are not simply implicated in the decision-
making process; they are part and parcel of the very content of the do-
main. Thus, to understand the role of emotion and affect in morality, we

need to move beyond the general discussion of affect and cognition to ex-
plore the particular relations between affect and knowledge in the moral
domain.
evolution and moral emotion

Beginning with Charles Darwin (1872/1965), scientists have speculated
that the precursors of human morality emerged within social animals as
a means of regulating intraspecies aggressive conduct and fostering
within species nurturance. These behaviors are thought to be regulated
by a system of inborn emotions and associated physical displays, such
as facial expressions, body posture, and vocalizations. As an illustrative
example, anyone who has a dog is familiar with its capacity to present
what a human would interpret as a guilty look when it has misbe-
haved. Ethologists, such as Lorenz (1960) and Lopez (1978), have pro-
vided accounts of how such displays serve to sustain the social fabric of
canine social groups.
Frans de Waal (1996) has provided compelling evidence that primates
have, to varying degrees, evolved behaviors that closely approximate
human morality. Among the behaviors he and others have observed
within chimpanzees and/or bonobos are sharing, reciprocity, revenge,
reconciliation, and prosocial conduct. Evidence of this sort, along with ac-
counts of primate aggression and sexual behavior, has generated a cottage
industry of speculative accounts in which human conduct, from war
(Morris 1969, 1994) to marital indiscretions (Buss 1994) to morality
(Wright 1984), is reduced to our presumed membership within the pri-
mate order. Primatologists, however, are generally far less prone to en-
gage in such romanticism. De Waal (1996), for example, reminds us that
no serious primatologist has made the claim that great apes engage in
moral philosophy. Nevertheless, there is more than a century of careful
observational and experimental work that points to continuities in the
evolution of mammalian social behavior that are consistent with the as-
sumption that part of the substrate of human emotion and related social
behavior has its roots in our evolutionary history.
There is some evidence that humans are born with both productive and
receptive behaviors that would prime them for life as social animals. Re-
search has demonstrated that human infants respond to emotions shown
by other people. Infants as young as one day old have been reported to
cry intensely and spontaneously in response to the distress cry of another
infant, but not to a tape recording of themselves crying (Martin and Clark
1982). This rather remarkable finding (replicated in several studies) has
been interpreted as evidence that feelings of distress at anothers pain
may be an evolutionarily selected component of human nature (Plutchik
1987). By around six months of age, infants become capable of differen-
tially responding to diverse facial expressions associated with particular
emotions (Ludemann 1991; Nelson 1987). By the end of the first year of
life, infants employ the emotional expressions of mothers as indicative of
a situations being one of safety and comfort or one of danger (Campos
and Barrett 1983).
While there is considerable evidence of cultural influences in the ways
in which we learn to interpret or respond to our feelings, there is also ev-
idence of a remarkable degree of cross-cultural similarity in the facial ex-
pressions used to convey basic emotions (Ekman 1993). These emotional
displays appear very early. For example, researchers report being able ob-
jectively to code anger expressions in four-month-old infants (Sternberg,
Campos, and Emde 1983) accompanied by behaviors consistent with
anger feeling. Children born deaf and blind have been found to provide
the same basic emotional displays of laughter, crying, and anger as chil-
dren with intact sensory systems (Eibel-Eibesfeldt 1970). Thus, it would
appear that the human infant is primed with affective schemata that af-
ford access to the feelings of others, and that allow the infant to convey
basic feeling states.
Evidence of this sort has been taken by researchers, working within
what is called differential emotions theory, as evidence that there are bio-
logical determinants of emotion states (Izard 1983, 1986). These re-
searchers (Izard 1983, 1986; Zajonc 1984) maintain that emotions may oc-
cur as a function of untransformed sensory input. Their position is that
one can feel emotion prior to cognitive evaluation of the experience. One
can sense anger, for example, before one has had time to reflect upon and
interpret the feeling as anger. If one takes an evolutionary/adaptive view
of intelligence, one can attribute to these basic emotional schemata the
sort of quick and dirty response to social problems that might be a part
of our evolutionary heritage. Unmediated raw emotion, however, is
hardly adaptive in the social world. What we generally refer to as emo-
tional development is largely about the integration of affect into cognitive
systems that are more adaptive for life within a sociocultural frame than
the outbursts available to us as infants.
As we consider this with respect to the moral domain, we are interested
in how the affective schemata available during infancy and early child-
hood are incorporated into the construction of our moral understandings,

and how the energetics of affect contribute to the selection and enactment
of moral behaviors in context. From an educational point of view, we want
to come to an understanding of how the emotional or affective climate of
a childs social world enters into his or her moral constructions.
emotion and the construction

of moral understandings
A question we might ask regarding the relations between emotion and the
childs construction of moral understandings is whether morality is asso-
ciated with particular emotions. There are at least two ways to understand
this question. The first is whether there are particular kinds of emotional
experience that lead to moral constructions, rather than to the develop-
ment of knowledge about other social-cultural rules, such as conventions.
The second, related question is whether certain kinds of feelings help to
motivate and direct moral behavior.
A good place to begin consideration of the issues raised in these ques-
tions is the work of William Arsenio (Arsenio 1988; Arsenio and Lover
1995). Arsenio set out to discover whether social events that involve moral
forms of right and wrong elicit different emotions than do events that
have to do with conventional or personal matters. In his initial studies,
Arsenio (1988) presented kindergarten, third-, and fifth-grade children
with drawings depicting children engaged in actions that fit within six so-
cial or moral rule systems. Four of these rule types were within the moral
domain. These were
active morality (interventions on behalf of victimized others, such as

stopping a child from hitting another child);
distributive justice (distributing group-earned resources, such as di-
viding up the money earned by a group of children working together
to clean someones yard);
prosocial morality (engaging in helpful behavior toward another, such
as carrying the groceries for an aged person); and
inhibitive morality (actions in which one should refrain from engag-
ing; acts which cause harm or unfairness to others, such as stealing
another childs toy).
The remaining two rule types were violations of conventions, such as

wearing inappropriate attire to school and engaging in behavior that the
child might consider personal, but which an adult authority wishes to reg-
ulate (e.g., a child writes something in a notebook at recess and the teacher
requires the child to reveal what was written).
Children were asked to indicate how three actors in each of the sce-
narios would feel. These three were the child engaged in the action, the
person who was the recipient of the action, and a third child, an observer.
The drawings depicting each of the scenarios presented the characters
with neutral facial expressions so that the children would have to infer
what the characters felt from their own personal experiences and under-
standings of these situations, rather than by reading the facial expressions
of characters shown in the drawings.
Findings were that with respect to violations of convention, children
judged that the child violating a convention would be neither happy nor
sad about it and would experience essentially neutral affect. They also ex-
pected neutral affect from a child third-person observer, and thought they
(the child subjects) would themselves have neutral affect if they were to
observe the situation. On the other hand, they expected an adult govern-
ing the convention (teacher) to be upset about the violation and to expe-
rience some degree of negative affect. In terms of personal issues, the chil-
dren expected the governing adult and the third-person observers to have
relatively neutral affect, but expected the main actor in the personal sce-
narios to experience negative affect, such as anger or sadness at having
his/her personal forms of conduct controlled by an adult authority. This
latter reaction is consistent with childrens and adolescents views that the
personal domain constitutes a zone in which it is illegitimate for adults to
intercede or regulate.
With respect to the four moral scenarios, the results were as follows. In
the case of inhibitive morality, children judged all parties, including them-
selves, to experience considerable negative affect (sadness, anger, fear) in
the face of such events, with the exception of the perpetrator of the act,
who was judged to experience positive affect (happiness) with his/her be-
havior. (This happy victimizer effect is something that will be discussed
in greater detail in the section on the directive function of affect.) In con-
trast with the findings regarding inhibitive morality, they expected all
parties involved to experience positive affect (happiness) in response to
acts that entailed distributive justice or prosocial conduct. Not only were
the recipients of such actions thought to be happy, but so were the actors
themselves.
In the second part of the study, Arsenio (1988) investigated whether
children would use emotional information conveyed by drawings of peo-
ples emotional expressions to make inferences about what sort of inter-

action produced the depicted emotions. Specifically, children were pre-
sented with drawings of individual characters displaying various emo-
tional expressions. These were based on emotions that the children had
attributed to the actors in various situations depicted in the first part of
the study. They were then presented with two story boards in which the
actors had neutral expressions. One story board depicted a scenario con-
sistent with the emotions shown in the individual character drawings; the
other did not. Children were shown the two story boards and asked which
depicted the scenario most likely to have produced the emotions dis-
played by the characters shown in the individual drawings. Findings
were that children, including preschoolers, accurately matched the emo-
tional displays of the actors with the scenario most likely to have pro-
duced the depicted emotions.
As Arsenios work demonstrates, children associate different feelings
with different domains of social events. Issues of social convention gen-
erally elicit cool affect on the part of children, who expect both compli-
ance and violations of conventional norms to elicit neutral affect from chil-
dren. To the extent that emotion is generated by convention, children see
it as emerging on the part of adults, who might become upset at the vio-
lation of such norms. Thus, it would appear that children do not experi-
ence the conventions of society as containing much in the way of intrin-
sic emotional content. However, as Shweders work in India (Shweder et
al. 1987) and our work in Brazil (Nucci et al. 1996) has shown, children
may well experience hot emotion, such as anger, in the context of vio-
lations of conventions emanating from adults responding to transgres-
sions of importantly held cultural norms.
Issues of morality, however, are viewed by children as rife with emo-
tional content. All parties to moral interactions, not just the guardians of
the social order, as with convention, are thought by children to experience
identifiable emotional responses to moral events. This is the case whether
the moral behavior is positive or negative in impact. In Arsenios (1988)
study, children described the participants in distributive justice situations
as experiencing happiness or a sense of satisfaction that things turned
out fairly. They likewise attributed positive emotions to all participants in
prosocial moral situations. In contrast, moral transgressions entailing vi-
olations of inhibitive morality were seen by children as arousing feelings
of anger, sadness, and fear in victims and bystanders alike. Only the per-
petrators were viewed by young children as having positive feelings in
the context of moral transgressions.
Morality, then, is an area of human conduct associated with hot af-

fect. In addition to the emotions identified in Arsenios (Arsenio and
Lover 1995) work, prosocial morality has been associated with feelings of
care (Gilligan 1982) and empathy (Eisenberg 1986; Hoffman 1981). Inhib-
itive morality has been associated with shame and guilt (Ferguson,
Stegge, and Damhuis 1991) and with disgust (Haidt et al. 1994). And the
victims of moral transgression are said to respond not simply with anger
but with outrage, an emotion which the German philosopher Ernst Tu-
gendhat (1993) interprets as indicative that the victim holds the perpetra-
tor personally responsible for his actions.
It is not my purpose here to offer a list of moral emotions but to call on
both the formal research literature, as well as the readers own experience,
to see that part of what goes into the recognition of moral events are the
evoked emotional reactions. As Arsenio explains, emotions appear to be
routinely stored as a part of our basic cognitive and social-cognitive rep-
resentations (Arsenio and Lover 1995, p. 90). Not all social events elicit
similar emotions. Children extract different affect-event links, depending
on the particular nature of the acts. Repeated experience with events with
similar emotional outcomes allow children to form generalized scripts.
The automatic reactions to familiar events, or to events of similar type, re-
sult from the affective triggering of these scripts or habits. Thus, we begin
to see how the basic connections between affect and cognition play out in
the domain of morality.
Arsenio (Arsenio and Lover 1995) adds an additional step to the
processes of moral knowledge formation. He states: Children coordinate
their knowledge of sociomoral affect to form more general sociomoral
principles. For example, commonalties in the expected emotional out-
comes of being a target of theft, a target of undeserved aggression, and a
target of verbal abuse might all be combined to form a concept of unfair
victimization (Arsenio and Lover 1995, p. 91). As we saw in Chapter 1 of
this book, there is considerable evidence that children experience quali-
tatively different forms of interaction in the context of moral and non-
moral social events. For Arsenio, the most important feature of moral in-
teractions is their affective content. In Arsenios view, sociomoral affect
provides the raw data from which more general abstract principles are
formed by using a variety of cognitive abilities. The cross-cultural con-
sensus that we observe in the meaning of moral acts may be accounted
for, according to Arsenio, because of the basic similarities in meanings that
people attribute to the emotions that accompany moral events.
My own reading of the research evidence as discussed in Chapter 1 of
this book is that there are more inherent commonalities to moral events
than simply the emotions that accompany them. The harm caused by
moral transgressions, for example, has objective consequences beyond the
emotions that are generated. Thus, it would be an overinterpretation to
identify emotional experience as the sole form of raw data that results
in the cross-cultural similarities we observe in moral concepts. Nonethe-
less, the work of Arsenio and others makes it abundantly clear that emo-
tions and feelings are an integral part of the construction of our social and
moral cognition.
development and the directive function of affect

To recapitulate, beginning in infancy we initiate the process of construct-
ing the schemata that form our social and moral values. Incorporated
within those schemata are the emotions associated with particular event
types, including the affect associated with adult reactions to childrens
compliance with or violation of social norms (Hoffman 1983; Kochanska
1993; Zahn-Waxler, Radke-Yarrow, and King 1979). The development of
these early social and moral schemata form the substrate of our moral
habits and, in the view of some researchers, the beginnings of our moral
character (Kochanska 1993). Variations in the nature of these interactions,
stemming from such things as differences in childrens temperament
(Kochanska 1993), the degree of anger displayed by adults in reaction to
childrens transgressions or of warmth in reaction to childrens prosocial
conduct (Emde et al. 1991), and the overall affective climate of the house-
hold (Katz and Gottman 1991; Zahn-Waxler and Kochanska 1990) appear
to impact the ways in which young children construct the basic under-
pinnings of their concepts of how to react within interpersonal situations.
The basic social-action schemata developed in infancy are incorporated
within the construction of the overall conceptions of moral and social
norms that we observe in preschool children. Thus, the affective content
associated with the construction of particular moral-action schemes (e.g.,
hitting hurts and makes one sad or angry) becomes integrated within the
overall conceptual framework guiding the childs morality. As the child
develops, the meaning and relations among those affective components
is altered as the child attempts to coordinate or bring into balance the
competing needs, desires, and deserts of individuals and groups im-
pacted by the childs moral judgments and actions. This is an interactive
process wherein the childs moral understandings alter the meaning or
salience attributed to affectively laden events, and the childs emotional
experiences impact the childs constructions of moral positions. Perhaps

Martha Nussbaum (2000) best captures the latter form of this interactive
process in her description of emotion as collisions of thought. Educa-
tors will recognize this role of emotion in their efforts to generate feelings
among students as a way of moving them to reconsider their positions on
things.
This developmental process can be seen in the results of recent research
on what has been referred to as the happy victimizer phenomenon (Bar-
den et al. 1980; Nunner-Winkler and Sodian 1988). This is also one of the
more interesting contexts within which to observe both common threads
and disruptions in the relations between childrens emotional develop-
ment and their morality. The happy victimizer phenomenon refers to the
tendency of preschool-age children to attribute positive emotions to the
perpetrator of moral transgressions.
In the Nunner-Winkler and Sodian (1988) study, children between 4
and 8 years of age were presented drawings depicting a scenario in which
a child is shown deliberating over whether or not to steal candy from an-
other childs coat, which is hanging unattended in the cloakroom. In one
version of the scenario, the child resists the temptation and does not steal.
In the other version, the child steals some candy. Subjects in the study
were asked to indicate how the protagonist in each situation would feel,
and why. There were no effects of the sex of the subjects in terms of chil-
drens answers. All of the children included in the research indicated that
they thought it was not right to steal the candy. Nonetheless, 74% of the
4-year-olds and 40% of the 6-year-olds expected the protagonist in the
story to feel good or happy about having stolen the candy. In contrast,
90% of the 8-year-olds expected the (thief) protagonist to feel sad,
bad, not good, or not happy having committed the theft. With re-
gard to the scenario depicting the child who resisted temptation to steal
the candy, the majority (67%) of the younger children thought that the pro-
tagonist would experience negative emotions, while a minority (41%) of
the 8-year-olds thought that the child resisting the temptation to steal
would have negative feelings about having done so. Few children at these
ages in either situation reported that the protagonist would have mixed
feelings.
The younger children explained their reasoning by focusing on the out-
come. The child in the story would be happy that he got the candy, or
sorry because he didnt take the candy, and now he doesnt have any.
The 8-year-olds, on the other hand, tended to focus more on the moral
consequences of the act. The child would be sad because he had stolen
his friends candy; she was nasty to do that; because he is a thief and he
shouldnt do that, or He would be happy with himself for not taking
the candy, and being good; She would be sad at having thought about
taking her friends candy. These age-related patterns of emotion attribu-
tions and justifications held up for situations depicting the victimizer en-
gaged in actions that had no direct benefit to the protagonist (i.e., teasing
another child), and in actions in which the victimizer physically harmed
another child. In all cases, the majority of 4-year-olds expected the vic-
timizer to be pleased with the outcome of his or her hurtful behavior,
while the majority of 8-year-olds expected the victimizer to experience re-
morse, sadness, or other negative feelings in response to transgressions.
Finally, Nunner-Winkler and Sodian (1988) reported on childrens
judgments of who they thought was worse: a child who appeared happy
or one who appeared sad with what s/he had done. Findings were that
90% of the 8-year-olds thought that the child who appeared happy with
the acts of victimization was worse than the child who appeared sorry for
the action. A majority of 4-year-olds, on the other hand, judged both chil-
dren to be about equally bad.
These findings are interesting in light of consistent reports that young
children judge actions of moral harm to be wrong. The complexity of the
findings with young children is inconsistent with simple accounts of
morality as emerging from an inherited moral sense of right and wrong.
Subsequent work in this area has indicated that there is a developmental
progression in childrens abilities to coordinate the mixed feelings that
acts of victimization generate, and to bring these mixed feelings together
with their moral understandings of the actions. The well-reported finding
that children, some even as old as age 11, expect the victimizer to feel
happy has to be placed alongside the fact that children as young as age 4
know and express that the victims of such actions suffer and experience
negative emotions. Moreover, a study by Arsenio and Kramer (1992) re-
ported that children do not view victimizers as atypical children or bul-
lies; rather, they expect that positive emotions are experienced through
obtaining ones desired goals through immoral acts.
As children get older, they understand that one can maintain more than
one emotion in response to a given event. The work of Harter and Bud-
din (1987) has demonstrated that children do not understand mixed emo-
tions (that one can maintain opposite feelings) until about age 11. Arsenio
and Kramer (1992) found that this developmental pattern matched chil-
drens tendency to attribute mixed emotions to the victimizer in moral sit-
uations. According to Arsenio (Arsenio and Lover 1995), what seems to
occur is a gradual coordination of the knowledge that children have of the

victims suffering with their assumptions of positive emotion that would
come from the victimizers goal attainment. A part of that development is
the modulation of positive feelings children might have as they contem-
plate engaging in immoral actions. As children progress through the nor-
mal course of development, they begin to weigh the positive feelings that
come from maintaining positive peer relations against the gains that they
might achieve through victimization. Their developing sense of justice in-
tegrates this balancing of emotional gains and losses to form a moral po-
sition rejecting victimization as a positive course. Thus, the interplay be-
tween changes in how children think of persons and their feelings, and
developing understandings of reciprocity, equity, and human welfare
leads to shifts in the ways in which affect guides moral behavior.
The juxtaposition between the suffering caused by ones victimization
and the positive feelings that result in gains to oneself provides opposing
motivations for ones actions. Piaget (1962) was aware of these affective
conflicts, which he referred to as the problem of will. Pitting ones du-
ties and obligations against ones desires is an old notion often captured
in religious symbolism, which poses the devil within against the better
angels of our nature (A. Lincoln 1861). Coordinating these affective op-
posites was viewed by Piaget as analogous to intellectual decentration.
For Piaget (1962), an act of will requires the subordination of desire to
what is necessary as determined by coordinated reversible values. While
Piaget never directly addressed the issue, his notion of will may be seen
as placing what is rationally understood to be morally necessary as su-
perordinate to ones personal desires in a given context. To be moral, then,
is to do what is right, even when it is counter to ones immediate desire.
We are obligated to act morally even toward those for whom we dont
have an affective connection.
For the child growing up in an affectively supportive environment, the
construction of moral reversibilty (fairness) is supported by the experi-
ence of goodwill that comes from acts of fair reciprocity. Moreover, this
goodwill complements the positive feelings and happiness that children
experience when engaged in acts of prosocial conduct (Eisenberg 1986).
In contrast with this positive picture, Arsenio (Arsenio and Lover 1995)
uses evidence from studies of aggressive children to suggest that some
childrens early experiences are ones that establish a pattern of ill will,
in which long-term patterns of victimization and peer rejection distort the
construction of moral reciprocity, such that the child feels entitled to act
aggressively toward others. Aggressive children are found to be outliers
in most of the studies of childrens concepts of victimization, in that ag-

gressive children are more likely to attribute positive emotions to the vic-
timizer and to do so at later ages than nonaggressive children.
Along these same lines, Nancy Guerra and I found in a recent study
that although children seen by their peers as engaging in high rates of ag-
gressive behavior were just as likely as their peers to rate harmful acts as
wrong, the aggressive children were the only ones who also stated that it
was their right to hit someone else if they wanted to. We interpreted this
to mean that aggressive children do not view the moral component of
harm as the necessarily salient feature of such behavior but, rather,
viewed their own commission of acts of victimization as matters of per-
sonal choice.
The deviations that we see in aggressive childrens moral judgments
and actions point to the importance of gaining greater understanding of
the role of affect in childrens moral development. At a more general level,
the developmental work on childrens affective development has demon-
strated the process by which normal affective experiences are integrated
into the childs moral constructions. Morality is not simply guided by
feelings as the emotivist philosophers (Moore 1903) would have it. Nor
is it cold-blooded rationality as depicted in some misreadings of cognitive
accounts of morality (e.g., MacIntyre 1984). Our feelings are an integral
part of the very schemes that constitute the whole of our so-called moral
habits. Our moral reasoning and processes of reflection are in reciprocal
relation with the schemes that generate our moral behaviors.
cultural influences on moral emotion

While there are broad cross-cultural commonalities in human emotion,
there are significant cultural variations in the salience afforded to partic-
ular feelings, the contexts which give rise to particular emotions, and the
manner in which emotions are expressed. Although nature has afforded
us stereotypic physical displays (e.g., crying, laughter, rage) of basic emo-
tional events, our feelings take place within our bodies beyond even our
own direct observation. Our shared emotional experiences are, thus,
largely a function of our shared language for describing those feelings
(Nussbaum, 2000). Because the language of emotion is about our interior
states, it is rich with metaphor about bodily events (Sarbin 1995). We say
that we had a gut-wrenching experience, our heart aches or is bro-
ken, our blood boils, we get butterflies in our stomach, we are
moved to tears, and we leap with joy. Placing language and metaphor
around our feelings allows for considerable slippage and for variation in
what we attend to and how we couch things. Most importantly, our emo-
tions are not interpreted out of context, but within the frame of sur-
rounding events. Thus, for example, the feeling of jealousy does not oc-
cur outside of the context of a series of events that would be interpreted
as ones that should evoke jealous feeling. As a result, our tendency to feel
certain things is not simply a function of what Martha Nussbaum calls our
common animality but also a result of the cultural narratives and lan-
guage that frame and interpret our feelings (Mancuso and Sarbin 1998).
Not surprisingly, then, anthropologists have uncovered cultural varia-
tions in human emotional experience. Anthropologists employ common
emotional displays as a way of studying cultural variations in the emo-
tions that are emphasized and how they are incorporated into social life.
For example, observations of emotional displays of crying are used as a
way of studying variations in cultural views of how one should grieve
(Levy 1984). Tahitians, for example, view it as unhealthy to grieve for too
long and reinterpret prolonged sadness as the state of fatigue. The in-
terior feeling is acknowledged, but it is not interpreted as an emotion
(Levy 1984). Utka Eskimos and certain Tahitian groups find the overt ex-
pression of anger so dangerous that it is an emotion rarely expressed
overtly (Solomon 1984). The Utka do not even have a word for anger as
such, but label angry behavior as childish (Solomon 1984).
These cultural variations apply not only to differences across cultural
groups but also to subgroups within cultures. Perhaps the most important
of these for our purposes are variations associated with gender. Robin
Fivush (1993), for example, discovered gender differences in the emotional
content of parentchild conversations. In her study, parents and children
were asked to talk about significant events in their lives. Fivush observed
that when mothers spoke with their daughters, the mothers focused on
elaborating narratives dealing with sadness, showing concern about re-
solving the sadness episodes through adult comfort and reassurance. With
daughters as compared with sons, mothers less frequently framed events
in terms of anger, tending to focus on restoring relationships damaged
through anger episodes. Finally, when mothers discussed fear, they did so
more with respect to fear in their sons than in their daughters.
These and other findings showing gender differences in the emotional
socialization of boys and girls has led Nussbaum (2000) to wonder
whether, in fact, the two genders even share the same emotional lives.
Over the past two decades there has been heated debate over whether
gender differences in emotional sensitivity and expression spill over into
morality (Gilligan 1982). The most interesting discussion over gender dif-
ferences has focused on whether males and females differ in their ten-
dency to frame morality around issues of care, rather than justice (Gilli-
gan 1982). While the simple dichotomy distinguishing two purportedly
different gender-based moralities has been dismissed (Gilligan and Wig-
gins 1987), there is considerable evidence that gender is associated with
differences in the relative tendencies of males and females to read moral
situations as evoking feelings of care or justice (Turiel, 1998a). That is to
say, some situations tend to evoke a greater proportion of care responses
from males and justice responses from females, and vice versa (Nunner-
Winkler 1984).
We can attribute these cultural and gender differences in emotional re-
sponses to moral situations as resulting from the cultural narratives that
help to frame the construction of our moral schemes. The incorporation
of affect into our moral concepts is in part guided by the cultural narra-
tives that help us to interpret those feelings in the context of culturally de-
fined social events. For example, feelings of anger and aggressive behav-
ior in the form of revenge is often a culturally prescribed remedy for
culturally defined affronts toward ones masculinity (Sarbin 1995). Recent
work with Latino and African American urban gang members indicates
that their willingness to engage in aggressive acts is a function of their
reading of aggression and anger as appropriate responses to perceived
threats to their manhood (Astor 1994). In a similar vein, tendencies to
respond to ones own moral transgression with feelings of guilt or shame
are influenced by cultural views of ones conduct as reflecting upon oth-
ers (e.g., family) or solely upon oneself. In the former case, one feels
shame, and in the latter, guilt.
conclusions
The emphasis placed in this book on moral reasoning and educational ap-
proaches to developing childrens moral cognition stems from recognition
that the central feature of human morality is our capacity for choice and
judgment. That emphasis, however, should not be taken as an exclusive
view of morality or of moral education. As we have seen in this chapter,
moral reasoning and judgment occur in conjunction with feelings and
emotions. To educators, the interplay between emotion and moral devel-
opment implies, among other things, that our efforts to contribute to chil-
drens growth must include attention to the affective climate and content
of our classrooms. The culture of our schools and classrooms helps to con-
textualize and to direct childrens constructions of the meaning and im-

port of the feelings they experience in conjunction with social events.
These experiences can both build from and offset the social-affective con-
structions children forge at home and in their communities. Well-run
schools can do these things by providing emotionally safe and fair con-
texts within which to explore ways of interacting with others.
Attention to the affective side of morality and moral education goes be-
yond the obvious connections to direct moral experience associated with
the moral atmosphere of the school and classroom. It includes the emo-
tions generated through exposure to curricular assignments in such areas
as literature or history, which engage the reader in the moral conflicts and
events that broaden ones moral world. While we are accustomed to
bracketing such curricular activities under the rubric of cognitive teach-
ing goals, there is no question that their effectiveness rests in our ability
as educators to engage students in Nussbaums characterization of emo-
tion as collisions of thought.
We will deal with these educational issues at length in the second part
of this book. At this point we have one set of issues remaining in our ac-
count of moral and social development. Those are the issues having to do
with moral character. It is those issues which are addressed in Chapter 7.
chapter seven
Reconceptualizing Moral Character
The preceding chapters have dealt with issues of social cognition and
moral reasoning. Morality, however, is more than a matter of under-
standing what is right. It requires that one act in ways that are consistent
with ones moral judgment. This, in turn, requires that ones moral un-
derstandings be translated into a sense of personal responsibility.
One of the open questions in contemporary moral psychology is how
to account for the linkage between objective judgments of moral obliga-
tion and personal responsibility. In philosophy, a distinction is made be-
tween deontic judgments of what is morally obligatory and aretaic judg-
ments of the moral worthiness of individuals and their actions. Since the
question of moral action turns on the notion of personal responsibility, ac-
counts of moral action often evolve into aretaic evaluations of what it
means to be a good person. In everyday language, the term character is
used to convey such aretaic judgments. A person of good character is
someone who attends to the moral implications of actions and acts in ac-
cordance with what is moral in most circumstances. This everyday usage
of the term character captures an important feature of what is ordinarily
meant by a good person. It is also at the core of the current interest in char-
acter education.
While some notion of moral agency is necessary for a complete moral
psychology, it has been clear to most psychologists for decades that the
traditional character construct has fundamental flaws and cannot serve as
the basis for an account of moral action. Unfortunately, much of the cur-
rent rhetoric about character education has little to do with what people
are really like, and more to do with a political agenda (Kohn 1997). It is
important before moving on to more contemporary thinking about these
issues to recount why character education fell out of favor in the first
place.
124
reconceptualizing moral character 125
limitations of traditional views

of moral character
Traditional character education, which had its heyday in the early part of
the twentieth century, had as its central aim the fostering of the formation
of elements of the individuals personality and value structure that would
constitute socially desirable qualities or virtues. This is a venerable tradi-
tion, drawing on commonsense perspectives and buttressed by a partic-
ular, narrow reading of Aristotelian philosophy (Ryan and Lickona 1992;
Wynne 1986).
In the late 1920s, a major research effort was undertaken by Hugh
Hartshorne and Mark May (1928, 1929, 1930) to identify the factors that
contribute to the formation of character. Their research was based on the
reasonable premise that the first step should be to identify those individ-
uals who possessed moral virtues. What they had expected to find was
that the population of 8,000 students they studied would divide up into
those who displayed virtuous conduct nearly all of the time and those
who would not. To their surprise and disappointment, the researchers dis-
covered that few students were virtuous and that most children cheated,
behaved selfishly, and lacked self-control some of the time. Virtue, ac-
cording to their data, seemed to be context dependent, as students cheated
or lied in some situations and not in others. As Clark Power (Power, Hig-
gins and Kohlberg 1989b, p. 127) noted, Hartshorne and May concluded
that there were no character traits per se but specific habits learned in re-
lationship to specific situations which have made one or another response
successful.
In hindsight we can see two major flaws in the view of character that
guided the educational programs of that era, as well as the research pro-
gram of Hartshorne and May. The first is a mistaken view of personality
as defined by global dispositional tendencies or traits. This venerable trait
conception of personality comports with commonsense attributions that
we make toward others as we attempt to assign categories or labels to per-
sons that allow for some predictability in interpersonal interactions.
It is not difficult to get individuals to generate lists of characteristics
that are thought to capture certain types of people. For example, in a re-
cent study (Walker 1998), a sample of 120 undergraduates were asked to
freely list their perceptions of traits or attributes they thought would be
characteristic of persons who were defined as moral exemplars. Analyses
of these trait lists turned up agreeableness and conscientiousness as domi-
nant factors, followed by openness to experience as the main attributes of
persons considered to be morally exemplary. There were also variations

in the salience of these general traits accorded to moral types as a func-
tion of their presentation as secular moral, religious, or spiritual exem-
plars. For example, agreeableness was attributed less to religious exem-
plars than to the secular moral or spiritual types. This study demonstrates
that commonsense psychology contains the assumption that people have
reasonably consistent ways of acting, and that persons of moral character
can be expected to exhibit some shared general dispositions. Such attri-
butions, however, are neither a demonstration that any actual person fits
the general profile attributed to moral exemplars (for example, it is not
hard to imagine a disagreeable secular social activist), nor a demon-
stration that morally exemplary people are as consistent in their personal
tendencies across contexts as would be expected from a trait theory of per-
sonality.
Beginning in the 1950s, personality and social psychologists conducted
several decades of careful research into whether there is behavioral con-
sistency within individuals with presumed personality traits. This work
turned up the same sorts of contextual variations in the behavior of indi-
viduals as was reported in the character studies of Hartshorne and May
(Mischel 1973; Ross and Nisbett 1991; Sarbin and Allen 1968). These re-
searchers concluded that people cannot be accurately described in terms
of stable and general personality traits, since people tend to exhibit dif-
ferent and seemingly contradictory aspects of themselves in different con-
texts. People dont possess personality traits or moral virtues in the same
way that they have eye color or stature. We cant speak of someone as an
honest person in the same way that we can speak of someone as being
a blonde or as having brown hair.
Instead of articulating trait theories, contemporary personality psy-
chologists tend to view personality as something one does in particular set-
tings, rather than as something one has independent of context (Mischel
1990; Ross and Nisbett 1991). As Lapsley (1996) summarizes in his review
of this literature, people have scripts, knowledge systems, and reasoning
capabilities that allow them to pick out what are to them the salient fea-
tures of immediate situations and to act accordingly. Thus, one should
view dispositional tendencies as a set of if-then propositions, rather
than traits. From the domain-theory perspective of this book, one can un-
derstand these if-then sequences as emerging from the domain-salient
features of social events, the domain-specific knowledge that a person
has, and the affective weights that are incorporated within the persons
social-moral schemata.
As was discussed in Chapter 6, these affective weights comprise a sig-

nificant factor in how situations are perceived and responded to, and con-
tribute to observed individual differences in responses to social situations.
What one does in a moral sense is, thus, more fluid than would be ex-
pected from a simple trait account of virtue. It is also more fluid than
would be expected from an account of moral action as stemming from in-
culcated social values and deeply ingrained habits of conduct. Yet, it is
these companion notions of inculcation and habit formation that form an
integral part of the traditional account of the emergence of virtue. Not sur-
prisingly, then, the emphasis on habit and inculcation as sources of virtue
comprise the second major limitation of traditional accounts of character
formation and education.
Since Aristotle, the development of virtue has been thought to emerge
out of the progressive building up of habits. Contemporary character ed-
ucators (Benninga 1991; Wynne 1989; Wynne and Ryan 1993) likewise rely
heavily on psychological theories that emphasize punishment and re-
ward systems to reinforce desired behavior, and systems of inculcation
that are presumed to instill values and virtues in the young (Kohn 1997).
It is worth remembering that in response to their findings, Hartshorne and
May (1930) concluded that such traditional approaches to character edu-
cation through the use of didactic teaching, exhortation, and example
probably do more harm than good since such practices do not take into
account the practical demands of social contexts. In other words, such
rigid instruction runs counter to the evaluative and contextualized nature
of moral life. By focusing heavily on efforts to instill proper values and
habits, such approaches fail to develop students capacities to make the
social and moral judgments that contextualized actions require.
Ironically, Aristotle was not as limited in his approach to virtue and
moral habit as some of his twentieth-century interpreters. For Aristotle
(1985), mature morality was identified by the subordination of particular
habits and virtues to the master virtue of justice. A just person was not an
automaton, ruled either by passion or thoughtless conformity to social
norms, but a person of reason and judgment.
The limitations of a reliance on modes of inculcation and habit forma-
tion have not been lost on all character educators. There is an emerging
trend among those Clark Power (Power and Khmelkov 1998) refers to as
generalists (e.g., Battistich et al. 1991; Lickona 1991) toward an integra-
tion of practices of reflection, borrowed from developmentalist moral ed-
ucators, such as Kohlberg, into programs of character education. This
eclectic integration has not occurred, however, with a corresponding
reconceptualization of the character construct. Thus, we are entering an

interesting period in the field where the term character education is
serving as the generic, publicly accepted label for a range of approaches
to moral education, without any clear conceptual framework for what the
term character even refers to.
There would seem to be two options open to resolving this situation.
One would be to take a narrow reading of character education and reserve
the term for the traditional approaches, plagued with the limitations I
have just outlined. That is the approach recently taken by Kevin Ryan
(1996) in an article attempting to distance traditional character educators
from what he refers to as the character education bandwagon (p. 77).
The second would be to reconceptualize what is meant by moral charac-
ter in a way that does not rest on assumptions about personal virtues or
traits, while capturing the essential notion that morality cannot be di-
vorced from the person as a moral being.
the moral self

Over the past decade, there has been a gradual convergence among some
moral educational researchers (Blasi 1983, 1984, 1993; Blasi and Glodis
1995; Colby and Damon 1992; Lapsley 1996; Noam 1993; Power and
Khmelkov 1998) toward the idea that a more fruitful way to begin under-
standing how a persons moral concepts relate to the person as a moral
agent is to look at the ways, and the extent to which, individuals integrate
their morality into their subjective sense of personal identity. The most in-
fluential source for this shift has been the work of Augusto Blasi (1993).
For Blasi, moral responsibility is the result of the integration of morality
in ones identity or sense of self. From moral identity derives a psycho-
logical need to make ones actions consistent with ones ideals. Thus, in
Blasis (1993) words, self-consistency is the motivational spring of moral
action (p. 99).
In a similar vein, Clark Power (Power and Khmelkov 1998) redefines
character as the specifically moral dimensions of self. Like Blasi, Power
states that the motive for moral action is not simply the direct result of
knowing the good but derives from the desire to act in ways that are
consistent with ones own sense of self as a moral being. As Power puts
it: Individuals may undertake a particular course of action, even at some
cost, because they want to become or remain a certain kind of person
(Power and Khmelkov 1998). In contrast with the traditional character
construct, the approach taken by Blasi and Power, does not attempt to
replace moral ideas with a set of noncognitive personality characteristics:

it sees personal identity as operating jointly with reason and truth in pro-
viding motives for action (Blasi 1993, p. 99). Thus, ones moral character
is not something divorced from moral cognition and the complexity that
it entails.
General Issues in the Construction of Self

The construction of personal identity is itself multifaceted, incorporating
values and social roles from a number of contexts. There is both a per-
sonal, idiosyncratic element to who we are and what we care about, as
was discussed in Chapter 3, as well as an integration of shared normative
concerns and objective factors inherent in social life. Our personal tastes,
talents, opportunities, and experiences enter into the construction of
self in ways that capture both the particular sociohistorical context of
the individuals life space, and the particulars of the persons own read-
ing of what matters in his or her own life. Self, in this view, is not so much
an entity as it is a story or a narrative we tell ourselves in which we are
the featured character (Sarbin 1986). Who we are emerges as we engage
the social world and attempt to provide ourselves an account of how we
initiate actions (a sense of agency), who that agent is (a sense of identity),
and who we wish that agent to be (a combination of agency and identity).
Research on the development of childrens conceptions of self (Damon
and Hart 1988; Harter 1983) provides evidence that with age, children
construct increasingly differentiated notions of themselves as actors
within different contexts or domains. These differentiated constructs
emerge as a result of childrens efforts to interpret their differential com-
petence and involvement in various areas of activity (academic, making
friends), as well as a corresponding tendency with age to assign meaning
to those levels of competence and commitment. Harter (1983) has sug-
gested that development of self-concepts may very well entail a reitera-
tive process whereby a childs initial attempts to construct an integrated
notion of self (e.g., in terms of characteristic behaviors) is followed by a
period of differentiation (e.g., good at some things, bad at others). These
differentiated general descriptions are then incorporated within a higher
level of integration (e.g., general traits), which are then subsequently dif-
ferentiated. This process eventuates at the most advanced levels of de-
velopment in a conceptualization of self in multidimensional and contex-
tual terms (Broughton 1978; Damon and Hart 1988).
The inherent complexity of self-definition has its counterpart in chil-
drens efforts at self-evaluation. As a way of beginning to think about how

this might apply to the area of morality, lets look for a moment, by way
of analogy, at the highly researched area of how children apply their sense
of self to academic performance. Educators have long been concerned
with the relation between self-esteem and school variables, such as aca-
demic achievement. At issue is whether children have a global sense of
self-worth, or whether self-esteem varies by domain of activity. There
have been proponents of the view that self-esteem is a global construct
(Coopersmith 1967), as well as views that self-esteem exists as a differen-
tiated aggregate of evaluations (Mullener and Laird 1971). Current evi-
dence, however, supports the proposition that children construct both a
general sense of self-worth and domain-specific evaluations of their own
competence (Byrne 1984; Harter 1985, 1986; Rosenberg 1965).
In line with those findings, there is little evidence to suggest that stu-
dents view of themselves in terms of academic capabilities (academic
self-esteem) is necessarily tied to students general sense of self-worth
(Harter 1983; Marsh, Smith, and Barnes 1985). Correlations between gen-
eral self-esteem measures and academic self-concept tend to correlate be-
tween 0.30 and the low 0.40s (Nucci 1989). What is more, there is evidence
that childrens academic self-concept may be differentiated according to
area of activity, for example, math versus reading (Harter 1983).
In one such study, Marsh and colleagues (1985) found that math and
reading achievement scores and teacher ratings of fifth-grade boys and
girls were positively correlated with each other and with academic self-
concepts in the matching area. Childrens academic achievement was un-
correlated, however, with nonacademic self-concept, and the two aca-
demic self-concepts (math and reading) were nearly uncorrelated. It also
appears that the areas of activity important to childrens self-image may
be a function of gender or ethnic/cultural background (e.g., first-grade
girls may not consider their ability in math to be relevant to their academic
image) (Entwisle et al. 1987). The importance of distinguishing between
academic self-concept and general self-image is underscored by findings
that there is no causal relationship between academic self-performance
and general self-image, as measured by such global instruments as the
Coopersmith (Harter 1983). The loose relationship between academic self-
concept and general self-worth means that attempts to improve childrens
academic performance and academic self-image are unlikely to result
from attempts to raise childrens general self-esteem. These findings also
illustrate that our overall sense of self may or may not be importantly re-
lated to any particular area of our social or practical activity.
Morality and the Self

If we move from the area of academics back to the issue of the moral self,
one can see both parallels and differences. One significant difference is
that people arent as free to discount their moral selves as they are to dis-
count other aspects of their personal endeavors, such as their performance
in mathematics or on the dance floor (Power and Khmelkov 1998). This is
because morality is inherent in human interaction and engages us in bind-
ing objective ways. As we have seen, very young children construct in-
tuitions that harming someone is wrong. The objective or binding nature
of morality should not, however, be overstated as a basis for its centrality
in the construction of personal identity. Whether one attends to the moral
implications of events may be more compelling than whether one devel-
ops skill as a dancer, but it may not attain the same degree of salience or
centrality for everyone. There is no reason to assume that the basic process
of constructing the moral aspect of self is fundamentally different from
the construction of other aspects of personal identity. Thus we should ex-
pect interpersonal variations in the connection between self and morality.
This assumption of interpersonal variation in moral identity has not
been extensively researched. However, recent work by Augusto Blasi
(1993) and his colleagues has provided evidence that some individuals let
moral notions penetrate to the essence and core of what and who they are,
while others construct their central defining features of self in other ways.
This is not to say that morality is somehow absent from many people but,
rather, that the moral aspects of self may be subjectively experienced in
different ways. Blasi (1993, p. 103) puts it this way:
[S]everal individuals may see morality as essential to their sense of self,

of who they are. For some of them, however, moral ideals and de-
mands happen to be there, a given nature over which they feel little
control. In this case moral ideals exist next to other characteristics, all
equally important because they are there. Others instead relate to their
moral ideals as being personally chosen over other ideals or demands,
sense their fragility, and feel responsible to protect them and thus to
protect their sense of self.
To explore the relationship between moral identity and motivation for

moral action, Blasi and Glodis (1995) examined whether people who de-
fine morality as a central part of their personal identity experience a sense
of personal betrayal when they act in opposition to those moral values.
They hypothesized that such a sense of personal betrayal would be more
evident in persons whose sense of identity stemmed from their own ac-
tive efforts at becoming the person they were, than among persons whose
identity emerged from a relatively passive, unreflective acceptance of
themselves. In their study, they asked 30 women to indicate an ideal that
they considered to be very important to their sense of self, one that they
cared deeply about and to which they were deeply committed. Among the
ideals listed were friendship, caring for others, morality and justice, self-
reliance, and improving ones mind and knowledge. Six to ten weeks later,
each of the women was presented with a story in which a fictional char-
acter chooses a course of action advantageous financially and careerwise,
but which compromised her ideals. The compromised ideal in each case
was the one listed by the subject as a central value in her earlier interview.
What Blasi and Glodis (1995) found was that some of their subjects
tended not to see the situation as relevant to their ideals. Instead, they fo-
cused on the pragmatic consequences of the decision presented in the
scenario and expressed feelings of satisfaction with the protagonists
pragmatic choice. However, others saw the situation as entailing a serious
contradiction of their ideals, and they expressed such feelings as shame,
guilt, and depression over the protagonists choice to violate those ideals.
The feelings expressed by subjects in the study were a function of their
own sense of identity as being one for which they were actively involved.
Subjects whose ideals were not experienced as passively received from
outside influences, but rather as central concerns to be pursued, were
those who reported the most distress in response to the scenarios entail-
ing a contradiction or betrayal of those ideals.
In discussing their findings, Blasi and Glodis avoid claiming that it is
essential for a person to have constructed a moral identity of this sort in
order for someone to act in morally consonant ways. They recognize that
morality may be viewed as important for other reasons, such as social ap-
proval, or simply out of concern for the objective consequences of actions.
They also suggest that such intense personal involvement may not be im-
plicated in many day-to-day moral interactions that dont entail dilem-
mas pitting ones pragmatic self-interest against the needs of someone
else. Ones personal identity may only be at stake in cases requiring sub-
stantial subordination of other motives. Of course, whether one views
such situations as placing the self at risk is a function of the degree to
which morality exists as an ideal central to ones self-definition. Blasi
(1993) asserts that moral and other ideals are chosen as core values be-
cause they are understood to be important. Thus, to some extent per-
sonality is shaped by what one knows to be worthy of education and com-

mitment (Blasi 1993, p. 119).
Blasis work is provocative in that it links Aristotelian notions of eu-
daimonia (self-flourishing) to the work that has been done on moral cog-
nition. It also implies that constructivist assumptions of how one gener-
ates moral knowledge are also important to the active construction of the
moral self and the consequent moral responsibility and character. A ma-
jor (self-acknowledged) limitation of his work is that it is centered around
a sophisticated form of personal identity that does not typically emerge
before adolescence or adulthood. Thus, Blasis work does not provide us
with an account of the developmental antecedents of moral identity, nor
does he provide an account of moral motivation for children prior to this
adolescent period of identity formation.
Childhood Antecedents of the Moral Self

Other research on childrens construction of self has indicated that chil-
dren use moral language in their self-definitions from at least 6 years of
age (Power and Khmelkov 1998). At these young ages, however, the terms
used are very global, evaluative labels, such as good, bad, and nice,
which appear to have little to do with the childrens own efforts at self-re-
flection. Young children do not differentiate between descriptions of
themselves as they are and descriptions of themselves as they would like
to be, and they rarely offer moral self-criticism, even when probed to do
so (Power and Khmelkov 1998). Instead, when describing the moral as-
pects of themselves, they tend to use positive terms such as good, and
nice. The absence of self-criticism means that self cannot serve as a
source of moral motivation for young children. That is, while children
may view hurting as wrong, and refrain from engaging in the action be-
cause of their perceptions of the objective harm that would be caused by
the act, engaging in wrong actions does not seem to be tied to conceptions
of the self as bad.
This lack of self-reflection is consistent with Freudian assumptions that
the morality of young children is tied to remorse for consequences after
the fact, rather than to an internally directed anticipatory experience of
guilt. Roughly between 8 and 10 years of age, children begin to apply
moral language to describe not only their typical dispositions for action,
such as kindness or helpfulness, but also their behavioral goals for them-
selves to become free of any bad habits or dispositions that they might
possess. These goals are in relation to their recognition of aspects of their

own current behavioral tendencies that constitute bad habits or dispo-
sitions. Thus, it is in middle childhood that children begin to evidence
early signs of moral self-evaluation (Power and Khmelkov 1998). The
moral goals of middle childhood, however, are framed in terms of the be-
havioral language of self-understandings of this developmental period
and, therefore, center around overt behaviors, such as responding to the
needs of others, rather than affecting interior psychological characteris-
tics, such as becoming a more caring or sensitive person.
These more complex psychological aims emerge in early adolescence
as self-understanding becomes based around a conception of self and per-
sonal identity as comprised of a unique personal configuration of interior
thoughts, feelings, beliefs and values (Damon and Hart 1988; Nucci and
Lee 1993). The moral content of ones self is now as seen as a component
of this psychological self-definition, and moral terms are now sponta-
neously applied to describe the self (Power and Khmelkov 1998). Finally,
in late adolescence and adulthood, the self is seen as an integrated system,
and personal identity is viewed as integrated with ones moral character
(Power and Khmelkov 1998).
Power and Khmelkovs (1998) work on moral self-concept has led them
to conclude that whatever precursors may exist for moral character, they
do not reveal themselves in the form of conscious self-reflection in young
children. Middle childhood and early adolescence, however, appear to be
crucial in the integration of morality into the self-system (Damon 1984;
Power and Khmelkov 1998). It is at these ages that children begin to link
their conceptions of what sort of person they would like to become (Ideal
Self) and what sort of person they hope never to become (Dreaded Self) to
evaluations of the person that they are (Real Self) (Power and Khmelkov
1998). This integration allows the child to become capable of being self-
critical and provides the capacity for motivating the child to begin to be
concerned about living up to his or her own expectations.
There is some empirical evidence that the integration of moral concerns
into personal identity has an impact on the positive social behavior of ado-
lescents. Hart and Fegley (1995) studied the moral identities of a group of
inner-city adolescents who exhibited a high degree of community-service
voluntarism and care for others. These adolescents were identified by
community leaders, teachers, and churches as youth who had done such
things as organize youth groups and work in homeless shelters. They and
a comparison group of adolescents from the same community were asked
to generate a list of all of the important characteristics they could think of
that described themselves as they are in the present, the person they were
in the past, the person they dreaded becoming, and they kind of person
they would ideally like to become. What Hart and Fegley (1995) assumed
was that persons whose actual selves incorporate a subset of their ideal
selves will be more driven to realize the goals of the ideal self than per-
sons whose ideal self and actual self are unrelated. What they discovered
in their study was in line with that hypothesis. Two-thirds of the adoles-
cents high on voluntarism and care and less than a third of the compari-
son adolescents exhibited overlap between the characteristics of their ac-
tual and ideal selves.
The comparisons adolescents draw among their potential selves, how-
ever, do not always lead to good outcomes. Power and Khmelkov (1998)
note that early adolescence provides a period of risk for children who per-
ceive themselves not only falling short of an ideal but becoming what
they fear (Power and Khmelkov 1998, p. 16). Such children appear to en-
gage in a form of debilitating self-criticism that undermines their sense of
agency. In some cases, this debilitating view of self becomes a self-fulfill-
ing prophesy in which the childs sense of becoming what he or she most
dreads ends up defining the self that emerges. In other cases, the effort to
save face (as in the case of violent antisocial youth) leads to a set of self-
serving cognitive distortions to justify or excuse their actions. An educa-
tional implication Power and Khmelkov (1998) draw from their research
findings is that character education needs not only to engage children in
constructing moral understandings, but also to provide a context within
which to construct a positive sense of self and personal agency, a view
echoed in our work on the relationship between morality and the personal
domain (Nucci 1996).
The consistent picture that emerges from diverse studies of the devel-
opment of self-understandings is that morality and the self-system de-
velop independently until middle childhood. Prior to this integration,
however, children begin to construct modes of responding to moral situ-
ations that reflect, at least in part, their sense of how such actions relate
back to their own goals, aims and their sense of what is right in relation
to themselves. Gil Noam (1993) has captured much of the results of this
research, as it relates to the eventual construction of the moral self, in his
conclusion that early, secure emotional attachments, predictable con-
texts, and a zone of trust and reciprocity are conducive to formation of
the moral self.
Noams position is consonant with an overwhelming body of evidence
on the social and emotional development of young children. It is also con-
sonant with the work on emotional development and morality reviewed

in Chapter 6. As we saw there in the discussion of the happy victimizer
phenomenon, the gradual coordination of early-childhood conceptions of
moral transgressions as wrong with the sense that knowledge of the pain
caused to the victim should outweigh possible gains to the perpetrator is
fostered by affectively supportive environments in which fairness and
moral reciprocity are supported by the experience of goodwill that
comes from such interactions. As Arsenio and Lover (1995) discuss, some
childrens early experiences lead to the construction of a pattern of ill
will in which long term patterns of victimization and peer rejection dis-
tort the construction of moral reciprocity such that the child feels enti-
tled to act in aggressive or exploitive ways toward others.
The importance of early emotional experience in the construction of
ones moral orientation has long been the subject of psychological ac-
counts of moral development and character formation (Hoffman 1983;
Kochanska 1993; Wilson 1993). Clearly, early-childhood patterns that
emerge from such things as experiences of goodwill and ill will, if
unchecked, become integrated into the construction of moral self in mid-
dle childhood and form the base for constructions of personal biases in
the reading of social-moral situations later in life. The tendency to read
situations as having moral, rather than primarily pragmatic or conven-
tional, features and to link moral situations to oneself will be affected by
the ways in which lifelong patterns of responding to social situations pre-
dispose one to reason and act. Because of the sheer logic of the temporal
primacy of early-childhood events, there is a tendency to overestimate the
influence of such early experiences on later social and moral functioning.
In addition, because these events take place during a period of relative
unsophistication, there is also a tendency to view such early-childhood
experiences as forming a nonrational base for morality and character
(Wilson 1993). These two notions come together in a view of early child-
hood as a critical period for moral character formation (Wilson 1993).
Psychotherapist and clinical researcher Gil Noam (1993) takes issue
with the idea that formation of a moral self is an all-or-none phenomenon.
The formation of the moral self is not the outcome of the socialization of
a nonrational childhood sense (Wilson 1993) but, rather, a lifelong ex-
perience of intersubjectivity, of selves merging and differentiating
(Noam 1993, p. 233). Noam reminds us that the early pioneers of object re-
lations and attachment theory, such as Anne Bowlby, have pointed to the
healing power of new relationships that can be formed throughout ones
life. For Noam, having missed out at first on the types of emotional expe-
riences conducive to constructing a positive moral self makes it harder

later, but new opportunities may arise from which a person may create
a new vitality (Noam 1993, p. 233). It is interesting to note that Noam
views moral reflection and engagement in moral action as an avenue not
just for development of the moral aspect of self, but as a way in which to
heal the self more generally (Noam 1993, p. 356).
Developmental Summary
The developmental picture that emerges of the construction of the moral
self may be summarized as follows. Early-childhood constructions of
morality incorporate the affective experiences associated with moral
events, resulting in schemas that establish tendencies toward moral ac-
tion. A part of the affective information that goes into the generation of
early moral schemata is the overall climate of social events, which chil-
dren may interpret as constituting a context of goodwill or ill will.
This early-childhood interpretation of the social world as benign and sup-
portive or as malevolent may contribute to the likelihood that emerging
capacities to understand morality in terms of just reciprocity will result in
the view that the affective consequences of harm or perpetrating injustice
toward another should outweigh the possible benefits that would accrue
from engaging in moral transgression. This act of will, as Piaget (1962)
defined it, constitutes an early instance of character, in that it entails the
subordination of personal gain to what is morally right. This construction
of will forms the entry point in the childs incorporation of moral ideals
of conduct into his or her construction of self.
The continuing construction of self that takes place during adolescence
and adulthood involves a series of differentiations and integrations, of
which morality is but one component. Because of the objective nature of
morality and its presence in all human interaction, it is more difficult to
discount the moral aspect of self than other aspects of ones self-system.
Nonetheless, individuals vary in the degree to which morality becomes
integrated into the core of ones personal identity. Moral responsibility is
at stake in those situations which the individual reads as moral, and for
whom morality is an integral part of personal identity.
Character, then, is not a constellation of personality traits or virtues but,
rather, the operation of the moral aspects of the self in relation to the self
as a whole. As such, the expression of character is subject to contextual
variation, even if the structures of moral reasoning themselves are con-
textually invariant. Finally, character, defined in terms of the moral self, is
not static but may evolve over time, both in terms of its own structure and
in relation to the totality of the self as a system.
education and the moral self

There are several educational implications in reconceptualizing character
in terms of the moral aspects of self. Perhaps the most important is the
recognition that what is being developed in terms of moral character is
not a set of traits but, rather, an integration of moral and social under-
standings, affects, and skills with the way in which one defines oneself in
moral terms and in relation to the given social context. This is an un-
doubtedly less straightforward and more complex way of looking at
things than being able to size people up in terms of such virtues as hon-
esty, diligence, and the like. It also makes it much more difficult for us as
educators to clearly identify students as either having good character or
not. For if we recognize that being able to identify a good person is often
a matter of being able to see the world from the vantage point of the ac-
tor, the enterprise of aretaic evaluations becomes, as Socrates acknowl-
edged in The Meno, a very difficult task, beyond even his wisdom.
Yet, to ignore the agentic aspect of moral development is to abdicate a
fundamental role of any educator. It matters a great deal whether or not
students grow up to be people for whom morality is a central element of
their identity, and whether their moral understandings inform them in
ways that direct them to attend to the embedded, as well as highly salient,
moral features of the social world. Thus, we neednt throw up our hands
in dismay at the prospect that we cannot create people of virtue. What we
can do instead is contribute to the ways in which children construct their
moral understandings, their interpretations of the moral and social world,
and the linkages between those understandings and how they self-define.
This integrative view of moral education addresses the agentic side of
morality without reducing moral education to a series of futile efforts at
indoctrination. Viewed in this way, the process of moral education be-
comes consistent with the more general constructivist approach to teach-
ing that is emerging as the general paradigm for contemporary education.
It is also consistent with what we understand to be the psychology of chil-
drens moral and social development.
With this chapter, we have reached the end of the overview of research
on childrens moral and social development. Let us then turn to a more
detailed discussion of the implications of this psychological research and
theory for educational practice.
part two
Classroom Applications
chapter eight
Creating a Moral Atmosphere
Caitlin and Lauren are girls who live in the same neighborhood but attend
different schools. At Caitlins school, children all wear uniforms. In the
morning they all line up with their classmates and are led into the school
by their teacher. There is no talking allowed as they walk into school in
single file and take their assigned seats. During class, students must raise
their hand to speak or to get permission from the teacher to sharpen a pen-
cil or go to the bathroom. No one is permitted to chew gum or eat in class.
There are clear rules against using swear words or fighting on the play-
ground.
Lauren, on the other hand, can wear jeans or shorts to school, but she
cant wear extrashort skirts. When the bell rings, she and her classmates
enter the school together, laughing and talking to one another. Once they
get to the classroom they take whichever seat they wish. If they have
something interesting to say during a lesson, they can speak up without
raising their hands so long as they dont interrupt another speaker. If they
need to sharpen a pencil, they can do so whenever they wish so long as
they dont interfere with other students. Bathrooms are built into each
classroom, and students may use them freely whenever they need to. As
in Caitlins school, students are not allowed to eat or chew gum in class.
Also as in Caitlins school, there are clear rules against fighting, and kids
arent supposed to swear, though that rule isnt strictly enforced.
Lauren and Caitlin attend schools with different social norms, which
reflect divergent educational philosophies and ideologies. Readers famil-
iar with variations in school structure can envision even more divergent
forms than the examples illustrated by Lauren and Caitlins elementary
schools. Schools constitute minisocieties within the larger culture. They
are structured by norms and conventions that frame the affective, per-
sonal, and moral elements of the school experience. As a consequence, the
141
142 classroom applications
sociomoral curriculum of school, unlike its academic curriculum, is not

confined to periods of instruction and study but includes the social inter-
actions established by school and classroom rules, rituals, and practices
(Jackson, Boostrom, and Hansen 1993), and by the less regimented peer
interactions that take place on the playgrounds, in cafeterias, and in hall-
ways.
The standard approach to this hidden curriculum has been to treat
the entire complex of school rules and conventions as rife with moral
meaning (Durkheim 1925/1961; Hansen 1996), and to treat adherence to
rules as a cornerstone in the formation of moral character (Wynne 1986,
1989). Whereas it is the case that some school rules deal with matters of
morality, and also true that the manner in which even trivial rules are en-
forced can have moral consequences, it is a mistake to equate school
norms with moral standards. It is equally mistaken to view student com-
pliance with or resistance to school rules per se as indicating much about
a students moral character. This is because the same differentiations that
exist within the larger social system among convention, morality, and per-
sonal discretion also hold within the microsociety of the school. As teach-
ers and administrators wrestle with how best to establish and maintain
educationally constructive school rules and discipline, they are constantly
confronted with the qualitatively different characteristics and functions of
the moral, conventional and pragmatic/procedural norms of their insti-
tutions and classrooms, and with the qualitatively different ways in which
students at different ages react toward those norms. For the most part,
teachers and administrators are unaware of the systematic way in which
these classes of norms vary. Nor are they generally cognizant of the tacit
ways in which their own classroom interactions are often guided by these
qualitative differences.
In the remainder of this chapter, we will take up the issues surround-
ing the domain-related features of school rules and norms and the ways
in which students and teachers at different grade levels deal with matters
of social regulation. In doing so, opportunities will be created for educa-
tors to reflect upon how best to incorporate this information within their
own school setting in ways that constitute domain appropriate practice
(Nucci 1982). While some approaches to classroom management and
school structure will be presented as examples of effective practice, they
are offered as a way to look at general principles, and not as the sole or
necessarily best ways in which to achieve a positive sociomoral school cli-
mate within a particular school setting.
creating a moral atmosphere 143
domain appropriate practice: general issues

regarding school and classroom norms
Teacher Authority and Childrens Conceptions of School Rules

As one might expect, childrens differential understandings of the nature
of morality and convention have implications for the ways in which chil-
dren evaluate school rules and teachers authority. One might argue that
how children view such issues doesnt matter very much since teachers
exert considerable power over their student charges. However, as Metz
(1978) indicated more than twenty years ago, the authoritychild rela-
tionship is not a one-way street. Just as teachers and schools establish
rules and policies for behavior, so too do students evaluate those rules.
Barnard (1963), writing in the 1930s, pointed out that authority is suc-
cessful only when its commands further the moral or social order as the
subordinate understands it. Research on childrens moral and social con-
cepts has begun to provide a consistent set of findings that childrens in-
terpretations of acts as matters of morality or convention affect their eval-
uation of the legitimacy of social rules and authority.
With regard to the moral domain, children expect schools to have rules
governing such actions as hitting and hurting or stealing personal prop-
erty. They state that it is wrong for schools or teachers to permit such be-
haviors because they result in harm to persons (Laupa and Turiel 1986;
Weston and Turiel 1980). In addition, Laupa and Turiel (1993) reported
that children generalize their reading of actions to their evaluation of the
legitimacy of adult authority. In their study, Laupa and Turiel (1993)
found that elementary school children accepted as legitimate those in-
structions from teachers that would prevent harm to another child, but
they rejected the instructions of teachers that, if followed, would result in
harm to another child. The Laupa and Turiel (1993) study dealt with hy-
pothetical scenarios so that children could provide responses without fear
of coercion from an actual teacher. It is possible, and perhaps even likely,
that a child would follow a teachers command to hurt another out of fear
of the teachers power. Nonetheless, the study suggests that children
might not view such a teacher as a legitimate authority. Finally, teacher
fairness and impartiality constitute important criteria for students judg-
ments of teacher adequacy (Arsenio 1984; Lee, Statuto, and Vedar-Voivo-
das 1983; Veldman and Peck 1963). This latter finding is consonant with a
central theme addressed by Philip Jackson and his colleagues (Jackson et
al. 1993) in their depiction of the pervasive nature of moral issues in every-
day classroom interactions. Thus, it would appear that, with respect to
morality, it is less the case that teacher authority and rules establish what
is right or wrong as it is that teacher authority stems from the extent to
which the rules they establish, and the actions they engage in, are conso-
nant with the childs conceptions of justice and harm.
The one caveat that must be added to this conclusion, however, is that
teachers, because of their presumed access to accurate information, have
great potential to alter the ways in which children read the meanings of
peoples intentions and actions. As was covered in Chapter 5, recent work
has shown that the informational assumptions people bring to social sit-
uations can radically alter their reading of events (Turiel et al. 1991; Wain-
ryb 1991). Teachers who provide children with highly biased and preju-
dicial accounts of historical events, and of the intentions and capacities of
groups along racial, ethnic, and gender lines, have the capacity to alter the
ways in which children view the actions of others. The impact of such
teacher bias, particularly when enacted within the context of a shared
community-wide viewpoint, has not been well studied in relation to chil-
drens moral understandings, and further research in this area is needed.
One neednt wait for definitive research, however, to be aware of the po-
tential for harm that might stem from a teachers prejudicial framing of
events for children. A moral responsibility of teachers and administrators
is to mitigate such tendencies within themselves. This will be dealt with
again when we look in Chapter 9 at the role of factual assumptions when
generating moral lessons from the academic curriculum.
If we move from the moral domain to consideration of classroom con-
vention, we see a very different pattern regarding childrens acceptance
of teacher authority. With respect to conventions, students acknowledge
that school authorities may legitimately establish, alter, or eliminate
school-based norms of propriety (e.g., dress codes, forms of address) and
the rules and procedures for academic activity (Blumenfeld, Pintrich, and
Hamilton 1987; Dodsworth-Rugani 1982; Nicholls and Thorkildsen 1987;
Weston and Turiel 1980). As we saw in the examples presented at the be-
ginning of this chapter, schools may vary widely in terms of these con-
ventional and procedural norms, while sharing a common set of core
moral rules.
The scope of the schools legitimate authority in establishing conven-
tional norms is limited from the childs point of view by whether they en-
croach on areas of activity perceived by children as within the personal
domain. This was illustrated in a study of childrens positive and nega-

tive feelings about classroom rules (Arsenio 1984). Arsenio reported that
nearly 62% of all negative rule evaluations provided by fifth-grade boys
involved undue teacher control of such nonacademic activities as bath-
room and drinking-fountain procedures and restrictions on free-time ac-
tivities. As was noted in Chapter 3, the definition of what counts as per-
sonal is not, however, solely a matter of individual decision making. The
precise content of what is personal will vary as a function of the general
system within which the child operates and the degree to which the child
has successfully established an area of personal authority.
Schools are social institutions that place different sets of constraints on
personal behavior than might exist in other social settings, such as the
family and the general outside environment. Thus, schools represent a
rather unique context within which children must learn to negotiate and
accommodate their own personal freedoms in relation to the organiza-
tional conventions imposed by the varying institutions of general society.
As we will discuss more thoroughly in this chapter, the negotiations over
the personal domain of students in school contexts provides a major
source of both conflict and the potential for student social growth.
Teacher Authority and Domain Appropriate

Feedback to Rule Violations
The source of the childs understandings of morality, social convention,
and personal issues is the qualitatively differing forms of social interac-
tions associated with each domain. The educational implication of these
qualitative differences is that in order for discourse surrounding moral
and conventional norms to have maximal impact on students social and
moral growth, it should be concordant with the moral or conventional na-
ture of the social/normative issue under consideration. This means that
teacher feedback to students about school norms and norm violations
should be different in kind, depending upon whether the norm deals with
an issue of morality or convention. As we will see in detail in Chapter 9,
curriculum research has shown that domain-concordant instructional
methods lead to greater moral and social cognitive growth than methods
that are not domain appropriate (Nucci and Weber 1991).
Consistent with those findings are the results of studies that look at stu-
dents evaluations of the appropriateness of teacher responses to hypo-
thetical transgressions of school rules. In one such study (Nucci 1984) chil-
dren in grades 3, 5, 7, and 9 were presented line drawings of children en-

gaging in behaviors that were either moral transgressions or violations of
a convention. Following the presentation of each line drawing, the chil-
dren listened to a tape recording of a teacher providing five possible re-
sponses to the student behavior. Each child was asked to rate the teachers
responses on a four-point scale as an excellent, good, fair/so-so, or poor
way to respond to what the child had done. The five teacher responses
were those that had been shown in observational studies (Nucci and
Nucci 1982b; Nucci and Turiel 1978; Nucci, et al. 1982) to be the most
prevalent modes of teacher response to classroom transgressions:
1. Intrinsic features of act statement indicates that the act is inherently hurt-
ful or unjust. (John, that really hurt Mike.)
2. Perspective-taking request is a request that the transgressor consider how
it feels to be the victim of the act. (Christine, how would you feel if
somebody stole from you?)
3. Rule statement is a specification of the rule governing the action. (Jim,
you are not allowed to be out of your seat during math.)
4. Disorder deviation statement indicates that the behavior is creating
disorder or that it is out of place or odd. (Sally, its very unladylike to
sit with your legs open when you are wearing a skirt.)
5. Command is a statement to cease from doing the act without further
rationale (Howie, stop swearing!).
These examples would all be considered domain appropriate. The

reader can generate examples of domain-inappropriate responses by sim-
ply substituting the form of the responses to items 1 and 2 for the re-
sponses given to items 3 and 4 and vice versa. If the reader does this, it
should be apparent that moral responses to violations of convention di-
rect the actor to consider a set of intrinsic interpersonal effects that sim-
ply are not there (e.g., in response to leaving ones seat during math time:
Darrell, how would you like it if other people got out of their seat dur-
ing math? or Darrell, it upsets people when you leave your seat.). On
the other hand, the responses that seem most consonant with violations
of conventional norms provide a rather weak basis for evaluating the ef-
fects of moral transgressions (e.g., in response to hitting: John, its against
the rules to hit. or John, that isnt the way a gentleman should act.).
In the study just described (Nucci 1984) and a subsequent study with
preschool-age children (Killen et al. 1994), it was found that children
prefer teachers to use domain-concordant methods of intervention

(e.g., telling an instigator who doesnt share toys to give some back be-
cause its not fair to others who do not have any), rather than domain-
inappropriate ones (e.g., telling a child who has hit another child, You
shouldnt do that; its against the rules to hit. or simply saying, Thats
not the way that a student should act.).
In terms of issues of childrens evaluations of the legitimacy of teacher
authority, we found that children age 10 and older evaluate not only the
teachers responses but also the teachers as respondents (Nucci 1984). Stu-
dents rated highest those teachers who responded to moral transgressions
with statements focusing on the effects of the acts (e.g., Carlos, that re-
ally hurts Mike.). Rated lower were teachers who responded with state-
ments of school rules or normative expectations. Rated lowest were teach-
ers who used simple commands (e.g., Stop it! or Dont hit!).
As one would expect, students rated highest those teachers who re-
sponded to breaches of convention with rule statements or with evalua-
tions of acts as deviant, and they rated lower those teachers who re-
sponded to such transgressions in terms of their effects on others (e.g.,
When you sit like that, it really upsets people.).
In studies examining how teachers spontaneously respond to actual
classroom transgressions (Nucci and Nucci 1982b; Nucci and Turiel 1978;
Nucci, Turiel, and Encarnacion-Gawrych 1983), we found that teacher re-
sponses were not uniform across transgressions but, instead, tended to
map differentially onto transgressions as a function of domain (roughly
60% in response to moral transgressions; 47% conventional). These same
studies, however, also indicated that about 8% of teacher responses were
domain discordant, and another 40% domain-undifferentiated simple
commands (e.g., Stop it!).
During informal conversations, the teachers in these studies indicated
that they were unaware that they were responding in such systematically
domain-differentiated ways. Their own sense of things was that while
they tried on occasion to give reasons for rules or explanations for why a
given behavior was wrong, they were mostly giving commands to stop
misbehavior or reminding students of how they should behave. This per-
ception of themselves as rule and social-order focused may have been due
to the fact that in proportional terms, simple commands made up a sub-
stantial proportion of their actual responses. This is interesting in light of
the fact that students rated simple commands as low or lower than do-
main-inappropriate responses to transgression. It would appear, then,
that there is room for movement in teachers current practices toward

more domain appropriate patterns of response.
Having looked at some of the general issues associated with domain
appropriate practice in relation to school rules and norms, lets turn now
to consideration of the sociomoral aspects of schooling at different grade
levels. Although there are commonalties across grade levels, there are also
important developmental factors and differences in the nature of school
structure that need to be taken into account in thinking about schools and
classrooms as contexts for sociomoral growth. For example, develop-
mental changes in childrens concepts of social convention and the per-
sonal impact the ways in which children at different grade levels respond
to school norms and authority. As we move through the discussion of ed-
ucational practices in the rest of this chapter, we will be making connec-
tions with the descriptions of development from Part One.
school and classroom climate
Early Childhood (Preschool through Grade 2)

A climate of acceptance and warmth toward students is an essential ele-
ment of moral education at any grade level. However, these elements are
expressed differently toward students at different ages. Because young
children are in the early phase of integrating affect within their moral and
personal schemas, it is important that positive affect be overtly manifest
within the school context. As we learned in the Chapter 6 discussion of af-
fect and moral growth, young children are particularly open to displays
of warmth by adults and particularly susceptible to the negative effects of
adult displays of anger. Thus, in early-childhood contexts, it is important
that teachers be even tempered and refrain from emotional outbursts or
shouting at children. The desire that young children have for emotionally
calm environments accounts for the immense popularity of television
such characters as Barney and Mr. Rogers, whose soporific manners bore
most adults and older children.
In a broader sense, it is essential that school be perceived as a benign
environment in which children are safe from harm and exploitation by
others. If we take seriously Arsenio and Lovers (1995) suggestions about
the early integration of affect into the childs moral schemas, then we
would want to do whatever possible to enable young children to construct
a view of the world as benevolent and fair so that they might construct an
orientation of goodwill toward others. This would be particularly im-
portant for young children whose experiences outside of school may be

less than benign, and which may contribute to an experience of ill will
and a consequent tendency to act in terms of self-interest rather than fair
reciprocity.
Middle Childhood and Early Adolescence (Grades 3 through 8)

The climate of acceptance and warmth that characterized the good pre-
school is also essential at the elementary and middle-school levels. Chil-
dren at this age range are less dependent on adults, but they still look to
them for emotional support and social stability. Because the formal aca-
demic curriculum now assumes greater importance, one critical arena in
which teachers determine the affective climate is through their approach
to academic instruction. A positive climate for social and moral growth
is enhanced by academic experiences that foster peer interaction and
discussion within a setting that allows for people to make mistakes with-
out the risk of being made to look dumb. This means that children
should be encouraged to ask questions and to risk making mistakes in
the process of learning. The key element for the teacher is to convey to
students that mistakes are necessary to learning, and that everyone
needs to make mistakes if they are to grow. In doing so, the teacher
establishes a social context in which differences among people in ability
and interest are not used as criteria for inclusion or exclusion from aca-
demic activity. In a subtle, experiential way, students are being exposed
to a social milieu in which issues of equity and equal treatment are
being integrated. While this is an important feature of teaching at all
ages, it is especially important for children in middle childhood and
early adolescence.
A central issue of middle childhood and early adolescence is how the
self appears, relative to the competencies of others (Nicholls 1984, 1989).
In a focus group that we conducted this past year with fifth-grade chil-
dren, we learned that the primary source of conflicts at school was peer
exclusion. The instigators of the conflicts were said by both boys and girls
to be children who were not well liked because of their lack of social skills
(shy, nerdy), their inability to perform well in team sports (kickball), or
their tendency to pick fights (bullies). An interesting sidelight of these dis-
cussions was the spontaneous tendency of the children to recognize that
it was the act of exclusion that was the primary problem, and not just the
characteristics of the children who instigated the fights or arguments that
followed.
Being made to look dumb in class or being made the outsider on the
playground is not simply a problem of peer culture but of the school
and its values. Schools can enhance the sense of inclusion through the
judicious use of cooperative modes of teaching (Aronson and Patnoe
1997). They can reduce the harmful effects of peer competition and com-
parison by means of recreational forms of team sports (e.g., American
Youth Soccer Organizationstyle soccer) that focus on participation,
skill enhancement, and camaraderie, rather than loss or victory (Shields
and Bredemeier 1995). Finally, they can refrain from engaging in prac-
tices that magnify peer comparisons, such as posting lists of children
who have displayed good character (Character Counts Coalition
1993). Such practices do not serve to enhance the values schools wish
to promote but, on the contrary, exacerbate tendencies toward invidi-
ous social comparison one of the truly negative features of this devel-
opmental period.
Adolescence (High School)

The social climate of the high school should continue to underscore the
basic elements of safety and academic and social participation discussed
in regard to earlier grade levels. Integrated participation of students is
particularly important at the high school level in order to offset the ten-
dencies toward segregation into cliques and crowds that characterize peer
relations at this age. While this self-selection serves the purposes of iden-
tity formation, it also works toward exacerbating the problems of social
exclusion that emerge during earlier developmental periods. While it
should not be the goal of schools to interfere with students friendship net-
works or associations (elements of the personal domain), school should
promote a broader sense of community in which students of diverse in-
terests and abilities interact with one another.
Unfortunately, the sheer size of many American high schools pose spe-
cial problems for efforts to generate this sense of community and social
interaction. The comprehensive high school is a late-nineteenth-century
American invention designed to serve the combined educational needs of
students in vocational and college-preparatory curricula. This institution
was designed to offset the social-class segregation of earlier models in
which children of the upper classes attended college preparatory schools,
and children of the working classes attended vocational institutes where
they learned directly employable skills.
In its present form, the comprehensive high school is a very expensive
physical plant, which includes laboratories, computer facilities, technical

facilities (wood shops, auto shops, television studios), kitchens, dining
halls, theaters, gymnasiums and athletic fields. In order to keep the cost
of such facilities within bounds, many communities build high schools
that house student populations the size of small community colleges. The
advantage of these larger schools with populations in excess of 800 stu-
dents is that they can offer a much richer curriculum and broader array of
extracurricular activities. The disadvantage of these larger schools is that,
on a percentage basis, there is actually less student participation in a given
activity and less student participation in such things as sports, school
newspaper, and theater, overall.
A number of strategies have been devised to offset the social costs of
the large comprehensive high school. What these approaches share in
common is the goal of breaking down the total population of the school
into smaller, socially diverse units within which students can generate a
sense of community. In general, these strategies use a common set of
courses (e.g., English, history) or a class period (e.g., homeroom) as a way
of identifying houses or communities within the school. Teachers and
students within a given house remain together for at least one academic
year and may use specified times throughout the year to address or dis-
cuss social issues collectively.
The most well-researched of these school-within-a-school programs
are the Just Community Schools developed by Lawrence Kohlberg and
his colleagues (Power, Higgins, and Kohlberg 1989a). The Just Commu-
nity School employs weekly whole-group discussion among the 40 to 100
students and teachers who make up the community as a way of resolving
moral and social issues that arise among the students. Published reports
indicate that this approach is quite effective in reducing student miscon-
duct, and it contributes to students moral development. A more eclectic
use of this school-within-a-school idea is now being attempted on a rea-
sonably large scale within the Chicago public school system through the
Small Schools Workshop operated by the University of Illinois at Chicago
(Anderson 1998). The latter project is too new to have definitive outcomes.
Nonetheless, this project and others, such as the Just Community School,
are pointing the way toward practical approaches for reducing the popu-
lation of the comprehensive high school into human-scale, diverse social
communities.
The general affective climate establishes the overall emotional tone
within which school rules and norms function. Having discussed some of
the basic features of affective climate, we will turn now to a discussion of
how domain appropriate practice would structure an educational ap-

proach to moral and social-conventional norms.
Moral Rules and Norms

The great moral achievement accomplished by young children is the con-
struction of an understanding of fair reciprocity. Helping children gener-
ate a conception of fairness as requiring the reciprocal coordination of two
or more points of view is the central challenge of early-childhood moral
education. Because young children generate their initial understandings
of morality out of their direct experiences in social interactions, the pri-
mary contribution that schools make toward young childrens moral de-
velopment is through the framing of these direct moral experiences.
Teachers do this by helping children focus upon the effects of actions and
their reciprocal implications. For example, a teacher might respond to
moral transgressions in the following way:
Mike, Matthew needs some clay. Please give him some.

Veronica, Dawn hasnt had a turn on the swings. Please let her have one.
In both cases, the teacher statements focus upon the needs of the other
child, and not simply on the power of the adult. But even these domain-
concordant moral statements lack the element of reciprocity. While they
do connect up with the young childs conceptions of morality, they do not
explicitly direct the childs attention to the reciprocal nature of turn tak-
ing or distribution of goods.
There are two ways for a teacher to do this. One is for the teacher to do
all of the thinking and lay out the reciprocal implications in statements to
the children:
Mike how would you like it if Matthew had all of the clay, and you didnt
have any? He needs some too. So, please share with him.
This is a reasonably efficient way for a teacher to handle the situation, and
it makes sense in contexts where the teachers time is at a premium. The
teachers response is domain concordant, and it lays out the reciprocal
nature of morality and moral justification. However, it does not engage
students in active problem solving and is, therefore, not an optimal way
for a teacher to make use of this situation. A second, better use of this
teachable moment is for the teacher to assist the children in conflict reso-
lution.
The value of engaging children in conflict resolution is that it engages
the child in recognizing the contradictions that exist between his own ini-
tial way of looking at things and the way in which his own needs and
those of another person can be met. This is a slow process that is helped
along by the childs inevitable experience of being on more than one side
of these prototypical childhood disputes. One days owner of the clay or
the swing is the next days child on the sidelines. In Piagetian terms, what
takes place is the gradual disequilibration of the childs current way of
thinking and its gradual replacement by a more adequate reequilibrated
form that resolves the contradictions arising from the initial way of look-
ing at things.
From this viewpoint, there is an argument that can be made for allow-
ing the children to solve such problems on their own (Killen 1991; Piaget
1932). Allowing children to solve their own problems has the advantage
that the solutions generated are owned by the children, and the process
contributes to the childs autonomy and social efficacy. In point of fact,
teachers cannot enter into every conflict situation that arises among chil-
dren, and observational studies have indicated that teachers allow a fair
number of social conflicts among preschool and early-elementary chil-
dren to be resolved without adult intervention (Killen 1991; Nucci and
Nucci 1982b). In many cases, young children handle these disputes quite
well. Approximately 70% of preschool childrens disputes during free
play are resolved by the children themselves, either through reconcilia-
tion by the instigator or through compromising and bargaining (Killen
1991).
While these findings are impressive, the value of allowing children to
solve their problems on their own can be overstated. Adults have the de-
velopmental advantage of being able to see both sides of a moral dispute
in ways that young children cannot. Moreover, children look to adults to
provide protection from exploitation and harm, and to help them work
through social problems (Killen 1991; Nucci and Nucci 1982b; Youniss
1980). As was stated before, adults impede moral growth when they re-
duce moral situations to ones of convention and adult power. Adults con-
tribute to moral growth when they engage children in moral reflection.
With respect to conflict resolution, adults contribute to young childrens
moral growth by assisting them in identifying the sources of the conflict,
by helping them to consider the perspective of the other, and by helping
them to arrive at mutual solutions. This approach also provides children

with experiences that counter the tendency to conclude that the use of
sheer power and intimidation are the only methods by which one can
achieve personal goals.
In the swing-set example, the teacher might begin by first asking the
children to describe what the problem is and to hear each others view-
point and feelings, and then help them work toward a solution. We can
imagine the following interchange:
T: Okay, whats the problem?

D: Veronica has been on the swings for a long time, and I havent had a turn.
T: Veronica, what do you have to say to that?
V: I got on the swing first, and I didnt even get to swing yesterday.
T: Dawn, how do you feel about what Veronica just said?
D: Well, this isnt yesterday, and she is making me really mad.
T: Why is that?
D: It isnt fair. She only gets a turn, and I dont!
T: Well, what do you think we should do?
D: We could share. Veronica could let me swing for a little and then I would
let her swing some more.
T: Veronica, Dawn is suggesting that you guys share. Is that something that
you can do?
V: Maybe . . . but I should get to have more time than her because I got here
first!
T: Well Dawn how do you feel about that?
D: Okay, but not all day. I need turns too!
T: Okay, why dont you guys give it a try. I bet you can work something out.
Call me if you need any help.
This scenario was loosely based on events commonly observed in our

classroom observations and on the discourse format of teacherchild con-
versations in DeVries and Zan (1994). It illustrates how a teacher can pro-
vide a scaffold for children to build their own approach to moral problem
solving. The key elements are that the children hear each others point of
view, attend to the harm or fairness issues involved, and offer a mutually
satisfying resolution. The key roles for the teacher are to act as an honest
broker, to assist in thinking about possible solutions, and to offer support
for follow-through. This provides a context in which the work is done by
the children in an atmosphere of safety and mutual regard.
Naturally, real children do not always engage in cooperative resolu-
tions of conflicts. In such cases, the teacher will need to make a judgment
as to whether such harm or injustice is being perpetrated that a direct in-
tervention by the teacher is warranted, or whether the issue is one of rel-

atively minor consequence where the children will simply need to deal
with the fact that not all situations turn out nicely. For example, if Veron-
ica simply is not interested in sharing, but hasnt really been dominating
the swing set, the teacher may simply decide to let things stand as they
are. She might say to Dawn, Well, I am sorry to say that Veronica isnt
going to share right now. Perhaps you can come back and use the swings
later.
One might argue that in doing so, the teacher has rewarded Veronicas
selfishness. This is where a teachers judgment has to come in. If Veron-
ica does not generally behave in a selfish manner, there is little likelihood
that an occasional act of self-interest marks a major shift in character. In
Chapter 10 of this book, we will discuss the implications of the multifac-
eted nature of human motivation for a realistic approach to character and
education. It may well be that Veronica has a special desire to swing that
day, or that she doesnt particularly like Dawn and is momentarily acting
on that dislike. Unless the teacher is clairvoyant, she will have no way of
knowing why Veronica has chosen this moment to act as she has.
In this scenario, Veronicas failure to be nice may be irrelevant to her
level of morality. As for Dawn, she will live to swing another day. In this
case, disappointment would not entail moral tragedy but a practical les-
son in human psychology and interpersonal relations. The childrens at-
tempt at moral discourse would not have resulted in a solution, but it
would raise the underlying issues to a level of consciousness from which
both children would stand to benefit.
If on the other hand, Veronica has dominated the swing set and is sim-
ply unreasonable, the teacher would have a moral obligation to protect
the rights of the other children and would step in to ensure that Dawn was
given a turn. The teacher might also take disciplinary action toward
Veronica. We will also take up the issue of discipline in our discussion of
the moral self in Chapter 10. There we will see that discipline is itself a
context in which to generate reflection and cognitive change, and not sim-
ply a vehicle for punishment.
Middle childhood (Grade 3 through 6)

By the third or fourth grade of elementary school, the morality of children
has the element of reciprocity lacking in the preschool child. However, it
is a very literal reciprocity in which fairness requires simply that one not
come out on the short end of things. On the plus side, children are now
much better able to take into account the needs of the other, as well as the
self, in making moral decisions. On the down side, this tit-for-tat moral-
ity has a basic limitation that elementary school teachers will recognize as
being expressed in the kinds of trouble that elementary school children
sometimes get themselves into, and in the instances of insensitivity that
children of this age sometimes exhibit.
The social exclusion that our focus-group children so readily identified
as the primary source of social problems at school is in part sustained by
a morality that views fairness in terms of providing rewards in direct pro-
portion to the quality or amount of ones deeds (Damon 1977). From this
moral orientation, a child who is not a good kickball player is simply not
as entitled to play as someone who is a good player. A child who is shy or
not socially skilled is less worthy of invitation to a party than someone
who is more socially adept. Excluding these children is, therefore, not un-
fair. In addition, there is an element of personal choice involved, in that
children may view the selection of whom to involve in play or social ac-
tivity as an aspect of social relations that are a matter of personal prerog-
ative.
Generally, teachers are not involved in helping to resolve these social
problems. Unlike the failure to engage in turn taking, which is an overt
act of excluding others from common playground equipment, the deci-
sion by children not to include a particular child in their games or activi-
ties is often viewed by the teachers, as well as the children as a peer mat-
ter of choice. On the other hand, children do recognize that teachers have
legitimate authority to ensure that school resources (in this case, oppor-
tunities to play) are distributed in a fair manner. In addition, children ex-
pect teachers to protect not simply their physical safety, but their feelings
as well. For a teacher to become involved requires a judgment that a
childs exclusion is becoming systematic and, therefore, potentially harm-
ful to the child.
Name calling and fighting are other common examples of moral prob-
lems that are compatible with the direct-reciprocity morality of middle
childhood. One consequence of a morality based on direct reciprocity is
that it can lead to the view that any harm requires a commensurate harm-
ful response. This eye-for-an-eye morality leads to a vicious cycle in
which, as Martin Luther King, Jr., put it, all parties end up blind. Virtually
every parent and teacher has heard the phrase He started it! as an ex-
planation for name calling or fighting. And, as every parent and teacher
knows, the tit-for-tat mentality of children makes the efforts to determine
who started it usually futile.
Domain appropriate responses to social exclusion and fighting are

somewhat different, though in both cases the goal is to direct children to
consider the intrinsic moral consequences of their actions. Teachers may
do this by engaging in the sorts of domain-concordant feedback described
with reference to younger children. In applying this to older children,
however, the goal is not simply to get each child to consider the others
perspective, but to help them recognize the limitations that result from
strict-reciprocity moral reasoning.
Another strategy is to extend the effort at social problem solving, de-
scribed with reference to preschool children, by bringing in a peer medi-
ator (Deutsch 1993). The advantages of engaging a peer mediator to help
with conflicts among elementary and middle-school children are several.
First and foremost, the act of peer mediation reduces the tendency for chil-
dren to see objections to immoral conduct as simply a matter of adult au-
thority. Second, it causes the disputants to see their situation from a third,
disinterested vantage point. This third-person perspective moves the is-
sue out of one of direct reciprocity, offering a window into a new way of
looking at moral issues. Finally, it is of benefit to the mediator, who is nec-
essarily engaged in moral discourse and reflection. For example, a study
examining the impact of peer mediation on second- through fifth-grade
students found that students who had served as peer mediators more of-
ten resolved their own interpersonal conflicts in ways that took into ac-
count the needs of both parties, and they were also less likely to ask for
adult intervention than children who had not had this mediator experi-
ence (Johnson et al. 1995).
Adolescence (Grades 7 through 12)

The rate at which teachers respond to childrens moral transgressions be-
gins to decline by the time children enter the fifth grade. By seventh-
grade, teachers and other school personnel are rarely respondents to chil-
drens moral transgressions (Nucci and Nucci 1982b). The lack of adult
response observed at the seventh-grade level was in part a function of the
reduction in rates of moral transgressions that entailed overt acts of ag-
gression and squabbles over such things as playground equipment. Most
of the moral transgressions observed at the seventh grade level were in
the form of name calling or other forms of psychological harm (Nucci and
Nucci 1982b). Teachers provide relatively low response rates to such
transgressions at all age levels, including preschool (Killen 1991), leaving
such issues up to processes of peer interaction. Commensurate with the
observed decline in adult response rate, older children and adolescents

tend to seek out adult intervention for moral interactions at much lower
rates than do young children (Nucci and Nucci 1982b).
At both the junior and senior high school levels, school authorities ap-
pear to respond only to severe breaches of moral conduct, such as fight-
ing and theft. In most schools, this means that teachers and other school
personnel have little direct input into the moral interactions of the vast
majority of their students. The contributions that traditional junior and
senior high schools make to students moral growth are functions of the
degree to which conventional norms are fairly applied, the degree of re-
spect and mutuality that exists between teachers and students, and the de-
gree of openness and interaction that exists in the discourse over academic
subject matter. In other words, the contribution of junior and senior high
school faculty and administrators to students moral growth (beyond
moral elements of the academic curriculum) is through these general
structural features of the school and classroom, rather than any form of
direct teacher involvement in student moral interactions.
This state of affairs makes a great deal of sense if one views the primary
function of junior and senior high school to be academic instruction, and
if one presumes that children should have developed basic moral atti-
tudes prior to adolescence. From this traditional point of view, students
may continue to grow in the more subtle aspects of moral life through peer
interactions and through engagement in moral discourse and reflection in
the context of the academic curriculum.
Objections to this traditional perspective have been raised by those who
argue that it is only through direct social experience that one can develop
as a moral being, and that academic discourse is insufficient without a di-
rect linkage to students actual lives (Power 1996). The primary propo-
nents of this point of view are the advocates of democratic education (Lind
1996; Oser 1986) and the Just Community School (Power, Higgins, and
Kohlberg 1989a, 1989b). What these approaches share in common are
mechanisms by which students come together as a community for open
discussions of the moral issues they are confronting within the school con-
text (e.g., thefts, student exclusion or isolation, sexual conduct, racism) in
order to arrive at a rational moral consensus (cf. Habermas 1991; Oser
1986) for how such issues should be resolved. Often these resolutions en-
tail the construction of shared moral norms, which are then used to guide
the conduct of members of the Just Community (Power et al. 1989a).
In order for these just communities to work, schools must give over
instructional time on a regular (weekly) basis in order for students to hold
these town hallstyle meetings. They must also give over to the students
and their community advisors the authority to alter, add to, or abolish ex-
isting school rules that affect these quality of life issues for students.
Students are not empowered to change the basic academic framework of
the school but, rather, those norms that pertain to problematic areas of
their moral interactions. Despite evidence that such just communities re-
sult in behavioral and cognitive moral growth, few schools in the United
States have adopted this holistic approach.
Moral interactions take place within the conventional normative sys-
tem of the school. Having discussed issues of morality, we will turn now
to a discussion of conventional norms and students personal domain
within school settings.
Conventional Norms and the Personal

Prior to the fourth or fifth grade, children dont generally view the con-
ventions of schools to be their business. Young children rarely, if ever, re-
spond to another childs violation of a conventional school norm (e.g.,
talking without raising ones hand) (Killen and Smetana 1999; Nucci and
Nucci 1982b). This is not to say that young children are unaware of, or
disinterested in, social conventions in general. Preschool-age children do
respond to violations of general societal norms, such as gender inappro-
priate dress (Nucci, Turiel, and Encarnacion-Gawrych 1983), violations of
conventional roles in the context of fantasy play (Goncu 1993), and trans-
gressions of peer-constructed games (Corsaro 1985). From these findings,
it would appear that while young children have a sense of convention
and social organization, they have a difficult time making a connection
between themselves and the arbitrary conventional norms established by
adults. In particular, they seem to maintain a distance between them-
selves and what they perceive to be the adult-generated rules that run
schools as institutions.
One implication of these developmental trends in young childrens
conceptions in the area of convention is for teachers to accept the fact that
children are years away from having any real understanding of schools as
social institutions, and to view the establishment of school conventions as
a task of responsible adult authority. As mentioned, young children view
teachers as having legitimate control over the establishment of school con-
ventions and procedures. It is reasonable then, not only from an adult per-
spective but also from the point of view of the children for teachers to es-
tablish the basic routines, conventions, and customs of the school day.
The distance at which children experience classroom social conven-
tions has been interpreted by some students of early-childhood education
as a factor in maintaining a heteronomous or authority-based orientation
toward social norms and social hierarchy (DeVries and Zan 1994). Con-
tributing to this concern is the fact that young children tend to view con-
ventional norms in highly prescriptive terms, relative to older children.
That is, while they recognize that conventional norms are alterable, they
also tend to treat existing conventional regularities as descriptive of an ex-
isting empirical order (e.g., men should wear shorter hair than women be-
cause men generally do wear shorter hair than women). This transforma-
tion of the typical (is) into the normative (ought) is due in part to a more
general effort by young children to seek order and organization in the so-
cial and physical world. Few things are as upsetting to young children as
chaos and unpredictability. In fact, one aspect of providing children with
an environment that they would respond to as benign and supportive is
to have a classroom that is orderly and routine and, in the broadest sense,
conventional.
These needs of young children for conventional organization and rou-
tine should not be confused with a heteronomous moral orientation to-
ward authority and rules. Young children understand that such conven-
tional norms are alterable, but they have little in the way of an
understanding as to their social function. This lack of understanding is
one reason for teachers to provide-domain concordant social messages to
matters of convention in the form of rule statements, statements of order,
and social expectation.
Once the teacher has established the basic conventional framework
needed to manage a school or classroom, the teacher may engage young
children in the construction of conventional norms that affect them di-
rectly. This provides young children concrete experience with the collec-
tive and negotiated source of these social norms. Doing so also establishes
very early on an experiential framework for discussion of social and
moral norms that is at the heart of any meaningful social-values curricu-
lum. For example, children may be engaged in forming the conventions
that are to guide how the children are to play with the classroom guinea
pig (DeVries and Zan 1994, pp. 12830). The keys to having children con-
struct such rules are to allow children to voice their ideas and to help them
negotiate a practical set of shared outcomes. We will discuss these process
issues on the values curriculum in more detail in Chapter 9.
Middle Childhood (Grade 3 through 6)

As was described in Chapter 4, the developmental course of concepts of
social convention follows an oscillating pattern in which childrens affir-
mations of the purposes of convention are subsequently negated, and
these negations then replaced by more comprehensive understandings af-
firming conventions. Around 7 or 8 years of age (second grade), children
start paying attention to the situational inconsistencies in the application
of social conventions as evidence that conventions are not describing a
natural order. Such things as being able to call some adults by their first
names, rather than titles, are now seen as evidence that conventions dont
really matter. As you might expect, there are behavioral correlates of this
period of negation, though not as pronounced as what one sees in early
adolescence. In our observations of classroom social transgressions, we
noted that the rates of conventional transgression are higher in grades 2
and 7 than they are in grade 5 (Nucci and Nucci 1982b). In grade 5, chil-
dren are about 10 to 11 years old, which corresponds to the modal age for
Level 3 affirmation of the functional value of conventions as serving to
maintain social order. In contrast, both grades 2 and 7 correspond to
modal ages at the front end of phases of negation of convention.
The main tool that teachers possess to help them in constructively deal-
ing with the negation of convention maintained by second- and third-
grade children is the general, positive regard that children at these ages
have toward teachers. The desire to please adults and to receive their af-
fection is such that young children generally endeavor to comply with
adult wishes, even when the child doesnt understand the teachers pur-
poses. This vulnerability makes it very important that teachers provide
fair and consistent feedback for norm violations, and that teacher repri-
mands focus on conduct and not on attributes of the child. In responding
to conventional transgressions by second- and third-grade children,
teachers should make use of rule statements and disorder/deviation
statements, rather than simple commands, as a way of setting out nor-
mative expectations. In so doing, the teacher is helping children to recon-
struct their conceptions of convention, both in terms of the shared nature
of the behavioral expectation (rule) and in terms of its organizational func-
tion (statement of disorder).
With older students, however, teachers should use rule statements in-
frequently. In our study looking at childrens evaluations of the adequacy
of teacher responses to transgression, we found that children at third
grade and earlier grades evaluated rule statements as an adequate re-
sponse to conventional transgressions. Older children, however, treated

rule statements as no more adequate than domain-inappropriate re-
sponses (Nucci 1984). This finding is consistent with observations of chil-
drens responses to conventional transgressions indicating that the rate at
which they use rule statements in response to peers drops sharply after
third grade (Nucci and Nucci 1982a). It would appear that children older
than third grade expect their peers to be aware of general social rules.
Concordant with that interpretation, it is likely that older students find
the teachers use of rules redundant and noninformative and, hence, an
inadequate form of response. So, rather than using a rule statement, such
as Class, lets be quiet. We are not supposed to be talking while we are
doing seat work. as a response to disruptive talking, the teacher could
provide a statement of disorder, which focuses on the organizational pur-
poses of the norm, such as Its getting too noisy in here folks. People are
trying to work.
In our observations of teachers actual classroom behavior, we found
that the proportion of rule statements provided by teachers remains rela-
tively unchanged (roughly 14% of responses) from grades 2 to 7 (Nucci
and Nucci 1982b). If that number is added to the more than 40% of re-
sponses to transgression in the form of simple commands, it becomes
clear that the form of teacher responses to violations of school conventions
is less than optimal. One practical reason for this state of affairs is that
teachers are responding to a fairly large number of repeated violations of
the same norms.
The vast majority of classroom conventional transgressions committed
by elementary school children fall into a few categories: cross-talking, be-
ing out of ones seat, talking without raising ones hand, and being out of
line (Nucci and Nucci 1982b). Over half of the classroom conventional vi-
olations we observed being responded to by teachers were accounted for
by a single category: cross-talking (Nucci and Nucci 1982b). In such a sit-
uation, the tendency for teachers to short-circuit the process and rely on
simple commands is understandable. On the other hand, this situation
raises some interesting questions in terms of whether or not a frequently
violated conventional norm should be maintained in the first place. Ob-
viously, second- and third-grade children in a negation of convention
phase are not the best sources upon which to make such a judgment since
their lack of understanding of the purposes of convention contributes to
their elevated levels of noncompliance. However, if a norm is violated at
a fairly high level across grades, including fifth grade, at which point chil-
dren are at their most compliant, then there may be reason to reconsider
the appropriateness of the convention.
Lets consider the issue of cross-talking for purposes of illustration.
Second-grade and fifth-grade children differentiate between disruptive
talking, which prevents others from hearing the teacher and doing their
work, and merely chatting quietly with a neighbor. During our inter-
views, children expressed the view that rules against disruptive talking
were good ones. In our observations, however, we witnessed teachers re-
sponding to childrens cross-talking that was neither disruptive to others
nor interfering with the overall learning of the children being repri-
manded. No one, including second-grade children, is in favor of a chaotic
classroom. However, there is a difference between chaos and conversa-
tion. Even in the most interactive and well-organized classroom, there is
bound to be down time in which children will want to simply talk to
one another. This is particularly the case when children finish their seat
work ahead of their classmates, and during periods of classroom transi-
tion from one activity to another. In addition, children (and my university
education majors) often find it pleasant to chat occasionally with a neigh-
bor while doing their work. In none of the above examples are educational
goals being compromised. Reprimanding children in such situations
would seem to add little to their education or their love of schooling. A
far better way to make use of the childrens desire to socialize is to inte-
grate it into instruction through the uses of discourse and group activity
as instructional methods.
A simple suggestion that DeVries and Zan (1994) make with respect to
younger children which I would echo here as a general approach, is that
teachers and school administrators reduce conventional regulations to
those that are actually instrumental to the operation of a school or class-
room. In deciding which rules to have, elementary school teachers might
consider calling upon the expertise of fifth-grade children. Students at this
age are both experienced with the norms and purposes of schooling and
are also at a point of affirmation in their concepts of social convention.
During the focus group mentioned earlier in this chapter, we asked
fifth-grade children to share with us some of the rules at their schools that
they thought werent especially good ones, or rules that should be modi-
fied. Their answers might serve as an illustrative example of how children
at this age might be of help to teachers. One school was reported to have
a no passing rule that forbade anyone from walking past someone else
in the hallways. The children readily understood the goal of the rule as
helping to reduce the likelihood that someone would run in the halls and
either get hurt or knock down a younger student. However, they saw the
no passing rule as going too far. They pointed out that the no skip-
ping and no running in the halls rules at the school were sufficient to
meet those safety goals. These same children also stated objections to the
need to raise ones hand in order to say something in class. Again, they
expressed an understanding of the organizational purposes of the rule,
but they felt that it should only apply to whole-group lessons and should
not be enforced in small-group activities. As one girl put it, We manage
to be polite and talk at home without raising our hands, why cant we be
expected to do that here?
Many schools engage fifth- and sixth-grade children in activities, such
as student council, and as hall monitors and assistants to school crossing
guards. In these ways, schools contribute to the integration of children
into the conventional structures of school society. These activities also
help to develop childrens sense of personal responsibility. What is being
suggested here is that schools go beyond the pro forma nature of these in-
stitutions and actually engage them, particularly student council, as
meaningful forums within which children can contribute to the estab-
lishment of the overall set of school conventions. Engaging children in so-
cial problem solving in the area of convention would easily mesh with the
uses of peer mediation discussed earlier with respect to moral concerns.
Adolescence (Grades 7 through 12)

Early adolescence is a second phase of negation of convention. This is cou-
pled with an expansion of what children at this age consider to be per-
sonal, rather than under the jurisdiction of adult authority. Although stu-
dents generally grant schools the authority to regulate prudential, moral,
and conventional issues, they also draw boundaries around teacher au-
thority and maintain the view that teachers have no right to regulate ac-
tions they consider personal (Smetana and Bitz 1996). Children in ele-
mentary school are consistent in claiming personal jurisdiction over such
issues as with whom to associate, how to spend lunch money, and choice
of hairstyle. In adolescence, students are even less likely than fifth graders
to grant legitimacy to teacher authority regarding personal or prudential
areas of conduct (Smetana and Bitz 1996).
The developmental double whammy of the early-adolescent negation
of convention along with the expansion of the personal is associated with
an increase in parentchild conflicts (Smetana 1995b). It also makes
teacherstudent relations more challenging. School norms that were an-

noying to fifth graders become highly objectionable to some adolescents
in grades 7 through 9. Issues of appearance, manners, tardiness, and talk-
ing in class may become a blur of personal choice and arbitrary adult
dictate. These adolescent behaviors often give a false impression of self-
centeredness, and the resistance to authority is sometimes mistakenly
responded to through harsh control.
Through it all, these students are still children in need of affection and
structure. Schools are still social institutions that require compliance with
certain norms in order to function. The key, then, in terms of positive so-
cial climate is to construct a conventional system that allows for personal
expression. In many American schools, this is accomplished through gen-
erous dress codes that permit oddities, such as green hair, but draw the
line at obscene or immodest attire. But open dress codes neednt be the
avenue that a given community or school takes. Adolescents are gener-
ally able to adjust to the idea that school is a place where behaviors (e.g.,
public displays of affection, such as kissing) that would be personal mat-
ters elsewhere are under legitimate conventional regulation at school
(Smetana and Bitz 1996). Students who find it difficult to recognize the
schools legitimacy in such areas also tend to show elevated levels of mis-
conduct across a wide range of actions.
A positive approach to this age group is for the teachers to make a dis-
tinction between the norms needed to operate the school and to protect
student safety and those behaviors that constitute a minor threat to the
social order. For example, marking a student tardy for being next to his
seat, rather than sitting in it, as the bell rings may make the adult feel pow-
erful, but it does little to enhance the students appreciation of the norm
of promptness. Without reducing things to a clich, this really is a phase
that will pass, and some adult patience is called for. Most students who
were good kids in fifth grade still view teachers as people worthy of fair
treatment. For example, a student will call teachers by titles in order not
to offend the teacher needlessly, even though the student is clueless as to
why using the teachers first name is offensive. Firm and fair enforcement
of rules with a dash of humor will work better than rigid requirements for
compliance.
Eventually, junior high school students and high school freshmen reach
the point (1417 years) where they construct an affirmation of convention
as basic to the structuring of social systems. As one would expect, this de-
velopmental shift is associated with a marked decline in student miscon-
duct (Geiger and Turiel 1983). It is also a period in which students fully
comprehend that the array of school conventions structures the high

school as a societal system. Even as students move within their own par-
ticular crowds and cliques, the larger conventional culture of the high
school with its norms, rituals, and traditions provides many students with
a sense of belonging.
The risk at this point in development, however, is that students will
identify with an alternative social system and remain alienated from the
school. This is a well-identified risk among African American male high
school students, who in many cases adopt what has been termed a re-
sistance culture that stands in opposition to white middle-class values of
academic behavior and social convention (Ogbu 1987). This is an ulti-
mately self-defeating perspective motivated by a desire to maintain a dis-
tinctive identity in the face of a perceived oppressive, dominant majority.
This is not a phenomenon limited to African Americans. Similar orienta-
tions have been described among working-class British youth (Willis
1977), and we might describe the adolescent subcultures, such as the
goths, made famous by the tragedy in Littleton, Colorado, as serving
analogous identity needs.
Integrating students into the social-conventional structure of high
school is aided by processes that give students genuine input into the
structure of those conventions. An example of how this can be done
within a traditional large high school is provided by the First Class pro-
gram at Deerfield High School in Illinois. First Class originated in 1994 as
a result of problems with graffiti, littering, vulgar language, and a basic
lack of belonging that was perceived by some students and faculty as
characterizing student life at the high school. In response, a committee
was formed of students and teachers who set out to establish democrati-
cally shared norms of faculty and student conduct, and who agreed upon
modes for teachers to address student misbehavior. The result of these ef-
forts was a visible dramatic shift in the overall look of the school, in stu-
dent behavior, and in the general sense of school community. Unfortu-
nately, the group of students who originated the norms that comprise
First Class have now all graduated, and the current students feel less
ownership for what was accomplished.
The challenge facing Deerfield High School and other schools that
might wish to engage in similar sorts of activities is to keep such efforts
current and alive. This cannot be done simply by addressing crises and by
generating formal codes of conduct. The community discourse needs to
become a much more integrative aspect of student life. For this to happen,
however, schools will have to recognize that a portion of instructional
time is going to have to be apportioned for these social developmental

purposes.
conclusion
In summary, moral education cannot be divorced from the overall social
climate and normative structure of the school and classroom. This un-
avoidable aspect of schooling means that all teachers are engaged in at
least some tacit form of moral and social normative education. The man-
ner in which teachers and schools establish and maintain conventions and
moral standards forms a substantial aspect of the schools contribution to
students sociomoral development. At a basic level, a climate of mutual
respect and warmth, with fair and consistent application of rules, forms
the elemental conditions for an educationally constructive moral atmos-
phere. Beyond this general base, what we have seen is that effective prac-
tice is enhanced by the coordination of teacher responses with the moral
or conventional nature of school norms or student behaviors. Domain ap-
propriate teacher input with regard to moral concerns focuses on the ef-
fects that actions have upon the rights and welfare of persons. Teacher
contributions regarding social conventions focus on social organization,
social expectations, and rules.
We have also seen that the degree and form of teacher involvement
with students moral and conventional behavior shifts as children move
from preschool on through high school. The greatest degree of teacher in-
volvement, as well as opportunities for students to solve their own social
problems is at the level of the preschool. The level with the least direct
teacher involvement with student sociomoral issues, as well as the point
of least opportunity for students collectively to resolve or have input into
these issues, is the traditional high school. This has much to do with in-
structional time and the increased emphasis on academics with age.
Social interactions in grades 3 and above are largely constrained by
classroom routines. Free social interactional exchanges, during the school
day, are confined to recess and lunch periods, which are themselves elim-
inated as opportunities for social interaction at the high school level. As a
consequence, teacher input into students actual sociomoral interactions
becomes increasingly confined to matters of convention. Moral experi-
ences tend to be limited to the fair application of conventional norms and
to the fairness of academic practices, such as grades and teacher feedback
(Thorkildsen 1989, 2000). The tendency for school social interactions to be
focused in the area of convention (Blummenfeld et al. 1987) means that
developmental shifts associated with periods of affirmation and negation

of convention are felt directly in terms of rates of student transgression.
The early adolescent years are a period of particular importance in this re-
gard since it marks a convergence of a period of negation of convention
with the increased claims by adolescents to personal discretion in areas
that schools and other adults might view as matters for conventional reg-
ulation (Smetana and Asquith 1994). Sensitive and creative teacher re-
sponses during these periods of transition are important inasmuch as they
either foster or subvert adolescent interest in schooling and a sense of re-
spect for legitimate social authority.
Despite the importance attached to this hidden curriculum (Jackson
et al. 1993), it is rather thin gruel upon which to feed moral growth be-
yond the elementary school years. The range of conventional and moral
issues with which students have direct experience is limited to the par-
ticular features of schools as social institutions. In addition, naturally oc-
curring social interactions in traditional school settings do not afford
much in the way of time for reflection or discussion. The educative role of
schools, however, is not limited to direct social experience. Schools are
specialized institutions designed to bring students beyond their own di-
rect encounters with the world to acquire information and to construct un-
derstandings that are valued by their culture. This is accomplished
through the formal academic curriculum. The curriculum is rife with
moral and conventional content, as well as issues of personal choice and
identity.
Schools, then, have an opportunity to engage in meaningful moral and
social education through an integration of values education with the
teaching of regular academic subject matter. This becomes increasingly
important from the third grade of elementary school on through high
school as students become increasingly capable of reflection, and as the
involvement of teachers in the moral lives of students lessens. Employing
domain appropriate practice to integrate values education within the ac-
ademic curriculum is the subject of Chapter 9.
chapter nine
Integrating Values Education into the

Curriculum: A Domain Approach
In this chapter, we will explore some suggestions for incorporating the de-
velopment of childrens conceptions of morality, convention, and per-
sonal issues into the existing academic curriculum. The goal is to provide
teachers with some guidance for how to engage in domain-appropriate
moral education that will complement, rather than compete with, teach-
ers more general academic aims. The suggestions and examples provided
here are not meant to serve as a curriculum per se but, rather, as a tem-
plate for teachers to use in adapting their course materials and syllabi for
moral education.
The purposes of this curricular approach are (1) to stimulate the de-
velopment of students moral conceptions of fairness, human welfare,
and rights, and (2) to develop their conceptions of societal convention and
social organization so that they may (3) participate as constructive citizens
and moral beings and (4) develop a critical moral orientation toward their
own conduct and the norms and mores of society.
The first three stated purposes of this curricular approach are noncon-
troversial in that they are resonant with the goals of virtually all tradi-
tional forms of values education. In and of themselves, however, those
three goals fall short of what is required of a genuinely moral person. In
the absence of the capacity to employ ones moral and social judgments
in a critical manner, an individual cannot reflect upon the possibility that
his or her own moral perspective within certain situations is at odds with
what is most fair and right. As we saw in Chapter 5, the dynamics among
morality, convention, and informational assumptions are such that they
may form a conceptual framework with immoral consequences. The most
obvious example from our own social history would be racial segregation.
Systems of education that either inculcate students into the existing social
normative structure, or that simply focus upon students construction of
169
moral and conventional understandings within the assumptions and

norms of the existing social framework, run the risk of perpetuating the
immorality built into the existing social system and its values. For educa-
tors to go beyond this, attention needs to be given to developing students
capacities to analyze critically the interrelations among morality, conven-
tion, personal claims to choice and privacy, and relevant informational as-
sumptions from a moral point of view. The primary medium that schools
have to engage in this process is the academic curriculum.
research on domain appropriate curricula

The core assumption of the domain appropriate curriculum is that the
forms of educational experience intended for developing students social
values should be coordinated with the domain (i.e., moral, conventional,
personal) of the values or issues under consideration. Several years ago,
we set out to address whether attention to the domain of social values
makes a difference in the development of childrens moral and social con-
ventional concepts (Nucci and Weber 1991). The setting for our study was
an eighth-grade American history course and a companion course in Eng-
lish composition. Together with the history teacher, we identified a series
of issues from American history that were primarily either moral or social
conventional in character, as well as events and issues that involved do-
main overlap. (Examples of the moral issues are slavery and the forced re-
moval of Indians from their lands.) Conventional issues included such
things as the adjustments in modes of dress, work conventions (such as
time schedules), and dating patterns that resulted from the influx of im-
migrants and the shift from an agrarian to an industrial society. (Changes
in laws permitting women to vote is an example of a mixed-domain issue
used in the study.)
Students participated in small-group discussions of these issues once
each week for a period of seven weeks. In addition, students were given
essay homework assignments based on the issues that they had discussed.
These homework assignments were graded by the classroom teacher as a
part of his assessment of their learning of history. Finally, students wrote
essays on related moral, conventional, or mixed issues in their English
composition class.
Students were assigned to one of three forms of instruction. In one con-
dition (Convention), students were directed in their small-group discus-
sions and in their essays to treat all issues as if they were matters of con-
vention. Discussions centered around the norms involved, the function of
values education: a domain approach 171
norms in structuring society, and the impact that altering or violating the
norms would have on the social order. In the second condition (Moral),
students were directed to treat these same issues as if they were matters
of morality. Discussions and essay instructions directed students to con-
sider the justice and welfare implications of the issues under considera-
tion. The third instructional mode fit our definition of Domain Appropri-
ate values education. The focus of discussions and essays was matched
with the domain of the particular issue under consideration. In the case
of mixed domain issues, students were asked first to consider normative,
conventional aspects and then to consider the justice or welfare features
of the issue. Finally, students were asked to integrate or coordinate the
moral and conventional features of the event. This latter exercise was one
that we hoped would increase the capacity of students to respond spon-
taneously and in a critical way to contradictions between morality and
conventions, and to seek moral resolutions of those contradictions in
ways that also respected the need for social organization. Examples of the
ways in which these discussions were structured will be presented in
some detail in the next section of this chapter when we look more closely
at how to generate a domain-appropriate curriculum.
Several findings from the study are important for this discussion. First
are the outcomes regarding development of morality and convention.
Level of moral reasoning was assessed with a group measure the DIT
test (Rest 1979; Rest et al. 1999). The DIT produces an index, the P score,
indicating the extent to which a person uses principled (justice-based) rea-
soning to render moral decisions. We assessed students level of conven-
tional reasoning with the interview procedure developed by Turiel (1978,
1983). All of the subjects in the study were either at Level 4 negation typ-
ical of early adolescence, at level 5 affirmation, or at a transitional point
between these two levels.
What we found was that subjects in the Moral condition and students
in the Domain Appropriate condition had P scores that were very similar
and significantly higher than students who had been in the Convention
condition. With regard to the development of reasoning about conven-
tion, the outcome was the inverse. Students in the Convention and Do-
main Appropriate conditions had similar levels of conventional reason-
ing, and both were on average nearly half a stage higher than the
conventional levels of students in the Moral condition. These results in-
dicate that attention to domain does matter in terms of efforts to impact
on students social-conceptual development. Students who received in-
struction focusing in one domain developed in that domain and not the
other. Only the students in the Domain Appropriate instructional condi-

tion developed in both domains.
A second noteworthy finding of the study had to do with how students
dealt with overlapping issues. At the end of the seven-week instructional
period, all students were asked to write an essay discussing their views
of the social-values issues raised by an event in which morality and con-
vention were in conflict. The matter concerned an actual event in which
the king of the Gypsies of the Chicago metropolitan area refused federal
money for scholarships to a local public university because it would re-
quire him to permit Gypsy women as well as Gypsy men to attend. This
actual event pitted the gender-based conventions of Gypsy society against
the unfair provision of educational opportunities for one gender and not
another. The student essays were scored in terms of whether or not they
subordinated the issue to either morality or convention, vacillated be-
tween the two domains without coordination, or integrated the moral and
conventional elements of the event through domain coordination. Find-
ings were that students who had Domain Appropriate teaching were the
only ones to coordinate elements from both domains spontaneously. In
contrast, two-thirds of the students in the Moral instructional condition
subordinated the issue entirely to its moral elements. Conversely, and as
we had expected, a majority of students (including females) in the Con-
vention instructional condition subordinated the issue to its conventional
elements.
This last set of findings has particular relevance for our aim to develop
students capacity for critical moral reflection. Obviously, the students in
the Convention instructional condition were hampered in their ability to
attend to the moral implications of the gender-based conventions of
Chicagos Gypsy community. Their prioritization of concerns for social
organization was fostered by their recent educational experiences, which
heightened the salience of those conventional elements. The social con-
servatism of their curriculum appeared to foster a similar conservatism in
their reading of this real-life social issue.
Conversely, the students in the Moral instructional condition priori-
tized the moral elements of the situation, guiding the social arguments
made in their essays. The prioritization of morality is recognized in phi-
losophy as requisite for ethical judgment and behavior (Baumrind 1998).
However, the idealist social critics in the Moral condition of our study
did not spontaneously consider the social-organizational ramifications of
their single-minded attention to morality. In real life, however, there are
always organizational costs to any change in the conventional social struc-
ture. For example, a single-minded attention to needs for gender equality

in careers leaves unanswered any number of practical questions in terms
of how one should restructure the conventions of the family. When all is
said and done, somebody has to do the dishes, raise the children, and so
forth (Harrington, 1999).
The students in the Domain Appropriate instructional condition did
prioritize the moral elements of the situation, arguing in their essays
against the Gypsy kings decision. However, their arguments also ac-
knowledged the ramifications this decision might have for the conven-
tional organization of Gypsy society, and they offered constructive sug-
gestions for resolving those changes. When we argue for a critical moral
perspective as a goal of Domain Appropriate moral education, we are not
simply advocating the development of single-minded moral criticism of
social-conventional systems but, rather, this more integrative form of so-
cial critique.
The results of this study provided the springboard from which we went
on to develop domain-based values education at elementary schools,
middle schools, and high schools. Our experiences have been primarily
with students grades 5 and above. However, the basic principles under-
lying domain-based values education are applicable at any age level. The
general approach, which will be described in this chapter, can easily be in-
tegrated into existing developmental approaches to early education, such
as those presented by DeVries and Zan (1994) and the Child Development
Project (Battistich et al. 1991).
constructing a domain appropriate curriculum
Communicative Discourse
A number of media and activities may be employed to generate concep-
tual change in the social area. Teachers we have worked with have em-
ployed diverse activities, from artistic expression through painting, sculp-
ture, and dance to role playing, reading and writing stories, and
constructing video presentations as ways to engage students around so-
cial and moral issues. Ultimately, however, the construction of more de-
veloped social understandings relies on discussion. This is because dis-
cussion is the only means we have of allowing one persons ideas to come
into direct contact with anothers. We see this at an early level in the ar-
guments and negotiations among young children. Without such argu-
mentation, there would be no reason for a child to assume that others do
not hold the same position as they do, and certainly no reason to assume
that the other person might be in the right (Piaget 1932). At an advanced
level, discussion can take place through interactive writing, and we are
beginning to see a revolution in that form of communication through the
Internet. In whatever form discourse takes, it must result in transforma-
tions in the individuals ways of thinking about social issues if it is to have
an impact on development.
In early efforts at moral education, it was assumed that discourse had
to take place between individuals who were within one developmental
stage of each other in terms of their moral reasoning (Blatt and Kohlberg
1975). On the basis of that assumption, teachers were instructed, when
leading moral discussions, to provide statements to students one stage
above the modal level of the class. Research on this plus one assump-
tion proved it to have little use in actual classroom discourse (Berkowitz
and Gibbs 1983; Berkowitz, Gibbs, and Broughton 1980). What this re-
search uncovered was that it is very difficult for teachers to generate plus-
one statements in the flow of an actual classroom conversation, and they
were in fact quite rare in occurrence. More importantly, even when such
plus-one statements were provided by experts, their input into the dis-
cussion had less of an impact on students moral reasoning than did the
statements of peers.
When the researchers looked at the factors that made for effective dis-
cussion, they discovered that the most important variable was whether or
not students statements constituted efforts to actively transform the ar-
guments that they had heard others make. They labeled such statements
transacts. Transacts are responses that attempt to extend the logic of the
speakers argument, refute the assumptions of the speakers argument, or
provide a point of commonalty between the two conflicting positions.
Passive listening and simple efforts to restate or give back the speakers
argument were not associated with conceptual change. This last finding
is a rather revealing indictment of simple, direct instruction and regurgi-
tation as an educational method.
The use of transactive discussion in and of itself, however, may not be
an optimal vehicle for values education. This is because one can use trans-
active argumentation in two fundamentally different ways. Here we are
going to borrow loosely from the distinction that the philosopher Jurgen
Habermas (1991) makes between strategic action and communicative dis-
course. When we are engaged in strategic action, our goal is somehow to
get the other person to agree with, and go along with, our own point of
view and our own goals. A great deal of our conversations are of this
strategic kind. The prototype of strategic discourse is debate. In a debate,

the goal is to win the argument. It doesnt matter whether or not the po-
sition we take is the most defensible, but whether or not we are able to
convince the other, or convince the judges, that we have been able to
outdo our opponent in presenting our case. When we are engaged in com-
municative discourse, however, the goal is to arrive at the best, most com-
pelling position regarding the issue. It is the shared recognition of the
force of the reasoning and not the power or skill of the debater that is the
winner. In a strategic discourse, the outcome is unilateral; someone wins.
In a communicative discourse, the outcome is mutual; the argument wins.
The goal of sociomoral discourse is to have the argument win, not an
individual student or elite group of students. In our approach to so-
ciomoral education, we attempt to engage students in activities that move
toward communicative discourse. In doing this, we are assuming that the
overall moral atmosphere of the classroom is compatible with this form
of instruction. In effect, the use of communicative discourse contributes
to an overall moral climate of mutual respect and cooperation that serves
not only social growth but academic achievement as well.
What follows, then, are some suggestions for how to structure com-
municative discussions, as well as some exercises for how to prepare stu-
dents to engage in effective sociomoral discussion. Students and teachers
find these exercises fun. They should be used early in the term to prepare
students for later work. They may be used sporadically thereafter as a way
to develop discussion skills, but they shouldnt be overdone. These exer-
cises, constructed with the help of Marvin Berkowitz, make use of the dis-
coveries from his research on transactive discourse, and they borrow from
practices that teachers have long used to help students engage in pro-
ductive discussions. The initial listening exercise may be used at all grade
levels. The transactive discourse exercises are intended for use with stu-
dents in grades 4 and above.
Warm ups: Learning to Listen. In order for students to discuss one an-
others ideas and points of view, they need to be able to listen to what each
other has to say. This first activity is intended simply to address the ten-
dencies among some students to listen to others only in the sense of hear-
ing their voices until they have stopped talking so that the first student
may begin. This sort of parallel conversation is common among very
young children, but it is an affliction that many older students and adults
share as well. The purpose of the game is to get each player to paraphrase
the statement of another speaker accurately. It is similar to the game tele-
phone, except in this case, the goal is accuracy.
Place students in threes. Player (1) tells something brief about himself to player
(2). Player (2) restates it as accurately as possible to (3). Player (3) then evalu-
ates whether or not the paraphrase was accurate. Player (2) then tells some-
thing brief to player (3) with player (1) as the checker until all players have
had a turn at each role.
Transactive Discourse: Elaboration Game. One of the simpler trans-

acts is to extend the arguments made by a previous speaker. This game
may be used directly after the listening game since it extends the use of
paraphrase. In this game, the student must take into account what the pre-
vious person said and elaborate on it. Prior to play, the teacher models a
simple elaboration of a previous statement. The teacher then gives the
class an interesting issue to discuss. Over the past three years we have
used the following issues: Should the Chicago Bulls rehire Dennis Rod-
man? Should the Congress impeach President Clinton? Should the mom
have a say in whether or not a person your age cleans up his/her room?
Place students in circles of up to 6 players. Player (1) begins by expressing a

point of view. Player (2) paraphrases the statement made by player (1) and
elaborates or extends it. Player (3) does the same with the statement made by
player (2). This continues until all students have had a turn at extending the ar-
gument. With elementary-age children, the teacher should circulate from
group to group to hear whether or not children are accurate in providing elab-
orations, and helping out when this doesnt occur. With junior and senior high
school students, the teacher can assign one member of each group to serve as
checker.
Transactive Discourse: Rebuttal Game. The rebuttal game is an ex-

tension of the elaboration game and uses the same procedure, except that
each student must paraphrase and offer a refutation of the argument ad-
vanced by the previous speaker.
Transactive Discourse: Integrative Resolution. This final version is
one that is intended for use with high school sophomores and above, or
with very advanced younger students. It requires the students to listen to
both an initial argument and its refutation, and then taking both argu-
ments into account, offer an integrative resolution of the two positions.
Prior to this exercise, the teacher should model an integrative resolution.
Students are placed in groups of 6. Player (1) states a position, which player
(2) then paraphrases and refutes. Player (3) then paraphrases the positions
taken by both players (1) and (2) and offers an argument that resolves the dif-
ferences between the two positions. Player (2) then offers a new position that
player (3) refutes and player (4) integrates. This continues until each player has
had a turn at offering an integrative resolution.
Employing Communicative Discourse

Once students have developed basic listening and argumentation skills,
they are ready to engage in constructive group discussions about social
issues. There is no single correct way to go about structuring these dis-
cussions. The approach we have taken makes use of work on moral-
dilemma discussion (Oser 1986; Power, Higgins, and Kohlberg 1989a),
along with the suggestions and guidance of the experienced teachers with
whom we have collaborated.
At the outset, it is important to convey the basic norms and goals of
communicative discourse. Listing Jurgen Habermass (1991) formal crite-
ria for communicative discourse is not a particularly good route to take,
unless the students are in a university philosophy course. We have found
it useful, when presenting the goals of these discussions to students, to
compare and contrast winning a debate with the process of talking with
friends so as to come up with the best solution to a problem. In order to
maximize student participation, and also to allow the teacher to provide
some shared experiences with the whole class, the process we have em-
ployed uses both small-group and whole-class discussion.
Small groups should contain 5 or 6 students and be diverse in terms of
ethnicity, gender, and student academic ability (Aronson and Patnoe
1997). This diversity is in itself a part of the hidden values curriculum,
and it also maximizes the likelihood that developmental differences im-
portant to these discussions will exist among students. The content of the
discussions is framed by issues provided by the teacher, which either have
been drawn directly from the academic content the students are working
on, or is related in some way to an academic goal of the class. The dis-
cussions are guided by a series of questions provided by the teacher. One
of the students uses this series of questions to direct the course of the con-
versation. (We will take up the ways in which to construct these materi-
als in the next section of the chapter.)
In our intervention studies, we have tended to divide the class time
roughly 60:40 between small-group and whole-class discussion of issues.
Whole-class discussion follows the small-group work. It is useful in that
it affords an opportunity for students to hear what other positions were
taken by class members. It also affords an opportunity for the teacher to
direct students to attend to the different arguments that are offered up by

class members. In this way, the teacher helps to draw out similarities in
strands of thought, and helps students to attend to contradictions in ar-
guments and unresolved positions. The teachers role here is to serve as
a model for how to listen to the flow of an argument and how to bring the
pieces of a discussion into focus. The teacher has an opportunity at this
juncture of making sure that all of the relevant questions she intended the
students to cover have been addressed. The teacher should not short-
circuit the students efforts to construct their own understandings by
throwing out the right answers. A more useful thing for the teacher to
do is to throw out a provocative point for students to ponder further.
In our approach, discussions are used as a tool for academic instruc-
tion, not as an added-on activity. Thus, we always link in-class discussions
with a written homework assignment in which students are asked to write
a brief essay summarizing their position on the issue considered in the
class discussion. Language arts teachers naturally use these discussions
as a starting-off point for students written work. This linkage serves sev-
eral purposes. First, it makes clear to students that the discussion has rel-
evance for their ability to complete their homework or other assignments,
and thus increases the likelihood that student discussions will remain on
task. Second, the written activity asks the student to think about the is-
sues at a later time and to transform their ideas into another medium. This
act of written production, then, serves to deepen the impact of the exer-
cise on the students thinking. Grading of homework or other academic
products is based on standard academic criteria established by the
teacher. Grading is never to be based on whether or not the student ar-
rived at the correct value or the correct developmental level of social
reasoning. (We will take up this issue of assessment in some detail in the
final section of the chapter.)
As a final comment before turning to examples of curricular materials,
we should keep in mind that any instructional activity can become rou-
tine and boring to students if it is overused. We have found it best to limit
the use of these discussions to no more than two sessions per week.
generating domain appropriate

materials and lessons
The greatest challenge for a teacher wishing to engage in domain appro-
priate practice is to identify issues within the regular academic curricu-
lum that will generate discussion and reflection around a particular val-
ues domain. Obviously, some academic areas lend themselves more read-
ily to this process than others. Language arts, social studies, and health
courses are rife with social and moral values issues. Other courses, such
as mathematics, are less amenable to social-values discussion. The natu-
ral sciences are somewhere in between.
One of the most effective examples of domain appropriate practice was
developed by a high school biology teacher. The unit he developed on re-
productive biology and population ecology required that students sys-
tematically consider issues of personal choice, societal structure, morality,
and the shifting assumptions that discoveries in biogenetics hold for our
current view of this set of issues. Among the questions he asked his stu-
dents to consider was whether parents should be able to select for specific
genetic properties in their children, and whether society should be able to
require parents to provide gene therapy (i.e., alter the genetic makeup) of
a child with a genetic defect, such as Downs syndrome. This teachers
students were, thereby, asked to learn a great deal about biology but were
also integrating that knowledge with their moral and social growth.
In constructing domain-related tasks, the teacher uses the criteria for
moral, conventional, and personal issues to identify salient value-laden
issues in the academic content or assignments for the class. Most issues
that are contextualized will have some degree of domain overlap. How-
ever, the issue of overlap should only be addressed when elements from
more than one domain are highly salient. Once an issue has been identi-
fied, the teacher should either present a synopsis or abstract of the issue,
or develop a hypothetical situation that illustrates the issue the teacher
wants to focus upon. The teacher then prepares a handout that contains a
set of questions for students to address. Students are asked via these ques-
tions to interpret or resolve the domain-related issues contained in the ab-
stract or scenario.
The issues that the students work with should not be resolvable by
looking up information in the textbook. In addition, they should contain
some element of controversy, in the sense that students might take differ-
ent positions in arriving at their conclusions. These two points both are
central to generating the cognitive dissonance needed for development
and are elements in maintaining student interest and motivation (Nicholls
1984). In traditional developmentally based moral education, issues for
discussion are presented in the form of dilemmas. Dilemmas by defini-
tion are controversial and are good sources for student discussion. How-
ever, not all interesting social issues constitute dilemmas, and reliance on
dilemmas as a basis for curricula would be overly restrictive.
Finally, the lesson should be tied to either a homework assignment or

some other written product. One way to do this is to ask students to write
an essay responding to a short list of the most central questions from the
in-class discussion. To get a better idea of how to do this, lets turn to some
concrete examples.
Conventional Issues
Examples of social conventions are readily found in literature and stories
read by students at all grade levels. Depictions of the routines of family
life, manners of dress, or ways of addressing elders have shifted over time,
and stories often capture ways of life that bring these conventions into fo-
cus for students. In addition, teachers may use the literature from differ-
ent American ethnic groups to allow students to experience the conven-
tions that differentiate them from one another, as well as the moral
commonalties that tie them together.
For example, one of the suburban school districts we work with has be-
gun to intersperse selections from the Norton Anthology of African Ameri-
can Literature (Gates and McKay 1997) throughout their junior high and
high school American literature courses, rather than focus solely on mod-
ern African American writers in the month of February (Black History
Month). Among the selections they employ to develop students concepts
of social convention are passages from Gwendolyn Brooks, Maude
Martha (i.e., tradition and Maude Martha, kitchenette folks), which
depict everyday life among African Americans.
History is also a very rich area for social-conventional issues. The fol-
lowing example stems from an event in early American history. The cur-
ricular unit was designed for use with eighth-grade students who are
moving from the Level 4 negation of social convention to Level 5 affir-
mation of convention as constitutive of social systems. What follows is the
handout that the teacher distributed to his students to generate their full
discussion.
King Georges Letter to Washington

After the revolutionary war between England and the American colonies, the
United states was formed and George Washington was elected first President
of the United States. Many problems with England continued, however, be-
cause the English government did not recognize the United States as a coun-
try. There was no way to exchange ambassadors, have trade agreements, or
settle war debts. The king of England wrote a letter to George Washington to
start negotiations. He addressed the letter to Mr. George Washington. When

Washington received the letter from the king of England, he saw that it was
addressed to Mr. George Washington instead of to President George Wash-
ington. So, Washington returned the letter without reading it.
Discussion Questions
1. Was Washington right or wrong to return the letter to the king of England
because it was addressed to Mr. Washington instead of President Wash-
ington? Why?
2. Why do you think Washington returned the letter?
3. In the story we learn that the letter was related to negotiations regarding
having England recognize the United States as a country. In what sense
might the way that the letter is addressed have something to do with Eng-
land recognizing the United Sates?
4. What is the significance of titles like president and king for the way a so-
ciety is structured?
4a. Who do you think is a more important person, a king or a president?
5. In countries that have kings and queens, people bow or curtsy when they
first meet them. Why dont we do that when greeting the president?
6. Suppose that an individual, such as a news reporter, doesnt like or re-
spect a particular president. Would it be all right for that individual to ex-
press his or her lack of regard by addressing the president without using
a title, such as Mr. President or Madame President?
7. Could we have a society that didnt use different titles for people who are
in different positions, such as doctors or presidents?
7a. How might that change society?
8. How about at school? Why do we use titles here for teachers (Mr. and
Mrs.) but not for students?
8a. What do those titles tell us about the way our society at school is struc-
tured?
9. Suppose we did away with using titles like Mr. and Mrs. for teachers. What
do you think of that?
This issue works well with this age group (grades 79) because it cap-
tures students at a point in developmental transition, and it forms a nat-
ural point in which students will disagree over Washingtons conduct,
based on their interpretation of the structural function of conventions. The
teacher has placed hints, here and there, of the relationship between con-
vention and social structure (i.e., question 3) both to draw out these un-
derstandings from the developmentally advanced students and to pro-
vide a scaffold for the students who have no idea as to why Washington
would return the letter. In fact, the structural nature of development does
not permit immediate transformations in students thinking, and students

who are solidly in Level 4 provide explanations for Washingtons conduct
as based on personal conceit and as functionally irresponsible; After all,
whats more important, his title or getting things going with England?
In his use of the whole-class follow-up discussion, the teacher directed the
class to address the main positions taken by the students. For example, he
asked the class, Some people seem to be arguing that Washingtons ac-
tions were due to his own personal conceit. What do you think of that?
As we indicated earlier in the chapter, this type of exercise, conducted
over several months, does lead to conceptual shifts in students under-
standings of convention. We have also discovered that development in the
conventional domain has ramifications for students abilities to compre-
hend certain aspects of the academic curriculum. As an offshoot of our
work with teachers of history, we explored whether or not students con-
ceptions of social convention were related to their academic success in the
course itself (Nucci and Charlier 1983). The medium for the study was a
freshman-year world history course. World history concerns many issues,
but a central element in making sense of the myriad dates, places, and
names is to see history as interactions and transformations among soci-
eties. For example, students in world history classes are presented with
the customs and traditions of various cultures at different points in time
and are asked to relate them to current conditions.
The question that we addressed in our study was whether or not stu-
dents levels of understanding about convention would be related to how
well they did on various components of their history tests. We were also
interested in knowing whether success on history exams was due to the
level of conventional reasoning or to general cognitive growth. We as-
sessed general cognitive growth with a Piagetian measure of formal op-
erations, which had been theorized as the level of cognitive reasoning
needed to understand societies as social systems.
The instructional unit that was the focus of the study dealt with early
China. The unit exam had two parts, a multiple-choice section, which
asked students to identify the names of particular historical figures, dates,
and places on a map of China, and an essay portion, which asked students
to interpret elements of the content of their chapter. The content of the es-
say exam was drawn directly from the questions presented at the end of
the chapter. It included questions such as the following: Confucius said,
Let the ruler be a ruler, and the subject a subject; let the father be a father,
and a son a son. What did Confucius mean by this? How does this relate
to how Confucius thought Chinese society should be organized?; How
was the view of society described by Confucianism related to Chinese re-

ligion and the organization of the family in early China?; How is Tao-
ism different from Confucianism? Which of these two views is most like
American society? The multiple-choice portion of the exam was machine
scored, and the essay portion was graded by another experienced teacher
who was not a faculty member at the students high school.
What we discovered was that general cognitive development (whether
a student was a concrete or formal operational thinker) had no relation-
ship to students level of reasoning in the social-conventional domain, and
it had no predictive value on the students essays. Piagetian level was cor-
related with their scores on the multiple-choice part of the exam. Level of
reasoning about societal convention, however, positively contributed to
the students scores on both the multiple-choice and essay parts of the test.
Societal-domain level alone accounted for 54% of the variation in stu-
dents essay scores. In fact, by combining a students multiple-choice
score and his or her level of conventional domain reasoning, we were able
to account for 97% of the variations in the grades students received on
their essays. What we also found in this study was that the students who
were participating in an experimental section, which integrated domain
appropriate values education into their history course, scored higher on
a schoolwide final exam than did students in the other sections, which em-
ployed traditional instruction.
Moral Issues
A number of moral issues cut across age groups and come up in the aca-
demic curriculum. One of these issues is what constitutes a fair or just re-
sponse to harm that was done to you. The eye-for-an-eye reasoning we
brought up in Chapter 8 has variations that reappear in different contexts
in literature and history. With younger children, these issues are often pre-
sented through stories about animals in order to reduce the anxiety they
might produce. One story, called Bimbo the Bully, that was used by a
second-grade teacher we work with tells of an aquarium that decided to
introduce a young whale into the dolphin area. The whale was so bois-
terous that he continually injured the dolphins. So the aquarium keepers
reduced the water level until it beached the whale but allowed the dol-
phins to continue swimming. As a a result, the whale was very upset and
began crying out in distress. The dolphins, who were free to swim around,
did not ignore the whale but instead came up close to him and comforted
him. Afterwards the aquarium keepers raised the water level and allowed
the whale to swim freely again. But now the whale swam carefully so as
not to hurt his dolphin friends.
This teacher reported to us that her students all respond to this story,
but that it is especially useful for her class bullies who often identify
with the whale. In discussing the story, the teacher takes advantage of this
identification to help the bully see why the dolphins were afraid of him,
and to help the other children see that the bully might also need their
friendship and comfort. In her discussions, she asks the children whether
or not the dolphins would have been justified in hitting the whale back,
when the water level was low, in order to teach him a lesson. She also
asks the children to explain why they thought that the dolphins acted as
they did. If, in her view, she feels that the bully is feeling safe in the con-
versation, she connects the story to the childrens own experiences by ask-
ing them to describe similar incidents on the playground. She uses this
teachable moment not to preach about what the children should do or
to label the virtues brought out in the story, such as kindness or forgive-
ness, but rather to engage the students in their own process of problem
solving.
The theme of justice versus retribution is also captured in the follow-
ing incident in American history, which several teachers have used with
junior and senior high school students. It concerns John Browns raid.
What follows is an example of these units taken from the same curricu-
lum as the George Washington example.
John Browns Raid

In May, 1856, a border raid from Missouri devastated the antislavery town of
Lawrence, Kansas. Within a few days, John Brown, who was strongly opposed
to slavery, together with his sons and a few companions retaliated by attack-
ing a settlement at Pottawatomie Creek, Missouri. The raid killed five settlers.
John Brown had hoped that his actions would spark a slave rebellion, but that
did not occur.
1. Was John Brown justified in leading a retaliatory raid against the proslav-
ery settlement?
2. How far should a person go in retaliation? Is it right to hurt others as much
as they have hurt you or the people you care about?
2a. Is there a difference between vengeance and justice?
3. Brown had hoped that his actions would set off a slave rebellion. If that
had taken place, would it have justified the raid?
Some of the teachers using this unit extend the discussion by having
students discuss the following quotations from Martin Luther King, Jr.,
and Malcolm X, which the teacher first saw at the end of the Spike Lee
movie Do the Right Thing.
Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and im-

moral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in de-
struction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody
blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather
than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to con-
vert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love.
It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves
society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating
itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the de-
stroyers.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
I think there are plenty of good people in America, but there are also
plenty of bad people in America and the bad ones are the ones who
seem to have all the power and be in these positions to block things
that you and I need. Because this is the situation, you and I have to pre-
serve the right to do what is necessary to bring an end to the situation,
and it doesnt mean that I advocate violence, but at the same time I am
not against using violence in self-defense. I dont even call it violence
when its self-defense, I call it intelligence.
Malcolm X
1. Which of these positions do you favor? Why?
2. Can you integrate these two positions? How would you do it?
For their homework assignment, the teacher asks the students to write
an essay in which they compare and contrast and also attempt to inte-
grate the views presented in these quotations. This exercise can be taken
a step further by extending the discussion to include two class periods
on the death penalty. I mention this because it is an excellent example of
how a teacher may integrate informational assumptions into a values
lesson. What students learn from the following exercise is to recognize
that their moral positions may rest on incomplete or faulty informational
assumptions.
During the first class period, the teacher simply presents the following
proposition to her students and asks them to engage in communicative

discourse and arrive at a shared position:
It is resolved that the state of Illinois shall not have a death penalty.
During the last ten minutes of the class period, the teacher lists the unre-
solved differences among the students. These differences stem primarily
from factual disagreements over the cost of incarceration, the rate of error
in conviction and execution, the tendency for convicts with life sentences
to be released and commit additional crimes, the need for victims fami-
lies to receive retribution, and the social class and racial discrepancies in
the use of the death penalty. The teacher then divides the class up into re-
search teams charged with obtaining as much information as they can
about each of these unresolved factual matters. She then distributes copies
of the reports to the class and reconvenes the discussion for a second class
period.
Mixed-Domain Issues
There are multiple ways in which moral, conventional, and personal ele-
ments may overlap in social situations. What follows are examples of cur-
ricular units dealing with (1) second-order moral concerns, (2) structural
contradictions between convention and morality, and (3) interactions
among convention, morality, and personal choice.
This first example illustrates second-order moral/conventional over-
lap. It is an extension of the discussion on the use of forms of address de-
veloped in the unit on King Georges letter to Washington. The exten-
sion illustrates how the unfair application of a convention can have
immoral consequences. However, in order for the student to see this in
the present example, he would have to understand the role of forms of
address in signifying a persons social position. This was the central el-
ement of the kings letter unit. The extension comes from American lit-
erature. It is a passage from Maya Angelous I Know Why the Caged Bird
Sings. The passage describes an incident in which a local judge mistak-
enly refers to Angelous grandmother by the title Mrs. This was a mis-
take because the conventions of the period were that whites, but not
blacks, were referred to by titles. In the situation Angelou describes, her
grandmother was subpoenaed to give testimony before the judge. What
follows is the passage and the stimulus questions students use to guide
their discussion:
The judge asked that Mrs. Henderson be subpoenaed, and when

Momma arrived and said she was Mrs. Henderson, the judge, the
bailiff and other whites in the audience laughed. The judge had really
made a gaffe, calling a Negro woman Mrs., but then he was from Pine
Bluff and couldnt have expected that a woman who owned a store in
that village would also turn out to be colored. The whites tickled their
funny bones with the incident for a long time, and the Negroes thought
it proved the worth and majesty of my grandmother. (Angelou, p. 39)
1. What was the source of humor for the white people described in the pas-
sage?
2. What did the title Mrs. signify? Why did it matter so much?
2a. How is this use of the title Mrs. similar to the use of the title Mr.
in the George Washington situation we discussed earlier?
3. How did the use of titles for grown-ups reflect American society at that
time?
4. What issues of fairness do you see in this passage?
5. How do they relate to the use of titles?
5a. Is it always unfair to call an adult by their first name rather than by
their title? If not, then why would it matter here?
The next example illustrates how an existing norm, in this case the con-
ventional treatment of older children as having more privileges than
younger ones, is in conflict with the moral requirements of equality. The
example unit is used in fourth- and fifth-grade language arts. It makes use
of role play. The academic component asks students to write a polemic
essay addressing the issue of age discrimination.
Childrens Wages (Role Play and Discussion)

Three children (3 girls) select roles and scripts. One girl is an adult, the other
two girls sisters.
Teacher: In this scene we have a girl who is 11 (use students name), her
sister (use students name) who is 16, and a woman (use Mrs. with stu-
dents last name) who needs to hire a baby-sitter. Her regular baby-sit-
ter is the younger sister. However, she is busy and cant do it. So, Mrs.
X asks her older sister to baby-sit for her.
Older sister: [Talking with younger sister] Hi (sisters name). Guess
what. I agreed to baby-sit for Mrs. (name) this weekend. So, you dont
have to worry about it.
Younger Sister: Thats great! How much is she paying you?

Older sister: $5
Younger Sister: What! She only pays me $3!
Older sister: Well, I am in high school, you know. I guess she figures that
she should pay me more because I am older after all.
Younger sister: This stinks. Im gonna call Mrs. (name) and see what gives.
Younger sister: [On phone] Hi, Mrs. (name), my sister (name) told me that
you pay her $5 to baby-sit, but you only offered me $3.
Mrs. (Name): [On phone] Well, (name) your sister is five years older than
you. I think that $3 is a good wage for an 11-year-old.
Younger sister: But, I am doing exactly the same job, and I baby-sit more
for you than she ever does.
Mrs. (name): Yes, but you are only 11 and your sister is in high school. I
am offering you $3, take it or leave it.
Group Discussion
Teacher opens the discussion to the class:
1. Well, what do you think (younger sister) should do, accept the baby-sit-
ting job at the wage Mrs. X is offering or not? How come?
The teacher then turns to the girls who enacted the role play and asks: Girls
answer the question of what she should do as the person whose role you are
playing. Once each girl has spoken from the perspective of her role, the
teacher returns to class discussion.
1. Is it okay for Mrs. X to offer the younger sister less than her older sister?
2. Do you think older teenagers generally get paid more than younger kids?
How come?
3. What reasons can you think of for why older teenagers might get paid
more for the same job than younger kids?
4. What do you think of those reasons?
5. Suppose that all of the adults in the neighborhood did the same thing and
paid teenagers more than kids your age for doing the same the job? That
was the norm. Would that be all right?
6. Taking everyone into account, what would be the best thing for Mrs. X to
do in this situation? Why is that the best thing?
7. Okay, one last thing. We talked about what the younger sister should do,
and what Mrs. X should do. But suppose Mrs. X stays with her original of-
fer to the younger sister, should the older sister do anything in that case?
8. Is this really something the older sister should get involved in, or is this
just something between the younger sister and Mrs. X?
The last portion of the discussion in this example is directed at having
children consider whether a person in a position of relative advantage is
obligated or should come to the aid of someone less advantaged. The fol-
lowing example, which illustrates the use of domain overlap, brings up
the issue of personal responsibility along with other elements of personal
choice. It also comes from our work with American history teachers. It
concerns child labor laws and the shifts in conventions governing chil-
dren and adults in the workplace as the country moved from an agrarian
to an industrial society. The teacher who developed the original version
of this unit provided the quotations used in its introduction, as well as the
scenario used to guide discussion. Subsequent teachers have modified it
to include the action-oriented segments concerning current child labor
practices in producing the goods that U.S. children purchase. To help the
reader follow the logic of the questions, I have inserted the letters M, C,
or P next to questions to indicate which domains of thinking (moral, con-
ventional, personal) the teacher is attempting to stimulate.
Glassborough Story
(Mixed-Domain Issue, Primarily Moral)
What follows are some quotations to get you to start thinking:
1. The most beautiful sight we see is the child at labor; as early as he may
get to labor, the more beautiful, the more useful does his life become.
Asa Chandler (founder of Coca Cola)
2. In Lawrence, Massachusetts, half the textile workers in the mills were
girls between the ages of fourteen and eighteen.
3. A considerable number of boys and girls die within the first two or three
years of beginning work. Thirty-six of every one hundred of all the men
and women who work in the mill die by the time they are twenty-five
years old. The life span of the average mill worker in Lawrence is twenty-
two years shorter than that of the owner.
The late 1800s was a period of rapid industrial growth in the United States.
Competition among businesses was fierce as companies competed against
one another for customers. In order to cut costs some businesses hired chil-
dren under the age of 15 since they would work for lower wages than adults.
This placed companies which did not hire children at a disadvantage. One
business caught in this situation was the Glassborough bottle factory.
The owner of the Glassborough bottle factory, Mr. Galle, did not wish to
hire children since his factory was dangerous and the children would have to
work long hours after school. On the other hand, if he didnt hire children he
would not be able to sell his bottles for a competitive price, and he would risk
going out of business. In the end, Mr. Galle decided to hire children to work
in his factory.
1. Was Mr. Galle right or wrong to have hired children to work in his fac-
tory? Why/Why not?
2. In Glassborough it was customary for children to work alongside adults
on the farms and in the factories. How should that affect what Mr. Galle
should do? (C)
3. What impact do child labor laws have on the way society is structured?
(C)
4. Why might a society want to have children work alongside adults in fac-
tories? (C)
5. Did Mr. Galle have a right to hire children in order to remain competi-
tive? Was it fair for him to have done that? (M)
6. In hiring children to work in his factory, Mr. Galle is placing them in a sit-
uation of considerable personal danger. What are Mr. Galles obligations,
given those conditions? (M)
7. Should children under the age of 15 have a right to work in a dangerous
factory such as Mr. Galles if they wish to? (P)
8. Taking everything into account, what would have been the right thing for
Mr. Galle to have done in this situation? (M, C)
The following questions were designed for use with high school stu-
dents:
9. Today, many products manufactured by American companies are pro-

duced in countries that allow young children to work in factories. Can
you name any of those products?
10. Is it okay for individual Americans to buy those products? (M, P)
11. Should Americans take any actions to change the policies of the govern-
ments which allow child labor? (M, P)
12. Do members of one society have a right to intervene in the social prac-
tices of another society? (M, C)
13. On what moral basis, if any, can one society judge the customs and con-
ventions of another society to be morally wrong?
In this last example, we see the questions developed by the high school
teacher taking her students head-on into issues of moral and cultural rel-
ativism, tolerance, and moral chauvinism. These are questions that are im-
portant for helping students to begin taking moral stands and to recog-
nize the relationships those moral positions have to social structure and
culture. By having the students parse the moral and conventional aspects
of the problem, she has provided them with an opportunity to develop a
set of analytic tools for engaging in principled reflection on one of the
thorniest issues of our ever-shrinking world. She has also given them a
window into the process of moral self-reflection.
Issues of Assessment
A final question that might arise concerning the use of domain appropri-
ate curricula is how one would go about conducting measurement or
evaluation. From our perspective there are two levels to this question. At
one level is determining whether or not a given programmatic use of do-
main appropriate practice results in sociomoral growth. A district, for ex-
ample, may wish to determine the effectiveness of its values-education
programs, or a university researcher may wish to determine if a particu-
lar application of domain apppropriate practice results in an increase in
students generation of domain coordinations. These are research ques-
tions that can be addressed most definitively by university researchers or
professional evaluators employing interview methods (Turiel, 1983) or
other tools available to the research community.
A second aspect of measurement and evaluation is at the level of the
classroom. Here, the formal assessment tools used for programmatic
evaluation are neither useful nor ethically justified. The scores generated
by formal measurement instruments have little utility for a classroom
teacher. What would it mean, for example, to learn that a group of stu-
dents moved up half a stage in conventional reasoning over the course of
the academic year? How does this translate into goals that a teacher can
use to evaluate his or her effectiveness? How would a teacher translate
such scores into meaningful evaluation of individual student progress? If
Johns conventional reasoning score moved up half a level, and Marks
score moved up one quarter of a level, does John deserve a higher grade?
Is John a better person?
We have taken the position that assessment of all domain-based values
units should be done solely in terms of the regular academic criteria of the
class. These would include tests of knowledge of a subject area, integra-
tive writing, flow of argument, or other traditional means of academic as-
sessment. Students moral and social reasoning can be included within
such an assessment, but not as something separate from an evaluation of
the assignment as a whole. For example, a language arts teacher may pro-
vide feedback to a seventh-grade student on the success or shortcomings
of his efforts to take into account the moral and conventional elements of
a multifaceted social issue. This would be similar to providing feedback
on an essay in terms of the students more general attention to basic ele-
ments of an argument. In such a case, the teacher is not grading the stu-
dent as a sociomoral being but is providing standard academic feedback
appropriate to the purposes of the course.
A teacher wishing to evaluate her own effectiveness as a sociomoral
educator can use the arguments from classroom discussion and in writ-
ten products to look for general shifts in the sociomoral reasoning of her
students consistent with their developmental level. Table 4.1 in Chapter
4 provides some guidance in terms of age-typical levels of sociomoral
reasoning. A third-grade teacher, for example, might look for movement
among her students toward efforts to engage in moral reciprocity, rather
than in egocentric resolutions of moral problems. At later grades a
teacher would be looking for efforts by students to generate integrative
moral positions that display attempts to find positions that would be
most fair for all concerned. From fifth grade and above, these shifts in
general level of thought should be coupled with evidence that children
are developing a critical moral perspective (as described in this chapter)
when dealing with multifaceted social issues. This approach to assess-
ment is global in nature and does not ask that the teacher either grade her
students on moral-development criteria or shift her focus from the aca-
demic purposes of her classroom. What is being proposed is a way for
teachers to have a sense of their own efficacy in an often neglected area
without adding yet another domain in which education becomes a mat-
ter of teaching to the test.
domain appropriate curriculum:

summary and new directions
The examples in this chapter are intended to provide a sense of the ways
in which teachers may incorporate attention to domains of social reason-
ing in their everyday academic instruction. What these examples serve to
illustrate is how one can use the curriculum to stimulate thought within
a given domain and also bring childrens social knowledge to bear in crit-
ically examining multifaceted social issues. The purpose of this book is to
stimulate a new direction in teachers thinking about how to go about in-
tegrating moral and social-values education into their everyday teaching.
There are undoubtedly many other creative ways to address morality,
convention, and personal issues within the curriculum, other than the
methods just illustrated. There are also other areas of application to be
developed.
Among the applications to be explored are how best to address per-

sonal conduct in such areas as substance use and abuse and sexuality.
These are problematic behaviors dealt with in the general curriculum as
specialty topics within health or other courses in response to the perceived
failure of other institutions (e.g., the family) to address them adequately.
A part of the difficulty in dealing with these topics successfully is that
their multifaceted nature is often reduced by interested parties to one or
another domain, rather than being dealt with in its entirety.
Drug use, for example, is treated by most adolescents as primarily a
matter of prudence and personal choice (Berkowitz, Guerra, and Nucci
1991; Berndt and Park 1986; Killen, Leviton and Cahill 1989; Nucci,
Guerra, and Lee 1989; Tisak and Tisak 1990). One study (Nucci et al. 1989)
found that less than 20% of nondrug-using adolescents viewed regular
use of cocaine as wrong because of the harm it might cause to others. This
does not mean that most adolescents take a laissez-faire attitude toward
drug use but, rather, that the decision of whether or not to do so is gener-
ally determined by their reading of the potential benefits and negative
costs associated with drug consumption. For most adolescents, the per-
ceived personal costs keep them from engaging in substance abuse. Ado-
lescents can be directed to consider the social costs of their conduct to oth-
ers (e.g., harm to family members, contributions to criminal activity) and
to view it as wrong to engage in such conduct if it has consequences for
other people (Killen et al. 1989). On the other hand, few adolescents prior
to college age spontaneously consider such moral ramifications of the
consumption of drugs or alcohol.
The example of drug use illustrates that we cannot simply reduce our
concerns regarding all serious forms of childrens and adolescents be-
havior to issues of morality and moral education. In some instances, as in
the case of sexual conduct, issues are so complex that they draw from a
number of areas of social understanding. As we saw in Chapter 3 in our
interviews with devout Christian and Jewish children, even a behavior as
heavily condemned as premarital intercourse was not treated as an in-
herently moral issue. The moral aspect of sexuality, as in any other area of
interpersonal conduct, has to do with issues of fairness, caring, and hu-
man welfare (Okin 1996). To the extent that moral education may be inte-
grated into sex education, it would be in these often overlooked aspects
of intimate conduct, which go beyond questions of whether or not to en-
gage in sexual intercourse to include more basic questions of malefemale
relations.
A serious effort to engage adolescents in considering such multifaceted

issues of personal conduct would require going beyond their cursory
treatment in a mandatory health course to a more intensive and frank set
of discussions extended over the time that students are in junior and sen-
ior high school. Such discussions would be structured around the princi-
ples of communicative discourse and domain appropriate practice that
have guided our approach to the curriculum.
For example, discussions around sexual relations might include face-
to-face conversations with groups of male and female students in which
they would share their views of how they would like to be treated in a
given situation. This would allow males and females to get beyond their
own gender-based experiences to learn to interpret one anothers inten-
tions and aspirations. Such understandings would make use of universal
moral motivations, but they would also allow males and females to begin
to decode and adjust the conventions that are causing misunderstandings
and inequities in malefemale interactions. This is something quite dif-
ferent from preaching to boys about how to treat girls properly, and
preaching to girls about how to act as women. It is also more than giving
students strategies for how to resist peer pressure, and how to say no
in response to requests to engage in improper or unwanted conduct. It is,
instead, a process by which adolescent boys and girls would work
through their own misperceptions about one another to arrive at a shared
set of understandings about how to treat each other with mutual respect
and grace.
As we saw in Chapter 8, such discussions could take place through do-
main appropriate adaptations of the just community model, recogniz-
ing that many of these issues have as much to do with restructuring con-
vention and personal choice as they do with morality. There is also a
considerable element of fact finding that would need to go into these dis-
cussions, and an important function of the teacher/advisor would be to
direct students toward resources to help them get information that would
inform their perspectives. There is, therefore, no reason not to use these
discussions over social issues as a way to enhance students more general
academic skills and appreciation for their utility in resolving real-life con-
cerns. Unfortunately, most traditional high schools now relegate student
discussion around such issues to special after-school programs (such as
snowball) that attract a minority of students. In the future, a more ef-
fective approach will require some structural accommodation in school
scheduling to permit discourse by all students around these central issues
of social life.
We have now covered both the social climate and curricular aspects of
domain appropriate sociomoral education. These two complementary el-
ements comprise the essence of values education. What remains to be dis-
cussed is how schools may contribute to the integration of the students
sociomoral knowledge in their motivational system. It is this third leg of
the triangle that we will address in Chapter 10.
chapter ten
Fostering the Moral Self
The purpose of moral education is to increase the likelihood that students

will develop into people who engage in moral conduct and who work to
improve the moral structure of society. An integral part of that purpose is
accomplished through the development of students moral knowledge. It
is sociomoral understanding that provides the capacity to evaluate the
moral elements of social situations and the normative structure of society.
Knowing the good, however, is not always sufficient to motivate someone
to do the good. For moral action to take place the individual must also want
to do what is moral, rather than to engage in actions that lead to other goals.
There are two basic ways in which individuals are motivated to do
something. One is to respond to external incentives in the form of pun-
ishments and rewards. The second is to engage in actions because of their
perceived value to the individual (Deci 1995). It is obviously much easier
for teachers and schools to manipulate external rewards and punishments
than it is to somehow connect up with or influence students intrinsic rea-
sons for doing something. Yet it is the connection with intrinsic, non-
pragmatic motivation (Subbotsky 1995) that is the most effective and en-
during way in which to link up moral reasoning with action. As we saw
in Chapter 7, this means building up the linkages among childrens moral
affect, their moral understandings, and their construction of personal
identity. The integration of these three elements of affect, reasoning and
identity form the moral self.
childhood antecedents of the moral self

and classroom practices
The connections between moral identity and behavior do not have much
force until middle childhood and adolescence. However, the foundation
196
fostering the moral self 197
for moral identity is formed in early childhood. There are three related as-
pects of the process by which young children link their conduct to their
sense of self. The first is the generation of a general world view and the
corresponding placement of self in relation to that world view. The sec-
ond aspect is the construction of self-regulation or self-discipline that en-
ables the child to engage in actions concordant with his or her moral iden-
tity. The third aspect is the assignment of meaning to the labels associated
with the various components of childrens social and personal identities,
such as gender, race, age, and whether they are good or bad children.
We will take up this last element of early childhood identity later in this
section.
Teachers and schools can help to establish the childs moral world view
by means of the components of moral atmosphere discussed in Chapter
8. A climate of predictability, trust, emotional warmth, and reciprocity are
the key elements to establishing a pattern of goodwill (Arsenio and
Lover 1995) conducive to the emergence of the moral self (Noam 1993).
As we discussed in Chapter 6, the childs sentiment of goodwill is critical
to the childs willingness to forgo actions that might serve his or her own
self-interest in situations where those actions would cause harm or injus-
tice to someone else. By the same token, if the child concludes that the
world is a dangerous, unloving, or arbitrary place then there is the possi-
bility that the child will self-define as an outcast, or potential victim, and
be more likely to feel justified in acting from self-interest in social situa-
tions where such actions would result in negative moral consequences for
others.
With a positive moral atmosphere as a backdrop, schools can further
contribute to the young childs construction of moral self-regulation
through methods of classroom discipline that support and sustain the
childs intrinsic reasons for acting in accord with what is morally right and
socially appropriate (Deci 1995). For most developmentalist moral edu-
cators, approaches to classroom discipline that emphasize childrens in-
trinsic motivation and moral autonomy are considered an integral part of
what they would consider to be a positive moral classroom atmosphere
(Battistich et al. 1991; DeVries and Zan 1994). However, an atmosphere of
warmth, predictability, and fair treatment can also form the backdrop for
more traditional, consequentialist approaches to classroom discipline and
parenting (Smetana 1995b, 1996). Therefore, we will treat methods of
classroom discipline as a separate element of childrens socialization. Bor-
rowing from the Child Development Project, I refer to these newer con-
structivist models by the term developmental discipline.
Developmental Discipline
In recent years there has been a convergence around methods of class-
room discipline with young children (Battistich et al. 1991; DeVries and
Zan 1994; Dreikurs 1968; Dreikurs, Grunwald, and Pepper 1982) that are
compatible with constructivist views of childrens motivation (Deci 1995;
Harter 1992; Nicholls 1984, 1989), and sociomoral development. The core
idea behind each of these developmental approaches, and the position be-
ing advocated here, is a conception of classroom discipline as supporting
acts of self-regulation that are consonant with the persons autonomously
determined sociomoral goals. The key to these approaches is to get peo-
ple to adopt what is socially desirable for their own reasons, rather than
exerting external control over them. In Decis (1995) terms, the goal is to
have children construct integrated, rather than introjected, modes of self-
regulation. The latter are imposed from outside, whereas the former are
autonomously adopted/constructed as consistent with ones own beliefs
and, in later years, ones true identity. The following classroom sugges-
tions are derived from the shared tenets of these approaches.
Supporting Positive Behavior. One way to avoid discipline problems
in the classroom is to provide feedback that supports childrens positive
behavior. This feedback can come in the form of tangible rewards, but
most often comes in the form of adult praise. While the use of positive
feedback and rewards can help sustain and guide a childs developing
morality, an overreliance on rewards and positive adult feedback can
backfire and actually undermine the childs moral motivation (Deci 1995).
Although this is a relatively new position within American psychology,
hints of this point of view were already being suggested in the 1950s by
B. F. Skinner (1948, 1953), who argued that intrinsic reinforcement was
more effective than external reinforcement in stimulating and maintain-
ing human behavior.
The limitations of external reinforcement are most readily apparent
with the case of offering children tangible rewards for their good behav-
ior. There is a substantial research literature indicating that providing ex-
ternal rewards to children, such as gold stars or stickers, reduces their
tendency to engage in the rewarded behavior spontaneously. In other
words, children shift from engaging in the behaviors for their own in-
trinsic reasons toward doing things simply for the money. This is not
to say that rewards should never be given, but that the use of rewards
should serve to validate what the child is already motivated to do, rather
than as a means of shaping the childs behavior to conform to the
wishes of adults (Deci 1995). For example, a child who has consistently
treated classmates with kindness and generosity might well respond to a
citizenship award as reflecting social validation for her actions, rather
than as an effort to shape her behavior. On the other hand, the routine
awarding of pins or other emblems, and the weekly public listing of the
names of children who have displayed virtue or character as advo-
cated by some neotraditionalist programs (cf., Character Counts), exem-
plify how not to support childrens positive behavior (Kohn 1997). In such
cases, the rewards become overt sources of competition and commodi-
ties in and of themselves. While they may temporarily serve to mold and
shape childrens conduct, they also undermine the very motives such
programs seek to instill.
Similarly, in providing praise to a child, we need to differentiate be-
tween positive statements that validate the child and encourage his or her
efforts at moral action from controlling praise that serves the adults de-
sire to mold and shape the child. Controlling praise focuses attention
upon the child, rather than the childs actions, is nonspecific in content,
and often employs terms that are superlative in nature. Examples of such
praise are Allison, you are such a good girl. Jack, you are the nicest
child I have had in class in years. The effect of controlling praise is to give
the child a momentary boost in self-esteem, but at the cost of setting the
bar at an unrealistically high level. Is it realistic to assume that Allison and
Jack are always going to be so superlatively well behaved? In addition,
the feedback to the child says little about what it is that warranted being
labeled such a good boy or the nicest child in years. Any reasons that
the children might have had for doing the behaviors that won them their
accolades are lost in the focus upon the evaluations of the children them-
selves. Thus, one risk associated with controlling praise is that it moves
the desire to engage in a behavior from intrinsic valuing of the action to
an ego-oriented focus upon ones own perceived social status (Nicholls
1989). The moral self that is constructed on this basis may be superficially
oriented toward behaving morally, but not for moral reasons. The child
who needs to always be such a good boy in order to fit social expecta-
tions is not operating out of moral motivation but in order to sustain ex-
ternal approval.
In contrast, praise that takes the form of encouragement uses moder-
ate language and focuses on the specifics of the action. Such praise lets the
child know that his or her actions are appreciated, and also indicates that
it is the actions that are being evaluated, and not the child himself. Ex-
amples of validating praise would be Tatiana, that was a kind thing that
you just did. I am sure that Marcy appreciated the time you spent with
her when she wasnt feeling well. Mike, thanks for helping clean up the
room. It makes everything better for everyone. I really appreciate it. En-
couraging praise is especially effective as a response to what we might re-
fer to as everyday acts of character. In the encouraging praise exam-
ple, Mike might have been one of the children who never helped with
cleanup time. For him to have done so might well have taken consider-
able personal effort. Acknowledgment from the teacher in the form of
thanks would let him know that his efforts were recognized and his con-
tribution validated. The teacher might even add a word of encouragement
to keep up the good work. Of course, a behaviorist might justifiably ar-
gue that such positive feedback is serving to shape Mikes positive social
behavior. There is no reason to quibble over this point. The key elements
are whether the teacher acts out of a genuine sense of appreciation, and
whether Mike interprets the statement as validating his own efforts. In
any case, praise should be used in moderation and directed at specific
acts, rather than at the characteristics of children.
Responding to Misbehavior. An essential aspect of all learning is the
making of mistakes. It would be nice to believe that moral education is a
matter of guiding children down the right path, but the fiction of er-
ror-free learning has even less to do with morality than other aspects of
education. While children are rarely, if ever, motivated to make purpose-
ful mistakes in academic areas, the very nature of sociomoral misconduct
is that it often involves actions that are counter to what the child knows
to be the right thing to do. Correcting errors in the sociomoral area is
not simply a matter of pointing out mistakes but also helping the child to
choose to act in ways that are not always concordant with the childs im-
mediate desires. Piagets (1962) conflict of will is what is at stake, and
not simply the epistemic question of the objectively right thing to do.
Helping the child choose to want to do the right thing is in part a func-
tion of teachers disciplinary responses to childrens misbehavior. In
Chapter 8 we discussed the importance of providing domain-concordant
messages as a way of connecting up with and furthering the childs moral
and conventional understandings. Here we are dealing with the role of
teacher-imposed sanctions. The complement to the developmentalist po-
sition regarding the use of rewards for appropriate behavior is that sanc-
tions provided to young children in response to their misbehavior should
not take the form of expiatory punishments designed solely to inflict dis-
comfort or cost to the child (DeVries and Zan 1994). Expiatory punish-
ments are to be avoided since they do not provide the child with any rea-
son beyond the pragmatic goals of punishment avoidance or generation

of teacher favor as a motivation for action. Since students associate expi-
atory punishments with the person meting them out, rather than with
their own misconduct, such punishments invite revenge and provide stu-
dents with a sense that they have the right to retaliate (Dreikurs and Cas-
sel 1972). In other words, the morality of the situation becomes turned on
its head as the student, guilty of misconduct, now becomes in his or her
own mind the aggrieved party. Through the use of expiatory punishment,
the teacher transforms the affective climate of the classroom into an envi-
ronment of ill will that supports students self-protective and selfish
motivations.
Instead, sanctions should take the form of logical consequences con-
nected in a meaningful way with the nature of the transgression (DeVries
and Zan 1994; Dreikurs 1968; Dreikurs et al. 1982). Logical consequences
include such things as restitution, depriving the transgressor of the thing
misused, and exclusion. Because of the nonarbitrary, reciprocal nature of
morality, it is somewhat easier to envision logical consequences for moral
transgressions than for violations of social conventions. For example, if a
child takes something away from another child, a logical consequence
would be for the child to have to replace it. However, even conventions,
once in place, have a logic associated with their function. A student who
talks disruptively during story time might be asked by the teacher to leave
the story area until he or she is able to rejoin the group and sit quietly. If
this sanction is coupled with a domain appropriate statement of the rule
or social-organizational function of the norm, the student is likely to see
the connection between the sanction and the misbehavior. An indefinite
or extended expulsion from the story area, however, would shift the con-
sequence away from the behavior and become an arbitrary, expiative pun-
ishment, rather than a logical consequence (Dreikurs and Cassel 1972).
Teachers can increase the likelihood that children will accept the logi-
cal consequences of misbehavior by engaging them in group discussions
about patterns of misbehavior occurring in the classroom, and by seeking
their advice on how to avoid or reduce such problems in the future (Bat-
tistich et al. 1991; DeVries and Zan 1994). In Chapter 8 we offered the use
of group discussions as a way of engaging children in the consideration
of rules that should be in place to regulate or help guide childrens con-
duct. In this case, the discussion concerns what to do about behaviors that
the children agree are problematic. Through group discussion, the teacher
can guide children to generate ideas about what would constitute appro-
priate logical consequences. Part of the teachers role is to help the chil-
dren focus on prevention of misbehavior. Another part is to help children

moderate their tendency to come up with overly harsh consequences.
Young children, because of their limited conceptions of fair reciprocity, are
especially prone to mete out punishments that exceed what are reciprocal
and fair consequences. By engaging children in such discourse, teachers
move the consequences of misconduct from a top-down, adult-imposed
act of power to autonomously constructed, objectified, logical outcomes
reflecting values shared by the children.
Finally, an ethical response to childrens misconduct must allow for the
childs reentry and acceptance into the social group. Once the logical con-
sequence has been met, the child must have the opportunity to move for-
ward as a class member. Otherwise, the logical consequence is trans-
formed into expiatory punishment with all of the negative ramifications
already discussed. This is a fairly easy requirement to meet when it comes
to typical transgressions of social convention. It is not always so easy
when the transgression involves moral consequences to other classmates.
While the teacher may be willing to move forward, the children may be
unwilling to risk interactions with someone who had caused them pain
or injustice. In such cases, as with an aggressive child, the teacher needs
to help the transgressor understand the connections between aggressive
conduct and the responses of his or her classmates. The teacher must also
help the other children to decenter enough to recognize that they would
not want to be permanently excluded either. This requires patience and
persistence on the teachers part, and is helped or hindered by the over-
all moral and affective climate of the school and classroom.
Summary
In sum, developmental discipline affords an approach to classroom man-
agement that is consistent with the processes by which children construct
their sociomoral knowledge. By integrating developmental discipline
with domain appropriate forms of teacher feedback (discussed in Chap-
ter 8), teachers can contribute to childrens construction of autonomously
adopted, integrated reasons for wanting to act in moral and socially ap-
propriate ways. Because these early patterns of action and moral motiva-
tion are concordant with the childs own perceptions and choices, they are
coherent with the childs own emergent sense of personal identity. It is for
this reason that such early experience provides a precursor for the con-
struction of moral character what we have referred to as the moral self.
In the context of a stable, emotionally warm and fair moral environ-
ment, children not only are likely to construct a sense of goodwill toward
the social world but are also likely to adopt sociomoral self-labels of be-
ing a good or nice boy or girl. In early childhood, these moral self-
labels are quite global in nature, and fleshing them out is a gradual and
continuous lifelong process of integrating ones own personal narrative
with ones developing sociomoral understandings within a cultural
framework and worldview. Because of their generality, these aspects of
self-concept do not serve as an important source of moral motivation for
the young child. Instead, it is the sociomoral action schemata that children
generate out of their social interactions, including their experiences with
social sanctions, that guide sociomoral conduct in early childhood. Early-
childhood educators contribute to childrens moral development primar-
ily through the ways in which actual classroom experiences impact upon
childrens sociomoral constructions.
However, early-childhood educators also impact upon the develop-
ment of young childrens construction of the moral self by means of the
information they provide symbolically through their actions as role mod-
els and by the provision of cultural narratives contained in fairy tales, sto-
ries, and other media. These sources of symbolic interaction, which en-
gage the childs imagination and feelings, provide young children with
models against which to compare their own conduct, and with worlds
against which to compare their own social experiences. As children de-
velop, they begin to differentiate and to integrate this cultural informa-
tion with their own personal experience to form more particular and psy-
chologically potent notions of themselves as sociomoral beings.
education and formation of the moral self

in middle childhood and adolescence
Elementary and secondary teachers can contribute to the childs forma-
tion of the moral self through continuation of the basic approach to disci-
pline just outlined for young children, and by engaging students bur-
geoning interest in constructing their sense of personal identity. Around
8 to 10 years of age, children begin assigning comparative values to the
various aspects of their personal competencies and behavioral tendencies
(Broughton 1978; Harter 1983; Nicholls and Miller 1984; Nucci 1977). It is
at about this time that the moral self begins to take on motivational
force. Children are now capable of, and interested in, comparing their ac-
tions against their self-conceptions (Power and Khmelkov 1998). The so-
ciomoral worldview and action schemes established in early childhood
provide the core content for the middle-childhood construction of a moral

aspect of self. In adolescence, the process of identity formation becomes
accelerated as the notion of self shifts from simple behavioral descriptions
to a conception of self in terms of internal thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and
values.
Throughout this process of identity formation, the moral self does not
emerge in a vacuum but is constructed alongside of the childs notions of
other aspects of themselves, such as boy or girl, student, athlete, and fam-
ily member. In addition, the self that is emerging, while reflecting idio-
syncratic preferences and choices, is also integrating cultural values, man-
nerisms, and predispositions toward reading social events in particular
ways. This multifaceted and contextualized construction of self means
that the relative salience of morality, and its role in defining the person as
a whole, is neither simple nor straightforward.
Educators influence this process of moral self-construction by using the
curricular practices outlined in Chapter 9 and by the direct treatment of
students through the classroom moral atmosphere and disciplinary prac-
tices. These aspects of schooling provide students with opportunities to
generate moral understandings and to connect them up with their own
conduct. In addition, educators can affect the construction of the moral
self through practices that engage students in self-reflection and provide
students with information both from symbolic sources and direct experi-
ence that may heighten the salience of morality in students lives.
In thinking about these practices, the educator is confronted with the
same ethical issues that arise in the context of the social-values curricu-
lum. Among the issues to recognize is that one cannot limit the notion of
good children to conformity to the status quo and, at the same time, en-
gage in the curricular and classroom discipline practices advocated in this
book. The notion that moral education entails enabling students to em-
ploy their moral understandings to evaluate the conventional practices of
their own culture is meaningful only if we also view moral education as
fostering a moral identity in which the person self-defines as someone
who is open to the possibility that morality may require changes in the
ways in which society operates. This critical moral perspective would also
hold for ones own point of view, and would necessitate a sense of hu-
mility and openness, rather than moral rectitude. Thus, while hopefully
raising the salience of morality as an element of students self-definition,
the multifaceted view of social knowledge and social existence that
emerges from domain theory also directs us as educators away from a
monolithic view of human character, and toward the selection of educa-
tional experiences that foster a range of self-definitions consistent with

moral autonomy.
Responding Constructively to Resistance. For many young people,
the road toward defining a moral identity involves detours and explo-
rations of forbidden territory. The reasons for this are probably several, in-
cluding the relative costs and benefits of acting in ways that are immoral
or unconventional. More important, however, than any straightforward
costbenefits analysis is the fundamental motivation to establish agency,
autonomy, and a unique personal identity. As we discussed in Chapter 3,
children and adolescents express the need for uniqueness through claims
to an area of personal prerogative, privacy, and choice. A sense of agency,
however, also operates in any domain in which the person perceives him-
or herself as initiating decisions and actions (Deci 1995).
As children begin to understand that being good is not only about
your actions but about your self-definition, there arises an existential
problem not evident in the personal domain. If you act morally or in ac-
cordance with convention, then at the level of action, you are being
good in a way that is common to all members of a social group. There is
nothing personally unique in such actions, since they have universal or
consensual origins. In order for you to act morally or in accord with con-
ventional standards, and still maintain your sense of agency, then you
need to be sure that you are being good for your own reasons.
In large part, this sense that one is being good for ones own reasons is
implicit in the justifications children provide for moral judgments begin-
ning in early childhood. A child who argues that hitting is wrong because
it hurts is not saying this simply in order to conform to social expectations.
However, establishing ones moral positions as issues become more con-
textualized and tied up with adult expectations may entail a certain de-
gree of playfulness and perhaps contrarian conduct.
In the ensuing discussion, I am not attempting to account for children
who have become so alienated that their conduct is seriously harmful or
criminal, but rather for the typical child or adolescent with contrarian
conduct. Examples of what I have in mind here are the well-known phe-
nomena of adolescent petty crime, such as shoplifting, and adolescent en-
gagement in so-called status offenses (e.g., underage drinking). I recently
polled my undergraduate students, all of whom are planning to become
classroom teachers, and found that nearly all had engaged in petty theft
as adolescents, had cheated on tests in high school, and had engaged in
various status offenses, ranging from drinking to attending unauthorized
parties or breaking community curfews. Not a person with good charac-
ter in the bunch, it would appear. Ditto for my doctoral students in an ad-
vanced seminar on social development.
In traditional psychoanalytic accounts, such behavior is seen as the re-
sult of a weakening of the structures of morality (A. Freud 1969) associ-
ated with the resurgence of sexual impulses at puberty. More behaviorally
oriented traditionalists see such adolescent conduct as evidence of social
decay and poor social support for youth (Wynne 1989). What I am sug-
gesting is that the ubiquitousness of such conduct has other sources that
educators and parents can respond to in positive and constructive ways.
If the motivation for such contrarian conduct is tied up with efforts at es-
tablishing personal autonomy, then neither should we be surprised that
it happens nor should we overreact with punitive measures. Instead, we
should begin to view such events as teachable moments rife with op-
portunities in which to engage the young person in taking personal re-
sponsibility for his or her actions and the logical consequences that fol-
low, employing the same principles of developmental discipline used
with young children.
We should also not be surprised when youths see through our con-
trivances for building character, such as enrolling them in the boy scouts
or requiring them to engage in service activities. As part of a study of the
impact of service learning on adolescent character, Jim Leming (1999) in-
terviewed participants regarding their views of such programs. One thing
that stood out in his interviews was that students across the United States
stated that they resented what they perceived to be attempts by the school
systems to make them into certain kinds of people. In effect, they told
Leming in their interviews, We know who we are already, and we al-
ready know how we want to act. We dont need this. Leming interprets
these young people as saying that they already have a moral identity and
resent efforts to tamper with it (Leming, personal communication, Octo-
ber 1999).
The educational suggestions that follow are intended to increase the
likelihood that students will construct a sense of self in which morality
plays an integral part. They are also intended to engage students efforts
to maintain personal autonomy and agency.
Symbolic Sources of Self: Fictional and Historical

Figures in Literature
Advocates of social-learning theory (Bandura 1977) and traditional char-
acter education (Wynne 1989) have long extolled the educative power of
role models. As we have learned from cognitive psychology (Kohlberg

1966, 1984), children do not passively adopt the behaviors exhibited by
role models but, instead, evaluate them in relation to their perceived rel-
evance and informational value. Individuals whom children accept as
role models serve as sources of information for how to act socially and
how to define themselves in the social world. Parents, teachers, siblings,
and media figures are potential role models. Whether a child will view
someone as a role model will be a function of the childs age and interests.
Thus, we cannot know that any particular role model will engage a given
child. What we can do as teachers, however, is to expose children to po-
tential role models who exhibit the sorts of decisions and actions that we
hope children will also incorporate into their self-definitions. Obviously,
the place to begin is with the teacher him- or herself. A teacher who es-
tablishes the sort of moral atmosphere described in Chapter 8, and who
employs the disciplinary practices described in this chapter, will likely ev-
idence many of the personal qualities consistent with what one would
hope to engender in students.
In addition to encounters with actual persons, school offers opportu-
nities for students to broaden their exposure to potential role models
through literature and history. A students personal narrative can become
enriched by engagement in reflective activities that would link up the stu-
dent with the person being read about. There are two main advantages of
such symbolic encounters, from an educational point of view. First, they
allow the teacher to select the sort of person toward whom to direct stu-
dent attention. Second, they allow the teacher an opportunity to structure
assignments that will actively engage students in evaluating the personal
qualities of someone with whom the student does not subsequently have
to interact. In this way, the student can assume a critical stance toward the
model without fear of alienating the person.
The following are some suggestions for using historical or fictional
characters for moral education:
1. Use characters who are related to the academic unit being taught. This is es-
sentially the same suggestion made regarding other aspects of so-
ciomoral educational activities. The more integrated the activities are
with regular classroom academic practices, the more natural they will
be for students, and the more readily teachers can use them. In prac-
tice, this means selecting historical figures from the period being stud-
ied, or fictional characters from the assigned literature.
2. Allow students choice in the characters they are to focus upon, or in the as-
signment they are to work on. Providing students with choice increases
the probability of student intrinsic interest, and the likelihood that they
will allow themselves to connect up with the model. It also decreases
the likelihood that they will view the assignment as forcing them to
agree with a predetermined adult point of view.
3. Provide accessible characters. Historical figures, such as Martin Luther
King, Jr., Madame Curie, or Abraham Lincoln provide models of great-
ness, and having children learn about them has value. However, the
sheer magnitude of their historical accomplishments often renders
these personages so distant as to be inaccessible or unrealistic as mod-
els from the point of view of students. Who can match such people?
There are several ways to deal with this difficulty. One is to provide
other figures or personages to look at who are less well known, yet
worthy of emulation. The second is to take a warts and all view of
figures, such as Jefferson or Lincoln, and have students assess them as
total people. In both cases, student assignments can involve library re-
search, as well as evaluative discussions and student writing. The third
is to employ characters who are similar in age as the students them-
selves. This can include biographies of youths from historical periods
or characters from fiction.
4. Provide exposure to models whose moral actions go against the grain of con-
temporary conventions. People of character evidence their moral steel
when they act contrary to popular sentiment or the status quo. In addi-
tion, such models emulate a moral orientation that takes a critical stance
toward received mores. This is, in part, what one hopes students will
adopt as part of their sense of moral identity. Such an ethical stance is
the essence of what is entailed in responding morally to instances of do-
main overlap, wherein the existing conventions of society or social sys-
tems (e.g., ones own family) are counter to fairness and human welfare.
Martin Luther King is a prototype for this sort of moral personage.
So also were some leaders of the suffragettes and the more-recent
womens movement. Such models dont need to come from history;
they can also be depicted in fictional accounts in which a young per-
son stands up for what is right in opposition to peer pressure or con-
vention.
5. Provide exposure to models who struggle with what is the right thing to
do. Huckleberry Finn is a well-known example of a flawed character
whose moral strength is tested to the fullest. Flawed characters provide
students with ways to connect with the internal struggle that accom-
panies moral conflict.
6. Expose adolescents to antiheroes. One of the most enduring and popular

figures in American fiction is Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye.
This characters appeal is, to a large extent, due to his vulnerability,
moral sweetness, and superficial vulgarity. He is the quintessential
adolescent searching for meaning in a morally confusing universe.
Less appealing to adults, but no less powerful to adolescents trying
to find a moral world, are characters who search for what is right in the
midst of pathological or immoral worlds, such as urban gang life. Good
examples are the characters in Jess Mowrys (1993) Way Past Cool,
which describes youth dealing with gangs and drug dealers in urban
California. The power of such models is that they allow young people
to measure themselves against others whose choices may not always
be moral ones, but whose struggles reflect the process of coming to
terms with oneself as a moral being.
Summary. Effective educational use of historical or fictional charac-

ters depends on the engagement of students in reflective activities. Merely
asking students to prepare a biography or to summarize the main attrib-
utes of a particular fictional character may serve certain academic aims
but will contribute very little to students character formation. In order for
such activities to benefit students moral development, they should in-
clude oral or written analysis and reflection. These reflections should fo-
cus upon the connections between the moral or normative issues at stake
and the main characters approach to dealing with them. This first task
would ask the student to identify the moral and conventional elements of
the situation, as well as any personal or prudential factors at work. With
middle-school and older students, this aspect of the reflective exercise
would also include asking the student to identify explicitly relevant fac-
tual assumptions operating in the main characters decisions. Second,
these reflections should engage the student in making an evaluative as-
sessment of the figure in terms of what they saw as positive in the per-
sons actions and why, and what limitations, if any, they saw in the fig-
ures approach.
Finally, the student may be asked to make a connection between the
figure and the students own personal qualities. This latter activity risks
exposure of some aspects of the students private life, and it should be
done in a way that permits the student options. For example, the students
may be given the choice of writing or discussing (1) what they saw in the
person that was either similar to or different from themselves, (2) how
they dealt with a similar situation, (3) what they might have done if they
were in the persons position, or (4) what advice they would have given
to the person if he or she was a close friend. In sum, the purpose of sym-
bolic models is to engage students in value-driven reflection, and to make
connections between the decisions and personal attributes of such figures
and their own sense of moral self.
Direct Self-Reflection
This last set of activities entails a shift away from simply evaluating a
model to conducting some degree of self-evaluation. The most direct
method of engaging a person in considering his or her own moral quali-
ties is self-reflection. Virtually all religious systems employ some sort of
self-review as an element of spiritual and moral renewal. The experiential
wisdom behind these traditional practices is that the process of self-re-
flection can have a meaningful impact on a persons self-definition and
connection to a particular value system. Employing self-reflection within
a public school setting has obvious differences from the religious context,
but the main purpose of such an exercise is similar. It is to draw a com-
parison between ones own behavior with a goal or ideal.
Persons who are on a diet or exercise program often establish measur-
able goals against which to determine their rate of success. Although set-
ting specific behavioral goals can help students develop self-control over
their own conduct (Bandura 1986; Schunk 1989), moral self-reflection, as
discussed here, does not generally have this sort of quantitative element.
Instead, the purpose of such reflection is to determine in a global sense
whether one is measuring up to ones own internal moral standard. There
is, then, an interdependence between a persons conceptions of morality
and his or her moral standard. The mere exercise of engaging in such re-
flection perforce causes the person to raise, if only momentarily, the rela-
tive salience of the moral aspect of self. Thus, meaningful moral self-re-
flection has potential for moral growth on several levels. It causes one to
pay attention to the moral aspects of self, thus making morality more
salient. It causes one to measure oneself against a personal standard, thus
having the potential for motivating moral growth and behavioral change.
Finally, it causes one to reflect on ones own moral position, thus provid-
ing a potential motivating source for conceptual moral growth.
While engaging students in moral self-reflection has potential bene-
fits, it is no simple task. For one thing, it runs the obvious risk of inviting
student resistance. Such resistance comes from the desire to maintain
personal privacy, and teachers would be wise to respect students pri-
vacy needs. Resistance also comes from students who view school-based
assignments that require self-reflection as a way for teachers to manipu-

late the students own sense of self. This latter form of resistance is
similar to that of students who resent mandatory school-based public-
service activities.
One way to overcome some of these obstacles and to engage students
in moral self-reflection is through the use of private journals. We recently
employed this approach with middle-school students as part of a more
general values-education program. We directed sixth-grade students to
write, on separate pages of a privately kept personal journal, descriptions
of themselves as they are now, the self they would like most to become,
and the person they would least like to become. We also asked them to
draw a picture of each of these self-descriptions as a way to engage those
children who use visual imagery as a primary mode of expression. We
then asked the children to consider the ideal person that they had de-
scribed and to think about what sort of person they could realistically be-
come in the next two months if they really worked at it. After they had
completed this exercise, we engaged the children in a group brainstorm-
ing session to generate strategies that they would use to actualize their
personal goals and become the sorts of people that they would want to be
in two months. In the context of this open discussion, children often re-
vealed their goals as they laid out their strategies. However, no one was
required to discuss their own approach, and the children in our program
readily volunteered their suggestions. Students thoroughly enjoyed this
reflective activity and rated it as one of the best parts of the program. The
strength of the exercise is that it is intrinsically interesting to the children
and does not violate their privacy. The limitation of the approach is that
it is not directly connected to regular school activity, and thus does not
lend itself to teacher evaluation.
As children enter adolescence, they become even more resistant to pub-
lic expressions of their private goals, including the use of journals for
school purposes. However, literature and writing courses offer natural av-
enues for moral self-reflection concordant with traditional academic aims.
American literature, for example, introduces students to Henry David
Thoreau and the transcendentalists with their concerns about individual
liberty and community. In the context of teaching this academic unit, a
Chicago-area high school teacher has her students write an essay on the
theme The Time I Defied Authority. The instructions for the theme re-
quired the student to provide a personal context for the event and a clear
moral justification for going beyond authoritys commands. Students
who find Thoreau a big yawn are transfixed by this assignment, which
draws them into the very concerns of transcendentalist literature while
opening them up to their inner moral selves. In this one assignment, this
very creative teacher transforms adolescent resistance into a vehicle for
moral self-exploration, as well as a gateway into American literature.
Finally, students can be engaged in self-reflection through processes of
creative writing or artistic expression that ask them to create characters
who deal with moral conundrums common to adolescent life. Here again,
the teacher can offer a selection of issues to deal with can and allow stu-
dents to take whatever perspective they may find most interesting. In
most cases, students will end up projecting their own issues into their
characters. By working things through in this fictional mode, young peo-
ple are drawn into a process of reflection, working through their own per-
sonal moral issues and the place that morality holds within their own self-
systems.
Given such an assignment, some students will elect to write about con-
trarian personalities whose choices are immoral. In most cases, these con-
trarian depictions represent efforts by students to play with moral iden-
tity and to explore selves that they would not feel comfortable acting out.
This permits the students a chance to compare their own moral perspec-
tive with other possible selves, and to claim ownership of their own moral
identity as an autonomous choice, rather than the product of social con-
formity. In other cases, these contrarian representations may alert the
teacher to students who are suffering serious struggles with their moral
selves (Noam 1993), and they provide a window for the teacher to engage
the student in counseling or therapy.
Summary. Through direct reflection on the moral aspect of self, stu-
dents integrate their moral knowledge with their moral identity. Teachers
can engage students in these processes of self-reflection through activities
that are concordant with their academic goals. This permits teachers to
evaluate students on academic criteria, such as the flow of their writing,
paragraph development, sentence construction, or depth of analysis of
themes within literature. It does not entail evaluating students in terms of
their character.
Opportunities for Engagement in Moral Action:

Service Learning
The last issue we will discuss is the provision of opportunities for students
to engage in prosocial or moral activities. The purpose behind such activ-
ities is to bring students into the realm of action and, thereby, afford op-
portunities for young people to make direct connections between them-
selves and their capacity to engage in helpful behavior. The assumption is

that the formation of moral identity is made easier if children and adoles-
cents can explore forms of moral action, if they are supported in these ex-
plorations of moral conduct by relationships with people they trust and
admire, and if they feel that their actions genuinely contribute to the wel-
fare of others (Hart 1992). A final element required for such activities to
have meaning for the young person is that they be voluntary or have a sig-
nificant element of choice (Barker and Eccles 1997; Hart 1992; Hart and
Fegley 1995; Hart, et al., 1995; Hart, Atkins, and Ford 1998; Hart et al. 1999).
Research examining service-learning programs has reported that stu-
dents who have been involved in voluntary participation in a variety of
extracurricular activities, including service as a referee or coach for youth
sports, help with a community food-distribution program, tutoring, and
so forth, were less likely than other adolescents to be involved in any of
the following problem behaviors: theft of $50 or more, assault, breaking
and entering, or student misconduct requiring that a parent be brought to
school (Hart, Atkins, and Ford 1998). Other studies have reported that
early engagement in social organizations is associated with long-term en-
gagement in social activities (Yates and Youniss 1998). Perhaps most im-
pressive is that such community-service activities can have a positive im-
pact on inner-city youth whose daily lives do not provide environmental
support for the construction or enactment of positive moral identities
(Hart and Fegley 1995; Hart, Atkins, and Ford 1998).
The collective impact of these studies is that children and adolescents
benefit from opportunities to engage in community-service activities if
they are provided a range of options for how they might serve, such that
their involvement is concordant with their own sense of personal auton-
omy, as well as their burgeoning moral identities. Examples of such an ap-
proach are elementary school districts that require service hours for grad-
uation from the eighth grade but allow students a large menu of options
through which to meet such community service.
Service learning need not be limited to extracurricular activities but
may take place as a regular part of school life. The Developmental Stud-
ies Project, for example, includes a buddy system in which upper-grade
students serve as tutors for lower-grade students (Battistich et al. 1991).
Less effective are programs that mandate students to perform particular
services, especially when such community service is thought by the stu-
dents to be pointless. An example of the latter are wealthy high school dis-
tricts that, out of a well-intentioned desire to engage their students in com-
munity service and to provide them with some direct connection with
children of poverty, require students to participate in service activities in

inner-city neighborhoods or public-housing projects. This sort of program
results in the alienation Leming (1999) reported among adolescents who
saw through what they perceived to be blatant attempts by the schools to
make them into particular sorts of people.
summary and conclusion

The educative process fosters the moral self through the establishment of
a positive moral atmosphere, the use of developmental discipline, oppor-
tunities for personal self-evaluation and reflection, and the enactment of
moral responsibility. These processes increase the likelihood that students
will integrate the construction of moral and social-normative under-
standings as salient components of their personal identities.
Each of the educational components described in this discussion of the
moral self is consistent with, and can occur together with, the curricular
and classroom structural suggestions laid out in Chapters 8 and 9. In fact,
a comprehensive approach to moral education would necessitate their in-
tegration. This is because the rhythm of social development establishes a
reciprocal to-and-fro between the construction of sociomoral conceptual
frameworks and the formation of personal identity. Development in one
system ordinarily affects the structure and function of the other. When self
and sociomoral knowledge become disconnected, the result is stunted
growth and a loss of human potential.
Engaging students in that educative process is something quite differ-
ent, however, from any formulaic attempt to raise good children or to
create people of character. This is because the moral self that emerges is
one part of the complex totality of any real person. That totality includes
the cultural biases and informational assumptions that have been incor-
porated into the individuals social constructions. It also includes the idio-
syncratic aspirations and social interpretations that enter into any real
persons reading of contextualized social situations. Moral education can
influence the development of a persons sociomoral understandings, and
it can affect the degree to which morality matters as an aspect of a per-
sons sense of self. But moral education cannot determine how any given
person is going to interpret particular real-life social situations. Domain
theory teaches us how to understand what goes into a persons moral de-
cisions and actions, and how to influence the development of those sys-
tems of meaning. In the end, however, it is the person who determines the
moral meaning of events in his or her own life.
Conclusion: Keeping Things in Perspective
The Art Institute of Chicago is home to one of the worlds great collections
of impressionist and postimpressionist paintings. Perhaps the most pop-
ular piece in their collection is Georges Seurats A Sunday Afternoon on the
Island of la Grande Jatte. This magnificent painting takes up an entire wall
of one main gallery. As you enter the gallery, you are immediately drawn
into a fanciful park scene with couples in formal wear strolling with um-
brellas in a wooded area by a shimmering lake. On the lake, sailboats,
steamers, and a scull boat with crew glide by. Once you adjust to the sheer
size of the painting, you begin to pay attention to smaller details. A young
girl is skipping through the lawn. One of the women is walking a mon-
key on a leash. The experience of seeing this painting is breathtaking. It is
made even more remarkable if you move from looking at the painting
from a distance to looking at it from a few inches from the canvas. Stand-
ing close up you can see that the subtle effects of light and shadow, the
shimmering of the sun on the water, and the shapes of the figures are
achieved with tiny dots of basic color spaced closely together.
The nuances of visual experience captured by Seurats use of basic
color form a metaphor for the ways in which basic domains of social
knowledge interact to account for the subtleties and complexities of social
life in context. Each domain is a discrete and distinct system correspon-
ding to qualitatively different aspects of social interaction. Each, so to
speak, is a basic color corresponding to the personal, social organiza-
tional, and moral aspects of social life. As in Seurats paintings, these ba-
sic colors are rarely seen in isolation but tend instead to co-occur in rela-
tionship to one another. The visual effect of Seurats technique rests not in
the dots of paint but in the coordinations imposed upon them by our cog-
nitive system of perception. In like manner, the interpretations we give to
215
216 conclusion
sociomoral events reflect the ways in which we coordinate their domain-

salient features.
In this book I have presented evidence that the domain of morality is
constructed early in life out of the childs experiences with universal and
unavoidable aspects of interactions with other people. Young children
construct intuitions about issues of harm and welfare, fairness and rights,
that develop into later moral conceptions of justice, equity, and compas-
sion. These core elements of morality transcend culture and are inde-
pendent of the persons religious affiliation. It is this universal, transcen-
dent core of morality, available to persons at all ages, that permits moral
reflection upon the social lives that we lead as individuals, and upon the
structure and norms of the society that we inherit. With development, our
moral and societal concepts allow us to better comprehend our social
world, and they provide us with more powerful tools for guiding our
moral conduct.
As educators, we enable our students to discern the basic elements that
go into their understandings of the social world. We also enrich their lives
by providing them with the capacity to understand how the moral, soci-
etal, and personal aspects of social life interact in the course of everyday
social events. In order to do this, we need to become familiar with the na-
ture of social development and its implications for the curriculum, class-
room climate, and modes of student discipline. This book presented some
suggestions for how teachers can do those things. Those suggestions are
intended as a starting point in what will necessarily be an extended con-
versation.
The ethics of our profession demand that we do more than teach chil-
dren how to recapitulate an inherited picture of the social world. Instead,
moral education involves helping young people to understand and ma-
nipulate the moral canvas of their own lives and the social worlds they in-
herit. This allows for personal renewal and moral reexamination. It also
provides the possibility for the moral growth of society as a whole.
Additional Resources
Readers may continue the dialogue opened up in this book and remain
current with issues in the area of moral development and education by
exploring the web site operated by the author for the Office for Studies in
Moral Development and Education of the University of Illinois at Chicago,
College of Education. The site URL is: http://MoralEd.org
The site provides access to recent articles on moral development, char-
acter formation, and education. It also provides information about books
on the topic, classroom practices, assessment, and links to related sites.
The site sponsors an international e-mail listserver for persons interested
in participating in dialogue around issues of moral development and ed-
ucation.
217
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Index of Names
Abu-Lughod, L. 98, 99 Bredemeier, B. J. 150

Allen, V. L. 126 Bridgeman, D. 54
Anderson,V. 151 Brehm, J. W. 57, 60
Angelou, M. 186, 187 Brehm, S. S. 57, 60
Aristotle. 127 Bronte, C. 20
Aronson, E. 150, 177 Broughton, J. 129, 174, 203
Arsenio, W. 112114, 118, 119, 136, 143, Brown, T. 108, 109
145, 148, 197 Buddin, N. 118
Asquith, P. 6870 Buss, D. M. 110
Astor, R. 122, 213 Byrne, B. 130
Atkins, R. 122, 213
Augustine 52 Cahill, J. 193
Camino, C. 64
Baldwin, J. M. 54 Campos, J. 111
Bandura, A. 81, 206, 210 Cassel, P. 201
Barden, R. 117 Chao, R. K. 62
Barker, B. 213 Character Counts Coalition 150
Barnard, C. 143 Charlier, P. 182
Barnes, J. 130 Clark, R. D. 110, 111
Barrett, K. 111 Cocking, R. R. 55
Barry, H. 70 Colby, A. 80, 81, 90, 92, 93, 128
Bartz, K. W. 62 Coopersmith, S. 130
Battistich, V. 127, 173, 197, 198, 201, 213 Corsaro, W. 18, 159
Baumrind, D. 57, 62, 63, 172 Crittenden, P. 21
Bearison, D. 108 Crockenberg, S. 57
Bellah, R. 53 Cushman, P. 55
Bennett, W. 53, 74
Benninga, J. 174 Damhuis, I. 115
Berkowitz, M. 174, 175, 193 Damon, W. 17, 54, 73, 87, 88, 91, 128, 129,
Berndt, T. 193 134, 156
Bersoff, D. 53 Danon, H. 32
Bitz, B. 164, 165 Darwin, C. 110
Black, A. 11, 86 Davidson, P. 11, 86, 87
Blasi, G. 128, 129, 131133 Deci, E. 196199, 205
Blatt, M. 174 Deutsch, M. 157
Blumenfeld, P. C. 144, 167 DeVries, R. 81, 154, 160, 163, 173, 197, 198,
Boostrom, R. 142 200, 201
Borowitz, E. 28 Dias, M. G. 12
Bourne, E. J. 55 Dodsworth-Rugani, K. 144
Breages, J. 11, 68, 69 Dunn, J. 16
237
238 index of names
Dreikurs, R. 198, 201 Jackson, P. W. 142, 143, 168

Durkheim, E. 74, 142 James, W. 54
Dworkin, R. 6, 73 Johnson, D. W. 157
Johnson, R. 157
Eccles, J. 213 Jung, M. K. 63
Eckman, P. 111
Eibl-Eibesfeld, I. 111 Kant, I. 52
Eisenberg, N. 87, 115, 119 Katz, L. F. 116
Emde, R. 111, 116 Kempen, H. 55
Encarnacion-Gawrych, G. 8, 16, 18, 147, Kernberg, O. F. 55
159 Killen, M. 18, 68, 146, 153, 157, 159, 193
Entwisle, D. R. 130 King, R. 116
Erikson, E. 54, 56 Kirkpatrick, W. 53
Etzioni, A. 53 Kirschenbaum, H. 20
Khmelkov, V. T. 127, 128, 131, 133135, 203
Fegley, S. 134, 135, 213 Kochanska, K. 116, 136
Ferguson, T. J. 115 Kohlberg, L. 8, 78, 79, 81, 82, 8693, 125,
Fivush, R. 121 127, 151, 158, 174, 177, 207
Ford, D. 213 Kohn, A. 124, 127, 199
Frankena, W. K. 6 Kohut, H. 54, 55
Freud, A. 206 Koller, S. H. 12
Freud, S. 52 Kopp, C. 16, 18, 57
Kramer, R. 118
Gates Jr., H. L. 180 Kuczinski, L. 60
Geertz, C. 98, 100
Geiger, K. 165 Laird, J. D. 130
Gesell, A. 56 Lapsley, D. 78, 89, 91, 93, 126
Gewirth, A. 6, 73 Lau, S. 63
Gibbs, J. 174 Laupa, M. 143
Gilligan, C. 6, 121, 122 Lee, J. Y. 54, 70, 134, 193
Glodis, K. 128, 131, 132 Lee, P. C. 143
Goncu, A. 159 Leming, J. 206, 214
Gottman, J. M. 116 Levine, E. S. 62
Gralinski, H. 16, 18, 57 Leviton, M. 193
Greenfield, P. M. 55 Levy, R. I. 121
Grunwald, B. 198 Lickona, T. 125, 127
Guerra, N. 54, 70, 120, 193 Lincoln, A. 119
Lind, G. 93, 158
Habermas, J. 6, 93, 95, 158, 174, 177 Litman, C. 57
Haidt, J. 12, 115 Lopez, B. H. 110
Hamilton, V. L. 144 Lorenz, K. 110
Hansen, D. T. 142 Lover, A. 112, 118, 119, 136, 148, 197
Harrington, M. 173 Ludemann, P. 111
Hart, D. 54, 73, 118, 129, 134, 135, 213 Lyman, I. 21
Harter, S. 118, 129, 130, 198, 203
Hartman, H. 93 MacIntyre, A. 120
Hartshorne, H. 125127 Madden, T. 11
Hasebe, Y. 71 Mahapatra, M. 53
Helwig, C. 8 Mahler, M. S. 5456
Hermans, H. 55 Mancuso, J. 121
Higgins, A. 81, 125, 151, 158, 177 Marsh, H. W . 130
Hildebrandt, C. 104 Martin, G. B. 111
Hoffman, M. L. 115, 116, 136 Masterson, J. 55
Hollos, M. 12, 95 May, M. A. 125127
Howe, L. 20 Mckay, N. Y. 180
Metz, M. H. 143
Illich, I. 74 Milgram, S. 96
Izard, C. 111 Miller, J. 53, 203
index of names 239
Milnitsky Sapiro, C 65, 67. Shields, D. L. 150

Mischel, W. 126 Shweder, R. A. 11, 12, 14, 16, 53, 95, 98,
Moore, G. E.. 120 100, 102, 105, 114
Morris, D. 110 Simon, S. 20
Mowrey, J. 209 Skinner, B. F. 5, 198
Much, N. 14, 16 Slomkowski, C. 16
Mullener, N. 130 Smetana, J. G. 8, 11, 16, 17, 60, 61, 63,
Munn, P. 16 6771, 77, 159, 164, 165
Smith, I. D. 130
Nelson, C. 111 Snarey, J. 93, 95, 96
Nicholls, J. 144, 149, 179, 198, 199, 203 Sodian, B. 117, 118
Nielsen, K. 43 Solomon, D. 121
Nisan, M. 13, 95 Solomon, R. C. 121
Nisbett, R. M. 126 Song, M. J. 12
Noam, G. 135137, 197, 212 Spiro, M. 55
Nucci, L. 8, 11, 13, 14, 1618, 21, 26, 55, 57, Statuto, C. 143
59, 61, 64, 65, 67, 7072, 79, 80, 93, 95, Staub, E. 87
114, 130, 134, 135, 142, 145147, 153, Stegge, H. 115
157159, 161, 162, 170, 182, 193, 203 Stern, D. 55, 56
Nucci, M. S. 14, 17, 18, 71, 147, 153, Sternberg, C. 111
157159, 161, 162 Stipek, D. 57
Nunner-Winkler, G. 117, 118, 122 Subbotsky, E. V. 196
Nussbaum, M. 117, 120, 121
Thorkildsen, T. A. 144, 167
Ogbu, J. 166 Tisak, J. 193
Okin, S. 77, 98, 99, 193 Tisak, M. 8, 23, 69, 193
Oser, F. 158, 177 Triandis, H. C. 64, 98
Tugendhat, E. 115
Park, K. 193 Turiel, E. 8792, 97, 99, 100, 104,
Patnoe, S. 150, 177 143147,165, 171, 191
Peck, R. 143
Pepper, F. C. 198 van Loon, R. 55
Pettengill, S. M. 62, 63 Vedar-Voivodas, G. 143
Piaget, J. 8, 17, 52, 7274, 76, 82, 87, 108, Veldman, D. 143
109, 119, 153, 174, 200
Ping, C. C. 63 Wainryb, C. 53, 67, 99, 100, 103, 104, 144
Pintrich, P. R. 144 Waal, de F. B. M. 110
Plutchik, R. 111 Wakenhut, R. 93
Power, C. 81, 125, 128, 131, 133, 134, 151, Walker, L. 93
158, 177, 203 Walton, M. D. 14
Pugh, G. E. 108, 109 Weber, E. 16, 57, 59, 61, 79, 93, 145, 170
Weiss, L. 108
Radke-Yarrow, M. 116 Weston, D. 143, 144
Rest, J. 81, 171 Wiggins, G. 121, 122
Rohner, R. P. 62, 63 Willis, P. 166
Rosenberg, M. 130 Wilson, J. Q. 13, 136
Ross, H. 16 Wright, R. 110
Ross, L. 126 Wynne, E. 8, 53, 74, 125, 127, 142, 206
Ryan, K. 6, 8, 74, 125, 127, 128
Yates, M. 213
Sampson, E. E. 53, 55 Yau, J. 63, 68, 99
Sapiro, C. 64 Youniss, J. 153, 213
Sarbin, T R. 64
Schlegel, A. 70 Zahn-Waxler, C. 116
Schunk, D. 210 Zajonc, R. 111
Sedlak, A. 14 Zan, B. 154, 160, 163, 173, 197, 198, 200,
Searle, J. R. 7 201
Selman, R. 54 Zimiles, H. 108
Index of Subjects
adolescent-parent conflict 6872; and autonomy 197, 198; and uses of group
culture 70; and family patterns 7071 discussion 201202
aggression: in childhood 119, 120; among domain appropriate curriculum: and
urban adolescents 122 assessment issues 191192; and
anger expressed by parents and teachers: controversial issues, approaches to
effects on young children 116, 148 193194; and conventions, focusing
Aristotle and virtue, habit, and justice 127 upon 180183; constructing lessons
autonomy 52; and the individual 54 within 178179; core assumptions of
170; and mixed domain issues, focusing
Bush, George Sr. 52, 68 upon 186191; and moral issues,
focusing upon 183186; purposes of
character: defined 124; limitations of 169170
traditional conceptualization of 125128 domain interactions: as domain mixture
Character Counts Coalition 150; program 77; forms of response to 7778; as
199 second order moral events 77
character education: bandwagon 128; drug use and social judgments 70
generalists 127; limits of traditional Druze Arabs and gender in relation to
approach to 129 rights and duties among 98100
Child Development Project 173, 197, 213 Dutch Reform Calvinists 43, 44
collectivism-individualism dichotomy 52,
53, 64, 72 emotion: and culture 120122; and
communicative discourse 174175, 177 cognition 107109; displays of in infancy
comprehensive high school 150151 110111; evolution of and morality
conventions in schools and classrooms: 110112; and gender 121, 122; as
and adolescent students 164167; and heuristic guide to action 108109; and
early childhood students 159160; and moral habits 116; and moral judgment
middle-childhood students 164 120; morality and convention in relation
culture: conflicts within 98; and emotion to 112116; and motivation 108
120122; gender and rights and duties emotional development and morality
in relation to 99101; and morality and 118120
convention 9496; and the personal emotivism 120
domain 54, 6467 empathy 111115
expiatory punishment 200201
Defining Issues Test (DIT) 171 eudaimonia 133
deontic and aretaic judgments 124 Euthyphro dialogue 43
developmental discipline: and logical external rewards and moral motivation
consequences to misbehavior 201; and 196, 198
praise, validating versus controlling
198200, 203; and responses to positive factual assumptions and moral judgments
behaviors 198200; in support of moral 101104
240
index of subjects 241
fairness of academic practices, student morality-convention distinction: criteria

perceptions of 167 for 910; and culture 1113; and
First Class program 166 formalist ethics 9; and social class 13;
formalist ethics 6 social interaction origins of 1318; at
young ages 11
happy victimizer phenomenon 113,
117119; and aggressive children 119; NBC News Poll of beliefs of Catholics 23
and emotional development 119
Hartshorne and May studies of character parenting styles 62; and culture 6263
125 personal domain: and adolescent-parent
Hegel 28 conflict 6872; and adolescent
pathology 71; and culture 54, 6467;
Judaism: the enlightenment and 28; and defined 54; and identity and
laws of man and laws of God individuality 54; mother-child
distinction 39; and the orthodox-reform interactions and 5661; psychological
schism 28 need for 55, 72, 74; and rights concepts
Just Community School 151, 158, 194 7274; and social class 6467, 70, 71
personality traits, contemporary view of
Kohlberg stages of moral development: A 126
and B types of 81, 90; limitations of Pope John Paul II 77
8082; reconceptualized 8293 prudential issues 69, 70
Malcolm X 185 religion: and the First amendment 20; and

Martin Luther King Jr. 156, 185, 208 home schooling 21; and public schools
Mennonites/Amish 2627 20, 21, 51; and separation of church and
Meno, The 138 state 20
Milgram studies of obedience; and religious norms and morality: among
domain overlap 9697; and moral Catholics 2126; among Christians
judgment 96 2933; among Jews 2933; and
moral conflict resolution in schools: in judgments of alterability 30, 31; and
adolescence 157159; in early childhood judgments of Gods word contingency
152154; in middle childhood 155157 33; and judgments of universality 3133
moral development, levels of: in role models: classroom uses for fostering
adolescence and adulthood 9193; in the moral self 207210; limitations of
early childhood 8687; in middle- 207; in literature 207298
childhood 8788; in pre-adolescence
8991 school climate: and competition 150; in
Moral domain: defined 7; and formalist early childhood 148149; in middle
ethics 6 childhood 149150; and size of
moral education: inherent controversy of American high schools 150151
104105; teachers role in 105106 school rules: and domain appropriate
moral self 128, 131133; in adolescence practice 143148; and the hidden
134136; and behavior 134135; and curriculum 142; and the personal
early childhood classroom practices domain 164165; and school culture
197; early childhood antecedents of 141142; and teacher authority 143145
133134; ideal and dreaded forms of self: and culture 55; and the personal
134; resistance to being good and domain 55
formation of 205206; summary of the self concepts: development of 129; and
development of 137138 school achievement 130
moral self reflection: limitations of service learning: features of successful
210211; through classroom activities programs 213214; impact on behavior
211212; through use of personal 213; negative reactions to 206
journals 211 Seurat, G. 215
morality: of care 121; and Gods word 42, Small Schools Workshop 151
4649; innate sense of 13; and judgment social convention: defined 6; and morality
25; and personal freedom 52, 53, 72; 1417
traditional view of 8 social hierarchy and morality 97101
242 index of subjects
sociomoral discussion: in classrooms childhood 16; at home 16; in middle

177178; educational value of 173; childhood 14, 15, 17; responses by
exercises for 175177; and the plus-one adults 1618; responses by children
assumption 174; transactive form of 174 1416; at school 16, 161166; in
Socrates 138 toddlers 16
Spinoza 28
values clarification 20
terrible twos 56
transgressions, moral and conventional: in will, the problem of: and disciplinary
adolescence 18; and domain practices 200; and moral action 119
appropriate feedback 146147; in early William James 54

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Education in the Moral Domain

Larry P. Nucci is Professor of Education and Psychology at the University of

Cambridge University Press 2001

First published in printed format 2001

A catalogue record for the original printed book is available

ISBN 0 511 01298 5 virtual (eBooks.com Edition)

Foreword by Elliot Turiel page ix

PART ONE . THE NATURE OF MORALITY AND THE

1 Morality and Domains of Social Knowledge 3

PART TWO . CLASSROOM APPLICATIONS

8 Creating a Moral Atmosphere 141

Additional Resources 217

Engaging in education in the moral domain is hard to fault. Almost every-

ond was that Durkheim failed to recognize that development involves,

rooted in understandings of justice, rights, equal consideration of per-

What Kohlberg meant by speaking to the nature of virtue is that it is

appropriate methods and want to make a good storm trooper, then it is

opment. An arena of personal jurisdiction is part of an individuals social

A number of scholars have read and commented on chapters or on drafts

Few areas of education are as central to the purposes of public schooling

vides an overview of the research evidence gathered within the United

contribution provides a new way to look at the developmental aims of

The educational practices introduced are designed to stimulate stu-

The Nature of Morality and the Development

Morality and Domains of Social Knowledge

In my education classes, I often start off by asking students to state what

Generally, my students accept this scenario as a rather dramatic in-

and wrong. Conduct is moral if it involves selection of particular courses

identifying the moral domain

apparent that morality is a domain apart from knowledge of other social

Within the domain theory of social development, morality refers to

lustrated by the following example (collected in the U.S. Virgin Islands

As I stated earlier, the distinction between morality and nonmoral

research on the moral and conventional domains

Studies of the MoralConventional Distinction

Rule contingency: Does the wrongness of a given action depend upon

refer to the philosophical criterion that a moral norm be prescriptive. Rule

ity of people to make these domain distinctions. The youngest age at

Origins of the Childs Construction of Morality and Convention

settings, for example, we discovered that middle-class suburban children

As can be seen in these examples, the social experiences of children dif-

my mother.) or by ignoring the respondent and continuing to engage in

tions (Raise your hand before talking.), as well as statements labeling

Morality and Religious Rules

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To at-

One question frequently asked by those concerned with moral or charac-

such concerns by withdrawing their children from public schools and, in

morality and religious norms as seen by catholics

be pointed out that nonmoral religious prescriptions are not, strictly

to rate moral transgressions as more serious than violations of convention

TABLE 2.1. Percentages of High School and University Catholics

Would it be wrong or Suppose that another

TABLE 2.1 (continued)

Would it be wrong or Suppose that another

morality and religious norms as seen by