Handbook of Moral Behavior and Development. Volumen 1: Theory

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Handbook of Moral Behavior and Development. Volumen 1: Theory

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HANDBOOK OF MORAL BEHAVIOR AND DE VELOPMENT Volume 1: Theory

Edited by

WILLIAM M. KURTINES JACOB L. GEWIRTZ Florida International University

Im 1991

LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUB LISHERS Hillsdale , New Jersey Hove and London

Copyright 1 99 1 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates , Inc . All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form , by photostat, microform , retrieval system, or any other means without the prior written permission of the publisher. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates , Inc. , Publishers 365 Broadway Hillsdale, New Jersey 07642

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Handbook of moral behavior and development I edited by William M . Kurtines, Jacob L. Gewirtz. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index . Contents: v. 1 . Theory - v. 2. Research - v. 3. Application. ISBN 0-8058-0206- 1 (set). - ISBN 0-805 8-08 80-9 (v. I) -ISBN 0-8058-088 1 -7 (v. 2). - ISBN 0-805 8-0882-5 (v. 3) 1 . Moral development. 2 . Ethics . 3. Moral education . I . Kurtines , William M. II. Gewirtz , Jacob L . , l 924BF723 . M54H35 1 99 1 1 55 . 2 ' 5-dc20 9 1 - 1 3908 CIP

Co n te n ts

xi

Preface to Handbook Editorial Advisory Board Preface to Volume 1

xiii

xvii

Contributors' Biographies

xix

Prologue-Lawrence Kohlberg's Life and Work from the Vantage of a Long-time Friend and Colleague: A Memoir

1

Jacob L. Gewirtz The Cognitive- Developmental Paradigm

7

Rheta De Vries A Few Words in Commemoration of Lawrence Kohlberg

13

Wolfgang Edelstein The Kohlberg Legacy to Friends

15

Usa Kuhmerker Lawrence Kohlberg 1927-1987

21

Gil G. Noam and Maryanne Wolf Lawrence Koh Iberg: The Vocation of a Moral Psychologist and Educator. Part I

25

Clark Power Lawrence Kohlberg: The Vocation of a Moral Psychologist and Educator. Part I I

35

Ann Higgins v

VI

1.

CO NTE N TS Social Cognitive Theory of Moral Thought and Action

45

Albert Bandura Abstract

45

Stage Theories of Moral Reasoning

47

Hierarchical Moral Superiority

46

, ·.

Prescriptive Ambiguity of Abstract

50

Principles

Sequential Typologies and Multifaceted

51

Moral Judgment

Developmental Changes in Moral

52

Judgment

56

Familial and Social Transmission Models Multifaceted Nature of Moral Judgment

58

and Action

Social Change of the Moral Standards of Stage

59

Theories

Cognitive Conflict as an Automotivator

61

Moral Judgment as Application of Multidimensional Rules

64

Relation Between Moral Reasoning and Conduct

67

Conception of Moral Agency in Terms of SelfRegulatory Mechanisms

68

Interplay of Personal and Social

70

Sanctions

Selective Activation and Disengagement of

71

Moral Control

96

References

2.

Which Comes First, Morality or Identity? Philip Davidson and James Youniss Abstract

105 107

Piaget's Analysis

Cognitive Modalities and Identity Formation

112

Implications for a Theory of Moral

118

Development References

120

105

CONTE N TS 3.

VI I

123

The Moral Development of Forgiveness Robert D. Enright and the Human Development Study Group Abstract

123 124

Forgiveness Defined

131

Philosophical Objections to Interpersonal Forgiveness The Moral Justification of Forgiveness The Problem of Pseudo-Forgiveness

134 134

The Cognitive Developmental Model of Forgiveness

138

The Processes of Forgiving Another Person

A Synthesis of the Stage and Processing Models Some Final Thoughts on Intervention References

4.

135 146

147

148

Proximal Mecha11isms Underlying the Acquisition of 153

Moral Behavior Patterns Jacob L. Gewirtz and Martha Pelaez-Nogueras

153 154 Introduction

Abstract

Cognitive- Developmental and Social-Conditioning

156 160

Approaches to Moral Behavior Contrasted Origins of and Influences on Moral Behavior Rule-Governed Behavior

166 169

Children's Moral Behavior as Rule-Governed On Reasoning and Judgments

174

From Moral Judgment to Moral Action

176

178 178 References Epilogue

5.

Toward an Integration of Kohlberg's and Hoffman's Theories of Morality

183

John C. Gibbs Abstract

183

Moral Development and Moral Motivation: Kohlbergian Theory

185

Moral Development and Moral Motivation: Hoffman's Theory Toward an Integration

199 207

Concluding Comment: Internal Morality in Cross-Cultural and Historical Contexts References

217

213

VI I I

6.

CO N TE N TS Moral Theory and Culture: The Case of Gender

223

Helen Haste and Jane Baddeley Abstract

223

Universals and Group Differences: ·.

226 The Nature of Culture 229 Gender as Culture 232 Arriving at Culture

235

Moral Theory, Social Theory, and Culture The Public Domain: The Political, the Social,

241 244 247

and the Self Conclusions References

7.

Moral Development and Action from a Social Constructivist Perspective

251

Norma Haan

251 Introduction 252

Abstract

lnteractional Morality

254 262

Morally Neutral Strategies

Test Areas for lnteractional Morality

263

Common but Confounding Moral Phenomena A Final Word References

8.

271 272 273

Empathy, Social Cognition, and Moral Action Martin L. Hoffman Abstract

275

Development of Empathy

277 285

Empathic Arousal in Moral Encounters Empathy and Moral Judgment Empathy and Moral Principles

286 289

Moral Principles as Hot Cognitions

293

Empathy, Moral Judgment, and Principle Summary References

297 299

295

275

CONTE N TS 9.

IX

Social and Moral Development from the Perspective 303

of Psychosocial Theory William M. Kurtines, Ellen Mayock, Steven R. Pollard, Teresita Lanza, and Gustavo Carlo Abstract

303

Part I-Psychosocial Development:

304

Theory

Psychosocial Role Theory Psychosocial Development Developn1ent and Beyond

306 308 312

Part I I-Psychosocial Development:

315

Research

The Reconstruction of Sociomoral Knowledge The Co-construction of Sociomoral Knowledge

315 322

Co-constructive Research on the Ontogenesis of Sociomoral Knowledge

331 332

Conclusion References

10.

323

Analytic Hermeneutics and the Study of Morality in Action Martin J. Packer and Ellen Richardson Abstract

335

Understanding Comes Through Participation

338

Research Should be Conducted in Everyday Settings

339

Action Must be Fixed Before it Can be Studied

340

Interpretive Analysis is Guided by the

343 Coding Schemes Misrepresent Action 346 Fore-Structure of Understanding

Interpretive Analysis Builds an Account of a Specific Case

350

Going Beyond the Individual Case: Comparison, Not Aggregation Conclusion References

368 369

367

335

X

11.

CONTE N TS Toward the Redevelopment of Kohlberg's Theory: Preserving Essential Structure, Removing Controversial Content

373

Bill Puka

373

Abstract

373

Philosophical Partisanship End- Points/Top-Down/Stage Concluding Remarks

6 and Justice

380

390

390 391

References Appendix A

12.

·.

In a Gemeinschaft Voice: The Cross-Cultural Expansion of Moral Development Theory

395

John Snarey and Kurt Keljo Abstract

395

Theoretical Perspective

396

Review Questions and Method

402

403 417 Discussion 421 References

Results

13.

Psychological and Cultural Origins of Extreme Destructiveness and Extreme Altruism Ervin Staub

425 443 References

Abstract

Author Index Subject Index

447 459

425

P reface to H a n d book

The literature on moral behavior and development, on pro- and anti-social be­ havior, and on moral and character education has grown enormously in recent years . Work has proliferated and the area continues to attract a broad range of interests and activities . The field has thus emerged as a continuing , separate , substantive area of scholarly and research interest. Yet , despite this substantial interest in the area and the emergence of a substantial body of data, there exists currently no single source of information on developments in the field . The Handbook of Moral Behavior and Development is designed to provide re­ searchers and professionals in the area of moral behavior and development with a central source of state-of-the-art information in the field . The aim of the Handbook is to advance work in the area of moral behavior and development by facilitating the dissemination of know ledge and information in theory, research , and application . By bringing together in one place representa­ tive writings of prominent scholars , researchers , and professionals in the area, the Handbook provides a central source of information about the most important developments that have taken place . Progress in the field will be facilitated by a focal source of information that encompasses a broad range of theoretical , em­ pirical , and practical issues , and that bridges the many gaps in and among theory, research , and application . The central source of information that this Handbook constitutes provides a means for the exchange of information and ideas among the diverse theoretical perspectives , research methods , and areas of applied interest that have emerged . In addition to meeting the need for a central source of information on ad­ vances in the field , the Handbook also seeks to bridge the gap between theory, research , and application . A critical feature of the Handbook is that it includes XI

XI I

PR E FACE TO HAN D BOOK

separate volumes that review developments in theory, research , and application . By bringing together in one place work on diverse topics , the Handbook will foster a mutually beneficial exchange not only between alternative approaches and perspectives , but also between "applied" and "pure" research interests . Be­ cause the contributors to the volumes in ' the Handbook are active theorists , researchers , and practitioners , it will also serve to define directions that will shape the emerging literature in the field. The Handbook consists of three volumes . Because one of the aims of the Handbook is to bridge the gap between theorists , researchers , and practitioners , each volume focuses on a separate topic-Volume 1 : Theory, Volume 2: Re­ search , and Volume 3: Application.

E D ITO R IAL ADV I S O RY BOA R D

The international Editorial Advisory Board for the Handbook included distin­ guished members representing diverse theoretical perspectives and orientations as well as of expertise in various research and applied areas . The topics and issues included in the Handbook were selected by the Editors in consultation with members of the Editorial Advisory Board. The goal was to assemble for each volume a range of works representative of current topics and issues by scholars and professionals active in the areas to be represented . The Handbook would not have been possible without the cooperation and assistance of the members of the editorial advisory board whose effort and input helped to make the series possible . We also wish to thank friends and colleagues who provided support and encouragement, the editorial staff of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates , and others whose contribution at various stages were instru­ mental in its successful completion. In view of recent events we have dedicated the first edition of the Handbook to the life and work of the late Lawrence Kohlberg . To this end , the prologue to the first volume is made up of personal observations from his colleagues on his life and work. William M . Kurtin es Jacob L . Gewirtz

Ed i to r i a l Ad v i so ry B o a rd

Canada D wight R. Boyd , Ontario Institute for Studies in Education , Toronto Charles Levine, University of Weste1n Ontario Ken Rotenberg, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay Lawrence Walker, University of British Columbia Germany Wolfgang Edelstein, Max-Planck Institut for Human Development and Education , Berlin Jurgen Habermas, University of Frankfurt Monika Keller, Max-Planck-Institute for Human Development and Education , Berlin Georg Lind, Universitat Konstanz Gertrude Nooner-Winkler, Max-Planck-Institute for Psychological Research , Starnberg Israel Daniel Bar-Tai, Tel Aviv University Mordecai Nisan, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Japan Takakazu Furuhata, Tokyo University Nobumichi Iwasa, Institute of Moralogy, Reitaku University Fumiyuki Ohnishi, Niigata University XII I

XIV

E D I TO R IAL ADVISORY BOARD

Latin America Angela Biaggio, Universidade Federal Do Rio Grade Do Sul , Curso De Pos-Graduacao Em Educacao , Brazil The Netherlands Marinos van Uendoorn, University of Leiden Spain Maria-Jose Diaz-Aquado, Universidad C01nplutense de Madrid , Madrid Switzerland Fritz Oser, University of Fribourg Wolfgang Althof, University of Fribourg United Kingdom Nicholas Emler, University of Dundee Helen Weinreich-Haste, University of Bath Monica J. Taylor, National Foundation for Education Research , London United States Albert Bandura, Stanford University Diana Baumrind, University of California, Berkeley Marvin W. Berkowitz, Marquette University Augusto Blasi, University of Massachusetts , Boston Mary Brabeck, Boston College Roger V. Burton, State University of New York, Buffalo Michael Commons, Harvard University Medical School Rheta DeVries, University of Houston Richard Dienstbier, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Nancy Eisenberg, Arizona State University Paul Ekman, University of California , San Francisco Robert Enright, University of Wisconsin-Madison Donelson Forsyth, Virginia Commonwealth University John C . Gibbs, The Ohio State University Carol Gilligan, Harvard University Norma Haan, University of California , Berkeley Ann Higgins, Harvard University

E D ITO R IAL ADV I S O RY BOA R D

Martin L. Hoffman, New York University Robert Hogan, University of Tulsa Raymond Hummel, University of Pittsburgh Lawrence Kohlberg, Harvard University Lisa Kuhmerker, Harvard University Thomas Lickona, State University of New York at Cortland Walter Mischel, Columbia University Gil Noam, Harvard University Larry Nucci, University of Illinois at Chicago Martin J. Packer, University of California, Berkeley Clark Power, University of Notre Dame Bill Puka, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute James Rest, University of Minnesota Kevin Ryan, Boston l}niversity Robert Selman, Harvard University Richard A. Shweder, University of Chicago Judith G. Smetan a, University of Rochester John Snarey, Emory University Ervin Staub, University of Massachusetts , Amherst Elliot Turiel, University of California, Berkeley Alan Waterman, Trenton State University Marilyn Watson, Developmental Study Center, San Ramon , Californiaa Thomas Wren, Loyola University of Chicago James Youniss, Catholic University of America Carolyn Zahn-Waxler, National Institute of Mental Health

XV

·.

P reface to Volume 1: Theory

Volume 1 of the Handbook of Moral Behavior and Development contains chap­ ters that present current and ongoing theoretical advances prepared by theorists representative of diverse perspectives . The focus of this volume is on new the­ oretical developments or substantive refinements and/ or revisions to existing theoretical frameworks .

XVII

"

·.

Co n tr i b uto rs' B i og ra p h i es

Jane Baddeley worked with Helen Haste on the project reported in the chapter she coauthored . Her current research is on women and the right. Albert Bandura is David Starr Jordan Professor of Social Science in Psychology at Stanford University, Stanford , California . He received his doctorate in psychology from the University of Iowa . He has written extensively on social learning . His current major interest is in the development of social-cognitive theory. He is the author of a number of books , including his most recent publication , Social Foundations of Thought

and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Gustavo Carlo is a doctoral student in developmental psychology at Arizona State Uni­ versity, Tempe , Arizona . His research interests are in the areas of social and moral development, especially the role of empathy and role taking in moral functioning . Philip Davidson is an assistant professor in psychology and a member of the Life Cycle Institute at the Catholic University of America . He received his doctorate in psychology from the University of California , Berkeley in 1 983 . His research interests include moral , social , cognitive , and family development . Rheta De Vries is professor of human development and director of the Human Develop­ ment Laboratory School at the University of Houston, Houston , Texas . Her publica­ tions include studies of children 's cognitive development and social-role taking , and stages in children's conceptions of shadow phenomena. With Lawrence Kohlberg , she has written on relations between Piagetian and psychometric conceptions of intelligence

and Programs of Early Education: The Constructivist View. With Kamii , she has written Physical Knowledge in Preschool Education and Group Games in Early Educa­ tion: Implications of Piaget's Theory. Her recent research compares sociomoral compeXIX

XX

C O N TR I B U TORS' B I OG RAPH I E S �

tence in children in Montessori and constructivist preschool programs , as well as sociomoral competence and relations to classroom atmosphere of kindergarten children in DISTAR , constructivist, and academic child-centered public school classrooms . Robert Enright is professor of educational psy chology at the University of Wisconsin­ Madison , Madison , Wisconsin . He received his doctorate in educational psychology at the University of Minnesota . His theory and research contributions have been in dis­ tributive justice development and social development in adolescence . He is currently working on the moral development of forgiveness . Wolfgang Edelstein is director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education , Berlin . He received his doctorate in Linguistics , Latin and English Litera­ ture from the University of Heidelberg in 1 962 . His research focus is on cognitive and sociomoral developmeni. His publications have been in German , English and Icelandic . Jacob L. Gewirtz is professor of psychology at Florida International University, Miami , Florida , and professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the University of Miami Medical School . He received his doctorate in developmental and experimental psychology from the University of Iowa. Dr. Gewirtz's theoretical and research contributions have been on the topics of social learning and development including attachment acquisition and los s , imitation/ identification , parent-child interaction and directions of influence , and the behavioral effects of shift in maintaining environments . He has edited Attachment

and Dependency and co-edited (with W. Kurtines) Morality, Moral Behavior and Moral Development, Moral Development Through Social Interaction, and Intersections with Attachment. John Gibbs is associate professor of psychology at the Ohio State University, Columbus , Ohio . He received his doctorate in social psychology (with a minor in cognitive devel­ opment) from Harvard University. His work in sociomoral development has concerned assessment methods , theory, and interventions with conduct-disordered adolescents . He

has authored (with Keith Widman) Social Intelligence: Measuring the Development of Sociomoral Reflection and (with Karen Basinger and Richard Fuller) Moral Maturity

Measuring the Development of Sociomoral Reflection. The late Norma Haan had been a research psychologist in the Institute of Human Development, University of California, Berkeley. She received her doctorate in devel­ opmental psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology, San Fran­ cisco . Her major research interests centered on rrmrality, stress , coping and the life span . Dr. Haan's books include Coping and Defending: Processes of Self-Environment Organization, Social Science as Moral Inquiry (with R . Bellah , P. Rabinow and W. Sullivan) and On Moral Groups: The Search for Practical Morality (with E . Aerts and B . Cooper). Helen Haste, Ph . D . , 1s m the School of Social Sciences at the University of Bath , England . Her research fields are in the development of values and beliefs in adolescents and young adults , and she has concentrated on moral , political and social understand-

CONTR I B UTO R S ' B I OG RAPH I E S

XXI

ing , and on the effect of gender on cultural definitions and categories . She is the author of numerous articles in these fields and has edited , with Jerome Bruner, Making Sense; The Child's Construction of the World: (Methuen , 1 987). She is currently completing The Sexual Metaphor, an account of cultural changes in the meaning of gender, and a book on feminism and the hew right. Martin L. Hoffman is professor and chairman of the department of psychology at New York University, New York , New York . He received his doctorate in social psychology from the University of Michigan. Dr. Hoffman's theoretical and research contributions have been on the topics of moral development, empathy, the effects of parental disci­ pline practices , and the integration of affect and cognition. He has edited Psychological Review, Developmental Psychology, and the Merrill-Palmer Quarterly. Kurt Keljo is research associate at the Center for Research in Faith and Moral Develop­ ment, and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Theology and Personality at Emory

University. His interests are in moral development, community development, and high.,. er education . Lisa Kuhmerker is the publisher and editor of the Moral Education Forum and the f_ounder of the Association for Moral Education. She received her doctorate in psychol­ ogy and education from Yale University. She is professor emeritus of education at Hunter College , City University of New York and a visiting scholar at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education . William M. Kurtines is professor of psychology at Florida International University, Miami , Florida . He received his doctorate in psychology from The Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Kurtines' current areas of interest include social , personality, and moral development. He co-edited (with J. L . Gewirtz) Morality, Moral Behavior and Moral Development and Moral Development through Social Interaction, and Intersections

with Attachment. Teresita Lanza is a mental health clinician with the psychology department at Newington Children 's Hospital School at East Hartford, Connecticut. She received her masters degree in human development from Harvard University in 1 987 . Her interests include clinical and developmental psychology. Ellen Mayock is a student of anthropology at Florida International University, Miami. Her interests include moral development and the influence of culture on social and personality development. Gil Noam directs a research department at Harvard Medical School and the Hall-Mercer Children's Center of McLean Hospital . He is the co-founder of the Clinical­ Developmental Institute in Belmont, Massachusetts . He received degrees in clinical psychology from the Free University of Berlin in 1 975 and in human development in 1 984 from Harvard University. His research interests include developmental psycho­ pathology, socio-emotional and self-development in adolescence and through the life span .

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C O N TR I B UTO RS' B I O G RAPH I E S

Martin Packer i s lecturer i n the Division o f Social and Cultural Studies in Education , Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley, California, and a research scientist at Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development. The Division of Social and Cultural Studies is an interdisciplinary graduate program that views the study of education as being, at its broadest, the study of sociocultural reproduc­ tion and transformation. Education extends far beyond the confines of institutions that formally specialize in the production of learning; and learning, not teaching, is the basic phenomenon at the heart of education . Far West Laboratory is a public , non-profit agency that has focused on the design , development, and evaluation of learning systems , and on the problems and processes of communicating the results of inquiry to help solve signifi­ cant educational , organizational , and societal problems . Dr. Packer is author of Moral Action : The Hermeneutic Analysis ofMoral Conflict, and co-editor, with Dr. Richard B . Addison, of Entering the Circle: Hermeneutic Investigation in Psychology. Martha Palez-Nogueras is a doctoral student in life-span developmental psychology at Florida International University, Miami , Florida. Her interests are the experimental

analysis of behavior in general and the development of attachment behaviors in partic­ ular. Steven Pollard is a doctoral student in life-span developmental psychology at Florida International University, Miami , Florida. His interests are social and personality devel­ opment in general , and moral and communicative development in particular. Clark Power is associate professor in the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame and former President of the Association for Moral Education . He did his doctoral work in moral development and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education . His research focuses on democratic education and the relationship of moral development to school culture . He is principle author of Lawrence Koh/berg's Ap­

proach to Moral Education and co-editor of Self, Ego, and Identity: Integrative Ap­ proaches. He is currently editing a book on pluralism and moral education . Bill Puka is associate professor of philosophy at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York. He received his doctorate in ethics and clinical-developmental psychology from Harvard University. His publications in moral development focus on the compara­

tive , theoretical interpretation of research data and on the integration of fairness con­ cepts with precepts of benevolence or "caring. " As a congressional fellow, he applied this integrated , "right mix" ethic to urban revitalization policy and workplace democra­ cy, formulating legislation that was introduced in the U. S . Congress . Ellen Richardson is a doctoral student in development psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, California. Her interests include attachment theory, object rela­ tions , emotions , and the development of self, and her research concerns the fantasy play of preschool children , and clinical infant research and intervention . John Snarey is associate professor of ethics and human development, adjunct associate professor of psychology, and associate director of the Center for Research in Faith and

CONTR I BUTO R S' BI O G RAPH I E S

XXlll

Moral Development, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. He received his doctorate in human development from Harvard University in 1 982 . His interests include the devel­ opment of moral reasoning about the social and natural environments , family studies and human development, and cross-cultural research methods . He is coeditor of Con­

flict and Continuity : A History of Ideas on Social Equality and Human Development and Remembrances of Lawrence Kohlberg. Ervin Staub is professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts , Amherst , Massachusetts . He has conducted research and published articles on the social , person­ ality, and developmental origins and cmrelates of helping and altruism and wrote a two volume book on the subject, Positive Social Behavior and Morality. Violence is an additional , more recent focus of his work . His book , The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group V iolence ( 1 989) also explores the origins of war and tor­ ture , and ways to create caring and nonaggressive persons and societies . He also edited Personality: Basic Issue and Current Research, and co-edited Development and Main­ tenance of Prosocial Behavior: International Perspectives on Positive !..torality and So­

cial and Moral Values: Individual and Societal Perspectives Maryanne Wolf is associate professor of child study at Tufts University. She received her doctorate in human development from Harvard University in 1 979. Her research pro­ gram bridges deveJopmental psychology and neurosciences , and disorders of language and reading . She has published widely on her longitudinal neurolinguistic research . James Youniss is professor of psychology in Department of Psychology and director of the Life Cycle Institute at the Catholic University of America, where he received his doctorate . He is author of a number of books including , Parents and Peers in Social Development and Adolescents' Relations With Mothers, Fathers, and Friends.

·.

P ro l og u e Law re n ce Ko h l be rg' s L i fe a n d Wo rk fro m t h e Va n tage of a Lo n g-ti m e F r i e n d a n d Co l l eag u e : A M e m o i r

Ja cob L. G ewirtz

Many of the readers of this volume are familiar with Larry Kohl berg the person . Many more are familiar with arrays of Larry Kohlberg' s seminal contributions through the years to theory and application in the fields of psychology , philoso­ phy , and education . In this memoir, I shall mention some lesser known featu res of the development of Larry' s thinking , and of Larry the person , from his days in the university . Surely we are all familiar with Larry' s most influential theories and re­ searches . These include his stage theory of moral development and its applica­ tions, involving the just c'ommunity theory and the intervention projects gener­ ated by it; his theory of moral attachment; his cognitive-developmental theory of psychological development; his theory of gender identity and the identification process ; and his approach to early childhood education . Because of this audience' s certain familiarity with these contributions , I think it best in this memoir to share with you briefly some observations and memories of a long-time friend , of Larry' s habits and life-style from the time he was in college , that contributed to his behavior as friend and as colleague , and that can provide insights into his most productive and meaningful life . Larry showed a pattern of openness and breadth of interests early on as a student at the University of Chicago . As an undergraduate , he took courses with Henry Sams and Alan Gewirth (well before the appearance of the latter' s major work on ethics and morality) . As a graduate student in psychology , he worked with the developmental psychologist Helen Koch , with the philosopher Charles Morris (who introduced him to the symbolic-interactionist thought of George Herbert Mead) , with W illiam Stephenson (Q Technique and research design) , with me (behaviorism, social learning , and empirical child research) , and with 1

2

G EW I RTZ �

the sociologists Nelson Foote and Anselm Strauss (who blended Mead' s symbolic interactionism with cognitive structures) . In addition, Larry learned clinical theory and procedures from Bruno Bettleheim, Carl Rogers , David Shakow , Sam Beck, and others . He also studied ad�lt development with B ernice Neu­ _ garten and Bob Havighurst . Finally , Larry learned much during these important formative years from his personal psychoanalysis , upon which he embarked during the same period. Even so , like his brilliant, principled, fiercely independent , and articulate father, and like his resourceful , inventive , and strong mother, Larry was essen­ tially self-taught , particularly in the area of much of his later work on morality , moral behavior, and moral development , and his search for universal justice. As an undergraduate , he became interested in the great philosophers of the moral tradition, from Socrates , Plato and Aristotle to Kant , John Stuart Mill , and Dewey; and in Durkheim ( 1 925 / 1 973) . He was instrumental in bringing Durk­ heim' s thinking to the attention of the contemporary psychological community . Of particular concern to this audience, Larry' s interests led him , in the early 1 950s , to read widely. In this reading, his emphasis came to focus on the process of moral reasoning or ' 'moralization' ' as emphasized by such late 1 9th- and early 20th-century psychological thinkers as James Mark Baldwin , George Herbert Mead, and William McDougall . With this conceptual focus on moral reasoning more than on actual moral-behavior outcomes , Larry' s thinking went against the grain of the mainstream American psychology of the period. Thu s , his downplay of behavior outcome may have led, as a corollary, to his downplay of behavior consequences (reward and punishment contingencies) of the behavior theorists . And while he was interested in internal structures as theoretical conceptions , Larry also found little utility in Freud' s conception of superego formation , with its resulting behavior inhibition, guilt, and/ or shame, as a general account of moral character formation. Concurrently , as he approached beginning his dissertation research , Larry searched the literature for empirical research reports on the moral reason­ ing/judgment that became the focus of his attention . Larry downplayed the classic behavioral work of Hartshorne and May ( 1 928) , whose situational-con­ formity findings he took to be counter to commonsense assumptions about char­ acter and its bases . This was because Hartshorne and May found neither con­ sistency in moral behavior on the ' 'virtues ' ' of honesty , prosocial actions , and self-control , nor that behaviors denoting those virtues were influenced by tra­ ditional character education (Kohlberg & Diessner, 1 99 1 ) . Apart from the Hartshorne and May work, Larry found little in the empirical literature of the time except the report of Piaget' s ( 1 932/ 1 965) landmark study of children from around 3 to 1 1 years old, which Larry then proposed to e�tend through adoles­ cence, in his dissertation. Larry' s focus on Piaget ' s writings on moral ( 1 932) and cognitive (e. g . , 1 929) development came even before those writings were known to exist by most American psychologists , much less included in the standard

A MEMOIR

3

psychological curriculum. It is recalled that Larry' s empirical approach to the psychology of cognitive and moral development began with Piagetian theoretical conceptions and empirical reports . Moreover, Larry' s discovery of the conceptual dependence, particularly of the approach of Jean Piaget (Kohlberg, 1 982; Piaget, 1 982) , and also that of the symbolic interactionist George Herbert Mead ( 1 934) , on the earlier work of James Mark Baldwin ( 1 897 , 1 906- 1 9 1 1 ) led him to a close reading of Baldwin ' s seminal volumes published before, and at , the turn of the century-work that had been all but forgotten by mainstream American psychology by the early 1 950s when Larry ' s interest in them was kindled . In the writings of Baldwin , Larry found the notions of genetic epistemology and stages of moral judgment, and the concepts of schema, assimilation, and accommodation. He also identi­ fied in Baldwin ( 1 897) (as well as in the writings of the later symbolic interac­ tionists Mead and Dewey) the process of imitation as the basis of the self (both ego and alter) (Kohlberg & Diessner, 1 99 1 ) . Indeed, the recent resurgence of interest in James Mark Baldwin ' s work is due , I think, in great part to Larry ' s emphasis and to his use, with Piaget, of key assumptions and theoretical con­ structs of Baldwin ' s approach as the basis of his own widely appreciated ap­ proach to cognitive, social , and moral development, and to Larry' s attribution of his debt to Baldwin' s theory . At the same time that, as a graduate student, Larry was reading widely in the psychological theory of social , cognitive, and personality development, he was also acquiring considerable sophistication in the methods , designs , and statistical procedures used by experimental , survey , and other empirical psychologists , and by empirical sociologists . He was a most competent methodologist . I remember learning from Larry , in one intense period, the details of Louis Guttman and Paul Lazarsfeld ' s scaling procedures , including Guttman' s simplex and circumplex methods that were required in my work at the time. In this connection , Larry was conversant in detail with the philosophy of science (a major philosopher of science of the period , Rudolph Carnap , was teaching at the University of Chi­ cago at the time) and the canons of the scientific method , descriptive and inferen­ tial testing procedures , and the canonical-research designs that research scientists value. The occasional critic of the methodology underlying Larry' s work typ­ ically failed to appreciate the level of scientific sophistication he brought to that work . This underestimation was very likely the result of the fact that Larry often chose to make significant conceptual points outside this traditional frame of science methodology . It was always marvelous to see how Larry handled intellectual matters , even differences , at first with fellow students and professors , later with colleagues and with his own students . Larry was invariably accessible. He was capable of changing his perspectives , when he felt that change was called for. Larry was a model of how to engage in intellectual discussion and debate . Over and over, his interactions would demonstrate how one could hold a position while, simul,

4

G EWI RTZ

taneously, show respect for the views,of others . Both his openness of mind and his tolerance were exceptional . To the occasional visitor, this openness sug­ gested, incorrectly , that Larry held no positions strongly . Yet, Larry' s intellec­ tual openness and tolerance , together with such endearing qualities as his rou­ tinely going out of his way to help people , ' his considering others ' needs more important than his own , and his accessibility and unambivalent friendliness , resulted in his becoming a dear, lifelong friend to so many. Larry presented the paradox of an exceedingly well-organized thinker, re­ searcher, and person who, because of a remarkable tolerance of differences and apparently casual personal habits , might appear to the world to be the very opposite . By noticing some of his idiosyncrasies (even limitations) , some may have overlooked Larry' s enormous strengths . Yet, Larry never made the mistake of overlooking anyone' s strengths , beginning student or faculty colleague , with whom he was interacting or debating, even when those strengths would be embedded in that person' s peculiarities or the problems caused by that person . On a more personal level, some might find it difficult to imagine two people more unalike than Larry and me-in life-style , in intellectual style, and in the theoretical approach we each favored. Our relationship through the years stands as an exemplar of Larry' s openness of mind, flexibility , and warmth. Larry considered no conceptual issue unworthy of discussion . He considered neither his conceptual orientation , nor mine , a barrier to argument within the frame of either one of our very different theoretical orientations . Yet, in a very human frame Larry could teach a friend, like this writer, to begin , and to learn to enjoy, activities alien to their history-to fish, to crab , to harvest shellfish , to visit and wager at the track, to sail , and to appreciate Cape Cod summers . I have another recollection about a phenomenon that has become quite rare in modem America. Larry' s home, and particularly his vacation home at Wellfleet, Cape Cod, functioned very much like the idealized salon of 1 9th-century Paris . During any visit, one might meet, at Larry' s , a remarkable mix of students , opinion leaders , philosophers , psychologists , neighbors , sociologists , faculty and research colleagues , visiting colleagues from the United States , Europe , or Asia, or people Larry would have met in town, on the beach , or while fishing, oystering, clamming, or sailing . A visitor to Larry' s place was always guaran­ teed an exciting intellectual experience . Many other things can be said of Larry as philosopher, developmental psy­ chologist, free spirit, scientist, person , and friend. Certainly , Larry was the exceptional person whom one rarely meets in a lifetime , or in a scientific field . Even so , I believe that certain facets of Larry' s spirit and style can best be summarized in his own words . One can gain additional understanding of Larry the person and of his work by reading Larry' s autobiographical sketch, titled "My Personal Search for Universal Morality" (preface to Kohlberg, in press) , and his acknowledgments to The Psychology of Moral Development (Kohlberg, 1 984) , in which he relates the origins and evolution of his cognitive-developmen-

A M E M OIR

5

tal approach with its emphasis on moral development, to earlier conceptual influences as well as to significant personal experiences . The reader of this memoir would find a reading of these pieces sweet.

R E FE R E N C E S B aldwin , J . M . ( 1 897) . Social and ethical interpretations in mental development. New York: Macmillan. Baldwin , J . M . ( 1 906- 1 9 1 1 ) . Thought and things. A study of the development and meaning of thought. Or genetic logic (3 vols . ) . New York: Macmillan/London: Swan Sonnenschein. Durkheim, E . ( 1 925 I 1 973) . Moral education: A study in the theory and application of the sociology of education. New York: Free Press. Hartshorne , H . , & May, M. A . ( 1 928) . Studies in the nature of character: Vol. 1 . Studies in deceit. New York: Macmillan . Kohlberg , L . ( 1 984) . Essays on moral development: Vol. 2. The psychology of moral development. S an Francisco: Harper & Row . Kohlberg , L. (in press) . Ethical stages through the life cycle. San Francisco: Harper & Row . Kohlberg, L. ( 1 982) . Moral development . In J . M . Broughton & D . J . Freeman-Moir (Eds . ) , The cognitive-developmental psychology of James Mark Baldwin (pp . 277-325) . Norwood, NJ: Ab lex . Kohlberg , L . , & Diessner, R . ( 1 99 1 ) . A cognitive-developmental approach to moral attachment . In J. L. Gewirtz and W. M . Kurtines (Eds . ) , Intersections with attachment. Hillsdale , NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates . Mead , G . H . ( 1 934) . Mind, self and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Piaget, J. ( 1 929) . The child' s conception of the world. New York: Harcourt Brace . Piaget , J . ( 1 932/ 1 965) . The moral judgment of the child. New York: Free Press. Piaget , J. ( 1 982) . Reflections on Baldwin . In J . M . Broughton & D. J. Freeman-fvfoir (Eds . ) , The cognitive-developmental psychology of James Mark Baldwin (pp. 80-86) . Norwood , NJ: Ablex . "

·.

T h e Cog n i t i ve- Deve l o p m e nta l Pa rad i g m

R h eta DeVries

The centerpiece of Lawrence Kohlberg's work is his research and theory of moral development, and it is therefore fitting that a memorial volume focuses on advances in this field . Kohlberg succeeded in moving the discussion of moral development out of philosophy and religion , bringing it into the social sciences as a legitimate domain for scientific study . He swam against the tide of opinion that morality simply was a matter of attitudes , customs , norms , and values that were culturally relative . However, his work was not limited to this seminal research and theory of moral development , and its contribution must therefore be situated more broadly . In this tribute , I highlight the cognitive-developmental perspective characterizing not only the work on moral development, but Larry's many other interests which spanned the field of child development and extended to education . During his doctoral work in clinical psychology at the University of Chicago during the 1 950s , Larry felt that ' 'the way clinical psychologists labelled moral development as ' the superego formation' was intellectually and philosophically naive" (Kohlberg , 1 972, p . 2) . He " stumbled across Piaget who, at that time , was not part of the psychology curriculum" (Kohlberg , 1 972 , p. 1 ) . One of the first Americans in psychology to recognize the importance of Piaget's efforts , Larry was an early advocate who clearly articulated the Piagetian alternative to cultural transmission (environmentalist and behaviorist) and romantic (matura­ tionist and phenomenological) views in philosophy , psychology , and education . His effectiveness in arguing the Piagetian alternative was certainly an important factor in the rise of interest in Piaget's work and the subsequent revolution or paradigm shift that transformed child psychology into child development. An energetic participant in the debates of the 1 960s and early 1 970s that changed the 7

8

DeVR I E S

focus o f controversies over nature versus nurture , the role of early experience, and the nature of intelligence , Kohlberg argued that empirical evidence sup­ ported Piaget' s general position. Later, during the 1 970s , Larry jokingly com­ plained that it was ' ' not as much fun as it used to be ' ' to go to conferences and engage with other psychologists because· P�aget' s work had become so well known and largely accepted . Throughout his career, Larry seemed to be con­ tinually in the center of controversy, testifying to the frontier nature of his concerns . Long before attempting practical work in education himself, Kohlberg , ( 1 966b , 1 966c , 1 967 , 1 968a, 1 968b) viewed his interests as centrally concerned with educational issues . His collected work on The Philosophy of Moral Devel­ opment ( 1 98 1 ) begins with three chapters on " Moral Stages and the Aims of Education, ' ' including the classic article ' 'Development as the Aitn of Educa­ tion ' ' (Kohlberg & Mayer, 1 972) . In Piaget, Kohlberg found ' 'the basis for a new kind of educational psychology which , when integrated with the only viable philosophy of education we have-John Dewey 's-offers a new meaning to schooling in America" (Kohlberg , 1 972 , p . 2) . He noted that Dewey ' s broad philosophic perspective had never been filled in empirically , that it never ful­ filled its promise to revolutionize and transform schools . He saw this as due , in part, to the fact that ' ' American educational psychology went a different route , that of Thorndike , and ignored the whole concept of development' ' (Kohlberg , 1 972 , p . 2) . Kohlberg' s work as a whole has served to redirect our path back to Dewey' s views by giving these a solid research base. Eventually arguing for the general validity of Piaget' s genetic epistemology , Kohl berg did not adopt this view without research to explore this position for himself. Efforts from the beginning were focused on studying Piaget' s ideas in a more empirical fashion than that presented by Piaget's own early writings . In particular, he focused on empirical validation of the stage construct that Piaget proposed for cognitive development but not for moral judgment. Laying out the basic assumptions of Piaget' s stage hypothesis , Kohlberg ( 1 966b , 1 966d) pro­ posed �mpirical criteria for validation of this hypothesis . In particular, these criteria laid out a self-imposed challenge to explore the stage hypothesis in relation to moral judgment. In moral judgment, Piaget had stopped short his own investigations with the conclusion that " we cannot speak of stages properly so called" ( 1 932/ 1 965 , p . 284) . Yet he did argue for the age-developmental nature o f heteronomous and autonomous morality from early to middle childhood , and Kohlberg took up the study of the development of moral judgment with the idea of extending the study of this conceptualization into adolescence . However, he found that Piaget' s two dimensions were insufficient to categorize all the types of moral reasoning found in his dissertation study (completed at the University of Chicago in 1 958) . A developmental sequence of six types , or stages , was formulated , the first two " based much more heavily on Baldwin' s ( 1 897 , 1 906- 1 9 1 1 ) view of the early '

COG N I TIVE-DEVE LOP M E N TAL PARADI G M

9

stages of moral development than they were on Piaget ' s" (Tappan et al . , 1 987 , p . 3 1 9) . Much later, the conceptualizations of heteronomy and autonomy reap­ peared in a new integration as the two substages of each of the six stages (Colby et al . , 1 987) . Having significantly modified Piaget' s conceptualizations in moral reasoning , Kohlberg turned to the empirical study of the concept of structural stage in cognitive development. During his years ( 1 959- 1 96 1 ) as Assistant Professor of Psychology at Yale University , he collected data from children 4- 8 years old on their notions of dreams , magical causality , categorization and class inclusion , constancy of generic and sex-role identity, adult roles , conservation of sub­ stance, origins of mountains , objects as alive, reciprocity in relational terms (brother/sister) , limitations on choice of marriage partners , and intentionality in moral judgment. He also gathered data on egocentric speech . Kohlberg applied his empirical criteria for stages to these replications and extensions of Piaget' s research , and a monograph on the results was written while a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in the B ehavioral Sciences ( 1 96 1 - 1 962) . Never published (though many of the findings were reported in later publications) , this monograph was heuristic for Larry' s graduate students at the University of Chi­ cago ( 1 962- 1 968) where he extended his research broadly on fundamental issues related to whether the stage interpretation of age-normative changes in children' s thought should be accepted. This research led Kohlberg to begin to elaborate a general structural concep­ tualization of development that he termed ' 'cognitive-developmental . ' ' The cen­ tral theme of this view is that children are philosophers who actively construct their own worlds , the meaning of their actions in it, and their very instruments of knowing . Kohlberg enriched this Piagetian view by critically evaluating its em­ pirical validity, correcting some aspects , situating it clearly in broad historical and theoretical perspectives , pointing out its limitations , and extending it broadly to major domains of child development and educational practice. The cognitive­ developmental view represents Kohlberg ' s effort (which he saw as a basic career goal) to integrate the theories of Jean Piaget, James Mark Baldwin , George Herbert Mead, and Lev Vygotsky . Over the years , he argued for this theoretical position as the one most supported by empirical evidence in various domains of child-development research. In one of his last gifts to the field, Kohlberg used the cognitive-developmental paradigm to review and integrate theory and re­ search in critical areas of child development. This gift is the book Child Psychol­ ogy and Childhood Education: The Cognitive-Developmental View (Kohlberg and colleagues , 1 987) in which Larry and his colleagues argue that the modified Piagetian perspective succeeds better than alternative views in ordering data in ways that are useful to education . Kohlberg presented the cognitive-developmental view as an alternative to maturational and environmental views not only in moral development (Kohlberg, 1 963 , 1 964) , but more broadly in socialization in general (Kohlberg , 1 969) . It

10

DeVR I E S

was argued as more valid in relation to conceptions of intelligence than the classic ' ' British' ' biological view or the environmental view , based on factor­ analytic studies of psychometric and Piaget-type task performance (Carroll , Kohlberg , & DeVries , 1 984; DeVries & Kohlberg , 1 977; Kohlberg & DeVries , 1 987) . Kohlberg also argued for a cognitive-developmental view of sex-role development (Kohlberg, 1 966a; Kohlberg & Zigler, 1 967) , language develop­ ment (Kohlberg & Wertsch , 1 987; Kohlberg , Yaeger, & Hjertholm, 1 968) , and play and constructive work (Kohlberg & Fein , 1 987) , ego development (Kohlberg , 1 977; Snarey, Kohlberg, & Noam, 1 987) , and the development of the self (Hart, Kohlberg , & Wertsch , 1 987) . In the moral domain , research to explore the cognitive-developmental view was relentlessly pursued, culminating in the elegant definitive work of Kohlberg' s research group (Colby , Kohlberg , and collaborators , 1 987) . In these two volumes on the measurement of moral judgment, one finds the end point of an intellectual search that was characterized by tough-minded empirical attack on the theoretical issues , conceptualizations enriched by the gamut of historical and current perspectives . It was not until the Harvard years ( 1 968- 1 986) that active engagement in experiments and research in schools began, guided by his long-held conviction about ' 'concepts of developmental psychology as the central guide to education' ' (Kohlberg , 1 972) . Establishing the Center for Moral Education as the context for his efforts , Kohl berg began to tackle the problem of how to promote moral development. This work is discussed in several other tributes in this volume . He also returned to his early interest in early education by joining me in writing a description and rationale. for the constructivist view , along with reviews of vari­ ous programs from the perspective of the cognitive-developmental paradigm (De Vries & Kohlberg , 1 987I 1 990) . This , along with his writing on the practice of moral education , deals with the process side of development, complementing his other work focusing on structural aspects of development. Kohl berg ' s life work was in large part devoted to articulating and elaborating the scientific base of the cognitive-developmental paradigm that revolutionized child psychology . The broader significance of this work is the foundation it provides for applied developmental psychology in education and other practical do1nains . We owe him a great deal . Looking back over my 25-year association with Larry , I feel privileged to have witnessed and participated in the work of the Chicago years when he was my professor, mentor, and collaborator. I treasure our subsequent colleagueship and friendship, especially during 7 years of work on two books . Reviewing the scope of Larry ' s published work, I realize that he still is an important source of inspiration for my thinking. As Eleanor Maccoby stated during the Society for Research in Child Development memorial symposium in April , 1 986, rereading Larry ' s writings is fruitful and necessary for realizing fully the complexity of his arguments and insights . Scholars will profit for a long time from exploring Kohl berg ' s thought in the rich body of his work.

COG N ITIVE-DEVE LO P M E NTAL PARA DI G M

11

In 1 97 1 Larry became ill with a parasitic infection while doing cross-cultural research in Belize. Thereafter he courageously fought a battle with pain , remain­ ing productive despite its debilitating effects . In our last telephone conversation , Larry told me that he was in constant pain and could no longer read or write . His life ended, at age 59 , on January 1 7 , 1 987 , when he disappeared, and on April 6 his body was found in Boston Harbor. Lawrence Kohlberg ' s legacy is the work accomplished and the work of those influenced by this life that so enriched our field. Those who were close to Larry will remember him not only for the genius of his work and his impact on our professional lives, but especially for his warmth , humor, generosity , and the quality of his friendship .

R E FE R E N C E S Baldwin , J . ( 1 897) . Social and ethical interpretations in mental development. New York : Macmillan . Baldwin , J . ( 1 906- 1 9 1 1 ) . Thoughts and things or genetic logic (3 vols . ) . London : S wam Sonnenschein . Carroll , J . , Kohlberg , L . & DeVries , R . ( 1 984) . Psychometric and Piagetian intelligence . Intelligence, 8, 67-9 1 . Colby , A . , Kohlberg , L . , & collaborators . ( 1 987) . The measurement of moral judgment: Vol. 1 . Theoretical foundations and research validation: Vol. 2. Standard issue scoring manual. New York: Cambridge University Press . D eVries , R . , & Kohlberg , L. ( 1 977). Relations between psychometric and Piagetian assessments of intelligence . In L. Katz (Ed . ) , Current topics in early childhood education (Vol . 1 ) . Norwood , NJ: Ablex . DeVries , R . , & Kohlberg , L . ( 1 987 / 1 990) . Constructivist early education: Overview and com­ parison with other programs . Washington , D . C . : The National Association for the Education of Young Children . (Originally published as Programs of early education: The constructivist view. ) New York: Longman . Hart, D . , Kohlberg , L. , & Wertsch , J . ( 1 987) . The developmental social-self theories of James Mark Baldwin, George Herbert Mead , and Lev Semenovich Vygotsky . In L . Kohlberg and collaborators , Child psychology and childhood education: A cognitive-developmental view (pp . 223-258) . New York: Longman . Kohlberg , L . ( 1 95 8) . The development of modes of thinking and choice in years J O to 16. Unpublished doctoral dissertation , University of Chicago . Kohlberg , L . ( 1 963) . Moral development and identification . In H . Stevenson (Ed . ) , Child psychol­ ogy, 62nd yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education . Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kohlberg , L . ( 1 964) . The development of moral character and ideology . In M. Hoffman & L. Hoffman (Eds . ) , Review of child development research (Vol. 1 ) . New York: Russell Sage Foundation . Kohl berg , L. ( l 966a) . A cognitive-developmental analysis of children ' s sex-role attitudes . In E . Maccoby (Ed . ) , Sex-role development, Stanford , C A : Stanford University Press. Kohlberg , L. ( l 966b) . Cognitive stages and preschool education . Human Development, 9, 5- 1 7 . Kohlberg , L. ( 1 966c). Moral education in the school. School Review, 74 , 1 -30.

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DeVR I E S

Kohlberg , L . ( 1 966d) . Stages in children' s conceptions ofphysical and social objects. Unpublished manuscript. Kohlberg , L. ( 1 967) . Moral education , religious education , and the public school. In T . Sizer (Ed . ) , Religion and the public schools. Boston: Houghton Mifflin . Kohlberg , L . ( 1 968a) . Early education: A cognitive-developmental view. Child Development, 39, 1 0 1 3- 1 062 . Kohlberg , L. ( 1 968b) . Montessori with the culturally disadvantaged: A cognitive-developmental interpretation . In R . Hess & R . Bear (Eds . ) , The challenge of early education: Reports of theory, research, and action. Chicago : Aldine . Kohlberg , L. ( 1 969) . Stage and sequence: The cognitive-developmental approach to socialization. In D. Goslin (Ed . ) , Handbook of socialization theory and research . Chicago: Rand McNally . Kohlberg , L . ( 1 972) . The concepts of developmental psychology as the central guide to education: Examples from cognitive , moral , and psychological education . In M. Reynolds (Ed . ) , Proceedings of the conference on psychology and the process of schooling in the next decade: Alternative conceptions. Washington , DC: Leadership Training Institute/Special Education, sponsored by the Bureau for Educational Personnel Development , U . S . Office of Education. Kohlberg , L. ( 1 977) . Moral development , ego development , and psychoeducational practice . Pupil Personnel Services Journal, 6( 1 ) , 25-40 . Kohlberg , L . ( 1 98 1 ) . Essays on moral development: Vol. 1 . The philosophy of moral development. S an Francisco: Harper & Row . Kohlberg , L. , & De Vries , R. ( 1 987). Psychometric and Piagetian measures of intelligence : Their nature and educational uses. In L. Kohlberg , Child psychology and childhood education: A cognitive-developmental view. New York: Longman . Kohlberg , L. , & Fein, G . ( 1 987) . Play and constructive work as contributors to development. In L. Kohlberg , Child psychology and childhood education. New York: Longman . Kohlberg , L , & Mayer, R. ( 1 972) . Development as the aim of education . Harvard Educational Review, 42(4) , 449-496 . Kohl berg , L . , & Wertsch , J . ( 1 987) . Language and the development of thought . In L . Kohlberg , Child psychology and childhood education. New York: Longman . Kohlberg , L . , Yaeger, J . , & Hjertholm , E . ( 1 968) . Private speech: Four studies and a review of theories . Child Development, 39, 69 1 -736. Kohlberg , L . , & Zigler, E . . MDB0/( 1 967) . The impact of cognitive maturity upon the develop­ ment of sex-role attitudes in the years four to eight. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 75, 891 65 . Kohlberg , L . , with DeVries , R . , Fein, G . , Hart, D . , Mayer, R . , Noam , G . , Snarey , J . , & Wertsch , J . ( 1 987) . Child psychology and childhood education: A cognitive-developmental view. New York: Longman . Piaget, J . ( 1 932/ 1 965) . The moral judgment of the child. London: Free Press . Snarey , J . , Kohl berg , L . , & Noam , G . ( 1 987). Ego development and education: A structural perspective . In L . Kohlberg and collaborators , Child psychology and childhood education: A cognitive-developmental view. New York: Longman . Tappan , M . , Kohlberg , L . , Schrader, D . , Higgins , A . , Armon, C . , & Lei , T . ( 1 987) . Heteronomy and autonomy in moral development: Two types of moral judgments . In A . Colby & L . Kohlberg (Eds . ) , The measurement of moral judgment: Vol. 1 . Theoretical foundations and research validation (pp . 3 1 5-3 87) . New York: Cambridge University Press . ,.

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I

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A Few Wo rd s i n Co m m e m o rat i o n of Law re n ce Ko h I be rg

Wo lfg a n g E d e l ste i n

It is fitting , I think, that a European voice be heard amid the concert of American voices commemorating the life and work of Lawrence Kohlberg . I do not pre­ sume to represent all of Larry' s many friends and admirers in Europe , but let me try to speak for a few friends and colleagues in Iceland , Germany , Switzerland , and elsewhere who were deeply influenced by his work and devoted to him as a person . To his European friends , Lawrence Kohl berg afforded great intellectual and personal comfort. At a time when American social science provided, more than anything , a model of competitiveness and subservience to the criterion of suc­ cess, it was not very fashionable to place one' s research efforts in the service of universal justice . Without much ado , Kohlberg had the courage to refuse to comply with prevailing scientific fashions , the rules of career making, and defer­ ence to foundation money . It was not that he spumed success or foundation support; rather that they never interfered with his dedication to his program of research and application . The fact that an American model should hold onto the universal values of science , that is , to cumulative knowledge seeking , to the more ascetic notions of truth following , to the progressive and enlightening function of the scientific endeavor beyond the ideals of the moment and the marketplace , as Kohlberg did, offered a challenge and a promise that live after he left the scene of science . It is the challenge of a tradition , a common heritage of America and Europe originat­ ing more than 2 ,000 years ago . This was a tradition revived again some 500 years ago , and once more some 300 years later in the modem history of science: the tradition of a truth-seeking science not in the service of, but critical of, power. And Kohl berg ' s work carries the promise back to Europe from America 13

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E D E LSTE I N

that the tradition of enlightenment · is still valid , that critical and substantive rationality still stands a chance of success , even when the institution of science has itself become a mainstay of power. Lawrence Kohlberg' s story , despite many pains and setbacks , is a story of progress and success . His story should teach -us to continue his work in the spirit with which he endowed it. It should also encourage us to revise it where neces­ sary and where possible through the efforts of those who come after him and who may be able to see farther than he for the very reason that they stand on his shoulders and enjoy the privilege of knowing his work. Kohlberg' s work chal­ lenges us to continue the job independent of temporary success and defeat as part of an ongoing program of substantive rationality. It calls on us to engage our­ selves in the endeavor of cooperation with other minds that Larry demonstrated ceaselessly in his own life , and yet to maintain the generous openness to criticism that he always demonstrated to us , his colleagues , his friends , and his students . Larry Kohlberg' s work will live after him, a rational quest for truth about the development of human beings in a changing world-a truth , at the same time , for a changing world . In his hands , the reconstruction of individual develop­ ment-through a dialectical union of the analytical and the normative-was transformed into the construction dynamics for social evolution . But contrary to most attempts at evolutionary construction turned practical , his construction remained nonoppressive , liberating and attentive to the individuals involved in the process . In this respect let us also learn from Larry Kohl berg and the human­ ity that characterized his interventions . But Larry not only left u s the moral imperatives and perspectives of en­ lightened science . He left with us memories of a caring human being , of the tenderness and fragility and friendliness of a person who was able to unite , though he did not fear to divide where such was called for. The world is poorer without him; and for us , his European friends , Boston, Cambridge , Harvard are certainly colder places . Without him we must now try to pass on not only the torch of enlightened and enlightening science under the moral ·imperative of his work, but the moral imperative of his very life . So that when referring to us , people will say, just as we say of him when we direct our thoughts to his life and work: The world would be an even less just and less friendly place than it is but for the life and work of Lawrence Kohlberg .

T h e Ko h l be rg Legacy to F r i e n d s

Li s a K u h m e rke r

While countless theoreticians and practitioners have been influenced by Kohl­ berg ' s publications , the major contributions to moral development and education have been made by individuals whose work brought them into personal contact with Kohlberg . Of this group, a substantial proportion met Kohlberg in the context of their graduate and postgraduate work, and many of the excerpts in the following pages are from people to whom Kohlberg had been either a formal or informal dissertation adviser. A small but not insignificant number of people met Kohlberg through students they had in common. Some became colleagues through school intervention projects . The smallest number, like myself, had no strong " academic claim" for requesting an appointment with Kohlberg , but persevered against considerable odds . As the founder of the Association for Moral Education , I persuaded Larry to come to one of the early meetings of the fledgling group , and from that point on he was always "first among equals " in our hearts . When the membership honored me by creating a Kuhmerker Award for service to the association , it was the most natural thing in the world for Larry to be the first recipient of the award. How best to honor a man like Kohlberg? A plaque was appropriate but insuffi­ cient . We peeked into Larry' s address file and solicited letters from a remarkably long list of close colleagues , collected them, and read liberally from the contribu­ tions at the award dinner. It was a jqyous occasion, and when I remember Larry , I think of two occa­ sions: the first time I met him and the evening he received the Kuhmerker Award. So , within the space limits of my contribution to this volume , I want to share part of both sets of memories . I don' t remember exactly what year I met Larry Kohlberg ; it could have been 15

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1 969 or 1 970. I know it was in the " old days , " when correspondence disappeared into a bottomless pit, and the hapless individual who was drafted to answer the center' s telephone claimed to be taking messages , but was powerless to make appointments . It was at that point that I decided to take j · days out of my life and literally to sit on the doorstep of Larry ' s office until he fell across me . Larry had a small office in Larsen Hall in those days , filled to the ceiling with books and papers . It seemed to me that there were a great many young men at work in various cubicles . Every so often , when the secretary was quite positive that Larry would not be appearing within the next hour, I made a quick foray into one of these offices . Bob Selman's office is one that stays in my mind . We had no sooner begun to talk, when one young man after another filed into the office and conversation got better and better. Suddenly , without preamble , they rose as one . . . and announced that they were off to play basketball ! One might say that the subsequent creation of the Association for Moral Education is no more or less than a creative way to assure that there would be some time each year when women interested in moral development theory and practice could be sure that their male counterparts would not cut short a good conversation by retreating to the locker room. I resumed my vigil on Larry' s doorsill . Somewhere toward the end of the second afternoon, he appeared. He answered my specific questions , but merely whetted my curiosity . Since I was staying another day, I asked if I could borrow something to read overnight. Larry ru mmaged in the pile on the desk and pulled out a manuscript. ' 'This is the only copy I have , ' ' he said , ' ' You really have to promise to bring it back . ' ' I remember returning to my motel room early in the evening , climbing into bed and starting the manuscript. It was From Is to Ought. I had had no idea what to expect, and I was enthralled . All my ideas clicked into place in a new way . It was surprising; it was exhilarating. It was absolutely the only time in my life when I had a peak experience alone in a motel room. Year after year I revisited the Center. Several times I attended scoring work­ shops and informal consortiums . If there was no " event , " I simply came to attend one of the weekly open sessions in Room 3 1 3 . Moral development theory changed the way I thought about learning and teaching. If I haven't suffered from " teacher burnout" I owe it to Larry; to his ideas and to the people I met who were working-or waiting-for Larry Kohlberg. Making a selection from the letters is no easy task . Perhaps a good way to begin is by quoting from the remeniscences of Liam K . Grimley, a professor at Indiana State University , who was one of Kohlberg' s earliest friends and col­ leagues . In recalling their experiences together, Grimley decided that four words best described Kohlberg: lovable, courageous , exciting, and dedicated: The word " lovable " is not a term we often think of using to describe an eminent psychologist, educator, writer and scholar. But in your case , it' s the very first word

TH E KO H L B E R G LEGACY

17

that comes to mind . You not only have the quality of being lovable, but you also have a remarkable ability to insure this characteristic in those who work with you . Over the years there has gathered around you-at Harvard and elsewhere-an extraordinary group of lovable people , faculty and students alike. This group does not operate like a professional organization but more like a club of good-humored , lovable people , all of whom have not only a peculiarly fanatical interest in the study of moral development, but also a deep personal affection for Lawrence Kohl berg , the man .

Robert Kegan-a colleague at Harvard who has integrated Kohlbergian theo­ ry into his thinking so thoroughly that he has created a developmental clinical theory that sees what is commonly accepted as mental ' 'breakdown' ' as actually a failure of developmental ' 'breakthrough' ' -remembers taking his life in his hands as a passenger in Kohlberg' s car: We piled into the front seat, you behind the wheel , me o n your right. The car was i n the Larsen lot, facing a yard-high brick wall . You turned o n the engine , put the car in gear and rammed right into the wall , the car flying back to its original position . You and it rested a moment. Then you started the engine up again , put it in gear, and you and I and the car flew once again smack into the wall , once again bouncing back to our starting point . I remember thinking , "This is a novel approach to exiting a parking lot. But what persistence ! " This is a note of admiration and affection for your persistence Larry-and of appreciation for what it has wrought .

Kegan ' s remeniscence moves from literally smacking into a brick wall to the struggle of the " young upstarts" who called themselves "clinical developmen­ talists ' ' to bring developmental and clinical psychology together. The task seemed at times as wearying and apparently ill-fated as the ride in the Larsen parking lot: Isn' t it remarkable , I thought. For twenty-five years this man has kept faith with an idea. And what struck me was not so much that the idea is as important as it ever was or that it is the foundation for so much other work now getting attention­ although I think these things are also true . What struck me was how much we all derive from your continuing example that an idea can be compelling enough, and an individual devoted enough , for the two to spend twenty-five years together in a relationship as fresh and combustible today as when it began. . . . I have been changed by your quiet and persistent faithfulness , a stubbomess on behalf of everyone ' s development. . . . The wall in the Larsen lot is still standing but a lot of other walls are not .

Gil Noam, on the staff of McLean Hospital and Harvard' s Department of Psychiatry , recalls the first time he invited Kohlberg for dinner: I had just arrived in this country . . . and had only the barest of furnishings ac­ quired from fourth-hand stores . You probably did not notice that the chair you sat

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on was dangerous , the bowl you ate fro m was cracked and the table you sat at was a desk covered with a sheet . In fact, it became clear that you could be at home almost anyplace as long as important dialogue was possible . The experience of that first evening has b�en -the core of our relationship . Your questions and our dialogue have contributed ·greatly toward integrating myself, theories , our relationship, a new sense of history and biography , and a new vision of development. All this with two main tools: " why" and respect.

In making contact with the children of students and colleagues to whose houses Kohlberg was invited for dinner, he often drew on his youthful skill as a magician . Tom Lickona, professor at SUNY-Cortland , has a son , Mark, who was an aspiring magician at the age of 1 1 , when he and Kohlberg took turns entertaining guests . But Mark learned more than some new tricks from Kohl­ berg . Shortly thereafter, he wrote the following fantasy: I accept the nomination for election for the President of the International Broth­

erhood of Magicians . I have always had a dream of becoming a great magician . I shall take all responsibility and make sure that all our meetings are properly organized . What ' s more , I shall always maintain a fair and cooperative mood toward my fellow magicians .

Most " Kohlbergians " came " under the influence" during their mentor' s years at Harvard . Jim Rest was one of the small number who began to work with Kohlberg when they were at the University of Chicago . Rest remembers meeting Larry when the latter was a not very well known assistant professor. As Rest was moving through the clinical psychology sequence , friends suggested he take Kohlberg' s course: They said that the course was very stimulating , although the instructor was totally unfair in loading up the reading assignments and course requirements . Indeed , for only. three lousy credits , Larry assigned about 2000 pages of reading , required a term paper and a research project, and a midterm exam and a final . The course was great but it just about killed everybody who took it. After working your head off for Larry ' s introductory course , it seemed only a small step to make developmental psychology your life ' s work . At Chicago , Larry ' s courses drew the largest crowds of students and at one point he advised almost a dozen dissertations per year. His manner was low-key but his enthusiasm and his brilliance attracted more interest and more students than the staffing in developmental psychology could handle . The other faculty . . . believed that the future of psychology was in biopsychology . . . and thought that develop­ mental psychology would soon fade away . Hence Larry was lured to Harvard . After collecting my dissertation data in Chicago , I moved to Harvard to join Larry as a post-doc . I look upon those days as the Camelot era. At the Center for Moral

TH E KO H L B E R G LEGACY

19

Education there was a sense of being at the right place at the right time, that terribly new and important breakthroughs were just around the comer . . . that granting agencies and foundations were eager to fund projects , that questions of social justice were on everyone ' s mind , and we thought we had the answers-or nearly had the answers .

It was at this point that the scoring of moral dilemmas began to take on monumental proportions . Kohlberg became convinced that his 1 958 scoring system ought to be revised , and he wasn't going to settle for just a little tidying up . As Rest recalls: If I remember correctly , the first revision of the 1 95 8 scoring system required a scorer to cross-classify a moral judgment simultaneously along eight dimensions , and there were over two and a half million possible combinations . . . . Larry' s assistants at the Center (of which I was one) began to complain and drag our feet. Larry ' s tactic in response was to call a national conference and invite 1 00 people . . . . Although Larry said the scoring workshop was to enable other psy­ chologists to use his scoring system, I think the real purpose was to whip his assistants into line . . . . Later on I also suspected that Larry would call another scoring workshop whenever he felt his assistants were working less than eighty hours a week .

Despite his rueful recollection of the innumerable items scorers of Moral Judgment Interviews were expected to categorize, Rest took the occasion of the Association for Moral Education ' s honoring of Lawrence Kohl berg to share with the group his belief that Kohlberg' s distinctive role in psychology has often been misperceived: Foremost he is a visionary , a discoverer of new phenomena and new connections , a proposer of new approaches , one who works on the big picture and keeps the major questions in focus . This sort of psychologist is rare among American psychol­ ogists . . . but also , being so rare , Larry' s role is all the more important in Ameri­ can psychology , for otherwise , many of us would not have identified the important questions , would not have a conceptual framework for designing our own work , or would not have become interested in psychology at all .

In the first letter I quoted , Liam Grimley calls Kohlberg " lovable , cou­ rageous , exciting and dedicated . " I hope that the lovable , exciting , and dedi­ cated dimensions of Kohlberg ' s personality have leaped out from these pages . If so , it is fitting to close with excerpts from a letter that highlights the fourth of these dimensions . Norman Sprinthall , a professor at the University of North Carolina, recalls : While at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, I learned many things like the importance of theoretical relativism and similar games of sophistry . . . . Also I

20

K U H M E R KE R �

learned the difference between such breath-taking rhetoric and action. It was during the infamous Nixon-Kissinger " incursion" into some parts of Laos-Cambodia called the Parrots Beak , when I came of age on that score . The faculty , at that time , seemed righteously _outraged at this latest attempt to win · South East Asia by destroying the countries . r too was certainly caught up in the immorality of such an adventure and found myself the author of a formal proposal to the faculty to take a stand on the question . After due reverence was paid to the necessities of academic freedom . . . a resolu­ tion was struck . The votes counted. We had won . The faculty for the first time had authorized a document proclaiming that the administration of the country was in error on moral grounds . I was feeling triumphant . At that moment the Dean queried "Well , who will take the position paper to Washington? " Since I had been standing up a good deal of the time debating the issues , I naturally felt some obligation to offer. After accepting , I then asked, " and who will help me?" It would be difficult to describe in the light of passing years , just how silent the meeting became . It was just like a sailing ship in the doldrums . Motionless . Eerily quiet. These giants of education who daily proclaimed the virtues of equality , of human rights , of democratic citizenship , and who had themselves just voted over­ whelmingly in favor of the resolution , now sat in perfect repose , looking at their shoes . Numbed and dazzled by this educational experience , I finally did notice one lone figure , somewhat unkempt in attire , standing next to me . Although I had met him on a number of prior occasions , that was the time I really met Larry .

Law re n ce Ko h l be rg 1 9 2 7- 1 9 8 7

Gil G. Noam M a rya n n e Wo l f

One of the ways of knowing a person or a culture is to ask the question: Who are their heroes? For, it is the heroes , these men and women who embody the best of our thought and action, who tell us what principles are deemed highest in a society , what actions most honorable . For Lawrence Kohlberg , there were at least two sets of models . He wrote about them, talked of them in conversations as if they were alive , used them as examples in his stage theory of moral develop­ ment , and emulated aspects of each of them, we believe , in his own life . The first set i s more obvious-the heroes of the mind: James Baldwin , Jean Piaget , Sigmund Freud, and less obviously perhaps , William Wordsworth , whom Larry would read in long passages in a chair perched above the ocean . The second set includes heroes of moral action, those who combined the highest principles of justice and compassion with direct action: Mahatma Gandhi , Martin Luther King , Jr. , and the lesser known Janusz Korczak, who chose to die in Treblinka with the children from his Jewish orphanage rather than desert them. For many of us , there was much of the heroic in Larry Kohlberg ' s life: his contribution toward a theory of mind; and the way he drove himself to apply his highest moral principles in the schools , the prisons , and the workplace . There was also much of the antihero in Larry: a man who prided himself in his youth in being accepted by railroad ' 'bums ' ' as one of them; or the man who posed innumerable problems to many a conventional administrator. In this brief essay we do not wish to place Larry on any pedestal . A less suitable place for thinking about him we can't imagine . Rather, we want to look at three parallels in his life and the life of Janusz Korczak, whom Larry described with such force in the epilogue , "Education for Justice: The Vocation of Janusz Korczak, ' ' of the first volume of his collected works . 21

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We discovered these parallels a short time ago when asked by the Ethical Society of America to give a talk, a tribute to Larry' s life and work. In trying to bring to life the ways that Larry thought and lived his life , it struck us then and now that Janusz Korczak represented the ki,nd ·of human being Larry Kohlberg wanted to be , perhaps even more than figures seemingly larger than life , like Gandhi and King . Janusz Korczak was a highly respected Polish doctor, a man of science , who during World War II headed two orphanages . When the children from the Jewish orphanage were rounded up to be taken to a concentration camp , Korczak chose to accompany them , even though he might have gone free . Kohlberg ' s descrip­ tion of Korczak ' s decision and death is as powerfully and beautifully written as anything in his published work: Like the death of Socrates and the death of Martin Luther King , the death of Janusz Korczak expresses both his vocation as a moral educator and his progress in a spiritual journey that few undertake and few succeed in making . He died during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of World War II . For many years Korczak , trained as a pediatrician , had directed two orphanage schools in Warsaw , one for Christian children and one for Jewish children , expressing a universal concern that went beyond his Jewish heritage . With the coming of the Nazis , Korczak and his Jewish orphans were herded into the ghetto along with the rest of Warsaw ' s half-million Jews. His daily life became a round of seeking food and medicine for his charges . Although in ill health and starving himself, in his last year Korczak volunteered to take responsibility for the 1 ,000 children in the ghetto' s public orphanage . He and his devoted colleague , Stepha Wilczynska, invited actors and musicians to perform as a way of raising funds . They organized a school in which caring and justice guided the daily lives and experiences of the children , a place in which the children could still study and learn despite the war. On the morning of August 6 , 1 942 , German and Ukrainian guards surrounded the orphanage as part of the plan for elimination of "nonproductive elements " to the Treblehka death camp. Prepared for death, Korczak led the 200 children from his own orphanage to the train station where the freight cars waited. Each child , neatly dressed and carrying a favorite doll or book, marched the two miles in a parade of quiet dignity . Korczak led the column , holding the two youngest by the hand . Stepha and the other teachers walked not far behind. His attitude towards his own impending death is expressed in two statements : ' ' You do not leave a sick child in the night , and you do not leave children at a time like this . ' ' In a diary entry August 4 , while watching a guard outside his window, he said , "What would he do if I nodded to him? Waved my hand in a friendly gesture . Perhaps he doesn' t know that things are as they are . He may have arrived only yesterday , from far away . ' ' Korczak' s acceptance of death put him beyond fear or hatred . His acceptance of death was not an acceptance of indignity for himself or his charges . From his first days in the ghetto he was a resister, refusing to wear the Star of David and

KO H LB E R G 1 927- 1 987

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protesting the lack of food and medicine . However, the day Korczak and his children marched to the trains , they carried proudly a banner with the blue Star of David .

The differences between Korczak' s and Kohlberg ' s lives are eminently clear. Larry never was forced to face the choices Korczak did . He was fortunate enough-and openly , vociferously grateful about this good fortune-that he was born in America . B ut it was , in part, just this acute recognition of his good fortune and the belief in the American Constitution and the practices of American democracy that riveted Larry on the Holocaust and its meaning throughout his lifetime . Nazi Germany, with its contempt for human life , was the antithesis to every­ thing Larry believed in . Thus , the centrality of the Holocaust for both Korczak and Kohlberg is the first parallel we wish to draw . Kohlberg viewed his own theory as a response to Nazi Europe and the murder of millions of Jews . "The Holocaust is the everit in human history that most bespeaks the need for moral education and for a philosophy that can guide it. My own interest in morality and moral education arose in part as a response to the Holocaust . . . . " (p . 407) . More than any other psychologist, Larry attempted to understand the psychologi­ cal dimensions of moral aberration by understanding the normal course of moral development. By his focus on the development of rationality and moral respect , he gave concrete reality to the often empty slogan ' 'Never Again . ' ' The second parallel is the shared commitment to children, to protecting them from unnecessary pain and standing by them in the darkest hour. Korczak wrote that loving children means understanding their development , "becoming a sculptor of the child' s soul . ' ' At the same time he set up a Children' s Repub lie in his orphanages that included democratic rules and a children ' s court. Fifty years later Larry Kohlberg , Ann Higgins and their coworkers were in the toughest high school in Brooklyn, working to set up a just community. Larry was a sculptor in a very particular sense: He believed you taught children to sculpt themselves . Larry was the born socratic teacher not only to children but to many adults for whom he served as a mentor. He often engaged in a special relationship where friendship , teaching , and joint exploration fused into a powerful proces s . Even when he was most in pain from his illness , there was never a meeting in which he did not try to learn and to teach . He knew about the lives of the people around him. Personally , he always exuded optimism about his student' s strengths and opportunities . There was rarely a discussion about research and theory where his thinking did not shed new light on a problem. His was usually not a trendy thought, but one which penetrated and organized information at a different, deeper level . His observations inevitably persisted past the discussion of the moment to go on to instill new ideas and further curiosity in the other person . By giving so freely and so personally, Larry created an environment for learning in the context of a more fundamental search. It would be fair to say that most

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students and friends transformed their views on the world in some form while working with him . The third parallel between Kohlberg ' s and Korczak' s lives has to do with the commitment to moral action-not one that w.ants to announce moral courage , but a quiet, almost natural, way of acting on a· set of beliefs about human dignity . It is in this way that Korczak endured daily humiliations that the Nazis and their Polish collaborators imposed on him and his children . It is in this almost tran­ scendent perspective that Korczak could view his captors not only as enemies but fellow humans potentially capable of reciprocating human gestures , no matter how small . For his part, Larry acted on his beliefs in daily life , as well as in his theoretical work. As a young man , adventure and principled moral conduct united in a just cause and simultaneously supported his search for identity . He joined the mer­ chant marine in order to smuggle Jews from Europe to Palestine . This experience remained a reference point throughout his life and is captured in his witty and thoughtful account, Beds for Bananas, written when he was 22 . Larry retained a keen interest in Israel and the Middle East the rest of his life . While he rarely made use of his considerable moral authority to influence political events , there were times when he , the " guilty bystander, " wanted to intervene. On one occasion, a group of students at Harvard asked him, and other faculty , to serve as civilian observers in Lebanon in order to help prevent a massacre of Palestinians in the camps . Prior commitments made this trip impossible and , as events turned out, the massacres occurred . Larry genuinely suffered from not having partici­ pated in a mission that could have saved many lives . This capacity for guilt, not as a neurotic trait, but as a recognition that moral judgment did not necessarily lead to responsible moral action , made Larry truly a human full of frailty and limitations . This knowledge contributed to making him at times a tragic figure , with considerable suffering and despair. But these natural limitations never made him lose his direction . He was clear and even wise , if wisdom means to unify compassion and knowledge . In an essential moment such as Korczak encountered-and one to which Larry would have responded-this form of wisdom is not only life-affirming but also an unbreakable form of resistance .

Law re n ce Ko h l be rg : T h e Vocat i o n of a M o ra l Psyc h o l og i st a n d Ed u cato r . Pa rt I

C l a r k Powe r

He opened paths for our children ' s feet to follow and something of him will be a part of us forever. 1

Lost perhaps in the attention given to the impact of Lawrence Kohlberg' s ideas upon psychology and education is an appreciation for what motivated him to work so brilliantly and courageously over the years . All of those who knew him will testify to his unsurpassable energy and enthusiasm for his research and educational projects . Clearly he enjoyed the intellectual stimulation of his work, yet he was driven by forces much deeper than this . Lawrence Kohlberg was a man who grasped with increasing clarity as his life unfolded that he had a very special call to be a scientist and educator of morality . For him , moral psychology and moral education were not interests to be pursued simply because they were self-fulfilling , they were the means he chose to give his life to the cause of justice . In my opinion, Kohlberg ' s most revealing statement about his own vocation may be found in the epilogue entitled , "Education for Justice: The Vocation of Janusz Korczak, ' ' which he wrote for his first book ( 1 98 1 ) . In it Kohlberg virtually canonized Korczak, who in the 1 930s gave up a successful career as a physician to become the director of two schools in Warsaw . Korczak organized these schools as democratic communities , believing , as Kohlberg , did , that children' s sociomoral development is best fostered in an environment that en­ courages participation and mutual care . When the Nazis occupied Warsaw , Korczak , in spite of being in poor health , chose to remain with his orphans and eventually was executed with them . As Kohlberg pointed out, Korczak ' s death illustrated the depth of his love-a love that flowed from a profound spiritual 25

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philosophy developed through years ·of personal anguish . Kohl berg recognized that it was this same love born of suffering that had inspired his own crusade for justice and that brought him consolation in times of pain and sorrow . Hopefully this brief essay will give some testimony to tl).e way it animated his exceptional work, particularly on behalf of children. Whenever Kohlberg traced the path that led him into moral psychology and education, he began with his decision right after high school to join the effort to smuggle Jewish refugees through the British blockade into Palestine . An intense­ ly idealistic young man , who was moved by the Holocaust, he was eager to put his life on the line for a cause he believed was unquestionably just . After a brief term of duty in the merchant marine , he volunteered as an engineer aboard an old , Navy iceboat that had been purchased by the Haganah , the Jewish defense force . On the way to Palestine his ship , full of refugees , was captured by the British; and he along with the rest of the crew and their passengers , were interred in a camp in Cyprus . With the help of the Haganah, he and some others escaped and remained on a kibbutz in Palestine until it was safe to return to the United States . There they found another ship and made their way back to Palestine. Torn between joining a kibbutz , which had given him his first taste of a just community, or returning to a less demanding and more familiar way of life in the United States , he opted for a "philosophical moratorium" and went back to school . Beset with moral questions that arose from the violence that had occurred in his capture and Haganah methods , he recognized the need for serious and sustained ethical reflection. Undergraduate study at the University of Chicago , which emphasized the classical philosophical texts of the Western tradition , allowed him to grapple with these issues . Poring over the ethical writings of Plato , Mill , Locke , and above all Kant, he formulated the rudiments of what was later to become his sixth moral stage . In choosing graduate study leading to a career, Kohl berg considered philoso­ phy, law , and clinical psychology . He eventually settled on psychology , in part because he could relate it to philosophical concerns , as William James had done , and in part because it offered him a direct and personal way of helping others . As a graduate student at Chicago , Kohlberg studied under the top psychologists of his day . He was taught psychoanalysis by Bruno Bettleheim , social learning theory by Jacob Gewirtz , and humanistic psychology by Carl Rogers . When his coursework was completed, he spent 2 years as an intern in a mental hospital . The more he learned about the mainstream of American psychology , as both a student and a training clinician , the more dissatisfied he became with its neglect of moral issues . After unsuccessfully protesting his supervisor' s unfairness to one of his patients , he took leave of clinical psychology and focused on his doctoral thesis , which he wrote between 1 955 and 1 958 . It became one of the most cited of unpublished dissertations ever, and helped to establish Kohlberg' s reputation in this country as one of the leading ' ' structuralists'' of the 1 960s , with Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky . '

·.

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From Kohlberg ' s personal history it is not surprising that he chose to study moral development. Nevertheless , such a topic was entirely out of place in American psychology . Kohlberg was particularly fond of the following passage by Brown and Hern stein ( 1 97 5) , who in their text on psychology , explained why his fellow psychologists used to regard him as an ' 'odd duck ' ' : The very words " moral " and " conduct" had a kind of No, No Nanette period flavor to them . . . . No up-to-date social scientist, acquainted with psychoanalysis , behaviorism, and cultural anthropology used such words at all . . . . Moral reason­ ing as a process was something of which behavioral scientists were at least profes­ sionally unaware. (pp . 307-308)

Kohlberg ' s liberal arts background had given him a broad perspective that helped him to place the psychological orthodoxy of his day within an intellectual framework extending b ack to Socrates . Acutely conscious of the myopia of that ¥ orthodoxy , he accused his fellow social scientists of having lost sight of one of the most fundamental questions in Western intellectual history: ' 'How does the impulse and sensation bound infant (or savage) become moral?" Kohlberg rec­ ognized that moral judgment was the linchpin to all of social psychology because it provided the norms regulating all social interaction . By refocusing social science on the distinctive features of the moral domain , he not only made the psychological study of morality respectable but inaugurated a whole new ap­ proach to social psychology . He expounded this approach in the most program­ matic and revolutionary of his psychological writings : ' ' Stage and Sequence: The Cognitive Developmental Approach to Socialization" (Kohlberg , 1 969) . Implicit in Kohlberg ' s doctoral thesis is the outline not only of ' ' Stage and Sequence' ' but of a lifetime' s work. In the first part he struggled to define the term ' ' moral ' ' broadly enough to fit a variety of philosophical traditions and yet narrowly enough for sustained empirical analysis . He demonstrated quite con­ vincingly that to equate morality with conformity , as had been done by behav­ iorists and psychoanalytical theorists , was unsound from both a normative and a phenomenological point of view . Before constructing his own theory of moral development, Kohlberg clarified the distinction between morality and social convention . In a style that was to become a trademark, he introduced this distinction through homely personal examples . The first was an elaborate psychological interpretation of how he internalized the practice of regular toothbrushing after years of parental prod­ ding . The second was a dilemma he faced between meeting a deadline or taking the time to buy his nephew a magic book for Christmas , as he had promised (p . 8) . Kohlberg pointed out that in order to distinguish toothbrushing from keeping a promise , attention must be given to the motivations underlying the two actions . He then proceeded to derive the following characteristics of a moral orientation from his second example:

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1 . Moral action is oriented to or preceded by a value judgment. 2 . Moral judgments are viewed by the judge as talcing priority over other value judgments . 3. Moral j udgments are associated with judgments of the self as good or bad . 4 . Moral judgments tend to be justified ()r based on reasons which are not limited to consequences of that particular act in that situation . 5 . .Moral judgments tend toward a high degree of generality , consistency , and inclusiveness . 6. Moral judgments tend to be considered objective by the malcers , i . e . , to be agreed to independently of differences of persons and interest. (Kohlberg , 1 95 8 , pp . 8- 1 2) '

.

Throughout the remainder of his dissertation, Kohlberg presented his remark­ ably original research strategy and moral reasoning typology . Carefully and insightfully , he noted points of agreement and disagreement with a number of related theories of moral development, particularly those of Baldwin, Mead , and Piaget. Although his sentence scoring system and descriptions of the stage types are now outdated, his account of how he arrived at them provides fascinating insights into his abductive "bootstrapping" method of theory building . For a psychologist who prefaced his research on sound philosophical criteria, Kohl­ berg approached the responses to his moral dilemmas with surprisingly few theoretical assumptions . Instead of starting \vith a hypothetical typology and determining to what extent the data supported it, Kohlberg derived his typology from the data. Selecting responses that were in the moral domain and that seemed to have " genetic " implications , he grouped them into intraindividual response clusters . He then attempted to account for the coherence of these clusters , which he found in other individuals , by identifying underlying ' ' 'principles ' of thought and evaluation. ' ' In his later work with the benefit of more mature longitudinal subjects and a greater reliance on Piaget' s psychological theory, Kohl berg de­ scribed these ' 'principles ' ' as logical structures and distinguished them from content: In his dissertation , however, he tended to confound structure and con­ tent by describing the principles in Weberian terms as ideal types . Although it seems today as though there were always six stages of moral judgment, Kohlberg struggled in his original study with the question of how many stage types he should try to define; and finally concluded: ' 'Too few types seemed worse to us than too many , since too many may be simplified but too few cannot be refined' ' (p . 89) . He also remarked that the number of types he arrived at was ' 'rather arbitrary' ' and ' 'undoubtably determined by the limits of varia­ tion of our population, ' ' a concession that anticipated Carol Gilligan' s critique of his all-male sample . Willing to add or to subtract from his stage types , he only changed the number of stages on two occasions-firsf in the course of his dissertation research (when he reduced the number from eight to six) and sec­ ondly in the course of constructing the latest manual (when he discounted the empirical basis of stage 6) .

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l(ohlberg ' s careful hermeneutical approach to the study of children' s moral discourse made him as much an oddity in psychology as did his decision to study morality . To the behaviorist, the dilemma responses he worked so hard to classi­ fy represented nothing more than learned verbal behavior. Few understood why Kohlberg found such ' 'verbalizations ' ' significant because they believed that there was no intrinsic connection between words and deeds (the two being subject to different reinforcement contingencies) . Wisely , Kohlberg resisted the temptation to attempt a premature study of moral action . In answer to the charge that the validity of his stages depended on their correlation with moral behavior, he argued for their validity on construct criteria alone . Although accused of the heresy of ' ' mentalism, ' ' he maintained that moral reasoning and judgment had their own integrity as psychological processes . In so doing, he did not deny the importance of exploring the judgment/ action question but put off its investiga­ tion until he could satisfactorily describe moral judgment. He recognized that without such a found'!tion he would replicate the errors of previous researchers who had virtually ignored the intentionality of the agents whose behaviors they were observing . Because he respected the seriousness of the judgment/ action question , he refused to trivialize it: "The relations between moral thought and moral action are surely too complex and interesting to be considered primarily in terms of ability to predict choice in action from choice in thought. (Kohlberg , 1 958 , p . 1 7) Kohlberg ' s resolve to explore moral reasoning for its own sake was animated, by a genuine love for the children who he believed were philosophers in their own right. While the behaviorists attempted to control children in order to learn about them , Kohlberg tried to listen to and understand them. Although the major thrust of his dissertation was in the area of psychology , Kohlberg did broach the most significant philosophical issue to arise from his research: the question of the ' 'value of ' development' itself. ' ' Conceding that a response to such a question was "beyond the scope" of his dissertation , he added that he shared the assumption that his reader would probably make that the " developmentally higher is the more valuable . " In fact , he went so far as to say that he believed that the morally right might in some sense be defined by the developmentally mature (p. 87) . It was not until 1 97 1 , when he wrote the provocative essay , ' 'From Is to Ought: How to Commit the Psychological Fall­ acy and Get Away With It . . . ' ' that he systematically developed these hunches (Kohlberg , 1 97 1 b) . While acknow Iedging that moral psychologists must base their work on philosophically sound principles , he advanced the controversial position that the ' 'facts ' ' of moral development o.u ght to be relevant to philo­ sophical claims about moral adequacy . Demonstrating a parallelism between psychological-descriptive and philosophical-normative analyses of structures of moral reasoning , he argued for both the complementarity and the convergence of these two analyses . Kohlberg ' s interest in demonstrating that higher stages were philosophically better was not purely academic . He knew as early as 1 958 that without such a

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demonstration a developmental appro ach to moral education would lack justifi­ cation . Kohlberg did not really invest himself in moral education practice and research until he began collaborating with Moshe Blatt on the moral discussion approach , just prior to joining the facuity of the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1 967 . Nevertheless , in 1 966 he ··sketched out a rationale for devel­ opmental moral education and offered some hints about what form he thought it should take . In that article he (Kohlberg , 1 966) started with the sociological observation that schools cannot help but provide moral education . He then expounded the Dewey-like view that " stimulation" to a higher developmental stage be the goal of education . In proposing a method of developmental education he proposed that attention be given to promoting a positive classroom atmosphere as a way of encouraging peer-group participation and role taking . Although he never used the terms "democratic" or " community, " in this essay Kohlberg laid the foun­ dations of what was to become the just community approach to moral education (Power, Higgins , & Kohlberg , 1 989) . Kohlberg , like other great moral educators , did not focus narrowly on private virtues and personal morality . He was concerned about the virtues of the society , as he was about those of the individual; in fact, he saw the one as impossible without the other. For him, moral education was political education and as political education was risky . In his essay , ' 'Education for Justice: A Modem Statement of the Platonic View , ' ' originally composed as a lecture in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. , Kohlberg warned that " there is nothing more dan­ gerous than the serious teaching of virtue . ' ' He went on to describe why the best of our moral educators have been killed: It' s not the people who preach power and hate who get assassinated . They are not a threat; they are like the worst in others . It is the people who are too good for other people to take , who question the basis on which people erect their paltry sense of goodness who die . ( 1 970 , p . 66)

One of the purposes of the United States Constitution as stated , in its pream­ ble , is to establish justice . Kohlberg frequently referred to the moral basis of Constitution and from this derived a warrant for moral education aimed at pro­ moting postconventional development. In understanding the Constitution to be a moral document, Kohlberg parted company with legal positivists who deny the connection between law and natural moral principles . The Constitution , as Kohlberg understood it, embodies a social contractarian theory of morality with a strong emphasis on human rights . Although Kohlberg described the Constitution as a stage 5 document in the Lockean tradition, he made a distinction between the document as an historical expression of a moral idea and the moral ideal itself. Kohlberg believed that the ideal version of the social contractarian ideal was stage 6 morality . Rather than focusing on the historically conditional views of the

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constitutional framers , Kohlberg would have us attend to the moral theory that animated their thinking . Respect for the Constitution as a living document re­ quires a recognition of the moral principles that make up its soul . Attention to the moral principles that underlie the Constitution and the tradition of judicial review illumine a history of an ever enlarging and deepening conception of human rights as can be seen , for example , in the 1 3th Amendment abolishing slavery, the 1 9th Amendment granting suffrage to women, and the Supreme Court decisions ex­ tending the due process and equal protection clauses of the 1 4th Amendment well beyond their original intent to eradicate the effects of slavery (Richards , 1 977) . Because Kohlberg' s just community approach receives fuller treatment else­ where in this volume, I will address only three of its features . The first feature is the democratic structure of the school . Kohlberg, like Thomas Jefferson , Horace Mann , and John Dewey, believed that the social structure of the school is the most important instrument for moral education. If schools are to promote devel­ opment to moral autonomy , then they must provide an opportunity for students to participate in decisions that effect their lives and the well-being of their school community . In the words of Horace Mann, schools ought to provide an ' ' appren­ ticeship in self-government" : In order that men may be prepared for self-government, their apprenticeship must commence in childhood . . . . He who has been a serf until the day before he is twenty-one years of age, cannot be an independent citizen the day after. . . . Liberty and self-imposed law are as appropriate a preparation for the subjects of an arbitrary power, as the law of force and authority is for maturing those sentiments of self-respect, or honor, and of dignity which belong to a truly republican citizen . (Cremin, 1 96 1 , p . 59)

The second feature of the just community approach is, as its name indicates , ' 'community . ' ' Ever since he began writing about moral education in the mid- 1 960s , Kohlberg has stressed the influence of peer relations on moral judg­ ment and behavior. He discovered the model for what would become the just community approach in the summer of 1 969 when he observed a school in an Israeli kibbutz . The members of that school had a strong sense of responsibility and care for each other and the group . The adult leader, the madrich, exercised influence not by appealing to positional or personal authority but to the shared norms and values of the group (Kohlberg , 1 97 1 a) . Kohlberg' s importation of this communitarian model has raised many an eyebrow since he first applied it in an experimental prison cottage in Niantic , Conn . , and then in the Cluster School in Cambridge. Nevertheless , he consistently defended it as the only effective anti­ dote to privatism, which he felt had by the late 1 970s become the dominant characteristic of American culture . By giving students a taste of life in communi­ ty , Kohl berg hoped to foster a sense of connectedness and public spiritedness . Yet he never lost sight of the dignity of the individual . Well before Gilligan' s

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critique of his view of justice became popular, Kohl berg had developed an educational approach that stressed the relational values of care and of collective responsibility . He saw those values as built upon yet transcending justice; and he believed that their full articulation requirecl a religious or cosmic horizon (Kohlberg and Power, 1 98 1 ) . The third feature of the just community approach is its stress on equality: The just community is as at home in Cambridge as it is in Brookline-in the South Bronx as it is in Scarsdale . All of the students in the just community school participate directly in the democratic process . Kohlberg saw little value in using the public schools to foster a ' 'natural aristocracy' ' of talent and virtue , as Jefferson did . In this sense he was closer to Mann , who advocated that attention be given to the development of each and every child, particularly those who may be disadvantaged. In failing health , Kohlberg commuted from Cambridge to Roosevelt High School in the Bronx the last 2 years of his life . He never wavered in his commitment to moral education and his capacity for work had seemed bound­ less . Nevertheless , he had a keen sense of his limitations . He wrote: ·.

To think of one ' s role as exemplary is to risk hypocrisy by inconsistent displays of virtue; it is to risk arrogance and an attitude of superiority to the students ; and it is to risk a recurring sense of failure for those of us who are not saints . ( 1 98 1 , p . 407) . 1

Although Lawrence Kohlberg never pretended to be a saint, he left as his legacy a record of devotion to research , thirst for justice , and loving commitment to children.

R E FE R E N CE S Brown , R . , & Hemstein , R . ( 1 975) . Moral reasoning and conduct. In Psychology . Boston: Little , Brown . Cremin , L . A . ( 1 96 1 ) . The Republic and the school: Horace Mann on the Education of the free man . New York: Teachers College . Kohlberg , L. ( 1 958). The development of modes of thinking and choices in years 10 to 16. Doctoral dissertation , University of B asil Blackwell. Harding, S . , & Hintikka, M. B . ( 1 983) . Discovering reality. Dordrecht: Reidel. Haste , H. ( 1 986) . Brother sun , sister moon ; can rationality overcome a dualistic cosmology? In J . Harding (Ed . ) , Perspectives on gender and science. Lewes: Falmer Press. Haste , H . ( 1 987) . Growing into rules . In J . S. B runer &-H . Haste (Eds . ) , Making sense: The child' s ·. construction of the world. London: Methuen . Haste , H . ( 1 988) . Legitimation , logic and lust; historical perspectives on gender, science and ways of knowing. New Ideas in Psychology, 6, 1 37- 1 45 . Hogg, M . , & Abrams , D . ( 1 988) . Social identification. London: Routledge . Holland , D . , & Quinn , N . (Eds . ) . ( 1 987) . Cultural models in language and thought. Cambridge , England: Cambridge University Press. Johnston , D. K. ( 1 988) . Adolescents' solutions to dilemmas in fables : Two moral orientations­ Two problem-solving strategies . In C. Gilligan , J. V. Ward , & J . M . Taylor (Eds . ) , Mapping the moral domain. Cambridge , MA: Harvard University Press. Jones , L . ( 1 987) . Perceptions of " peace women " at Greenham Common 1 98 1 - 85 . In S . Mac­ donald , P. Holden, & S . Ardener (Eds . ) , Images of women in peace and war. London: Macmillan . Keller, E . F . ( 1 983). A feeling for the organism. San Francisco: Freeman . Keller, E . F . ( 1 985) . Reflections on gender and science. New Haven: Yale University Press. Kohlberg, L . ( 1 966) . A cognitive developmental analysis of children ' s sex-role concepts and attitudes . In E . E . Maccoby (Ed . ) , The development of sex differences. California: Stanford University Press . Kohlberg , L . ( 1 97 1 ) . From is to ought: How to commit the naturalistic fallacy and get away with it in the study of moral development . In T. Mischel (Ed . ) , Cognitive development and epis­ temology. New York: Academic Press . Kohlberg , L . ( 1 984) . The psychology of moral development. San Francisco: Harper and Row . Kohlberg , L . , & Kramer, R . ( 1 969) . Continuities and discontinuities in childhood and adult moral development . Human Development, 12, 93- 1 20 . Kohl berg, L . , Boyd , D . , & Levine , C . ( 1 990) . The return o f Stage 6 . I n T. Wren (Ed . ) , The moral domain. Cambridge , MA: MIT Press. Locke , D. ( 1 986) . A psychologist among the philosophers: Philosophical aspects of Kohlberg ' s theories . In S . Modgil & C . Modgil (Eds . ) , Koh/berg: Consensus and controversy. Lewes : Falmer Press. Maccoby, E. E . , & Jacklin , C. N . ( 1 985) . The psychology of sex differences. Oxford: Oxford University Press . Miller, N . K . ( 1 986) . The Poetics of gender. New York: Columbia University Press . Nisan , M . , & Kohl berg , L . ( 1 982) . Universality and cross-cultural variation in moral development; a longitudinal and cross-sectional study in Turkey . Child Development, 53 . Potter, J . , & Wetherell , M . ( 1 987) . Discourse and social psychology. London: Sage . Rosenkrantz , P . , Vogel , S . R . , Bee , H . , Broverman , I . K . , & Broverman , D . M . ( 1 968) . Sex role stereotypes and self-concepts in college students . Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 32 , 287-295 . Schank , R . , & Abelson , R . ( 1 977) . Scripts, plans, goals and understanding. Hillsdale , NJ: Law­ rence Erlbaum Associates. Scribner, S . ( 1 978) . Modes of thinking and ways of speaking; culture and logic reconsidered . In R. 0 . Freedle (Ed . ) , Discourse production and comprehension. Hillsdale , NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Selman , R . ( 1 980) . The growth of interpersonal understanding. New York: Academic Press . Shweder, R . ( 1 982) . Beyond self-constructed knowledge; the study 'of culture and morality . Mer­ rill-Palmer Quarterly, 28, 4 1 -69. '

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Shweder, R . , Mahapatra, M . , & Miller, J. G. ( 1 987) . Culture and moral development . In J . Kagan & S . Lamb (Eds . ) , The emergence of morality in young children. Chicago: University of Chicago Press . Siegal , H . ( 1 986) . On using psychology to justify judgements of moral adequacy. In S . Modgil & C . Modgil (Eds . ) , Koh/berg: Consensus and controversy, Lewes: Palmer Press . Simpson , E . L . ( 1 974) . Moral development research; a case of scientific bias . Human Develop­ ment, 1 7, 8 1 - 1 06 . Stigler, J . W . , Shweder, R . A . , & Herdt , G . ( 1 990) . Cultural psychology. Cambridge , England: Cambridge University Press . Tajfel , H . ( 1 982) . Social identity and intergroup relations. Cambridge , England: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press . Trainer, P. E . ( 1 977) . A critical analysis of Kohlberg ' s contribution to the study of moral thought. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 7, 4 1 -64 . Vine , I . ( 1 986) . Moral maturity in socio-cultural perspective : Are Kohlberg ' s stages universal? In S. Modgil & C. Modgil (Eds . ) , Koh/berg: Consensus and controversy. Lewes: Palmer Press . Walker, L. J . ( 1 984) . Sex differences in the development of moral reasoning: a critical review . Child Development, 55, 677-69 1 . Weinreich-Haste , H . ( 1 977) . What future for the female subject? Some implications of the women' s movement for psychological research . Human Relations, 30, 535-543 . Weinreich-Haste , H . ( 1 984) . Morality , social meaning and rhetoric ; the social context of moral reasoning . In W . M . Kurtines & J . Gewirtz (Eds .) , Morality, moral behavior and moral develop­ ment. New York: Wiley. Wingfield , L . , & Haste , H. ( 1 987) . Connectedness and separateness: Cognitive style or moral orientation? Journal of Moral Education, 16, 2 1 4-225 . �

·.

Mo ra l Deve l o p m e n t a n d Act i o n fro m a Soc i a l Co n stru cti v i st Pe rs pecti ve

N o rm a H a a n

AB STRACT

The problems and processes of doing moral research are first discussed so as to bring out the guidelines followed in constructing this working proposal of in­ teractional morality . The importance in research of positing an ideal , cherished form of morality , with clearly stated moral grounds , as distinct from its deriva­ tive , enacted forms is argued. Further, the process of research on morality is described as necessarily an inductive search for the prototypic morality of every­ day life . The basic structures of the proposed system are then described, beginning with the moral dialogue , which is thought to be the sine qua non of moral activity . Further discussions of the moral balance and its grounds of equalization , dialogues that do not equalize , moral motivation and emotion , and the self as a moral being give the basic outlines of the system . Because people' s usual meth­ ods of problem-solving are probably also employed in resolving moral conflict, a formulation of coping and defending, which is relatively neutral morally , com­ pletes the picture . Finally research work in moral development and action is presented in two sections . The worth of common sense as a guide in moral investigation as well as its limitations are underscored as several phenomena that confound common sense is explained within the terms of the interactional theory . This latter exercise is to test the comprehensiveness of the proposal . Reality must resist us and strike back when we deny a moral distinction that exists and when we identify one that does not. Stuart Hampshire , New York Review of Books, March 26 , 1 987

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The task seems simple enough . Social scientists must work to understand moral functioning for the sake of the understanding itself and with more immediate and serious consequence , in order to help so c iety move toward greater moral sen­ sitivity . Thus the stakes are high and real , but scientific accomplishment to date suggests that the task presents special difficulties . For this reason I begin this chapter by discussing the processes and problems of doing moral research . I want to bring out the ideas that have guided the construction of the proposed interac­ tional system of morality that is described later in this chapter. H ow M i g ht Soci a l Scientists I nvesti g ate M o ra l ity?

As a formal , research-oriented discipline , psychology is comparatively new , so it is only within the past 20 to 30 years that psychologists have been willing to risk their objectivity by addressing the heated and complex questions of morality . Without doubt, Lawrence Kohlberg' s courage and vision facilitated this move . The central difficulty is that moral research requires choosing , wittingly or unwittingly , a value-a moral ground or a premise of first value . (Other areas of research have a similar requirement but perhaps none exert such immediate , compelling , and wholly defining effects on subsequent theorizing as does the choice of a moral ground. ) This occurrence-whereby a theory attempts to tum a value into a fact was recognized in the early 1 900s by moral philosophers who came to identify it as the naturalistic fallacy . Because the naturalistic fallacy seemed to make impartial scholarship impossible and philosophers do not want to be theologians of partisan value the field of moral philosophy languished. Much later, Rawls ( 1 97 1 ) took the step of openly choosing a value basis and then constructing a theory of economic justice on the basis of his choice . Needless to say Raw ls ' s value choice was not entirely acceptable to a number of philosophers (see Daniels , 1 975) . Psychologists ' arguments about morality seldom involve choices of value , a matter that is usually ignored. The manifest content of their disputes concerns methods , statistics , and replicability of small findings . Being forewarned by philosophers ' difficulties , psychologists should take care not to impose inadver­ tently a personally favored, parochial morality on reality; this can only lead to a gridlock of dispute over whose moral grounds are " correct" or " best . " How­ ever, psychology does not need to follow philosophy because its own different methods of study may deal with the problems of value choice and in any event contribute understandings about moral functioning that have never been system­ atically addressed . I refer to moral development, the morality of the very young , unevenness in the adequacy of moral action , moral motivation, the universality of morality , and more . Throughout history moral philosophers' formulations have been constructed 252

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in armchairs but psychologists are expected actually to investigate the phe­ nomena they study. This is why they are called and call themselves " scientists . " Indeed, the unique contributions of psychology are especially needed . As the prominent British philosopher, Anscombe, has said, ' 'My first thesis . . . is that it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy . . . it should be laid aside . . . until we have an adequate moral psychology , in which we are con­ spicuously lacking" (Anscombe , 1 969 , p . 1 75) . The core difficulty is that the identity of the very phenomena to be studied is in doubt. Scientists are not allowed to impose a whole formulation on reality; they must find the phenomena in reality even though their description of it will always be , in part, an interpretative imposition . But our only course is to keep rebuilding our raft , plank by plank while we are at sea, an observation that the epistemologist, Quine ( 1 968) attributes to Otto Neurath . For psychology this means identifying the practical , everyday morality that all people would en­ dorse-given the opportunity-as the way they would ideally act and would have others act. (Such a practical , cherished morality may not actually exist worldwide and if it does , it may not include' all aspects of morality within any one society. But to assume no part of morality is universal , before the work is done would seem to be a failure of scientific nerve. These are empirical questions once a candidate practical morality is in hand. ) A self-made trap of empiricists is avoided by giving first importance to cherished, ideal morality (the ought) rather than enacted morality (the is) . History is replete with less than ideal moral actions that represent adjustments people found they had to make , given restrict­ ing, dire circumstances , rather than adjustments they might have preferred to make . Life does not always permit perfect moral solutions ; for instance , choices sometimes have to be made between the lesser of two evils . It is psychologists ' particular task to elucidate the conditions of the various forms of relationship between practiced and ideal morality . The central concern of moral scholarship is the choice of a moral ground. Philosophers have usually selected a moral ground in answer to the question , ' 'why be moral ? ' ' which seems to contain an unstated prejudgment that humans naturally want everything for themselves . This is not an unusual supposition; it is consonant with Judeo-Christian description . Thus the inquiry has focused on whatever moves people to be concerned for others , such as: the moral imper­ ative; the logic of the greatest good for the greatest numbers ; and society ' s punishments for individual selfishness . Modem psychologists can avoid making this prejudgment of innate selfishness for at least two reasons . Recent research in animal behavior makes it clear that lower species are quite capable of cooper­ ative , reciprocal behavior, so why not homo sapiens ? Moreover, very young children are not as self-serving as was once supposed. Recent results show that when research solves technical problems of dealing with children' s cognitive naivete and limited social responsibility , 3- and 4-year-old children can behave with moral sensitivity . Finally psychologists as scientists are not allowed to make

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such fundamental prejudgments about the phenomena they would investigate , such as , humans are naturally selfish . This would violate the ethic of scientific neutrality. The initial question for social scientists cannot be " why be moral? " but rather ' ' what is morality ? ' ' And this can only be a'human construction since no a priori principles of justice exist in the world . This means that the discovery of morali­ ty' s features is a risky, inductive , trial-and-error procedure . Try as we might, our own personal moral values are likely to determine the ground and the ways we understand and interpret our findings . We can only bootstrap ourselves on our personally chosen initial ideas about morality . Once before I have tried to deal with this problem and suggested at this juncture: Happily psychologists already have special methods for diminishing, but never eradicating this bias of bootstrapping . We routinely decide whether social-psycho­ logical phenomena "exist" and interpretations have " truth" by checking our observations and interpretations with others . Consensual validation is not a puny criterion, and reliability and validity are not merely statistical techniques . They are formalized extensions of the ways all humans commonsensically come to know social-psychological reality . More fundamentally , however, they are moral regula­ tions , methods that social scientists have devised to protect themselves and their work from human culpability and fallibility . (Haan, 1 98 2 , p . 1 099)

The psychologist' s task seems to be then , a matter of discovering the nature of those human constructions that impel people when they are in situations they and observers seem to regard as moral . Plainly this enterprise involves definitions , revisions , and redefinitions but it will ' 'domesticate' ' morality by drawing it close to everyday life . By referring the question " what is morality" ? " to life as it is lived , and allowing their own biases to be uncovered, investigators stand some chance of keeping themselves honest. They would not then be trapped with the assumptions they grew up with , or merely rely on moral assumptions that seem t� fit an already constructed theory of the person , as Freud did with the superego, or avoiding all assumptions , stand awash in a sea of facts . Extending Stuart Hampshire' s ideas , cited at the beginning of this chapter, social scientists would be less likely to deny moral distinctions that exist and identify distinctions that do not. In fact, reality would be invited to strike back .

I NTE RACTI O N AL M O RALITY

Several guidelines for investigating morality have so far been suggested: 1 . A formulation must be regarded as a tentative , working proposal that will be inductively studied and thus successively revised .

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2 . Its ideal , cherished form will involve a moral ground that needs to be openly stated. Dynamic relations will connect the cherished form (true to the valued ground) and the enacted forms of morality . 3 . It can only be the practical , everyday form of morality that people im­ plicitly depend on and use , however imperfectly , and neither the morality of theology nor the educated elite . The interactional proposal is meant to fit these criteria. After a series of research projects concerned with moral action brought out several limitations in the Kohlberg system, a deliberate attempt was made to construct a formulation that would reflect the supposed central features of moral action . This prototypical morality seemed to be the equalizing interactions that people take as they work out and resolve their concerns and difficulties . The prototypical morality of Albert Bandura' s proposal , as described in this volume , seems to be the situation of transgression , whereas Martin Hoffman' s description of his system seems to take empathy for victims as prototypical . As moral research proceeds , formula­ tions that embrace all facets of morality will be needed. We begin with the basic structures of the proposal, first with the moral dialogue which in its various imagined and real forms seems to be the sine qua non of moral activity . The moral ground of this interactional morality will be discussed next, followed by other basic features of this proposal , before several sets of research findings that concern moral action and then development, are presented. Th e M o ra l D i a l og u e : P ra ctica l M o ra l ity

Interaction is the distinctive feature of everyday moral consciousness , as it is regarded, experienced , and lived out, either between two people , within the mind of a single person who is initially ambivalent, between a person and society, and between societies . A lone person , shipwrecked on a desert island, has no moral problems . Moral claims , ideas , and facts are weighed and priorities set in negotiants ' interaction until some balance is found, but the need for new resolutions never cease-new considerations always arise. Thus , moral tensions are ubiquitous , and moral resolutions are constantly achieved. When social interaction is taken as the telling feature of morality , a particular view of moral processes , decisions , guidelines , and individual capacities emerges . Some moral contretemps occur between parties so discussion must take place , either literally or only imagined in one person' s mind. Inequities are not always discussed in real life , but that does not prevent participants from angrily conducting imaginary dialogues within their own minds . This work must occur because people cannot long tolerate moral disequilibrium . Relations must be re­ equilibrated, whether falsely or authentically , and if some resolution does not occur the participants ' commitments to each other begin to decay .

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Moral dialogues continuously occur as major or minor events throughout the day and lifetime of all people, but these are not always expressed in talk. Nonverbal communications convey peoples ' -particularly young children' s­ positions and reactions as well . As minor events , dialogues often go unmarked . Dramatic and all but irresolvable episodes , 'such as the ones philosophers concoct to confound one another or psychologists use to "test" subjects , are rare. Dialogue is an exploration of mutual positions and thought-a joint inquiry into the facts , emotions , and parameters of the moral issue at hand . Initially , parties make fumbling, awkward , and, often intense attempts to defend their own views ; but faced with antithesis , they back off in order to clarify the problem (see Packer, 1 985) . Thus , statements of antithetical positions serve to identify the parameters of the issue. As its features are identified , elaborated , and finally simplified, the parties can begin to comprehend each other' s views . For one person to understand another, attitudes of receptivity and amity are required; the interchange moves people to cast aside their self-preoccupations . The dialogue corrects both parties ' positions despite their initial intentions . Typically , each party brings out cognitive-affective considerations . Sometimes people prefer and choose the best rational-cognitive argument (such is our commitment to logic and reality) , but the emotional importance of less rational views sometimes overrides the objective considerations . Often one party' s position is embedded in the other' s position , so common solutions or compromises are discovered. It is unreal to think that A and B are so opposed to each other that a victory for A means a loss for B . The dialogue is as much to discover A ' s and B ' s similarities (parties implicitly agree to abate their narcissism by participating) as it is for them to press their differences . Only unthinking , overwrought partisanship defeats the dialogue' s purpose . " Losing" is not necessarily devastating to participants , because being wrong concerns what a person is doing , which can be merely mistaken or foolish and not necessarily immoral . In the Platonic theories " losing" is a deficiency in moral capacity or character, which pertains to who the person is , a more personally assaultive evaluation . The M o ra l B a l a n ce a n d Its G ro u n d of E q u a l izati o n

The dialogue strives toward a balance that will be satisfactory to the immediate participants . Normative balances take various , not mutually exclusive forms : (a) The discovery of mutual interests : Both parties discover they want the same resolutions; (b) Compromises of advantage between two or more interests: Each discussant gives up some of what he or she wants to achieve a workable solution and all are helped in some small degree (Rawls , 1 97 1 ) ; (c) Compromises of disadvantage between two or more interests: Each discussant accepts some dis­ advantage to achieve a workable solution. All are hurt in the same degree; ( d) Compromises based on the choice of the lesser of two evils: No solution can be

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found that avoids hurting some one person or advantaging another in a small degree . The invariant criterion is that a balance is an agreement that restores-in reality , often not perfectly-moral equilibrium . Outside observers can and often do judge whether a balance has been reached , providing they have full informa­ tion . Therefore, the criterion of morality in this theory does not rest on the whims of a Jolie a deux. It has the kind of independent, commonsense objectivity provided by disinterested observers . In real life , solutions are often rational , which is not always the same as their being logically impeccable . Given the complexity of human interchange and the unique needs of each person , we all expect to suffer occasional minor injustice . This is not a perfectionist theory or one of strict compliance; it is one of probabilities . Various phrases express our understanding of moral balance , for example, " making it right with every­ body, " " evening things up, " and "restoring the peace . " In proposing the grpund of equalization, I make the ' 'thin' ' ontological as­ sumption that the desires and rationality of people are served by dialogues that promote fairness . Given informed , unencumbered choice , surely all people would hope to present their morally relevant claims and have them considered rather than not. This wish is differentiated by practical experience that informs us when we are still very young that our moral claims can only be validated reciprocally; that is , within the context of others ' claims also being validated . Various features of moral dialogues that promote accurate and full exchanges of views are derived from the ground of equalization; all should be allowed to speak , none should dominate , and anyone can veto . These criteria provide as­ surance that all parties ' interests will be heard and served , most of the time and over time. The moral ground of this proposal has then two parts : equalization within the process of dialogue and in the outcome as well . The ground of this outcome does not mean that exact sameness in the number or kind of supplies or resources must always be achieved. People seem satisfied that they have equalized their rela­ tions , for instance, if one person of a dyad has done more to complete a shared job and then receives more or if one person clearly needs more and thereby receives more , as is the case with physically handicapped people . The more difficult , stubborn , chronic problem for society is to achieve equalization within the dialogue; full and emotional communication is needed for the advantaged to understand the situations of the disadvantaged . The disadvantaged usually under­ stand the advantaged all too well . Exce pt i o n s : D i a l o g ues That Do N ot Eq u a l ize

Dialogues between persons of equal power are simplest in form. The interchange between the adult and child starts out with an actual imbalance which is , never­ theless , widely accepted as balanced because it is socially and emotionally

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legitimated by all parties' and society' s expectancies . But other kinds of balances occur that are ' ' false' ' and not legitimated. Two examples are dialogues that involve an emotionally stressed person or the frank ' ' freeloader' ' who partici­ pates in the dialogue but does so insincer((ly .'

Legitimated Imbalances. (a) Parent-child: Several aspects of this rela­ tionship prevent full moral exchange and true equilibration. The child' s imma­ turity is a prime reason for imbalance in this dyad. Unique to the parent-child relation is the fact that children do not initially make a free, autonomous cornmit­ ment to enter the relationship with their parents-they do not ask to be bom­ nor can they ordinarily terminate the relationship if it is morally imbalanced . However, most parents do make a free, autonomous commitment to bear their children. Entailed in that commitment is the parent' s interest and intent of en­ hancing the child' s development, power, and integration over time , at least until the child is an adult and less ostensibly even when the offspring is an adult. Children infrequently return moral concern to their parents equal to what the parents give , at least not until the parents are aged. But in their tum , the children generally take disproportionately greater moral responsibility for their own chil­ dren. A_s Rawls ( 1 97 1 ) whimsically says , " Only the 'first' generation of parents are deprived by these temporal arrangements . ' ' Thus the moral agreements achieved between parents and children are not always or actually equalized in kind and quantity and can only be understood to be ultimately equalized within the contextual meaning of the parent' s initial and long-term commitment first to bear and then to raise the child. Clearly the actual imbalance is both socially legitimated and socially required. (b) Persons of Unequal Power. The same kind of legitimate imbalances occasionally occur between two persons of unequal power and resources . For instance, on particular occasions and in particular ways , physically able persons are expected to help physically handicapped persons; thus society decides that special expenditures should be made to fix building entrances so the physically handicapped can enter and participate in work and social life . At the same time persons of lesser power and resource violate the terms of moral equalization if they expect to unduly receive, in all ways or in ways not related to their hand­ icap . Again these are socially legitimated although the nature and extent of the actual imbalance is often a cause for debate. Nonlegitimated Imbalances. (a) False Balances Based on Insincerity: The freeloader-the person who negotiates but secretly inte!lds to pursue his or her own ends-is an everpresent threat to moral balance . In fact, knowledge of this insincerity has probably been a major concern in the construction of most moral theories as is in Rawls' s theory . He makes extensive provisions to prevent

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selfishness from taking control . He insists that none should know their future advantage or current personal status in negotiating a set of moral principles . If they do know , he assumes that they will take advantage . He counts on group pressure to prevent or stalemate members who want to take more than their share . He adds a "difference" principle , which would allow some to enjoy greater advantages . But he warns that the difference principle is workable only if the least advantaged person will agree to the differential . These means of guard­ ing against freeloading bureaucratizes the Rawlsian system and makes it a sup­ port for the status quo (see Daniels , 1 97 5) . In contradistinction , the interactional view of moral dialogue suggests that chances must initially be taken that people will be sincere because the possibility that moral understandings will evolve must be kept open . Thus , security against freeloading is not a preoccupation. If a participant should prove to be insincere , dialogue becomes futile . All that sincere participants can then do is urge the other to be sincere and then protect themselves as they are entitled to do because they are moral objects to themselves .

(b) False Balances Based on Neurotic Interchange. Neurotic dyads (persons or societies) may unconsciously or unwittingly achieve and maintain basically corrupt moral balances . A bargain is drawn whereby the lesser receives protec­ tion or is allowed a convoluted sense of his or her superiority in return for the mistreatment by the stronger (for instance , in the classical sado-masochist dyad or husbands and abused wives) . These arrangements exact their toll and sincere moral dialogue among participants becomes all but impossible . (c) False Balances Based on Unequal Social Status and Caste. When a moral problem arises between two persons (or two societies) of unequal power, there is no legitimate basis within the interactional theory for the discussant of greater power to use that power to dominate the dialogue and determine its outcome . To do so is bad faith that defeats the dialogue and leads to unsatisfacto­ ry conclusions . Nevertheless , domination does occur so the moral outrage of the parties of low power frequently leads them to adopt various underground strat­ egies of subtle sabotage or pseudostupidity. Humans do not readily accept a state of moral helplessness . (d) False Balances Arising from Individual Psychological Statuses. An indi­ vidual ' s experience may lead to false balances in at least three ways : (a) At some time in their development they crystallized their approach to moral dialogues and adopted and came habitually to use defensive strategies that deprive them of vital , intersubjective , moral information; (b) Their immediate situation is so stressful that they accept or invent a false balance that protects their self-con­ sistency as a moral being; they choose compartmentalization instead of disin-

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tegration; or (c) Their habitual social experience positively promotes their adopt­ ing false balances that are , nevertheless , socially adaptive. within their society .

M o ra l M ot ivati o n a n d E m oti o n

·.

The view of moral motivation from the interactional perspective is markedly different than the view held in most other theories . Moral motivation is usually thought to be only slowly and arduously instilled in reluctant humans . B ut in the interactional proposal , motivation is viewed as already evident in very young children , whether or not they always act morally . It is supposed that morality is an inevitably shared, interactive understanding that arises from social interdependence . Reciprocity follows from the fact that when we press our own self-interest, by sound logic we are recognizing the right of others to do likewise. As parents we go to great length to ensure our off­ spring' s morality , placing this concern above all other concerns that we may have for their future . The result of this inexorable but caring recruitment of the young to social life , and specifically to moral interchange , is that all persons need to view themselves as moral . Moral motivation thereby becomes compel­ ling but when the lessons for the young are severe , dramatic , and accusatory , their morality becomes susceptible to all manner of distortion . Thus people tenaciously cling to their view of themselves as moral-all evidence is to the contrary-even if it means proving their morality by their demand for punish­ ment. Even hardened criminals regard themselves as moral , some of whom , like Gary Gilmore , "prove " their morality by their death . Others , like Adolf Eichmann, steadfastly cling to their innocence despite massive evidence to the contrary . Furthermore Freud' s theory of ego defenses depends on the single observation that humans resort to all manner of self-deception to fortify their view of themselves as moral. This is not a phenomenon of modem times . According to Plato , in the fifth century , Protagoras observed that ' ' all men properly say they are righteous whether or not they really are . Or else if they do not lay claim to righteousness, they must be insane" (Havelock, 1 957 , p . 1 69) . The cognitions of morality are usually emotional- "hot" rather than cool . From the interactional view , moral emotions communicate more immediate , compelling , and accurate information to disputants than is captured in words . This is the same difference as seeing a news event on television as opposed to reading about it in the newspaper. Messages of emotion convey anger at being violated as well as the glow of good conscience when dialogue is going well but not infrequently emotion works to disrupt and distort. Because the activity of the human mind is unimaginably complex and fast we often ' 'understand' ' a situa­ tion without seeming to have first known it. As Robert Zajonc ( 1 980) contends , emotion does not necessarily need inference for its occurrence . For these rea­ sons , emotions displayed during moral dialogues are taken as prime communica-

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tions that motivate possessors and protagonists , to keep working on their prob­ lem or abandon the attempt as impossible . The development of children' s moral intersubjectivity literally depends on their experiencing others as accountable , that is , children need to feel " good faith' ' rather than betrayal . Tangible loss is only one reason why people cannot tolerate bad faith . Often of greater anguish, are the excruciating emotions of being foiled . People risk themselves on the possibility that others are credible but feel like fools if they are "taken in , " " set up, " "ripped off, " " used, " or " stabbed in the back. " Thus willingness to enter a moral dialogue means self­ exposure that may be risky . Nevertheless , dialogue is the actualization of people ' s root knowledge that they have no alternative but isolation and alienation . Undoubtedly there are other additional related reasons for moral commitment that we do not yet fully understand . The meanings of social bonding in the very young are only now beginning to be explored (e . g . , Ainsworth , Blehar, Waters , & Wall , 1 978) . For now we can say humans are invariably drawn into moral dialogue , if not honestly to consider the legitimacy of their own and others' self­ interests , then to preserve their sense of themselves as moral beings . To refuse dialogue is to admit a degree of immorality that is tantamount to casting oneself out of human society . The Self a s a M o ra l B e i n g

Most moral theories focus only on concern for others and its corollary , the thwarting of self-concern. However, a morally adequate ' 'taking all parties ' claims into account' ' requires that all parties be able to speak and be desirous of speaking so that the import of their claims can be known and not slighted. Therefore , people' s subjective self-interest and their third-person view of them­ selves as a legitimate moral object are as necessary to the moral dialogue as is their concern for others . That selves are entitled to receive their deserts without guilt in order to function givingly is an insight of modem psychology . If the self is not adequately considered by the self and if the self does not require the other to consider the self' s claims , the stage is set for morally corrupt, masochistic relations . The self' s anger and others ' guilt are thereby entailed at some level of awareness and enactment. Balances are not achieved by benevolence . Thus , we can see why the magnanimity of the welfare state morally violates rather than pleases its recipients� instead of gifts , people much prefer what is legitimately theirs . Consequently , the problem for the child is not the simple one of learning to give , but the considerably more complex learning of how to exchange in different circumstances-to be able to structure when , why , where , and how much to give in terms of the other' s needs and one' s own needs when all must live together, invariably interacting , and mutually needful , deserving , and obligated . The

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child' s decision process develops toward differentiated understandings of what is needed by the other, and what is required by and for one' s self in a moral sense . A moral basis for deciding when one has done enough for the other person develops because doing too much upsets the- moral balance as much as doing too little. '

. ·

M O RALLY N E UTRAL STRATE G I E S

If the essential moral activity i s dialogue within the self, or with others , or within society , then people' s habitual as well as situationally invoked methods of solv­ ing problems are involved in the processing and resolution of moral conflict. These strategies are morally neutral and essentially the same as rnethods used in nonmoral situations . However, moral conflict seems to require particular pat­ terns of strategies . The formulation of general problem solving used in our research has been a previously proposed model of coping and defending (Haan , 1 977) . This is not described here in detail . Suffice to say now that this model has several features that fit situations of moral conflict First, the model carries the same dynamic quality of striving toward tension reduction that can be seen in its heritage in the psychoanalytical theory of ego defenses . Second , the main property of defense as rigid fortifica­ tion of the self was scrupulously observed. Third, both the meaning and scope of the defenses were extended beyond Freudian theory to include all kinds of protection against both external and internal threat, not just threat from the id instincts as originally contended. Fourth, a coping process was derived as a counterpart of each defensive process to describe a kind of problem solving that was neither rigid nor preoccupied with self-fortification but instead , apt and accurate . When people confront complex , important moral conflicts they are stressed so they need to undertake a complex series of considerations and strategies . In the beginning , each participant is understandably convinced that his or her self­ interest is legitimate and should take priority in the resolution. But confronted with a protagonist who has the same view of his or her own interests , disputants are pressured to readjust their claims while they still maintain a sense of their own moral legitimacy and worth. Stress may overload participants to the point that they become defensive­ rather than coping-and therefore fail to recognize the moral problem, consider only soµie aspects of their situation , or warp the meanings of recognized aspects . Albert B andura has detailed descriptions of moral defensiveness in this volume . But stress is not always detrimental . It can heighten awareness and involvement and thereby improve the quality of moral participation: When people cope with stress , I mean that their considerations and choices of actions are likely to be more apt, differentiated, and sensitive than otherwise . When people defend

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themselves , they are more likely to distort and become diffused , rigid, and obtuse . Thus a major hypothesis of our research has been that levels of moral action will rise when people cope and fall when they defend . This expectancy will be evaluated in the later section concerned with the research on moral action .

TEST AR EAS F O R I N TE RACTI O N AL M O RALITY R esea rch o n M o ra l Deve l o p m e nt

The interactional formulation of moral development has been substantially re­ vised as research and understanding has proceeded so earlier statements no longer hold and a number of statements in this section do not have the backing of published papers . A major revision of the view of development followed two recognitions : first, the rneaning of a growing and already sizable body of literature that indicates young children entertain far more cogent and differentiated moral considerations than previously thought and certainly more than allowed by the descriptions of stages 1 and 2 in the Kohlberg system (for a few examples of this literature see Anderson & Butzin , 1 978 ; Darley , Klossen , & Zanna, 1 97 8 ; Main & George , 1 985 ; Radke-Yarrow , Zahn-Waxler, & Chapman , 1 98 3 ; Rheingold & Hay , 1 980; Strayer, 1 980); second, the fact that observant parents and teachers of preschoolers have no difficulty recounting instances of their charges ' moral sensitivity . Earlier, I had presented (Haan , 1 978) a scoring system of five levels which I thought represented a developmental continuum. However, the weight of the recently contradictory evidence and my own recent research (Matsumoto , Haan , Yabrove, & Theodorou , 1 986) meant that these levels must be regarded , more simply , as merely arbitrarily fixed milestones along a continuum of improved moral adequacy and sensitivity (according to the moral ground of equalization) . These levels are not presented here (see Haan , Aerts , & Cooper, 1 985 for a tabular exposition and descriptions of various levels for the primary structure of moral balance and the secondary structures of self as a moral being , others as moral beings , taking chances on others ' good faith , righting wrong that the self commits) . Two relatively complicated investigations of friendship groups-one of 56 adolescents (Haan , 1 978) and another of 1 1 9 young adults (Haan , 1 986) included provisions for a developmental study based on participants ' shifts in these level scores . In both studies , the young people were first individually pretested, then with their friends experienced five 3-hour training sessions that evoked moral conflict among the friends , and at the conclusion they were again posttested and finally posttested for the second time 3 to 4 months later. In both studies the young people registered significant gains . Whether these gains in scores follow-

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ing these training sessions can be, tegarded, even tentatively , as evidence of development in moral capacity now seems doubtful . Instead the changes might be due to improvement in morally neutral skills that allow moral problems to be solved more satisfactorily. , The hypothesis that coping strategies shoqld enhance and defensive strategies should impede moral functioning was strongly supported. Individual students ' habitual tendency to cope , combined with the extent of their friendship group' s social disequilibrium (in other words , stress) , strongly predicted their moral gains . The students who gained characteristically tolerated ambiguity and their friends regarded them as straightforward and able to make clear arguments . Students who neither gained nor lost avoided exposing themselves to ihe moral conflict and protected themselves from the chaos of their group-their friends regarded them as dominating , inflexible , and less likable . The few students whose moral scores were depressed at posttest were characteristically defensive and vacillating and their friends regarded them as weak and withdrawing, com­ pared with other group members . Coping with moral imbalance and its indignations involved foregoing for a time the clairr.i of self-righteousness . If honest dialogue was to take place the risks of participation and its consequences had to be accepted . The personal imperviousness of the stable students and the anxious , self-effacing defensiveness of those students who lost indicated that it was impossible for them to accept and deal with these risks . (Haan et al . , 1 985 , p . 274)

These investigations were planned to study why people develop morally . Upward shifts in moral level were taken as sufficient evidence of development. At the time , the meaning of the results seemed clear enough . However, if very young children have the capacity to operate at morally sensitive levels (their average levels were equal to that of university students when both groups were confronted with the same cognitively simple , moral problem) , it makes no sense to assume that the adolescents ' and young adults' gains were actually shifts in moral capacity . Plainly there are persistent differences between preschoolers and university students in moral behavior but are these differences in morality or differences due to some other factors? The question must be asked: What does develop in the phenomena that we take to be moral development? There is an alternative formulation for moral development. Perhaps the in­ clination to act morally is given in human nature or logically follows on in­ terchanges among socially oriented species , as in_creasingly appears to be repre­ sented in the cooperative , self-denying behaviors of some lower species . Axelrod and Hamilton ( 1 98 1 ) suggested that the time has now- come for evolutionary biologists to propose a formal theory of reciprocity among unrelated members of lower species . If morality is not arduously wrought from a transformation of

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human selfishness, what might seem to be the moral development of the young may be (a) the maturing of problem-solving capacities that then reduce moral conflict and stress vulnerability as well as (b) the increasing cognitive and factual complexity of social situations wherein the young are expected and themselves expect to act. In this case it could be that the young only seem to increase in moral capacity , when actually their strategies of stress reduction and their prob­ lem solving may account for the improvement in concert with an increase in the scope of their social power and responsibility . In his chapter, Bandura makes a similar point as he discusses "obvious natural orders of development. " Moral enactment is especially difficult for the young because they lack skills for dealing with conflict as well as sheer knowledge, a backlog of experience , and socially granted and self-expected power. From my observations of different age groups in the same or very similar research settings-preschoolers to young adults-I have come to think that moral work is much harder for the young. Their dysphoria is palpable. As R . M . Hare commented: As we grow older [our moral development] consists in the main in making our moral principles more and more specific , by writing in exceptions and qualifica­ tions to cover the kinds of cases of which we have had experience . . . they soon become too complicated to admit of formulation, and yet give tolerably clear guidance in familiar situations . It is , indeed always possible for a situation to arise which calls for a qualification of the principle; but unless a person is plunged suddenly into an environment quite different to that in which he has grown up , this is likely to happen less and less as he grows older, because the situations which he encounters will more often resemble ones which he has encountered and thought morally about before . ( 1 965 , p . 40 1 )

We turned then to the similar study of approximately 40 four-year-olds who were studied for 1 year (Haan , unpublished; Matsumoto , Haan , Yabrove, The­ odorou , & Camey , 1 986) . Consequently , the index of moral change was more than a year; ego strategies and several more specific skills of conflict manage­ ment were repetitively assessed within the moral situations by two independent raters and also twice.for school behavior by the children' s teachers in the fall and spring . Two additional variables representing the substance of moral gain ex­ pected in other theories-verbalizes moral ideas and interpersonal sensitivity­ were also rated by the teachers and raters . The children were presented with two moral situations of doll play which were repeated 1 year apart; one involved sharing five brownies between a self-doll and a friend doll (the Brownie situa­ tion) and the other involved a friend doll breaking a vase and telling the self-doll not to tell his or her mother (the Vase situation) . The major difference between this and previous studies was the method of moral scoring. It was clear that the level scoring would involve excessive and shaky inferences if applied to 4-year-olds because they say little or nothing that

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qualifies as moral language . (A separate study , Matsumoto et al . , 1 98 6 , showed that these children communicated their moral positions to peers primarily through facial expressions . ) Consequently we moved to a different scoring sys­ tem that was based on five clear moral acts; equalization, reparations made to achieve equalization, stalemate , default, and . betrayal of stated intention . Exten­ sive work had been previously done with these categories to achieve scale val­ ues , and reliability of scoring was almost perfect (see Matsumoto et al . , 1 986 for details) . The results in terms of changes over 1 year were clear: Between 4 and 5 years of age most of the sample gained morally but their gains were only marginally significant (ps < 0 . 1 0 , two-tailed test) . However, both teachers and raters agreed that the children had become significantly more coping (freer and better able to regulate their emotions) and less defensive (denying) . Several other skills of conflict resolution also showed improvement: Children were significantly less likely to capitulate-simply give up their moral claims or autonomy-with the Brownie and Vase situations and in school . The teachers also gave children higher marks for striving to reach moral balance . In Vase they were significantly more admitting of violations and more morally innovative . But none of these variables registered as strikingly significant gains as did verbalizes moral ideas (p < 0 . 00 1 ) . Also the children significantly gained in Brownie for interpersonal sensitivity . In these results the competitive explanations simply parallel each other. The critical question is whether any significant part of the variance in the moral change scores of individual children could be accounted for by changes in their problem solving , verbalizing moral ideas , or interpersonal sensitivity . The an­ swer could suggest the ingredients of moral development as morality is opera­ tionalized by these five acts . Pairs of multiple regression models to partition the variance in moral change scores were constructed pitting the change scores for each skill of conflict resolution against the change scores: In the first series for verbalizes moral ideas , and in the second series , against the change scores for interpersonal sensitivity . In no instance was change in the latter two variables associated with moral change , despite their highly significant change across 1 year. This result occurred whether they were entered first or second in the model for moral performance in either Vase or Brownie . On the other hand , change in the children' s capabilities of regulating their emotions , protecting their legitimate interest with peers , and not denying were all significantly associated with the moral gains in both B rownie and Vase even when verbalization and interpersonal sensitivity were controlled . Changes in striving for balances and not capitulating within the Brownie situation were also related to moral gain . Sharply restricted variance in the teachers ' change scores prevented significant results . This one , more carefully designed study hardly resolves questions about interactional moral development. However, the results are consistent with the revised view of the findings from the two previous studies (Haan, 1 978 , 1 986)

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that when the development of moral action is the focus-and I would argue that this is the only important focus-learning how to handle one ' s self in conflict is more critical than improving one ' s moral vocabulary or being more sensitive to one ' s protagonist. The latter instance underscores the bilateral aspect of moral negotiation; morally successful acts require that both the self and the other be treated as moral beings . Four-year-olds are all too ready to relinquish their moral rights in dialogue with peers . Given the recent surge of findings that describe young children ' s moral sen­ sitivity , it seems likely that research on moral development will be controversial and exciting for some years more . It matters whether the development of morali­ ty is in moral capacity or capabilities of conflict resolution or some combination of the two , or some other phenomenon , not only for the sake of " truth" itself, but also for the reason that different focuses for programs of moral education follow each identification . M o ra l Act i o n

Dialogue i s the form of all moral activity and , of course , dialogue is action . Thus action is at the heart of interactional theory and separation of thought (or judg­ ment) from behavior is not particularly fruitful . Testing the adequacy of moral thought seems to be merely a method of determining whether people have ac­ quired knowledge of the moral rhetoric approved by their culture . In everyday life , action is regarded as the only authentic criterion of the person' s moral intent. Understanding the dynamics of the disparity between what people cherish and usually say , on the one hand , and what they do, on the other hand , has been a preoccupation in interactional research (see Haan, 1 97 8 , 1 986; Haan et al . , 1 98 5 ; Haan , unpublished) . From the standpoint of the moral ground of equalization , the character of people' s actions during dialogue should find its complement in the actions they take after the dialogue , that is , whether or not the agreed-upon acts actually occur. Morally violating acts during dialogue are usually controlled by pro­ tagonists ' correction of each other; for instance , " you ' re not letting me say what I mean" (see Packer, 1 985 , for a vivid , detailed hermeneutic analysis of the young adults ' exchange during the most stressful game they experienced) . After the dialogue , checks on the morality of concluding acts are less immediate and close . Nonetheless , the conclusions were made jointly and therefore in public so that pressures to enact them are maintained . Only an imagined dialogue carried on in the privacy of one person' s mind escapes this kind of public scrutiny . But it is not uncommon for people to betray their final commitments and then cover their delinquency with profuse rationalizations . And they can also default during dialogue by participating insincerely while planning all the while to pursue their own ends . They can also capitulate , leaving guilt and a variety of unresolved and accumulating tensions in the relationship. In our research observations , we have

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seen 4-year-olds , adolescents , and young adults act in all these ways so we have little reason for wondering why tests of moral knowledge have weak or nonexis­ tent relationships with moral behavior. All three projects mentioned before (Haan , 1 978; Haan , 1 982; Haan et al . , 1 985 ; Haan , unpublished) included group ·· interactions among friends wherein rather stressful moral ' 'games ' ' drew participants into moral conflict with each other, but all these problems had solutions whereby conflict could be reduced and equalization achieved . The young adult project also included discussion groups who were only given hypothetical dilemmas to resolve . In all projects , measures were attained of the participants ' coping and defensiveness , not only within the interaction situations but also with friends in their ordinary life , described for the 4-year-olds b y raters and their teachers or for the older subjects by themselves . I want to discuss five general findings that held in all three studies , but to simplify the presentation I focus on the young adults . 1 . The students ' coping and avoidance of defensiveness were strongly asso­ ciated with higher moral action scores . These results involved habitual or usual ways of coping and defending as well as situational invoked ways as assessed in the group interactions by raters who were independent of and naive about moral sconng . .



2 . A particular configuration of coping and defensive processes was re­ petitively associated with the adequacy of moral action as it occurred in the five relatively stressful situations , positively : intellectuality (a free consideration of possibilities) , empathy, and suppression (not repression) of emotions; and nega­ tively: isolation (compartmentalizing related facts or facts and related feelings) , intellectualizing, and displacement (blaming and taking negative emotions out on others) . In other words , higher moral action occurred when the young people considered all possible solutions , understood their protagonists and regulated their own feelings . At the same time they needed to get the circumstances " together" in their minds , and refrain from intellectualizing and accusing their protagonists for the difficulties they faced . These results underscore the various facets of moral conflict-the search involved, the need to consider others , the emotion evoked, and the escapes of compartmentalizing , intellectualizing , and blaming others . They underscore the delicacy of moral dialogue and its like­ lihood of misfiring when participants are stressed. 3 . The students ' moral levels varied radically from one situation to another in concert with their group' s stress and with the difficulty or costs of the moral problems they faced. The latter source of variation has not been systematically considered in moral research . These results suggest that the popular and schol­ arly concept of ' 'the moral character' ' may be an oversimplification . In the young adult project, post hoc analyses were done of the sessions ' moral difficulty with 20 naive judges rank ordering objective descriptions of the games . Moral

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scores were highest when the games involved issues that were distant from the students ' experience , and vicarious in nature (for instance , in simulations where a possibly contaminated survivor wishes to enter the students ' safe area) . In other words , it is easier to act in morally adequate ways when the situation is hypothetical . 4 . The friendship groups' operations as equalizing during moral conflict were associated with members' moral performance . Group members had rated all their friends on several dimensions before the interactions began and these evaluations provided the basis for designating each of the 1 5 groups as being either led or dominated by one member. Notice that these two group designations contrast in whether or not members should be able to follow equalizing processes when the group is in moral conflict . The groups ' behavior was rated in each session by sociologists who knew nothing about the groups ' designation . Analy­ sis of these behaviors showed that the led groups were consistently more inte­ grative and communal �bile the dominated groups were more disintegrated and hierarchical in their functioning. In tum , the led game groups consistently pro­ duced higher moral action scores . Group designation had no effect on the moral levels of the staff-led discussion groups , presumably because the staff leader set the tone and pace of group functioning . Thus another significant contextual influence was identified-the extent to which the interpersonal context of di­ alogue influences possibilities for equalization. 5 . Despite the obvious importance of contextual effects , the comparative strengths of the different influences on moral action still show that personal reactions make the strongest contributions even when all other effects were controlled . Of all significant variance for five group sessions , the individual students ' situationally invoked ego processing accounted for 4 1 % , whether they were members of game or discussion groups for 3 1 % , their habitual or charac­ teristic ego processing for 1 9% and the designation, of their group as dominated or led , for 9% . These figures are based on multiple regression models for each session with an order of entry that moved from distal to proximal influences , that is , game or discussing , led or dominated , characteristic and finally situation ego processing. Reversed order of entry produced no different results . (The signifi­ cance level for 1 2 models was 0 . 00 1 and for the remaining three models , 0 . 0 1 when analyses were done separately for each sex and then for the sexes com­ bined . ) Thus even though the individual students ' immediate efforts at problem solving most strongly predicted the quality of their moral action , aspects of their context-the objective nature of the moral problems and the extent to which the interpersonal ambience was equalizing-also affected outcomes . The other studies did not include discussion groups or the means of discerning led or dominated groups but in all other ways they were much the same and produced the same results .

270

H AA N

All three age groups played a version of Prisoner' s Dilemma. There was very little difference between the age groups in the incidences . of their equalizations , reparations , stalemates , defaults , and betrayals . The preschoolers ' incidences were almost identical with the young adult&. Qualitatively , the preschoolers also acted like their older counterparts . '

·.

They became emotional in the same ways . That i s , they became frustrated during stalemates , angry during defaults and betrayals , and happy when they arrived at a mutual solution. Their glow of shared good conscience was palpable when they equalized. Like the subgroups of young adults and adolescents , they at first , heedlessly worked only for their self-interests , but changed their course of action when their partners made their indignation known. B oth children and the older students employed defensive maneuvers to rationalize their defaults and mute their anxiety . Preschoolers sometimes sucked their fingers or hair, picked their noses , wiggled in their chairs , and stared expressionless at the table; university and high school students became immobilized and repressive or cocky and belligerent. When they realized their wrong-doing, the four-year-olds pleaded ignorance: " We don't know the colors . " In contrast , the students more often justified themselves by pointing out they had haplessly thought it was ' 'just a game . ' ' (They had volunteered and signed contracts to take part in a study of morality . ) The four-year-olds projected responsibility for the inequities on the staff leader' s poor anticipation of their needs and implied their mothers would have done better, while the university students accused the project staff of being cheap about pay-offs . (Packer, Haan, Theodorou , & Yabrove , 1 985 , pp . 30 1 -302)

Altogether then , when morality is conceived in action terms-as it is in this proposed system-no separate theory of action is necessary . Separate theories of action are needed when morality is thought to reside in a private , quiescent capacity , either learned or given naturally by development, because explanations are then needed for how this capacity is aroused and enacted. These explanations describe the moral agent that varies in naive situationalism , from being entirely driven by external demand , to being encapsulated in a stage' s capabilities in the stage formulations . In comparatively benign action situations , like research must ethically present, self-choice can be the most important influence . But in malev­ olent, restrictive environments , such as cults and concentration camps , external effects can override self-choice , at least when people first find themselves in such circumstances . In these projects , context appeared as a backgroup in the sense of either providing or taking away options for individual actors . For the most part, variations in moral levels were not random (nor due to poor scoring , as stage theorists have sometimes suggested) but instead were systematically related to variations in context and personal resources and vulnerabilities . Finally , the similarity in the preschoolers ' and older age groups ' results , both qualitatively and quantitatively, suggest that no matter what its content, the moral experience with its joys and angers and conflict-resolving processes may

7.

A SOCIAL CO N STRUCTIVIST P E R S PECTIVE

27 1

not only be similar for all ages but possibly for all people of different back­ grounds . In any case , that is the only feasible goal for research and investigations of the emotions displayed in moral protagonists of different ages and cultures as they confront moral problems in action situations .

CO M M O N B U T CO N F O U N D I N G M O RAL P H E N O M E N A

Common sense is a good starting point for moral study for as Thomas Na gel ( 1 970) observes , it is correct about most things For unless the apparatus is useful . . . it will simply not be developed and refined in the endless dealings of countless ordinary individuals , it will not automatically become common property and a part of human life , and will not infiltrate our common language . (p . 33) ...

Still several moral phenomena seem to confound conventional wisdom . I con­ clude this chapter by discussing four of these conundrums in order to highlight the explanations that the interactional theory offers in clarification . One test of a moral proposal is the comprehensiveness of its coverage . Why Do M o ra l Act i o n s Va ry So R a d i ca l ly?

The Old Testament led to the idea that moral character should be unwavering; whatever the code , sometimes solid citizens become embezzlers , priests seduce parishioners , and Nazis cared for their children . Inconsistency between public and private morality characterized famous moralists such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King . Most likely no one is wholly a saint or a sinner. Variability in the quality of people ' s moral action is endemic and is ascribed in the interactional proposal as due to the remarkable efficiency of defensive maneuvers in handling stress so that moral problems go unrecognized or when recognized , become so warped that self-justification for defaults are allowed . Variability is also ascribed to contextual influences , such as the immediate interpersonal ambience , the costs of the moral problem itself, and the particular options available to different actors .

If Morality Is Concern For Others, Is Self-Concern Immoral? The self must be treated as a moral being by the self if the dialogue and outcomes are to be equalizing . Balances are toppled when people give too much because they gra­ tuitously obligate the other. They themselves will eventually feel used and invar­ iably need to seek some kind of amend or possibly "revenge , " if only by not giving enough the next time. Confusion between self-servingness and regarding the self as moral seems to stem from the obsession to check human selfishness

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that is central to most moral theories . Self-sacrifice has been touted as the most noble of virtues .

How Is the "Happy Slave" to be Expl�iin ed? A clear distinction must be made between moral conditions that people "i dealize and cherish and deleterious moral conditions in their own lives that they do not reject and may even embrace. The " happy slave" makes difficulties for all moral theories that identify morali­ ty in terms of human affairs , instead of a priori principles or categorical imper­ atives that exist apart from human activity . Slavery comes in many forms and formal slavery is just one; sado-masochist partners and women abused by their husbands are other examples . If the ' ' happy' ' victims-slaves could be engaged in a serious , careful and sincere conversation to ascertain whether or not they might prefer an egalitarian life , some would still prefer slavery . I contend that even though the " happy" victim-slave may choose the known as security rather than take the risks of the unknown , they would not want their children to live the slave life . As always , parents urge their children to better themselves . Thus I still contend that equalization is preferred by all people. If Y..o ung Children Are Not Moral, How

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for preoperational thinking and the capacity to engage in normative commu­ nicative actions . The development of an autonomous (internal) orientation to sociomoral concepts at Level 3 is , in tum, viewed as dependent upon the devel­ opment of concrete operational thinking and the capacity to engage in the begin­ nings of discursive communicative action. Finally, the development of a critical (hypothetical-discursive) orientation at Level 4 is viewed as dependent upon the development of formal operational thinking and the capacity to engage in dis­ course . The four developmental levels (see Table 9 . 1 ) organized in terms of psychosocial perspective (i . e . , the overriding understanding of social reality that defines the individual ' s orientation to linguistic , cognitive , communicative and sociomoral activity) represented by each level are presented next. Psych osoci a l Deve l o p m enta l Leve l 1 : ( I nfa n cy : 0- 2 ) Psyc h osoc i a I Pe rs p ective : Presubjective

At this level the infant is linguistically at the preverbal level and in the sen­ sorimotor stage of cognitive development. During this period, the infant is in the process of acquiring basic linguistic and sensorimotor competencies . The in-

9.

PSYC H OSOCIAL TH E O RY

31 1

fant' s communicative actions tend to be primarily nonnormative goal oriented actions (GOA) organized around sensorimotor activities . The sociomoral orien­ tation associated with this level is premoral . The psychosocial perspective asso­ ciated with this level is presubjective , a perspective rooted in the initial emer­ gence of a separate and distinct sense of self. Psych osoci a l Deve l o p m e nta l Leve l 2 : ( C h i l d h oo d : 2 - 7 ) Psyc h osocia I Pers pective : Egocentric-Subjective

At this level the child has acquired the basic linguistic competence necessary for verbal interaction . Cognitively , the child is at the preoperational stage . At this level the child is acquiring basic role taking and role playing skills and is in the process of moving from egocentric thought to sociocentric thinking . In terms of communicative competence , at this level the child is capable of engaging in ordinary communicative action (OCA) and strategic goal oriented action (SGA) , but has not yet achieved the capacity for discursive communicative action (DCA) . Sociomoral competence , at this level, is defined by an orientation that is heteronomous and uncritical . The child acquires a basic understanding of so­ �iomoral rules and concepts , but the rules are viewed as externally imposed. The psychosocial perspective that defines this level tends to be egocentric (i . e . , a perspective rooted in the ego' s or self' s understanding) and is typically oriented to subjective needs , interests , and expectations , either of the self or others , but not to shared needs , interests and expectations . Psych osoci a l Deve l o p m e nt Leve l 3 : ( Prea d o l esce n ce : 7- 1 2 ) Psyc h osocia I Perspective : Sociocentric-lntersubjective

At this level the preadolescent' s linguistic competence becomes fully developed . The preadolescent' s cognitive competence at this level includes the capability for concrete operational thinking as well as the capacity for decentered thinking . Along with the capacity for decentered thought , the preadolescent has acquired basic role taking and role playing skills and the preadolescent' s thinking tends to be sociocentric . In terms of communicative competence , at this level the pre­ adolescent can engage in OCA and SGA and at later ages some capacity for DCA . For example , in interactions in which consensus is threatened the pre­ adolescent may recognize the need to render explicit the shared understanding that is threatened and even move toward a willingness to suspend judgment on the problematic validity claims . Sociomoral competence at this level is defined by an orientation that is autonomous . Sociomoral rules are no longer viewed as externally imposed , but as intersubjectively shared constructions . The psycho­ social perspective that defines this level tends to be sociocentric (i . e . , a perspec­ tive rooted in shared understanding) and is typically oriented to inter-subjectively

31 2

KU RTI N E S , M AYOCK, POLLARD, LAN ZA, CAR LO

shared needs , interests , expectation s , rules , norms , values , and standards now understood as collective co-constructions . Psych osoc i a l Deve l o p m e nt Leve l 4 :, (Ad o l escen ceAd u lt h oo d : 1 2 +) Psyc h osoci a l Perspective : Critical ·

·-

At this level the youth/ adult is cognitively at the stage of formal operations . The youth/ adult' s cognitive competence includes the capacity for formal , hypo­ thetical thinking that is characteristic of this stage . With the acquisition of hypo­ thetical thinking , the youth/adult acquires the capacity to distance him/herself from socially constructed roles and conventions as well as norms and values . In terms of role taking skills , the individual now not only can take the perspective of the potential other in interactions , but can also take the perspective of an objec­ tive neutral third person . In terms of communicative competence , the individual can now render explicit the implicit validity claims that form the basis of consen­ sual speech , suspend recognition of them, treat them hypothetically , and subject them to critical , discursive examination . At this level the individual has the capacity to engage in all levels of DCA including communicative action which moves beyond attempts to restore or reestablish a shared mutual understanding to attempts to establish through integration or construction a new shared mutual understanding . Sociomoral competence at this level is defined by a critical orien­ tation in that the individual can now engage in critical-hypothetical thinking and critical-discursive communicative about sociomoral rules . The psychosocial perspective that defines this level tends to be critical, a perspective rooted in critical-hypothetical thinking about norms , needs , interests , expectations , rules , norms , values , and standards (both subjective and intersubjectively shared) now capable of being viewed as hypothetical and in critical-discursive communica­ tion about normative claims , now viewed as open to critical examination , nego­ tiation , discursive redemption and co-construction. Psychosocial Developmental Level 4 (Adolescence/ Adulthood) defines , for our developmental theory , psychosocial maturity . Thus , in our view , with the development of the capacity for critical-hypothetical thinking, critical-discursive communication, and a critical sociomoral orientation the individual has ac­ quired a full range of psychosocial competencies and achieved psychosocial maturity.

DEVE LO P M E N T A N D BEYO N D

In conceptualizing the development of psychosocial competencies described in the prior section we have drawn previous research in each of the domains (Chomsky , 1 965 ; Habermas , 1 979; Piaget, 1 93 2 , 1 936) . To this work we have

9.

PSYCH OSOCIAL TH E O RY

31 3

added our own view of rule systems characterized by a high degree of complexity and structure and open to human construction (Kurtines , 1 984 , 1 986 , 1 987) . The emergence of newness or novelty in such systems does not necessarily involve an increase or decrease in complexity. Change involves the evolution of new rules , but not necessarily more rules . All sociomoral rules systems , we have argued (Kurtines , 1 987) , are complex systems organized about the basic issue of the meaning of the good and the just life . Ontogenetic and socio-historical variation in sociomoral rule systems thus involve new or novel applications of rules rather than changes in the complexity of rule systems . Sociomoral knowledge and understanding is thus conceptualized as knowledge and understanding of a com­ plex system of rules that is open to ontogenetic and social evolutionary change . Such a formulation has , in our view , not only important implications for the conceptualization of psychosocial development, but also for conceptualizing the nature of ontogenetic change in sociomoral knowledge and understanding . Such a view requires a conceptualization of ontogenetic change in sociomoral knowledge and understanding-in competent rule users that differs in significant respects from theoretical orientations that conceptualize the ontogenesis of sociomoral understanding as a developmental process (i . e . , the result of maturational or learning processes) . For the past 3 decades , we noted earlier, the moral development literature , has been predominately defined by the same two theoretical traditions that have defined the human development literature , viz . , the cognitive developmental approach (Kohlberg , 1 976 , 1 98 1 , 1 984; Piaget, 1 932/ 1 965) and the behavioral­ learning approach (Burton, 1 984; Liebert, 1 984; Mischel & Mischel , 1 976) . The cognitive developmental approach focuses on moral cognition (e . g . , moral rea­ soning , moral judgment, etc . ) as an outcome variable and uses maturational processes (e . g . , developmental stage or sequence) as its primary process vari­ ables . The behavioral-learning approach , on the other hand , focuses on moral behavior (e . g . , moral transgressions , aggressive behavior, etc . ) as an outcome variable and relies on learning processes (e . g . , conditioning, imitation , model­ ing , etc . ) as primary process variables . Consistent with these theoretical tradi­ tions , we view the development of sociomoral competence (and other types of psychosocial competencies) to be the outcome of both maturational and learning processes . As discussed shortly, however, our view of the nature of the process of ontogenetic change in psychosocially competent individual ' s diverges from both the cognitive developmental and behavioral learning approaches . We view the acquisition of psychosocial competencies as a developmental process with the endpoint of development defined as the acquisition of a full range of competencies . Ontogenetic change , however, does not cease with the acquisition of a full range of psychosocial competencies . Ontogenetic change does not end with psychosocial maturity , but the processes governing on­ togenetic change shift from developmental processes such as maturation and learning to co-constructive social evolutionary processes . According to this ,

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predicted for each set of possible conditions . The tables illustrate the application of the model to the simplest case involving two participants (A and B ) , a single normative issue, and the respective validity claims (X , Y) or ' 'understandings ' ' that each participant brings to bear upon his ?r her position on the issue during a given interactive episode. Obviously , the m�del can be applied to more than two participants , issues , validity claims , and multiple episodes . Table 9 . 2 presents the predicted outcome for interactive episodes involving normative consensus (i . e . , when both participants share the same understanding in terms of coinciding rightness claims) . As can be seen from Table 9 . 2 , change is hypothesized to be unlikely to occur in interactions involving consensus . A s can be seen from Table 9 . 2 , in the simplest case of two participants i n an interactive episode involving normative consensus , the interaction model would predict little or no change in sociomoral understanding . As Table 9 . 2 illustrates , if normative consensus exists prior to the interaction (X,X) and if the interactive episode involves a discussion of an issue in which the participants bring their respective understandings (here, the same: X-X) to bear upon the issue , both participants will have the same understanding (X ,X) after the interaction that they had before the interaction . From Table 9 . 3 it can be seen that in an interactive episode involving nor­ mative conflict (where each participant has a different understanding in terms of validity claims) , the model would predict little or no onto genetic change in sociomoral understanding if there is no critical discussion (i . e . , if each partici­ pant simply states his or her respective positions without explicitly discussing the validity claims implicit in their understanding of the issue) or if there is discus­ sion of each participant' s own validity claims but not of each other ' s . As Hypoth­ esized Outcomes # 1 and #2 on Table 9 . 3 illustrate , if normative conflict exists prior to the interaction (X , Y) and if the interactive episode does n�t involve discussion of conflicting validity claims (X Y) or if the interactive episode involves a noncritical discussion (X ---- Y ) of each participant' s own validity claims but not of each other ' s , both participants will have the same understand­ ing (X. , Y) after the interaction that they had before the interaction . The model further predicts that interactive episodes involving normative con­ flict have a greater potential for resulting in ontogenetically new understanding on the part of one or both participants if the conflicting understandings of the issue are critically discussed . Critical discussion requires that the conflicting validity claims are both rendered explicit and submitted to critical examination . It further requires that each participant consider the potential validity of the other' s claim by explicitly examining the other' s claim as well as one ' s own in the course of the discussion. In so doing, the conflict may be resolved by the establishment or reestablishment of a shared mutual understanding through the integration of the two understandings . In the simplest case of two people , the model would predict a greater probability of the ontogenetic emergence of new sociomoral understanding on the part of one or both of the participants . Hypoth­ esized outcomes #3 and #4 on Table 9 . 3 depict the process that results in the

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reestablishment or restoration of a shared mutual understanding . In both of these cases , if normative conflict exists prior to the interaction (X , Y) and if the interac­ tion involves a critical discussion of the conflicting understandings (X-Y) , the interaction is predicted as more likely to result in one of the participants having an ontogenetically new (or at least different) understanding of the issue after the episode (X ,X or Y , Y) than before the episode (A' s X has changed to Y or B ' s Y has changed to X) . More importantly , however, interactive episodes involving normative conflict in which a genuinely new shared mutual understanding is established have the potential for resulting in an ontogenetically new understanding on the part of both participants . Hypothesized outcome #5 on Table 9 . 3 depicts this process . In this case , both participants understand the issue differently after the discussion than before. More importantly , the understanding at the end of the discussion is new or novel in that it is not the same understanding that either person had at the beginning of the discussion . The new understanding that results from the interac­ tion rnay be some combination based on the participants' prior understanding (XY or YX) or it may be a completely new understanding (Z) that emerged in the context of the critical discussion . The important point is that an ontogenetically new understanding is more likely to emerge in the context of initially conflicting or competing validity claims on an issue . The creative or constructive resolution of normative conflict results in the reestablishment of a new shared mutual normative understanding among the participants . The creative or constructive resolution of normative conflict is hypothesized to be facilitated by the type of communicative actions that take place during the interaction . Because discourse facilitates the establishment of a shared mutual understanding , it is hypothesized to enhance the constructive resolution of normative conflict and the emergence of new knowledge and under­ standing . Discourse , as a form of communicative action , implies a willingness to suspend judgment on competing or conflicting validity claims , including one' s own validity claims . It also implies a willingness to examine critically conflicting validity claims and allow the conflicting claims to be resolved by the force of the better argument, which in tum implies the ability to resist resolutions based on power, deception , or manipulation, including the use of such strategic action in support of one' s own claims . Our research on the role of co-construction in ontogenetic change required that we translate our theoretical claim (viz . , that higher levels of communicative functioning facilitate ontogenetic change in sociomoral knowledge , i . e . , the emergence of forms of sociomoral knowledge and understanding that are new or novel relative to the individual) into a testable research hypotheses . That is , having refined our conception of the role of co-construction in ontogenetic change , it was possible to express our theoretical claims in such a way as to be empirically testable. We used the model to generate a number of specific hypoth­ eses (described in more detail in Kurtines , 1 990) . In addition to developing a model for generating testable hypotheses , part of

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our experimental work required that we refine a procedure for creating contexts of normative dis-equilibrium in order to be able to investigate the role of co-constructive communicative processes in the resolution of normative conflict. Moreover, because we have postulated co-cqnstructive communicative processes as a primary modulator of ontogenetic ·change in competent rule users , it was necessary to refine a procedure for experimentally creating contexts of normative conflict. We have found that the most useful procedure for our pur­ poses was the method of preselection. That is, in order to exercise some ex­ perimental control over the degree of normative disequilibrium that exists in interactive episodes subject to observation, it was necessary to preselect partici­ pants for interaction and observation representing different position on normative issues . Finally, in expanding our research program to include the role of commu­ nicative social processes we have found that the assessment methods that we used in our reconstructive research (e. g . , interviews , self-report measures , etc . ) , while useful for indexing the individual' s knowledge and understanding were not suited for indexing relevant co-constructive processes . In shifting to co-construc­ tive research we found that we had to begin to refine methods for investigating processes that occur between individuals. We. have thus developed a measure of communicative performance because , as we noted earlier, co-constructive research is process oriented research that necessarily includes performance as well as competence variables . The performance measure assesses levels of communicative performance that oc­ cur during interactive episodes . The measure that we developed , the Com­ municative Functioning Scale (CFS) , was designed to use observational data to assess level of communicative action that occurs during group discussion of normative issues . The modes of communicative action used with the CFS were derived from Habermas' s levels of communicative action: OCA � SGA, and DCA . Using our model , measures , and method of preselection we have conducted a number of studies using various populations that provides some preliminary evidence for the role of co-constructive social processes in ontogenetic change in sociomoral knowledge . This research is described in more detail elsewhere (Kur­ tines , 1 990) . In general , the result of this research suggests that communicative processes that more closely approximate discourse result in making the nor­ mative nature of conflict more explicit and more difficult to resolve during discussion, but that the process of rendering explicit and critically examining normative claims also increases the probability of subsequent ontogenetic change . The results of this research thus provide support for the view that co­ constructi ve communicative processes contribute to the emergence of on­ togenetically new forms of sociomoral understanding , ·but that the relationship between co-constructive communicative processes and the ontogenesis of so­ ciomoral knowledge is a complex one.

CO N C LU S I O N

This chapter outlined a view of social and moral development from the perspec­ tive of psychosocial theory . We have also provided an overview of an ongoing program of research aimed at the development of methods and procedures for investigating our theoretical claims . As part of our program of research we have formulated a conception of the development of a full range of psychosocial competence (including linguistic , cognitive , communicative , and sociomoral competence) . We have argued that the development of a full range of psycho­ social competence facilitates a shift in the process of ontogenetic change from primarily developmental processes to a formative evolutionary process of subjec­ tive construction and intersubjective co-construction . In this frame , a central focus of our research program has been on the role of critical-hypothetical thinking (as a form of cognitive competence) and critical-discursive discussion (as a form of communicative competence) in the ontogenetic evolution of so­ ciomoral knowledge and understanding . Most of this chapter has focused on the role that psychosocial development plays in freeing the individual from the constraints of maturation and learning. Our view of the liberating potential of our theoretical understanding is thus rooted in our theoretical claim that ontogenetic change in competent rule users is not constrained by maturational and learning processes . From such a co-con­ structive perspective , each individual is viewed as freely and creatively contrib­ uting to the subjective construction and intersubjective co-construction their understanding of reality. In addition to its liberating potential for the individual , however, a view of rules and rule systems as a product of human construction and co-construction also has implications for the social evolutionary history of the species . We conclude this chapter by briefly noting what we consider to be the most important implication such a view has for the social evolutionary history of the species . Nomotic knowledge is knowledge of human rules and rule systems . Develop­ mental theories have traditionally focused on developmental change in the indi­ vidual ' s knowledge and understanding . N omotic knowledge and understanding , however, changes at the social , cultural , and historical level as well as at the individual level . Indeed, it has been argued (cf. McCarthy , 1 98 1 ) that the social evolutionary history of the species , from relatively simple Neolithic societies organized around kinship systems to postindustrial societies with an elaborate and highly differentiated organizational structure of social , moral , legal , political , and economic institutions , has been one of a continuous process of the creation and evolution of new forms of nomotic know ledge and understanding . Nomotic knowledge thus undergoes a process of social evolu­ tionary change . Consequently, we have come to understand our work as in not only the co- constructivist tradition , but also in the social evolutionary tradi33 1

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K U RTI N ES, MAYOC K, POLLA R D, LAN ZA, CAR LO

tion (Campbell , 1 975; Erikson, ,f950; Hogan & Busch , 1 984; Waddington , 1 967) . Social evolution , it has been argued , has replaced biological evolution as the primary adaptive process for the human species (Huxley , 1 943 ; Waddington , 1 967) . Through the process of biological ·evolution the human species acquired the capacity for social evolution. Once acquired, the process enabled humans to circumvent the process of organic evolution . Characteristics that lead to suc­ cessful adaptation no longer have to be disseminated throughout the species by the slow gradual process of genetic transmission . They can be transmitted both within and across generations by social and cultural means . The phylogenetic evolution of the capacity for social evolution made the human species unique because it freed human beings from the constraints of biological evolution . As we discuss in detail in Volume 3 of this Handbook (Pollard et al . 1 98 1 ) , however, the human species is unique not only in that the social evolutionary history of the species is not constrained by biological evolu­ tion but also in that one of the consequences of the evolutionary process was that human beings acquired the capability of understanding the forces that shape their evolution and therefore the potential to influence those forces . Social and cultural evolution is the most open type of evolution-a process that is open to human construction and co-construction. The co-constructive socio-evolutionary tradi­ tion that our work represents thus offers a fresh perspective on role of freedom and creativity in both ontogenetic and social evolutionary change .

R E FERE N CES B altes , P . B . , & Goulet, L . R . ( 1 970) . Status and Issues of a Life-Span Developmental Psychology. In L . R . Goulet & P . B . Baltes (Eds .) , Life-Span developmental psychology. New York: Aca­ demic Press . B artlett , F. C . ( 1 932) . Remembering London: Cambridge University Press . B erger, P . L . , & Luckman , T . ( 1 967) . The social construction of reality. New York: Doubleday ( Anchor Books) . Burton , R . V . ( 1 984) . A paradox in theories and research in moral development . In W . Kurtines & J . L . Gewirtz (Eds . ) , Morality, moral behavior and moral development (pp . 1 78- 1 92) . New York: Wiley . Campbell , D . T . ( 1 975) . On the conflicts between biological and social evolution and between psychology and moral tradition . American Psychologist, 30, 1 1 03- 1 1 26 . Chomsky, N . ( 1 965) . Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge , MA: MIT Press . Erikson , E . H . ( 1 950) . Childhood and society. New York: Norton . Fromm , E . ( 1 947) . Man for Himself. New York: Rinehart. Gergen , K . J . ( 1 985) . The social constructionist movement in modem psychology . American Psy­ chologist, 40, 266-275 . Habermas , J . ( 1 979) . Communication and the evolution of society._ Boston , MA: Beacon . Hogan , R . , & Busch , C . ( 1 984) . Moral conduct as auto-interpretation . In W . Kurtines & J . L . Gewirtz (Eds . ) , Morality, moral behavior and moral development (pp . 227-240) . New York: Wiley.

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Hogan , R . , & Henley, N . ( 1 970) . Nomotics : The science o f human rule systems . Law and Society Review, 15, 1 35- 1 46 . Huxley , J . ( 1 943) . Evolution: The modern synthesis. New York: Harper. Kohlberg , L . ( 1 976) . l\1oral stage and moralization: The cognitive developmental approach . In T . Lickona (Ed . ) , Moral development and behavior: Theory, research, and social issues (pp . 3 1 53) . New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston . Kohlberg , L . ( 1 98 1 ) . Essays in moral development: The philosophy of moral development (Vol . 1 ) . New York: Harper & Row . Kohlberg , L . ( 1 984) . Essays in moral development: The psychology of moral development (Vol . 2) . New York: Harper & Row . Kurtines, W . ( 1 982) . Moral behavior as rule governed behavior: A psychosocial role-theoretical approach to moral decision making. Symposium presentation: Integrative new approaches to moral behavior and development, America Psychological Association ' s Annual Convention , Washington , D . C . Kurtines, W . ( 1 984) . Moral behavior as rule governed behavior: A psychosocial role theoretical approach to moral behavior and development. In W. Kurtines & J . L. Gewirtz (Eds . ) , Morality, moral behavior, and moral development (pp . 303-324) . New York: Wiley. Kurtines, W . ( 1 986) . Person and situation effects on moral decision making: A psychosocial role,,. theoretical approach . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 784-79 1 . Kurtines, W . ( 1 987) . Psychosocial theory as a nomotic science . In W . Kurtines & J . L . Gewirtz (Eds . ) , Moral development through social interaction. New York: Wiley . Kurtines , W . ( 1 990) . Psychosocial development; A co-constructivist socio-evolutionary perspec­ tive. Unpublished manuscript, Florida International University . Kurtines , W. , & Gewirtz , J . L. ( 1 99 1 ) . (Eds . ) The Handbook of Moral behavior and development: Theory, Research and Application (Vols. 1 -3). Hillsdale, NJ . : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Lewin , K . ( 1 935) . A dynamic theory of personality. New York: McGraw-Hill . Liebert, R . ( 1 984) . What develops in moral development? In W . Kurtines & J . L . Gewirtz (Eds . ) , Morality, moral behavior, and moral development (pp . 1 77- 1 92) . New York: Wiley . McCarthy , T . ( 1 98 1 ) . The critical theory of Jurgen Habermas. Cambridge, MA . : The MIT Press . Mischel, W . , & Mischel , H . N . ( 1 976) . A cognitive-social learning approach to socialization and self-regulation . In T. Lickona (Ed . ) , Moral Development and behavior: Theory, research, and social issues (pp . 84- 1 07) . New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston . Pepper, S . C . ( 1 972) . World hypotheses: A study of evidence. B erkeley: University of California Press . Piaget , J . ( 1 932/ 1 965) . The moral judgment of the child. (M . Gabain, Trans . ) . New York: Free Press . (Originally published 1 93 2) . Piaget, J . ( 1 936) . The origins of intelligence in children. New York: International Universities Press . Pollard , S . R . , Kurtines , W. , Carlo , G . , Danes , M . , & Mayock , E . ( 1 99 1 ) . Moral education from the perspective of psychosocial theory . In W . Kurtines & J . L. Gewirtz (Eds . ) , Handbook of moral behavior and development, Vol. 3 . Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates . Reese , H . W . , & Overton , W. F. ( 1 970) . Models of development and theories of development . In L . R. Goulet & P . B . Baltes (Eds . ) , Life-span developmental psychology (pp . 1 1 5- 1 45 ) . New York: Academic Press . Sullivan , H . S . ( 1 953) . The interpersonal theory of psychiatry. New York: Norton . Waddington , C . H . ( 1 967) . The ethical animal. Illinois: University of Chicago Press .

·.

A n a l yt i c H e rm e n e u t i cs a n d the Stu d y of M o ra l i ty i n Acti o n

M a rt i n J. Packe r E l l e n R i c h a rd s o n

AB STRACT

This chapter describes an approach to the study of social interaction , of the moral concerns that are at work in that interaction , and the moral issues that arise from it. Analytic hermeneutics involves the interpretive investigation of human ac­ tivity as an ongoing situated accomplishment. Informed by an existential analysis of human being-of the character of the enterprise of research as well as of the human phenomena being studied-it calls for changes in our study of young children ' s social relations . These changes include the renunciation of a stance of distance and detachment; entry into the everyday settings where children ' s ac­ tivity occurs; the need to fix action before it can be studied; attention to the forestructure of interpretation; the avoidance of coding systems; and a focus on individual cases . The psychological study of morality began in the heyday of behaviorism, and so it took the form of experimental investigations of moral and immoral acts , as though these were purely descriptive categories (Hartshorne & May , 1 928) . It moved next , gaining much more territory and profit , to the structuralist , cog­ nitive-developmental reconstruction of stages of moral competence , tied em­ pirically to performance data of people' s judgments concerning the moral course of action when presented with vignettes of hypothetical moral dilemmas (Kohlberg , 1 958) . Most recently , as psychology in general , and developmental psychology in particular, moves beyond behaviorism and cognitivism, beyond objectivism and relativism (Bernstein, 1 983) , to an interest in approaches that place emphasis on everyday activity in concrete settings , moral development 335

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research has been moving towards stlldy of the moral aspects of social interaction in real settings . This chapter describes an approach to the study of interaction that can be called analytic hermeneutics . Hermeneutics is , simply put , the business of interpretation , and the work of Dilthey ( 1 900/ 1 976) and Heidegger ( 1 927/62) introduced the notion of the interpretive ·analysis of human activity; the in­ terpretive study of people ' s action . Such an application of hermeneutics to action implies that one has reason to think that action requires interpretation if it is to be properly understood . Why might action require interpretation? One answer is that it shares certain characteristics with texts ; with written narrative accounts . One can view , as Ricoeur ( 1 979) does , the similarity between action and text as a consequence of the fact that actions must be fixed to be studied, as a written text fixes spoken language , or one can view it, with Macintyre ( 1 984) , as a conse­ quence of the fact that life , and the activity that makes it up , has a certain dramatic quality, one we have all recognized at one time or another. Both these are correct analyses , but Heidegger' s position , at least that re­ flected in his early work Being and Time ( 1 927I 1 962) , is a little different . And it is in the m.ain Heidegger' s account of human activity , and of the reasons why and the manner in which it requires a hermeneutic analysis-a hermeneutic phe­ nomenology-to be properly understood , which guides the narrative in this chaptei:. Our aim here is to lay out some guidelines for the conduct of one kind of hermeneutic or interpretive analysis. One kind because there will be other in­ terpretations of what makes an analysis hermeneutic ; one kind because the topic of investigation around which we shall organize our account is a specific one: the social relations of young children . Our subject is analytic hermeneutics , as distinct from the ontological her­ meneutics that can be found in Being and Time. Ontological hermeneutics is an effort to uncover and articulate fundamental structures of human existence; ana­ lytic hermeneutics attempts the more modest task of examining the way activity is organized in a particular kind of local setting . As such , it rests on and presup­ poses the results of the former analysis , albeit considering them, as Heidegger would. repeatedly insist, "provisional and incomplete . " What then , in brief, are the results of Heidegger' s analysis , his fundamental ontology? 1 Heidegger de­ scribed how care is the essential structure of human being: We are the kind of beings whose being is an issue for us , and entities in the world show up because they matter to us . Care is not some simple association of personal value with an external object, event, or person , it is an existential structure that organizes all of our ways of being in the w·orld . The structure of care shows itself in our concern with entities in the world and our solicitude towards other people . It may seem surprising that Heidegger was seeking to uncover general existential structures . Although these structures are general they are not abstract or decm:itextualized . As structures of being-in-the-world , these ontological structures are never abstracted from the setting of concrete activity . In Heidegger' s terms they are formal , existential , concrete structures, while the ontical structures an investigation such as ours aims to uncover are actual , existentielle , and concrete . 1

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Human being also has a structure that Heidegger called ' 'thrown projection ' ' : we are thrown into the world with specific , concrete possibilities for acting and being , and we project ourselves onto these possibilities , understanding ourselves in terms of them, albeit generally in a prereflective manner. Heidegger main­ tained that understanding is part of our way of being, and that knowing the world is , in contrast, a special derivative case of being-in-the-world . Interpretation is a working out of the possibilities projected in understanding. As such it is never a disinterested matter, but is always guided and organized by the interests and concerns of practical involvement . Interpretation of a phenomenon is oriented by the preliminary understanding of that phenomenon that comes from practical dealings with it . In Being and Time Heidegger both described and demonstrated an approach to understanding human being that avoids the epistemological foun­ dationalism characteristic of modem cognitive and behaviorist psychologies (cf. Bauman , 1 98 1 ; Bernstein , 1 98 3 ; Bleicher, 1 980; Caputo, 1 987; Palmer, 1 969) . If one starts from such a view of what it is to be a person (and the reasons for accepting this view are 'both compelling and complex) then an account of human action follows that is significantly different from that underlying much of the research on moral development. Action is a primary mode of our being and , as such , it has a special ontological status , one that renders it distinct from mechan­ ical and biological processes ; one that necessitates a special form of inquiry . It has a semantic organization: Acts have effectiveness by virtue of their meaning (though what this means precisely requires some spelling out) . Action is a primary mode of engagement in the world: Everyday practical activity has a characteristic organization , one of concerned engagement in a social world of involved entities: tools like a calculator or a cup; institutions like marriage , school , and prime time TV; and people like friends and colleagues . This organi­ zation is both social and personal . Action is "thrown " : Possibilities for action are provided by social practices , by one' s own history and one' s society . And action is "projected" : Within these socially and historically given practices , different possibilities can be taken up and they can be taken up in different ways . We can pursue the ends that are internal to a practice , or seek-and settle for­ extemal rewards like money and fame . As thrown and projected , action has a characteristic temporal organization: Its possibilities are handed down from the past and projected into the future , while in the present it is both ongoing and fleeting , leaving only traces behind it (Ricoeur, 1 979) . Ongoing action is intrinsically linked to its setting or context; it embodies a way of understanding this setting , as well as a self-interpretation on the part of the person acting (Garfinkel , 1 967) . The importance of context introduces a causal complexity into the events of every social activity . Actions derive their causal efficacy not from material causation but from the significance they have in their setting . Everyday activity is also characteristically tricky: it is absorbing and misleading . We lose sight of the totality of involvements within which we inevitably act; we 1nisunderstand ourselves as being like the entities we

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have concerned dealings with , and' we misunderstand them as being detached independent objects with fixed, objective properties . Interesting methodological consequences follow from adopting this in­ terpretation of human being and human action . Most significant, of course , is the consequence that we must employ an interpretive approach when we study action . The circularity here-that we have interpreted human being and human action in a particular way , then to conclude that human action and being must be interpreted-is a conscious and deliberate one . Heidegger' s plan was to establish the need for a hermeneutic approach by demonstrating what the use of this approach uncovered, including uncovering the approach' s justification . A her­ meneutic approach is required because we are self-interpreting beings; because we are the kind of being whose being is an issue for it. And a hermeneutic approach is necessary because primarily , in our everyday activity-including that activity that makes up the conduct of research , including research on moral development-we misunderstand ourselves and the character of our own being, together with the being of the people we have dealings with. The human condi­ tion is , one might say , self-concealing . In addition to this broad methodological consequence , and following from it, are more specific consequences concerning the best way to study moral phe­ nomena in young children' s social interactions . Some of these consequences shall be our concern for the remainder of this chapter. We first lay them out as bald assertions and then attempt to explain and illustrate each in tum . 2 • • • • • • •

Understanding comes through participation Research should be conducted in everyday settings Action must be fixed before it can be studied Interpretive analysis is guided by the " fore-structure" of understanding Coding schemes misrepresent action Interpretive analysis builds an account of a specific case Going beyond the individual case is a matter of comparison , not aggregation U N D E RSTA N D I N G CO M E S TH R O U G H PARTI C I PATI O N

If understanding has its source in everyday involved engagement in the world then it follows that only through some kind of involved engagement with the phenomenon under investigation will the researcher obtain a genuine understand20ther accounts of interpretive methods can be found in S arbin ( 1 986) , Mishler ( 1 986) , Polking­ home ( 1 983) , and cf. Ricoeur ( 1 976) , Kvale ( 1 986) , Giddens ( 1 976) , Geertz ( 1 973). Examples of interpretive inquiry can be found in Packer and Addison ( 1 989) . It should be noted that the kind of inquiry we shall be describing is not restricted only to the study of moral phenomena in social interaction , or to the interactions of young children . For several reasons it is well suited to this kind of study, however.

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ing of it. The researcher must participate in the practices and activities of the people studied in order to gain an everyday familiarity with the way things are done if this understanding is to be achieved. In the study that provides the example we shall repeatedly return to in this chapter; we had close contact for a year with each of two cohorts of children in a preschool kindergarten classroom. Far from trying to avoid interacting with the children , we made efforts to get to know them and develop friendly relationships with them. We sat with them at Circle Time, talked with them while they worked and played , and accompanied them on picnics and fieldtrips . We tied their shoelaces , picked them up when they fell , answered their questions , and asked questions of our own . We ventured into the world of the playground and watched the unfolding interactions of play and friendship . Clearly our entry into the preschool world was not as neutral observers , with stop-watches and clipboards . Nor was it as teachers or parents , and certainly not as the children' s peers . Our participation was somewhat different from any of these regular roles in tlfe school , and we had to choose carefully the manner in which we presented ourselves to the children. We wanted to make it clear to them that , even though adults , we had no power to regulate their activity or sanction them for misbehavior. We wanted to become well-known adults who did regular kinds of things in the classroom, on a regular schedule , who didn't take sides or lay down rules , who didn' t get angry when people misbehaved , who asked friendly if odd-seeming questions , and who brought fresh games to play . In this way we put into practice the belief that only a practical , social involve­ ment with the children would provide us with the practical familiarity necessary to understand what they were doing .

R E S EARCH S H O U LD B E CO N D U CTE D I N EVE RYDAY S E TTI N G S

There is a second methodological consequence of maintaining that understanding is grounded in everyday involved activity , namely that we should study the characteristics of people' s involved engagement, not (or not only) their reflective reasoning or their judgments about hypothetical situations , since in neither of these do they have an absorbed engagement in the world . If acting and reflecting involve different kinds of engagement in the world , studies of behavior in actual settings of conflict and studies of reasoning , especially reasoning about hypo­ thetical dilemmas , are not tapping a single, common, underlying competence . From the hermeneutic perspective everyday practical activity is the primary kind of engagement. For this reason we studied children as they interacted together on their playground , and focused our attention on what they did together rather than what they told us about their world . Our attention was on the ways the children' s interactions led to the establishment of intimate relationships over the

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course of the year, so that children� became either regular play-companions or friends . Conversely , we tried to understand those occasions when a child became unpopular or socially marginal . We worked to acquire an understanding of the children' s social activities , of the motivations at work in their choices of play­ mate, of the concerns and issues in their rives , and of the kinds of incidents that occurred as they played and interacted together. In the course of this we devel­ oped a great respect for the range and depth of issues that these young children had to deal with , an appreciation of their sensitivity when faced with some of these issues and, more rarely , their _cruelty . 3

ACTI O N M U ST B E F I XE D B E FO R E IT CAN B E STU D I E D

It has been recognized for some time that a transcription of a conversation i s not a simple objective record; it reflects and embodies assumptions and preconceptions about the events being examined. Ochs ( 1 979) has emphasized how the layout and format employed to document material from tape-recorded interaction reflect both explicit and tacit theoretical assumptions about the relationship between the interactants; about who, for instance, has the initiating role . Once these assump­ tions ai;-e rendered concrete in a chosen format they are hard to alter. B ut things are more complex than this . Action is fleeting and evanescent; an act has no sooner occurred than it is gone, a thing of the past. Action must be fixed before it can be studied, and transcribing is one way of accomplishing this fixing . Paul Ricoeur ( 1 979) has described the changes that take place as action is fixed in a written narrative (cf. Freeman , 1 985 ; Hekman, 1 984; Honey , 1 987) . Central is a change in the act' s temporality: A fixed action can be re-viewed; the text can be read again and again. Fixing also changes the relationships between an act and the agent, between the act and the recipient it is directed towards , and between the act and its setting . These changes-especially changes in temporality­ facilitate the systematic analysis of action that we wish to undertake , indeed such an analysis would be impossible without them, but we should be aware of the differences between the original event and the fixed action we study . There is a danger of reading characteristics of the latter back into the former; in particular, of reifying action as a process with a determinate outcome . Narrative accounts are not the only way to fix action; when an interaction is 3We ' ve also supplemented these naturalistic observations with more traditional methods , includ­ ing a sociometric technique to identify playmate preferences, asking the children to pick who they do and do not like to play with , from photos of their classmates (Hallinan , 1 98 1 ; McCandless & Marshall, 1 957) . We' ve set up analogue entry tasks (Asher & Hymel, 1 98 1 ) , asked the children to draw their family (Kaplan & Main , in press; Main , Kaplan , & Cassidy , 1 985) , and had parents and teachers complete instruments: attachment Q-sorts by the parents (Waters & Deane , 1 982) , and the Behar and Stringfield ( 1 974) behavior questionnaire and the Abelson , Naylor, and Provence ( 1 980) inventory of emotional and behavioral development , by the teachers .

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34 1

video-recorded fixing has taken place and somewhat different changes have been introduced . In particular, the temporality of a video-recording differs from that of a text. Table 1 0 . 1 summarizes the changes that occur when action is fixed both in writing and in a video-recording . Again , the danger is of assuming that the video-recording is simply an objective record of the original events; it is not. We have fixed the kindergarten children' s interactions in two ways , in two phases . The first of these employed video-recording , the second textual tran­ scription; we wanted the benefits of both video and textual fixing . Three times during the year each child wore a small T-shirt with a wireless microphone sewn into it, transmitting to a receiver attached to the videocamera. We were able to video-record the children' s movements around the playground and at the same tirne hear and record their conversations , not matter how far away they were . This in tum meant we were able to keep a polite distance from the children , though they all knew that the camera was running and that we were making a movie of them. In fact once the taping was completed the child who had worn the T-shirt was invited, together \Vith a friend of their choice , to watch a portion of it. We made careful decisions about the appropriate kind of organization for our transcriptions of playground interaction . We wanted to exploit the benefits of computer storage and retrieval , but most of the so-called qualitative analysis

TAB L E 1 0. 1 . C h a n g es I ntro d u ced by Fixi n g Act i o n i n Writi n g , a nd i n a Vi deo- reco rd i ng

Speech/Action

Writing

Video-recorrling

The original event

Fixes what is said, but

Fixes both the event and

not the event

what is said

Act's meaning and agent's intention are both available

Relation to A gent ( Speaker)

Act's meaning and agent's intention coincide

Relation to Recipient (Hearer)

Act is directed to specific The text is now addressed to anyone who other

We are not the person addressed, but we can see and hear them; we have a third role

Relation to World

Act is situated in a particular setting, which it points to

The text creates its own world

We have restricted access to the original setting

Fleeting. Participants absorbed in the action's flow

The text can be reread, in We can be absorbed, or a nonlinear manner we can replay. We know the outcome; we can grasp the action as a whole

Temporality

Meaning and intention are now separate

can read

are

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PACK!: R AN D R I CHARDSON

programs are crude , providing onli the ability to attach short code words to segments of text so that they can be retrieved and collated . We needed to distinguish interaction episodes of different kinds , to maintain the sequencing of episodes , and to attach information about the, children who were involved . And we needed to do this for video-recordings ' of .almost 50 children, made on three different occasions . These considerations led us to decide that we needed the power and flexibility of a text-oriented relational database , and we selected one which allowed fields of unlimited length, with which we could easily design screens for transcription, and which \Yould link our transcripts directly with other kinds of data. Figure 1 0 . 1 shows a screen from the database , one of several into which we can transcribe directly while viewing a videotape , or into which we can import transcripts from a world-processor file . This screen records a single episode of playground interaction. This will usually be an episode that begins with a child' s approach to another child or a group and a bid for entry , but we also transcribe episodes of rejection and of conflict, and we can add further kinds of episode as they come to seem significant. As text is transcribed into the screen the database fields expand dynamically , so that a single screen can efficiently hold almost unlimited text. This screen is linked to others , and this means that not all the information on the scre�n has to be input anew for each episode . Once an item such as the child' s

Add or maintain codes fo r types of p layg round episode S#: 2 E#: 1 2 C#: 3800 PLAYGROU N D E NTRY

Nm: Ann N a rrative

__

0 1 - 1 2-88

I D: 23 Tape : P20 1

67m MP E ntryAtt E

Bider: Ann Bidee (s): Rebecca

Ann and Rebecca are stil l swingi ng in parallel. Rebecca calls out for a push: Rebecca: M-a-r-y !

One ->One

An n: You said "me rry"! Rebecca: (I said Mary.)

Outcome: Rejected

Ann: You said "me rry." I heard you. Ann: Want to make something really neat with me?

N otes

Rebecca: ( Madeline ).

Several familiar things here: Ann's

An n: I know, but, do you want to do

criticism of Rebecca, the n an

a very neat thing with me?

invitation to do something special

[More i nsiste ntly.] I n the sand.

("really neat") with her. The shift

Name

Morph

Ann

I nvite

Status +

Key:

I ntimacy

O p e n ness

+

---------

Wi

1 1 J [J�I_ n

PLAYG RO U N D

��:: ;�::1� l

------

F 1 -Help ---

__

_____

CF2-Concept

__

Help F2-0ptions

F&·Softkeys

Fa-Cl ear

F9-Save

--

C F 1 0-Filter

------

F I G . 1 0. 1 . ----

Ann*2* 1 2

-------

The p l a yg ro u n d e p i sode scre e n i n the data base

-- -----

--------

---

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343

name has been entered this screen can refer to other files in order to look up that child' s date of birth , and it can calculate her age on the day this tape was made . The sociometric status of the children involved can be assessed, too . This ability to link files containing different kinds of data is what makes the database rela­ tional . What we have here is a computerized version of ethnographic datacards , with all the advantages that the computer brings . As we have noted, this structure embodies theoretical decisions about the material . For example , we discovered that for our purposes episodes of interac­ tion could be distinguished fairly readily , so a screen deals with a single episode; each record in the underlying data file retains the information on one episode . But at the same time we 've left ourselves a lot of flexibility . For instance , new fields can be added at any time , as we spot new things to attend to . This reflects our view that analysis of social interaction is progressive; that new categories will emerge as analysis proceeds . And the screens of a sequence of episodes can be viewed successively, so that we retain the sequence of the original interaction . .,.

I N TE R P R ETIVE A NA LYS I S I S G U I D E D BY TH E FO R E -STR U CTU R E O F U N D E RSTA N D I N G

Once action has been fixed the business of interpretation can begin. We have seen that the structure that Heidegger calls ' 'projection ' ' characterizes both being and understanding . Action is the projection of existential possibilities that have become available. The understanding that accompanies action is also charac­ terized by the structure of projection , and interpretation , as the working out and articulation of the possibilities projected in understanding , has a projective struc­ ture too . In particular , interpretation is grounded in a three-fold ' 'fore-structure' ' of preliminary preconceptions that guide its course: the " fore-having , " " fore­ sight , ' ' and ' ' fore-grasp. ' ' Central to hermeneutics is the recognition that pre­ supposition-free knowledge is unobtainable . Understanding this , it is important to make an effort to enter the circle of interpretation in an appropriate way (see Packer, 1 989 , for a more detailed account) . Our interpretation builds on the understanding that has been achieved through a practical familiarity with the children and the setting of their activity. This understanding has already been drawn upon , to be sure , in transcribing , but we are now in a position to apply our understanding of the children' s world in a detailed and systematic way in order to interpret the interactions we have fixed. But what should we look for, and how should we look at it? These questions obtain their first answers in the fore­ structure . Each of its three components may require revision as our analysis proceeds , but their role must be recognized from the outset. The first element of the fore-structure (the fore-having) is an understanding of the totality of involvements in which the children live: an understanding of their world . The fore-having is an access to the totality of relations that constitutes the

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phenomenon being studied . It is important to get the appropriate kind of access to this world . We talked earlier of the importance of entering the world of the kindergarten children so as to become familiar and accepted adults . We will have already understood this totality if we have , gained appropriate access to the children' s world , even though we will never be able to articulate it fully in a thematic interpretation. Just as it provides the background to the children ' s own actions and understanding , the totality of involvements in the kindergarten play­ ground provides a background to our understanding and interpretation of their actions . The second element (the fore-sight) is a preliminary sighting of the entity to be studied: an initial sense of the kind of phenomenon we are dealing with; a point of view from which to begin; a first cut. In the case of the study we have been describing our interest was in the ways children established joint activity with their peers , so we decided to focus our attention on entry episodes: those occasions when a child approached another to initiate joint activity . Clearly this is only one phenomenon among many on the playground to examine, and it is itself multiplex . In time we came to look also at episodes of conflict between children and at occasions where a child was apparently working to maintain joint activity in the face of pressures of dissolution . These shifts illustrate how the fore-strµcture may need revision, but our initial focus on entry provided a basis for comparing our work with other studies of children' s social relations , as we shall see shortly . Our assumption was that children' s approaches to one another were the first and best place to look for an understanding of the success of their social relations . This assumption was modified as we realized that, for instance, some popular children were approached by peers so frequently that they needed to make no entry bids themselves in order to be occupied in play for their entire time in the playground . The third element of the fore-structure (the fore-grasp) is a way of conceiving of phenomenon: an articulated system of concepts that orients our interpretation. Again, this scheme can be modified and it is important not to force an inappropri­ ate analytic scheme onto what we are studying , but some kind of scheme is essential (and inevitable) from the outset. The scheme stems from an effort to articulate the essential aspects of the phenomenon without becoming formal or abstract. Interpretation is always the articulation of meaningful events in a prac­ tical setting . Abstract structures can be derived from a situated interpretation , since one can abstract a phenomenon from its concrete setting , but an abstract description (such as a reconstruction of procedural competence or an operational definition) differs from a situated interpretation and is of lesser merit and char­ acter; it is derivative . This point becomes clearer if we now describe the conceptual scheme we have employed-one of interpersonal movements-and contrast it with the abstract, decontextualizing fore-grasp that can be found in the coding categories typically

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used in the study of playground interaction. Our attention to interpersonal move­ ments is grounded in and embodies the following assumptions (cf. Packer, 1 985) . We wanted to employ an analysis that would articulate the way that the actions that make up a social exchange are directed towards specific others , in a shared setting that provides context, to achieve certain effects . We have kept in view in our analysis , as we did earlier in our choice of setting and manner of engagement, that practical activity is a distinct mode of engagement. We have also taken for granted that human conduct is structured by emotionality (cf. Guignon, 1 984; Hall & Cobey , 1 976) . And we have assumed that action has a rhetorical character: it influences others not by material causality but by persua­ sion of various kinds . Each of these characteristics of social action is grasped by considering action as interpersonal movement between people . Accordingly , our analysis attends to interpersonal movements of three kinds : movements that bring about changes in the children' s status , intimacy, and openness . The first kind of movement changes a child' s standing with respect to another: her social signifi­ cance and importance , her status or rank. The second kind of movement changes the degree and kind of closeness and involvement between children . The third changes the acknowledgment a child gives to another child' s projects and con­ cerns , or the lack of such acknowledgment. We have looked especially at the way a child "presents , " or represents , herself in an approach to a peer; how she tries to " move " the other child . These three kinds of interpersonal movement can be the loci of moral concerns and conflicts (Packer, 1 985), and so they can provide us with an access to the moral aspects of young children' s practical social activity . One source of these three kinds of interpersonal movement has been de Rivera ' s ( 1 977) phenomenological analysis of emotions . De Rivera's insight is to interpret emotions not as mental states , not as individual phenomena, but as intentional and dyadic , as essentially dynamic movements between people , be­ tween subject and object. A second source of these movements is provided by the work of Carol Gilligan and her colleagues (Argyris et al . , 1 987; Brown et al . , 1 989; Gilligan , 1 982) on the moral voices of care and justice . In Gilligan' s view these two voices articulate dimensions of social interaction that correspond to what we ' re calling intimacy and status . Figure 1 0 . 2 shows the three kinds of movements , along with de Rivera's and Gilligan' s terms . Two asides are worth noting here . First, when the terms we use are put side by side with those of de Rivera and those of Gilligan, as in Fig . 1 0 . 2 , there ' s a suggestion that a third moral voice should be discernible , one that articulates interpersonal movements of Openness . This is something we plan to explore in the future . Second , Carol Gilligan has recently forged a conceptual link between use of these two moral perspectives and early childhood attachment relations (Gilligan & Wiggins , in press) , and this has inspired us to take steps to assess the kindergarten children' s attachments .

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C O D I N G S C H E M E S M I S R E P R E S E N T ACTI O N

Launched , so to speak, by the fore-structure of understanding , interpretation will move through phases of articulation . There is a negative side to articulation , one that involves uncovering that in our understanding which has withdrawn . This is done by attending to what is conspicuous in the interactions we are studying , especially practical disturbances: what doesn 't seem to work; what doesn ' t make sense . And there is a positive side to articulation , one that pays attention to the way that the speech and action that make up a social interaction continuously index entities and aspects of their setting (see Packer, 1 989 for more detail on the character of interpretation) . The situated character of practical activity is man­ ifest in this indexicality . The movements that go on in a social exchange depend on how its acts fit or break with tacit assumptions , peer group conventions , about

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what is appropriate , what is normal and acceptable, on the playground . An act is always pointing out and pointing up what is going on around the children . Herein lies the crux of the distinction between the conceptual scheme employed in the hermeneutic fore-structure and the abstract structure employed in coding-scheme analyses of children' s social interaction . The indexicality of social action means that any description of action , any classification or coding , that attends to the form of the acts but not to their setting will be inadequate . Our initial recognition of an act takes account of the setting in which the act makes sense , and so also must any subsequent coding , naming , labeling or description of the act, if we pay due attention to this indexicality . Properly understood , the description of an act is tied to the circumstances , the identity of the individuals concerned , and the character and aims of the activity they are engaged in . We need familiarity with each of these to have even a preliminary understanding of the act (our under­ standing may change as investigation proceeds) . We must avoid removing (ab­ stracting) the act , or our description , from some record of the context . We must attend to the constellation of context and action that makes up an event when we identify and describe the act, and we must fix both components of this constella­ tion if we wish to be able to improve and correct our interpretation later in the analysis , because if our understanding of one part changes so will our under­ standing of the rest, and of the whole . Fixing is not an abstraction from context (hence the distinction between ' 'text' ' and ' ' language' ' that Ricoeur is at pains to sustain) , nor does the conceptual scheme of interpersonal movements force an abstraction . Movements are general structures of human being and human rela­ tionships, but the elements of this fore-grasp are not interpretation-free elements , and so they do not constitute an abstract system . Analyses of children' s social interaction based on coding schemes inevitably objectify and reify it , viewing it as made up of atomistic elements and as the causal product of fixed characteristics of the children involved . Coding schemes attend to what David Forbes has called the ' 'morphology' ' of an act; to what is essentially its static form: whether it is an invitation , a request , an intrusion , a display (Forbes , Katz , Paul, & Rubin , 1 982) . Coding schemes focus on the bare outlines of an act, the features that are unchanged as the act is removed from the context provided by the people who are acting together, and the character of their relationship to one another. The majority of naturalistic studies of children' s interaction employ such coding as their means for recording the exchanges they analyze . Child develop­ ment research has been influenced here by animal ethology. A typical analysis will categorize acts into broad types using what is supposedly a descriptive taxonomy of codes , derived from the observation and recording of what are presumed to be natural occurrences . Agonistic activities typically include aggres­ sion (such as attack, threat, submission, retreat) and competition (such as object or position struggle, loss) ; prosocial activities typically include affiliative acts (such as approach, contact, signal, talk) and sharing acts (such as offer and give

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object) . An interpretive perspective � is at work here , behind the ideology of neutral description and straightforward taxonomy . Categories of affiliation and agonism, of submission and cornpetition , of assault, threat and attack, suggest a Hobbesian view of preschool life as helium omnium contra omnes ( ' ' the war of all against all ' ' ) , of a struggle for social existence and supremacy , going by the sweeter name of ' ' social adaptation . ' ' A social Darwinism is built into the ground floor of such behavioral taxonomies . At the same time moral judgments typically run as an undercurrent through discussion of the results of such analy­ ses . Conflict is morally reprehensible (though socially inevitable) so correlations between secure attachment and lower aggression , and between insecure attach­ ment and initiation of conflict, for instance , can go without comment; they are just what is expected . There is a double irony here . Darwinism was an interpreta­ tion of nature in the terms and values of a class-conscious, Victorian England . Today our understanding of childhood still embodies the terms and values of this Darwinian perspective , reading back onto humans a social philosophy imposed on animals . But the kindergarten class is not an isolated social group , like a troop of baboons moving through the tropical rain forest. The children are constantly in contact with the complexities of adult culture: Each child goes home to parents and sibs ; teachers monitor the playground and provide advice , support, and nurturance . Why should we assume that children are trying to form a micro­ society-let alone a self-sufficient breeding colony-with their peers? There is little scarcity of resources , no necessity for foraging , no mate selection . Yet, from the Darwinian perspective , these are the environmental pressures and con­ straints that make establishment of a dominance hierarchy and clearly defined affiliative bonds so important: who gets what first, and who gives what to who? Might not children be concerned with other matters? This Hobbesian fore-grasping explains why , when one looks at coding schemes for children ' s behavior with the three movements we have described in mind , most of them stand out as attending primarily to changes in status . They fail to allow the possibility that interests other than a struggle for status , for supremacy and leadership , could drive groups of children . (Even when lead­ ership becomes an issue for the children we studied, it was not always obtained by status movements , ironically . We have noticed popular boys who relate to their play-companions in a chummy way , with much caring and solicitude . ) Dominance and affiliation are evidently related to movements of status and intimacy, but the latter are broader notions and encompass a broader range of phenomena . Dominance connotes force , the use of agonism as a means to social ends , interpersonal struggle, and a status imposed on unwilling and competitive others . Movements of increased status , in contrast, can involve any of the ways in which we accord standing to another. A child who is respected and admired has high status , but need not have achieved this through acts of dominance . Affiliation , in tum , connotes genetic closeness , biological ties , and is generally measured ·in terms of physical distance and spatial contiguity. Intimacy move-

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ments in contrast reflect social contact that can take a variety of forms , and social distance that can occur despite close physical proximity . Openness movements are simply neglected by most ethological coding schemes , in all probability reflecting a general deemphasis , denial and exclusion of interpersonal openness in our society. Coding inevitably involves interpretation , but it is interpretation that is dis­ torted in two respects . First , because they are intended to be operationally de­ fined , so that an act can be coded on the basis of its evident form in the absence of any familiarity with the children , the codes fail to fix the setting and so they fail to capture the practically engaged character of what the children are doing . Second, the interpretive perspective that runs through coding categories such as these is covered up and operates covertly, and coding is presented as an objec­ tive , unproblematic procedure . "Natural " categories express unexamined as­ sumptions . These points become clearer as we summarize some of the differences be­ tween the movement 'analysis and a morphology coding . First, morphology codes can obscure the different uses of an act . A request or an invitation can accomplish very different social ends depending on the manner in which it is made and the circumstances in which it is used . We see an example of this shortly . Second , there are relationships among different kinds of entry bid that are not represented , at least explicitly , by a morphology coding. Movements of high status can be accomplished in different ways: with certain kinds of request, by a directive , by giving information . Third, movement analysis cannot be carried out on an action in isolation . To identify the movement accomplished in an action requires knowledge of the current setting of activity , and an under­ standing of the way things are done on the playground. An act can be coded as a request or a command on the basis of its apparent form, its surface features . But the movement that's going on depends on how the act fits or breaks with tacit assumptions , peer group conventions , about what is appropriate , what is normal and acceptable , on the playground . Sometimes these background assumptions become visible in the event itself, if a child points out a transgression , perhaps by threatening to tell the teacher. More often our awareness of the tacit conventions that develop among peers comes from our familiarity with the individual children and with the ways they work and play together. This means that we cannot even pretend to be able to give operational definitions of movements , so that they can be identified in a straightforward way by naive viewers . With morphology codes people have been able to give definitions that seem to make reference only to " objective " features of an utterance or behavior, that is to say , those features apparent to someone unfamiliar with the children and the setting of their activity . But the appearance of objectivity is purchased at the cost of stripping the activity from its setting , and so losing sight of what it is accomplishing in that setting. Where movements are concerned we could never list all the relevant assumptions about playground

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activity that the children might make' reference to in their entry bids . What we have to do is develop the ability , simply through familiarity with the children and the setting , to recognize examples of different kinds of movement when they occur. ·.

I N TE R P R ETIVE ANALYS I S B U I LDS A N ACCO U N T O F A S PE C I F I C CAS E

Our discussion of coding and interpretive articulation has implications for the handling and analysis of material drawn from social interaction . It will not surprise the reader to learn that our overarching concern has been not to code the data, in the following sense . In most analyses the coding categories replace the material that has been collected . An interaction between two children will be coded as a particular kind of bid, an invitation say , and that code will then move forward into the analysis process : to be counted , along with others of its type; to be sequenced with those preceding and following it; its rate of occurrence calcu­ lated , and so on. Instead, we wanted to use terms like " invitation" or "threat" as tags , as handles to the material, not codes to replace it . Once an episode of interaction is tagged as an invitation, the tag becomes a way to retrieve the material for further examination. This is another reason for using a database like the one we have described: the transcribed record of each episode can be re­ trieved at any time . It is not replaced by the code , but labeled . New , alternative labels can be added , old ones changed if they come to seem incorrect. Different invitations can be retrieved and their transcripts compared , and so finer distinc­ tions can become apparent to us . Finally , tags can also be used to select episodes and collate transcripts for a report. More relevantly , we wanted to attach designa­ tions of the kinds of movements in an episode . Figure 1 0 . 1 includes a multi­ valued field for each kind of movement , signifying that several moves can be entered for each episode . The result of this will be a sequence of transcribed episodes , each identified as entry, conflict , or maintenance (etc . ) , and as involving a particular kind of movement . They are now available for more detailed examination, for com­ parison, even to be counted . At any time the tagging of episode type and of movement can be modified as our interpretation changes . The tagging of an episode-the identification of its movements-provides the basis for a narrative account of the episode . From the interpretation of a single episode we can proceed to examine other episodes , both similar and different. In this way we can develop an account of a particular child' s manner of relating to peers . Let' s consider, as an example , episodes from the videotaped sessions of a girl named Ann. 4 When we interacted with her Ann seemea a competent, bright, 4All names are pseudonyms .

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cheerful child. But watching her on the playground it became clear that she was alone for much of the time , despite making frequent approaches to other chil­ dren . Ann provides an illustration of the differential power of morphology cod­ ing and movement analysis . Her bids varied in their morphology: Ann on some occasions used requests , on others she gave invitations , she offered information , appealed for help , issued directives , suggested play roles . But throughout this variation Ann was generally consistent in the kind of interpersonal movement with which she approached others . On the majority of occasions she presented herself as having a higher status than the child she was approaching . Consider the following exchange between Ann and Rebecca: (See transcript 1 on p . 352 . ) Ann begins here by commenting on Rebecca's call to the teacher, in a judg­ mental tone , and then she proposes a new joint activity . She says , "Want to ma..1