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    Moral Judgments and Actions

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    Mari

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    of 34
    Cover image: © Gey images “Third edition published 2023 by Routledge 605 Thind Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Patk, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN ‘Rontledge i an imprin of the Tylor & Func Grp, am info busines (© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Melanie Killen and Judith G, Smetana; individual chapters, the contributors ‘The right of Metnie Killen and Judith G, Smetana to be identifi csitorial maceral, and ofthe authors for thir individual chapters, has been asserted {in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents ‘Act 1988, ied asthe authors ofthe All tights reserved. No part of this book may be eprinced or reproduced or ualsed in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means ow ‘known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retieval system, without permission in ‘writing ftom the publishers ‘Tiademark: note: Product ot corporate names may be ceademarks os egistered ‘eademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation wishout Intent to infringe. Fin edition published by Lawrence Edlbsum Associates 2006 Secon edition published by Routledge 2014 Libnry of Congress Citalging-in-Pubtcaton Data Names: Killen, Melanie, editor. | Smetana, Judith G., 1951- editor. ‘Title: Handbook of moral development / edited by Melanie Killen and Judith G, Smetana, Description: Thinl edition, | New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. | Includes bibliographical seferences and index. | Wdentifer: LOCN 2021062083 (pein) | LCCN 2021062084 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367497569 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367497545 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003017217 febook) Subjects: LCSH: Moral development. (Chassfication: LCC BF723.M54 H354 2022 (print) | LCC BE723.MS4 (ebook) | DDC 155.2/5—de23/eng/20220118 LC record anailable at hups:/ lees loc gov/2021062083 LC ebook record available at hps://lcen loc gov/2021062084 ISBN: 978-0-367-49756-9 (hbk) ISBN: 975-0-367-49754-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003.04724-7 (eb) Dor 10.4324/9781003047247 ‘Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC 1 MORAL JUDGMENTS AND ACTIONS Development and Processes of Coordination Elliot Turiel { begin this chapter not with theory and research about children and adolescents but with con- sideration of the actions of adults in experiments that have gone under the rubric of beens authority. Ido $0 as a way of illustrating two major themes considered in this chapter regarding the development of morality in childhood! and adolescence: relations between judgments and actions and processes of coordination. Before considering the findings and responses of the adult parti, pants in the experiments I describe the actions of Stanley Milgram (1963, 1974), the initiacor and designer of the experiments, and of those who were employed by him in experimental oles, The context of the research is that it was conducted about fifteen years after the end of World Wer II and the Holocaust with the extermination of six million Jews and others by the Germans under Hitler, Milgram (1974) began his volume, Obedience to Authority, with reference to those events se carried out in the “name of obedience” (p. 2), and he stated that the motivation for his rsessch Was the need to study and better understand such phenomena as the Holocaust, For those seaders who might not be familiar with Milgram’ research, the experiments were designed to determine if participants would “obey” instructions ftom an “authority” to administer electric shocks va another person. In the preface to his volume, Milgram laid out some of his findamental premises reganting obedi- Gace (xd), “The person who, with inner conviction, loathes stealing, killing, and assalt may find himself pesforming chese acts with relaive ease when commanded by authority.” We can all vo hie list of stealing, killing, and assault, ehe acts of dishonesty, and inflicting emotional harm, We ean safely assume chat Milgram loathed those later transgressions. Yet he engaged in those very actions by lying, ina public platform and within the confines of the experimental setting to potential and actual paris pans The public lies were inthe recruitment of participants in an announcement in local newspapers with a heading, “Persons Needed! fora Study of Memory” along with “We will pay... men to help us complete a scientific seudy of memory and learning” (ee Milgram, 1974, p. 15). Of course, che studies Rare not of memory and learning. Within the confines ofthe experiments, in addition to deception, Milgram also accepted the infliction of emotional pain and stress since he referred to the experiences of the participants in those terms. Milgram was not obeying authority by engaging in those acs since he initiated, designed, and directed the research. Obviously, he did so to pursue social scientific goals. Essentially, he wos subor= dlinating his own values of honesty and abhorrence of inflicting emotional pain on others vo the goal of better understanding the phenomena he labeled obedience to authority (sues about the ethics of the experiment were raised by Baumrind, 1964 and discussed by Milgram, 1964). Tt could be satd DOL:10.4324/9781003047247-2 3 Eliot Turiel that the adults who actually carsied out the experiments in the roles of experimenters and conf cates were obeying Milgram as an authority who insteucted them to lie and to continue with the pameriment f@ the end in the ace of expressions of emotional pain by the participants. More likely, however, they too subordinated their “loathing” of dishonesty and inflicting emotional pain to the ‘cientitic goals of beter understandings of socal problems deemed of great importance, Consequently, several considerations were at work in decisions made by the researchers: the goal of valuable social scientific information, as well as conceptions of dishonesty and the inlet’ a emotional pain and stress. in addition, Milgram and his colleagues had the goal of preventing the ‘ype of great harm inflicted in genocide through better psychological understandings. Milgram Presumed that the Holocaust perpetrated by Germans involved large mumbers of people obeying: authority. Moreover, Milgram’ experiments are frequently invoked 2s demonstrations of the censel ity of obedience to authority in the Holocaust. However, others have argued that nether coercion not obedience to authority explins what occutted, In a far-reaching analysis, Goldhagen (1996) has maintained, with evidence, that most Germans acted as they did because oftheir vivlem seer semitsm and were, as in the tile of his book, “Hitlers willing executioners” Goldhagen explicitly addressed Milgram’s experiments: Arguments holding chat Germans inflexbly obey authority—namely that they obey any cides regardless of its content—are untenable. By extension, so are the claims by Stanley Milgram and many others that humans in general are blindly obedient to authority (p 383) { bropose that the decision-making process of the participants also involved weighing and bal- ancing concerns with the apparent physical pain and harm inflicted and the scientific goals of the research. To illustrate how this isthe case for the participants and the extent to which the researchers ‘went in engaging in deception and inflicting emotional harm, itis useful to briefly describe details of the experiments (which may be well known to many readers) Participants were met by an experimenter who wore a laboratory-type white coat and told that they would be participating in a study on the effects of punishment in the form of electric shock on learning and memory (thus repeating a lc). Deceptively, the experimenter pretended to choose beeween two supposed participants a a teacher and a learner, who was actually a confederate of the experimenters. The learner was strapped into a machine, and the participant was told that he ‘would be administering increasing levels of electric shock (tot the case) each time the learner made a mistake, Ih the initial experimental condition, che learner was in an adjacent room where he could be beard but not seen, As “mistakes” were made, the participant-teacher was instructed to give increas, ing levels of shock, and the learner expresed increasing levels of supposed pain, as well as objec: tions to being shocked. Each time the participant expressed concern forthe other person's pain and well-being (which was frequent), the experimenter made comments like “the experiment requires that you continue, Teacher.” In this condition, a majority of participants (about 65%) continued administering shocks to the end—findings interpreted by Milgram and many others as reflecting People’ propensity to obey authority even to the point of inflicting much pain to another. However, 4 more adequate interpretation of those findings involves processes of coordination (Turiel, 2008a, Tariel & Banas, 2020; Turiel, 2015). The decisions of the majority of participants were not made easily, but with a great deal of conflict and verbal and emotional expressions of concern for the other person's welfare—as well as repeated requests to the experimenter that they stop (there are no ‘sport of conflict on the part of Milgram or the experimenters). The reactions of the participants reflected a weighing and balancing of concerns with achieving the scientifc goals and with the pain and harm experienced by the other person. Since the only systematic and quantified results of the Moral Judgments and Actions (.beriments reported were the ultimate conclusion of participants to stop the experiment or to con- Sinue to the end, these interpretations are based on recordings provided by Milgtam (1965, 1974) of Portions of the experiment, including statements by participants regarding the scientific enterprise, ‘A more informative analysis would have been to make a running account of, participants’ reactions, satements, and emotional expressions and to have a corresponding coding of those accounts, The reg P eration of processes of coordination is futher supported by findings from several other experi. mental conditions in Milgram’s research (Turiel, 2015; Turiel & Banas, 2020). Those conditions included variations in the salience of the other’ pain expressed due to the proximity of the person being shocked (e.g., the person isin the same room) and of the reactions of the experimenters in ‘ways reflecting less commitment to the experiment on their part. In most of those experimental condivions the majority of participants sefused at some junceure to continue with the experiment As discussed inthe following section, proceses of coordination are central to explanations both of social and moral decision-making in people’ reasoning, as wells in their actions. Fist, howevet,T dlscus the ways that considerations around supposed obedience to authority and related propositions but forth regarding children’s acquisition of such orientations bear upon definitions of the mocal domain and its development, Moral Epistemology and Moral Development An informative aspect of Milgram’ theorizing does bear on moral development. Milgram was a social psychologist who did not research children’s development, but his propositions are in accord ‘with developmental researchers e.., Bandura & Walter, 1963; Kochanska, 1993) who propose that children acquire moral values transmitted by parents and others in authority values reflecting those of their society or culture (usually, honesty falls under the transmitted values). Milgram presumed that the adults in the experiments had been taught in childhood that it is a fundamental breach of mou consluct to hurt another person. He also presumed that fom an early age, children ae aso exposed {o parental regulation involving “inculeation” of a sense of respect for adult authority. Thesefore, with regard to inflicting physical harm, the child learns two imperatives: do not hurt another yal obey the parent as a person in authority. ‘The imperative of obedience to authority is fnther rein, forced in insitusions—especially in schools. Moreover, adults function in systems of social orden such that “in a hierarchy of rules, that which requires compliance to authority assumes a paramount position” (Milgram, 1974, p. 138) Psychological explanations of the development of morality ace implicily or explicitly associated with epistemology or how morality is defined and whether ies conceptualized as culturally sclative or universal (Kohlberg, 1971; Turiel, 1983b). One of the primary thrusts of the approach to issues of obedience to authority taken by Milgram, as well as others who have commented on Milgram’ And ings and the broader issue of obedience to authority, has been to have it both ways, By that, I mean ‘morality is explained as involving the acquisition by individuals ofsocietal and cultural values includ. ing obedience to authority), and at the same time, strong moral evaluations are made of those who inflict pain and harm on the instructions of a person in authority (specially in non-experimental, real-life situations, such as the Holocaust and other acts of genocide), These positions are internally contradictory in that a value learned through a ditect transmission Process involving inculcation of culturally derived values is treated as a moral imperative that should be understood 2s such by individuals and that is universally applicable (for an exposition on problems with these Kinds of contradictions, see Kohlberg, 1971). It is assumed that itis morally wrong to inflict pain and harm on others even when instructed to do so by persons in authority. As one exam. ple, Milgram (1974, p. 2) referred to the Nazi acts in World War II as “instances of abhorrent moeal acts” and saw the acts of those in his experiments as loosely analogous in that they could “become agents ina terrible destructive process” (p. 6). These conceptualizations reflect a moral stance that the Eliot Turiel sation applied universally and regarded as necessary to override cominitments to societal institutions and their systems of authority, Therefore, these orientations reflect positions involving assertions of moral principles and obliga~ pons regarding harm and welfare—positions calling for definitions of the moral domain thac go well beyond the identification of societal and culeural values (and as described in the following paragraphs, ofbrocesses of development ofthe formation of the substance of morality). One source of definitions oi the moral domain isthe discipline of philosophy. Psychological analyses necessitate epistemolog: cal considerations regarding che substance of concepts studied. Kohlberg alvo maintained dh moral Philosophy could benefit from the psychological study of development Moral philosophical formulations that have informed developmental research have included defi nivions of morality as entailing welfare, justice, and rights. There isa long history of what Nussbaum (1999, p. 57) refers to the “tradition of liberalism," which is nota political Ibel but « philosophical per~ spective Vin the tradition of Kantian liberalism represented voday inthe politcal thought ofJohn Rawls, and ako the classical Uslitaran liberal tradition of ohn Stuart Mill” The core features ofthe taadition, {6 agreed upon by philosophers like Kane and Mill as well x many other contemporary philosophers (©: such as Raw, 1971 and Sen, 2009), are, as put by Nusbaum (1999, p. 54), “thy all, just by being human, are of equal dignity and worth, no matter where they ae situated in society, and that the arma goles ofthis worth isa power of moral choice within chem,” and that “the moral equality of Petons gives them a fair claim to certain types of treatment at the hands of society and politics” 1: certainly appears that in discussions of “obedience to authority” resulting in actions involy- ing harm to others, and even more so to causing setious harm of taking of lives, psychologists and jay other adults apply concepts of welfare which they do not treat as solely the application of incorporated values or standards. This is the case even though some of the same psychologists put forth explanations ofthe internalization by children of such values and standards, These is ¢ way that these seemingly contradictory positions can be connected. It would be that morality i acquired by children through straightforward internalization but that older individuals can shift ro being able to reflect upon the acquired values and form conceptual understandings of obligations to werd harry and promote human welfare in universalistc ways—a position that would require an explanation of why and how the shift occurs. (A very loose analogy of such a formulation eoull be Piaget’s [1932] Proposition ofa shift froma heteronomous to an autonomous moral orientation. This iss loose ana by because Piaget’ description of heteronomy was proposed as entailing constructions of thinking and not replications of adult teachings.) However, sich an interpretation is not suppented by the evidence. A large number of studies on the moral judgments of young children, older children, and adolescents have shown that they form patterns of easoning aboutt moral issues based on their under, standings of harm, welfate, justice, and rights. Recently, there has been increased attention to mol

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