OCR Psychology For A Level Book 1 sample

Key theme 2 for developmental psychology Moral development Even if you regularly cheat in tests, does that make you a dishonest person? How do we come to understand the difference between right and wrong, between what is and is n moral? This is a question that has occupied philosophers and people of all religions for centuries. Psychologists such as Bandura and Freud have taken a more recent interest. background Section A of the Component 02 exam focuses on pairs of core studies, each linked to one area of psychology and one key theme. There are two key themes for developmental psychology – external influences on children’s behaviour and moral development. This spread focuses on moral development. This theme (and the next two core studies) are part of the full A level. We have highlighted the material you need to know for the exam with a star. Other material is background reading. You may want to read this spread once you are familiar with the first two core studies, or before, or both. Are you a moral person? Do you consider yourself a moral person? That is, someone who always seeks to do the right thing, to play fair, tell the truth, avoid cheating? Have you ever copied part of another student’s answer in a test? Or taken the credit yourself for an achievement that was actually the work of others? ‘Peeped’ during a game when you were supposed to have your eyes shut? These behaviours (and many more) were measured back in the 1920s and 1930s by two psychologists, Hugh Hartshorne and Mark May (1930). They carried out an extensive five-year investigation of children’s ‘moral character’, called the Character Education Inquiry (CEI). They particularly wanted to know whether children’s moral behaviour is consistent from one situation to another. Is the ‘common sense’ view of moral behaviour correct, that some people are just good and some are just downright bad? However, in a series of results that came as a real surprise, Hartshorne and May concluded that the common sense view is wrong. They tested more than 11,000 children, observing them in situations where they could lie, cheat and steal. There was a very wide variation in moral behaviour – most of the children behaved morally in some situations but not in others. Their approach to moral behaviour was pragmatic rather than absolutist – something like, ‘It’s wrong to cheat, lie or steal unless …’ Early theories of moral development Hartshorne and May’s results (below left) challenged the widely-held view that lying, stealing and cheating are the result of a lack of ‘moral fibre’, and influenced the psychologist who is the main focus of the following spreads, Lawrence Kohlberg . He constructed a theory of moral development that built upon this result and was also developed in the context of two other important psychological perspectives at the time – the behaviourist and psychodynamic views. Behaviourist perspective According to the behaviourist perspective (discussed on pages 340–341), our moral development is controlled by experiences of conditioning. The first source of conditioning is our parents. Later we are influenced by peers and teachers. Such people reinforce behaviour they approve of by rewarding it, which makes it more likely to happen again. They punish behaviour they consider bad, or at least they do not reward it, making it less likely to reoccur. This is operant conditioning . Albert Bandura (see page 172) introduced a social element into the process of moral development. A child indirectly learns to behave morally, through observing and imitating the ‘good’ behaviour of role models being rewarded ( social learning theory ). The child experiences vicarious reinforcement , and this is even more powerful if the models are people he or she can identify with (they share some characteristics) and /or have high status (celebrities, but ‘down-to-earth’). The reason why Bandura’s approach is so important is because it recognises – unlike classical behaviourism – that moral development through social learning is influenced by more than just environmental /external factors. There is a cognitive element too, because Bandura emphasised the child’s ability to think about moral questions. This influenced Kohlberg, whose theory also focuses on moral reasoning rather than moral behaviour. This is an important distinction, given that Hartshorne and May showed there is only a very weak association between the two. The moral behaviours we learn from role models generally reflect wider cultural values (e.g. it’s wrong to cheat on your partner). Therefore the behavourist perspective can explain how cultural and social influences affect moral development. Such influences are the focus of our fourth core study, by Kang Lee et al . Chapter 4: Developmental psychology 194 A level only