Morals no. 2
There are 5 or 6 stages of moral development, according to Kohlberg. These stages are based on the person's moral reasoning.
When you make a moral decision, you take the perspective of the other parties involved with an interest in the outcome. The higher your stage of moral development, the better you will be able to make a balanced, impartial decision.
When people take Kohlberg's test, they have an "accuracy goal" rather than a "directional goal", and this affects the results.
In everyday life, moral judgements (and all judgements) are affected by one's motives and one will make judgements that support one's goals, but when taking Kohlberg's test, one's judgements are affected by the desire to reach an accurate, objective decision.
Kohlberg's Stages from http://www.eli.pdx.edu/erc/handouts/kohlberg.php
Preconventional
Stage one Punishment and obedience orientation.
The physical consequences of an action determine whether it is good or bad. Avoiding punishment and bowing to superior power are valued positively.
Stage two Instrumental relativist orientation.
Right action consists of behavior that satisfies one's own needs. Human relations are viewed in marketplace terms. Reciprocity occurs, but is seen in a pragmatic way, i.e., "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours
Conventional
Stage three Interpersonal concordance orientation.
Good behaviors are those that please or are approved by others. There is much emphasis on conformity and being "nice".
Stage four Orientation toward authority (law and order).
Focus is on authority or rules. It is right to do one's duty, show respect for authority, and maintain social order.
Post-Conventional
Stage five Social-contract orientation.
This stage has a utilitarian, legalistic tone. Correct behavior is defined in terms of standards agreed upon by society. Awareness of the relativism of personal values and the need for consensus is important.
Stage six Universal ethical principle orientation.
Morality is defined as a decision of conscience. Ethical principles are self-chosen, based on abstract concepts (e.g., the Golden Rule) rather than concrete rules (e.g., the Ten Commandments).
People develop in this order of stages. Once you reach the next stage, you can reason with any of the stages before it. Most people never graduate from the Conventional stages, and Stage Six is theoretical. It is possible to reason with more than one stage.
This is the page where you all answered the Heinz dilemma. I am going to unscreen your responses (at your consent) and we can figure out what stages you answered with.
Let's see, we had:
Stage 5: 3?
Stage 4: 1?
Stage 3: 1?
Or something like that. Some of you didn't explain why and that was the essential part.
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These are my notes from here and here (both were very interesting and I suggest reading them!)
. . . I seem to have lost my notes from the first one :/
I'll just skim it and note some things now.
Moral Emotions
People tend to express intense emotions about immorality without being able to explain why.
In a lot of real-life situations, moral reasoning is never activated during a moral conflict. Then, when questioned about one's decision, one will attempt to justify oneself by engaging in more logical moral reasoning.
Many people first react impulsively, then use moral reasoning to justify their actions later.
Information may be processed in two ways:
high road - identifying and analyzing stimuli, then emitting an appropriate emotion
low road - direct path to emotional response
There are different emotions related to different moral conflicts:
Transgressions committed by others: anger, righteous indignation
Succumbing to temptation: guilt, shame, defensive reactions
Social pressure/threat of punishment: anxiety, fear, resentment, frustration
Reacting to needs of others: sympathy
People tend to be more emotionally engaged by personal dilemmas than impersonal ones and by moral dilemmas than by non-moral dilemmas.
According to the first study, there are three basic emotions elicited by three basic types of morals.
These are:
Autonomy (individual rights violations) - anger
Community (communal codes, hierarchy violations) - contempt
Divinity (purity, sanctity) - disgust
There are also Shame, Embarrassment, and Guilt (which were not covered in the study.)
So each category is based on a different view of the person:
Autonomy - individual preference structure
Community - office-holder within a larger interdependent group-family-community
Divinity - divine creature bearing a bit of God within
When thinking or talking about each category, a person will use words such as:
Autonomy - harm, rights, justice, freedom, fairness, individualism, and the importance of individual choice and liberty
Community - duty, role-obligation, respect for authority, loyalty, group honor, interdependence, and the preservation of the community
Divinity - sin, the natural order of things, sanctity, and the protection of the soul or the world from degradation and spiritual defilement
Liberals and conservatives argue with each other because they have morals in different categories.
Liberals have morals limited to autonomy, while conservatives have a mix of community and divinity.
One of the interesting things was that when the usual arguments against incest were removed (i.e., the couple is infertile,) people still found it to be immoral, although they could not explain why.
(Now I can't find which article this was in.)
I wonder why this is and if it is some sort of belief perseverance?
Why morals exist
People make moral decisions about themselves for the same reasons they make moral decisions about others.
There are four main reasons:
1. To approve/disapprove of their own or others' behaviors
2. To resolve conflicts of interest (outside or within themselves)
3. To induce themselves to behave in cooperative ways
4. To induce themselves to behave in ways that enhance their interests at the expense of others
Morals are made to remove the advantage of freeriders and increase the advantage of those who contribute their share or more than their share.
Systems have evolved in humans to encourage people to uphold systems of cooperation (since this is good for group living.)
A few different mechanisms have evolved:
those which encourage people to cooperate
those which encourage people to make others cooperate
those which cause positive reactions (love, friendship, sympathy, gratitude, indebtedness, approval, admiration)
those which cause negative reactions (indignation, guilt, revenge, etc.)
So humans are predisposed to cooperate with others and punish those who violate the norms of cooperation, even at a personal cost, and even when it is implausible to expect compensation for costs.
However, people may use moral judgements/ for immoral purposes.
People may use moral judgements to persuade themselves that they are more moral than they actually are.
The ability to reach one's goals is constrained by both the anticipated reactions of others and the available justifications.
If the function of real life moral judgment is to induce people to uphold systems of cooperation that help them achieve their goals, moral judgment should be activated by issues involving:
1. social exchange
2. giving and taking
3. rights and duties
4. conflicts of interest
5. violations of the principles and rules that uphold cooperative relations
Real-life moral judgments are triggered when:
1. people are tempted to foster their interests at the expense of others (temptation dilemmas)
2. people attempt to persuade others to behave in ways that help them achieve their goals and advance their interests (social pressure dilemmas)
3. people must decide what they owe others and what they have a right to themselves (conflicting demands and needs of others dilemmas)
Second person moral judgements
-People use judgements such as “You should pay your debts” and “You should help your friends” to persuade recipients to behave in ways that uphold systems of cooperation and relationships that advance their interests
-People use judgments such as “You are the most moral (or immoral) person I have ever met” to reinforce cooperative and altruistic behaviors and to punish uncooperative and selfish behaviors
-People use judgments of responsibility to induce recipients to fulfill their social obligations and contribute their share and to hold them responsible for failing to do their duties
Third person moral judgements
-People use judgments such as “She should have helped him” and “He is a manipulator” to influence recipients’ opinions of, and future behavior toward, the objects of the judgments
-People use judgments to identify the good guys and the bad guys in their groups-those who behave in cooperative and uncooperative ways and those who uphold and violate the rules-and to reward or punish them indirectly by enhancing or degrading their reputation
-People use judgments to convey such implicit messages as “This is how you should or should not behave” and “If you behave like the person I am judging, you will be judged in a similar manner”
Why people use moral reasoning
-to figure out the best solutions to moral problems-often in interaction with others-and then behave in accordance with their decisions
-to persuade themselves and others to behave in ways that enable them to achieve their goals
-to support and justify what they have done after acting
-to reinforce desired behaviors and punish undesired behaviors
Other notes:
Members of groups involved in intergroup conflict will adopt the social identities and moral standards of their in-groups.
In social exchanges, it is one's perceived worth that counts, and not one's actual worth or value of what one gives.
The goals that people pursue affect the kinds of moral judgments they make.
"There is nothing morally immature about invoking simple solutions to simple problems.
However, in other conditions, such as when one person repeatedly exploits another person’s generosity, we would not view it as morally immature for the victim to revert to a more effective behavioral strategy. Indeed, one might even view it as immoral for the victim to continue behaving in a way that reinforces the exploitative behavior of the perpetrator. “Turning the other cheek” is not morally mature when it induces perpetrators to continue slapping you in the face."
If we want morality, we must create societies and social relations that ensure that people actually have greater benefit by cooperating than by behaving immorally.
"When people identify with one group and promote its interests, they tend to discriminate against other groups and oppose their interests (i.e., “us” against “them”; Krebs & Denton, 1997; Tajfel, 1982). Some theorists (e.g., Singer, 1981) have suggested that we can solve this problem by inducing people to expand the circles of those with whom they identify to include all of humanity, but unfortunately there is little evidence that many, if any, people have achieved this ideal"
"People can be encouraged and taught to resolve their conflicts of interest through dialogue, negotiation, and argumentation (Elser, 1999; Habermas, 1990).
Reason and cognitive consistency have a role to play in this process.
People may use their intelligence to identify logical inconsistencies in their own and others’ arguments and to deduce creative, fair, and effective resolutions of conflicts of interest.
Abstract statements about how people should ideally behave tend to be less effective than concrete suggestions about how to resolve conflicts of interest in mutually acceptable ways, and the latter may be derived from any of the structures of moral reasoning described by Kohlberg."
The Ideal
Stage Six: Universal Ethical Principles Orientation
During this stage, people reason about ethical rules from an individualist, democratic perspective. Ethical rules are a product of individual reasoning, rather than handed down from an authority. (I find this extremely important!!!!) Justice and fairness are the guiding principles.
Kohlberg later decided that this stage did not exist because he never obtained experimental evidence for it.