Suchergebnisse

Approximately 300,000 child soldiers serve in various armed groups around the world, and become directly implicated in the perpetration of kidnappings, killings, and torture. Considering that children construct moral concepts and a sense of themselves as moral beings in the context of their everyday interactions with others, the concern with how their harrowing experiences of violence may affect their moral development is particularly compelling. To date, however, no research has been conducted examining how these youths grapple with the violence they have perpetrated and how they reconcile their own actions with a view of themselves as moral people. In this paper, I review the limitations of constructs relying on moral disengagement and post-traumatic stress, which are typically used for examining the aftermaths of violence perpetration, and outline a new framework grounded on the normative developmental process whereby children grapple with their experiences of wrongdoing.

AbstractIn a social world, occasionally we all will harm others, as well as be harmed. Previous research has focused largely on how perpetration and victimization events are distinct rather than on how they might be integrated with one another, jointly shaping moral agency. We report on an exploratory qualitative analysis of narratives about perpetration and victimization. Our sample included 30 participants divided evenly by gender and age (ages 11–12, 16–17, and 19–26). Our aims were: (a) to identify potential forms of integration in moral agency across perpetration and victimization; (b) to explore developmental paths in integration; and (c) to examine forms of integration that were not tied directly to the construction of moral agency. We found three frequent integration patterns: harm was similarly understandable in perpetrator and victim narratives; harm was similarly incomprehensible in perpetrator and victim narratives; and harm was understandable in perpetration narratives but incomprehensible in victim narratives. Other forms of integration suggestive of how diminished moral agency can be reclaimed via narrative also were identified.

AbstractThis study examined how children reason about competing personal preferences. Seventy‐two participants (mean ages 5 years 5 months, 10 years 4 months, and 17 years 7 months) considered three hypothetical scenarios in which a protagonist's personal preference was in conflict with her or his friend's personal preference. Scenarios varied in the relative weightiness of each character's desires. Whereas 5‐ and 10‐year‐olds prioritized the friend's preference across scenarios, 17‐year‐olds affirmed the character's prerogative to act according to her or his own preference except when the friend's preference was weightier. Nevertheless, regardless of age, participants generally reasoned about these situations in terms of autonomy and friendship rather than as moral obligations. The findings contribute to our understanding of how children of different ages work out the boundaries of the personal.

This paper poses the following question: When, in spite of knowing that it is wrong, people go on to hurt others, what does this mean for the development of moral agency? We begin by defining moral agency and briefly sketching relations between moral agency and other concepts. We then outline what three extant literatures suggest about this question: social domain theory, moral intuitionist theories, and theories of moral identity development. Building on these literatures, but moving beyond them, we propose that experiences of harming others are catalysts for the development of what we term moral agency. In the remainder of the paper, we outline a model for how moral agency develops that draws on research about the narrative development of self. We close by outlining some of the critical directions for future work that are suggested by our approach.

AbstractThe present study examined early and middle adolescents' and emerging adults' emotions associated with salient experiences of disclosure, concealment, and lying to parents about their routine activities. US middle class youth (n = 131; Ms = 12.74, 15.81, 20.40 years, respectively) recalled a time they disclosed, concealed, and lied to parents; using directed questions, participants were asked to recall their emotions when the events happened and in thinking about the events now. Youth reported more relief but also more distress and anxiety when reminiscing about the time they disclosed than they reported at present, whereas they reported more happiness at present than when they disclosed. Youth reported more undifferentiated negative emotions and more guilt—but unexpectedly, also less shame—when reminiscing about the time they concealed and lied than they reported at present; emerging adults reported more guilt than did early and middle adolescents, but only when reflecting on their past experience and not when considering their guilt about that experience now. Middle adolescent females recalled more anxiety and distress when they lied than did either same‐age males or older females. Findings shed light on the role of emotions in disclosure, concealment and lying and their implications for self, identity, and moral development.

AbstractFar from being unthinking energies or irrational impulses that control or push people around, emotions are intricately connected to the way people perceive, understand, and think about the world. As such, emotions are also an inextricable part of people's moral lives. As people go about making moral judgments and decisions, they do not merely apply abstract principles in a detached manner. Their emotions—their loves and sympathies, angers and fears, grief and sadness, guilt and shame—are inseparable from how they make sense of and evaluate their own and others' actions, the way things are, and the ways things ought to be. While this is not to say that emotions have a privileged role in morality, it does mean that emotions cannot be reasonably sidelined from the study of people's moral lives. Thus, an important part of formulating a theory of moral development is to articulate a framework for capturing children's relevant emotional experiences in the context of morally laden events. Such a framework should also help us understand how these sometimes turbulent or bewildering experiences inform, enrich, and change children's thinking about what is right and wrong and about themselves as moral agents. This article considers the research on the relation between emotion and moral thinking, offers a perspective that aims to broaden and elaborate our understanding of the connections between emotion and morality in adolescence, and sets a new agenda for research on this topic.

AbstractThis study examined how adolescents coordinate personal and moral concerns in reasoning about opposite‐sex interactions. Sixty‐four early and middle adolescents (Ms = 12.74, 16.05 years) were individually interviewed about two hypothetical situations involving opposite‐sex interactions (commenting on appearance, initiating a date), presented in four conditions that varied the salience of personal vs. moral concerns. Overall, participants viewed opposite‐sex interactions as harmless and acceptable in personal conditions, but as moral concerns became more salient, they were viewed more negatively, as less contingent on the target's response, and as entailing humiliation, coercion, and victimization. Age differences occurred primarily in reasoning about conditions entailing mixed‐personal and moral concerns. Implications for adolescents' understanding of harassment and victimization are discussed.

The trouble with the ways morality is used and how they impede social equality and social justice / Elliot Turiel -- The moral judgment of the child reevaluated : heteronomy, early morality, and reasoning about social justice and inequalities / Charles C. Helwig -- America's Head Start program : an effort for social justice / Edward Zigler and Sally J. Styfco -- Affirmative action and ethnic minority university students : enlarging pipelines to support success / Joel Gills, Kristina Schmukler, Margarita Azmitia, and Faye Crosby -- The biology of social justice : linking social inequalities and health in adolescence / Elizabeth Goodman and Nancy E. Adler -- Leaving LGBT students behind : schools, sexuality, and rights / Stacey Horn -- The development of stereotype threat : consequences for educational and social equality / Catherine Good and Joshua Aronson -- Honour, truth, and justice / by Unni Wikan -- In defense of universal values / Martha Nussbaum

In a sample of 95 urban Colombian mid‐adolescents, this mixed‐method study examined how youths' retaliatory desires and actions were juxtaposed with forgiveness and nonforgiveness in their narrative accounts of peer conflict. Quantitative analyses examined how retaliatory desire and action were associated with variations in youths' lifetime exposure to violence (ETV) and recent victimization by peers at school. These measures of violence exposure were related to revenge only in the context of unforgiven harms. Qualitative analyses explored aspects of youths' narrative accounts that may underlie the observed associations. Overall, findings suggest that ETV may interfere with youths' capacity to reflect on revenge in ways that recognize their own fallibility and thus open the door to forgiveness.