The Moral Development of Children Karen Hussar TEDxYouth DoverSherbornHighSchool

good afternoon everyone it's nice to be here thank you so much for putting this together it's really remarkable to see what these high schoolers have been able to do so congratulations to all of you on this great event yes my name is Karen haar do teach at Curry College in human development and psychology do have four children who are here in the Dover Sherburn School District today am going to be talking to you about moral development and and I'm going to be talking about this through the work that do with young children but hope through the course of my talk that you'll be able to see how these different concepts that talk about and address with children apply to teenagers as well as adults and specifically I'm going to be talking about moral reasoning and when we think about moral reasoning the idea here is that we want to see how individuals are interpreting events and if they're interpreting them as being moral or IM moral or if also they're seeing them as you know not even worthy of any type of judgment so it's about that idea of interpreting events and specifically my research looks at the this lens of moral developments through what's known as social domain Theory so social domain Theory argues that we can understand children's and adults moral reasoning when we think about how actions or events occur in different social settings and it's really important to consider those social settings when we think about how someone is going to interpret an action so social domain theorists argue for three different domains or like categories or buckets when it comes to classifying actions so there's the moral domain the social conventional domain and the personal domain so I'm going to spend few minutes going through each one of those before do that just you know want to reiterate that my work has been done with children the research results that I'm going to share with you today are applicable to six to 10 year olds but social domain theorists have really found these same results with high school students as well so it's not just relevant to children children's reasoning okay so I'm going to start with this moral domain so social domain theorists argue that in this moral domain right this Mora bucket or category we think about actions that are surrounding issues of welfare so harm and this can be physical harm let's say like push ing someone or tripping them it can also be psychological harm let's say teasing someone or bullying them the moral domain also focuses on issues of fairness so this might be something like cheating or plagiarizing and also rights like what are our rights so when work with my young children participants I'll share story cards with them and this story card here related to Susan is an example of an event that would occupy this moral domain so the next domain is social conventional domain and this domain differs from the moral domain in that it really is focused on social norms and not disrupting the social order so we think about what is appropriate behavior in different social contexts so for example let's take this Auditorium right now so as look around see that everybody is sitting in seats I'm not seeing anybody having like side conversation no one's screaming across the auditorium right no one's sitting on the back of chairs but imagine if there was rehearsal going on for graduation here right there may be some high school students in that particular context right who would be sitting on the back of their chairs or might be having side conversation or might be screaming across the auditorium to their friends so the idea is in different social contexts different behaviors are appropriate and inappropriate so you can think about high schooler who's walking down the hallway with the baseball cap on they might get detention for that but out on the baseball field completely acceptable behavior right so that's the important issue here with this social domain excuse me with it social conventional domain it's really thinking about appropriate behavior in different social contexts and then there's the personal domain and this is different from the moral domain and the social conventional domain because this just relates to an individual themselves it's private actions that are just impacting them so this can be be choices related to their body it can be related to choices of social activities could be related to you know what they want to do in their free time so we see here Sam right is choosing to read book as compared to exercising this could be you know someone choosing to work on Mac as compared to PC this could be someone choosing to wear sunglasses to block the Sun as compared to sun hat so the idea with the personal domain is it really just is impacting that individual themselves and outside of any type of judgment so individuals tend not to judge actions that are classified in this personal domain so as said when do my research with young children will ask them I'll present those different story cards that just shared with you and I'll ask them if those story card characters if what they're doing is it okay is it little bad or is it bad and the results that have found and social domain theorists have found this so This research has been repeated many times over is that children and Adolescence are judging transgressions in that moral do domain more serious than social conventional transgressions so they would say it would be worse to let's say bully classmate as compared to wearing hat down the hallway at school and why this is really important and why we need to give children and adolesence credit for this distinction that they're making is because if you think about authority figures whether that be their primary caregivers or their teachers or religious leaders or Sports coaches they're going to be told by these authority figures you know what you shouldn't be wearing hat at school right you shouldn't Bo bully that classmate you know you shouldn't sit on the back of that chair sit in your seat right but children and adolescents are distinguishing for themselves right that it's worse to have these transgressions in the moral domain so they're saying you know what get that I'm disrupting the social order when wear had at school but it's actually worse to bully someone so even though they're getting feedback from authority figures right that they shouldn't do either they're making distinction for themselves that it's worse to harm someone physically or psychologically so as said think we need to give children an adolesence credit for that right that they are doing some internal reflection and making that value judgment themselves and not relying on these external authority figures to tell them what is worse right what's more severe in terms of an action and then the other really nice piece of this data is that we look at this personal domain and we see that children and once again adolesence are saying you know what who am to judge right what person chooses to do if they choose to work on Mac or PC right if they choose to get sparkling water or Still Water right that's that's their choice I'm not going to put any type of judgment on that all right so we see that for events that can be categorized in this personal domain they are not passing judgment they're saying nope I'm not going to judge this event at all so clearly very distinct categories here and the results here are statistically significant meaning these are meaningful differences that we're seeing here in terms of how children are classifying these events okay so I've just shared with you actions that can be very neatly categorized into one of these three domains but as you all know our world is quite messy and we can think about events that can't be so nicely categorized into just one domain right or just one bucket so these are known as mixed domain issues and the idea here is some individuals might look at these actions or events as part of the moral domain and other people may look at them as part of the personal domain or the social conventional domain so examples of this might be you know thinking about same-sex relationships or it could be premarital sex it could be getting tattoo right so the idea here is that some people may categorize these events as part of that moral domain and other people may categorize them as part of that personal domain now the topics just gave shared with you are really not appropriate to be researching with young audience right so had to think about what was topic that could work with young children that got it this idea of mixed domain issues so focused on the act of eating meat and we can imagine that for some children they would look at it through this moral lens focusing on the harm the suffering right that these animals endure as they being raised for meat product and then even that when they go through that slaughtering process and we can also imagine that they're focusing on animal rights right so they would be interpreting this act of Sam eating meat as part of that moral domain and in fact did see this with my research research participants so they had these quotes that you really see where they are highlighting that harm and suffering that the animal is enduring or they're focusing on those animal rights so these quotes that we have here really would be categorized as part of that moral domain or an interpretation from that moral perspective now it's also possible though that some children are going to look at eating meat as part of the personal domain right this is an event that just is impacting me it's my choice what choose to put in my body outside of judgment from other people and once again did find that some of my children in my sample focused on eating meat as part of this moral excuse me personal domain so we see here their reasoning when they cut it from this personal perspective is focusing on just don't like the taste of it right it does it's not it doesn't taste good to me or or they're focusing on the health aspects there are healthier options for me there are healthier options for my body right want to have different type of you know want to have more vegetables in my diet so we can see that these explanations are really focused on that very personal nature of eating meat and how it's just impacting them so argued right that certainly we see with these young children that they're looking at eating meat as mixed domain issue some are looking at from this moral perspective Ive others are looking at it from this as personal choice so also did research with my CH excuse me my children participants related to environmentally impactful actions so here we see Sam who's choosing to throw out Can instead of recycling it okay so once again we can imagine for some participants they're looking at this action through that moral perspective focusing on the harm right the the suffering that the environment endur whereas other people are looking at this and saying what choose to do with my trash right that's that's that's private that's personal right you you don't have right to judge that so we can actually think about lot of choices that would fit into this idea of environmentally impactful Events maybe it's plastic or paper right if you are you know getting your water from water fountain or buying bottled of water you know what type of car are you driving how you choose to get to work are you car pooling right are you riding bike are you you know driving your SUV by yourself right into the city every day so we can imagine right with these events some people may be saying that's personal choice right the type of car that drive or how choose to get to school every day or you know to my office whereas other people are like May interpret that as moral choice thinking about that harm that would be done to the environment by you know always getting water bottle you know plastic water bottle when their thirst day as compared to refilling up at water fountain so once again with my young participants did see that they looked at these environmentally impactful actions as mixed domain some looked at it from that moral perspective others through that personal perspective okay so hopefully even these examples of eating meat and these environmental issues you can see how these would be applicable to adolescents and adults as well as young children so want to take now the conversation to something that we are all dealing with in society today related to our the pandemic that we're experiencing so I'm going to argue that one of the reasons why there is so much tension and divisiveness around an issue like wearing mask is because people are interpreting this through different domains so we have some people who are looking at wearing mask as part of that moral domain right and they're focusing on the harm potential suffering right they're they're focusing on the welfare of individuals and thinking about their health so they're looking at it through this moral lens and then there's other individuals who are looking at wearing mask as personal choice right it's decision that they make for themselves it is related to their bodies and they don't feel that other people have right to be telling them what they can and can't be doing right as applies to their body so share this with you because think it's helpful for us to think about how the same action right wearing mask can be interpreted so differently by different individuals and so hopefully you know when you when you you know are engaged in conversation with someone or you know you see someone who is doing something differently from what you would be doing whether that's wearing mask or not wearing mask now you have sense of their perspective and how they're looking at this action through different lens than you are so hope hopefully this will help teach us little bit of Tolerance right and understanding how not everybody's interpreting these actions in the same way that we are and if you want to try to persuade someone let's say to wear mask or you know persuade them that it is your choice not to wear mask you can think about what's that argument that you want to build how are you going to present your argument from that personal domain or from that moral domain focusing on the harm and suffering or or you know welfare so another example of this is certainly getting the vaccine right so once again related to the pandemic and thinking about how some individuals are looking at this from that moral perspective others are looking at as personal choice so when shared with you these examples related to young children you know it's like how does this relate to us but we can see that this idea of mixed domain issues doesn't just relate to Children right we can think about how it applies to teenagers to adults and hopefully as said when we think about the issues surrounding this pandemic it will give us sense of how not everybody's interpreting the same action right from the same perspective and in that sense right allow us to be little bit more tolerant in understanding how people can have different perspective or different Viewpoint from us thank you