INUR3214 Human Developmental psychology OCTOBER 23, 2023 AJARN : PRATOOMVADEE PATTANARUEANGKUL AJARN : PRATOOMVADEE PATTANARUEANGKUL Psychobiological approaches to understanding people
INUR 3214 Human Developmental Psychology 2_66 Instructor : Pratoomvadee Pattanarueangkul Page 1of 22 WEEK 2 Psychobiological approaches to understanding people Subtopics 1. Psychoanalytic theories 2. Cognitive theories 3. Behavioral and Social Cognitive Theories 4. Ethological theory 5. Ecological theory 6. Moral development theory Learning Objective Explain the concept of human development psychology theory.
INUR 3214 Human Developmental Psychology 2_66 Instructor : Pratoomvadee Pattanarueangkul Page 2of 22 Psychoanalytic theories Describe development as primarily unconscious (beyond awareness) and heavily colored by emotion. Psychoanalytic theorists emphasize that behavior is merely a surface characteristic and that a true understanding of development requires analyzing the symbolic meanings of behavior and the deep inner working of the mind. Psychoanalytic theories also stress that early experiences with parents expensively shape development. Freud’s Theory 1856-1939 Freud proposed that Personality has three structure the ID the ego and the superego. The ID is the Freudian structure of personally did that consists Off instincts, which are an individual’s reservoir of psychic energy. In Freud’s view, the id is totally Unconscious; It has no contact with reality. Children experience that demands and constraints of reality, a new structure of personality emerges—the ego. It deals with the demands of reality and is called the “executive branch” of personality because it uses reasoning to make decisions. The id and the ego have no morality —they do not take into account whether something is right or wrong. The superego id the Freudian structure of personality they is the moral branch of personality, the pan that considers whether something is right or wrong. Think of the superego as what we often refer or as our “conscience.”
INUR 3214 Human Developmental Psychology 2_66 Instructor : Pratoomvadee Pattanarueangkul Page 3of 22 As Freud listened to, probed, and analyzed his patients, he became convinced that their problems were the result of experiences early in life. He thought that as children grow up, their focus of pleasure and sexual impulses shifts from the mouth to the anus and eventually to the genitals. As a result, we go through five stages of psychosexual development: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital.Our adult personality, Freud claimed, is determined by the way we resolve conflicts between sources of pleasure at each stage and the demands of reality. Stage Age Describe Oral stage Born- 1 year old Children derive pleasure from oral activities, including sucking and tasting. They like to put things in their mouth. Anal Stage 1-3 years old Children begin potty training. Phallic stage 3-5 years old Boys are more attached to their mother, while girls are more attached to their father. Latency stage 6-12 years old Children spend more time and interact mostly with same sex peers. Genital stage Beyond 12 years old Individuals are attracted to opposite sex peers.
INUR 3214 Human Developmental Psychology 2_66 Instructor : Pratoomvadee Pattanarueangkul Page 4of 22 Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory 1950,1968 Erickson said we develop in psychosocial stage, rather than in psychosexual stage, as Freud maintained. According to Freud, the primary motivation for human behavior is sexual in nature; according to Erikson, it is social and reflects a desire to affiliate with other people, developmental change occurs throughout the life span. In Erikson’s theory, eight stages of development unfold as we go though life. At each stage, a unique developmental task confronts individuals with a crisis that must be resolved. According to Erikson, this crisis is not a catastrophe but a turning point marked by both increased vulnerability and enhanced potential. The most successfully and individual resolves the crisis , the healthier development will be (Hopkins, 2000). Trust vs mistrust, which is experienced in the first year of life. Trust in infancy sets the stage for a lifelong expectation that the world will be a good and pleasant place to live. Autonomy versus shame and doubt, which occurs in late infancy and toddlerhood (1 to 3 years). After gaining trust in their caregivers, infants begin to discover that their behavior is their own. They start to assert their sense of independence, or autonomy. If infants are restrained too much or punished too harshly, they are likely to develop a sense of shame and doubt. Initiative versus guilt, occurs during the pre-school years. As preschool children encounter a widening social world, they face new challenges that require active, purposeful behavior. Children are asked to assume responsibility for their bodies, their behavior, their toys, and their pets, and they take initiative. Feelings of guilt may arise, though, if the child is irresponsible and is made to feel too anxious. Industry versus inferiority, occurring approximately in the elementary school years. Children's initiative brings them in contact with a wealth of new experiences. As they move into middle and late childhood, they direct their energy toward mastering knowledge and intellectual skills. At no other time is the child more enthusiastic about learning than at the
INUR 3214 Human Developmental Psychology 2_66 Instructor : Pratoomvadee Pattanarueangkul Page 5of 22 end of early childhood's period of expansive imagination. The danger is that the child can develop a sense of inferiority-feeling incompetent and unproductive. Identity versus identity confusion. During the adolescent years individuals are faced with finding out who they are, what they are all about, and where they are going in life, adolescents are confronted with many new roles and adult statuses-vocational and romantic, for example. If they explore roles in a healthy manner and arrive at a positive path to follow in life, then they achieve a positive identity. If parents push an identity on adolescents, and if adolescents do not adequately explore many roles and define a positive future path, then identity confusion reigns. Intimacy versus isolation, which individuals experience during their early adulthood years. At this time, individuals face the developmental task of forming intimate relationships. Erikson describes intimacy as finding oneself yet losing oneself in another. If the young adult forms healthy friendships and an intimate relationship with another, intimacy will be achieved; if not, isolation will result. Generativity versus stagnation occurs during middle adulthood. By generativity Erikson means primarily a concern for helping the younger generation to develop and lead useful lives. The feeling of having done nothing to help the next generation is stagnation Integrity versus despair, which individuals experience in late adulthood. During this stage, a person reflects on the past. Through many different routes, the person may have developed a positive outlook in most or all of the previous stages of development. If so, the person's review of his or her life will reveal a life well spent, and the person will feel a sense of satisfaction-integrity will be achieved. If the person had resolved many of the earlier stages negatively, the retrospective glances likely would yield doubt or gloom-the despair Erikson described
INUR 3214 Human Developmental Psychology 2_66 Instructor : Pratoomvadee Pattanarueangkul Page 6of 22 Erikson’s Psychosexual stage
INUR 3214 Human Developmental Psychology 2_66 Instructor : Pratoomvadee Pattanarueangkul Page 7of 22 Cognitive theories Whereas psychoanalytic theories stress the importance of the unconscious, cognitive theories emphasize conscious thoughts. Three important cognitive theories are: Piaget's cognitive developmental theory, Vygotsky's sociocultural cognitive theory. and informationprocessing theory Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Theory Piaget's theory states that children actively construct their understanding of the world and go through four stages of cognitive development. Two processes underlie this cognitive construction of the world: organization and adaptation. To make sense of our world, we organize our experiences. For example, we separate important ideas from less important ideas, and we connect one idea to another. In addition to organizing our observations and experiences, we adapt, adjusting to new environmental demands (Mooney, 2006) The sensorimotor stage, which lasts from birth to about 2 years of age, in this stage, infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences (such as seeing and hearing) with physical and motor actions. The preoperational stage, which lasts from approximately 2 to 7 years of age, children begin to go beyond simply connecting sensory information with physical action and represent the world with words, images, and drawings. However, according to Piaget, preschool children still lack the ability to perform what he calls operations, which are internalized mental actions that allow children to do mentally what they previously could only do physically. For
INUR 3214 Human Developmental Psychology 2_66 Instructor : Pratoomvadee Pattanarueangkul Page 8of 22 example, if you imagine putting two sticks together to see whether they would be as long as another stick, without actually moving the sticks, you are performing a concrete operation. The concrete operational stage, which lasts from approximately 7 to 11 years of age. In this stage, children can perform operations that involve objects, and they can reason logically as long as reasoning can be applied to specific or concrete examples. For instance, concrete operational thinkers cannot imagine the steps necessary to complete an algebraic equation, which is too abstract for thinking at this stage of development. The formal operational stage, which appears between the ages of 11 and 15 and continues through adulthood, individuals move beyond concrete experiences and think in abstract and more logical terms. As part of thinking more abstractly, adolescents develop images of ideal circumstances. They might think about what an ideal parent is like and compare their parents to this ideal standard. They begin to entertain possibilities for the future and are fascinated with what they can be. In solving problems, they become more systematic, developing hypotheses about why something is happening the way it is and then testing these hypotheses.
INUR 3214 Human Developmental Psychology 2_66 Instructor : Pratoomvadee Pattanarueangkul Page 9of 22 Vygotsky's Sociocultural Cognitive Theory (1896-1934) Lev Vygotsky believed that children actively construct their knowledge. However, Vygotsky (1962) gave social interaction and culture lar more important roles in cognitive development than Piaget did. Vygotsky's theory is a sociocultural cognitive theory that emphasizes how culture and social interaction guide cognitive development. Vygotsky’s theory has stimulated considerable interest in the view that knowledge is stimulating and collaborative. In this view, Knowledge is not generated from within the individual but rather is constructed through interaction with other best be advanced through interaction with other in cooperative activity.
INUR 3214 Human Developmental Psychology 2_66 Instructor : Pratoomvadee Pattanarueangkul Page 10 of 22 The Information-Processing Theory Machines may be the best candidate for the title of "founding father of information-processing theory”. Although many factors stimulated the growth of this theory, none was more important than the computer. Psychologists began to wonder if the logical operations carried out by computers might tell us something about how the human mind works. They drew analogies between a computer's hardware and the brain and between computer software and cognition. Robert Siegler (1998, 2003, 2006; Siegler & Alibali, 2005), a leading expert on children’s information processing. stage that thinking is information processing. In other words, when individuals perceive, encode, represent, store, and retrieve information, they are thinking. Siegler emphasizes that an important aspect of development is learning good strategies for processing information. For example, becoming a better reader might involve learning to monitor the key themes of the material being read.
INUR 3214 Human Developmental Psychology 2_66 Instructor : Pratoomvadee Pattanarueangkul Page 11 of 22 Behavioral and Social Cognitive Theories Ivan Pavlov and John B. Watson conducted detailed observations of behavior in controlled laboratory settings. Their work provided the foundations of behaviorism, which essentially holds that we can study scientifically only what can be directly observed and measured. Out of the behavioral tradition grew the belief that development is observable behavior that can be learned through experience with the environment (Bugental & Grusec, 2006). the behavioral and social cognitive theories emphasize continuity in development and argue that development does not occur in stagelike fashion. The three versions of the behavioral approach that we will explore are Pavlov's classical conditioning. Skinner's operant conditioning, and Bandura's social cognitive theory. Pavlov's Classical Conditioning In the early 1900s, the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1927) knew that dogs innately salivate when they taste food. He became curious when he observed that dogs also salivate to various sights and sounds before eating their food. For example, when an individual paired the ringing of a bell with the food, the bell ringing subsequently elicited salivation from the dogs when it was presented by itself. With this experiment, Pavlov discovered the principle of classical conditioning, in which a neutral stimulus (in our example, ringing a bell) acquires the ability to produce a response originally produced by another stimulus (in our example, food). In the early twentieth century, John Watson demonstrated that classical conditioning occurs in human beings. In an experiment that would be considered unethical today, he showed an infant named Albert a white rat to see if he was afraid of it. He was not. As Albert played with the rat, a loud noise was sounded behind his head. As you might imagine, the noise caused little Albert to cry. After several pairings of the loud noise and the white rat, Albert began to cry at the sight of the rat even when the noise was not sounded (Watson & Rayner, 1920).
INUR 3214 Human Developmental Psychology 2_66 Instructor : Pratoomvadee Pattanarueangkul Page 12 of 22 Skinner's Operant Conditioning Classical conditioning may explain how we develop many involuntary responses such as fears, but B. F. Skinner argued that a second type of conditioning accounts for the development of other types of behavior. According to Skinner (1938), through operant conditioning the consequences of a behavior produce changes in the probability of the behavior's occurrence. Behavior followed by a rewarding stimulus is more likely to recur, whereas behavior followed by a punishing stimulus is less likely to recur. For example, when a person smiles at a child after the child has done something, the child is more likely to engage in the activity than if the person gives the child a nasty look. According to Skinner, such rewards and punishments shape development. For example, Skinner's approach argues that shy people learned to be shy as a result of experiences they had while growing up. It follows that modifications in an environment can help a shy person become more socially oriented. Also, for Skinner the key aspect of development is behavior, not thoughts and feelings. He emphasized that development consists of the pattern of behavioral changes that are brought about by rewards and punishments
INUR 3214 Human Developmental Psychology 2_66 Instructor : Pratoomvadee Pattanarueangkul Page 13 of 22 Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory Some psychologists agree with the behaviorists' notion that development is learned and is influenced strongly by environmental interactions. Unlike Skinner, they argue that cognition is also important in understanding development (Watson & Tharp, 2007). Social cognitive theory holds that behavior, environment, and cognition are the key factors in development. American psychologist Albert Bandura (1925-) is the leading architect of social cognitive theory. Bandura (1986, 2001, 2004, 2006) emphasizes that cognitive processes have important links with the environment and behavior. His early research program focused heavily on observational learning (also called imitation or modeling), which is learning that occurs through observing what others do. For example, a young boy might observe his father yelling in anger and treating other people with hostility; with his peers, the young boy later acts very aggressively, showing the same characteristics as his father's behavior. A girl might adopt the dominant and sarcastic style of her teacher, saying to her younger brother, "You are so slow. How can you do this work so slowly?" Social cognitive theorists stress that people acquire a wide range of behaviors, thoughts, and feelings through observing others' behavior and that these observations form an important part of life-span development. Bandura's (2001, 2004, 2006) most recent model of learning and development includes three elements: behavior, the person/cognitive, and the environment. An individual's confidence that he or she can control his or her success is an example of a person factor: strategies to do so are an example of a cognitive factor. As shown in figure 2.4, behavior, person/cognitive, and environmental factors operate interactively. Behavior can influence person factors and vice versa. Cognitive activities can influence the environment, the environment can change the person's cognition, and so on.
INUR 3214 Human Developmental Psychology 2_66 Instructor : Pratoomvadee Pattanarueangkul Page 14 of 22 Ethological theory Ethological Theory at American developmental psychologists began to pay attention to the biological bases of development thanks to the work of European zoologists who pioneered the field of ethology. Ethology stresses that behavior is strongly influenced by biology, is tied to evolution, and is characterized by critical or sensitive periods. These are specific time frames during which, according to ethologists, the presence or absence of certain experiences has a longlasting influence on individuals. European zoologist Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989) helped bring ethology to prominence. In his best-known experiment Lorenz (1965) studied the behavior of grey lag geese, which will follow their mothers as soon as they hatch. In a remarkable set of experiments, Lorenz separated the eggs laid by one goose into two groups. One group he returned to the goose to be hatched by her. The other group was hatched in an incubator. The goslings in the first group performed as predicted. They followed their mother as soon as they hatched. However, those in the second group, which saw Lorenz when they first hatched, followed him everywhere, as though he were their mother. Lorenz marked the goslings and then placed both groups under a box. Mother goose and "mother" Lorenz stood aside as the box lifted. Each group of goslings went directly to its "mother." Lorenz called this process imprinting, the rapid, innate learning within a limited critical period of time that involves attachment to the first moving object seen. Ethological research and theory at first had little or nothing to say about the nature of social relationships across the human life span, and the theory stimulated few studies with humans. Ethologists' view that normal development requires that certain behaviors emerge during a critical period, a fixed time period very early in development, seemed to be overdrawn.
INUR 3214 Human Developmental Psychology 2_66 Instructor : Pratoomvadee Pattanarueangkul Page 15 of 22 Ecological theory Ecological Theory While ethological theory stresses biological factors, ecological theory emphasizes environmental factors. One ecological theory that has important implications for understanding life-span development was created by Urie Bronfenbrenner. Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory (1986, 2000, 2004; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998, 2 0 0 6 ) holds that development reflects the influence of several environmental systems. The theory identifies five environmental systems. Microsystem: The setting in which the individual lives. These contexts include the person's family, peers, school, and neighborhood. It is in the microsystem that the most direct interactions with social agents take place-with parents, peers, and teachers, for example. The individual is not a passive recipient of experiences in these settings, but someone who helps to construct the settings. Mesosystem: Relations between microsystems or connections between contexts. Examples are the relation of family experiences to school experiences, school experiences to church experiences, and family experiences to peer experiences. Children whose parents have rejected them may have difficulty developing positive relations with teachers. Exosystem: Links between a social setting in which the individual does not have an active role and the individual's immediate context. For example, a husband's or child's experience at home may be influenced by a mother's experiences at work. The mother might receive a promotion that requires more travel, which might increase conflict with the husband and change patterns of interaction with the child. Macrosystem: The culture in which individuals live. Remember from chapter 1 that culture refers to the behavior patterns, beliefs, and all other products of a group of people that are passed on from generation to generation. Remember also that cross-cultural studies-the comparison of one culture with one or more other cultures-provide information about the generality of development.
INUR 3214 Human Developmental Psychology 2_66 Instructor : Pratoomvadee Pattanarueangkul Page 16 of 22 Chronosystem: The patterning of environmental events and transitions over the life course, as well as sociohistorical circumstances. For example, divorce is one transition. Researchers have found that the negative effects of divorce on children often peak in the first year after the divorce (Hetherington, 1 9 9 3 ) By two years after the divorce, family interaction is less chaotic and more stable. As an example of sociohistorical circumstances, consider how the opportunities for women to pursue a career have increased during the last thirty years.
INUR 3214 Human Developmental Psychology 2_66 Instructor : Pratoomvadee Pattanarueangkul Page 17 of 22 Moral development theory The founder of psychoanalysis, Freud (1962), proposed the existence of a tension between the needs of society and the individual. According to Freud, moral development proceeds when the individual’s selfish desires are repressed and replaced by the values of important socializing agents in one’s life (for instance, one’s parents). A proponent of behaviorism, Skinner (1972) similarly focused on socialization as the primary force behind moral development. In contrast to Freud’s notion of a struggle between internal and external forces, Skinner focused on the power of external forces (reinforcement contingencies) to shape an individual’s development. While both Freud and Skinner focused on the external forces that bear on morality (parents in the case of Freud, and behavioral contingencies in the case of Skinner), Piaget (1965) focused on the individual’s construction, construal, and interpretation of morality from a social-cognitive and social-emotional perspective. Piaget’s Theory of Moral Development To understand adult morality, Piaget believed that it was necessary to study both how morality manifests in the child’s world as well as the factors that contribute to the emergence of central moral concepts such as welfare, justice, and rights. By interviewing children, Piaget (1965) found that young children were focused on authority mandates and that with age, children become autonomous, evaluating actions from a set of independent principles of morality. ▪ Heteronomous Phase : The first is the Heteronomous Phase. This phase, more common among children, is characterized by the idea that rules come from authority figures in one’s life, such as parents, teachers, and God. It also involves the idea that rules are permanent no matter what. Thirdly, this phase of moral development includes the belief that “naughty” behavior must always be punished and that the punishment will be proportional. This absolutism in moral development is seen in children’s play from the age of 5, where they exhibit a blind belief in the rules and ideas of right and wrong passed to them by their elders.
INUR 3214 Human Developmental Psychology 2_66 Instructor : Pratoomvadee Pattanarueangkul Page 18 of 22 ▪ Autonomous Phase : The second phase in Piaget’s theory of moral development is referred to as the Autonomous Phase. This phase is more common after one has matured and is no longer a child. In this phase, people begin to view the intentions behind actions as more important than their consequences. For instance, if a person who is driving swerves in order to not hit a dog and then knocks over a road sign, adults are likely to be less angry at the person than if he or she had done it on purpose just for fun. Even though the outcome is the same, people are more forgiving because of the good intention of saving the dog. This phase also includes the idea that people have different morals and that morality is not necessarily universal. People in the Autonomous Phase also believe rules may be broken under certain circumstances. For instance, Rosa Parks broke the law by refusing to give up her seat on a bus, which was against the law but something many people consider moral nonetheless. In this phase, people also stop believing in the idea of immanent justice. Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development (1927–1987) Moral reasoning does not necessarily equate to moral behavior. Holding a particular belief does not mean that our behavior will always be consistent with the belief. To develop this theory, Kohlberg posed moral dilemmas to people of all ages, and then he analyzed their answers to find evidence of their particular stage of moral development. After presenting people with this and various dilemmas, Kohlberg reviewed people’s responses and placed them in different stages of moral reasoning. According to Kohlberg, an individual progresses from the capacity for preconventional morality (before age 9) to the capacity for conventional morality (early adolescence), and toward attaining post-conventional morality (once formal operational thought is attained), which only a few fully achieve. Preconventional: Obedience and Mutual Advantage
INUR 3214 Human Developmental Psychology 2_66 Instructor : Pratoomvadee Pattanarueangkul Page 19 of 22 The preconventional level of moral development coincides approximately with the preschool period of life and with Piaget’s preoperational period of thinking. At this age, the child is still relatively self-centered and insensitive to the moral effects of actions on others. The result is a somewhat short-sighted orientation to morality. Initially (Kohlberg’s Stage 1), the child adopts an ethics of obedience and punishment —a sort of “morality of keeping out of trouble.” The rightness and wrongness of actions are determined by whether actions are rewarded or punished by authorities, such as parents or teachers. If helping yourself to a cookie brings affectionate smiles from adults, then taking the cookie is considered morally “good.” If it brings scolding instead, then it is morally “bad.” The child does not think about why an action might be praised or scolded; in fact, says Kohlberg, he would be incapable, at Stage 1, of considering the reasons even if adults offered them. Eventually, the child learns not only to respond to positive consequences but also learns how to produce them by exchanging favors with others. The new ability creates Stage 2, ethics of market exchange. At this stage, the morally “good” action is one that favors not only the child but another person directly involved. A “bad” action is one that lacks this reciprocity. If trading the sandwich from your lunch for the cookies in your friend’s lunch is mutually agreeable, then the trade is morally good; otherwise, it is not. This perspective introduces a type of fairness into the child’s thinking for the first time. However, it still ignores the larger context of actions—the effects on people not present or directly involved. In Stage 2, for example, it would also be considered morally “good” to pay a classmate to do another student’s homework—or even to avoid bullying—provided that both parties regard the arrangement as being fair. Conventional: Conformity to Peers and Society As children move into the school years, their lives expand to include a larger number and range of peers and (eventually) of the community as a whole. The change leads to conventional morality, which are beliefs based on what this larger array of people agree on—hence Kohlberg’s use of the term “conventional.” At first, in Stage 3, the child’s reference group are immediate peers, so Stage 3 is sometimes called the ethics of peer opinion. If peers believe, for example,
INUR 3214 Human Developmental Psychology 2_66 Instructor : Pratoomvadee Pattanarueangkul Page 20 of 22 that it is morally good to behave politely with as many people as possible, then the child is likely to agree with the group and to regard politeness as not merely an arbitrary social convention, but a moral “good.” This approach to moral belief is a bit more stable than the approach in Stage 2 because the child is taking into account the reactions not just of one other person, but of many. But it can still lead astray if the group settles on beliefs that adults consider morally wrong, like “Shoplifting for candy bars is fun and desirable.” Eventually, as the child becomes a youth and the social world expands, even more, he or she acquires even larger numbers of peers and friends. He or she is, therefore, more likely to encounter disagreements about ethical issues and beliefs. Resolving the complexities lead to Stage 4, the ethics of law and order, in which the young person increasingly frames moral beliefs in terms of what the majority of society believes. Now, an action is morally good if it is legal or at least customarily approved by most people, including people whom the youth does not know personally. This attitude leads to an even more stable set of principles than in the previous stage, though it is still not immune from ethical mistakes. A community or society may agree, for example, that people of a certain race should be treated with deliberate disrespect, or that a factory owner is entitled to dump wastewater into a commonly shared lake or river. To develop ethical principles that reliably avoid mistakes like these require further stages of moral development. Postconventional: Social Contract and Universal Principles As a person becomes able to think abstractly (or “formally,” in Piaget’s sense), ethical beliefs shift from acceptance of what the community does believe to the process by which community beliefs are formed. The new focus constitutes Stage 5, the ethics of social contract. Now an action, belief, or practice is morally good if it has been created through fair, democratic processes that respect the rights of the people affected. Consider, for example, the laws in some areas that require motorcyclists to wear helmets. In what sense are the laws about this behavior ethical? Was it created by consulting with and gaining the consent of the relevant people? Were cyclists consulted, and did they give consent? Or how about doctors or the cyclists’ families?
INUR 3214 Human Developmental Psychology 2_66 Instructor : Pratoomvadee Pattanarueangkul Page 21 of 22 Reasonable, thoughtful individuals disagree about how thoroughly and fairly these consultation processes should be. In focusing on the processes by which the law was created; however, individuals are thinking according to Stage 5, the ethics of social contract, regardless of the position they take about wearing helmets. In this sense, beliefs on both sides of a debate about an issue can sometimes be morally sound, even if they contradict each other. Paying attention to due process certainly seems like it should help to avoid mindless conformity to conventional moral beliefs. As an ethical strategy, though, it too can sometimes fail. The problem is that an ethics of social contract places more faith in the democratic process than the process sometimes deserves, and does not pay enough attention to the content of what gets decided. In principle (and occasionally in practice), a society could decide democratically to kill off every member of a racial minority, but would deciding this by due process make it ethical? The realization that ethical means can sometimes serve unethical ends leads some individuals toward Stage 6, the ethics of self-chosen, universal principles. At this final stage, the morally good action is based on personally held principles that apply both to the person’s immediate life as well as to the larger community and society. The universal principles may include a belief in democratic due process (Stage 5 ethics), but also other principles, such as a belief in the dignity of all human life or the sacredness of the natural environment. At Stage 6, the universal principles will guide a person’s beliefs even if the principles mean occasionally disagreeing with what is customary (Stage 4) or even with what is legal (Stage 5).
INUR 3214 Human Developmental Psychology 2_66 Instructor : Pratoomvadee Pattanarueangkul Page 22 of 22