Moral Development Running heading: MORAL DEVELOPMENT IN ADOLESCENCE

How Moral Development is Shaped in Early Childhood Through the Adolescent Stages in Life

Abstract

Moral Development Moral development refers to the alterations in a persons sense of justice and what an individual perceives as right and wrong and how they behave related to moral issues. An individuals moral development is reflective of their personal environment and life experiences in formative years of childhood and adolescence. One important factor is adolescence is the foundation for adulthood, can experiences in throughout childhood and adolescences influence adult morals.

Introduction

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Human Behavior in the Social Environment is largely what social work and human services are grounded in. As a practitioner it is vital to be aware of the stages of development throughout the human life course in order to be competent in our work. It is equally important to be sensitive to all cultures and ethnicities as well as the environment from which our clients come, both long term and short term. It is essential to have knowledge of the cognitive development perspective, the learning-theory perspective, and the psychoanalytical perspective (moral development) and how they are shaped in the early childhood through the adolescent stages in life, in order for a practitioner to extend proper services. Ones moral development is reflective of their personal environment and life experiences in formative years of childhood and adolescence. To date, the most common framework used to explore moral behavior has been a cognitive approach (Reynolds, & Ceranic 2007.) Cognitive Development The first perspective in moral development is cognitive development. According to Ashford, LeCroy, and Lortie (2006) cognitive development is based on the notion of reciprocity between the individual and society. There is a norm of reciprocal respect that guides the individual in his or her moral conduct (p. 406). Basically, ones behavior is governed by his/her personal beliefs or situation and environment. For example, in the book Random Family, a character named Jessica is a teenager mother with three infant daughters and no father around to help support them. Jessica gets involved with an older man by the name of Boy George who is the most notorious drug lord in New York. Jessica soon becomes a mill girl for Boy George, participating in the process of breaking down and distributing heroin in the warehouses before it gets out to the streets. Author LeBlance

Moral Development (2003) states, Jessica may have been desperate for money, but love is what she wanted

(p. 48) Jessica has two reasons for the justification of her behavior in becoming a mill girl: first, she needs money to support her three children, and second, she is in love with Boy George and wants to ultimately be his main girl. Jessicas cognitive development is shaped by these issues and the environment in which she is surrounded. Jessica is unable to care for her three children alone, so a friend of hers offers to be the caregiver for her twin daughters until Jessica can support her and her three children. Jessica also gets deeply involved with Boy George and his illegal drug activity because she feels as though she is in love with him and he has exposed her to a lifestyle which involves lots of money, nice cars and clothes, she has never experienced a lifestyle that offered her so much. In the Cognitive Behavioral Interventions for Social Practice article Berlin (1982) states, If individuals do not attend to environmental cues, or if they misperceive, or misinterpret them, they are unable to cope. Furthermore this perspective recognizes that messages sent by the environment, may be ambiguous, punitive, or overwhelming. Thus properties of a situation, along with personal factors, such as; attention, skills, beliefs, and associated emotions determine a persons response (p. 218). Although we can absolutely see here that Jessicas situation and environment is overwhelming to her at such a young age. How have internal and external barriers influenced Jessicas way of thinking? Internal and external barriers have been the dilemma for our adolescence. Internal barriers are the emotions within a person which prevent them from seeking help or aid. External barriers are in the environment which makes it difficult for people to receive help (Mandell, & Schram, 2006) (p. 17). Internal and external barriers can prevent adolescences from making moral decisions because of fear of what others may think of

Moral Development them or how they think their perceived by others. Jessicas internal barriers could be her reluctance to seek counseling, parenting classes, or other positive methods for not following the same path as her own mother. Jessicas external barriers could be reluctance

in seeking aid from Child Welfare with help for food stamps, Medicaid and TANF for fear of losing her children to the system. How has Jessicas cognitive development influenced her ability to overcome internal and external barriers, is there a correlation between the two; and is moral development for Jessica profoundly imbedded in her ability to make sound decisions because of her cognitive development or the barriers that prevent her from making the right decisions. As social workers and human service workers, we need to be aware of our clients challenges so that when we have a client who has made poor decisions, we understand their motivations, however misguided their choices may be. We need to know how to work with our clients toward redirecting their cognitive focus so that they are able to make better choices that will influence their lives in a more positive manner. Implications for practice should include a clinical setting that deals with cognitive behavioral intervention, which includes, according to Berlin (1982), specifying problems and possible solutions, modeling, cognitive and overt rehearsal, reinforcement, task assignments, self guided practice, alteration of daily activities, and interpersonal support, as well as examination, evaluation, and restructuring of basic beliefs and associated emotions (p. 219). I also found very interesting what psychologist Carol Gilligan has suggested that morality development among females in a three stage process (Feldman, 2008) (p. 341). I think Jessica is at stage 1 of Moral Development for Women; Orientation towards individual survival. Initially Jessica decided to hook-up with Boy George for the survival

Moral Development of self and her children. She made her decisions based on her ambition to survive in a world that has not been very kind to her. Social workers must be able to recognize the

environment from which the client comes, and how that may be affecting his/her cognitive development so that we are able to ensure that our clients are getting help for those specific environmental cognitive deficits. Only then can we work with clients toward developing more positive decision making skills which will, in turn, enhance their future cognitive development. Learning-theory Perspective The second perspective included in moral development is the learning-theory perspective. As stated by Ashford et. al (2006) moral behavior results either from the reinforcement of behavior or through the observation of others behavior (modeling) (pg. 407). The learning-theory perspective deals directly with ones environment, if all children and adolescents sees is negative behavior then it almost inevitable for them to exhibit negative behavior themselves. For example in Random Family Jessicas mother Lourdes displays poor parenting skills by having multiple men come in and out of her and her childrens lives, she also sells and abuses drugs in front of her children. If this is only what the children know, then that is what they are more than likely to do as well, for example Jessica ends up with multiple children from several different men. Not only does Lourdes provide poor parenting skills, but Jessica and Ceasar, Jessicas younger brother, are also exposed to an environment that surrounds them with illegal activity. Pinker (2002) states, Social psychologists have amply documented that people have a powerful urge to do as their neighbors do (pg. 63). Due to Jessica and Ceasar being surrounded by a negative environment it will be difficult for them to learn positive social and life skills. For

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example, Ceasar, at the age of thirteen ends up being apart of a street crew called Four Man Posse (FMP). While apart of this crew the boys are involved in illegal ways of getting money, mainly robberies. As Leblanc states, They robbed a bicycle store and armed themselves. They bought an M1, a .45, and a shotgun and set about committing robberies (pg. 61). Due to Lourdes example of poor parenting and the environment in which Jessica and Ceasar live, they learned negative behaviors and followed closely behind. According to Pinker (2002) scientists have found that the likelihood of people to take on the same behaviors of other people around them leads to metaphors like epidemics, wildfire, snowballs, and tipping points (pg. 64). A social worker or human service worker who is competent in the learning-theory perspective can see that the environment in which these children were raised didnt give them much of a chance to succeed, unless they are resilient. In Breaking Intergenerational Cycles: Theoretical Tools for Social Workers Mc. Millan and Rideout state the intergenerational modeling hypothesis suggests that children learn behavior from observing their parents and thus act similarly with their offspringSocial learning-theory suggests that observed behavior will be modeled only if it is perceived as functional (pg. 382) Loukas, Paulos, and Robinson (2005), conduct a study to examine the contributions of maternal psychological control and dispositional social evaluation anxiety to the use of social aggression in a sample of early adolescents. Method Participants The study consists of 745, 10-14 year old, sixth and seventh grade middle school students from three suburban schools in Central Texas. The final participation rate was

Moral Development 74.6%. Active parental consent was obtained form 76% of eligible students attending all three middle schools. Procedure

The procedure was a questionnaire consisting of 161 items was group administered to participating students in one 40 minute homeroom class. A member of the research team read each question aloud to students to control for varying levels of reading ability and to maintain student compliance. Measures The research measured maternal psychological control, social evaluative anxiety, overt aggression and social aggression. Maternal psychological control was assessed using the 8-item Psychological Control Scale-Youth Self Report (PCS-YSR; Barber, 1996). The PCS-YSR assesses the following components: Invalidating feelings; personal attack; and love withdrawal. Adolescents rated their mothers behaviors on a three point scale ranging from 1 (not like her) to 3 (A lot like her). Items were summed and higher scores reflect maternal psychological control. The self-report Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (SAS-A) adapted by La Greca and Lopez (1998) from the SAS-Revised (La Greca and Stone, 1993) was used to measure social evaluation anxiety. The SAS-A assessed fear of negative evaluation from peers, social avoidance and distress in new social situations or with unfamiliar peers, and generalized social avoidance and distress. Overt aggression was assessed using an adapted of Cricks (1996) three item peer nomination measure of overt aggression. The three items assessing physical and verbal aggression (hitting, yelling, and starting fights) were adapted for self-report by asking adolescents to identify how often they engaged in each of the behaviors. Items were scored on a scale ranging from 1(Not at

Moral Development all) to 5 (All the time) and were summed so that higher scores reflect more overt aggression. Social aggression was assessed using a six-item scale adapted from Crick and Grotpeters (1995) four-item peer-nominated measure of relational aggression; which

modified the wording of four items so that student could self-report how likely they were to engage in each of the behaviors. The six self-reported items were scored on a scale ranging from 1 (Not at all) to 5 (All the time) and were summed so that higher scores reflect more social aggression. Results Finding demonstrated consistent gender differences in overt aggression but gender difference inconsistencies in social aggression. Boys were more likely than girls to engage in elevated levels of overt aggression, to be classified as overtly aggressive and to report the combined use of overt and social aggression. Girls were more likely to report using extreme levels of social aggression in the exclusion of overt aggression. Additional findings provided support for the increasing number of studies demonstrating the detrimental impact of parental psychological control on child functioning (Barber and Harmon, 2002). Although maternal psychological control was not directly associated with girls self-report use of social aggression, it did have an indirect association through social evaluation anxiety. As social workers and human service workers we can see that implications for practice should definitely deal with the amount of exposure to the negative lifestyle in the children and adolescents environment, in the case of Jessica and Ceasar. Other interventions can include participation in clinical settings that focus on the explanation of repercussions for their negative behaviors, as well as interventions that highlight the

Moral Development dysfunction of the clients problem behaviors, rather than what they believe to be

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functional. These interventions encourage clients to avoid intergenerational cycles of pain, struggle, and overall negativity. By offering such services to clients who are deeply enmeshed into negative environments, at no choice of their own as children and adolescents, we are offering them a sense of relief and hope. Psychoanalytic Perspective The psychoanalytic perspective is the last perspective that is linked to moral development. According to Ashford et. al (2006), psychoanalytic perspective is, moral behavior that is a result of peoples personalities, primarily their instinctual drives.their early childhood experiences that have influenced their ego development (pg. 407). If a person has experienced trauma in their immediate environment as a child, then that experience can have a negative affect on who they become later in life. A good example of this perspective is of Boy George in Random Family. Boy Georges mother used to physically abuse him and his brother when they were children and throughout the story Boy George had beaten Jessica on a few occasions, bad enough for her to have to go to the hospital. Boy George also ran away due to his mothers physical abuse, I wasnt a mamas boy no more. I was out on the street by myself. I had to fend for myself. I had to make money for myself, that taught me responsibility (Leblanc pg. 39) Boy Georges abusive nature and his reputation as the most notorious drug lord in New York city stems from the issues he faced as a child. Traumas that children and adolescents experience need to be dealt with before they become adults, if they arent they can end up being a serious hindrance to themselves and society.

Moral Development Being able to recognize these issues in a client will assist the social worker in attaining the clinical services that these clients need in order to address the root of the

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problem. Implications for practice will include one on one counseling and possible family counseling once the individuals problems are resolved or in the process of being resolved. In the article Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Substance Use and Antisocial Personality Disorder authors King, OBrien, and Giacomantonio state, Psychodynamic therapies are most likely to be of value to the person whose motivation of therapy extends beyond resolution of an immediate problem and who is seeking increased awareness of previously hidden sources of experience and behavior (pg. 114). The psychoanalytic perspective is associated to deeply rooted traumas and painful experiences that clients have been exposed to within their environments as children and adolescence, making it imperative to deal with the healing process of ones soul. Overall, moral development is shaped through ones experiences in their surrounding environment, whether positive or negative. I am not saying that these experiences should be used as an excuse for some of the problem behaviors or crimes that are committed by these clients; however, there is an explanation for these problem behaviors and reasons behind decisions that are made by these individuals. If we as social workers are aware of these perspectives that make up moral development and are sensitive to their environment, then it can give us an understanding of their situation and reasoning behind their behavior. We can then look into the most effective interventions for our clients so they dont have to be a victim of this vicious cycle. It is crucial for us to provide our clients with what they need in order for them to heal on an individual level, which can eventually extend into a macro level of becoming a productive citizen of society.

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References Ashford J.B., LeCroy C. W., & Lortie K.L. (2006). Human Behavior in the Social Environment: A Multidimensional Perspective (3rd ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson Brooks/Cole. Berlin S.B. (1982). Cognitive behavioral interventions for social work practice: Social Work. 27 (3), 218-226. Feldman R.S., (2008). Development Across the Life Span (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. King R., OBrien T., & S.G. Giacomantonio (2005). Psychoanalytical perspectives on substance use and antisocial personality disorder: Australian Psychologist. 40 (2), 137-145.

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LeBlanc A. N. (2003). Random Family. New York, NY: Scribner Loukas, A., Paulos, S.K. & Robinson, S. (2005). Early Adolescent Social and Overt Aggression: Examining the Roles of Social Anxiety and Maternal Psychological Control. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 34(4), 335-345. McMillan J.C. & Rideout G.B. (1996). Breaking Intergenerational Cycles: Theoretical Tools for Social Workers: Social Service Review. 70 (3), 378-399. Pinker S. (2002). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York, NY: Penguin Books.