Moral Reasoning From Childhood to Emerging Adulthood: New Perspectives

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Children and adolescents show growing awareness about complex social issues like wealth inequality, environmental conservation, academic integrity, and prosocial behaviors. As they form judgments and decisions about these issues, they rely on moral and non-moral reasoning about right and wrong. Decades ago, research on the development of moral reasoning shifted from the study of global stages (e.g., Kohlberg, 1971; Piaget, 1932) to the study of distinct domains of reasoning (e.g., moral vs. conventional; Turiel, 1983, 2015). More recently, several trends have emerged in research on moral reasoning during childhood and adolescence. Researchers have examined the (a) development of conflicts within the moral domain (e.g., welfare vs. fairness), (b) application of moral reasoning to new issues that require complex social knowledge (e.g., wealth inequality), and (c) links among evaluative judgments, reasoning, and specific decisions. This symposium includes diverse methods, samples, and theoretical perspectives to showcase each of these advances in research on moral reasoning from childhood through early adulthood.
The first presentation discusses how children and adolescents reason about wealth and inequality. The second presentation explores adolescent perceptions of environmental conservation as a moral issue. The third presentation investigates high school and college students’ perceptions, judgments, and reasoning regarding plagiarism. The fourth presentation investigates the role of expected parental reactions in emerging adults’ prosocial reasoning and behaviors.
Implications and new directions for research on moral cognition from childhood through emerging adulthood will be discussed.

Sub Unit

• Moral Development

Chairs

• Talia Waltzer, University of California - San Diego

• Audun Dahl, University of California - Santa Cruz

Individual Presentations

• Children’s and Adolescents’ Conceptions About Wealth Inequality: Individual and Structural Sources - Presenting Author: Amanda Rose Burkholder, Furman University; Non-Presenting Author: Riley N. Sims, University of Maryland - College Park; Non-Presenting Author: Melanie A. Killen, University of Maryland - College Park

• Adolescents' Reasoning About Pro-Environmental Behavior: A Moral Issue? - Presenting Author: Tobias Krettenauer, Wilfrid Laurier University

• What’s Wrong With Plagiarizing? High School and College Students’ Reasoning About Acts of Copying - Presenting Author: Talia Waltzer, University of California - San Diego; Non-Presenting Author: Audun Dahl, University of California - Santa Cruz

• The Mediating Roles of Moral Traits in the Links Between Expected Parental Reactions and Prosocial Behaviors - Presenting Author: Sahitya Maiya, University of New Hampshire; Non-Presenting Author: Jon Dicus, University of Missouri; Non-Presenting Author: Gustavo Carlo, University of California, Irvine