The distinction between conventional and moral norms depends on culture

• In Event: 2-197 - The emergence of and mechanisms underlying the development of moral norms

Integrative Statement

Moral reasoning develops early and children do not only perceive social norms as such, but also enforce these norms on persons who deviate from these norms. But not all norms share the same scope or require the same type of reaction. Turiel (1983) introduced the distinction between moral and conventional norms. Moral norms have an objective force independent of authority and violations typically involve a victim who is been harmed; examples include injuring other people or stealing property. In contrast, conventional norms are situation-dependent and can be changed by an appropriate authoritative; examples include licking one’s plate at the dinner plate (Kelly, Stich, Haley, Eng, & Fessler, 2007). While Turiel himself conceptualized the distinction as innate, others suggested that both morality and the distinction between the two types of norms are culturally variable (Graham et al., 2013; Shweder, Much, Mahapatra, & Park, 1997).

In the current study, we thus investigated whether the distinction between moral and conventional norms is universal or culturally variable and whether the difference can be explained by cultural values. We tested 3.5-year-old bicultural children from intermarriage families in a common norm-enforcement task (Schmidt, Rakoczy, & Tomasello, 2012). Results in favor of the innate distinction between moral and conventional norms would show a universal pattern that moral norm violations are taken more seriously than conventional norm violations by all children and moral norm violations are not culturally shaped. Results in favor of cultural models on moral reasoning would show that cultural values effect reactions to conventional norm violations and explain the perceived distance between both norm types.
Children were presented with conventional or moral norm violations of different puppets. Children’s reactions to these norm violations were classified into normative protest, imperative protest, implicit protest, indication, waiting and acceptance. Both parents independently completed the GLOBE questionnaire (House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, & Gupta, 2004) and provided their cultural values for the respective nine dimensions.

Children showed higher violation reactions in moral violations (median = 3) compared to conventional violations (median = 2), z = 3.482, p < .001, r = .572. For conventional violations, cultural values and violation reaction were associated, χ2 (N = 18) = 31.801, p = .023. For moral violations this was not the case, χ2 (N = 18) = 24.034, p = .154. We grouped the children according to their violation reaction: Children showing higher violation reactions in game violations (n = 12), children showing similar reactions in game and moral violations (n = 14) and children showing higher violation reactions in moral violations (n = 11). The cultural values were associated with the membership in the protest group, χ2 (N = 18) = 30.728, p = .031.

These data suggest that moral norms are less culturally variable than conventional norms but the distinction between both types is a matter of culture. The results thus provide evidence for both Turiel’s approach and cultural models of morality and enlighten a vivid discussion on the origin of human morality.

Authors

• anja gampe, university of zurich
  Presenting Author

• Julia Fenkl, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
  Non-Presenting Author

• Moritz M Daum, University of Zurich
  Non-Presenting Author