Abstract
Key constituents of morality emerge during the first 4 years of life. Recent research with infants and toddlers holds a promise to explain the origins of human morality. This article takes a constructivist approach to the acquisition of morality, and makes three main proposals. First, research on moral development needs an explicit definition of morality. Definitions are crucial for scholarly communication and for settling empirical questions. Second, researchers would benefit from eschewing the dichotomy between innate and learned explanations of morality. Based on work on developmental biology, we propose that all developmental transitions involve both genetic and environmental factors. Third, attention is needed to developmental changes, alongside continuities, in the development of morality from infancy through childhood. Although infants and toddlers show behaviors that resemble the morally relevant behaviors of older children and adults, they do not judge acts as morally right or wrong until later in childhood. We illustrate these points by discussing the development of two phenomena central to morality: Orientations toward helping others and developing concepts of social equality. We assert that a constructivist approach will help to bridge research on infants and toddlers with research on moral developmental later in childhood and into adulthood.
Highlights
Key constituents of morality emerge early in ontogeny: by their fourth birthday, most children express obligatory judgments based on moral concerns with others’ welfare, rights, and fairness through spontaneous reactions and reasoning about perceived violations (Schmidt et al, 2012; Smetana et al, 2012; Dahl and Kim, 2014; Rizzo et al, 2016; for a review, see Killen and Smetana, 2015)
We argue that explaining major transformations in early moral development requires a new lens, one that bridges the gap between infancy and childhood
We propose that an investigation of early moral development requires a definition of morality and other key concepts
Summary
Key constituents of morality emerge early in ontogeny: by their fourth birthday, most children express obligatory judgments based on moral concerns with others’ welfare, rights, and fairness through spontaneous reactions and reasoning about perceived violations (Schmidt et al, 2012; Smetana et al, 2012; Dahl and Kim, 2014; Rizzo et al, 2016; for a review, see Killen and Smetana, 2015). A Developmental Perspective on the Emergence of Morality parts of morality are innate, or otherwise emerge independently of relevant experiences (Hamlin, 2013; Wynn and Bloom, 2014; Warneken, 2016) In these debates, key terms like “morality” and “innate” are often left undefined (Dahl, 2014). Infants and toddlers demonstrate important precursors to morality, but lack core components of a developed morality In elaborating on this third claim, we discuss age-related changes regarding young children’s orientations toward helpful behaviors and toward generalizing moral obligations to members of different groups. These three issues are fundamental (definitions, acquisition, and age-related change), but they clearly do not exhaust all major points of debate about a complex construct such as morality. We hope that addressing these concerns will help integrate research on how morality develops during the first year of life
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