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Posted on Aug 21, 2018 in Psychology and Sociology

¡Escribe tu textthe study of morality aims to understand where the principles of right and wrong come from and how they work.  is right or wrong but we are unable to explain the reasons of why we think that way. This is called ‘moral dumbfounding’, which opens the question to different theories and research exploring moral nature.  On one hand, nativism argues that moral knowledge and emotions are instinctive; a product of evolutionary history with a strong genetic base. On the other hand, empiricism argues that the morals we have as adults must have been learned during childhood and morals can be a process of acquiring behaviors and internalizing the standards and values of a society. At the same time the study of epigenetics, which focuses on how the environment regulates particular genes in an individual’s lifetime, has proved that twins raised in the same conditions are not perfectly correlated in either physiological or psychological measures (Plomin, 1994).  Not able to find an answer for this, one possibility could be thinking that it is due to molecular chance events, and that a model based on genes and environment doesn’t explain these kinds of variations. Jean Piaget tried to overcome the limitations of nativism and empiricism by developing ‘Rationalism’ which supports the idea that morality in children is self-constructed through their interaction with others. I.e: if you pour the water from a tall thin glass into a short fat one, younger children will think that the volume has changed, however, when they are older they can tell that the volume is the same without being taught about volume. Piaget, states that interaction with adults allows children develop this kind of knowledge through self-constructed knowledge. Piaget’s work was followed by Lawrance Kohlbergh 1960, with his stages of moral development, which explains how children develop morals as they get older. Children were told short stories and asked why they thought they were right or wrong. This research developed the different stages in moral hierarchies based on justice. Although Piaget and Lawrance Kolhbergh’s research methods were highly important regarding children development, it is has been argued that their conclusions came from older children being better at articulating their reasoning than younger children and their studies focused more on increasing children’s abilities than on developmental research, which questions the validity of the studies regarding giving an answer on where morality comes from.Kolhbergh’s study had limitations that were corrected by Elliot Turiel and Carol Gilligan. Turiel, simplified Kolhbergh´s research with stories that required only a response of yes or no; i.e: if all the swings are busy, is it ok to push someone so you can play?, concluding that children recognize that rules about clothing, food are social conventions and changeable. He also found that moral rules are related to ‘justice, rights and welfare’ and that moral rules are special, unalterable and universal’. In all the cultures he studied children made a distinction between moral rules and conventional rules. Gilligan, realized that Kohlberg’s study was based on white American children only. She replicated the study with children of different backgrounds and found that while he identified a moral hierarchy based on justice, moral hierarchies could be also based on other values like care. The pluralistic view of morality supports this cultural variation. However, when the historical and sociological perspective on the nature of moral development is included, social convention and moral rules become confusing and further studies are needed to achieve a clear conclusion. . For example, Richard Shweder found differences in morality in a study made with a sample of 600 people across different cultures. Results showed that in India, for example, they saw food, sex, and clothing judged as moral issues rather than social conventions, demonstrating the role morality plays in culture variation. He also criticized the validity of Kohlberg and Turiel’s studies for having individualist’s frameworks. Haidt and Joseph (2004), also developed the Moral Foundations Theory which suggested that proportions of morality are universal but that they can be modified by culture. Research by (Warken et al 2011)  crossed boundaries beyond species and found that humans share from their early years, and that moral behavior is  only a human characteristic, i.e: chimpanzees have a strong tendency to compete over resources. Finally, the relationship between moral and neuroscience was studied by Antonio Damasio (1994), by studying patients who suffered brain damage in the prefrontal cortex. This lead to an inability to feel emotions and Damasio claimed that reasoning requires passion. I.e.: when the violation is based on a taboo scenario like sex with a dead chicken, moral reasoning came later for justifying the decision they had already made.o aquí!