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Social and Behavioral Socialization Outcomes - Coggle Diagram

- - - - In sum, research analyses of the relationship of biological factors to aggressive behavior conclude that aggression occurs indirectly through the interaction of biological processes and environmental events (Bushman & Huesmann, 2012; Dodge et al., 2006; Gifford-Smith & Rabiner, 2004).
        
        Scientists suspect that both genetic and environmental factors contribute to the complexity of aggressive behavior (Krahe, 2013). Studies have shown that the amygdala, one of the brain structures responsible for controlling emotions, has an important role in mediating violence. Other recent advances include:
        
        ♦ identifying a host of specific genes and chemical reactions in the brain that are linked to violent behavior
        
        ♦ discovering that dysfunctional regulation of the brain chemical serotonin, which affects mood, affects impulsiveness in humans.
- - - - The development of aggression must also be viewed in an ecological context. According to researchers (Beyers, Bates, Pettit, & Dodge, 2003; Dodge et al., 2006), the complex variables operating in aggressive behavior involve the
      - ♦ child (personality, cognitive level, social skills)
      - ♦ family (parenting, interaction)
      - ♦ school (attitudes on handling aggressive behavior)
      - ♦ peer group (modeling, norms, acceptance/rejection)
      - ♦ media (modeling)
      - ♦ community (socioeconomic stressors, attitudes about what constitutes aggressive behavior, availability of support systems).
    - - ♦ harsh parental discipline
      - ♦ lack of maternal warmth
      - ♦ exposure to aggressive adult models
      - ♦ maternal aggressive values
      - ♦ family life stressors
      - ♦ mother's lack of social support
      - ♦ peer group instability
      - ♦ lack of cognitive stimulation.
- - - - As children mature and develop, their morality changes. Infants and toddlers do not distinguish right from wrong. Thus, when they conform to parental demands it is usually because they are attached and fear loss of love. Preschoolers and school-agers consider right and wrong to be direct opposites, with nothing in between. They are not capable of factoring “on purpose” or “by mistake” into their judgments of wrongdoing. Adolescents begin to view right and wrong as a matter of degree. They take into account intention in judging an act.
      - Not only does children's maturation influence their moral codes, but so do intelligence, motivation, the need for approval, self-control, and the particular situation (Bandura, 1991). Most psychologists (Damon, 1990; Hoffman, 2000; Smetana, 2006; Turiel, 2006) believe that one's moral code develops through social interaction in a societal context.
      - Piaget's Theory
        
        Jean Piaget (1965) defined morality as “the understanding of and adherence to rules through one's own volition.” Piaget analyzed morality from the perspective of how an individual's social experiences result in the formation of judgments about social relationships, rules, laws, and authority (Turiel, 2006).
        
        Generally, children's moral reasoning shifts from the belief that one is subject to external laws heteronomous morality—rules are moral absolutes that cannot be changed), to the belief that one is subject to internal laws (autonomous morality—rules are arbitrary agreements that can be changed by those who have to follow them). As children develop, they begin to understand that things are not totally right or totally wrong. They can also gradually see things from other perspectives and, therefore, can consider the intentionality of an act when deciding whether the act is right or wrong.
        
        Piaget found that for the younger children interviewed, the goodness or badness of the actors in the story was related solely to the extent of the consequences. They judged John to be naughtier than Henry because John had broken more cups. Older children, however, recognized the role of intention behind the acts. They judged Henry to be naughtier than John because Henry had been purposefully sneaking something, whereas John had had an accident.
        
        Contemporary researchers have corroborated Piaget's findings when his research methods are replicated (Jose, 1990; Lapsley, 1996; Lind, 2008). For example, young children in various cultures emphasize consequences more than intent in judging the wrongness of an act. Also, distinguishing between personal events (being hit by another child), social conventions (classroom rules about taking turns), and moral issues (lying) increased with age.
    - - Lawrence Kohlberg (1976), influenced by Piaget's work, developed a theory of moral development after 20 years of interviewing children, adolescents, and adults in different cultures (see Table 12.3). He proposed that there was no consistent relationship between parental conditions of child rearing and various measures of conscience or internalized values, because morality cannot be imposed; it has to be constructed as a consequence of social experiences (Turiel, 2006).
      - Based on the reasoning behind the responses to the stories (see Table 12.4), Kohlberg concluded that there are six distinct stages, or perspectives, of moral development, which are associated with changes in the individual's intellectual development; each perspective is broader, taking into account more variables or aspects of a moral problem. The stages begin at about age 6 and continue to adulthood. It is important to note that children and adults sometimes operate at several different stages simultaneously. According to Kohlberg (1976):
      - Basically, at the preconventional level, the individual considers and weighs the personal consequences of the behavior: “How will I be affected?” Preconventional moral reasoning focuses on individual results. At the conventional level, the individual can look beyond personal consequences and consider others' perspectives: “What will they think of me?” Conventional moral reasoning focuses on upholding the rules of society. At the postconventional level, the individual considers and weighs the values behind various consequences from various points of view: “How would I respect myself if I… ?” Postconventional moral reasoning considers principles that may be more important than upholding society's rules or laws.
        
        The stages of moral reasoning are the same for all persons, regardless of culture.
        
        Individuals progress from one stage to the next.
        
        Changing from stage to stage is gradual. The change results from many social experiences.
        
        Some individuals move more rapidly than others through the sequence of stages. Some advance further than others; for example, only 25 percent of U.S. adults were found to reason at stage 5 (principled morality).
        
        Although the particular stage of moral reasoning is not the only factor affecting people's moral conduct, the way they reason does influence how they actually behave in a moral situation.
        
        Experiences that provide opportunities for role-taking (assuming the viewpoints of others, putting oneself in another's place) foster progress through the stages. For example, children who participate in many peer relationships tend to be at more advanced moral stages than children whose peer interaction is low. Within the family, children whose parents encourage them to express their views and participate in family decisions reason at higher moral stages than children whose parents do not encourage these behaviors.
      - Views on Kohlberg's Theory
        Kohlberg's stage theory has been criticized in four aspects by some investigators even though his work has had significant influence on subsequent research (Turiel, 2006).
        
        Moral Reasoning and Moral Behavior. The link between the two is not as strong as Kohlberg's theory would predict (Blas, 1990; Rest, Narvaez, Thomas, & Bebeau, 2000). One's moral code consists of both moral reasoning (how one believes one should behave in a certain situation) and moral behavior (how one actually does behave in a certain situation).
        
        Interviewing Technique. Subjects' answers to questions about Kohlberg's dilemmas, which cue further questions, don't really measure the inner processes that underlie moral behavior (Rest et al., 2000). Researchers in cognitive science and social cognition contend that self-reported explanations of one's own cognitive process have severe limitations. There is now a greater understanding of implicit processes and tacit knowledge regarding human decision-making outside the awareness of the subject and beyond the subject's ability to verbally articulate them. The Defining Issues Test (DIT) takes a different approach to information collection.
        
        Another test, the Moral Judgment Test (MJT) developed by Lind (2008), measures two aspects of moral judgment behavior as defined by Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Orientation: moral judgment competence (cognitive) and moral preferences or attitudes (affective). While there are many tests of moral preferences or attitudes, the MJT is one of the few measurements which contain a real, rather than hypothetical, moral task for the participant. The task is to listen to and evaluate moral arguments about a moral dilemma, especially arguments that oppose the participant's stance on the dilemma.
        
        The DIT is regarded as neo-Kohlbergian in that the sequence of responses corresponds to Kohlberg's theory, but rather than six stages, individuals statistically fall into three groups beginning at age 12 (due to reading and cognitive ability, stage 1 is not considered):
        
        Personal-interest schema (corresponds to stages 2 and 3)
        
        Maintaining norms schema (corresponds to stage 4)
        
        Postconventional schema (corresponds to stage 6)
        
        Cultural Bias. Kohlberg's theory favors a Western (individualistic) perspective on morality, involving justice or fairness to the individual. Studies comparing moral concepts in different cultures (Shweder, Mahapatra, & Miller, 1987; Turiel, 2006) have demonstrated that culture defines morality for a child; in collectivistic cultures, what is best or “right” may be putting one's family obligations or honor above what might be fairer to the individual.
        
        Gender Bias. Kohlberg's original sample was all male. According to Gilligan (1982), the difference in the responses of females compared to the responses of the original male sample sheds some doubt on the applicability of Kohlberg's delineated stages of moral reasoning to all human development. Others disagree, citing that in real-life dilemmas, as opposed to hypothetical ones, the moral reasoning of males and females is similar, even though females do cite relationship and caring issues more often (Jaffee & Hyde, 2000; Turiel, 2006; Walker, 1991).
        
        justice moral perspective emphasizes the rights of the individual; when individual rights conflict, equitable rules of justice must prevail
        care moral perspective views people in terms of their connectedness with others; others' welfare is intrinsically connected to one's own
- - - - ♦ moralizing: “Look, you made Susie cry; it's not nice to pull hair.”
      - ♦ prohibition with explanation or statement of principle: “You must never poke anyone's eyes! He won't be able to see!”
      - ♦ withdrawal of love, physical or verbal: “I can't hug you when you've been mean.”
      - ♦ neutral: “Russell is crying because you hurt him.”
      - ♦ prohibitions without explanation: “Don't ever do that!”
      - ♦ physical restraint
      - ♦ physical punishment
    - - Cross-cultural studies show that societies vary greatly in the degree to which prosocial and cooperative behaviors are expected (Greenfield, Suzuki, & Rothstein-Fisch, 2006; Rogoff, 2003).
      - It has been documented that some societies provide more opportunities for learning to behave prosocially than do others (Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 2006), particularly by involving older children in the care of younger ones (Graves & Graves, 1983; Triandis, 1995; Whiting & Edwards, 1988). It has also been argued that the value a society puts on interdependence, cooperation, and social harmony (collectivistic orientation) versus independence, competition, and individual achievement (individualistic orientation) influences children accordingly (Greenfield et al., 2006).
      - Cultural variations in children's tendencies to cooperate or compete have been investigated in a classic study by Madsen and Shapira (1970), using various games that can be played cooperatively or competitively.
      - The game board is 18 square inches and has an eyelet at each corner. A string passes through each of the eyelets and is attached to a metal weight that serves as a holder for a ballpoint pen. A sheet of paper is placed on the game board for each trial so that the movement of the pen as the children pull their strings is recorded automatically.
      - In the cooperative condition, every time the pen crosses all four circles, all the players are rewarded. Thus, the more the children work together, the more they all win. In the competitive condition, each player is rewarded only when the pen crosses his or her circle. In this condition, if the children take turns helping one another, each child can win as often as any other. Some children never figure this out, however, and end up pulling the pen in their own direction, so no one wins.
      - Children reared in traditional rural subcultures and small, semi-agricultural communal settlements cooperated more readily than children reared in modern urban subcultures. Madsen and Shapira (1970) found schoolchildren in Mexican villages and small towns to be more cooperative than their urban middle-class Mexican, Mexican American, African American, or European American peers.
      - Thus, “children who … perform more domestic chores, help more with economic tasks and spend more time caring for their infant brothers, sisters, and cousins score high on the altruistic versus egoistic dimension” (Whiting & Whiting, 1973, p. 63). Although children in Western industrialized societies are not usually routinely involved in many family maintenance activities, those who are assigned tasks that benefit all family members (caring for younger members, animals) behave more prosocially than age-mates whose responsibilities consist mainly of self-care (cleaning one's own room) (Grusec, Goodenow, & Cohen, 1996).
- - - - Individual characteristics affect moral development (Turiel, 2006). They include temperament, self-control, self-esteem, intelligence and education, social interaction, and emotions.
      - Temperament
        Moral development may be affected by an individual's temperament—those innate characteristics that determine sensitivity to various experiences and responsiveness to patterns of social interaction. Kochanska's (1993, 1995, 1997) studies on children's temperament (inhibited or shy, impulsive or aggressive) and conscience development conclude that children's temperaments can affect parenting methods.
      - Self-Control
        Moral development may also be related to self-control, or self-regulation—the ability to regulate impulses, behavior, and/or emotions, discussed earlier (Eisenberg, 2009). Some studies (Mischel, 1974; Mischel, Shoda, & Peake, 1988) have shown that preschool children who exhibit self-control, in that they are able to defer immediate gratification, are more successful than their more impulsive age-mates at resisting the temptation to cheat at experimental games.
      - Self-Esteem
        Another influence on moral development may be self-esteem—specifically, the extent to which an individual needs approval from others (Hogan & Emler, 1995). Approval from peers was found to be linked to adolescents who shoplifted, whereas approval from parents was linked to adolescents who did not shoplift (Forney, Crutsinger, & Forney 2006). A longitudinal study (Dobkin, Tremblay, Masse, & Vitaro, 1995) showed that the need to receive approval from others was related negatively to the level of moral behavior.
      - Intelligence and Education
        Colby, Kohlberg, Gibbs, and Lieberman (1983) reported data from a 20-year longitudinal study of moral judgment in boys who were 10, 13, and 16 when first assessed. The data supported the theory that moral reasoning is significantly linked with age, IQ, education, and socioeconomic status. It also showed that stage 4 did not emerge in a majority of individuals until early adulthood (20s).
      - Advanced education, particularly the critical thinking and discussion common in college classes, promotes advanced moral reasoning, probably because it provides an opportunity to be exposed to diverse views (Mason & Gibbs, 1993; Turiel, 2006).
      - Social Interaction
        
        Several researchers (Dunn, 2006; Walker & Taylor, 1991) believe that one's moral code develops through social interaction—discussion, debate, perspective-taking, and emergence of consensus. Social interaction begins in the family, where children's needs, parental control, issues of reciprocity, fairness, rights, obligations, and the welfare of others are experienced regularly and negotiated between children, siblings, and parents. The family is also the setting in which children begin to learn the conventional and moral rules of their society. Such learning continues via social interaction in the school, peer group, and community.
        
        Emotions
        Jerome Kagan (1984) believes the morality of most persons to be directed more by emotions than by reasoning. Avoidance of unpleasant feelings and achievement of pleasant feelings are the major motivations for morality. Unpleasant feelings include fear of punishment, social disapproval, and failure, as well as guilt and uncertainty. Pleasant feelings include affection, pride, sense of belonging, and contribution.
        
        Typically, to study emotions and morality, stories are told to children of different ages about a moral transgression, such as lying or stealing, to see what emotions they attribute to the victim and victimizer. Preschool children usually attribute “sadness” to the victim and “happiness” to the victimizer—because the victimizer gets what he or she wants; this is known as “the happy victimizer.” By about age 7 or 8, children understand that the victimizer has done wrong and should feel bad even though he or she has gotten something desirable (Krettenauer, Malti, & Sokol, 2008).
        
        Economic research has proposed that emotions related to morality might be important causes of strong reciprocal behavior and the willingness to sacrifice one's own resources for others. For example, a study by Gummerum and colleagues (2010) explored how 3- to 5-year-old children allocate resources in the “dictator game,” and whether participants' understanding of moral emotions predicted allocations. The dictator game has been developed in experimental economics to measure people's altruism and fairness.
- - - - The following four main theories explain how children are socialized to assume the appropriate gender roles in their society (see Figure 12.4).
      - Psychoanalytic Theory
        Psychoanalytic theory deals with how one comes to feel like a male or female. According to Sigmund Freud (cited in Hall, 1954; Freud, 1925), children identify with the same-sex parent out of sexual love for the opposite-sex parent and fear of punishment from the same-sex parent for that love. In other words, a boy identifies with his father because he loves his mother (Oedipus complex) and is fearful that his father, who also loves his mother, will punish him for that love. A girl identifies with her mother because she loves her father (Electra complex) and is fearful that her mother, who also loves her father, will punish her for that love. In identifying with the same-sex parent, children unconsciously take on the characteristics of that parent.
      - Social Cognitive Theory
        This theory deals with how one comes to behave as a male or female. According to theorists Walter Mischel (1974) and Albert Bandura (1989), children behave in what are considered to be gender-appropriate ways because they are reinforced or rewarded when they do so and punished when they do not by the various agents of socialization. Boys identify with male models (usually their fathers) because they are rewarded for doing so: “You are strong, just like your daddy.” Girls identify with female models (usually their mothers) for the same reason: “You look pretty, just like your mommy.”
      - Cognitive Developmental Theory
        This theory deals with how one comes to reason about oneself as a male or female. According to Lawrence Kohlberg (1966), the assumption of gender-role behavior is part of the child's total cognitive development. On the basis of their observations and interactions, children accommodate, or reconcile, the differences between the categories of male and female. Once children know and understand the concepts of maleness and femaleness (about age 5 or 6), they then assimilate the appropriate gender behavior that matches their biological sex.
      - Gender Schema Theory
        Gender schema theory, proposed by Sandra Bem (1981), as well as by Martin and Hal-verson (1981, 1987), deals with how one comes to process information about oneself as a male or female by perceiving and interpreting gender-linked information. A schema (plural schemata) is a conceptual framework of one's experiences and understandings. It explains how children code new information in terms of gender. The basis for coding information is first the recognition of males and females as distinct gender categories. Labeling occurs about age 2½. As children develop, they observe male and female behavior around them.