Life Span Development II: School age and Adolescence 3 (2+1)
Lesson 28 : Emergence of morality and personality during adolescence
Moral value orientation
One of the important developmental tasks adolescents must master is learning what the group expects of them and then willing to mold their behavior to conform to these expectations without the constant guidance, supervision and threats of punishment they experienced as children. They are expected to replace the specific moral concepts of childhood with general moral principles and to formulate these into a moral code which will act as a guide to their behavior, a responsibility that was formerly assumed by parents and teachers.
By adolescence, boys and girls have reached what Piaget has called the stage of formal operations in cognitive ability. They are now capable of considering all possible ways of solving a particular problem and can reason on the basis of hypothesis or propositions. Thus they can look at their problems from several points of view and can take many factors into account when solving them.
According to Kohlberg, the third level of moral development, post conventional morality, should be reached during adolescence. This is the level of self-accepted principles, and it consists of two stages. In the first stage, the individual believes that there should be flexibility in moral beliefs to make it possible to modify and change moral standards if this will be advantageous to group members as a whole. In the second stage, individuals conform to both social standards and to internalized ideals t avoid self-condemnation rather than to avoid social censure. In this stage, morality is based on respect for others rather than on personal desires.
The three major tasks in achieving adult morality are
Replacing specific concepts with general moral concepts
Formulating these newly developed concepts into a moral code as a guideline for behavior,
Assuming control over one’s own behavior
These transitions are difficult for many adolescents. Some fail to make the shift to adult morality during adolescence and must finish this task in early adulthood. Others not only fail to make the shift but they build a moral code on socially unacceptable moral concepts.
Participants