Piaget, part two, and how moral reasoning grows

Transcript

RyanA family road trip. From the back seat, the eight-year-old announces a riddle he made up. If Andrew is taller than Brianna, and Brianna is taller than Cleo, who's the shortest? And he answers it himself. Cleo. Easy.

SoheeMeanwhile, his fifteen-year-old sister is refusing to get out of the car at the rest stop, because she's convinced everyone inside will notice her haircut.

RyanTwo kids, two stages, one car. Welcome to EPPP Prep, the podcast. I'm Ryan.

SoheeI'm Sohee. Last time we covered Piaget's first two stages. Today we finish the theory, look at what comes after it, and then move into moral reasoning, from Piaget to Kohlberg to Carol Gilligan.

RyanStage three, concrete operational, roughly seven to eleven. Lifespan Development says children now use logic to solve concrete problems involving tangible objects they can directly experience.

SoheeBut not abstract or hypothetical ones yet. The textbook's example is imagining the consequences of a world made from candy. That's still out of reach.

RyanThe key word is operations: cognitive actions that use logic and are reversible. And the headline operation is conservation, the understanding that the amount of something doesn't change just because its appearance does.

SoheeWhy can they do it now? Two reasons the textbook gives. First, decentration. They can focus on more than one aspect at once. The taller glass has the same water because it's skinnier. Height and width together.

RyanSecond, reversibility. They understand you could pour the liquid back into the shorter, wider container, and the amount wouldn't change.

SoheeThen classification. Between seven and ten, children can solve Piaget's class inclusion problem. Show them four apples and three bananas, and they can tell you there are more apples than bananas, and also more fruit than apples.

RyanAnd seriation, arranging things in order. Piaget's task had children line up sticks from shortest to longest. Related to that is transitive inference, which is exactly our eight-year-old's riddle. Andrew, Brianna, Cleo. That example comes straight from the textbook.

SoheeAnd they become less egocentric. Concrete operational children can describe what the three-mountain scene looks like from the other side of the table.

RyanHow well has this stage held up? Pretty well. Cross-cultural research in places including Bali, India, and Nepal found the sequence of stages is generally the same across cultures. But some children show concrete operational thought before age seven, earlier than Piaget believed.

SoheeStage four, formal operational, from adolescence on. The word formal means the ability to reason with formal logical systems and symbols. Lifespan Development frames it around possibilities. Teens can think about all the possibilities in a situation, and then test them systematically.

RyanThe classic test is Piaget's pendulum problem. Which of four things makes a pendulum swing faster? The length of the string, the height it's dropped from, the weight, or the force of the push?

SoheeA concrete operational child might try a few things seemingly at random and land on an answer. An adolescent is more likely to plan, and methodically test combinations of the four variables. That's scientific thinking.

RyanAnd here's the thing the exam likes. In tasks like this one, getting the correct answer isn't the point. The textbook says what matters to the research is how the participant goes about discovering it.

SoheeNow our fifteen-year-old with the haircut. David Elkind described adolescent egocentrism. And it comes with some memorable terms.

RyanThe imaginary audience is the belief that other people are as preoccupied with the teen's appearance and behavior as the teen is. Everyone at the rest stop is watching.

SoheeThe personal fable is the belief that they and their feelings are unique, that no one else has ever suffered so intensely. You can't possibly understand what I'm feeling!

RyanAnd the invincibility fable is the belief that they can't be harmed. Lifespan Development says preoccupation with the personal fable and the imaginary audience likely peaks around age fifteen.

SoheePause and think. A teenager walks into school, sees two classmates whispering, and confronts them for gossiping about his breakup. They were talking about something else entirely. Which concept?

RyanThe imaginary audience. He assumed he was the center of their attention. If he'd said no one has ever hurt like I hurt, that's the personal fable. If he started doing dangerous skateboard tricks sure nothing could happen, the invincibility fable.

SoheeNow the critiques of the later stages. Lifespan Development notes that in cultures that don't emphasize scientific reasoning, formal operations may not be reached. And treating formal operations as the final end-state of thinking reflects the bias of WEIRD research, meaning studies of mostly Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic samples.

RyanWhich leads to postformal thought. Researchers since Piaget have proposed a stage beyond formal operations that's more flexible, more complex, and able to recognize more than one correct answer to a problem.

SoheePart of that is dialectical thinking, the ability to stay practical, flexible, and open to multiple factors and solutions. Adolescents tend to think in absolutes. Adults are more likely to see the gray areas, the blessing in disguise.

RyanLet's shift to moral reasoning, which grows out of this same cognitive foundation. Piaget was interested in moral reasoning rather than moral behavior, and he thought it couldn't become sophisticated until children could consider other people's perspectives.

SoheeHe told children stories. One child breaks a cup while sneaking a cookie. Another breaks several cups by accident. Who's worse?

RyanChildren about five to ten follow rules and authority without flexibility. So they might say the child who broke the cups was wrong, accident or not. From about eleven, children are more flexible and weigh intentions. If it was an accident, maybe no punishment.

SoheeLawrence Kohlberg developed Piaget's ideas into a more comprehensive theory. His best-known story is the Heinz dilemma. A woman is dying. A druggist charges ten times what the drug cost to make. Her husband, Heinz, can only raise half. So he breaks in and steals it.

RyanAnd here's the most important thing to know about Kohlberg. He wasn't interested in whether you said yes or no. He was interested in the reasoning behind the answer.

SoheeHe described three levels. Preconventional: decisions based on what will happen to the person. Avoid punishment, be obedient, get a reward. Heinz shouldn't steal because he'll be punished.

RyanConventional: judging an action by what others will think, and by the law. Heinz shouldn't steal because it's illegal and people would think he's a criminal. Or he should, because people will see him as a good spouse.

SoheePostconventional: an internalized moral code based on abstract principles like justice and compassion. Heinz should steal because his wife's life matters more than the law. And the psychology textbook says only a few fully achieve this level.

RyanPause and think. Two students both say Heinz was wrong to steal. One says, because he'll go to jail. The other says, because people would think he's a criminal. Same answer. Same level?

SoheeNo. Going to jail is about consequences to himself, preconventional. What people would think is conventional. The yes or no never decides the level. The reasoning does.

RyanTwo more points the exam can use. First, moral reasoning isn't moral behavior. The psychology textbook says we might talk the talk, but not walk the walk.

SoheeSecond, the critiques. Kohlberg's research was done almost entirely with males. Carol Gilligan, who had been his research assistant, argued the theory was biased against women.

RyanKohlberg had felt that more men than women moved past stage four, and described women as deficient in moral reasoning. Gilligan argued they aren't deficient. They reason differently, focusing more on staying connected and the importance of relationships.

SoheeSo in her book, In a Different Voice, she described a morality grounded in caring and interpersonal relationships. And critics have also said Kohlberg's stories were culturally biased, particularly for collectivistic cultures that prioritize interdependence.

RyanLet's recap. Concrete operational children use logic on concrete things: conservation through decentration and reversibility, class inclusion, seriation, transitive inference.

SoheeFormal operational thinkers reason about possibilities and test them systematically, like in the pendulum problem. Adolescent egocentrism brings the imaginary audience, the personal fable, and the invincibility fable.

RyanPostformal thought accepts more than one right answer. Kohlberg's levels are preconventional, conventional, and postconventional, and the reasoning, not the verdict, sets the level.

SoheeAnd Gilligan answered with an ethic grounded in care and relationships, and the point that reasoning differently isn't reasoning worse.

RyanSpeaking of reasoning differently: a lot of you are coming back to this exam after a hard result. That isn't a deficit. It's more experience to reason from. And seeing that a setback can be more than one thing, maybe even a blessing in disguise? That's the flexible, postformal kind of thinking.

SoheeRest when you need to, and come back for the next one. Thanks for listening to EPPP Prep.

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