The development of moral judgement during childhood and pre-adolescence in the Romanian setting

• Author: Cocorada, E. - Cazan, A. M.
• Position: Department of Psychology, Transilvania University of Brasov
• Pages: 49-60

Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov • Vol. 4 (53) •No. 1 - 2011

Series VII: Social Sciences • Law

THE DEVELOPMENT OF

MORAL JUDGEMENT DURING

CHILDHOOD AND PRE-ADOLESCENCE

IN THE ROMANIAN SETTING

E. COCORAD1 A. M. CAZAN1

Abstract: The moral development is a classical topic, but still insufficiently

investigated in the recent studies in Romania. Our study aimed to compare

the results obtained by Piaget regarding the child’s moral development with

the child’s moral development corresponding to the recent cultural

Romanian setting. The research method is mixed, qualitative and

quantitative. The clinical interview and the short stories were designed after

Piaget’s model. Our findings suggest the existence of the same clasical stages

of moral development, but identify numerous mixed profiles that highlight the

oscillations of the moral judgments for amoral children and submissive pre-

adolescences.

Key words: moral development, mixed profiles, amoral children.

1 Department of Psychology, Transilvania University of Braşov.

1. Introduction

In Piaget’s works there have been

identified distinctive elements concerning

the novelty of the research methodology

and of the results concerning some

characteristics of the cognitive and moral

development of the child: the egocentrism,

the difficulty to synthesize, or the

transductive thinking seen as week points

as compared to adult rationality. The issues

of communication between the adult and

the child, between the formal and the

hidden curriculum for the pre-school and

primary school levels are seen as side

effects, which make some educational

practices of the times be questionable [22].

The moral development had been studied

and presented by J. Piaget in his work The

Moral Judgement of the Child [23]. The

author claims that the development of the

moral judgement takes place in certain

stages, and he identifies the motor and

individual stage, the egocentric stage, the

progressive egalitarianism stage, and the

moral autonomy stage. The path of moral

development is given by the progressive

transition from the heteronomous morality,

of submission to rules, to the reciprocal

autonomous morality.

The stage of heteronomous morality

corresponds to the egocentric morality,

being chronologically determined by the

ages of 4/5-7/8 years old, a stage in which

the child encounters difficulties in judging

the point of view of the others. His way of

thinking is dictated by the moral realism, a

mixture of physical and moral rules, where

deeds are not judged by the intention of

their authors, but by their appropriation to

the physical truth, and the moral rule is