Children’s Social and Moral Reasoning About Exclusion

Developmental research on social and moral reasoning about exclusion has utilized a social-domain theory, in contrast to a global stage theory, to investigate children’s evaluations of genderand race-based peer exclusion. The social-domain model postulates that moral, social-conventional, and personal reasoning coexist in children’s evaluations of inclusion and exclusion, and that the priority given to these forms of judgments varies by the age of the child, the context, and the target of exclusion. Findings from developmental intergroup research studies disconfirm a general-stage-model approach to morality in the child, and provide empirical data on the developmental origins and emergence of intergroup attitudes regarding prejudice, bias, and exclusion. KEYWORDS—social reasoning; exclusion; intergroup attitudes; moral judgment How early do individuals become capable of moral reasoning? What is the evidence for morality in the child? Over the past two decades, research on children’s moral judgment has changed dramatically, providing new theories and methods for analysis. In brief, the change has been away from a global stage model toward domain-specific models of development. According to Kohlberg’s foundational stage model of moral development (Kohlberg, 1984), which followed Piaget’s research on moral judgment (Piaget, 1932), children justify acts as right or wrong first on the basis of consequences to the self (preconventional), then in terms of group norms (conventional), and finally in terms of a justice perspective in which individual principles of how to treat one another are understood (postconventional). This approach involved assessing an individual’s general scheme (organizing principle) for evaluating social problems and dilemmas across a range of contexts. By the mid-1980s, however, studies of contextual variation in judgments provided extensive evidence contesting broad stages (Smetana, 2006; Turiel, 1998). For example, young children’s evaluations of transgressions and social events reflect considerations of the self, the group, and justice; these considerations do not emerge hierarchically (respectively) but simultaneously in development, each with its own separate developmental trajectory (e.g., self-knowledge, group knowledge, and moral knowledge). Thus, multiple forms of reasoning are applied to the evaluations of social dilemmas and interactions. Social judgments do not reflect one broad template or stage, such as Kohlberg’s preconventional stage to characterize childhood morality. Instead, children use different forms of reasoning, moral, conventional, and psychological, simultaneously when evaluating transgressions and social events. One area of recent empirical inquiry pertains to social and moral evaluations of decisions to exclude others, particularly on the basis of group membership (such as gender, race, or ethnicity), referred to as intergroup exclusion. What makes this form of exclusion a particularly compelling topic for investigation from a moral viewpoint is that it reflects, on the one hand, prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping, and bias about groups, and, on the other hand, judgments about fairness, equality, and rights (Killen, Lee-Kim, McGlothlin, & Stangor, 2002). Conceptually, these judgments are diametrically opposed; prejudice violates moral principles of fairness, discrimination violates equality, and stereotyping restricts individual rights. Do both forms of reasoning exist within the child? What do children do when confronted with an exclusion decision that involves moral considerations of fairness and equal treatment, on the one hand, and stereotypic and social-conventional expectations, on the other? A social-domain model proposes that morality includes fairness, justice, rights, and others’ welfare (e.g., when a victim is involved; ‘‘It wouldn’t be fair to exclude him from the game’’); social-conventional concerns involve conventions, etiquette, and customs that promote effective group functioning (e.g., when disorder in the group occurs; ‘‘If you let someone new in the group they won’t know how it works or what it’s about and it will be disruptive’’); and psychological issues pertain to autonomy, Address correspondence to Melanie Killen, 3304 Benjamin Building, Department of Human Development, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-1131; e-mail: [email protected]. CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 32 Volume 16—Number 1 Copyright r 2007 Association for Psychological Science individual prerogatives, and identity (e.g., acts that are not regulated but affect only the self; ‘‘It’s her decision who she wants to be friends with’’). Social-domain-theory approaches to moral reasoning, along with social-psychological theories about intergroup attitudes, provide a new approach to understanding social exclusion. Social exclusion is a pervasive aspect of social life, ranging from everyday events (e.g., exclusion from birthday parties, sports teams, social organizations) to large-scale social tragedies (e.g., exclusion based on religion and ethnicity resulting in genocide). These forms of interindividual and intergroup exclusion create conflict, tension, and, in extreme cases, chronic suffering. In the child’s world, exclusion has been studied most often in the context of interindividual, rather than intergroup, conflict. Research on peer rejection and victimization, for example, has focused on individual differences and the social deficits that contribute to being a bully (lack of social competence) or a victim (wariness, shyness, fearfulness; Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 1998). The findings indicate that the longterm consequences for children and adults who experience pervasive exclusion are negative, resulting in depression, anxiety, and loneliness. DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACHES Recently, developmental researchers have investigated children’s evaluations of intergroup exclusion (e.g., ‘‘You’re an X and we don’t want Xs in our group’’). Decisions to exclude others involve a range of reasons, from group norms and stereotypic expectations to moral assessments about the fairness of exclusion. Much of what is known about group norms has been documented by social psychologists, who have conducted extensive studies on intergroup relationships. The findings indicate that social categorization frequently leads to intergroup bias and that explicit and implicit attitudes about others based on group membership contribute to prejudicial and discriminatory attitudes and behavior (Dovidio, Glick, & Rudman, 2005). Few researchers, however, have examined the developmental trajectory of exclusion from a moral-reasoning perspective. Social-domain theory has provided a taxonomy for examining the forms of reasoning—moral, social-conventional, and psychological—that are brought to bear on intergroup exclusion decisions. One way that a social-domain model differs from the traditional stage model of moral reasoning, as formulated by Kohlberg in the late 1960s, is that the former provides a theory and a methodology for examining how individuals use different forms of reasons when evaluating everyday phenomena. SOCIAL REASONING ABOUT EXCLUSION One of the goals of social-domain research is to identify the conditions under which children give priority to different forms of reasons when evaluating social decisions, events, and interactions. What are the major empirical findings on intergroup exclusion decisions by children? Most centrally, children do not use one scheme (‘‘stage’’) to evaluate all morally relevant intergroup problems and scenarios; moreover, although some types of decisions are age related, others are not. In a study with children in the 1st, 4th, and 7th grades, the vast majority of students (95%) judged it wrong to exclude a peer from a group solely because of gender or race (e.g., a ballet club excludes a boy because he’s a boy; a baseball club excludes a girl because she’s a girl), and based their judgment on moral reasons, such as that such exclusion would be unfair and discriminatory (Killen & Stangor, 2001); there were no age-related differences, contrary to what a stage-model approach would predict. Introducing complexity, however, revealed variation in judgments and justifications. As shown in Figure 1, in an equalqualifications condition (‘‘What if there was only room for one more to join the club, and a girl and a boy both were equally qualified, who should the group pick?’’), most children used moral reasons (‘‘You should pick the person who doesn’t usually get a chance to be in the club because they’re both equally good at it’’); but in an unequal-qualification condition (‘‘What if X was more qualified, who should the group pick?’’), age-related increases in the use of social-conventional reasons (‘‘The group won’t work well if you pick the person who is not very good at it’’) were found. Young adolescents weighed individual merits and considered the functioning of the club or team. Qualifications (e.g., good at ballet or baseball) were considered to be more salient considerations than preserving the ‘‘equal opportunity’’ dimensions (e.g., picking a girl for baseball who has not had a chance to play). In fact, how children interpret their group’s ingroup and outgroup norms (conventions) appears to be related to prejudice and –0.1 –0.2 –0.3 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 M o ra l M in u s S o ci al C o n ve n ti o n al R ea so n s