Forty-three Zambian secondary school teachers and 121 of their students were interviewed to examine distinctions between direct moral, belief-mediated moral, social-conventional, and personal events. Additionally, 17 Zambian villagers and 15 American college students made judgments about a belief-mediated moral event Two main predictions were made: Zambian secondary school teachers and students would make distinctions between the four types of events, and subjects' understanding of belief-mediated moral and social-conventional transgressions would be patterned by sociocultural orientations. These predictions were confirmed. Discussed and deduced from the results is the proposition that as applied to individuals per se the concepts of unfairness, harm, justice, violation of human rights, and obligation form an insufficient basis for morality. A collective sense of well-being should, in addition, be part of this foundation.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Davidson, P. , Turiel, E., & Black, A. (1983). The effects of stimulus familiarity on the use of criteria and justifications in children's social reasoning. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 1, 49-65.
2.
Drake, A. M. (1976). Illness, ritual and social relations among the Chewa of Central Africa. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Duke University.
3.
Hays, W. L (1981). Statistics. (3rd ed.). New York: CBS College Publishing.
4.
Hollos, M. , Leis, P., & Turiel, E. (1986). Social reasoning in Ijo children and adolescents in Nigerian communities. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 17(3), 352-374.
5.
Kohlberg, L. , Levine, C., & Hewer, A. (1983). Moral stages: A current formulation and a response to critics. Basel, Switzerland: S. Karger.
6.
MacIntyre, A. (1984). After virtu. (2nd ed.). Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
7.
Marascuilo, L. A. , & McSweeney, M. (1977). Nonparametric and distribution-free methods for the social sciences. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.
8.
Much, N. C. , & Shweder, R. A. (1978). Speaking of rules: The analysis of culture in breach. In W. Damon (Ed.), New directions for child development 2: Moral development. (pp. 19-39). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
9.
Nisan, M. (1987). Moral norms and social conventions: A cross-cultural comparison. Developmental Psychology, 23(5), 719-725.
10.
Nucci, L. (1977). Social development: Personal, conventional and moral concepts. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Santa Cruz.
11.
Nucci, L. (1981). The development of personal concepts. Child Development, 52, 114-121.
12.
Nucci, L. , & Nucci, M. (1982). Children's social interactions in the context of moral and conventional transgressions. Child Development, 49, 400-407.
13.
Nucci, L. , & Turiel, E. (1978). Social interactions and the development of social concepts in pre-school children. Child Development, 49, 400-407.
14.
Nucci, L. , Turiel, E., & Encamacion-Gawrch, G. (1983). Children's social interactions and social concepts: Analyses of morality and convention in the Virgin Islands. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 14(4), 469-487.
15.
Pool, C. L. , Shweder, R. A., & Much, N. C. (1983). Culture as a cognitive system: Differentiated rule understanding in children and other savages. In E. T. Higgens, O. N. Ruble, & W. W. Hartup (Eds.), Social cognition and social development: A social cultural perspective. (pp. 193-213). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
16.
Reisman, P. (1986). The person and the life cycle in African social life and thought. African Studies Review, 29(20), 70-130.
17.
Shweder, R. (1982). Beyond self-constructed knowledge: The study of culture and morality. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 28(1), 41-69.
18.
Shweder, R. (1986). Divergent rationalities. In D. W. Fiske & R. Shweder (Eds.), Metatheory in social science: Pluralism and subjectivities. (pp. 163-196). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
19.
Shweder, R., Mahapatra, M., & Miller, J. G. (1987). Culture and moral development. Unpublished manuscript.
20.
Shweder, R. , Turiel, E., & Much, N. C. (1981). The moral intuitions of the child. In J. H. Flavell & L. Ross (Eds.), Social cognitive development: Frontiers and possible futures (pp. 288-305). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
21.
Smetana, J. G. (1981a). Pre-school children's conceptions of moral and social rules. Child Development, 52, 1333-1336.
22.
Smetana, J. G. (1981b). Reasoning in the personal and moral domains: Adolescent and young adult women's decision-making regarding abortion. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 2, 211-226.
23.
Smetana, J. G. (1982). Concepts of self and morality: Women's reasoning about abortion. New York: Praeger.
24.
Smetana, J. G. (1984). Toddlers' social interactions regarding moral and conventional transgressions. Child Development, 55, 1767-1776.
25.
Smetana, J. G. , Bridgeman, D. L., & Turiel, D. (1983). Differentiation of domains and prosocial behaviour. In D. Bridgeman (Ed.), The nature of prosocial development: Interdisciplinary theories and strategies. (pp. 163-184). New York: Academic Press.
26.
Song, M. , Snmtana, J. G., & Kim, S. Y (1987). Korean children's conceptions of moral and conventional transgressions. Developmental Psychology, 23(4), 477-582.
27.
Tisak, M. S. (1986). Children's conceptions of parental authority. Child Development, 57, 166-176.
28.
TurieL E. (1978). The development of concepts of social structure: Social convention. In J. Glick & A. Clarke-Steward (Eds.), The development of social understanding (pp. 25-107). New York: Garden Press.
29.
Turiel, E. (1983). The development of social knowledge: Morality and convention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
30.
Turiel, E. , & Davidson, P. (1986). Heterogeneity, inconsistency, and asynchrony in the development of cognitive structures. In I. Levin (Ed.), Stage and structure: Reopening the debat. (pp. 106-143). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
31.
Turiel, E., Killen, M., & Helwig, C. C. (1987). Morality: Its structure, functions and vagaries. Unpublished manuscript.
32.
Turiel, E. , & Smetana, J. G. (1984). Social knowledge and action: The coordination of domains. In W. M. Kurines & J. L. Gerwirtz (Eds.), Morality, moral behaviour and moral development: Basic issues in theory and research. (pp. 261-282). New York: Wiley.
33.
Walzer, M. (1983). Spheres of justice: A defence of pluralism and equality. New York: Basic Books.
34.
Welkowitz, J. , Ewen, R. B., & Cohen, J. (1976). Introductory statistics for the behavioral science. (2nd ed.). New York: Academic Press.
35.
Winer, B. J. (1971). Statistical principles in experimental design. (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
36.
Zimba, R. F. (1987). A study on forms of social knowledge in Zambia. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Purdue University.
