The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 2007, 168(2), 101104 Copyright 2007 Heldref Publications

Introduction to the Special Issues on Moral Development: Part I

Morality is of the highest importancebut for us, not for God. Albert Einstein

For decades, scientists have been interested in understanding moral behavior, focusing on understanding individual differences in compliance, conscience development, prosocial behavior, empathy-related emotions, sharing, moral sensitivity, and moral judgment in children, adolescents, and adults. This issue is the first of a two-part series designed to contribute to the scientific understanding of moral behavior, moral affect, and moral cognition. The first issue is devoted to research on parental socialization of childrens moral emotions and behavior. The second issue focuses on the measuring of moral behavior and predicting individual differences in moral development from a variety of factors, such as affective processes, cognitive processes, education, and contextual factors. The contributions to both issues are varied in researchers approaches to studying moral development in toddlers, children, adolescents, and adults. In toddler and young preschool samples, researchers used observational data to assess childrens prosocial behavior (Volbrecht, Lemery-Chalfant, Aksan, Zahn-Waxler, & Goldsmith) and compliance (Groenendyk & Volling). Additionally, contributors used parents and teachers reports of moral behaviors (Groenendyk & Volling; Hastings, McShane, Parker, & Ladha; Malti & Gummerum). Researchers also relied on participants responses to emotional videos (Hinnant & OBrien) and self-report data (Barr & Higgins-DAlessandro; Carlo, McGinley, Hayes, Batenhorst, & Wilkinson; Malti & Gummerum; Narvaez & Gleason; Patrick & Gibbs) across a variety of ages. Moreover, within similar study designs, the measures of moral behavior differed in each investigation. As discussed in a contribution by Jordan, there is an array of measures of moral sensitivity, and more consistency in measurement is needed to compare across studies. One theme that crosses both issues in this series is a focus on gender differences in moral behavior. It is a long-held assumption that girls outperform boys on indexes of moral development, such as empathy and prosocial behavior. Empirical data support this claim, although results vary based on the method used and on the age of participants (see Eisenberg & Fabes, 1998). The studies in this series are no exception, as researchers found that girls generally exhibit more sympathy and prosocial behavior than do boys (Carlo et al.; Malti & Gummerum; Volbrecht et al.).
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It is particularly striking that gender often served as a moderator in predicting childrens moral behavior. For example, Carlo et al. and Hastings et al. found that the relations between parental practices and moral behavior differed for boys and girls. Thus, socialization processes may have different meanings across the sexes and, as a consequence, result in divergent outcomes for boys and girls. Gender also moderated relations between cognitive or affective processes and childrens moral development (Barr & Higgins-DAlessandro; Hinnant & OBrien; Malti & Gummerum; Volbrecht et al.). Several groups of investigators found that the relations between these variables and moral development were significant only for boys. Perhaps one reason for these findings is that girls often are more consistently high in moral behavior, regardless of their levels of cognitive or affective development; thus, these factors may play a less important role in predicting girls moral development. Future research should focus on understanding the processes involved in predicting boys and girls moral behaviors, investigating why predictors of their development differ, and exploring whether their trajectories across childhood differ as well. Part I Biological factors undeniably play a role in childrens moral development (Zahn-Waxler, Schiro, Robinson, Emde, & Schmitz, 2001), and the contributions of nature and nurture to moral development are still under debate. In the first study, using a genetically informative design, Volbrecht and colleagues tested the genetic and environmental contributions to young childrens empathy. Their findings demonstrated shared environmental influences on prosocial behavior and concern and very little evidence of genetic contribution to these variables. Thus, the implication of this study is that environmental factors, including parental socialization efforts, play an important role in childrens moral behavior. Various aspects of parenting are linked to childrens moral behavior, and this issue includes research on broad parental styles (Carlo et al.; Hastings et al.), parental responses to childrens empathy (Hastings et al.), parental practices specific to childrens prosocial behaviors (Carlo et al.), and parental cognitions (Hastings et al.). Parental discipline practices also are seen as important to the development of moral values and behavior. Hoffman (2000) theorized that parental use of inductive practices (i.e., parental use of reasoning) orients children to others needs without overly arousing the children, whereas parental love withdrawal and power assertion may threaten children or overly arouse them such that children may become self-concerned or fail to process the information provided in the socialization interaction. Although researchers have found some empirical support for this suggestion (e.g., Hastings, Zahn-Waxler, Robinson, Usher, & Bridges, 2000; Krevans & Gibbs, 1996), Patrick and Gibbs question whether an additional component (i.e., parental expression of disappointment) should be considered a separate, distinct discipline practice. Their data did not support the

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use of disappointment as a distinct strategy; however, this work reminds researchers of the importance of critically approaching long-held assumptions about the typology of parental discipline. Another important development in current studies of childrens moral behavior is researchers not only studying the role of parental socialization on the acquisition of childrens morality but also examining the processes involved in this development. Carlo and colleagues attempt to examine such processes in their contribution to this special issue. The authors found that the associations between parenting practices used to promote prosocial behavior (e.g., social rewards, experiential learning) and adolescents prosocial behaviors are indirect, mediated through adolescents sympathy. Although longitudinal data are needed to further test the causal nature of these mediational processes, this study serves as an important step toward understanding the role of parenting practices and sympathy on childrens prosocial behavior. To date, researchers studying the socialization of childrens moral development have focused almost exclusively on mothers child rearing. In this issue, fathers influence on childrens prosocial development is considered in two contributions. First, Hastings et al. examined the association of mothers and fathers parenting to childrens prototypically feminine and prototypically masculine prosocial behaviors. Their findings demonstrate that fathers engaged in more sextyped socialization than did mothers; however, maternal parenting was a stronger predictor of young childrens prosocial behavior than was paternal parenting. Second, Groenendyk and Volling used a whole-family approach to observe mothers, fathers, and two children in a family clean-up paradigm and also assessed coparenting behaviors in relation to childrens compliance and conscience development. Coparenting (i.e., behaviors used to either support or undermine the others parenting) was linked to childrens conscience development. Both studies point to the importance of moving beyond a focus on motherchild interactions and considering the contribution of both mothers and fathers to childrens moral development. The work in this special issue contributes substantially to our knowledge about the socialization of childrens morality. However, the bidirectional relations between parents and children should not be ignored. Researchers generally acknowledge that children are operating in a dynamic system; however, few researchers have examined the reciprocal relations between parental socialization strategies and childrens moral behavior. Thus, longitudinal work that focuses on bidirectional effects is needed. Work on the socialization of moral behavior and moral affect is essential to understanding the development of morality in children. There is still much to be learned regarding the relations of parenting to childrens moral behaviors. Future researchers should focus on understanding the processes involved in the socialization of moral behavior and considering complex relations (such as moderating factors) between parental behaviors and childrens morality.

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REFERENCES Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R. A., & Spinrad, T. L. (2006). Prosocial development. In W. Damon & R. M. Lerner (Series Eds.) & N. Eisenberg (Vol. Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Volume 3. Social, emotional, and personality development (6th ed., pp. 646718). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Hastings, P. D., Zahn-Waxler, C., Robinson, J., Usher, B., & Bridges, D. (2000). The development of concern for others in children with behavior problems. Developmental Psychology, 36, 531546. Hoffman, M. L. (2000). Empathy and moral development: Implications for caring and justice. New York: Cambridge University Press. Krevans, J., & Gibbs, J. C. (1996). Parents use of inductive discipline: Relations to childrens empathy and prosocial behavior. Child Development, 67, 32633277. Zahn-Waxler, C., Schiro, K., Robinson, J. L., Emde, R. N., & Schmitz, S. (2001). Empathy and prosocial patterns in young mz and dz twins: Development and genetic and environmental influences. In R. N. Emde & J. K. Hewitt (Eds.), Infancy to early childhood: Genetic and environmental influences on developmental change (pp. 141162). London: Oxford University Press.

TRACY L. SPINRAD NANCY EISENBERG FRANK BERNT Guest Editors