Did Eisenberg's children develop prosocial moral judgments?

Eisenberg, like Kohlberg, focuses on children's moral judgment and reasoning. Eisenberg believes that almost all the difficult stories selected in Kohlberg's research involve law, authority or formal responsibility. For example, in the story of whether Heinz should steal medicine, Heinz must choose between stealing medicine and the death of his wife. It is illegal to steal medicine, and it is every husband's responsibility to protect his wife from death. Problems such as law and responsibility will restrict children's reasoning about story conflicts to some extent. So Kohlberg used his dilemma story to study only one aspect of children's moral judgment reasoning-prohibition-oriented reasoning.

Eisenberg distinguishes and designs another moral dilemma-prosocial moral dilemma, which is different from Kohlberg's dilemma, and studies children's prosocial moral judgment accordingly. The so-called prosocial dilemma situation means that a person must choose between satisfying his own wishes, needs and/or values and satisfying those of others, and there is an irreconcilable contradiction between the personal interests of the helper and the interests of the recipient. The following is a typical story used in Eisenberg's research:

One day, a girl named Mary is going to a friend's birthday party. On the way, she saw a girl accidentally fall and break her leg. The girl asked Mary to go to her home to inform her parents, so that her parents could come and take her to the doctor. But if Mary really informs her parents, she won't be able to attend the birthday party, and she will miss eating ice cream, cakes and all the games. What should Mary do? Why?

According to the different answers to these questions, Eisenberg draws the conclusion that the reasoning of prosocial moral dilemma has gone through five levels from childhood to adolescence:

Stage 1: hedonism and self-concerned reasoning. Reasons for helping others include personal interests, future needs, or whether you like a person.

Stage 2: Requirement-oriented reasoning. When the needs of others conflict with their own needs, children begin to show simple concern for the needs of others.

The third stage: the identification and reasoning of interpersonal orientation and stereotype orientation. When children analyze the reasons for helping others or not helping others, they will involve good people or bad people, stereotypes of good people or bad people's behavior, praise and permission from others, etc.

The fourth stage: empathy reasoning. When children analyze the reasons for helping others or not, they begin to pay attention to guilt or other emotional experiences related to the consequences of behavior, which initially involves paying attention to social norms.

The fifth stage: deep internalization reasoning. Children's decision to help others is mainly based on internalized values, responsibilities, norms and the desire to improve social conditions.

It is concluded that preschool children's judgments are often hedonistic, and their own gains and losses should be considered first; Only when children gradually mature will they think more about the needs and expectations of others and tend to consider helping others from the perspective of internalized value standards.

The above is a summary of relevant knowledge about the development of Eisenberg's prosocial moral judgment. Candidates can master their knowledge points skillfully by combing the above logic in the process of preparing for the teacher recruitment exam.