Women and Psychology

 

Learning Outcome 2

 

Influence of gender in development of social and moral behaviour

 

 

 

What do we mean by 'social and moral behaviour? Discuss in pairs or small groups and try agree a definition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have already discussed ideas about 'nature' and nurture' in considering gender development, and the differences between 'sex' and 'gender'. While the biological and evolutionary approaches in psychology argue that our behaviour is driven by 'innate' factors that are with us at birth, other approaches, such as social constructionism, argue that social and environmental factors have the greater influence on our behaviour.

 

 

Do you believe social and moral behaviour is learned or innate? If it is learned, who from? Think of examples of your own social and moral values and behaviour, and those of your children if you have any - where do you believe they came from?

 

Has your social and moral behaviour changed from when you were a young child? In what ways, and what implications does this have in considering whether such behaviour is innate or learned?

 

Theories of social and moral development

 

While some evolutionary psychologists argue that our 'pro-social' or 'helping' behaviour may be rooted in our ancestors' need to help others in their tribal community in order for the entire community - and therefore their genes - to survive, most explanations of social and moral development argue that we are born 'amoral' and learn or acquire social and moral behaviour as we grow older.

 

Psychoanalytical approach

 

Firstly, some revision of the key concepts:

 

 

Maria is 23 years old. She lives at home with her parents and has an office job which is reasonably well paid. Maria spends nearly all her money on clothes, handbags, CDs, mobile phone credit and nights out, much to the dismay of her parents. Maria feels a bit guilty about this, but when she passes Buchanan Galleries, her credit card just calls…

 

 

1.             According to Freud, what part of Maria's personality dominates her shopping habits?

 

2.             And what part of her personality causes her to feel bad afterwards?

 

 

 

Describe the Oedipus Complex in 25 words or less:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Freud's theories of gender development propose that gender identity stems from boys' identification with their father and 'loss' of the mother, and girls' identification with the mother, following her realisation that she is 'castrated' and lacks a penis.

 

Freud believed that identification with the parent led the child to 'introject' their parent's values and characteristics onto themselves, and to develop the 'superego' - the voice of the parent. As he believed that the process of identification was weaker for girls than for boys - based on the shared lack of a penis, rather than a positive identification - this led him to conclude that the girls' moral development - in the form of the superego - would also be weaker.

 

A number of problems have been identified with the psychoanalytical theory of social and moral development. Freud argued that the 'superego' develops all at once, at around the age of 5 or 6, and that this 'moral voice' is internal to the individual. This would mean that social and moral development would be complete around this age, and that behaviour such as cheating should be consistent across different situations.

 

Is this your experience of social and moral development? Is the family the only influence on social and moral behaviour? If this was the case in Freud's day (the late Victorian period), how might things be different today?

 

Several psychologists have produced evidence to refute Freud's theories; Hoffman (1975) found that women were no less likely than men to display moral behaviour, and that in fact were sometimes more likely. Hartshorne and May (1930) tested children's moral behaviour and found that whether or not children cheated varied across situations.

 

 

Learning Theory and Social Learning Theory

 

'Learning Theory' relates to the work of behaviourist psychologists such as Pavlov and Skinner, who argued that behaviour is learned from the environment, and can be reduced to 'stimulus and response' units (S-R) - we learn a response to an environmental stimulus, rather than thinking and calculating our response 'inside our heads'. Skinner's ideas about the use of reinforcement are still used in education today - such as gold stars for good behaviour in primary schools, or 'token economies' in prisons, where inmates can earn rewards in return for good behaviour.

 

Social Learning Theory goes beyond the notion of human beings as many thousands of stimulus-response units, however, arguing that even as young children, we 'think' about our behaviour and use cognitive processes when playing and interacting with others. Social Learning Theory emphasises the development of social and moral behaviour through 'modelling', arguing that our behaviour can be shaped by the behaviour we observe, particularly that of parents and close adults.

 

Study - Bandura et al (1961)

 

Bandura et al used an experimental study to measure the effect of adult models on children's behaviour; they also studied differences based on gender, and on whether the child observed a model of the same sex.

 

A sample of 36 girls and 36 boys was used; the children were aged between 37 and 69 months (3 years 1 month - 5 years 9 months). 24 of the children were in a control group who were given a choice of an inflatable 'Bobo' doll or a range of other toys to play with; one experimenter, who was known to the children, remained in the room during the experiment, while the others observed the child through a one-way mirror.

 

The remainder of the children were divided into groups, and spent a few minutes watching an adult model playing with a Bobo doll. One group of children observed a man playing aggressively with the doll  - hitting and punching it, while being verbally aggressive, another watched a man playing passively with the doll, while further groups watched a female model playing aggressively or passively with the doll.

 

The children were then taken into a second room and allowed to spend a few minutes playing with toys. They were then told that the toys were to be given to other children, and were led into the third room, where they were observed playing on their own with the Bobo doll.

 

Boys were found to be mostly likely to imitate physical aggression from a male model, while girls were more likely to imitate verbal aggression from a female model:

 

 

mean physical aggression score

mean verbal aggression score

 

control group

male model

female model

control group

male model

female model

boys

2.0

25.8

12.4

1.7

12.7

4.3

girls

1.2

7.2

5.5

0.7

2.0

13.7

 

 

Questions

 

1.             Do these findings surprise you?

 

2.             Can you see any ethical problems with this experiment?

 

3.             What are the disadvantages of using an experiment to measure children's behaviour?

 

Cognitive Developmental Theories

 

Social Learning Theory has been criticised for failing to explain how social and moral behaviour changes and develops as we get older - it simply states that we learn or acquire more of it!

 

Cognitive theorists such as Piaget, a leading child development theorist in the early part of the 20th century, have attempted to explain social and moral behaviour in terms of 'stages' of development.

 

Piaget (1932) studied the way that boys played with marbles, and their use and understanding of 'rules'. He found that boys aged 5 - 9 believed that rules were created by an authority - older kids, parents or even God - but could still be changed at random to suit the players. Older boys, aged 10 and upwards, understood that rules were fixed by children, and felt strongly that they should be followed.

 

Feminist psychologist Carole Gilligan (1983) criticises Piaget for basing his theories of 'child' development on boys' games and  situating male development as 'normal' and girls as 'deviant'; Piaget considered "girls' games" such as hopscotch to be too straightforward for the purposes of his studies. Gilligan highlights the work of later psychologists such as Lever (1976), who found that while boys played games with a higher level of skill and played the same game for longer, with arguments forming part of the game, girls put more emphasis on the social aspects of play, ending games rather than jeopardising friendships if arguments broke out.

 

Does this reflect your experience of girls and boys' play? Do you believe it is still the case given the shift from physical, outdoor games to Game Boys and Nintendos?

 

 

Study - Kohlberg (1963)

 

Kohlberg presented 'vignettes' - short stories illustrating moral dilemmas such as that of Heinz (see below) - to 58 males aged between 7 and 17. He found that the nature of the boys' responses changed qualitatively as they got older, and devised six stages of moral reasoning as a result of his work (see separate handout).

 

In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He paid $400 for the radium and charged $4000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $2000, which is half of what the drug cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said, "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." So Heinz gets desperate and considers breaking into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife.

 

1. Should Heinz steal the drug?

a) Why or why not?

 

2. If Heinz doesn't love his wife, should he steal the drug for her?

a) Why or why not?

 

3. Suppose the person dying is not his wife but a stranger. Should Heinz steal the drug for the stranger?

a) Why or why not?

 

(from Kohlberg, 1984)

 

 

Questions

 

1.             Read Kohlberg's stages - do you feel these are an accurate description of social and moral development? Are there any you would add?

 

2.             Can this theory be applied universally? Why/why not?

 

3.             What problems exist with Kohlberg's experimental approach and use of vignettes? Could an alternative method have been used?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gilligan (1983) also criticises Kohlberg's model of development as being based on a male experience, with the six stages of development based on the public sphere of life, and the male as a citizen, interacting in this sphere. Kohlberg and Kramer (1969) argued that women who stay at home to raise a family would not progress beyond stage three, and that the opportunity for a woman to progress her social and moral development further would only exist if she worked outwith the home.

 

 

Practical Applications

 

Re-read last week's handout on the practical applications of psychology. In which field might an understanding of children's social and moral development be used, and how might such knowledge be applied?