Culture and Moral Development

Introduction

Culture shapes moral development and helps to form the thoughts and morals of human beings. The social environment in which a child is raised has a great influence on his or her moral thoughts and judgments, therefore the community as a whole needs to accept some responsibility for the outcome of the morals of its members. However, this view is opposed by many evolutional psychologists, who maintain that a basic sense of morality is a cognitive adaptation produced natural selection, and thus ultimately innate. Communities that are attuned to the idea of social influences on moral development make sure children are not exposed to indecency and try to maintain a morally healthy environment for children. This is prominent in small communal societies with a very strong sense of moral responsibilities ( It is also prevalent in small villages, especially in Africa. It is said in Ivory Coast that "it takes a village to raise a child" (African Proverb). It is also said that 'a child is itself only when it is in the womb' (African Proverb). Furthermore, Elliot Turiel's Social Interactional theory supports the fact that moral obligation is related to social experiences with a restricted class of events that have objective implications for justice, rights and the welfare of others.

Culture

Culture is the shared, learned, symbolic system of values, beliefs and attitudes that shapes and influences perception and behavior. In the context of this paper, culture will refer to Daniel Pekarsky's definition - the sum total of a human being's social environment of birth and upbringing inclusive of social institutions like the family, school, friends, and church amongst others that denote the social, economic and political realms of communal life. Based on this definition, it is obvious that culture is very deeply rooted in the community whose ethics we reflect and to a very high extent molds our morals. The very fact that cultures are different across the globe and in different communities in same areas, explains why people from different parts of the world have different dimensions to ethics and morals.

Moral Development

Baron & Kalsher define moral development as changes in the capacity to reason about the rightness or wrongness of various actions that occur with age. Moral development focuses on the changes in the ability to reason about right and wrong in a given situation. Pekarsky also defines moral development as the process through which a human being acquires sensibilities, attitudes, beliefs, skills and dispositions that render him a morally mature or adequate human being. Both of the above definitions show a link between moral development and culture.

Culture's influence on moral development

According to the psychological principle of social learning, humans imitate what they see around them and this applies to culture as well and therefore we can rightfully say that we mimic our culture. As ambassadors of our culture, therefore, our beliefs and attitudes are based on what we represent. This is illustrated in a study by Joan G. Miller, to show the influence of culture on moral reasoning. In this study, a hundred and twenty people where chosen from the United States and Southern India. When presented with same scenario, which was a test of justice and interpersonal relations, their cultural differences, caused a huge difference in their judgment. It was noticed that the Americans preferred justice over interpersonal choices meanwhile the Indians preferred to solve their problems through interpersonal interaction (http://www.hope.edu/academic/psychology/335/webrep/moraldev.html). This trend of thought is also materialized in our every day life where people with young children or those who are planning to have children and raise a family often try to choose particular areas of the society to live in. We see people choosing 'safe' and 'good' neighborhoods to raise their children if they can afford it.

Also, culture is so embedded in morality as reflected in recent practices in churches (which are a representation of pivotal moral institution in the community). Churches have started to incorporate certain cultural items in segments of their religious rituals. Miller who maintains that psychology is always cultural, just as it is always biological. The culture around us is our main influence on what our values turn out to be through moral development because culture is