Sociomoral Reasoning in Children With Respect to Exclusion and Inclusion Relationships

Abstract

The goal of this study is the analysis of judgments by children and adolescents with regard to inclusion and exclusion in its moral, personal, and social senses. Interviews were conducted with 96 Colombian children and adolescents of diverse social origins and of different age groups (5, 9, 13, and 17 years old). The interviews focused on three types of situations in which peers were excluded from group activities. The qualitative analyses show that children and adolescents gradually gain complexity in their descriptions of situations, and their judgments become more flexible, differentiated, and integrated. Different models of moral development are discussed, and in conclusion we propose that moral development can be best understood as a process of increasing complexity and of differentiation-integration of domains.

Psicología del desarrollo en Colombia: pasado reciente y situación actual

“…Uno de sus trabajos empíricos estudia el razonamiento socio-moral en niños y adolescentes entre 5 y 17 años, a través de la presentación de imágenes que representan situaciones de exclusión e inclusión social para explorar los juicios y razonamientos morales que sobrevienen (Yáñez-Canal et al, 2013). Los resultados indican que el desarrollo moral es un movimiento hacia lo concreto, lo que implica la incorporación progresiva de significados y valores de una tradición dada, a diferencia de lo planteado por Piagetianos y por Kohlberg, quienes postulaban el desarrollo moral como un movimiento hacia lo universal, objetivo e imparcial.…”