Moral Development As Growth Beyond the Superficial

A recount of my academic (and personal) history exploring a key Piagetian theme-growth beyond the superficial in moral and other aspects or contexts of human development-is presented in this chapter. As the child's ongoing thought becomes more multidimensional (Siegler, 1996), integrative or comprehensive, balanced, and discerning judgments gain in prevalence. This growth is evident across social (or moral) and non-social (such as conservation) contexts. In the social context, we generally gain depth or maturity in how we know the right (Piaget, Kohlberg) and feel the good (Hoffman)-in how we understand moral wrong such as deception and feel empathic distress with others' suffering-as we grow beyond early childhood and across the lifespan. Growth beyond the superficial in the moral domain distinguishes this approach from the more emotion-based-and hence more morally relativistic-themes evident in socialization, identification, or enculturation approaches such as Haidt's "social intuitions" theory. A brief articulation of my two-phase, lifespan view of moral development as growth beyond the superficial concludes the chapter.