INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL REINFORCEMENT AND THE BEHAVIOR OF MODELS IN SHAPING CHILDREN'S MORAL JUDGMENTS.

This experiment was designed to test the relative efficacy of social reinforcement and modeling procedures in modifying moral judgmental responses considered by Piaget to be age-specific. 1 group of children observed adult models who expressed moral judgments counter to the group's orientation, and the children were reinforced with approval for adopting the model's evaluative responses. A 2nd group observed the models but received no reinforcement for matching their behavior. A 3rd group of children had no exposure to models but were reinforced for moral judgments that ran counter to their dominant evaluative tendencies. Following the treatments, the children were tested for generalization effects. The experimental treatments produced substantial changes in the children's moral judgment responses. Conditions utilizing modeling cues proved to be more effective than the operant conditioning procedure. Most of the literature and theorizing in the area of developmental psychology has been guided by various forms of stage theories (Erikson, 1950; Freud, 1949; Gesell & Ilg, 1943; Piaget, 1948, 1954; Sullivan, 1953). Although there appears to be relatively little agreement among these theories concerning the number and the content of stages considered to be necessary to account for the course of personality development, they all share in common the assumption that social behavior can be categorized in terms of a predetermined sequence of stages with varying degrees of continuity or discontinuity between successive developmental periods. Typically, the emergence of these presumably age-specific modes of behavior is attributed to ontogenetic factors rather than to specific social stimulus events which are likely to be favored in a social learning theory of the developmental process. The stage and social learning approaches differ not only in the relative emphasis placed