Moral Development in Early Childhood

All 6 Terms & Definitions

Moral Realism (Heteronomous Morality)

Piaget's term for early childhood moral reasoning: treating rules as sacred and unalterable, judging wrongness by consequences rather than intentions, and believing in immanent justice. Contrasted with autonomous morality, which develops in middle childhood through peer interaction and reciprocity. Subsequent research has qualified these claims: intention-sensitivity emerges earlier when tasks are designed to make intentions perceptually accessible.

Immanent Justice

The belief that wrongdoing is automatically punished by the natural world — that misfortunes befall people because they have done something wrong. A feature of Piaget's heteronomous stage. Children who believe in immanent justice interpret accidents that follow misbehaviour as punishment rather than coincidence.

Intention Sensitivity

The use of the actor's mental state (intended vs. accidental outcome) as the primary basis for moral judgement. Robustly present by age 4–5: children consistently judge accidental harm as less wrong than intentional harm when outcome severity is equated. Emerges earlier than Piaget claimed when intentions are made contextually clear. A key predictor of adult-like moral reasoning.

Preconventional Morality (Kohlberg)

Kohlberg's first level of moral development, spanning roughly ages 4–10. Stage 1 (Punishment-Obedience): right is what avoids punishment; wrong is what gets punished. Stage 2 (Instrumental Purpose): right is what serves one's own interests; fairness is concrete exchange ("I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine"). Moral reasoning is driven by consequences to the self rather than by internalised principles or social norms.

Moral/Conventional Domain Distinction

Turiel's finding that even young children distinguish between moral rules (harming people, fairness violations — wrong regardless of authority or social context) and social conventions (forms of address, table manners — contingent on authority and social context). Children judge moral violations as more serious, wrong even if no rule exists, and wrong even if an authority permits them. The distinction appears robustly by age 3–4.

Distributive Justice

The principles governing the fair distribution of resources, rewards, and burdens. In early childhood, distributive justice reasoning is dominated by strict equality ("everyone gets the same"). Merit-based (reward proportional to contribution) and need-based (give more to those who need more) principles emerge later, in middle childhood. Young children's equality preference is robust enough to lead them to discard resources rather than accept an unequal split.