Review the sections describing ethical values of individuals and societies. Discuss the ways both societies and individuals form those values. Which view best fits your moral development?

Ethical Values of Individuals

Individuals develop their ethical values from societal-level values that they learnfrom their family, religious training, peers, education, and life experiences. Theearliest source of ethical values is one’s family. The young child learns acceptablebehaviors during early family socialization processes, developing an internalethical standard both by instruction from others and by observation. As a persongoes from infancy to adulthood, he develops more complex thinking patternswith which to assess life experiences. Those patterns include the person’s ethicalvalues. Although people from the same society will have similar systems of ethicalvalues, differences will exist, and those systems can change over time. People go through three stages of moral development. Some theoristsbelieve that men and women have different experiences at each stage and canend up with different views of morality.The left side of Figure 3.2 shows the stagesattributed mainly to men. The stages movefrom an individually based understanding ofmorality to a societal one and then to auniversal moral view. That moral view islabeled an ethic of justice, because it appliesmoral rules to determine what actions are fair.Each stage has different characteristics duringits early and later periods.

Preconventional is the first stage of moraldevelopment. This stage characterizes mostchildren under age nine, some adolescents,and many criminal offenders. In the early period of this stage, the person is self-centered, does not consider anyone else’sviewpoint, and obeys rules because authority backs them. Moral behavior isalmost entirely a function of avoiding punishment. In the later period of thisstage, the person becomes aware of the interests of others and the conflicts thatarise among multiple interests. Moral behavior, though, stays focused on meetingone’s personal interests.

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Predominantly male Preconventional (Individual view) Conventional (Societal view) Principled (Universal view) Ethic of justice Predominantly female Focus on self (Concerned with survival) Focus on others (self-sacrificing) Reflective understanding of caring for others Ethic of care Figure 3.2: Stages of Moral Development