Enhancing moral growth: is communication the key?

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Moral Development

Background:

• Traditional interventions for moral growth, like Turiel's "+1" strategy, have limited success.
• Potential reasons for failure include inconsistent control of cognitive and social prerequisites and overestimation of interpersonal skills.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effectiveness of interpersonal skills training on moral reasoning.
• To examine the relationship between cognitive/social perspective-taking skills and moral growth.
• To explore gender differences in social perspective-taking and their impact on moral development.

Main Methods:

• Eight weeks of interpersonal skills training for 17 college undergraduates (basic or consolidated formal operations).
• Pre- and posttraining assessments of social perspective-taking and moral reasoning.
• Analysis of training effects on moral reasoning, considering prerequisite competencies.

Main Results:

• Posttraining changes in moral reasoning were observed in the predicted direction.
• Males showed significantly lower social perspective-taking at pretraining but significant gains posttraining.
• Females maintained high social perspective-taking scores with no significant posttraining change.

Conclusions:

• Interpersonal skills training supports moral reasoning development, contingent on prerequisite cognitive and perspective-taking abilities.
• The findings align with existing theoretical models of cognitive and social development.
• Gender differences in social perspective-taking development warrant further investigation within moral growth interventions.