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Morality: the ability to tell right from wrong.¹ Most of us probably strive to be moral people, but how do we define what is right and wrong? I think most of the world has been trying to figure that out since humanity began and mostly still are doing that every day. Most of us expect to live in a world where people do the right thing, where people act morally, but how do we learn this ability?
Like many life skills, morality develops in us very early in our life. In fact, scholars believe that the concept of morality emerges earlier in life than we think!² There are many different theories about how morality develops in children and we’ve highlighted just a few below.
Theories of Morality
Piaget’s Theory
Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget’s theory of moral development in children is well known. He examined moral development in terms of the way that children think about right and wrong, rather than whether they acted in a manner that was considered right or wrong.³
Piaget described two main stages of moral reasoning in children. He proposed that between the ages of 5–9 years old, children develop moral realism; that is, they believe that morality is conducted by authority figures and breaking rules will lead to…
