Moral Identity and Developmental Theory

The notion that self-identity and morality are deeply implicated has long-standing roots in both ethical theory and psychology. In ethical theory it is evident in Harry Frankfurt's 1971 account of what it means to be a person: A person (as opposed to a wanton) is someone who cares about morality. A person cares about the desirability of one's desires (second-order desires) and then wishes to will them all the way to action (second-order volitions). Similarly, Charles Taylor 1989 argued that identity is defined by reference to things that have significance for us. It is the result of strong evaluation about what is worthy or unworthy, and these discriminations are made against a horizon of significance that frames and constitutes who we are as persons. He writes, “My identity is defined by the commitments and identifications which provide the frame or horizon within which I can try to determine from case to case what is good or valuable, or what ought to be done or what I endorse or oppose” Taylor, 1989, p. 27.The affinity of selfhood and morality is a theme in several psychological traditions as well. Erikson 1968, p. 39 argued, for example, that an ethical capacity is the “true criterion of identity,” but he also noted that “identity and fidelity are necessary for ethical strength” Erikson, 1964, p. 126. This suggests that moral identity is the clear goal of both moral and identity development and that in the moral person the two developmental tracks are ideally conjoined. Similarly, Damon and Hart 1982 showed that, within each domain of the “Me Self” (physical, active, social, psychological), the highest level of self-understanding implicates a moral point of view. This suggests that the moral self is the clear outcome of self-development Lapsley, 2005. Indeed, recent research has shown that morality is considered indispensable to selfhood; it is the moral self that is essential to our identity, more than personality traits, memory, or desires Strohminger and Nichols, 2014. It may well be that, for all the contingent facts about ourselves, it is our moral integrity that is the necessary fact of the “real me” Carr, 2001.Of course few have done more than Blasi 1984, 1985 to elevate the importance of moral identity in post-Kohlberg moral development research. For Blasi, the moral person is someone whose very selfhood is constructed on moral grounds; it is someone whose desires reflect a wholehearted commitment to morality. Morality is essential, important, and central to self-understanding; and, to the extent that not everyone prioritizes morality in this way, it is also a dimension of individual differences.Blasi's account of moral self-identity struck a chord. It encouraged reflection on the link between personal agency and the construction of moral ideals. It raised questions about how best to understand moral character. It opened up possibilities for engaging other psychological literatures, particularly those regarding personality and cognition, with the goal of deriving robust integrative models of moral functioning Lapsley Walker Lapsley it is the integration of values with motivational and emotional systems. The authors add an important codicil to the standard account: The integration of self and morality is not available to children. Childhood, on this account, is “void of identity.”But the authors think that Blasian moral identity has been given enough time to show its mettle and has not delivered all that it promised. It promised to offer a resolution of the judgment-action gap, but there are doubts about whether moral identity is a better predictor of behavior than moral affect. It implied a developmental model that has not been adequately tested, let alone vindicated. For example, indices of moral identity are uncorrelated with age over the course of adolescence and emerging adulthood. Krettenauer and Hertz are concerned to understand why the developmental claims of the standard model have proved unavailing and to offer a number of recommendations by way of remedy.In their view one reason for the paucity of developmental research is the “top-down logic” that has characterized research on moral identity. This means that extant research focuses on the measurement of moral identity in adolescents and young adults and has neglected charting the developmental trajectories that get us to adult manifestations. A second reason is that current (adult-centric) measurement strategies are insensitive to the developmental features of moral identity even if developmental research were undertaken. So, on their view, we need both a new conceptual understanding of moral identity and new ways to measure it. Certainly, both are welcome.Krettenauer and Hertz propose a way of rescuing the developmental claims of moral identity by linking it to three domains that show more developmental promise. One might find evidence of development in literatures that track the increasing differentiation and integration of self-development. Harter [2012 showed, for example, that self-conceptions are both increasingly differentiated as one moves from early to late adolescence but also more deeply integrated. Hence the rhythm of development bids the adolescent to differentiate real versus ideal selves, or display multiple selves across different contexts, or create self-evaluations that differ across domains, but, at the same time, integrate disparate selves into a higher-order generalization, create a global sense of self-worth, or coordinate disparate and contradictory aspects of the self into a coherent self-system. Perhaps something like this can be deployed to understand the rhythm of moral identity development.Self-determination theory is also held out as a promising source of developmental claims. The continuum of self-determination moves from several forms of extrinsic regulation (external, introjected, identified, integrated) to authentic internal self-regulation where the self is experienced as the locus of causal agency Ryan McAdams behavior will be self-regulated increasingly by internal sources of motivation and be connected to larger narratives of the responsible self-as-agent. Indeed, the narrative understanding of the responsible self anticipates connections to important new constructs [e.g., moral agency; see Pasupathi McAdams McAdams and the external, introjected, identified, and integrated modes of external regulation in the continuum of self-determination are characteristic adaptations to social contexts and are not stages of development, as the authors note. Moreover, the fact that all four modes can be motivating to the self-same individual seems like a problem for a developmental theory (without further exposition) and not a mere caveat (as the authors would have it). And in self-determination theory, the importance of autonomy-supporting contexts cannot be overstated, so a moral identity theory premised on self-determination would have to include a contextual or situational element that is thinly described in the present account. A social-cognitive approach does much better on this score, as I will argue below.The authors blame the top-down logic of current approaches to moral identity for the current lack of developmental specification. But this cannot be correct. The so-called top-down logic is, in fact, required of developmental accounts that accord with the orthogenetic principle [Werner, 1957. The authors implicitly commit to an orthogenetic account of development in their embrace of the differentiation-integration of self-development. Indeed, Harter 2012 appeals to differentiation-integration just to underscore the cognitive developmental aspects of self-construction.But, if any developmental process accords with the orthogenetic principle, it is cognitive development. Here a conception of the end-point is crucial for making sense of the developmental processes. The top-down logic makes developmental explanation possible. The end-point makes reference to a standard that allows one to distinguish progressive development from mere change, and the standard is instantiated in the conceptualization of the end-point. Put differently, developmental change, if it is to count as an instance of development, is evaluated in terms of how closely it approximates the final stage of the developmental process Kitchener, 1983. Indeed, “the developmental end-state is a normative standard of reference by means of which we can evaluate the direction of development and its degree of progress towards this goal” Kitchener, 1986, p. 29. Far from an impediment to developmental analysis, a conceptualization of the end-state is utterly required. Hence, the authors cannot simultaneously reject (what they call) top-down logic while also touting an approach to self-development (e.g., in terms of increasing differentiation-integration) that requires it.There is also a sense in which the authors appear to have given up on moral identity development, or else have overstated the developmental promise of the approach they favor. More than once they remind readers that there is no moral identity in childhood and that all the action is in adolescence and young adulthood. Apparently there is not much action for all that given that moral identity does not appear to be correlated with age over this period. But surely correlations with age over a restricted range have little probative value and are an ambiguous indicator of development in any event.Yet even if we accept the authors' conclusion that the lack of correlations with age during adolescence counts against the standard model, it would seem odd that the remedy is to completely abandon childhood in the search for developmental precursors. To do so leaves us in a far worse place than the standard model that does not give up on early developmental precursors of moral identity. The authors do acknowledge some evidence of moral-self integration in childhood but do not follow the implications of this for establishing a developmental line for moral self-identity in young adulthood. Instead, we are referred to the personological approach favored by McAdams McAdams, 2009; McAdams Lapsley Narvaez Lapsley & Narvaez, 2004. On this account, moral chronicity is built on the foundation of generalized event representations that characterize early sociopersonality development Thompson, 1998. These prototypic knowledge structures are progressively elaborated in the early dialogues with caregivers who help children review, structure, and consolidate memories in script-like fashion Fivush, Kuebli, & Clubb, 1992. Autobiographical memory is also constructed within this “web of interlocution.” Parents help children organize events into personally relevant autobiographical memories which provide action-guiding scripts that become frequently practiced, habitual, and automatic. A sense of the morality can become a part of the child's autobiographical narrative to the extent that parents reference norms, standards, and values in their dialogic interactions. In this way, parents help children identify morally relevant features of their experience and encourage the formation of social-cognitive schemas that are chronically accessible. One attraction of this model is that it provides direct developmental lineage between the autobiographical narratives of concern to adult moral identity with the emergence of autobiographical self-narratives in early childhood.Krettenauer and Hertz make a real contribution to the ongoing articulation of moral identity theory. Every theory can use a little help, and their appeal to self-determination theory, to the orthogenesis of self-concept development, and to life-course personal narratives are useful emendations. I hope it leads to productive new lines of research. But the at the of their that it is all by an for a developmental theory, is The personological approach that is requires developmental specification. 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