The social cognitive theory of morality emphasizes a distinction between a child's moral competence and moral performance. Moral competence or acquisition of moral knowledge depends primarily on cognitive-sensory processes. It is essentially the outgrowth of these processes. Competencies include what children are capable of doing, what they know, their skills, their awareness of moral rules and regulations, and their cognitive ability to construct behaviors. Children's moral performance, or behavior, however, is determined by their motivation and the rewards and incentive to act in a specific moral way. Albert Bandura also believes that moral development is best understood by considering a combination of social and cognitive factors, especially those involving self-control.
Bandura argues that in developing a moral self, individuals adopt standards of right and wrong that serve as guides and restraints for conduct. In this self-regulatory process, people monitor their conduct and the conditions under which it occurs, judge it in relation to moral standards, and regulate their actions by the consequences they apply to themselves. They do things that provide them satisfaction and sense of self-worth. They often refrain from engaging in ways that violate their moral standards in order to avoid self-condemnation. Therefore, self-sanctions keep conducts inline with internal standards. In Bandura’s view, morality is rooted in self-regulation rather than abstract reasoning.
Famous quotes containing the words social, cognitive, theory and/or morality:
“Institutional psychiatry is a continuation of the Inquisition. All that has really changed is the vocabulary and the social style. The vocabulary conforms to the intellectual expectations of our age: it is a pseudo-medical jargon that parodies the concepts of science. The social style conforms to the political expectations of our age: it is a pseudo-liberal social movement that parodies the ideals of freedom and rationality.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“Realism holds that things known may continue to exist unaltered when they are not known, or that things may pass in and out of the cognitive relation without prejudice to their reality, or that the existence of a thing is not correlated with or dependent upon the fact that anybody experiences it, perceives it, conceives it, or is in any way aware of it.”
—William Pepperell Montague (1842–1910)
“There could be no fairer destiny for any physical theory than that it should point the way to a more comprehensive theory in which it lives on as a limiting case.”
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955)
“Wine is a part of society because it provides a basis not only for a morality but also for an environment; it is an ornament in the slightest ceremonials of French daily life, from the snack ... to the feast, from the conversation at the local café to the speech at a formal dinner”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)