Eurasian Journal of Educational Research 85 (2020) 23-44
Eurasian Journal of Educational Research
www.ejer.com.tr
The Development of Moral and Social Judgments: Social Contexts and
Processes of Coordination
Elliot TURIEL
1
, K. Amy BANAS
2
A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T
Article History: The research presented in this essay is grounded in
Social Domain Theory. Research provides substantial
evidence that children’s social development is
characterized by the formation of distinctly different
systems of thought, including those in the moral,
social-conventional, and personal domains. A main
focus here is on morality, defined as involving
understandings of welfare, justice, and rights, which
are applied across societal contexts.
Received: 12 Sep. 2019
Received in revised form: 17 Oct. 2019
Accepted: 11 Jan. 2020
DOI: 10.14689/ejer.2020.85.2
Keywords
domains, morality, coordination, moral
resistance
Social conventions are uniformities within social systems, serving to provide uniform
expectations. The domains constitute different configurations of thinking and developmental
changes occur within each domain. However, decisions in social situational contexts often
involve coordination, which is a process of weighing and balancing different and sometimes
conflicting considerations. Such social contexts can include conflicts between different moral
goals or between moral and societal goals. Processes of coordination are examined in social
psychological experiments, as well as developmental studies of topics like honesty, rights, and
social inclusion. Coordination is also considered in people’s perspectives on cultural practices
of unfairness and inequality. Psychological research in patriarchal societies shows that
females, who are subjected to inequalities evaluate those cultural practices as unfair.
Anthropological research documents that females engage in acts of opposition and moral
resistance regarding perceived unfair cultural practices.
© 2020 Ani Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved
1
University of California, Berkeley, e-Mail: turiel@berkeley.edu, ORCID: : 0000-0002-6987-3681
2
Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, amyb@berkeley.edu, ORCID: : 0000-
0002-3488-7063