Urban America as a context for the development of moral identity in adolescence

Journal of Social Issues, Fall, 1998 by Daniel Hart, Robert Atkins, Debra Ford

One facet of moral life where the concept of moral identity is particularly relevant concerns exemplary moral behavior. Colby and Damon (1995) interviewed adult moral exemplars who had devoted much of their lives to advance moral goals. Colby and Damon found that the moral exemplars reported that their efforts flowed naturally from their ideals. There are few adolescents who show this level of integration of self and morality - there are few adults as well - but there are many adolescents who have the potential to move toward this integration. Strikingly, many of the adolescents who develop rudimentary moral identities do so in the face of considerable adversity. It is useful in this context to describe briefly our previous research on adolescents' moral identities conducted in Camden, New Jersey. According to a recent national survey sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trust, Camden has the second highest rate of childhood poverty in the United States, at slightly more than 50% (Lindsay, 1998). It is much more difficult to develop successfully into adulthood in Camden than it is in most other cities and towns in America. Despite the obstacles to healthy development found in Camden, many adolescents there are astoundingly successful in constructing lives characterized by purpose and resilience. Our focus has been on adolescents in Camden in whom purpose and resilience has resulted in moral identities. By soliciting community nominations, we identified a group of adolescents whose efforts to promote the welfare of others were quite profound. These adolescents worked in soup kitchens, helped the elderly, worked with children in their neighborhoods, and so on (for details, see Hart & Fegley, 1995).

People in the community benefit from these actions - hungry people are fed, for example - but equally important is that the adolescents who work to help others are joining and renewing the foundation of the American political and social system. More than 150 years ago, Tocqueville (1966) reported that voluntary associations of Americans drawn together to pursue moral, social, and economic goals were necessary for the American political system to thrive. More recently, Putnam (1996) and Fukuyama (1995), drawing upon survey data, cross-cultural comparisons, and economic analyses, have argued convincingly that social functioning and economic success are dependent upon the widespread participation of Americans in voluntary social organizations. If Tocqueville, Putnam, and Fukuyama are right in their analyses of American culture and its political system, then the adolescents we studied made genuine contributions to the fabric of their communities and were at the same time contributing to the success of the democratic system.

The adolescents included in this study had the qualities that define moral identity: commitments to lines of action advancing the welfare of others that are consistent with their views of themselves (for details, see Hart & Fegley, 1995; Hart, Yates, Fegley, & Wilson, 1995). That these adolescents - or adolescents anywhere - construct moral identities is not surprising. As Davidson and Youniss (1991) have argued, the developmental and social transformations occurring across the threshold into adolescence allow for the first time the development of a moral identity. These transformations focus adolescents on resolving questions of the relation of self to moral regulations, and answers to these questions form one base for the formation of a moral identity. Not only are adolescents thinking about what is the right thing to do; many are acting. Sustained, reasoned commitment to lines of prosocial action are absent in childhood but can be found among adolescents (Hart, Yates, Fegley, & Wilson).