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

According to the model, there are other sources of influence on moral identity besides those that form the backdrop to development. These include moral judgments and social attitudes, self-conceptions, and opportunities. These qualities show considerable development and change over the course of childhood and adolescence and may be more sensitive to social context and intervention than the enduring features of individuals.

The relations of moral judgment and social attitudes to the elements of moral identity have been frequently studied. If moral judgments and social attitudes are narrowly construed as scores on developmental scales (e.g., measures of moral judgment sophistication such as Colby, Kohlberg, Gibbs, & Lieberman, 1983), then the relation to moral behavior, moral commitment, and conceptions of the self as a moral actor are weak but fairly consistently positive (for a review, see Rest, 1983; for an exception to this generalization, see the findings to the study of Camden youth described above in Hart & Fegley, 1995). However, if moral judgment and social attitudes are studied as part of the narratives that persons involved in moral lines of action tell, then the importance of moral judgments and social attitudes are manifest (e.g., Youniss & Yates, 1997). As suggested by the paths of influence outlined in Figure 1, moral judgment is influenced by personality (e.g., Hart, Edelstein, Keller, & Hofmann, in press), family relationships (Hart, 1988), and social class (Colby, Kohlberg, Gibbs, & Lieberman, 1983), and is related to self-conceptions (Hart, 1992).

Self-conceptions play an important role in the formation of a moral identity. The commitment to a specific type of prosocial activity is in part a consequence of, and partly the source for, an idealized image of oneself (Hart, Yates, Fegley, & Wilson, 1995). An idealized self-image motivates and supports commitment when the commitment demands more than can be considered typical. One might understand those who volunteer numerous hours as having ideal selves that pull them toward their actions even though the depth of their commitments may not result in the gratification and sense of respect that those who lack moral goals have. At the same time, the commitment to the activity - despite the hardships it produces in one's life structure - results in new attributions to the ideal self that are consistent with the activity. Moral action at high levels demands justifications to self and to others that heighten the salience of moral perspectives in evaluation of self and other.

Finally, the model posits that the formation of a moral identity is made easier if adolescents can explore lines of moral action, if they are supported in these explorations by relationships with persons they respect, and if they feel as if their actions genuinely contribute to the welfare of others. Adolescents in the United States are provided many opportunities to try out academic identities, athletic identities, artistic identities, peer identities, and so on, and we believe that the acquisition of moral identities may be fostered by providing the same kind of support. In our experience, these opportunities are most likely to occur in the context of local social institutions that connect the adolescent to the community, such as church groups, service clubs, school activities, and so on. Whereas some identity-forming opportunities like sports activities may be explored without institutional affiliations, we suspect that moral identities - like academic identities and artistic identities - may require the adult and community support that is commonly found in organized social institutions.