Assessment of youth's moral consciousness

Chvyakin Vladimir Alekseevich ORCID: 0000-0001-8166-9539 Doctor of Philosophy Professor, M.A. Budanova Department of Theoretical and Special Sociology, Moscow Pedagogical State University 117405, Russia, Moscow region, Moscow, Varshavskoye highway, 152-8-109, sq. 109 170558@inbox.ru Other publications by this author

Kozilova Lidiya Vasilievna ORCID: 0000-0002-7650-2432 Doctor of Pedagogy Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Professor of the Department of Educational Systems Management named after T.I. Shamova, Moscow Pedagogical State University 119991, Russia, Moscow region, Moscow, Malaya Pirogovskaya str., 1, office 117 lidiya-mggu@mail.ru Other publications by this author

The relevance of the study of moral consciousness is determined by the need to identify risks that affect the processes of personal development and socialization. Of particular importance is the assessment of the level of development of moral consciousness in older adolescence and early adolescence, when the basic norms of moral consciousness are already understood, but not always assimilated and accepted. This age period is characterized, on the one hand, by the incompleteness of some adolescent reactions (for example, negativism), and, on the other hand, by the immaturity of moral judgments ^{[7, 8]}.

The phenomenon of social infantilism can be considered as confirmation of the severity of the problem of moral underdevelopment, which attracts attention ^[3]. This phenomenon includes, first of all, the evidence of existing deviations not only in behavior, but also in the beliefs of young people. Such deviations in early adolescence may be of a general nature and therefore constitute the basis for the formation of specific behavioral disorders in the future ^[14].

This is due to the fact that the moral regulation of behavior is a system of beliefs and preferences that fundamentally affect the specifics of social communication in relation to a specific age group. The difficulty of assessing the levels of moral development is due to the subjectivity of approaches and the dynamics of public opinion. Therefore, it is often imperative to evaluate certain actions, statements, or behavior of young people. This refers to a categorical assessment, when the basis of ideas about proper behavior is the unambiguity of social norms, including moral norms ^[15].

The imperative basis for assessing the moral consciousness of young people can in itself lead to an aggravation of social and moral communications, since it is not always appropriate. Especially when it comes to different ethnic groups and even regions (territories) of residence within the same ethnic group. Such assessments should also take into account the dynamics of age-related development, which is very contradictory in adolescence and adolescence. It is believed that unambiguity, that is, the imperative of evaluation, is appropriate and necessary in cases of unlawful behavior ^[2]. One can only agree with this, since moral distortions in development are accompanied by deceit, cunning and resourcefulness. Such cases are difficult for those adults who are nearby. As a rule, obvious moral distortions of development are fraught with hidden social danger. Therefore, the assessment of the beliefs and behavior of such young people should be strictly imperative, since it presupposes legal norms that must be strictly and accurately enforced in accordance with categorical prescriptions.

If the process of moral formation of a personality is under control and upbringing has a positive impact on it, approaches to assessing moral consciousness based on the dispositivity of social norms are more appropriate ^[13]. Dispositive norms presuppose the freedom of multiple choices, and this is very important for the formation of a morally mature personality. Such norms presuppose independence in decision-making. But only some solutions, if we take into account adolescence. Dispositive norms are appropriate and effective in cases where there is a positive dialogue between the subjects of social communication.

A comparative analysis of imperative and dispositive norms indicates their fundamental differences in relation to the assessment of moral development in adolescence. Imperative norms are based on prohibitions and the inadmissibility of deviations from the norms of morality and morality. Dispositive norms presuppose the use of opportunities for correct choice in the relationship of morality and morality.

According to L. Kolberg, it is precisely this circumstance that encourages the structuring of assessment approaches based on dilemmas ^{[5, 6]}. One can only agree with his opinion, since the dilemmas themselves include both a guideline for condemnation (prohibitions) and an approved choice. This is because the dilemma is inherently a situation of mutually exclusive preferences that do not satisfy the subject and are therefore difficult. Dilemma situations force a young person to make a single choice and therefore reliably indicate the development of such moral foundations of personality as awareness of responsibility, selflessness, values of life and ideals in general.

Kohlberg's dilemmas involve choosing one of two moral principles that can be considered fundamental and that govern human judgment. The author attributed ten main and several additional ones to such universal regulators of human judgments. He attributed to the basic principles such as: life, freedom, law, punishment, property, affection, power, justice, truth and sex ^[6]. Additional principles can be formulated and proposed taking into account the social situation of development, age, ethnicity, territory of residence, etc. That is, it is possible to assess the levels of moral consciousness, both personally and transpersonally.

It is extremely important to consider the personal nature of the assessment. This is due to the rapid dynamics of moral development in adolescence and adolescence.

Ultimately, the formation of behavioral patterns in the structure of personal value orientations in adolescence contributes to the differentiation of fundamental concepts of unfair and just, bad and good, immorality and morality, etc. The norms formed in this way result from the acceptance of the meanings of these concepts in the process of socialization and eventually they become a moral ideal that regulates the activity of the structure of moral consciousness ^{[1, 4]}.

The activity of the structure of moral consciousness is understood as the dynamics of its individual components depending on the prevailing social situations or life circumstances. Despite the fact that moral consciousness is assessed as an integral part of social consciousness, including as a set of consciousness of individuals in relation to norms, values and categories from the standpoint of morality, such consciousness is also structured in itself. Many social characteristics of a person largely depend on how the structure of moral consciousness has been formed.

This is due to the fact that moral consciousness manifests itself in the system of social relations, since it is the result of socialization and a social category. Philosophers and social psychologists often use concepts such as public morality and public morality, social justice, the conscience of the nation, etc. These concepts fill the content of the category of morality and, in a broad sense, make it possible to present morality as a universal human value and a social regulator of the behavior of an individual and social groups.

Despite the dominant social determination in the genesis of moral consciousness, some signs of a hereditary nature in the structure of the moral organization of the individual are drawn to adolescence. This is consistent with the naturalistic concept of moral consciousness, the essence of which boils down to the genetic determination of the process of acceptance / non-acceptance of the norms of public morality. An analysis of data from, for example, penitentiary psychologists indicates that among juvenile offenders there are often forms of moral judgments that are almost impossible to correct and are accompanied by cunning, deceit and resourcefulness.

The manifestation of destructive forms of moral consciousness in adolescence concerns three main components of its structure. Such as cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components. Structuring morality according to these criteria makes it possible to assess it in relation to the risks of social deviations and, ultimately, the social danger of young people. But these three components have different meanings for such assessments.

Emotionality and behavioral characteristics to a greater extent, and cognitive characteristics of a personality to a lesser extent, allow us to judge the moral development of a young person. This is due to the fact that cognitive personality structures are associated with such mental functions as memory, attention, and thinking. It is this triad that is considered cognitive. Although it is increasingly possible to find an overly broad interpretation of cognitive characteristics and, especially, cognitive disorders and distortions in the literature. Apparently, it was a broad and arbitrary understanding of the meaning of the cognitive component that led to the fact that it began to include a combination of moral principles, knowledge, ideas, concepts, judgments, and personal awareness of their own moral qualities. But this is not entirely true, since cognitive functions are not directly related to the moral sphere.

Although some authors believe that the cognitive component is a combination of moral principles, knowledge, ideas, concepts, judgments, and personal awareness of one's own moral qualities. And L. Kolberg himself thought so. But nowadays, cognition as a concept acquires a slightly different content. For example, in English there is a different division of concepts – usually three different understandings of morality ^{[19, pp. 38-39]}. The first understanding is that social morality is synonymous with the norms, rules, and values of a particular society. This is an analogue of morality in Russian. The second understanding is universal non–historical principles inherent in all of humanity. So, in the cognitive direction of L. Kohlberg, morality of this kind is, first of all, justice.

It should be noted that the emotional component of personality may well be used to judge morality, as it reflects an emotional and value-based attitude to moral norms, self-esteem, moral self-esteem, and an emotional assessment of interpersonal relationships. The same can be noted about the behavioral component, reflecting readiness for a certain course of action, as well as the level of personal responsibility for one's own behavior ^{[9, 10]}.

There are other approaches for assessing the process of forming morality and ethical principles. First of all, this is L. Kohlberg's theory of progressive stages of moral development: moral development in the general process of socialization goes through certain stages (stages) until morality is organized at the conventional level. According to L. Kolberg, it is precisely this (conventional) level of morality that presupposes taking into account public opinion and realizing that a person's moral judgments should depend more on external conditions ^[6].

There may be variations when morality is selfish (the pre-conventional level of its development) or when an individual's morality is characterized by his self as dominant in the system of social relations. In the second case (postconventional level of development), moral self-esteem contributes to the individualization of judgments and behavior when a person does not strive to follow social norms and focuses mainly on his own opinion, which often complicates interpersonal and social communication to the point of conflict.

The purpose of the study is to determine the prevalence of moral judgments in the adolescent environment.

The subject of the research is moral development as an evaluative component of a person's consciousness, considering events and actions from the perspective of moral categories, norms, and values.

The novelty of the research is the identification and specification of the content of the levels of development of the moral consciousness of youth, depending on age and place of residence.

The research methodology is represented by the theory of moral development, which was developed by Lawrence Kohlberg and according to which the development of morality includes six stages. These stages are described in three levels: pre-conventional, conventional and post-conventional. These are the three main levels of development of moral consciousness ^[6].

306 people were examined. All the subjects were divided into groups: adolescents aged 13-14 (n=112) and representatives of early adolescence aged 17-17 (n=194); a group of Moscow youth (n=204) and a group of people from the regions of the Russian Federation (n=102).

Dilemmas prepared on the basis of the principles of L. Kohlberg were used, and allowed to make a choice between "bad" and "good" actions. The basic principles included life, freedom, law, punishment, property, affection, power, justice, and truth. Sex as a principle was excluded from the list of principles of L. Kolberg.

Using the method of L. Kolberg, the identification of the features of moral consciousness in the examined persons was carried out. In particular, attention was paid to the levels of development of moral consciousness (preconventional, conventional and postconventional levels). The development of moral judgments was assessed according to each level.

Statistical processing of the obtained data was carried out by simple calculation of percentage calculations (%).

As a result of the study, it was found that the structural organization of moral consciousness is largely determined by the age of the surveyed persons and the territorial affiliation of their residence. And this is despite the fact that moral norms are universal, suprasituational, and supra-personal. Nevertheless, age is a factor that reflects the dynamics and speed of the formation of values in the field of morality. And the territorial affiliation by residence reflects the peculiarities of the external conditions in which such attitudes are formed.

Although actual moral values are the same for everyone, the main task is to recognize them as significant and accept them as universally recognized as a regulator of communicative interaction. Therefore, it is important, on the one hand, to declare the norms of morality and morality, and on the other hand, to cultivate moral qualities, directing efforts to adopt such norms by young people, taking into account their age characteristics.

An analysis of the data in Table 1 indicates that the indicators of conventional (45%) and postconventional consciousness (34%) prevail in the total mass of moral judgments. But pre-conventional judgments in the field of morality and ethics are also found in almost one in five respondents (21%).

Table 1.

Structural organization of moral consciousness in adolescence (%)

Nevertheless, there are differences between the two groups of subjects in the frequency of occurrence of signs of developed moral judgments. Thus, in adolescents (group 1), a postconventional level of moral development was detected in 20% of cases, and a conventional level in 13% of cases. This indicator, compared with the subjects of the second group, who were older in age (early adolescence) and for whom it corresponds to only 14% in terms of occurrence, indicates that adolescents quite often focus only on their own ideas about the importance of morality and morality.

This discrepancy can be explained, apparently, only by age-related reactions of negativism, which are characteristic of adolescence and are often problematic in terms of upbringing. The natural desire for independence and self-affirmation is aimed at forming a self, that is, one's own self, accompanied by defending one's own opinion in all spheres of life, including in the field of morality and morality.

At the same time, the dynamics of the transition to adolescence, when the level of postconventional consciousness decreases in frequency (13%) it can be considered positive. As well as indicators of the occurrence of postconventionality of morality by stages: In adolescents, the first stage was 12%, the second stage was 8%; and in the second group of subjects, the first and second stages were equivalent in frequency and were detected in 7%.

It should be noted that both of these stages differ from each other in the characteristics of moral judgments, but not significantly. Thus, the first stage is characterized by moral beliefs associated with a rather primitive understanding of the meaning of morality/immorality of actions. If an act is approved by the immediate environment, it is good, but if the act ends in punishment, it is bad. That is, in such dilemma choices, their situational meaning is visible. But, apparently, this meaning is realized morally, because further dynamics, as can be seen from the data in Table 1, is accompanied by the appearance of increasingly frequent signs of conventional morality in the older age group (youth) (32%).

The assessment of the frequency of occurrence of conventional judgments in the younger age group is expressed by low indicators (only 13%). And at the highest stages of conventionality: at the 5th stage - 9% and at the 6th stage - 4%.

In this case, an explanation is necessary, since the discrepancy in concepts and their meanings is obvious. The fact is that in relation to adults, the highest stages of the development of conventional morality indicate the completion of its formation and the achievement of universal principles for regulating one's own behavior, taking into account a critical attitude to the opinions of others. In essence, as L. Kolberg wrote, at such stages of moral consciousness, we are talking about conscience as the highest regulator of behavior and a cognitive process that causes emotions and rational associations based on a moral philosophy or a system of personality values. In adults, this level of morality is found in most cases.

In adolescence, the conventional level of morality does not seem to be stable and corresponds to the ideas of adolescents' desire for independence in actions and independence in judgments. An indirect confirmation of this argument can be considered the increase in the number of occurrence of conventional moral characteristics in the second group (the group of representatives of adolescence). For them, this figure reaches 32%. That is, almost every third 1st year student is already a bearer of conventional morality. Moreover, according to its formation, these are the indicators of the fifth (18%) and sixth (14%) stages. This dynamic can be considered positive. But only on condition that it reflects natural growing up and orientation towards the opinion of the social environment (a kind of social contact), and not its rejection.

At the 6th stage of conventional morality, the presence of universal ethical principles in a young person is already noticeable. This refers to accepted ethical standards that take into account the interests of other people and cultures. Such as justice, nonviolence, equality, freedom and responsibility, mercy and some others.

Table 2.

The structural organization of moral consciousness in adolescence, depending on the place of residence (%)

Data analysis of the table. 2 allows us to present the prevalence of indicators of the development of moral consciousness in adolescence and adolescence, depending on the place of residence. The territorial factor of development is important for socialization at this age. It is known, for example, that even political subjectivity in the structure of the value orientations of the youth of the Moscow agglomeration has its own peculiarities in comparison with youth from the regions ^[12].

It was found that representatives of Moscow youth in 14% of cases are characterized by indicators of pre-conceptual consciousness, compared with youth from the regions (7%).

Conventional choices on diagnostic dilemmas, on the contrary, are more common among regional youth (28%) compared with Moscow youth (17%).

Post-conventional moral beliefs are more common among the youth of the Moscow agglomeration (20%) than among the youth from the regions (14%).

A generalized analysis of indicators of the development of moral consciousness in adolescence, taking into account territorial affiliation, indicates that the environment of a large metropolis has an impact on the development of morality. This is expressed in the desire for autonomy, that is, to organize one's behavior mainly on the basis of one's own beliefs and certain tendencies towards rejection of social norms. If we compare these post-conventional characteristics of morality with indicators of its pre-conventional beliefs (14%), it becomes obvious that there is some social infantilism (childishness).

The development and formation of moral beliefs in a group of youth from the regions indicates a much more frequent occurrence of conventional judgments (28%) and a much lower (two times, 7%) occurrence of beliefs at the pre-conventional level. At the same time, the postconventional characteristics of moral consciousness are less common (14%) compared with the youth from the Moscow group of respondents (20%). Such a distribution may reflect the presence of moral beliefs in the need to build their socialization strategies taking into account public opinion and personal responsibility for the consequences of their own actions and deeds.

The data obtained confirm the idea that L. Kohlberg's dilemmas can be used as a method for identifying indicators of the development of moral judgments. But there are certain limitations of this method, which are related to the fact that the subjects do not understand the presence in dilemmas of discrepancies in the choice between "bad" and "good" actions.

In this regard, A.A. Khvostov notes that a large number of works were aimed at simply establishing a link between the level of development of moral judgments and behavior ^{[10, 11]}. That is, in essence, a retrospective diagnosis was carried out, when, on the basis of an already accomplished act (offense), a study of the subject's morality was conducted. For example, this is how J. J. Beer and G.S. Richard generally found a direct link between problematic behavior and moral judgments, although relatively low ^[16]. In another study, J.J. Beer showed why the relationship between behavior and moral judgments is relatively low ^[17]. In particular, the reason may be the assessment methodology; qualitatively different judgments may be assessed as the same level of moral development. As a matter of fact, this is consistent with the results of our study.

The results of our study showed the presence of dependence on indicators of the development of moral judgments, taking into account the place of residence. The fact that there is such a dependence is evidenced by the research of D.M. Berzoff and J.G. Miller. The study of these authors, conducted in India and the USA, raised approximately the same question about how much an act is expected by society, how important it is to take it into account, how much it is a personal matter of the person himself, etc. ^[18]. It turned out that, in general, Americans were more likely to act according to the principles of justice rather than according to the principles of interpersonal relations in solving moral dilemmas. In India, the opposite trend was observed.

Despite the identified trends in the prevalence of moral judgments depending on age and place of residence, it is necessary to recognize their relative nature. For the completeness of the characteristics of moral consciousness in various social groups, L. Kohlberg's dilemmas alone are not enough. In this regard, G.M. Low and E.M. Shimberg showed that a test using short "moral stories" does not differentiate these groups ^[20]. From the point of view of these authors, these groups did not differ in their ability to assess situations as moral. At the same time, moral judgments themselves diagnosed intelligence and social apperception rather than moral essence. Referring to Weber, Khvostov A.A. provides evidence that similar results were obtained in a comparative analysis. Thus, the ranking of 16 "bad" actions revealed no differences between the norm and delinquent groups. According to this author, it's not about understanding the moral side of the issue. Rather, moral behavior is conditioned by emotions, will, and intelligence ^[9]. One can only agree with this interpretation.

Conclusions

1. L. Kolberg's dilemmas can be used as a method of identifying indicators of the development of moral judgments. But when assessing the levels of development of moral judgments in young people, there are limitations of this method, which are related to the fact that the subjects do not understand or do not always understand correctly the presence in dilemmas of discrepancies in the choice between "bad" and "good" actions. This indicates the relativity of using this method in relation to the specified age.

2. Adolescents are more likely to have a postconventional level of moral development than signs of its conventionality. The indicator of the conventional moral development of adolescents in comparison with the subjects of the older (youth) group indicates that adolescents quite often focus only on their own ideas about the importance of morality and morality and therefore are prone to moral distortions of perception of social situations.

3. There is a dependence of the manifestation of moral consciousness in adolescence on the place of residence. The territorial factor of development is important for socialization at this age. Thus, representatives of Moscow youth are more likely to have indicators of pre-conceptual consciousness than youth from the regions. Conventional choices on diagnostic dilemmas, on the contrary, are more common among regional youth compared to the youth of the Moscow agglomeration. Post-conventional moral beliefs are more common among Moscow youth than among youth from the regions.

In conclusion, it should be noted that the distribution structure of indicators of the development of moral consciousness of young people is very dynamic. Her mobility depends on many factors and agents of socialization. But it is advisable to build a general vector of assessment of moral beliefs in such a way that the dominant educational strategies are oriented towards public opinion, and not just one's own.