Question

Jerome, 6, and hani, 10, get up early on saturday morning and decide to make “breakfast in bed” for their mother. while reaching for the bed tray in the back of the hall cabinet, they accidentally break one of their mother’s favorite porcelain dolls. jerome knows that he’s going to get into “big trouble.” hani tells him not to worry because mom would understand that it was an accident. in what stage would jean piaget categorize the moral reasoning of jerome and hani?

Answer 1

Jerome operates under heteronomous morality while Hani is operating under autonomous morality. Under Jerome's schema, the outcome of the action and the rules of the world determine the morality of an action, without understanding the intentions or the mitigating factors that might be at play. Autonomous morality, however, sees that there are shades of grey to every situation and that morality does not always require a punishment for every action or transgression.