How do personal values, morals and ethics
influence decision making? That might be
obvious. There's a psychological model
that'll help us to understand that. What
I'm about to share with you is a model
that we use in the Nova principles
program which is taught in the schools
by uniformed law enforcement officers to
help kids make good decisions. This is
not just about staying away from drugs,
for example. Although that's one
application. This is about making morally
based decisions. And it has to do with
the way our mind develops morally. The
model to which I'm referring starts with
a graph like this that plots control on
this side. Against maturity down here.
Control means control over your own life.
And it goes from zero down here at the
bottom to 100% up here at
the top. So, you can have all of the
control in your life or none of the
control in your life or somewhere in
between. And most of us have somewhere in
between. Maturity is a really interesting
concept.
So, as we shift to the topic of maturity,
probably the most common way that we
think about maturity is in terms of age.
How old you are. Let's start with that
and we'll put birth over here on this
side of the graph. When you're first born,
how much control do you have over your
own life? None. Well, a little you can make
a big noise in a big stink. But for the
most part you don't have a lot of
control when you're first born.
How about as an adult? How much control
do you have on this end of the equation?
Hmm... Now, if you're an adult,
you probably got a little bit of small
print going on in your own mind because
you're thinking, "Well there's some things
that I don't really control." Yes, that is
true. But when I ask teenagers, "How much
control do the adults have?" What do you
think they tell me? "Oh, 100%.
They got all of it." Yeah.
Well, let's just go with what they're
saying for now. And we'll put the adult
control clear up here. Near, the top at
least between birth and adulthood, we
gradually increase in our control so
that the more mature we are the more
control we have. Now, that makes sense
when we talk about age. But today, we're
talking about moral reasoning which
makes more sense to handle in terms of
stage not age. In fact, you want to say
that with me? Stage, not age. You probably
didn't say it, that's okay.
Let's break this up into stages. So, I'm
going to take age out of the equation.
We'll just erase that. And instead, we'll
break this up into 3 stages. And the
way that I've labeled these, I think
it'll be pretty easy for you to remember.
Stage 1, stage 2 and stage 3.
Isn't that brilliant? These are different
stages of moral development. So stage 1
is the least mature, stage 3 is the
most mature. And at stage 3, you get
to have the most control over your own
life. Back to our title for a minute. How
do personal values morals ethics
influence decision-making? What we do
depends on what stage we're on in our
own moral development. People who are at
stage 1 tend to be very selfish, very
self-centered. It's all about me, me,
me. So, they also tend to be demanding and
manipulative and they tend to throw a
little fits and temper tantrums.
Now, 2-year-olds can do this right? But
so can 35-year olds. How much maturity
does it take to throw tantrum? That's
what stage one is all about. Now, when we
move to stage 2, we stop fighting and
start cooperating. People who are willing
to cooperate. You know, negotiate. Work
things out, come up with a win-win kind
of a solution. Well, that's a whole lot
easier to deal with. These people get to
have more control in their life. When we
move to stage 3, this is where we are
truly responsible. And now, our decisions
are driven by morals and values and
ethics. So, here's how it ties back into
our title for today. When you're on stage
1, you might do the right things
occasionally. But the reasons you do
those right things is because there's
something in it for me
or I'm going to get clobbered if I don't.
That's the level of moral reasoning
that's going on a stage 1. You'll
notice that it's stage 1, we have to
have somebody else take most of the
control. Because the internal control is
so limited at that stage of moral
development.
Stage 2 people will do the right
things for different reasons. At stage
2, I'll do the right things because
well life goes more smoothly when I do. I
got to work with people. You scratch my
back I'll scratch yours. This is the
stage 2. And it doesn't require as much
external control because we've got it
internally.
Stage 3? People on stage 3 do
their right things for the right reasons.
In the Nova principles program, we call
this true colors. What's right is right,
what's wrong is wrong. And I have an
internalized set of morals and ethics
and values that drive that
decision-making. It has everything to do
with our behavior. And notice this too. If
we go back to the graph really quickly,
the part on the top of this line is the
part that other people need to take.
Primarily parents but secondarily our
society. It is a huge cost to society
when we have adults out there who are
thinking at a stage one of moral
development. Stage 2 is more of a
balanced. Stage 3 is where we free up
the resources of our communities because
we have people in our communities who
are making decisions based on those
internalized standards and morals and
values.
I am personally very grateful to Nova
principles foundation who is the sponsor
of this and some other episodes that
Live On Purpose TV. The values and
principles that are taught in the
program are powerful and they help kids
to develop the kind of moral reasoning
that we talked about in this particular
video. If you'd like to contribute or
learn more about Nova principles, please
visit Novaprinciples.com.
