How Does Morality Develop and Differ as We Age?

What morality is, where it comes from, and how it changes throughout our lives are fundamental questions for the experience of being human. We can think of morality as simply a set of values and norms that label different actions as good or bad (Crockett, 2013). A key debate is whether people are born with a moral compass that helps them to understand these norms or whether morality is learned and depends more on our experiences and environment. Here, we discuss the latest scientific understanding of how morality changes or remains constant from birth to old age.

Morality in infancy and childhood

Studying morality in our earliest years presents a great challenge. We can’t ask babies for their judgment of different situations, and it is hard to get any infant to sit still for a long time in an experiment to measure their behavior. To get around some of these challenges, many researchers have used “looking time” experiments. In these experiments, researchers record where an infant looks, and looking longer at one thing than another is taken as showing they have a preference or are picking up that something unexpected has happened.

These studies have shown that the experience of guilt might start early in infancy. However, it is perhaps not until age 3 or 4 that more complex moral decision-making develops. At this age, infants may start to noticeably dislike if they are given an unequal share of sweets split with another child.

Some researchers argue that children show an early preference for other people who act morally compared to people who act in an immoral way. Yet others have argued that the findings of this research are problematic because the methods to record where infants looked are not precise and the tests can’t rule out alternative explanations for why infants look more at one event than another.

Morality in adolescence and young adulthood

By adolescence, it is thought that young people increasingly take other people’s intentions into account. This is essential for moral development.

For example, if a person decides to donate to a charity, but the charity secretly funds harmful practices, the intention is good, but the outcome is bad. In contrast, if I decide to donate for selfish reasons, such as enhancing my reputation, but I also inadvertently save someone from harm, the intention is bad, but the outcome is good. Were either of these instances moral merely because the intention or the outcome was good?

In adolescence, more advanced experiments can be conducted where we can measure people’s choices in different scenarios and incorporate neuroscience techniques such as brain imaging. One way in which adolescents’ moral behavior has been studied is by using “economic games.” In these games, people are allowed to punish unfair behaviour and the extent to which people punish can be measured.

For example, in one study the researchers compared a large sample of adults as well as children and adolescents ages 8, 12 and 15. Participants observed others playing an economic game called the ultimatum game where on each round they had to decide whether to divide money between themselves and another person fairly or unfairly.

The default in the game was an unfair 8/2 split, but participants were always presented with an alternative option that was more unfair, the same, or more fair. The observers could then punish unfair behavior by sacrificing a bit of money themselves. They found that adolescents and adults could take information about both the outcome and the intention into account, whereas 8-year-olds based their decisions to punish others on outcomes only.

Morality in older adulthood and old age

Caring about other people’s intentions as well as what outcomes they cause may also differ as part of the process of healthy aging. There is some evidence that older adults switch their focus to care more about the outcome of actions rather than what people intend to do, compared to younger adults. This might be because the ability to track other people’s intentions changes as people get older.

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Intriguingly, recent research suggests that people believe that morality declines in older age, but in fact, several studies suggest that morality may be preserved or even enhanced in older age. When examining basic economic games, such as the dictator game where participants are endowed with some money, and they can choose to give some of it away anonymously, studies have suggested an increased preference to be generous towards others with advancing age, a result that has been replicated around the world.

Another interesting aspect of how morality changes as we get older is how our own norms become influenced by other people, a phenomenon known as social influence. Adolescents are thought to be particularly sensitive to the moral norms of their peers as well as to other influences, such as the willingness to engage in risky behaviors. In adulthood, the influence of others is still very strong. Research has shown that when adults see someone else behaving dishonestly, they become more and more dishonest.

Recent evidence suggests in non-moral contexts that older adults are more influenced by others’ economic preferences than younger adults, particularly when these preferences are impulsive compared to restrained. Experience sampling work suggests that for daily desires, social influence by others may decrease. It will be interesting for future research to test how morality in people of different ages is influenced by others.

Reviewing the latest work, it is clear that morality is not fixed throughout our lives. Understanding how moral learning and decision-making ebbs and flows with age will be essential for building a healthy and resilient society that can effectively face global challenges.