, by Melanie Killen and Adam Rutland, Malden, MA, Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, 246 pp., $104.95 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-4051-7651-4
Over the past two decades and more, Melanie Killen and Adam Rutland, two productive experimental psychologists have worked both independently and more recently, together, to grapple with the paradox of how social exclusion in children develops in parallel (almost hand in hand) with their moral development. Their new book aims to disentangle this duality through applying an understanding of children’s social judgments (mostly Killen) and social perceptions (mostly Rutland) toward the creation of more inclusive theoretical frameworks. The authors each bring a strong theoretical lens to bear on the problem, and both are willing to integrate their own ‘identity’ group’s theoretical framework with that of the other, shifting their individual contributions to a higher scientific level of transformative collaboration.
Adam Rutland’s pedigree is rooted in social identity theory, a tradition in European social psychology that originally was neither very developmental (with regard to children), nor influential across the Atlantic. To make his orientation both more ‘child friendly’ and familiar to a broader audience, Rutland draws on several allied traditions that have North American roots, including Theory of Mind research, which has its origins in questions about early social development, and Implicit Bias Theory, which has recently recruited child participants into its singular method. He then reveals his own approach, looking at what he calls Developmental Subjective Group Dynamics to understand the question of social exclusion within groups (e.g. children’s perceptions of social dynamics within a clique or play group at school). He does this by borrowing methods and theory of the dynamics of between-group (ethnic, racial, gender, etc.) relations that includes drawing on a tradition originating from Gordon Allport’s post-WWII contact theory.
Melanie Killen’s work emerges from social domain theory, a made-in-the-USA framework that has tried to reanimate the best of rational and cognitive developmental psychology (i.e. Kohlberg, Piaget) to make it more robust and inclusive. A major insight here, theoretically driven and empirically illustrated, is that very young children have a moral sensibility that is not driven solely by or limited to their conscious wish to avoid punishment or to optimize self interest. From a very early age, children are categorizers of the social world who can articulate that exclusion of others based on arbitrary harm and meanness (part of the working definition of morality for Killen) is something quite different from rejection caused by a personal distaste, or the social discomfort of being out of step with group norms (e.g. being teased for wearing pyjamas to school). Exclusion does not necessarily indicate immoral.
The combination of the authors’ approaches and styles, often presented in tandem within topical chapters, is educative and illuminating. Although the literature and current theories that they draw upon are mostly limited to experimental child psychology, the monograph’s coverage is broad enough to be useful to a novitiate in a graduate experimental social psychology program. This audience will gain familiarity with the work of the authors and their colleagues in the two respective empirical and theoretical groups that have raised questions of interest about the tension between the dual emergence of moral development and the biases children develop, or acquire, growing up. Together, the authors give a resilient account of the early (earlier than once proposed) onset of a morality of right and wrong that cuts across a broad swath of cultures. They also persuasively provide an explanation of how moral consciousness develops hand in hand with the development of bias, prejudice, and toxic discrimination, and a consideration of why one hand does not know what the other is doing.
While the narrow concentration on the authors’ work provides focus in this retrospective volume, there is one serious constraint in the reach of the monograph. It would have been worthwhile for them to locate their theory in a broader context – historically, empirically, theoretically – where different methods are being utilized to understand the problems of social exclusion in child development. For instance, current work seeking to ground theory in a more flexible approach, including observations of children doing the hard work of getting along as well as open-ended child-centered focus group discussions and interviews with children of different ages and from different backgrounds, has provided remarkable insights on how children experience exclusion (and operate as excluders). Recent qualitative research has suggested there are implicit rules to each of the various ‘childhood cultures’ in which exclusion can breed, and it might be illuminating to see what common and diverse themes start to emerge from these childhood informants. Children are expected to meet their personal needs for power, affiliation, and personal safety while negotiating the explicit and implicit ‘cultural’ rules about exclusion and inclusion that surround them. They are struggling to learn how to make tough social choices in the context of socio-cultural rules about their peer relationships, and the authorities who roam their world (e.g. such as at school). What children have to say about these experiences will reflect that the complexity of the task before them (and us) does not easily reduce to singular theoretical frameworks, no matter how thoughtful and inclusive such frameworks are.
It is especially important in today’s academic climate, after many years in which the (social) cognitive developmental revolution has had a lock on the academic and empirical study of the topics of moral development and exclusion, to acknowledge there are now alternative models (e.g. brain centered, evolutionary, affective) striving to gain ascendancy. These alternative approaches are making the provocative claim that very little of what passes for moral or immoral development is guided by an individual’s rational or reflective thought, or even the identification with a social group through perceived similarity, the method and theory of choice embraced in this book. All that is missing to round out this meaningful book is to locate it more broadly in relation to these current trends in moral social sciences. The last thing we need is the emergence of another in-group/out-group conflict in this area of study. That, indeed, would be ironic.
© 2013, Bob Selman