Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2023 Feb 14:14:1059646.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1059646. eCollection 2023.

From action to ethics: A process-relational approach to prosocial development

Jeremy I M Carpendale  1 , Beau Wallbridge  1
Affiliations
Review

From action to ethics: A process-relational approach to prosocial development

Jeremy I M Carpendale et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

Explaining how children first become active prosocial and then later moral agents requires, we argue, beginning with action and interaction with others. We take a process-relational perspective and draw on developmental systems theory in arguing that infants cannot be born knowing about prosociality or morality or anything else. Instead, they are born with emerging abilities to act and react. Their biological embodiment links them to their environment and creates the social environment in which they develop. A clear distinction between biological and social levels cannot be made in the context of ongoing development because they are thoroughly interwoven in a bidirectional system in which they mutually create each other. We focus on infants' emerging ability to interact and develop within a human developmental system, and prosociality and morality emerge at the level of interaction. Caring is a constitutive aspect of the forms of experience in which infants are embedded in the process of becoming persons. Infants are immersed in a world of mutual responsiveness within caring relationships that are infused with concern, interest, and enjoyment. In such a developmental system, infants become persons when they are treated as persons.

Keywords: emotional involvement; engagment; infancy; moral development; process-relational approach; prosocial; socio-moral development; worldviews.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

References

    1. Allen J., Bickhard M. (2013). Stepping off the pendulum: why only an action-based approach can transcend the nativist–empiricist debate. Cogn. Dev. 28, 96–133. doi: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2013.01.002 - DOI
    1. Bates E., Camaioni L., Volterra V. (1975). The acquisition of performatives prior to speech. Merrill-Palmer Q. 21, 205–226.
    1. Bian L., Sloane S., Baillargeon R. (2018). Infants expect ingroup support to override fairness when resources are limited. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 115, 2705–2710. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1719445115, PMID: - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bibok M. B., Carpendale J. I. M., Lewis C. (2008). “Social knowledge as social skill: an action based view of social understanding” in Social life and social knowledge: Toward a process account of development. eds. Müller U., Carpendale J. I. M., Budwig N., Sokol B. (New York: Taylor Francis; ), 145–169.
    1. Bickhard M. (2009). The interactivist model. Synthese 166, 547–591. doi: 10.1007/s11229-008-9375-x - DOI

LinkOut - more resources