The development of moral and personal judgments and cultural arrangements

Elliot Turiel

pp. 285-311

in: Günter Dux, Frank Welz (eds), Moral und Recht im Diskurs der Moderne, Wiesbaden, Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2001

Abstract

In the United States, still another book written by a person who does not engage in psychological research has received a great deal of attention in the public media. Presumably high quality magazines, like the New Yorker, have highlighted assertions made by Judith Harris (1998) that the development of individuals is very little, if at all, influenced by parents. The sources of development, in her proclamations, are heredity and environment, but the environmental influences are exclusively one's peers—to the exclusion of one's parents. She estimates that the influences of heredity and environment are about equal, and that the variance attributable to the home is from zero to ten percent. She proposes, also, that group influences, mainly around peers, account for most of the variance other than that due to genetics.