Derryberry,
et. al. (2005), works to understand the early moral development in gifted
populations. When comparing gifted youth to adult college students they found
that such youth were more advanced than their adult peers. The research is
designed to help understand the nature of giftedness, how to foster further
development, and to encourage possible transfers to other members of the
population.
Moral
development has a number of stages. At the lowest stage such development is
associated with a personal interest schema, then norm maintenance, and then the
post-conventional schema (Rest. et.al, 1999). Each stage indicates a level of
personal development that grows overtime. A large percentage of society never
advances beyond the first or second stage.
At
the lowest stage of personal interest schema people naturally interpret
morality through what is best for them. This means that people are involved in
self-serving interests and associations. In the maintaining norms schema
morality is based with conventions, rules, and standards. At the highest level
of post-conventional schema people base their moral judgments on universal
principles of justice and fairness.
There are factors associated with
development that include education, intelligence, complexity of thought,
personality, and open to experience. People who are likely able to develop
morally seek higher levels of education, can reflect on their thinking
processes, have positive personality traits, and are open to trying and
understanding new things. These are the people who love to experience and learn.
They are capable of seeing themselves in a larger social context of history and
institutions while able to see broad cultural trends.
The study indicates that age has
only a small association with moral development. Gifted people are capable of
taking in a wider context of information to come to their own moral conclusions
and start doing so at a young age. These differences make them inherently
unique compared to both their peers as well as older members of the population.
The authors encourage greater study of this population as they are widely
outside the bell curve of the norm and often fight against such identification.
Derryberry,
et. al. (2005). Moral judgment developmental differences between gifted youth
and college students. Journal of
secondary gifted education, 17 (1).
Rest, et. al (1999). Postconventional moral thinking: a
neo-Kohlbergian approach. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
