Committed to Caring: Transformation in Adolescent Moral Identity

Abstract

This article considers emotion and social influence in the cognitive development of adolescent moral identity. Colby and Damon's (1995) metaphor of moral transformation is revisited on the basis of new research that implicates cognitive representations of emotion in the identification of caring goals. Additionally, transformation is considered in light of social influences. Preliminary findings are presented from a study of urban care exemplar and comparison adolescents in a computational semantic space. Findings indicated that care exemplars integrated parent and peer representations into actual selves, whereas comparison adolescents did not. Goal categories found in narrative responses were generalized to the care exemplar group. The study implies new possibilities for developmental assessment of morally influential relationships in adolescence.