The psychogenesis of obedience to social order through punishment justification: Psychological obstacles for the development of political consciousness in social groups

A complex comprehension of the genesis of political consciousness in different social groups neccesarily involves the understanding of emotional, moral and epistemic processes that constitute it; the comprehension of the psychological mechanisms of human consciousness. This paper presents research results on the psychogenetic development process of representations of social world, that attempt to understand the relationship between collectively constructed knowledge and the individual conceptualization process. We study the developmental processes of punishment’s justifications in children and adolescents (n= 216) from Buenos Aires, Argentina, oriented by Jean Piaget s’ suggestions about the psychogenesis of moral judgement of justice and Norbert Elías theory on social construction of emotional self control. The instrument utilized in our study is an interview based on piagetian clinically research method. Results show three types of punishment’s justifications: utilitarian, retributive and mixed, which are present across the age groups. However, differences have been identified in the evaluation of future consequences of punishment (into mixed and utilitarianism justifications). We conclude that the psychological process of conceptualization and the appropriation of collective knowledge would not be mutually exclusive, but it would be two dialectical poles with alternation in relative dominance over each other. Besides, the predominance, even in adolescence, of justifications linked to childish idea about an order in the world and retributive justifications highlight the individual appropriation of historically legitimated arguments. The object’s action on the subject, theorized by Piaget in this case would not be metaphorical, because children’s embodiment experiences with punishments constrains their possibilities to carry out an epistemological detachment process, which will enable them to think autonomously about this moral problem. Our research shows that - through the progressive appropriation of the justifications historically constructed by dominant social groups - the individuals become obedient to established social order.