Lawrence Kohlberg outlined one of the best-known theories addressing the development of morality in childhood. Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, which include three levels and six stages, expanded on and revised the ideas of Jean Piaget’s previous work on the subject. Show
Jean Piaget's two-stage theory of moral judgment marked a divide between the way children younger than 10 and those 10 and older think about morality. While younger children looked at rules as fixed and based their moral judgments on consequences, older children’s perspectives were more flexible and their judgments were based on intentions. However, intellectual development doesn’t end when Piaget’s stages of moral judgment ended, making it likely that moral development continued as well. Because of this, Kohlberg felt Piaget’s work was incomplete. He sought to study a range of children and adolescents in order to determine if there were stages that went beyond those proposed by Piaget. Kohlberg utilized Piaget’s method of interviewing children about moral dilemmas in his research. He would present each child with a series of such dilemmas and ask them their thoughts on each one to determine the reasoning behind their thinking. For example, one of the moral dilemmas Kohlberg presented was the following: “In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her… The druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. The sick woman’s husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about… half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: ‘No, I discovered the drug and I’m going to make money from it.’ So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man’s store to steal the drug for his wife.” After explaining this dilemma to his participants, Kohlberg would ask, “Should the husband have done that?” He then continued with a series of additional questions that would help him understand why the child thought Heinz was right or wrong to do what he did. After collecting his data, Kohlberg classified the responses into stages of moral development. Kohlberg interviewed 72 boys in suburban Chicago for his study. The boys were 10, 13, or 16 years old. Each interview was approximately two hours long and Kohlberg presented each participant with 10 moral dilemmas during that time. Kohlberg’s research yielded three levels of moral development. Each level consisted of two stages, leading to six stages in total. People pass through each stage sequentially with the thinking at the new stage replacing the thinking at the previous stage. Not everyone reached the highest stages in Kohlberg's theory. In fact, Kohlberg believed that many didn’t move past his third and fourth stages. At the lowest level of moral development individuals haven’t yet internalized a sense of morality. Moral standards are dictated by adults and the consequences of breaking the rules. Children nine years old and younger tend to fall into this category.
A majority of adolescents and adults fall into the middle level of conventional morality. At this level, people start to internalize moral standards but not necessarily to question them. These standards are based on the social norms of the groups a person is part of.
If individuals reach the highest level of moral development, they start to question if what they see around them is good. In this case, morality stems from self-defined principles. Kohlberg suggested that only 10-15% of the population was able to achieve this level because of the abstract reasoning it required.
Since Kohlberg initially proposed his theory, many criticisms have been leveled against it. One of the key issues other scholars take with the theory centers on the sample used to create it. Kohlberg focused on boys in a specific United States city. As a result, his theory has been accused of being biased towards men in Western cultures. Western individualist cultures may have different moral philosophies than other cultures. For example, individualist cultures emphasize personal rights and freedoms, while collectivist cultures emphasize what’s best for the community as a whole. Kohlberg’s theory does not take these cultural differences into account. In addition, critics like Carol Gilligan have maintained that Kohlberg’s theory conflates morality with an understanding of rules and justice, while overlooking concerns such as compassion and care. Gilligan believed the emphasis on impartially judging conflicts between competing parties overlooked the female perspective on morality, which tended to be contextual and derived from an ethics of compassion and concern for other people. Kohlberg’s methods were also criticized. The dilemmas he used weren’t always applicable to children at the age of 16 and under. For example, the Heinz dilemma presented above might not be relatable to children who had never been married. Had Kohlberg focused on dilemmas more reflective of his subjects' lives, his results may have been different. Also, Kohlberg never examined if moral reasoning actually reflected moral behavior. Therefore, it’s not clear if his subjects’ actions fell in line with their ability to think morally.
By Saul McLeod, updated 2013 Kohlberg's theory proposes that there are three levels of moral development, with each level split into two stages. Kohlberg suggested that people move through these stages in a fixed order, and that moral understanding is linked to cognitive development. The three levels of moral reasoning include preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development By using children's responses to a series of moral dilemmas, Kohlberg established that the reasoning behind the decision was a greater indication of moral development than the actual answer. Lawrence Kohlberg (1958) agreed with Piaget's (1932) theory of moral development in principle but wanted to develop his ideas further. He used Piaget’s storytelling technique to tell people stories involving moral dilemmas. In each case, he presented a choice to be considered, for example, between the rights of some authority and the needs of some deserving individual who is being unfairly treated. One of the best known of Kohlberg’s (1958) stories concerns a man called Heinz who lived somewhere in Europe.
Kohlberg asked a series of questions such as:1. Should Heinz have stolen the drug? 2. Would it change anything if Heinz did not love his wife? 3. What if the person dying was a stranger, would it make any difference? 4. Should the police arrest the chemist for murder if the woman died? By studying the answers from children of different ages to these questions, Kohlberg hoped to discover how moral reasoning changed as people grew older. The sample comprised 72 Chicago boys aged 10–16 years, 58 of whom were followed up at three-yearly intervals for 20 years (Kohlberg, 1984). Each boy was given a 2-hour interview based on the ten dilemmas. What Kohlberg was mainly interested in was not whether the boys judged the action right or wrong, but the reasons given for the decision. He found that these reasons tended to change as the children got older. Kohlberg identified three distinct levels of moral reasoning: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. Each level has two sub-stages. People can only pass through these levels in the order listed. Each new stage replaces the reasoning typical of the earlier stage. Not everyone achieves all the stages. The 3 levels of moral reasoning include Level 1 - Preconventional moralityPreconventional morality is the first stage of moral development, and lasts until approximately age 9. At the preconventional level children don’t have a personal code of morality, and instead moral decisions are shaped by the standards of adults and the consequences of following or breaking their rules. For example, if an action leads to punishment is must be bad, and if it leads to a reward is must be good. Authority is outside the individual and children often make moral decisions based on the physical consequences of actions. • Stage 1. Obedience and Punishment Orientation. The child/individual is good in order to avoid being punished. If a person is punished, they must have done wrong. • Stage 2. Individualism and Exchange. At this stage, children recognize that there is not just one right view that is handed down by the authorities. Different individuals have different viewpoints. Level 2 - Conventional moralityConventional morality is the second stage of moral development, and is characterized by an acceptance of social rules concerning right and wrong. At the conventional level (most adolescents and adults), we begin to internalize the moral standards of valued adult role models. Authority is internalized but not questioned, and reasoning is based on the norms of the group to which the person belongs. A social system that stresses the responsibilities of relationships as well as social order is seen as desirable and must, therefore, influence our view of what is right and wrong. • Stage 3. Good Interpersonal Relationships. The child/individual is good in order to be seen as being a good person by others. Therefore, answers relate to the approval of others. • Stage 4. Maintaining the Social Order. The child/individual becomes aware of the wider rules of society, so judgments concern obeying the rules in order to uphold the law and to avoid guilt. Level 3 - Postconventional moralityPostconventional morality is the third stage of moral development, and is characterized by an individuals’ understanding of universal ethical principles. These are abstract and ill-defined, but might include: the preservation of life at all costs, and the importance of human dignity. Individual judgment is based on self-chosen principles, and moral reasoning is based on individual rights and justice. According to Kohlberg this level of moral reasoning is as far as most people get. Only 10-15% are capable of the kind of abstract thinking necessary for stage 5 or 6 (post-conventional morality). That is to say, most people take their moral views from those around them and only a minority think through ethical principles for themselves. • Stage 5. Social Contract and Individual Rights. The child/individual becomes aware that while rules/laws might exist for the good of the greatest number, there are times when they will work against the interest of particular individuals. The issues are not always clear-cut. For example, in Heinz’s dilemma, the protection of life is more important than breaking the law against stealing. • Stage 6. Universal Principles. People at this stage have developed their own set of moral guidelines which may or may not fit the law. The principles apply to everyone. E.g., human rights, justice, and equality. The person will be prepared to act to defend these principles even if it means going against the rest of society in the process and having to pay the consequences of disapproval and or imprisonment. Kohlberg doubted few people reached this stage. Problems with Kohlberg's Methods1. The dilemmas are artificial (i.e., they lack ecological validity)Most of the dilemmas are unfamiliar to most people (Rosen, 1980). For example, it is all very well in the Heinz dilemma asking subjects whether Heinz should steal the drug to save his wife. However, Kohlberg’s subjects were aged between 10 and 16. They have never been married, and never been placed in a situation remotely like the one in the story. How should they know whether Heinz should steal the drug? 2. The sample is biasedAccording to Gilligan (1977), because Kohlberg’s theory was based on an all-male sample, the stages reflect a male definition of morality (it’s androcentric). Mens' morality is based on abstract principles of law and justice, while womens' is based on principles of compassion and care. Further, the gender bias issue raised by Gilligan is a reminded of the significant gender debate still present in psychology, which when ignored, can have a large impact on the results obtained through psychological research. 3. The dilemmas are hypothetical (i.e., they are not real)In a real situation, what course of action a person takes will have real consequences – and sometimes very unpleasant ones for themselves. Would subjects reason in the same way if they were placed in a real situation? We just don’t know. The fact that Kohlberg’s theory is heavily dependent on an individual’s response to an artificial dilemma brings a question to the validity of the results obtained through this research. People may respond very differently to real life situations that they find themselves in than they do with an artificial dilemma presented to them in the comfort of a research environment. 4. Poor research designThe way in which Kohlberg carried out his research when constructing this theory may not have been the best way to test whether all children follow the same sequence of stage progression. His research was cross-sectional, meaning that he interviewed children of different ages to see what level of moral development they were at. A better way to see if all children follow the same order through the stages would have been to carry out longitudinal research on the same children. However, longitudinal research on Kohlberg’s theory has since been carried out by Colby et al. (1983) who tested 58 male participants of Kohlberg’s original study. She tested them six times in the span of 27 years and found support for Kohlberg’s original conclusion, which we all pass through the stages of moral development in the same order. Problems with Kohlberg's Theory1. Are there distinct stages of moral development?Kohlberg claims that there are, but the evidence does not always support this conclusion. For example, a person who justified a decision on the basis of principled reasoning in one situation (postconventional morality stage 5 or 6) would frequently fall back on conventional reasoning (stage 3 or 4) with another story. In practice, it seems that reasoning about right and wrong depends more upon the situation than upon general rules. What is more, individuals do not always progress through the stages and Rest (1979) found that one in fourteen actually slipped backward. The evidence for distinct stages of moral development looks very weak, and some would argue that behind the theory is a culturally biased belief in the superiourity of American values over those of other cultures and societies. 2. Does moral judgment match moral behavior?Kohlberg never claimed that there would be a one to one correspondence between thinking and acting (what we say and what we do) but he does suggest that the two are linked. However, Bee (1994) suggests that we also need to take account of:
Overall Bee points out that moral behavior is only partly a question of moral reasoning. It is also to do with social factors. 3. Is justice the most fundamental moral principle?This is Kohlberg’s view. However, Gilligan (1977) suggests that the principle of caring for others is equally important. Furthermore, Kohlberg claims that the moral reasoning of males has been often in advance of that of females. Girls are often found to be at stage 3 in Kohlberg’s system (good boy-nice girl orientation) whereas boys are more often found to be at stage 4 (Law and Order orientation). Gilligan (p. 484) replies: “The very traits that have traditionally defined the goodness of women, their care for and sensitivity to the needs of others, are those that mark them out as deficient in moral development”. In other words, Gilligan is claiming that there is a sex bias in Kohlberg’s theory. He neglects the feminine voice of compassion, love, and non-violence, which is associated with the socialization of girls. Gilligan concluded that Kohlberg’s theory did not account for the fact that women approach moral problems from an ‘ethics of care’, rather than an ‘ethics of justice’ perspective, which challenges some of the fundamental assumptions of Kohlberg’s theory. Download this article as a PDF How to reference this article:McLeod, S. A. (2013, October 24). Kohlberg's stages of moral development. Simply Psychology. www.simplypsychology.org/kohlberg.html APA Style ReferencesBee, H. L. (1994). Lifespan development. HarperCollins College Publishers. Colby, A., Kohlberg, L., Gibbs, J., & Lieberman, M. (1983). A longitudinal study of moral judgment. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 48 (1-2, Serial No. 200). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gilligan, C. (1977). In a different voice: Women's conceptions of self and of morality. Harvard Educational Review, 47(4), 481-517. Kohlberg, L. (1958). The Development of Modes of Thinking and Choices in Years 10 to 16. Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Chicago. Kohlberg, L. (1984). The Psychology of Moral Development: The Nature and Validity of Moral Stages (Essays on Moral Development, Volume 2). Harper & Row Piaget, J. (1932). The moral judgment of the child. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Rest, J. R. (1979). Development in judging moral issues. University of Minnesota Press. Rosen, B. (1980). Moral dilemmas and their treatment. In, Moral development, moral education, and Kohlberg. B. Munsey (Ed). (1980), pp. 232-263. Birmingham, Alabama: Religious Education Press. Download this article as a PDF How to reference this article:McLeod, S. A. (2013, October 24). Kohlberg's stages of moral development. Simply Psychology. www.simplypsychology.org/kohlberg.html Home | About Us | Privacy Policy | Advertise | Contact Us Simply Psychology's content is for informational and educational purposes only. Our website is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. © Simply Scholar Ltd - All rights reserved  |
What stage of Kohlbergs moral development theory do children in middle childhood usually occupy group of answer choices?
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