Kohlberg Flashcards
1
Q
What does tabula rasa mean?
A
- Blank slate
2
Q
What did Kohlberg believe about us at birth?
A
- At birth we’re all amoral, don’t recognise right from wrong.
3
Q
What does morality mean?
A
- Principles for how individuals ought to treat one another.
4
Q
What is the background?
A
Freud - morality develops at the end of the phallic stage, identify the same-sex parent and internalise their morals. Morality as superego develops.
Skinner - morality develops from the learning process, reward and punishment
Piaget - child goes through stages of moral development, don’t have cognitive capacity t behave morally until at a certain age.
5
Q
What are the aims?
A
- To show how, as young adolescents develop into young manhood, they move through the distinct levels and stages of moral development (in particular if people at stage 6 go through stage 5).
- To assess whether this process is the same cross-culturally.
6
Q
What are the research methods?
A
- Longitudinal (12 years)
- Self-report (2 hour semi-structured interview with 10 dilemmas)
- Quasi experiment (cross-cultural study)
7
Q
What are the IV’s?
A
- Age
- Culture
8
Q
What is the sample?
A
- 75 American boys, aged 10-16 years old, 3 year intervals through to 22-28 years old.
- Moral development also studied in other countries (e.g., Turkey, Canada, Mexico)
9
Q
What was the procedure?
A
- participants presented with hypothetical moral dilemmas in the form of short stories, were to determine each participants stage of moral reasoning for each of the 25 MD. aspects assessed included: the value of human life
- tested by asking:
-> aged 10- ‘save the life of 1 important person or lots of unimportant people?’
-> aged 13-24- ‘should the doctor mercy kill a fatally ill woman requesting death?’ - using different cultures: taiwanese asked about theft of food, young boys in UK, canada, mexico, turkey all tested in a similar way
10
Q
What were some findings (stages)?
A
- boys go through moral development stages, good support for how people change due to age
- if a boy was in stage 6, they had gone through stage 5
- not all participants reached stage 6
- stages were passed through in a fixed order
- a child in an earlier stage tends to move forward when confronted with a child in later stages views & seems to prefer this next stage
11
Q
What are some findings (cross cultural)?
A
- mexico and taiwan showed the same results
- moral thought increased steadily in mexico and turkey
- lower-class urban groups were intermediate in the rate of development
- no differences were found among different religions
12
Q
What was a conclusion?
A
- suggests that moral development is universal and applies to all boys
