Kohlberg (1968) - Stages of Moral Development

Question 1

Kohlberg - Background (Stages of Moral Development)

Answer 1

Stage 1: Pre-conventional
1. Punishment orientation - rules are kept to avoid punishment
2. Self-interest orientation - ‘right’ behaviour ultimately brings rewards to oneself

Stage 2: Conventional
3. Good-boy good-girl orientation - ‘good’ behaviour is what pleases others
4. Authority orientation - obeying the law and doing one’s duty is important

Stage 3: Post-Conventional
5. Social contract orientation - what is ‘right’ is what is democratically agreed upon
6. Universal principle orientation - moral action is taken based upon self-chosen principles

Question 2

Kohlberg - Research Method

Answer 2

• Longitudinal study
• Followed development of same group of boys for 12 years
• Also has a cross-cultural element (after main study)

Question 3

Kohlberg - Sample

Answer 3

• 75 American boys aged 10-16 at start of study and aged 22-28 at end of study
• Studied at 3 year intervals
• Cross-cultural study conducted on boys in UK, Canada, Taiwan, Mexico and Turkey

Question 4

Kohlberg - Procedure

Answer 4

• Ps presented with hypothetical moral dilemmas in the form of short stories to solve, used to determine each ps stage of moral reasoning (e.g. Heinz dilemma)
• Moral concepts/aspects assessed included motive given for rule obedience or moral action and the value of human life
• Boys asked questions based on the dilemmas
• Taiwanese boys asked about a story involving food theft

Question 5

Kohlberg - Findings

Answer 5

• Found that his stages were reflected in the scenarios
• ~50% of each of the 6 stages, a p’s thinking was at a single stage, regardless of the moral dilemma involved
• Ps showed progress through the stages with increased age
• Not all ps over the period of the study progressed through all the stages and reached stage 6
• No differences of moral thinking across religions
• Taiwanese boys aged 10-13 often gave stage 2 responses
• Stage 5 thinking was more noticeable in the US at age 16 than either Mexico or Taiwan
• Middle class children were found to be more advanced in moral judgement than matched lower class children

Question 6

Kohlbeg - Conclusions

Answer 6

• There is a developmental sequence in an individual’s moral development
• Each stage of moral development comes one at a time and always in the same order
• An individual may stop at any given stage and at any age
• Moral development fits with Kohlberg’s stages
• There is a cultural universality of sequence of stages
• Middle class children move faster and further through the stages than lower class children
• This theory of development is not significantly affected by widely ranging social, cultural or religious conditions

Question 7

How does Kohlberg relate to the key theme of moral development?

Answer 7

• Identifies how moral thinking changes over time - it works in ‘stages’ with a child’s understanding of social and their own moral values
• Found that the level of reasoning from self-interest to the interest of humanity did not change whatever the culture
• Followed up in different cultures too to see whether

Question 8

How does Kohlberg link to the Developmental Area?

Answer 8

• ## One aspect of development is that we change over time - this theory notions that we pass through a prescribed set of stages in an invariant order