Kohlberg - Cognition: Turning to Crime

Question 1

2 theories of moral development

Answer 1

Piaget

Kohlberg

Question 2

Piaget

Answer 2

Piaget proposed the idea we develop in moral thinking as we get older. Pre-operational (pre-moral), Concrete operational (moral realism), Formal operational (moral relativity).

Piaget’s stories 1 & 2 = used to assess the nature of moral judgements

Theory 1 - heteronomous morality (age 4-7) eg. adults rules as scared and unchangeable
Theory 2 - autonomous (age 8+) eg. moral flexibility… rules can be changed and regards as product of group agreement.

Question 3

Kohlberg

Answer 3

Picked up Piagets ideas.
Developed a sequential (developmental) model.

Heinz dilemma

• Hypothetical
• You don’t know what you would do until you were in that situation.

Question 4

Kohlberg Level 1

Answer 4

Pre conventional morality:
Stage 1 there rules are fixed. breaking rules results in punishment.
- Child will do things so don’t get punished (avoid).
- Punishment proves the action was wrong.

Stage 2 each person seeks maximum return for themselves. So breaking laws results in a less to oneself.

• Seeking reward.
• Negative reinforcement that aims to remove behaviour.
• Punishment becomes a risk that one wants to avoid.
• Criminals sit in stage 2… egocentric (Centred on themselves).

Typical of children.
Unquestioning of right and wrong.
See morality as avoiding punishment.
Selfish mentality.

Question 5

Kohlberg Level 2

Answer 5

Conventional morality
Stage 3 people conform and adjust to others. Breaking rules will make others think badly of you.
- Peer pressure
- Behaviour concerning being accepted by social groups. Other people determine your actions.

Stage 4 there is a respect for and duty to those in authority. More responsibility to society as a whole. Breaking laws can lead to social instability.
- Moral behaviour is determined by legal structure of society. There is no room for manoeuvre.

More typical of adults - conforming to society, respecting authority and keeping promises. Concerned to be a good person and care about effects of behaviour on society.

Question 6

Kohlberg Level 3

Answer 6

Post conventional morality
Stage 5 the development of rules of universal justice and ethics. Breaking laws may be unacceptable, but there may be situations in which it is right to challenge and even disobey rules.
- Don’t desire to break law but sometimes may challenge them as the law does not always go hand in hand with morality.
- Cost Benefit Anaylsis eg. standing up for gay rights.

Stage 6 there is much debate as to whether there is a stage 6, in which people consider all others as equals, and are completely impartial in he way we deal with others.

• Mandela, Gandi, MLK
• Behaviour for the greater good than just the law of the land. Answer to a higher purpose eg. huggers idea of goodness or justice.

Less common attitudes. No one consistently scored stage 6 therefore questions if it exists.
People take diversity into account.

Question 7

Compare theories

Answer 7

• Both describe sequence of age correlated changes.
  In general: Younger only take into account what is good or bad for the wrong-doer.
• Older gradually shift from social conformity through the need to take welfare of others into account, to general principles of right and wrong.
• Both require each stage to be gone through before the next stage begins.

Question 8

Evidence

Answer 8

• Considerable evidence that the stages exist.
• Most studies show delinquents have attained lower stages of moral development than non-delinquents.
• Not all offences are the same, there are clear differences in moral attitudes towards different crimes. eg. theft affected by moral reasoning if involves planning, where as impulsive crimes eg. assault many not.

Question 9

Useful

Answer 9

• Evidence for treatment programmes raising the level of moral development in young offenders a practical option, but perhaps a more successful have been schemes aimed at developing young offenders cognitive skills in considering the consequences of their actions and problem solving skills.
• Judgement of motive and not actual behaviour. Based on moral reasoning, not moral behaviour as what we think and do are not the same thing. ie. we may know a certain action is wrong but still do it it anyway.
  MORAL UNDERSTANDING NOT MORAL BEHAVIOUR
• Test of moral development is based on hypothetical moral and social issues which have little relevance to type of thinking an offender engages in when deciding whether to commit a crime.
• Not specific to crime.
• Other studies show thinking prior to offending is not based on moral development, but rather with the likelihood of being successful = Carroll
• Did not do study on any offenders, therefore do not know if they lack moral development.

Question 10

Behavioural approach

Answer 10

• Rate at which person moves through successive stages and whether it moves past certain stages depends on learning.

Question 11

Andocentric

Answer 11

Gilligan

• women typically scored less than men on Kohlbergs tests
• male orientated which could have a large impact on results as mens morality based on abstract principles of law and justice, where as women behave differently eg. greater concern for others

Hence, not generalisable and biased reflecting male definition of morality.

Question 12

Sample

Answer 12

Hundreds of children.
Started with 58 boys from Chicago aged 7-16
expanded to UK, Mexico, Taiwan and Turkey.

Question 13

Procedure

Answer 13

2 hour interview.
Listen to 10 short stories that contained moral dilemmas = situation where no course of action was clearly the morally right one.
Kohlberg asked them to justify their answers.
Interested in reasons for their solution and used answers to design a more complex version of Piaget’s model.

Question 14

Conclusions

Answer 14

Many offenders stuck at pre conventional level of moral development.

Question 15

Treatment

Answer 15

EQUIP programme
Teach young people to see things from other people’s viewpoints
Successful at raising offenders up to conventional moral thinking.

Question 16

Reliable

Answer 16

+ve
Cross cultural.
Produces lots of evidence for his idea of moral stages.
Longitudinal - Shows development over time.

-ve
Generalised to adults and criminals.
Longitudinal… low replicability.
Low as based on hypothetical moral dilemmas.

Question 17

Validity

Answer 17

• Some evidence for certain sorts of offenders having retarded moral development

-ve:
> Moral thinking not necessarily the same as moral behaviour… one may know something is wrong but may still give in to temptation.
CANNOT LIKE CRIME AND MORALS…
> crime is not always immoral.
> many things that are against the law but people do not regard as immoral eg. speeding
> immoral acts which aren’t against the law eg. adultery
> moral development does not necessarily match up with being law abiding
> Highest levels of development may be less law abiding eg. people who think it is right to break the law for the sake of their principles.

Question 18

Determinsm

Answer 18

Determined by which moral development stage we get to eg. criminals stage 2.

Question 19

Nature vs. nurture

Answer 19

Moral development is a natural feature however influenced by nurture factors.

Question 20

Scientific

Answer 20

Bias from interpreting the participants responses from 2 hour interviews to fit moral stages, hence not scientific.

However, does use reliable controlled setting, which standardised 2 hour interviews and same dilemmas.

Question 21

Ethnocentrism

Answer 21

Do moral biases differ from other cultures.

Cultural variations.

Question 22

Ethics

Answer 22

Did use children, therefore did they gain valid consent?

Question 23

Quantitative

Answer 23

Mixture of both as on hand used dilemmas which could have fixed answers, on the other hand they could describe the transition from story to answer in more qualitative ways.

Question 24

Ecological validity

Answer 24

The dilemmas are artificial. Most are unfamiliar to most people. Kohlberg subjects were 7-16, hence never married or placed in a situation remotely like the Heinz dilemma. How should they know whether Heinz should steal the drug.
Hypothetical, and hence no consequentiality of actions. Kohlberg theory is heavily dependent on an individuals artificial dilemma, therefore questions the validity of the results obtained. The comfort of a research environment can produce very different answers.

Question 25

Cross sectional design

Answer 25

Interviewed children at different stages of development to see what level of development they were at. Better way would be to carry out longitudinal research on the same children, and hence results would not be affect by individual differences.
ALTHOUGH
Colby found support of Kohlbergs original conclusion that we all pass through the stage of development in the same order when carrying out longitudinal research on Kohlbergs theory which tested the 58 participants of Kohlbergs original study.

Question 26

General EV

Answer 26

1. Stresses cognitive factors in moral understanding, however also affected by emotion
2. Moral understanding vs. moral action
3. Cultural variations… individualistic or collectivist, these concerns may affect moral understanding, where as Kohlberg suggested that these levels (6stages) where general thinking patterns and hence not affected by cultural ideas.
4. Gender differences

Question 27

Reductionist

Answer 27

Kohlberg’s theory has been criticised for ignoring the effects of social influences and conditioning, as well as ignoring external factors such as reward and punishment from parents that determine early gender role behaviour.

Also, the theory describes the three stages, but doesn’t explain why they occur. Kohlberg’s theory is reductionist because it ignores psychological and social influences on gender development.

Question 28

Holistic

Answer 28

Holistic as looks at many stages of development and why a criminal doesn’t pass through the stages, and henries stuck at low levels of moral development thus more likely to commit a crime.