Kohlberg (Developmental) Flashcards
Kohlberg Background
It was motivated by Piaget’s theory of moral development, Kohlberg developed his own ideas and suggested that we have three levels of moral thinking. Pre-conventional, Conventional and Post-conventional
Kohlberg Aim
The aim of the study was to see if there was evidence to support his theory of moral development
Kohlberg Methods
Kohlberg conducted a longitudinal study over a period of 12 years and during this time in order to test moral reasoning he gave 75 young Americans males a series of moral dilemmas. The participants were aged 10-16 years old at the start of the study and were aged 22-28 by the end. Examples of the moral dilemmas for 10 year olds “is it better to save a life of one important person or a lot of unimportant people” and at ages 13, 16, 20 and 24 “Should the doctor ‘mercy kill’ a fatally ill women requesting death because of her pain?”
Kohlberg Results
Participants progressed through the stages as they got older, some participants had not reached the final stage of moral development by the end of the study. Around 50% of each six stages a participants thinking was at a single stage. Stages were passed through stage by stage and the participants never went back to a previous stage. Kohlberg found that when children are confronted with views of a child one stage further along, they seemed to prefer this next stage and to move forward
Kohlberg Conclusions
Findings from this study agree with Kohlberg’s 6 stage theory and moral development is invariant and individuals go through the stages one at a time and they are in a fixed order but some individuals may not reach the final stage.
