Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development

Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development constitute an adaptation of a psychological theory originally conceived by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget.

Kohlberg began work on this topic as a psychology graduate student at the University of Chicago in 1958 and expanded upon the theory throughout his life.

[6][5] Expanding on Piaget's work, Kohlberg determined that the process of moral development was principally concerned with justice and that it continued throughout the individual's life, a notion that led to dialogue on the philosophical implications of such research.

Arguments have been made that it emphasizes justice to the exclusion of other moral values, such as caring; that there is such an overlap between stages that they should more properly be regarded as domains or that evaluations of the reasons for moral choices are mostly post hoc rationalizations (by both decision makers and psychologists) of intuitive decisions.

A child with pre-conventional morality has not yet adopted or internalized society's conventions regarding what is right or wrong but instead focuses largely on external consequences that certain actions may bring.

Stage two (self-interest driven) expresses the "what's in it for me" position, in which right behavior is defined by whatever the individual believes to be in their best interest, or whatever is "convenient," but understood in a narrow way which does not consider one's reputation or relationships to groups of people.

Stage three reasoning may judge the morality of an action by evaluating its consequences in terms of a person's relationships, which now begin to include things like respect, gratitude, and the "golden rule".

The intentions of actors play a more significant role in reasoning at this stage; one may feel more forgiving if one thinks that "they mean well".

When someone does violate a law, it is morally wrong; culpability is thus a significant factor in this stage as it separates the bad domains from the good ones.

Post-conventional moralists live by their own ethical principles—principles that typically include such basic human rights as life, liberty, and justice.

Because post-conventional individuals elevate their own moral evaluation of a situation over social conventions, their behavior, especially at stage six, can be confused with that of those at the pre-conventional level.

[9][10][11] In Stage five (social contract driven), the world is viewed as holding different opinions, rights, and values.

In this way action is never a means but always an end in itself; the individual acts because it is right, and not because it avoids punishment, is in their best interest, expected, legal, or previously agreed upon.

Although Kohlberg insisted that stage six exists, he found it difficult to identify individuals who consistently operated at that level.

In his empirical studies of individuals throughout their life, Kohlberg observed that some had apparently undergone moral stage regression.

[8] Kohlberg's stages of moral development are based on the assumption that humans are inherently communicative, capable of reason and possess a desire to understand others and the world around them.

Progress through Kohlberg's stages happens due to the individual's increasing competence, psychologically and in balancing conflicting social-value claims.

Specifically important are the individual's "view of persons" and their "social perspective level", each of which becomes more complex and mature with each advancing stage.

[12] Kohlberg's theory was initially based on empirical research using only male participants; Gilligan argued that it did not adequately describe the concerns of women.

[24] Kohlberg stated that women tend to get stuck at level 3, being primarily concerned with details of how to maintain relationships and promote the welfare of family and friends.

[12] Critics such as Christina Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute argued that Gilligan's research is ill-founded and that no evidence exists to support her conclusion.

[30] According to Snarey and Kelio, Kohlberg's theory of moral development is not represented in ideas like Gemeinschaft of the communitive feeling.

[34] This view would allow for inconsistency in moral reasoning since individuals may be hampered by their inability to consider different perspectives.

[35] Immanuel Kant "predicted" and rebutted that argument when he considered such actions as opening an exception for ourselves in the categorical imperative.

Social intuitionists such as Jonathan Haidt argue that individuals often make moral judgments without weighing concerns such as fairness, law, human rights or ethical values.

[36] The researchers utilized the moral judgement interview (MJI) and two standard dilemmas to compare the 23 exemplars with a more ordinary group of people.

Researchers noted that the "moral judgement scores are clearly related to subjects' educational attainment in this study".

One example is the Defining Issues Test (DIT) created in 1979 by James Rest,[39] originally as a pencil-and-paper alternative to the Moral Judgement Interview.

[40] Heavily influenced by the six-stage model, it made efforts to improve the validity criteria by using a quantitative test, the Likert scale, to rate moral dilemmas similar to Kohlberg's.

The study applied the sharing resources technique to operationalise the dependent variable it measured: equity or justice.