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Kohlberg's stages of moral development

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Philosophy

   Kohlberg's stages of moral development are planes of moral adequacy
   conceived by Lawrence Kohlberg to explain the development of moral
   reasoning. Created while studying psychology at the University of
   Chicago, the theory was inspired by the work of Jean Piaget and a
   fascination with children's reactions to moral dilemmas. He wrote his
   doctoral dissertation at the university in 1958, outlining what are now
   known as his stages of moral development.

   This theory holds that moral reasoning, which is the basis for ethical
   behaviour, has six identifiable developmental stages. He followed the
   development of moral judgment beyond the ages originally studied by
   Piaget, who claimed that logic and morality develop through
   constructive stages. Kohlberg expanded considerably on this groundwork,
   determining that the process of moral development was principally
   concerned with justice and that its development continued throughout
   the lifespan, even spawning dialogue of philosophical implications of
   his research.

   Kohlberg used stories about moral dilemmas in his studies, and was
   interested in how people would justify their actions if they were put
   in a similar moral crux. He would then categorize and classify evoked
   responses into one of six distinct stages. These six stages where
   broken into three levels: pre-conventional, conventional and
   post-conventional. His theory is based on constructive developmental
   stages; each stage and level is more adequate at responding to moral
   dilemmas than the last.

Stages

   Kohlberg's six stages were grouped into three levels: pre-conventional,
   conventional, and post-conventional. Following Piaget's constructivist
   requirements for a stage model (see his theory of cognitive
   development), it is extremely rare to regress backward in stages. Even
   still, no one functions at their highest stage at all times. It is also
   not possible to 'jump' stages; each stage provides a new yet necessary
   perspective, and is more comprehensive, differentiated, and integrated
   than its predecessors.

          Level 1 (Pre-Conventional)

                      1. Obedience and punishment orientation
                      2. Self-interest orientation

                                  ( What's in it for me?)

          Level 2 (Conventional)

                      3. Interpersonal accord and conformity

                                  ( The good boy/good girl attitude)

                      4. Authority and social-order maintaining
                      orientation

                                  ( Law and order morality)

          Level 3 (Post-Conventional)

                      5. Social contract orientation
                      6. Universal ethical principles

                                  ( Principled conscience)

Pre-Conventional

   The pre-conventional level of moral reasoning is especially common in
   children, although adults can also exhibit this level of reasoning.
   Reasoners in the pre-conventional level judge the morality of an action
   by its direct consequences. The pre-conventional level consists of the
   first and second stages of moral development, and are purely concerned
   with the self in an egocentric manner.

   In stage one, individuals focus on the direct consequences that their
   actions will have for themselves. For example, an action is perceived
   as morally wrong if the person who commits it gets punished. The worse
   the punishment for the act is, the more 'bad' the act is perceived to
   be. In addition, there is no recognition that others' points of view
   are any different from one's own view. This stage may be viewed as a
   kind of authoritarianism.

   Stage two espouses the what's in it for me position, right behaviour
   being defined by what is in one's own best interest. Stage two
   reasoning shows a limited interest in the needs of others, but only to
   a point where it might further one's own interests, such as you scratch
   my back, and I'll scratch yours. In stage two concern for others is not
   based on loyalty or intrinsic respect. Lacking a perspective of society
   in the pre-conventional level, this should not be confused with social
   contract (stage five), as all actions are performed to serve one's own
   needs or interests. For the stage two theorist, the perspective of the
   world is often seen as morally relative.

Conventional

   The conventional level of moral reasoning is typical of adolescents and
   adults. Persons who reason in a conventional way judge the morality of
   actions by comparing these actions to societal views and expectations.
   The conventional level consists of the third and fourth stages of moral
   development.

   In Stage three, the self enters society by filling social roles.
   Individuals are receptive of approval or disapproval from other people
   as it reflects society's accordance with the perceived role. They try
   to be a good boy or good girl to live up to these expectations, having
   learned that there is inherent value in doing so. 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'. Desire to maintain
   rules and authority exists only to further support these stereotypical
   social roles. The intentions of actions play a more significant role in
   reasoning at this stage; 'they mean well...'.

   In Stage four, it is important to obey laws, dictums and social
   conventions because of their importance in maintaining a functioning
   society. Moral reasoning in stage four is thus beyond the need for
   individual approval exhibited in stage three; society must learn to
   transcend individual needs. A central ideal or ideals often prescribe
   what is right and wrong, such as in the case of fundamentalism. If one
   person violates a law, perhaps everyone would - thus there is an
   obligation and a duty to uphold laws and rules. 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

   The post-conventional level, also known as the principled level,
   consists of stages five and six of moral development. Realization that
   individuals are separate entities from society now becomes salient.
   One's own perspective should be viewed before the society's. It is due
   to this 'nature of self before others' that the post-conventional
   level, especially stage six, is sometimes mistaken for pre-conventional
   behaviors.

   In Stage five, individuals are viewed as holding different opinions and
   values, and it is paramount that they be respected and honored
   impartially. Issues that are not regarded as relative like life and
   choice should never be withheld or inhibited. In fact, no single choice
   is correct or absolute – 'who are you to judge if they are or not'?
   Along a similar vein, laws are regarded as social contracts rather than
   rigid dictums. Those that do not promote general social welfare should
   be changed when necessary to meet the greatest good for the greatest
   number of people. This is attained through majority decision, and
   inevitably compromise. In this way democratic government is ostensibly
   based on stage five reasoning.

   In Stage six, moral reasoning is based on abstract reasoning using
   universal ethical principles. Laws are valid only insofar as they are
   grounded in justice, and that a commitment to justice carries with it
   an obligation to disobey unjust laws. Rights are unnecessary as social
   contracts are not essential for deontic moral action. Decisions are met
   categorically in an absolute way rather than hypothetically in a
   conditional way (see Immanuel Kant's ' categorical imperative'). This
   can be done by imagining what one would do being in anyone's shoes, who
   imagined what anyone would do thinking the same (see John Rawls's '
   veil of ignorance'). The resulting consensus is the action taken. In
   this way action is never a means but always an end in itself; one acts
   because it is right, and not because it is instrumental, expected,
   legal or previously agreed upon. While Kohlberg insisted that stage six
   exists, he had difficulty finding participants who consistently used
   it. It appears that people rarely if ever reach stage six of Kohlberg's
   model.

Further stages

   In his empirical studies of persons across their life-span, Kohlberg
   came to notice that some people evidently had undergone moral stage
   regression. He was faced with the option of either conceding that moral
   regression could occur, or revise his theory. Kohlberg chose the
   latter, postulating the existence of sub-stages wherein the emerging
   stage has not yet been adequately integrated into the personality. In
   particular Kohlberg noted of a stage 4½ or 4+, which is a transition
   from stage four to stage five, sharing characteristics of both. In this
   stage the individual has become disaffected with the arbitrary nature
   of law and order reasoning. Culpability is frequently turned from being
   defined by society to having society itself be culpable. This stage is
   often mistaken for the moral relativism of stage two as the individual
   considers society's conflicting interests with their own choices
   relatively and morally wrong. Kohlberg noted that this was often seen
   in students entering college.

   Kohlberg further speculated that a seventh stage may exist
   (Transcendental Morality or Morality of Cosmic Orientation) which would
   link religion with moral reasoning (see James W. Fowler's stages of
   faith development). However, because of Kohlberg's trouble providing
   empirical evidence for even a sixth stage, he emphasized that most of
   his conjecture towards a seventh stage was theoretical.

Theoretical assumptions (philosophy)

   Kohlberg's theory is not value-neutral. It begins with a stake in
   certain perspectives in meta-ethics. This includes for instance a view
   of human nature, and a certain understanding of the form and content of
   moral reasoning. It holds conceptions of the right and the scope of
   moral reasoning across societies. Furthermore it includes the
   relationship between morality and the world, between morality and
   logical expression, and the role of reason in morality. Finally, it
   takes a view of the social and mental processes involved in moral
   reasoning.

   The picture of human nature which Kohlberg begins with is the view that
   humans are inherently communicative and capable of reason, and they
   possess a desire to understand others and the world around them. The
   stages of Kohlberg's model refer to the qualitative moral reasonings
   that people adopt, and thus do not translate directly into praise or
   blame of the actions or characters of persons. In order to argue that
   his theory measures moral reasoning and not particular moral
   conclusions, Kohlberg insists that the form and structure of moral
   arguments is independent of the content of the arguments, a position he
   calls " formalism".

   Kohlberg's theory revolves around the notion that justice is the
   essential feature of moral reasoning. By the same token, justice relies
   heavily upon the notion of sound reasoning upon principles. Despite
   being a justice-centered theory of morality, Kohlberg considered it to
   be compatible with plausible formulations of deontology and eudaimonia.

   Kohlberg's theory understands values as a critical component of the
   right. Whatever the right is, for Kohlberg, it must be universally
   valid across societies (a position known as " moral universalism"):
   there can be no relativism. Moreover, morals are not natural features
   of the world; they are prescriptive. Nevertheless, moral judgments can
   be evaluated in logical terms of true and falsity.

   According to Kohlberg, a person who progresses to a higher stage of
   moral reasoning cannot skip stages. For example, one cannot jump from
   being concerned mostly with peer judgments (stage three) to being a
   proponent of social contracts (stage five). However, when one
   encounters a moral dilemma and finds their current level of moral
   reasoning unsatisfactory, they will look to the next level. Discovery
   of the limitations of the current stage of thinking drives moral
   development as each progressive stage is more adequate than the last.
   This process is constructive; it arises through the conscious
   construction of the actor, and is neither in any meaningful sense a
   component of the actor's innate dispositions, nor a result of past
   inductions.

Formal elements

   Progress along the stages of development occurs because of the actor's
   increased competence in both psychologically and socially balancing
   conflicting value-claims. The name of " justice operation" is given to
   the process which resolves the dispute between conflicting claims and
   strikes an equilibrium between them. Kohlberg identifies two of these
   operations in " equality" and " reciprocity", which respectively
   involve an impartial regard for persons (i.e., irrespective of who the
   individual persons are), and a regard for the role of personal merit.
   For Kohlberg, the most adequate result of both operations is "
   reversibility", where a moral or dutiful act within a particular
   situation is evaluated in terms of whether or not the act would be
   satisfactory even if particular persons were to switch roles within the
   situation (also known colloquially as " moral musical chairs").

   Knowledge and learning contribute to moral development. Specifically
   important are the actor's view of persons and their social perspective
   level, each of which becomes more complex and mature with each
   advancing stage. The view of persons can be understood as the actor's
   grasp of the psychology of other persons; it may be pictured as a
   spectrum, with stage one having no view of other persons at all, and
   stage six being entirely sociocentric. Similarly, the social
   perspective level involves the understanding of the social universe,
   differing from the view of persons in that it involves a grasp of
   norms.

Examples of applied moral dilemmas

   To do this, Kohlberg established the Moral Judgement Interview in his
   original 1958 dissertation. During the roughly 45 minute tape recorded
   semi-structured interview, the interviewer uses moral dilemmas to
   determine which stage of moral reasoning a person uses. The dilemmas
   are fictional short stories that describe situations in which a person
   has to make a moral decision. The participant is asked a systemic
   series of open-ended questions, like what they think the right course
   of action is, as well as justifications as to why certain actions are
   right or wrong. The form and structure of these replies are scored and
   not the content; over a set of multiple moral dilemmas an overall score
   is derived.

Heinz dilemma

   A dilemma that Kohlberg used in his original research was the
   druggist's dilemma: Heinz Steals the Drug In Europe.

     A woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one
     drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of
     radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The
     drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times
     what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and
     charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's
     husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he
     could only get together about $ 1,000 which is half of what it cost.
     He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell
     it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: "No, I
     discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." So Heinz
     got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug-for
     his wife.
     Should Heinz have broken into the laboratory to steal the drug for
     his wife? Why or why not?

   From a theoretical point of view, it is not important what the
   participant thinks that Heinz should do. Kohlberg's theory holds that
   the justification the participant offers is what is significant, the
   form of their response. Below are some of many examples of possible
   arguments that belong to the six stages:

   Stage one (obedience): Heinz should not steal the medicine because he
   will consequently be put in prison which means you are really terrible.
   Or: Heinz should steal the medicine because it only worth $200 and not
   how much the druggist wanted for it; Heinz had even offered to pay for
   it and was not stealing anything else besides.

   Stage two (self-interest): Heinz should steal the medicine because he
   will be much happier if he saves his wife, even if he will have to
   serve a prison sentence. Or: Heinz should not steal the medicine
   because prison is a awful place, and he would probably languish over a
   jail cell more than his wife's death.

   Stage three (conformity): Heinz should steal the medicine because his
   wife expects it; he wants to be a good husband. Or: Heinz should not
   steal the drug because stealing is bad and he is not a criminal; he
   tried to do everything he could without breaking the law, you cannot
   blame him.

   Stage four (law-and-order): Heinz should not steal the medicine because
   the law prohibits stealing making it illegal. Or: Heinz should steal
   the drug for his wife but also take the prescribed punishment for the
   crime as well as paying the druggist what he is owed. Criminals cannot
   just run around without regard to the law; actions have consequences.

   Stage five (human rights): Heinz should steal the medicine because
   everyone has a right to choose life, regardless of the law. Or: Heinz
   should not steal the medicine because the scientist has a right to fair
   compensation. Even if his wife is sick it does not make his actions
   right.

   Stage six (universal human ethics): Heinz should steal the medicine,
   because saving a human life is a more fundamental value than the
   property rights of another person. Or: Heinz should not steal the
   medicine, because others may need the medicine just as badly, and their
   lives are equally significant.

Criticisms

   One criticism of Kohlberg's theory is that it emphasizes justice to the
   exclusion of other values. As a consequence of this, it may not
   adequately address the arguments of people who value other moral
   aspects of actions. Carol Gilligan has argued that Kohlberg's theory is
   overly androcentric. Kohlberg's theory was initially developed based on
   empirical research using only male participants; Gilligan argued that
   it did not adequately describe the concerns of women. Although research
   has generally found no significant pattern of differences in moral
   development between sexes, Gilligan's theory of moral development does
   not focus on the value of justice. She developed an alternative theory
   of moral reasoning that is based on the ethics of caring.

   Other psychologists have questioned the assumption that moral action is
   primarily reached by formal reasoning. One such group, the social
   intuitionists, state people often make moral judgments without weighing
   concerns such as fairness, law, human rights and abstract ethical
   values. Given this, the arguments that Kohlberg and other rationalist
   psychologists have analyzed could be considered post hoc
   rationalizations of intuitive decisions. This would mean that moral
   reasoning is less relevant to moral action than Kohlberg's theory
   suggests.

Continued relevance

   Theory and research of Kohlberg's stages of moral development have been
   utilized by others in academia. One such example, the Defining Issues
   Test or DIT, was created by James Rest in 1979 originally as a
   pencil-and-paper alternative to the Moral Judgement Interview. Heavily
   influenced by the six-stage model, it made efforts to improve validity
   criteria by using a quantitative test of a likert scale to rate moral
   dilemmas similar to Kohlberg's. It also used a large body of
   Kohlbergian theory such as the idea of 'post-conventional thinking'. In
   1999 the DIT was revised as the DIT-2; the test persists in many areas
   that require moral testing and in varied cohorts.

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