Lawrence Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development
Lawrence Kohlberg conducted research on the moral development of children. He wanted to understand how they develop a sense of right or wrong and how justice is served. Kohlberg used surveys in which he included moral dilemmas where he asked the subjects to evaluate a moral conflict. Through his studies, Kohlberg observed that moral growth and development precedes through stages such as those of Piaget’s stages of cognitive development. He theorized that moral growth begins at the beginning of life and continues until the day one dies. He believed that people proceed through each stage of moral development consecutively without skipping or going back to a previous stage. The stages of thought processing, implying qualitatively different modes of thinking and of problem solving are included in the three levels of pre-conventional, conventional and post conventional development. (2)
At the pre-conventional level, behavior is motivated by anticipation of pleasure or pain. The child is aware of cultural rules and labels of good or bad and right or wrong. (1) The subject interprets the labels in terms of the physical consequence, such as punishment or reward. (3) The child has an extreme self-interest. The first level of moral thinking is generally found at the elementary school level, before the age of 9. This level is divided into the following two stages. (2)
The first stage is the punishment and obedience orientation. This is observed in children ages 1-5. The subject is in avoidance of physical punishment and deference to power. The child behaves according to the socially acceptable norms, due to the fear of punishment by an authority figure. (4) The physical consequences of an action determine its goodness or badness. “What is right is to avoid breaking rules, to obey for obedience’s sake, and to avoid doing physical damage to people and property.” An example of stage one is evident in the soldiers of the holocaust who were asked to simply “carry out orders” under the threat of being punished. This illustrates that adults, as well as children may possibly be functioning at stage one. (2) An individual at this stage doesn’t consider the thoughts or feelings of others, nor are they able to relate two points of view. As in Piaget’s framework, ego-centrism and the inability to consider the pe...
... middle of paper ...
... He hypothesized that moral difficulties motivated development through a group of flexible kinds of moral reasoning. From his own ideas of moral reasoning he developed a series of stages describing moral development. In 1973, while in Central America, Kohlberg developed a rare and unknown tropical disease. This disease ruined his health and brought about severe depression. On January 18, 1987 Kohlberg was reported missing. His body was later discovered in a swamp area where it is believed that he took his own life. (6)
Kohlberg’s theory of the stages of moral development has gained some popularity despite being controversial. The claim that the levels form a “ladder,” the bottom being the immature child with a pre-conventional level and the top being a post conventional ethical individual. The sequence is unvarying and the subject must begin at the bottom with aspirations to reach the top, possibly doing so. (7) Research confirms that individuals from different cultures actually progress according to Kohlbergs theory, at least to the conventional level. Kohlberg’s stages of moral development continue to provide a foundation for psychology studies of moral reasoning. (6)
Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development is three levels consisting of two stages in each. Kohlberg’s Theory explains how a human’s mind morally develops. Level one is typically common in younger children. The two stages in level one are pre-conventional stages. Stage one is obedience and punishment driven; one will judge an action by the consequences given. Stage two is out of self interest. Level two is mostly common in teenagers. The stages in this level
Kohlberg’s theory of moral development shows the different stages of morality as people change as they get older (McLeod). He had three levels which broke down his stages
Lawrence Kohlberg is known for his Theory of Moral Development. The method that Kohlberg used was that of “moral dilemmas”. Kohlberg studied Piaget but developed his own theory. He would give individuals of different ages these dilemmas and survey their answers to see what the reasoning behind their answers were. An example of a dilemma is the “Heinz Dilemma”. In this dilemma there is a man whose wife is very sick and needs a certain type of medication. There is only one man who sells this drug in the area and he is charging more than the man can pay for. The husband of the wife decided to steal the drug in order to save his wife. At the end of this scenario, it asks if the husband should’ve stolen the medicine. This provides an example of how he went about creating these moral dilemmas. They are situations in which there are multiple answers and reasoning that could be provided. There was no “right” answer in the moral dilemma questions (as the answer to each question was solely based off of the individual’s opinion and moral reasoning). The reasoning that the individuals presented help develop levels of reasoning. These levels are also known as stages. In Kohlberg’s stages, sub stages are also included. The stages are: Preconventional, Conventional, and Postconventional. Each stages had two sub stages that helped determine what level of moral reasoning a person was at. In the preconvnetional stage the two sub stages are: Reward and punishment orientation and Naive reciprocity orientation. The preconventional stage begins at about age five and decreases with age. The sub stages in the conventional stage are: Good boy/girl Orientation and Authority and social order maintenance orientation. This stage increases ...
An informative speech, as the name suggest, provides an information to the audience. The purpose of the informative speech is to inform your audience on the topic that they might find relevant, or help them understand something that they find relevant, but need more information to understand it better.
In Kohlbergs moral stages five & six people begin to understand morals and social good then moral reasoning. Basic human rights become important as well as principles.
The moral development of children can depend on many factors. Parenting and upbringing of the child, their environment, social environment, gender, and race are all aspects that can contribute to how a child develops their moral standards and expectations. Many psychologists have tried for several years to develop a theory of how morality is developed. One in particular is Lawrence Kohlberg (1958). His moral development theory is based on the cognitive development of children and it is thought that moral development proceeds and changes as cognitive development occurs (Arnett, 2012).
The first level, the preconventional, is characterized as moral decisions are based on external standards (Zastrow & Kirst-Ashman, 2013, p.322). The first stage of level 1 is focused on avoiding punishment for example; children do what they are told to avoid punishment. The second stage of level 1 is based on rewards as opposed to punishment for example; children do
For my self-assessment, I chose to discuss the Middle Childhood, Adolescence, and Young Adulthood life stages. The theories of human behavior that will be discussed are Erikson’s Psychosocial theory, Kohlberg’s theory of moral reasoning, and Albert Bandura’s social learning theory. I chose these life stages because they are the stages where I have experienced many events that have shaped me into the person I am today. There are a number of factors that have played a role in my development over a period of time and I will discuss them throughout my paper.
To analyze this situation, Kohlberg 's model for Moral Development was used. Lawrence Kohlberg, indicates that the highest stage of moral development “comes when life decisions and actions are rooted in an autonomous, principled judgment of right and wrong, in full consciousness of
Kohlberg believed that people progressed in their moral reasoning through a series of stages. Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development consists of three levels with six stages divided
The child has a hard time realizing that though there are many other people and things in their world, none of them are more important than the child himself. The child believes that his point of view is the only point of view of the world. This is caused by his inability to put himself in someone’s else’s shoes (Smith). The concrete operational period, spanning between the ages of 7 and 11, is marked by the onset of logic in the young mind. The child is able to mentally manipulate objects and events.
Moral development: A child’s morality is the ability to learn the difference between right and wrong, both in behaviours and choices made in everyday life. Morality does not develop in isolation but is co-dependent on the other facets of development. The child’s experience in home and school environment, physical, intellectual, emotional and social abilities influence their developing sense of what is right and wrong. Jean Piaget suggested that, children between the ages of five and ten view the world through a Heteronomous Morality, which means that children think adults such as parents, teachers and other authority figures have rules the must obey, no questions ask.
Kohlberg a well-known theorist in social development, who built on to Jean Piaget’s theory of moral development. Piaget’s theory was based on two-stages of moral development, however the Kohlberg’s theory is based on six stages within three levels of moral development. He wanted to develop his ideas further with the hopes of discovering the ways in which children develop moral reasoning, including how it changes as they grow older. People can only pass through these levels in the order given. Each new stage replaces the reasoning of the earlier stage plus not every person achieves all the
Kohlberg, L. (1984). The psychology of moral development: the nature and validity of moral stages. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
The obedience and punishment orientation is the earliest stage of moral development and is also very common in young children; however, adults are also capable of expressing this stage of reasoning. In this stage, young children perceive rules to be fixed and absolute and that obeying them is a necessary means to avoid punishment (McLeod, S.A., 2013). The individualism and exchange orientation is the second stage of pre-conventional morality. At this stage, children take into account individual points of view and judge their actions based on how they serve individual needs (Cherry, K., 2014, October