Stages Of Lawrence Kohlberg's Theory Of Moral Development

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 ...

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...the specific dilemma. This gave me more of a real life perspective because these moral dilemmas that the subjects explained are dilemmas that people go through every day. The hypothetical dilemmas did not engage me as much because they are not likely to happen to an individual person at any given time. When critically analyzing both studies in the perspective of both theories, I learned that studies are going to have aspects in which the theory agrees with and then aspects in which it doesn’t. This gave me the opportunity to engage in critical thinking and challenging me to see the articles at a different level as well as perspective. I feel that completing this research report was a valuable lesson because it challenged me to think in ways, that I normally do not think in. This research report have taught me a lot of knowledge that I did not originally know.