Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development
KOHLBERG'S STAGES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT Lawrence Kohlberg was a moral philosopher and student of child development. He was director of Harvard's Center for Moral Education. His special area of interest is the moral development of children - how they develop a sense of right, wrong, and justice.
Kohlberg observed that growing children advance through definite stages of moral development in a manner similar to their progression through Piaget's well-known stages of cognitive development. His observations and testing of children and adults, led him to theorize that human beings progress consecutively from one stage to the next in an invariant sequence, not skipping any stage or going back to any previous stage. These are stages of thought processing, implying qualitatively different modes of thinking and of problem solving at each stage.
These conclusions have been verified in cross-cultural studies done in Turkey, Taiwan, Yucatan, Honduras, India, United States, Canada, Britain, and Israel. An outline of these developmental stages follows: A. PREMORAL OR PRECONVENTIONAL STAGES: FOCUS: Self AGES: Up to 10-13 years of age, most prisoners Behavior motivated by anticipation of pleasure or pain. STAGE 1: PUNISHMENT AND OBEDIENCE: Might Makes Right Avoidance of physical punishment and deference to power. Punishment is an automatic response of physical retaliation. The immediate physical consequences of an action determine its goodness or badness. The atrocities carried out by soldiers during the holocaust who were simply "carrying out orders" under threat of punishment, illustrate that adults as well as children may function at stage one level. "Might makes right." QUESTIONS: What must I do to avoid punishment? What can I do to force my will upon others? STAGE 2: INSTRUMENTAL EXCHANGE: The Egoist
Marketplace exchange of favors or blows. "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours." Justice is: "Do unto others as
Kohlberg observed that growing children advance through definite stages of moral development in a manner similar to their progression through Piaget's well-known stages of cognitive development. His observations and testing of children and adults, led him to theorize that human beings progress consecutively from one stage to the next in an invariant sequence, not skipping any stage or going back to any previous stage. These are stages of thought processing, implying qualitatively different modes of thinking and of problem solving at each stage.
These conclusions have been verified in cross-cultural studies done in Turkey, Taiwan, Yucatan, Honduras, India, United States, Canada, Britain, and Israel. An outline of these developmental stages follows: A. PREMORAL OR PRECONVENTIONAL STAGES: FOCUS: Self AGES: Up to 10-13 years of age, most prisoners Behavior motivated by anticipation of pleasure or pain. STAGE 1: PUNISHMENT AND OBEDIENCE: Might Makes Right Avoidance of physical punishment and deference to power. Punishment is an automatic response of physical retaliation. The immediate physical consequences of an action determine its goodness or badness. The atrocities carried out by soldiers during the holocaust who were simply "carrying out orders" under threat of punishment, illustrate that adults as well as children may function at stage one level. "Might makes right." QUESTIONS: What must I do to avoid punishment? What can I do to force my will upon others? STAGE 2: INSTRUMENTAL EXCHANGE: The Egoist
Marketplace exchange of favors or blows. "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours." Justice is: "Do unto others as