Kohlberg's Theory Of Moral Judgement

Moral judgements have historically been thought to occur outside of conscious control and be emotionally driven (Freud, 1976). Empirical data shows humans to make judgements in milliseconds, even before giving the decision conscious thought (Willis & Todorov, 2006). Furthermore, Hume (1777/1960) proposed that moral judgements are largely influenced by ‘gut feelings’ as research showed individuals to have an automatic feeling of approval or disapproval when making a moral judgement. Albeit only in ‘hypnotisable’ participants, Wheatley and Haidt (2005) furthered this by inducing feelings of disgust and found this lead to more judgements of the action in a moral transgression being morally wrong, supporting the suggestion that moral judgements
In support of this, cognitive effort (Kohlberg, 1984) and intellectual ability (Moore, Clark & Kane, 2008) have been found to be key components of moral judgement. Kohlberg stated that moral judgements are developed through an explicit learning process; for example, having turns at taking on different roles and attempting to understand dilemmas from different points of view. Of note, is that it is not clear whether the role of emotion was also considered in this
The dual process model (Greene et al., 2004) helps to understand the different parts of the literature and the conflicts between emotion and reason, deontology and utilitarianism. This model proposes that moral judgements result from multiple psychological systems involving both emotion and explicit reasoning. In this model, reasoning relies on two separate brain systems, with deontological moral judgements being ‘driven by automatic emotional processes’ in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), an area specific to moral judgements (Greene & Haidt, 2002) and social emotion (Damasio, Tranel & Damasio, 1990), and utilitarian moral judgements being ‘driven by controlled cognitive processes’, in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DPC). In line with this, it has been shown that emotions are important in raising an individual’s awareness of moral dilemmas and help to make decisions in dilemmas where two moral norms conflict (Horberg, Oveis & Keltner,