New Kohlberg

(Lawrence Kohlberg's Stages of
Moral Development)
Lawrence Kohlberg was an American psychologist best known for his theory of stages of moral development.
Small Biography
• Born in 1927 to a wealthy family in New York.
• He was always known to be a man of Moral.
• Kohlberg served in the Merchant Marine at the end of World War II
• He helped transport Jewish refugees to Palestine after World War II
• He was in Palestine during the fighting in 1948 to establish the state of Israel, but refused to participate
and focused on nonviolent forms of activism
• He was able to return to America in 1948.
• In the same year he enrolled at the University of Chicago.
• He earned his bachelor's degree in one year.
• He then began study for his doctoral degree in psychology, which he completed at Chicago in 1958.
• Kohlberg found a scholarly approach that gave a central place to the individual's reasoning in moral
decision making.
• At the time this contrasted with the current psychological approaches of behaviourism and
psychoanalysis that explained morality as simple internalization of external cultural or parental rules,
through teaching using reinforcement and punishment or identification with a parental authority
• In his unpublished 1958 dissertation, Kohlberg wrote what are now known as Kohlberg's stages of moral
development
The Theory on Development of Moral Reasoning/Consciousness
• It is also known as the Theory of Descriptive Ethics
• It help us to understand how morality starts from the early childhood years and gets affected by several
factors.
• Lawrence Kohlberg used very young children as his subjects in his studies.
• He discovered that children are confronted with a variety of moral dilemmas.
• Their decisions about whether to act favourably or badly in each situation are highly impacted by a
number of circumstances.
• The theory claims that our development of moral reasoning happens in six stages.
• The stages themselves are structured in three levels.
Three Level of Moral Development based on the Responses to the Moral Dilemmas
Level 1: Pre-conventional Morality
• A basic or first level of Morality
• Here people are under the external control
E.g. - Child acting as per parents, teachers.
• They obey rules to avoid punishment or to get rewards
E.g. - A child will not steal as it may lead to punishment
E.g. - A student will work hard to get reward from parent.
• They basically act out of their self interest
• It is an egocentric approach
Level 2: Conventional Morality
• This level is also called as Morality of conventional role conformity
• At this level individual start internalising the standards
E.g. - A child understand that cheating is bad.
• Here approval from society determines moral behaviour
E.g. - Stealing from someone will be despised by friends and teacher
• Person judges an action based on the societal roles and social expectations
E.g. - Behaving properly in the class is required by the school
• People here want to look good and pleasing to others
• This stage includes respecting the authorities and following the rules
E.g. - A student completes his/her homework as a responsibility
Level 3: Post-conventional Morality
• This level is also called as Morality of autonomous moral principles
• Here people are confronted by the complexity of moral issues.
E.g. - Student who sees his friends are bullying other students faces a moral issue.
• They now understand/realize that there is conflict between moral standards
E.g. - Should I confront own friends at the cost of losing friendship
• They have to make judgement and resolve the conflict on basis of some principles
• These principles are of right, fairness and justice.
E.g. - It is not right, fair and just to bully another person
• The locus of moral behaviour and moral judgement is internal in this case.
E.g. - In a competition, a sportsperson would refuse to take steroids because it would be impossible for
him to know if he was the greatest and at the same time it would be unfair.
Inferences
• At the pre-conventional level, people are driven by fear and self-interest.
• They judge what is right and wrong by the direct consequence they expect for themselves and not by
social norms.
• This form of reasoning is common among children.
• At the conventional level people respond to peer pressure and rules.
• Their morality is centre around what society regards as right.
• At these level the fairness of rules is seldom questioned.
• It is common to think like this during adolescence and adulthood.
• At post-conventional level, people understand that things are complicated.
• At this level individual may disobey rules inconsistent with their own morality.
• Not every person reaches this level.
• Morality can be formed either negatively or positively depending on how a person accomplish tasks
before it, during each stage of moral development throughout its life.
• How people think about moral concerns is a reflection of their cognitive development.
• People make moral decisions on their own, rather than relying on the standards of their parents,
instructors, or peers.

New Kohlberg

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

New Kohlberg

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

New Kohlberg

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

(Lawrence Kohlberg's Stages of

You might also like