Background and method
Building on Piaget's research on children's moral judgment, Kohlberg presented boys with moral dilemmas in his doctoral dissertation at the University of Chicago (1958) and interviewed them about the reasons for their judgments. The best known is the Heinz dilemma, in which a man who cannot afford a drug that could save his wife steals it. Kohlberg scored stages not by the conclusion, whether Heinz should steal or not, but by the structure of the reasoning.
Three levels and six stages
- Preconventional level — Stage 1, punishment and obedience orientation: what is right is avoiding punishment. Stage 2, instrumental relativism: self-interest and fair exchange are the standard.
- Conventional level — Stage 3, interpersonal accord ("good boy/good girl") orientation: what is right is meeting the expectations of those around you and gaining approval. Stage 4, law and order orientation: what is right is maintaining social order and doing one's duty.
- Postconventional level — Stage 5, social contract orientation: laws are agreements among people and can be changed for the sake of rights. Stage 6, universal ethical principle orientation: one follows universal principles such as justice and human dignity.
Kohlberg held that the stages appear in the same order regardless of culture, are not skipped, and that each stage is a better structure that integrates the one before. Stage 6 resembles the principles of justice of Kant and Rawls.
Research findings
The 20-year longitudinal study by Colby, Kohlberg and colleagues (1983) supported the claim that stages rise in order with age, but most adults remained at stages 3 to 4, stage 5 was rare, and stage 6 was dropped from the scoring manual because it was not empirically confirmed.
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Criticisms and later research
Gilligan (1982) argued that Kohlberg's theory used a justice-centred standard drawn mainly from male samples, and so undervalued a voice of care that stresses relationships and responsibility. There are also criticisms about the gap between judgment and actual behaviour, and cultural criticisms that the theory reflects Western individualist values. The neo-Kohlbergian approach of Rest and colleagues (1999) recast the theory as moral judgment schemas rather than strict stages and developed the DIT test.
References
- Kohlberg, L. (1958). The Development of Modes of Moral Thinking and Choice in the Years 10 to 16 (Doctoral dissertation). University of Chicago.
- Kohlberg, L. (1981). Essays on Moral Development, Vol. 1: The Philosophy of Moral Development. Harper & Row.
- Colby, A., Kohlberg, L., Gibbs, J., & Lieberman, M. (1983). A longitudinal study of moral judgment. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 48(1-2), 1-124.
- Gilligan, C. (1982). In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development. Harvard University Press.
- Rest, J. R., Narvaez, D., Bebeau, M. J., & Thoma, S. J. (1999). Postconventional Moral Thinking: A Neo-Kohlbergian Approach. Lawrence Erlbaum.