Kohlberg's moral reasoning

• What is Kohlsberg's level of moral reasoning as a cognitive explanation for offending behaviour?

  • Criminal behaviour is based off of people's decisions and judgements on what is right and wrong
  • Kohlberg: a group of violent youths were significantly lower in their moral development than non-violent youth
• What are Kohlsberg's 3 levels of moral reasoning?

  1. Pre-conventional morality: rules are obeyed to avoid punishment and for personal gain, associated with less mature and childlike reasoning. Criminals do NOT progress from this level
  2. Conventional morality: ruled are obeyed for social approval and to maintain social order
  3. Post-conventional morality: rules are obeyed if fair and democratic, challenged if infringing on others' rights, associated with non-criminals, honesty, generosity and empathy
• What is one strength of Kohlberg's moral reasoning explanation?

  • Research support: Palmer & Hollin (1998) - compared moral reasoning between 332 non-offenders and 126 convicted offenders using moral-dilemma related questions
  • Offenders showed less mature moral reasoning than non-offenders
  • Chandler (1973): offenders are egocentric and display poorer social perspective-taking skills than non-offenders
• What is one weakness of Kohlberg's moral reasoning explanation?

  • Thornton & Reid (1982): people who committed crimes for financial gain like robbery were more likely to show pre-conventional moral reasoning than those who committed impulsive crimes like assault
  • Shows this is only applied to crimes where offenders believe they can evade punishment - but not all forms of crime adhere to this
• What is another weakness of Kohlberg's moral reasoning explanation?

  • Langdon et al (2010): correlational research - it may not be their morals but it is their lack of intelligence that leads them to commit crime, showing low internal validity in Kohlberg's theories