Kohlberg

• Background

  • previous research on the behaviourist perspective which would say that people learn morals through their parents
  • previous research on psychodynamic perspective which explains morals as a result of the superego
  • previous research by Piaget's theories on children's thinking developing in stages. he said that in the 1st stage, children cannot see the world from anyone else's point of view but from the age of 8 children begin to understand that morals are more complex and that there are grey areas of right and wrong
• Aim

  • to prove his stages of moral development through interviews

  his theory had three levels:

  • pre-conventional level: people are well behaved but only because of the physical consequences to them of being good or bad, if there was no one to judge them, they are likely to misbehave
  • conventional level: people conform to the social norms and expectations of their family, social group or nation. rules must be followed
  • post-conventional level: people set their own personal moral principles which may differ from those of their social group
• method


  longitudinal study
• sample

  • 75 American for 12 years
  • when they started the research they were between 10 and 16 years old
  • when they finished they were between 22 and 28 years old
  • Kohlberg repeated this study on boys from Taiwan, Mexico, Malaysia, Canada and the UK
• procedure

  • every boy was presented with hypothetical moral dilemmas every 3 years
  • these related to 25 different moral concepts
  • using the answers the boys gave, Kohlberg ranked them in 6 categories (1 being the least morally developed to 6)
  • this formed his theory of stages moral development
• six stages of morality

  1. Obedience/punishment
  2. Self-interest
  3. Conformity to expectations/rules
  4. Authority/social order
  5. Social contract
  6. Universal ethics
• conclusion

  • people's moral development follows an invariant developmental sequence, everyone (regardless of culture, social background or religion) moves through the same 6 stages, but not everyone reaches the last stage