kohlberg

• Kohlberg's key idea - a child develops in stages and development is a result of both nature and nurture
• 3 main theories of moral development

  • Freud's psychoanalytic theory (1930)
  • Skinner's behaviourist theory (1938)
  • Piaget's cognitive theory (1965)
• Freud's psychoanalytic theory

  believed that the personality (psychic apparatus) contains three parts: the id, ego and superego

  1. id contains everything that is inherited - the instincts
  2. ego becomes modified by the influence of the external world and represents reason and common sense
  3. superego represents the internalisation of parental and social moral values in two main aspects - the conscience and the ego-ideal
• Skinner's behaviourist theory (1938)

  focused on socialisation as the primary force behind moral development, like Freud

  • the power of external forces (reinforcement contingencies) to shape an individual's development
• Piaget's cognitive theory (1965)

  focused on the individual's construction and interpretation of morality from a social-cognitive/emotional perspective

  looks at how morality manifests in children and factors that contribute to moral concepts

  clinical interviews showed young children focused authority and with age become independent and evaluate actions from a set of morality principles
• Kohlberg was inspired by Piaget's pioneering effort to apply a structural approach to moral development rather than linking it to personality traits -> expanded on Piagetian notions of moral development and saw it as a more gradual process
• 6 stages of moral development

  1. punishment and obedience orientation
  2. instrumental-relativist orientation
  3. good boy - good girl orientation
  4. law and order orientation
  5. social contract orientation
  6. universal principles orientation
• level 1 - preconventional (usually occupies children aged 4-10)


  punishment and obedience orientation, instrumental-relativist orientation
• level 2 - conventional

  good boy-good girl orientation, law and order orientation
• level 3 - post-conventional

  social contract orientation, universal principles orientation
• punishment and obedience orientation

  rules are kept to avoid punishment
• instrumental-relativist orientation

  'right' behaviour is that which ultimately brings rewards to oneself
• good boy-good girl orientation

  'good' behaviour is what pleases others - conformity to goodness
• law and order orientation

  doing one's duty, obeying laws is important
• social contract orientation

  'right' is what is democratically agreed upon
• universal principles orientation

  moral action is taken based upon self-chosen principles
• aim

  to find evidence to support his theory of moral development
• research method

  longitudinal study

  self-report study

  aim was to show how young people develop from adolescence into adulthood through the distinct stages proposed in Kohlberg's theory

  also a cross-cultural study
• sample

  75 american boys

  aged 10-16 - followed at 3 year intervals for 12 years until the ages of 22-28

  moral development also studied in Great Britain, Taiwan, Mexico and Turkey
• procedure - US participants

  presented with hypothetical moral dilemmas in the form of short stories to solve

  stories determine each participant's stage of moral reasoning for each 25 aspects - included motive given for rule obedience or moral action and the value of human life -> asked aged 10 "is it better to save the life of one important person or a lot of unimportant people?", aged 13, 16, 20 and 24 "should the doctor 'mercy kill' a fatally ill woman requesting death because of her pain?"
• procedure - different cultures

  taiwanese boys aged 10-13 were asked a story involving theft of food

  "a man's wife is starving to death but the food owner won't give the man any food unless he can pay, which he can't. Should he break in and steal some food? Why?"

  young boys in Great Britain, Mexico and Turkey were tested in a similar way
• value of human life - the six stages results

  1. confused with the value of physical objects, based on social status or physical attributes
  2. seen as instrumental to the satisfaction of the needs of other peoples needs
  3. based on the empathy and affection of family members
  4. life is sacred in moral or religious order of rights and duties
  5. life is valued in relation to community welfare and human rights
  6. belief in sacredness of human life is a universal human value of respect
• US participants - results

  50% of ppts' thinking was at a single stage and ppts showed progress through the stages with age

  not all ppts progressed through all stages and reached stage 6

  ppts progressed through the stages one at a time and always in the same order

  once a ppt reached a particular stage, they stopped or continues to move upward

  a child at an earlier stage tends to move forward when confronted with views of a child one stage further along
• cross cultural - results

  taiwanese boys aged 10-13 tend to give stage 2 responses

  in the US by 16 stage 6 was rarely used - at 13 the good-boy middle stage 3 was not used

  stage 5 thinking was more salient in the US than Mexico or Taiwan by 16

  two isolated villages in Yucatan and Turkey showed moral thought increased steadily from 10-16 but not achieved a clear control over preconventional thought

  middle class children more advanced in moral judgement

  no important differences regarding religion
• research method - strength

  eliminates individual differences as extraneous variables - longitudinal study

  reduces ethnocentrism - increases generalisability and representativeness
• research method - weakness

  time consuming - longitudinal study over 12 years

  language barriers - increases difficulty to communicate and physical barriers such as to go to isolated villages
• sample - strength

  different social classes sampled

  additional samples also taken from a range of nationalities and consistency of results across groups suggest that sampling bias did not have a major impact on findings
• sample - weakness

  original longitudinal study in US used all American boys - ethnocentric and androcentric -> unrepresentative
• qualitative data - strength

  respondents to interviews could give full answers to questions rather than just select from a list of alternatives

  allows respondents to express their views fully
• qualitative data - weakness


  hard to draw conclusions from what they say
• ethics - strength

  no ethical issues

  • no deception or distress
  • privacy not invaded
  • not pressured to take part - took part willingly
• reliability - strength

  easy to replicate - good external reliability
• reliability - weakness

  ppts did not consistently give responses linked to a particular stage of development to different dilemmas - Kohlberg may have made a judgement which can be biased -> decreases internal validity
• validity - strength

  longitudinal design has good validity - eliminates the extraneous variable of individual differences between participants at different ages
• validity - weakness

  low ecological validity - ppts were asked about hypothetical moral dilemmas instead of being exposed to real ones - most of the moral choices we make in everyday life are simpler than Kohlberg’s dilemmas. 

  interviews limit validity - extraneous variables that can influence responses

  Kolberg’s interpretation of participants' responses to questions was quite subjective