How Moral Are You? Kohlberg, L. (1963). The development of children’s orientations toward a moral order: Sequence in the development of moral thought. Via Humana, 6, 11-33. Presented by Edward Londono

What are morals? attitudes and beliefs that people hold that help them decide what is right or wrong determined by rules and norms of conduct that are set forth by the culture in which you have been raised; have been internalized by one’s self

Kohlberg’s Questions since everyone has some concept of morality, where did it come from? how does morality go from being a set of cultural rules to become part of a person’s way of thinking?

Theoretical Proposition Kohlberg theorized that morality is acquired in developmental stages each stage is a uniquely different kind of moral thinking the stages always occur in the same step-by-step sequence so that no stage is ever skipped and there is never a backward progression children comprehend all stages below their own and perhaps have some understanding of, and no more than one stage above, their own

Methodology Kohlberg presented 72 boys (ages 10, 13, and 16) with 10 hypothetical moral dilemmas each boy was interviewed for 2 hours the children expressed between 50 and 150 moral ideas or statements

Results Kohlberg defined 6 stages of moral development there were 6 types of motives for justifying course of action or reasoning these stages do not predict a specific course of action if faced with a real dilemma, but rather the reasoning a child would use in determining a course of action

Level 1: Premoral Level Stage 1: punishment and obedience orientation (consequences for actions determine right from wrong) Stage 2: naïve instrumental hedonism (satisfaction of one’s own needs defines what is good)

Level 2: Morality of Correctional Role Conformity Stage 3: “good boy-nice girl” orientation (what pleases others is good) Stage 4: authority maintaining morality (maintaining law and order, doing one’s duty is good)

Level 3: Morality of Self-accepted Moral Principles Stage 5: morality of agreements in democratically determined law (society’s values and individual rights determines right and wrong) Stage 6: morality of individual principles of conscience (right and wrong are a matter of individual philosophy according to universal principles)

Motives 1: punishment by another 2: manipulation of goods or rewards by another 3: disapproval by others 4: censure by legitimate authorities followed by feelings of guilt 5: community respect and disrespect 6: self-condemnation

Criticisms 1: what one says is moral may not reflect a person’s moral action 2: Kohlberg’s 6 stages of moral reasoning are not universal, but are uniquely Western 3: Moral development stages may not be applied equally to males and females

Usefulness in Society in 1964 Kohlberg made this statement about his moral development theory, “while any conception of moral education must recognize that the parent cannot escape the direct imposition of behavior demands and moral judgments upon the child, it may be possible to define moral education primarily as a matter of stimulating the development of the child’s own moral judgment and its control of action.” Kohlberg made this statement because he had found teachers telling 13 year olds not to cheat because the person they copied from may have it wrong so it would not do them any good

Usefulness (cont.) most of these children were capable of advancing much more mature reasons for not cheating…children are almost as likely to reject moral reasoning beneath their level as to fail to assimilate too far above their level

New Tools, New Insights: Kohlberg’s Moral Stages Revisited Theo Linda Dawson International Journal of Behavioral Development, 2002, 26 (2), 154-166

Theoretical Proposition whether the results from Kohlberg’s studies supported the postulates of his theory reexamined relationships between moral reasoning, age, sex, and educational attainment

Method 4 sets of data 1: Kohlberg’s study of school boys 2: Armon’s life-span study 3: Common’s MENSA study 4: Walker’s study of school children and parents

Method (cont.) data was pooled using the Probabilistic Conjoint Measurement Model data was then examined using psychometric techniques

Results results confirmed previous research of the ordered acquisition of moral stages showed a positive correlation between age/education and moral development evidence of a stage between Koglberg’s stages 3 and 4

The End