Moral Development: Jean Piaget

An outstanding example of research in the Piagetian tradition is the work of Lawrence Kohlberg. Kohlberg has focused on moral development and has proposed a stage theory of moral thinking which goes well beyond Piaget's initial formulations.

Kohlberg, who was born in 1927, grew up in Bronxville, New York, and attended the Andover Academy in Massachusetts, a private high school for bright and usually wealthy students. He did not go immediately to college, but instead went to help the Israeli cause, in which he was made the Second Engineer on an old freighter carrying refugees from parts of Europe to Israel.

After this, in 1948, he enrolled at the University of Chicago, where he scored so high on admission tests that he had to take only a few courses to earn his bachelor's degree. This he did in one year. He stayed on at Chicago for graduate work in psychology, at first thinking he would become a clinical psychologist. However, he soon became interested in Piaget and began interviewing children and adolescents on moral issues. The result was his doctoral dissertation (1958a), the first rendition of his new stage theory.

Kohlberg is an informal, unassuming man who also is a true scholar; he has thought long and deeply about a wide range of issues in both psychology and philosophy and has done much to help others appreciate the wisdom of many of the "old psychologists," such as Rousseau, John Dewey, and James Mark Baldwin. Kohlberg has taught at the University of Chicago (1962-1968) and, since 1968, has been at Harvard University.

Moral development is a topic of interest in both psychology and education. Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg modified and expanded upon Jean Piaget's work to form a theory that explained the development of moral reasoning. Piaget described a two-stage process of moral development, while Kohlberg theory of moral development outlined six stages within three different levels. Kohlberg extended Piaget’s theory, proposing that moral development is a continual process that occurs throughout the lifespan.

This entry analyzes moral development as a perennial philosophical view complemented by modern empirical research programs. The two initial sections summarize what moral development is and why it is important for ethics and human nature theory. The “Roots” section notes historical versions of natural development in morality, touching on Confucius, Aristotle, Rousseau and Rawls.

The next four sections assess current empirical research in moral psychology focusing on the cognitive-developmental approach of Piaget and Kohlberg and its philosophical theory. In the “Critical Specifics” section, controversies are taken up in stage theories of moral development focusing major rivalries in moral philosophy, critical and feminist theory. “Caring’s Different Voice” focuses on conflicts between justice and benevolence ethics.

The “Pedagogical Implications” of moral cognition research are then summarized with a focus on classroom practices. Finally, “Related Research” is surveyed on the roles of moral perception, identity, empathy, convention/tradition, altruism and egoism, along with new moral-automaticity notions in cognitive science.

Traditionally, psychology has avoided studying anything that is loaded with value judgements. There is a degree of difficulty involved in trying to be unbiased about things that involve terms like "good" and "bad!" So, one of the most significant aspects of human life - morality - has had to wait quite a while before anyone in psychology dared to touch it!

But Lawrence Kohlberg wanted to study morality, and did so using a most interesting (if controversial) technique. Basically, he would ask children and adults to try to solve moral dilemmas contained in little stories, and to do so outloud so he could follow their reasoning. It wasn't the specific answers to the dilemmas that interested him, but rather how the person got to his or her answer.

One of the most famous of these stories concerned a man named Heinz. His wife was dying of a disease that could be cured if he could get a certain medicine. When he asked the pharmacist, he was told that he could get the medicine, but only at a very high price - one that Heinz could not possibly afford. So the next evening, Heinz broke into the pharmacy and stole the drug to save his wife's life. Was Heinz right or wrong to steal the drug?

There are simple reasons why Heinz should or should not have stolen the drug, and there are very sophisticated reasons, and reasons in between. After looking at hundreds of interviews using this and several other stories, Kohlberg outlined three broad levels and six more specific stages of moral development.

Level I: Pre-conventional morality. While infants are essentially amoral, very young children are moral in a rather primitive way, as described by the two preconventional stages.

Stage 1. We can call this the reward and punishment stage. Good or bad depends on the physical consequences: Does the action lead to punishment or reward? This stage is based simply on one's own pain and pleasure, and doesn't take others into account.

Stage 2. This we can call the exchange stage. In this stage, there is increased recognition that others have their own interests and should be taken into account. Those interests are still understood in a very concrete fashion, and the child deals with others in terms of simple exchange or reciprocity: "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine." Children in this stage are very concerned with what's "fair" (one of their favorite words), but are not concerned with real justice.

Level II: Conventional morality. By the time children enter elementary school, they are usually capable of conventional morality, although they may often slip back into preconventional morality on occasion. But this level is called conventional for a very good reason: It is also the level that most adults find themselves in most of the time!

Stage 3. This stage is often called the good boy/good girl stage. The child tries to live up to the expectations of others, and to seek their approval. Now they become interested motives or intentions, and concepts such as loyalty, trust, and gratitude are understood. Children in this stage often adhere to a concrete version of the Golden Rule, although it is limited to the people they actually deal with on a day-to-day basis.

Stage 4. This is called the law-and-order stage. Children now take the point of view that includes the social system as a whole. The rules of the society are the bases for right and wrong, and doing one's duty and showing respect for authority are important.

Level III: Post-conventional morality. Some adolescents and adults go a step further and rise above moralities based on authority to ones based on reason.

Stage 5. The social contract stage means being aware of the degree to which much of so-called morality is relative to the individual and to the social group they belong to, and that only a very few fundamental values are universal. The person at this level sees morality as a matter of entering into a rational contract with one's fellow human beings to be kind to each other, respect authority, and follow laws to the extent that they respect and promote those universal values. Social contract morality often involves a utilitarian approach, where the relative value of an act is determined by "the greatest good for the greatest number."

Stage 6. This stage is referred to as the stage of universal principles. At this point, the person makes a personal commitment to universal principles of equal rights and respect, and social contract takes a clear back-seat: If there is a conflict between a social law or custom and universal principles, the universal principles take precedence.

Kohlberg's original work was done with boys. When the research began to include girls, they found the girls to be less morally "developed" than the boys! Psychologist Carol Gilligan, involved in that research, began to notice that it wasn't so easy to distinguish "good boy/good girl" from "universal principles", especially in the girls. Since then, psychologists have readjusted their work to take into account for the fact that girls often express their morality in terms that emphasize personal caring more than abstract principles.