Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development

Origins
Jean Piaget's two-stage theory of moral judgment marked a divide between the way children younger than 10
and those 10 and older think about morality. While younger children looked at rules as fixed and based their
moral judgments on consequences, older children’s perspectives were more flexible and their judgments were
based on intentions.

However, intellectual development doesn’t end when Piaget’s stages of moral judgment ended, making it likely
that moral development continued as well. Because of this, Kohlberg felt Piaget’s work was incomplete. He
sought to study a range of children and adolescents in order to determine if there were stages that went
beyond those proposed by Piaget.

Kohlberg’s Research Method

Kohlberg utilized Piaget’s method of interviewing children about moral dilemmas in his research. He would
present each child with a series of such dilemmas and ask them their thoughts on each one to determine the
reasoning behind their thinking.

For example, one of the moral dilemmas Kohlberg presented was the following:

“In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors
thought might save her. The druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. The sick
woman’s husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together
about half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him
pay later. But the druggist said: ‘No, I discovered the drug and I’m going to make money from it.’ So Heinz got
desperate and broke into the man’s store to steal the drug for his wife.”

After explaining this dilemma to his participants, Kohlberg would ask, “Should the husband have done that?”
He then continued with a series of additional questions that would help him understand why the child thought
Heinz was right or wrong to do what he did. After collecting his data, Kohlberg classified the responses into
stages of moral development.

Kohlberg interviewed 72 boys in suburban Chicago for his study. The boys were 10, 13, or 16 years old. Each
interview was approximately two hours long and Kohlberg presented each participant with 10 moral dilemmas
during that time.

Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development

Kohlberg’s research yielded three levels of moral development. Each level consisted of two stages, leading to
six stages in total. People pass through each stage sequentially with the thinking at the new stage replacing
the thinking at the previous stage. Not everyone reached the highest stages in Kohlberg's theory. In fact,
Kohlberg believed that many didn’t move past his third and fourth stages.

Level 1: Preconventional Morality

At the lowest level of moral development individuals haven’t yet internalized a sense of morality. Moral
standards are dictated by adults and the consequences of breaking the rules. Children nine years old and
younger tend to fall into this category.

 Stage 1: Punishment and Obedience Orientation. Children believe the rules are fixed and must be
obeyed to the letter. Morality is external to the self.
 Stage 2: Individualism and Exchange. Children begin to realize that the rules aren’t absolute.
Different people have different perspectives and therefore there isn’t just one correct point of view.
Level 2: Conventional Morality

A majority of adolescents and adults fall into the middle level of conventional morality. At this level, people start
to internalize moral standards but not necessarily to question them. These standards are based on the social
norms of the groups a person is part of.

 Stage 3: Good Interpersonal Relationships. Morality arises from living up to the standards of a given
group, such as one's family or community, and being a good group member.
 Stage 4: Maintaining the Social Order. The individual becomes more aware of the rules of society on
a broader scale. As a result, they become concerned with obeying laws and maintaining the social
order.

Level 3: Postconventional Morality

If individuals reach the highest level of moral development, they start to question if what they see around them
is good. In this case, morality stems from self-defined principles. Kohlberg suggested that only 10-15% of the
population was able to achieve this level because of the abstract reasoning it required.

 Stage 5: Social Contract and Individual Rights. Society should function as a social contract where
the goal of each individual is to improve society as a whole. In this context, morality and individual
rights like life and liberty may take precedence over specific laws.
 Stage 6: Universal Principles. People develop their own principles of morality even if they conflict with
society’s laws. These principles must be applied to every individual equally.

Critiques

Since Kohlberg initially proposed his theory, many criticisms have been leveled against it. One of the key
issues other scholars take with the theory centers on the sample used to create it. Kohlberg focused on boys in
a specific United States city. As a result, his theory has been accused of being biased towards men in Western
cultures. Western individualist cultures may have different moral philosophies than other cultures. For example,
individualist cultures emphasize personal rights and freedoms, while collectivist cultures emphasize what’s
best for the community as a whole. Kohlberg’s theory does not take these cultural differences into account.

In addition, critics like Carol Gilligan have maintained that Kohlberg’s theory conflates morality with an
understanding of rules and justice, while overlooking concerns such as compassion and care. Gilligan believed
the emphasis on impartially judging conflicts between competing parties overlooked the female perspective on
morality, which tended to be contextual and derived from an ethics of compassion and concern for other
people.

Kohlberg’s methods were also criticized. The dilemmas he used weren’t always applicable to children at the
age of 16 and under. For example, the Heinz dilemma presented above might not be relatable to children who
had never been married. Had Kohlberg focused on dilemmas more reflective of his subjects' lives, his results
may have been different. Also, Kohlberg never examined if moral reasoning actually reflected moral behavior.
Therefore, it’s not clear if his subjects’ actions fell in line with their ability to think morally.