ETHICAL DECISION

MAKING & MORAL

DEVELOPMENT
 MODEL FOR ETHICAL DECISION MAKING

◦ 1. GATHER THE FACTS

◦ 2. DETERMINE THE ETHICAL ISSUES
◦ 3. WHAT ETHICAL PRINCIPLES HAVE A BEARING ON THE CASE
◦ 4. LIST THE ALTERNATIVES
◦ 5. COMPARE THE ALTERNATIVES WITH THE PRINCIPLES
◦ 6. WEIGH THE CONSEQUENCES
◦ 7. MAKE A DECISION
 LAWRENCE KOHLBERG’S STAGES OF MORAL
DEVELOPMENT.
◦ Lawrence Kohlberg, a professor of psychology in Harvard University is a prominent moral
development theorist, but his thinking grew out of Jean Piaget’s writing on children’s
intellectual development.
◦ Kohlberg presumes that there are six stages of moral development that people go through in
much the same way as infants learned first to role over, to sit, to crawl, to stand and finally to
walk. Kohlberg clearly emphasized the following system of his theory:
1.Everyone goes through each stage in the same order, but not everyone goes through all the
stages and
2.A person at one stage can understand the reasoning of any stage below him but cannot
understand more than one stage above.
PRE-CONVENTIONAL LEVEL; individuals do not yet speak as members of society, instead they
see morality as something external to themselves

Stage 1 Punishment and Obedience Stage 2 Individual And instrumental

exchange
CONVENTIONAL LEVEL; (it speaks on isolated individuals rather than as members of the
society. It sees individual exchanging favors, but there is still no identification with the values of the
family/community)

Stage 3 Mutual and interpersonal conformity Stage 4 Law And Order

POST-CONVENTIONAL LEVEL; it speaks on isolated individuals rather than as members of the
society. It sees individual exchanging favors, but there is still no identification with the values of the
family/community)
Stage 5 Social contract And Individual rights ◦ Stage 6 Universal ethical Principles