MORAL DEVELOPMENT

• MORALITY AND MORAL DEVELOPMENT

• THREE FACTORS OF MORALITY
• THEORIES OF MORALITY
• PIAGETS’ AND KOHLBERG’S THEORIES OF MORAL
DEVELOPMENT
OBJECTIVE
S
At the end of the lecture, you will be able to:
i. Define moral development
ii. Identify factors of morality
iii. Identify theories of morality
iv. Analyze stages of Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s moral development.
 WHAT IS
MORALITY/MORAL?
Literature shows that morality/moral includes:
• Understanding and belief about wrong and right, good and bad.
• Rules and conventions about what people should live including how to
behave, communicate, interact with others and avoiding harming others.
• Desirable attitudes and behaviors that make people’s life with others
easier.

• Moral development the change people’s thinking and understanding about

right and wrong that make them to change how they do and feel in moral
situation.
 FACTORS OF MORALITY
1. COGNITIVE
•Understanding, reasoning, judging
•Do you know what is right and what is wrong?

2. AFFECTIVE
•Feelings, approval, satisfaction and appreciation
•If somebody does something good or bad, do you approve
it?
3. BEHAVIORAL
• Actual behavior, what a person does.
• Is the behavior moral or immoral?
 THEORIES OF MORALITY
PSYCHOANALYTIC
•Unconscious internalization of morals through rearing practices,.
•Parents influence moral codes and standards.

BEHAVIORAL
•Moral codes, values and standards are learned through conditioning.
• Doing good is rewarded and doing bad is punished.

SOCIAL LEARNING
People learn moral codes and standards through observation, imitation,
modeling and reinforcement.
COGNITIVE
Moral codes, values and standards are learned through reasoning,
judging and interpreting moral behavior
 PIAGET’S STAGES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT
• Amoral AMORAL (before 4 years old)
• Heterenomous •No awareness of rules
• Autonomous •Unable to give moral judgment
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HETERENOMOUS (4-7 years)

•Rules from authority (parents, teachers, God) which can not be questioned
or challenged.
•They are fixed and obligatory.
•Breaking rules deserves penalty (immanent justice).
•Children are moral realists; consider damage caused, not intention.
 AUTONOMOUS (10 years onwards)
•Rules are not fixed or absolute, can be questioned, challenged and
changed depending upon the wish of the people and circumstances.
•Consider both intention and consequences.
•Rules are created by people for regulating behavior.
 Kohlberg (1927–1987
American Psychologist
He builds his theory on Piaget’s theory.
• His theory is based on analysis of moral
dilemma administered to people of
different ages.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________

ASSUMPTIONS
• Development of logic, intelligence and reasoning is important in moral
development.
• Advanced moral reasoning depends on advanced logical reasoning.
• Moral development is associated with social perception (understanding
people’s feeling, thoughts and their roles).
 MORAL DILEMMA
• A woman had a special kind of cancer. There was one drug recently
discovered that might save her and was expensive to make but the
druggist was charging ten times of the expenses. The sick man’s
husband tried to borrow money from many people but failed to get
the required money even half of the price. He asked the druggist to
sell it cheaper in order to save his wife but refused and answered, ‘I
have discovered the drug and I’m going to make money from it’. So
the husband broke into the store and steal the drug for his wife.
Taken from Kohlberg 1969 in Santrock, J; 1995:p334.
 Questions about the Moral Dilemma
• Should the husband have stolen the drug?
• Was stealing it right or wrong? Why?
• Is it the husband’s duty to steal the drug for his wife if he can not get it by other
means?
• Would a good husband steal?
• Would a good husband let his wife die when drug is known?
• Did the druggist have the right to charge that much when there was no law
setting a limit on the price? Why or why not? (Santrock;1995: 334).
 Kohlberg’s conception of Moral Development
• Kohlberg analyzed the answers from which he developed three levels of moral
development;
Level I: Pre-conventional level,
Level II: Conventional level and
Level III: Post-conventional level.
Two stages at each level.
• The second stage is more advanced and organized form of each major level.
Conventional: conforming to the rules, expectations and conventions of
society or authority.
LEVEL I: Pre-conventional:
• most children under nine;
• some adolescents; and
• criminals.
• Rules and social expectations are external to the self;
More egocentric answers, focus on oneself. Possible answers:
 If I steal I may be caught and punished
 People will see me a bad boy/girl
 LEVEL I: PRE-CONVENTIONAL

Stage 1: Stage 2:
• Awareness of social control in • Doing good for meeting immediate
enforcing rules. satisfaction, interest and needs.
• Children do good for; • Right is what is fair, an equal
• avoiding punishment, exchange, a deal and an agreement.
• fear of breaking the rule, • Mutual interpersonal expectations,
• avoiding physical damage to relationships and conformity.
persons and property.
LEVEL II: CONVENTIONAL: (most adolescents and adults)

Stage 3: Stage 4
• Good boy and good girl, law and order • Intention judges behavior
mentality. • People support society’s standards of
• The rules and expectations of conduct and authority in maintaining
others/authority has been internalized. social order.
• Loyalty and trustworthiness. • Breaking the rules is a sin.
• Doing good for approval, respect and • Any one breaking the rules deserves
mutual relationships. punishment.
Stage 5 Stage 6
• Social contract or utility, individual • People judge by universal
rights and a sense of obligation to laws. principles rather than by
• Understanding and accepting the conventions, e.g. equality, human
society’s rules and values based on the rights, respect.
general moral principles. • People reason out why something
• Questioning and redefining rules and is wrong or right.
conventions for individual and social • Self-chosen ethical principles
justifications.
• Commitment to the standard and moral
principles of a good or just society.
References
Elliot, S et al (2000): Educational Psychology: Effective Teaching, Effective Learning.
Boston: McGraw Hill,.
• Kohlberg, L ‘Moral Stages and Moralization: The Cognitive- Developmental Approach’ in
Diessner, R. 1997: Sources: Notable Selections in Human Development pp 25-34). New
York: Dushkin.
• Papalia, D et al (2001):Human Development (eighth edition). Boston: McGraw Hill
• Santrock, J (1999): Psychology; The Science of Mind and Behavior. Dubuque: WCB.
Brown & Benchmark.
• Woolfolk, A (2004): Educational Psychology (9th edition). Boston: Pearson.