Chapter Six: Moral Development Theory (Kolberg)

A major task beginning in childhood and continuing into adolescence is discerning right from wrong. Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1927–1987) extended upon the foundation that Piaget built regarding cognitive development. Kohlberg believed that moral development, like cognitive development, follows a series of stages. To develop this theory, Kohlberg posed moral dilemmas to youn males ages 10-16, and then he analyzed their answers to find evidence of their particular stage of moral development. Before reading about the stages, take a minute to consider how you would answer one of Kohlberg’s best-known moral dilemmas, commonly known as the Heinz dilemma:

In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman’s husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000, which is 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. Should the husband have done that? (Kohlberg, 1969, p. 379)

How would you answer this dilemma? What explanation would you give to justify your thinking?

Kohlberg was not interested in his subjects’ answers; instead, he was interested in the reasoning behind their answers. After presenting his subjects with this and various other moral dilemmas, Kohlberg reviewed their responses and placed them into three different levels of moral reasoning: Level 1: Pre-conventional, Level 2: Conventional, and Level 3: Post-conventional. Subsequently he subdivided  each level  into two different stages, for six total stages. (See figure 1). Each stage builds on the prior stage sequentially.

According to Kohlberg, an individual progresses from the capacity for pre-conventional morality (before age 9) to the capacity for conventional morality (early adolescence), and toward attaining post-conventional morality (once formal operational thought is attained), which only a few fully achieve. Kohlberg placed in the highest stage responses that reflected the reasoning that Heinz should steal the drug because his wife’s life is more important than the pharmacist making money. The fundamental value of a human life overrides the pharmacist’s greed.

Criticisms of Kohlberg’s Moral Development Theory

Many psychologists agree with Kohlberg’s theory of moral development but point out that moral reasoning differs greatly from moral behavior. Sometimes, what we say we would do in a situation is not what we actually do in that situation. In other words, we might “talk the talk” but not “walk the walk.”  Also, It is essential to realize that even people with the most sophisticated, post-conventional reasons for some choices may make other choices for the simplest of pre-conventional reasons.

How does this theory apply to males and females? Kohlberg (1969) felt that more males than females move past stage four in their moral development. He went on to note that women seem to be deficient in their moral reasoning abilities. These ideas were not well received by Carol Gilligan, a research assistant of Kohlberg, who consequently developed her own ideas of moral development. In her groundbreaking book, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, Gilligan (1982) criticized her former mentor’s theory because it was based only on the male perspective. She argued that women are not deficient in their moral reasoning—she proposed that males and females reason differently. Girls and women focus more on staying connected and the importance of interpersonal relationships. She proposed that females demonstrate their moral development through an ethic of care rather than through the lens of human rights and social justice. Therefore, in the Heinz dilemma, many girls and women respond that Heinz should not steal the medicine. Their reasoning is that if he steals the medicine, is arrested, and is put in jail, then he and his wife will be separated, and she could die while he is still in prison.

This chapter was remixed from Spielman, R.M., Jenkins, W.J., & Lovett, M.D. (2020). Psychology 2e. OpenStax. Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/pages/9-2-lifespan-theories