Lawrence  
    Kohlberg, 
      1927-87

A SUMMARY OF KOHLBERG’S STAGES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT
        with revisions in the light of subsequent studies

Question to consider:  Many people share a belief in certain universal human rights such as freedom from torture or slavery, freedom of conscience or religion or speech, and so on.  Which of the following 5 stages (or 6, if we inlcude 4.5) would probably believe in such universal rights?

[Note: Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-87) investigated moral reasoning, how people think about right and wrong. But people often do not act in conformity with what they think. E.g., people sometimes subvert what they intellectually believe to be true justice, in order to protect friends or family.]

PRE-CONVENTIONAL ["taboo" style morality]

1.  No consciousness of standards. Just desires to do what feels pleasurable or enjoyable. Follow inclinations; seek pleasure and avoid pain or frustration.

2.  In the search for self-gratification, a consciousness that others have desires also, and that interactions among people should be ‘fair.’ Called "scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours" approach.  In adults this can appear as "enlightened self-interest."

3.  It becomes highly desirable to be accepted by the significant others that form one’s reference group. That includes one’s peers, especially the slightly older ones and of one’s own gender; it also includes the general patterns of society (to which you want your parents/family to conform).

4.  A belief that there are some ‘objective’ norms that, ideally speaking, all people ought to follow regardless of what their society tells them. This might just be a reasonable set of "law and order" principles that every society needs; or it could be a full theory of natural laws and rights and obligations.

4.5 The search for the objective or natural moral laws can sometimes end in disappointment. Perhaps no law seems valid in all situations. This can result in a thorough disillusionment with moral theories and a return to a stage 2 position, now justified by self-conscious reflection on the uselessness of striving for a higher moral perspective.

5.  Failure to find ‘objectively’ valid moral norms may be followed not by disillusionment but by a sense that there are some basic values to which it is well worth making a commitment, so much so that a person would seek to get everyone to commit to these values also. Kohlberg often referred to these basic values with words like "equality," and "justice," But a reading of the interviews that Kohlberg based his conclusions on shows that people also spoke of compassion and caring as basic values.

A quick summary of some criticisms of Kohlberg’s theory, with a few responding notes:

Most of his interviews were with boys. His conclusions do not represent how girls think. (Comment: true enough. Fortunately, others extended his work to cover both genders.)

Girls and women end up looking ‘retarded’ in their development by Kohlberg’s scales. (Comment: apparently no study really says this. Girls do the same as boys, though with more emphasis on compassion and caring.)

Kohlberg focused on justice and ignored compassion as basic values worth tracking through developmental stages. (Comment: true, and this is a problem with how stage 5 is described by K.)

Kohlberg re-calibrated his ratings to fit some anomalies, showing he would fiddle with the figures until they said what he wanted. (Comment: there is some truth to this, but the anomalies were evidence, and he tried to follow the evidence. Moreover, James Rest’s "Defining Interest Test" is an objective instrument, used extensively and tested well for reliability and face validity, which upholds Kohlberg’s revisions – and includes a "caring" standard also.)

Mike Barnes. March 30, 2000