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Moraldevelopment 150306115640 Conversion Gate01
Moraldevelopment 150306115640 Conversion Gate01
DEVELOPMENT
LAWRENCE KOHLBERG
LAWRENCE KOHLBERG
- (born on October 25, 1927 —
died on January 17, 1987)
- American psychologist and
educator known for his theory
of moral development.
- A psychologist who portrayed
on education, anthropology, and
philosophy, to inform his work
on the development of moral
judgment and on moral
behavior.
WHAT IS MORAL DEVELOPMENT?
• Moral Development
is an aspect of a person’s overall
development that follows over the
course of a lifetime.
• Moral Development is growth and, like
all growth, it takes place according to a
pre-determined sequence.
KOHLBERG'S THEORY OF
MORAL DEVELOPMENT
• This theory is a stage theory. In other words,
everyone goes through the stages sequentially
without skipping any stage.
• Assessed moral reasoning by posing hypothetical
moral dilemmas and examining the reasoning
behind people’s answers.
• Proposed three distinct of moral reasoning: Pre-
conventional, Conventional, and Post-
conventional.
HOW DID KOHLBERG COME UP WITH
THE THEORY OF MORAL
DEVELOPMENT?
• All his ideas started from the research he performed with
very young children as his subjects. He found out that
children are faced with different moral issues, and their
judgments on whether they are to act positively or
negatively over each dilemma are heavily influenced by
several factors. In each scenario that Kohlberg related to
the children, he was not really asking whether or not the
person in the situation is morally right or wrong, but he
wanted to find out the reasons why these children think
that the character is morally right or not.
• For purposes of illustration, Kohlberg uses the Heinz
Dilemma.
The Heinz Dilemma:
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 pharmacist in the same town
had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make,
but the pharmacist was charging ten times what the drug cost
him to produce. 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 pharmacist that his wife was
dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later.
But the pharmacist 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.
SIX STAGES OF MORAL
DEVELOPMENT
Level 1: Pre-Conventional Moral Development
Stage 1 Punishment-Obedience Orientation
Stage 2 Instrumental Relativist Orientation
Level 2: Conventional Moral Development
Stage 3 Good boy-Good girl Orientation
Stage 4 Law and Order Orientation
Level 3: Post-Conventional Moral Development
Stage 5 Social-Contract Legalistic Orientation
Stage 6 Universal Ethical Principle Orientation
LEVEL 1: PRE-CONVENTIONAL
MORALITY [BIRTH-ADOLESCENCE]
- Young children do not really understand the conventions or
rules of a society.
Stage 1 - Punishment-Obedience Orientation