Lawrence Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development
Lawrence Kohlberg conducted research on the moral development of children. He wanted to understand how they develop a sense of right or wrong and how justice is served. Kohlberg used surveys in which he included moral dilemmas where he asked the subjects to evaluate a moral conflict. Through his studies, Kohlberg observed that moral growth and development precedes through stages such as those of Piaget’s stages of cognitive development. He theorized that moral growth begins at the beginning of life and continues until the day one dies. He believed that people proceed through each stage of moral development consecutively without skipping or going back to a previous stage. The stages of thought processing, implying qualitatively different modes of thinking and of problem solving are included in the three levels of pre-conventional, conventional and post conventional development. (2)
At the pre-conventional level, behavior is motivated by anticipation of pleasure or pain. The child is aware of cultural rules and labels of good or bad and right or wrong. (1) The subject interprets the labels in terms of the physical consequence, such as punishment or reward. (3) The child has an extreme self-interest. The first level of moral thinking is generally found at the elementary school level, before the age of 9. This level is divided into the following two stages. (2)
The first stage is the punishment and obedience orientation. This is observed in children ages 1-5. The subject is in avoidance of physical punishment and deference to power. The child behaves according to the socially acceptable norms, due to the fear of punishment by an authority figure. (4) The physical consequences of an action determine its goodness or badness. “What is right is to avoid breaking rules, to obey for obedience’s sake, and to avoid doing physical damage to people and property.” An example of stage one is evident in the soldiers of the holocaust who were asked to simply “carry out orders” under the threat of being punished. This illustrates that adults, as well as children may possibly be functioning at stage one. (2) An individual at this stage doesn’t consider the thoughts or feelings of others, nor are they able to relate two points of view. As in Piaget’s framework, ego-centrism and the inability to consider the pe...
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... He hypothesized that moral difficulties motivated development through a group of flexible kinds of moral reasoning. From his own ideas of moral reasoning he developed a series of stages describing moral development. In 1973, while in Central America, Kohlberg developed a rare and unknown tropical disease. This disease ruined his health and brought about severe depression. On January 18, 1987 Kohlberg was reported missing. His body was later discovered in a swamp area where it is believed that he took his own life. (6)
Kohlberg’s theory of the stages of moral development has gained some popularity despite being controversial. The claim that the levels form a “ladder,” the bottom being the immature child with a pre-conventional level and the top being a post conventional ethical individual. The sequence is unvarying and the subject must begin at the bottom with aspirations to reach the top, possibly doing so. (7) Research confirms that individuals from different cultures actually progress according to Kohlbergs theory, at least to the conventional level. Kohlberg’s stages of moral development continue to provide a foundation for psychology studies of moral reasoning. (6)
The second stage children recognize that there is not just one right view that is handed down by the authorities. This comes to the ...
Lawrence Kohlberg is known for his Theory of Moral Development. The method that Kohlberg used was that of “moral dilemmas”. Kohlberg studied Piaget but developed his own theory. He would give individuals of different ages these dilemmas and survey their answers to see what the reasoning behind their answers were. An example of a dilemma is the “Heinz Dilemma”. In this dilemma there is a man whose wife is very sick and needs a certain type of medication. There is only one man who sells this drug in the area and he is charging more than the man can pay for. The husband of the wife decided to steal the drug in order to save his wife. At the end of this scenario, it asks if the husband should’ve stolen the medicine. This provides an example of how he went about creating these moral dilemmas. They are situations in which there are multiple answers and reasoning that could be provided. There was no “right” answer in the moral dilemma questions (as the answer to each question was solely based off of the individual’s opinion and moral reasoning). The reasoning that the individuals presented help develop levels of reasoning. These levels are also known as stages. In Kohlberg’s stages, sub stages are also included. The stages are: Preconventional, Conventional, and Postconventional. Each stages had two sub stages that helped determine what level of moral reasoning a person was at. In the preconvnetional stage the two sub stages are: Reward and punishment orientation and Naive reciprocity orientation. The preconventional stage begins at about age five and decreases with age. The sub stages in the conventional stage are: Good boy/girl Orientation and Authority and social order maintenance orientation. This stage increases ...
An informative speech, as the name suggest, provides an information to the audience. The purpose of the informative speech is to inform your audience on the topic that they might find relevant, or help them understand something that they find relevant, but need more information to understand it better.
Being a good public speaker is an important skill to have because it improves various areas of everyday life. Public speaking improves communication skills which as a result improves relationships with others. Listening and understanding what someone is saying makes it easier to respond to them in an appropriate way and having that form of effective communication makes people want to have more interactions in the future. One of the most important skills obtained from public speaking is that it improve confidence in one’s communicating skills and increases one’s ability to read people. Being able to read others and understand their emotions and nonverbal communication helps someone understand if their point is being received and responded to in a positive way.
Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Erik Erikson have all determined stages of development which explain how people act and think at different points in their lives. Piaget’s theory determines that there are four stages of cognitive development, consisting of the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operational stage, and the formal operational stage. Each of these has an approximate age range and set of characteristics that explain a person’s general cognitive ability at any given age. According to Kohlberg, preconventional morality, conventional morality, and postconventional morality are the three changes in moral reasoning that a person will experience throughout their lifetime. Erikson’s theory focuses on psychosocial
They are able of solving problems using reasoning and logic. They can organize facts and events in mature fashion and figure out possible moves and their outcomes. They can also deal with proportions and analogies and reflect on their own thinking. One of the major themes of development is moral development. The most influential research on development was done by Lawrence Kohlberg. It was influenced by Piaget’s cognitive developmental approach. Kohlberg divided Moral development into 6 stages. The first stage is called Preconventional level. During this stage individuals recognize labels of “good” and “bad”, right and wrong, but do not interpret these labels in terms of social standards. The next stage is called Conventional level. During this level individuals make moral judgments based on expectations, whether the expectations are coming from family or society. This level of morality is shown mainly by adolescents and adults. The next level is the post conventional level. During this stage individuals accept and stand by society’s rules and laws but tend to view them in terms of the underlying principles. Individuals may also follow personal ethical principles. This is where they take into account human rights or life and
For my self-assessment, I chose to discuss the Middle Childhood, Adolescence, and Young Adulthood life stages. The theories of human behavior that will be discussed are Erikson’s Psychosocial theory, Kohlberg’s theory of moral reasoning, and Albert Bandura’s social learning theory. I chose these life stages because they are the stages where I have experienced many events that have shaped me into the person I am today. There are a number of factors that have played a role in my development over a period of time and I will discuss them throughout my paper.
While this theory does explain my own development from the influence of the decisions made during my undergraduate studies, Stage 2 and Stage 5 allowed me to develop a better sense of myself and how my moral evolved. By applying my parents’ decision to my own goals and achievements, I learned from areas where it failed me before. I moved onward from the decisions created and identified my own aspects and beliefs from my parents’ morals. In return, I grew into a bigger aspect of myself and learned. As I reflect back on Kohlberg’s theory of moral development and my own personal cognitive development during my undergraduate years until today, I can say that there might be conflicting aspects that impacted my development and growth. In Stage 1, while it was easy for me to understand my parents’ decision, it failed to describe the conflicting decisions I had to make moving onward to Stage 2. While Stage 3 and Stage 5 were more easily acknowledged, I felt that the theory did not describe my development as a whole. There were certain parts of the theory that were accurate, Kohlberg’s theory allowed some room for error in being generalizable toward the student
The moral development of children can depend on many factors. Parenting and upbringing of the child, their environment, social environment, gender, and race are all aspects that can contribute to how a child develops their moral standards and expectations. Many psychologist have tried for several years to develop a theory to how morality is developed. One in particular is Lawrence Kohlberg (1958), his moral development theory is based on the cognitive development of children and it is thought that moral development proceeds and changes as cognitive development occurs (Arnett, 2012). Kohlberg’s moral development theory consist of 3 different levels each containing 2 stages altogether making 6 stages of moral development, as Kohlberg conducted
Making a successful public presentation or speech to an audience was a very big task for me before I joined the public speaking class. I was always frightened and very nervous. Since then I now understand the process of making a speech or a presentation including coming up with a topic and from this topic develop the main points of the speech, research, organize my points, revise them, edit and make a magnificent presentation to any audience. People in the audience might sometimes agree or disagree with my opinion or points, it was therefore necessary to communicate my information clearly to the audience without making any judgments since every person was entitled to a different opinion and views about things.
According to Kohlberg, individuals progress through a series of stages in the evolution of their sense of justice and in the kind of reasoning that they utilize to make moral judgments (Feldman, R., 2013, p. 426). His work modified and expanded from Jean Piaget’s previous work to form a theory of cognitive development that explained how pre-adolescent children develop moral reasoning (Cherry, K., 2014, October 12). Kohlberg’s theory of moral development focuses on children’s ability to distinguish right from wrong based on their perception. His theory claims that individuals progress through the levels morality in a fixed order and
Part One:The criticisms of Kohlberg's moral development stages seem to center around three major points, his research methods, the "regression" of stage four, and finally his goals.The first criticism that I would like to address is that of his research methods. Kohlberg is often criticized for not only his subject selection, but also the methods by which he tries to extricate data from those subjects. His initial study consisted of school boys from a private institution in Chicago. The problem with this is fairly obvious, that this does not represent a significant portion of the population to allow for generalized conclusions. In other words, how can we test some boys from Chicago and ascertain that this is how all people develop worldwide?I believe that the answer to this criticism comes from the theory that it relates to.
Practice is a major role that needs to be played when it comes to presenting. Practicing, I feel gives you more confidence in your speech, and more preparation than if you were to not practice. Rehearsing before the speech then presenting makes you seem like you actually know what you are talking about even if the only reason you know all these facts is because of study and practicing. Practicing through my speech really helps me with my presentation, if I practice enough, I feel very confident to where I wouldn’t need t a paper to look at notes during the speech. This concept is important for anything. Practicing will always help you with any future task.
In order to successfully deliver an oral presentation such as a speech, the speaker must follow certain procedures to ensure his message can be conveyed clearly. Vast amounts of research are essential in order to acquire the knowledge necessary to be able to speak about a topic comfortably and answer any questions the audience might have during the course of the presentation. After acquiring such knowledge about the topic of the presentation the speaker will feel more confident, confidence is key in delivering speeches and other oral presentations because it makes the speaker look more credible and trustworthy. Lastly, the speaker must be fluid and eloquent with his words, the speaker must be able to sound clear and crisp while delivering their
Kohlberg, L. (1984). The psychology of moral development: the nature and validity of moral stages. San Francisco: Harper & Row.