Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Kohlberg (Overall conclusions (There is a fixed developmental sequence in…
Kohlberg
Overall conclusions
There is a fixed developmental sequence in an individual's moral development, which supports Kohlberg's stage-pattern theory.
Each stage of moral development comes one at a time and always in the same order. An individual may stop at any given stage and at any age.
-
Middle-class and working class children move through the same sequence but middle-class children move faster and further.
This 6-stage theory of moral development is not significantly affected by widely ranging social, cultural or religious conditions. The only thing that is affected is the rate at which individuals progress through the sequence.
Cross cultural findings
Taiwanese boys aged 10-13 tended to give 'classic' level 1/Stage 2 responses. E.g. 'He should steal the food for his wife because if she dies he'll have to pay for her funeral and that costs a lot' and 'He should steal the food because he needs his wife to cook for him'.
In the US, by age 16, Stage-6 was rarely used. At age 13, the good-boy, middle stage (Stage 3) was not used. Mexico and Taiwan showed the same results except that development was a little slower.
At the age of 16, Stage-5 thinking was much more noticeable in the US than either Mexico or Taiwan
In the three different cultural groups, middle-class children were found to be more advanced in moral judgement than matched lower-class children. Middle-class children move faster and father through the stages, than working-class children.
No important differences were found in the development of moral thinking among Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Buddhists, Moslems or atheists .
-
-
Procedure
75 American boys were presented with hypothetical moral dilemmas in the form of short stories to solve. The stories were to determine each participant's stage of moral reasoning for 25 moral concepts/aspects. Each moral concept/aspect was scored according to the 6 stages in Kohlberg's theory.
For example: Moral aspect: the value of human life. This was tested by asking the participant:
Aged 10: "Is it better to save the life of one important person or a lot off unimportant people?"
Aged 13,16,20 and 24: "Should the doctor 'mercy kill' a fatally ill woman requesting death because of her pain?"
Their response was then classified as one of the six stages of moral development. They did this for 25 moral concepts.
Aims
Aimed to find evidence to support his theory of moral development. Specifically, to show how, as young adolescents develop into young manhood, they move through the distinct levels and stages of moral development.
That moral development matures from a selfish desire to avoid punishment (personal), to a concern for group functioning (societal), to a concern for the consistent application of universal ethical principles.
Research method
Kohlberg also studied moral development in other cultures using hypothetical moral dilemmas. This study therefore has a cross-cultural element.
Sample
Boys of other cultures including Great Britain, Canada, Taiwan, Mexico and Turkey
Procedure
Taiwanese boys, aged 10-13, were asked about a story involving theft of food: "A man's wife is starving to death but the store owner won't give the man any food unless he can pay, which he can't. Should he break in and steal some food? Why?"
Young boys in Great Britain, Canada, Mexico and Turkey were tested in a similar way.
Research method
This was a longitudinal study which followed the development of the same group of boys for 12 years by presenting them with hypothetical moral dilemmas.
Sample
75 American boys who were aged 10-16 at the start of the study were followed at 3 year intervals through to ages 22-28.
-
-
-