Kohlberg

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Kohlbergs Moral Development Theory
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• Harvard Center for Moral Education
• 20 years of using interviews to investigate the
  nature of moral thought, by classifying interview
  responses to a story. The interviewee answers a
  series of questions about the moral dilemma
• From these answers Kohlberg hypothesizes three
  level of moral development

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The Story of Heinz

• 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. 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."

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• Kohlberg used this moral dilemma to question
  various interviewees to determine their moral
  thought pattern. He would follow the story with,
  Should Heinz steal the drug?

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What he was looking for

• Kohlberg did not care about the yes or no answer
  about stealing the drug, but rather the
  explanation behind the answer

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• Kohlberg then broke down the answers and
  developed the three stages of moral development
• Preconvention
• Conventional
• Post conventional

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Preconventional Stage

• Level 1.Obedience and punishment orientation
• Children obey because adults tell them to obey.
  People base their moral decision on fear of
  punishment
• Level 2. Selfinterest orientation
• Individuals pursue their own interests and expect
  others to do the same what is right involves
  equal exchange

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Conventional Stage

• Level 3. Mutual interpersonal expectations and
  conformity
• Individuals value trust, caring, and loyalty to
  others as a basis for moral judgments-
• Want to live up to expectations

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• Level 4 Social system morality
• Moral judgments based on social law
• The importance of doing ones duty
• Maintaining the fabric of society

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Postconventional Stage

• Level 5.Social contract and Individual rights
• Individuals reason that values, rights and
  principles may transcend the law difference
  between moral and legal right
• Level 6.Universal ethical principles
• Individual principles of conscience and justice