Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Understanding

Kohlberg and Piaget

Moral understanding is promoted by...

1. actively grappling with moral issues and noticing weaknesses in one's current reasoning.
2. gains in perspective taking, which permit individuals to resolve moral conflicts in more effective ways.

Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Understanding

• Morality is externally controlled.  
• Children accept the rules of authority figures.
• Judge actions by their consequences.
• Behaviors resulting in punishment viewed as bad.
• Behaviors leading to rewards viewed as good.

Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Understanding

Stage 1:

The Punishment and Obedience Orientation

• Difficult to consider two POVs in moral dilemma.
• Overlook people's intentions.
• Focus on fear of authority/avoidance of punishment.

Prostealing: "You'll be blamed for letting X happen."

Antistealing: "You shouldn't because you'll be caught."

• Aware that people can have different perspectives in moral dilemma, but at first this understanding is concrete.
• View "right" action as flowing from self-interest and understand reciprocity as equal exchange of favors.

Prostealing: "It's his life he's risking."

Antistealing: "he's running more risk than it's worth."

• Individuals come to regard conformity to social rules as important, but not for reasons of self-interest.
• Believe that actively maintaining the current social system ensures positive relationships and social order.

• Desire to obey rules first appears in context of close personal ties.
• Want to maintain affection/approval of friends/relatives by being "good person."
• Ideal Reciprocity - express same concern for welfare of others as for selves ("do unto others...").

Prostealing: "No one will think you're bad for stealing, but family will think you're inhuman if you let your wife die."

Antistealing: "Everyone will think you're a criminal, you'll feel bad for bringing dishonor on your family and yourself."

• Individual takes into account the larger perspective (societal laws).
• Moral choices no longer dependent on close ties, but must be enforced in the same evenhanded fashion for everyone and each member has personal duty to uphold them.
• Believes that laws should never be disobeyed--they are vital to ensuring societal order/cooperative relations between individuals.

Prostealing: "Heinz has duty to protect his wife, but it's wrong to steal, so he will have to assume the consequences later."

Antistealing: "Even if his wife is dying, it's still Heinz's duty to uphold the law."

• Move beyond unquestioning support for own society's rules/laws.
• Define morality in terms of abstract principles/values that apply to all situations and societies.

• Highest stage.  Right action is defined by self-chosen ethical principles of conscience that are valid for all people, regardless of the law and social agreement.
• Values are abstract, not concrete moral rules like the Ten Commandments.
• Typically mention principles as respect for the worth and dignity of each person.

Prostealing: "It doesn't make sense to put respect for property above respect for life itself."

• Most individuals move through the first four stages in the predicted order.
• Few people move beyond Stage 4
• Postconventional morality so rare that no clear evidence exists that Stage 6 actually follows Stage 5.

Maturation controlled by sex hormones

• androgens (male), estrogens (female), present in both, but in differing amounts.
• Overall body growth
• Maturation of sexual characteristics

• Primary sexual characteristics: reproductive organs
• Secondary sexual characteristics: visible on the outside of body, serve as additional signs of sexual maturity.
• Menarche/Spermarche

• Heredity
• Nurtrition/Exercise
• Region/SES/Ethnicity (Physical health)
• Secular Trend (generational change)

• revisions in sleep regulations
• go to bed later, but need just as much (9 hrs)
• sleep needs not satisfied
• sleep "phase" delay

Reactions

• Prior knowledge
• Support from family members
• Shock/disturbance vs. social support
• Initiation ceremonies - culturally valued time

Late-Maturing Girls and Boys more favorable

Early-Maturing Boys also favorable, but...

• slightly more psychological stress and problem behaviors

Body Image - conception of and attitude towards their physical appearance

Piaget

The Formal Operational Stage

• Around age 11
• Develop capacity for abstract, systematic, scientific thinking

Piaget

Hypothetico-Deductive Reasoning

• Start with hypothesis (possibility), deduce logical, testable inferences (reality)
• Pendulum problem*--only string length makes a difference in the speed of the arc.

Piaget

Propositional Thought

Consequences of Adolescent Cognitive Changes

Imaginary Audience

Erikson

Identity

-Major personality achievement of adolescence.  

-Crucial step towards becoming a productive, content, adult.

-Constructing an identity involves defining who you are, what you value, and the directions you choose to pursue in life.

Erikson

Identity vs. Role Confusion

Marcia

Identity Achievement

-Increased gender stereotyping of attitudes  and behavior and movement toward a more traditional gender identity.

-Biological, social, and cognitive factors.

-Changes in appearance, gender-linked thoughts about self.

-Gender-typed pressures from others