Stages of Moral Development (notes)

by Lawrence Kohlberg (1971)

I. Preconventional Level

At this level, the child is responsive to cultural rules and labels of good and bad,
right or wrong, but he interprets the labels in terms of either the physical or
hedonistic consequences of action (punishment, reward, exchange of favors) or
the physical power of those who enunciate the rules and labels. The level is
divided into the following three stages:

Stage 0: Egocentric judgement.

The child makes judgements of good on the basis of what he likes and wants or
what helps him, and bad on the basis of what he does not like or what hurts him.
He has no concept of rules or of obligations to obey or conform independent of
his wish.

Stage 1: The punishment and obedience orientation.

The physical consequences of action determine its goodness or badness
regardless of the human meaning or value of these consequences. Avoidance of
punishment and unquestioning deference to power are values in their own right,
not in terms of respect for an underlying moral order supported by punishment
and authority (the latter is stage 4).

Stage 2: The instrumental relativist orientation.

Right action consists of what instrumentally satisfies one's own needs and
occasionally the needs of others. Human relations are viewed in terms such as
those of the market place. Elements of fairness, reciprocity, and equal sharing
are present, but they are always interpreted in a physical, pragmatic way.
Reciprocity is a matter of "you scratch my back and I'll scratch your", not loyalty,
gratitude, or justice.

II. Conventional Level

At this level, the individual perceives the maintenance of the expectations of his
family, group, or nation as valuable in its own right, regardless of immediate and
obvious consequences. The attitude is not only one of conformity to personal
expectations and social order, but of loyalty to it, of actively maintaining,
supporting, and justifying the order and identifying with the persons or group
involved in it. The level consists of the following two stages:

Stage 3: The interpersonal concordance or "good boy-nice girl" orientation.

Good behavior is what pleases or helps others and is approved by them. There is
much conformity to stereotypical images of what is majority or "natural" behavior.
Behavior is frequently judged by intention -- "he means well" becomes important
for the first time. One earns approval by being "nice".
Stage 4: The "law and order" orientation.
The individual is oriented toward authority, fixed rules, and the maintenance of
the social order. Right behavior consists in doing one's duty, showing respect for
authority, and maintaining the given social order for its own sake.

III. Post-Conventional, Autonomous, or Principled Level.

The individual makes a clear effort to define moral values and principles that
have validity and application apart from the authority of the groups of persons
holding them and apart from the individual's own identification with the group.
The level has the two following stages:

Stage 5: The social-contract legalistic orientation (generally with utilitarian

overtones).
Right action tends to be defined in terms of general individual rights and
standards that have been critically examined and agreed upon by the whole
society. There is a clear awareness of the relativism of personal values and
opinions and a corresponding emphasis upon procedural rules for reaching
consensus. Aside from what is constitutionally and democratically agreed upon,
right action is a matter of personal values and opinions. The result is an
emphasis upon the "legal point of view", but with an additional emphasis upon
the possibility of changing the law in terms of rational considerations of social
utility (rather than freezing it in terms of stage 4 "law and order"). Outside the
legal realm, free agreement, and contract, is the binding element of obligation.
The "official" morality of the American government and Constitution is at this
stage.

Stage 6: The universal ethical-principle orientation.

Right is defined by the decision of conscience in accord with self-chosen ethical

principles that appeal to logical comprehensiveness, universality, and
consistency. These principles are abstract and ethical (the Golden Rule, the
categorical imperative); they are not concrete moral rules like the Ten
Commandments. At heart, these are universal principles of justice, of the
reciprocity and equality of the human rights, and of respect for the dignity of
human beings as individual persons.

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Notes and Caution

This quotation is taken from the table in "the Proceedings of the Conference on
Psychology and the Process of Schooling in the Next Decade: Alternative
Conceptions", Editor Maynard C. Reynolds. Kohlberg's contribution was entitled
"The concepts of Developmental Psychology as the Central Guide to Education:
Examples from Cognitive, Moral, and Psychological Education." The document is
further marked "A publication of the Leadership Training Institute/Special
education, sponsored by the Bureau of Educational Personnel Development,
U.S. Office of Education". Unfortunately, the reprint copy I have is not dated. The
latest reference in it is 1971, but one sentence in the paper gives 1972 as the
date of the same reference, which I think it possibly an error. I attributed 1971 as
the year for the levels in the form quoted here.

I obtained my copy of the reprint from "The Center for Moral Education" at
Harvard University many years ago. That organization is no longer listed as part
of Harvard's organization, and email inquiries have gone unanswered.

As I look at other reprints, I find a 1973 Journal of Philosophy article which does
not include the Stage 0. Another article in 1975 also does not have the Stage 0 in
it.

Kohlberg contrasts Stage 0 with other theories in a couple of other tables in the
article, so he may have made a "custom alteration" to the theory for the purpose
of this particular set of comparisons.

In table 3, Kohlberg's Stage 0 is ranked with Piaget's Symbolic, intuitive thought.

In table 4, his Stage 0 is ranked with Peck & Havighurst (1960) amoral, C.
Sullivan, Grant & Sulivan (1961) presocial, Harvey Hunt & Schroeder (1961)
Sub-1, Sovinger (1966) presocial, and Vanden Daele (1968) excitation oriented.

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One of the most influential critiques of the Kohlberg theory is to be found in Carol
Gilligan’s In a Different Voice (1982). Gilligan argues that Kohlberg’s rule-oriented
conception of morality has an orientation toward justice, which she associates
with stereotypically male thinking, whereas women and girls are perhaps more
likely to approach moral dilemmas with a "care" orientation. One important issue
in moral theory that the Kohlberg-Gilligan debate raises is that of the role and
importance of moral feelings in the moral life. The Philosophy of Childhood,
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Notes on In a Different Voice by Carol Gilligan by Allen Cypher

Chuck Huff's course introduction to In a Different Voice by Carol Gilligan

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Caution
by Charles Kramer

Level I: Pre-conventional methods: The use of the words "the child is responsive"
is so general that the reader may wonder whether the author has and provides
evidence that "every" child is responsive. Does he assume that all age groups
are concerned, that children of all cultures have been assessed and that a
significant number of children have been observed interpreting labels in terms as
indicated. If so, how many children, Boys and Girls, Caucasian or from all ethnic
groups and/or of different IQ, spoken or written language performance levels,
and where have indeed been observed so as to authorize the generalizations
stated about the abstract "pre-conventional" level and stages?

Stage 0, 1 and 2: Egocentric judgment, punishment and obedience orientation,

instrumental relativist orientation:

Is this verified for a given percentage of various samples of children (How, when,
where, by whom) or is this valid for a very large "parent population" including
representative samples of children, mixing origin, years of schooling, personal
status (orphan, one-parent family, only child and children with brothers and
sisters, in the US, Australia, Africa, Japan , China, etc.), health condition, physical
and/or mental skills development etc.? When was the data collected, how, by
whom, using which