Transcript Moral Development

Moral Development
Lawrence Kohlberg
Warm Up
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What would you do in the following situation:
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.
He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose
of the drug. 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." So Heinz got desperate and
broke into the man's store to steal the drug-for his wife. Should
the husband have done that? (Kohlberg, 1963, p. 19)
Introduction
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Harvard Professor
1970’s Research
Moral Development:
 3 Levels of
ethical thinking
 Broken down into
six stages with
two stages at each
level
Pre-Conventional Stage 1
Obedience & Punishment Orientation
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Childhood
Obey authority
without question
Fear Punishment
“It’s bad to
steal”
Pre-Conventional Stage 2
Individualism & Exchange
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Believe that people
have different
viewpoints
Pursue individual
interests
“Everything is
relative” “Do what
you want”
Conventional Stage 3
Good Interpersonal Relationships
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Seeking the
approval of others
Community based
expectations
“Steal for the love
of your wife” &
“Don’t be selfish”
Conventional Stage 4
Maintaining Social Order
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Abiding by the law
and respecting
authority
Concerned with the
individual’s society
as a whole
“We cannot condone
theft because what if
everyone started
stealing?”
Post- Conventional Stage 5
Social Contract & Individual Rights
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A smooth functioning society is
not always a just society
Social Mutuality:
 Care for the welfare of
others
Unjust laws may be changed
democratically
“Life transcends property in
any society”
Post- Conventional Stage 6
Universal Principles
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Very rare to achieve level
Equal respect for all
Civil Disobedience
A commitment to justice
requires us to disobey
unjust laws
“Consistently see yourself
through someone else’s
eyes”
Movement Through Stages
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Move through
stages 1 at a time
Can only
comprehend 1
stage above
present stage
Social interaction
promotes
movement
WWKD (What would Kohlberg do?)
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Use the information from this lecture to
analyze the hypothetical situations from
your worksheet
What level would your decision be for each
situation (according to Kohlberg)?