Moral Development Psychology: The Nature and Verification of Moral Stages

Author: (American) Kohlberg / Guo Benyu et al
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: People's moral judgments are formed based on their individual understanding of morality and personalized interpretation of moral standards. According to the research of American moral psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, various moral judgments are situated within the overall structure of human moral development. He termed this stage-based, ordered, and rigorous structure the "Three Levels Six Stages of Moral Development." Kohlberg's moral cognitive development theory has become the basis for many countries and regions to develop, design school moral education programs, and compile moral education textbooks and guidelines for schools at all levels, exerting a profound influence on moral education in American schools. An in-depth introduction to this theory has now been translated into the book Psychology of Moral Development—The Nature and Validation of Moral Stages, published by East China Normal University Press.
As a moral psychologist, educator, and advocate, Kohlberg linked psychological research with philosophical perspectives. The entire research process followed the logical sequence of "Psychological Theory—Educational Practice—Philosophical Reflection," but his theoretical framework followed the sequence of "Philosophical Thinking—Psychological Theory—Educational Practice." The content of this book represents the part of his theoretical framework that focuses on the psychology of moral development. It records the results of 25 years of longitudinal research conducted by Kohlberg on participants in the United States, Turkey, and Israel, starting from his doctoral dissertation research on this theory in 1955. Through this research, he tested and refined his theory. In the book, he first compares the cognitive development research on moral judgment stages with behaviorist methods (starting with the work of Hartshorne and May), psychoanalytic methods, and (consistent with Durkheim's ideas) sociocultural methods. He clearly distinguishes the cognitive development paradigm from other methods such as socialization and social learning, extending the cognitive paradigm from moral stage development to imitation, identification, and gender role development.
The authors did not rest on the achievements of theoretical research but continued to conduct longitudinal experimental studies on participants, refining the initially proposed theory through reflective research methods. In the book, he provides new elaborations on the cognitive development theory of moralization, the essence and scoring methods of each of the six stages, and summarizes the current formulation of the theory, including the revised perspective on Stage 6, the moral judgment domains covered by the theory, the revised view of the relationship between moral philosophy and stage theory, and the concept of moral sub-stages or moral types. Moreover, since nearly 20 years ago, Kohlberg's stages of moral reasoning theory has been considered a major cognitive structure view of moral development. His work has also sparked extensive debate. Therefore, he reviews and responds to critiques of the stage theory from scholars such as Habermas, Simpson, Schweder, Sullivan, Gilligan, and Gibbs, who represent a wide range of social science issues and critical viewpoints.
The Three Levels Six Stages theory of moral development is the core of Kohlberg's entire moral cognitive development theory. Therefore, in the chapter "Moral Stages and Moralization," Kohlberg provides some corrective elaborations on the meaning of the stages he initially proposed, further refining his theory from a theoretical perspective. In this chapter, after explaining what moral development is and how it is assessed, Kohlberg continues to elaborate on the moralization theory that can explain moral development, comparing this theory with various views that attribute moral development to socialization or social learning. Kohlberg believes that the normative philosophical theory of moral development can develop through a "step-by-step spiral" between the revision of philosophical assumptions and empirical results. As they hypothesized in their research on moral judgment development, a behavior is considered moral only if it meets certain appropriate standards. But what is appropriate or "moral" behavior? This is the question debated by Socrates and his companions in Platonic dialogues, but like the time of Plato and Aristotle, it remains unanswered to this day. Therefore, before elaborating on his own philosophical theory, the author attempts to demonstrate the necessity of philosophical clarification by highlighting the confusion and contradictory results of classic psychological empirical research on moral behavior and moral character by Hartshorne and May (1928-1930). Here, the author points out the flaws in the behaviorist definition of moral behavior and argues that the question of what constitutes morally right or good behavior must be sought from moral philosophy.
A distinctive feature of the book is that the author describes the methods and results of the 25-year longitudinal experiments, focusing on three core questions raised by psychologists about Kohlberg's stages of justice judgment reasoning. The first question is whether the stages are truly sequential, holistic, and culturally universal moral judgment stages. The second question is whether the stages are truly linked to moral behavior and moral action. The third question is the issue of relativism, as the longitudinal data from Turkey and Israel suggest the universality of the stage sequence. Here, the author gives the "flesh of experience" to the "skeleton of theory" in the book, enhancing the scientific rigor of the entire theory. For example, regarding the meaning of moral judgment and the theory of moral judgment assessment, the longitudinal study of American male participants demonstrated the constancy of the order of the first five stages and the completeness of their structure, while also comparing Luengger's theory and methods of self-development measurement with the moral development measurement being studied.
Kohlberg's work sometimes sparks controversy, but his ideas have helped establish moral development as an important research area in psychology and have prompted the development of other academic ideas in the field. Psychology of Moral Development—The Nature and Validation of Moral Stages is a thought-provoking book for colleagues in China who are concerned about moral education and the development of psychology.