Psychology of Moral Development: The Nature and Verification of Moral Stages

Author: Kohlberg
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 refers to this stage-based, ordered, and rigorous structure as 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 school moral education in the United States. 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 system followed the sequence of "philosophical thinking—psychological theory—educational practice." The content of this book represents the part of his theoretical system on moral cognitive development psychology. It records the 25 years of longitudinal research Kohlberg conducted on participants in the United States, Turkey, and Israel, starting from his doctoral dissertation research in 1955, to test and refine 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 cultural sociological methods (consistent with Durkheim's ideas), clearly distinguishing the cognitive development paradigm from other methods such as socialization and social learning. He extended the cognitive paradigm from moral stage development to imitation, identification, and gender role development.
The author did not rest on the achievements of theoretical research but continued to conduct longitudinal experimental studies on participants, starting with reflective research methods to refine the initially proposed theory. In the book, he presents 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 view of Stage 6, the moral judgment domains covered by the theory, the revised perspective on the relationship between moral philosophy and stage theory, and the concept of moral sub-stages or moral types. Moreover, since nearly two decades, 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 provides a review and response to criticisms 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-level, six-stage theory of moral development is the core of Kohlberg's entire moral cognitive development theory. Therefore, in the chapter "Moral Stages and Moralization," Kohlberg offers 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 and compares 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 the 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 through moral philosophy.
A distinctive feature of the book is that the author describes the methods and results of the 25-year longitudinal experimental studies, 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 have a genuine connection with moral behavior and moral action. The third question is about relativity, specifically whether the stage sequence is universally applicable, as indicated by the longitudinal data from Turkey and Israel. Here, the author gives the "flesh of experience" to the "bone 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, through longitudinal studies of male participants in the United States, the invariance of the order of the first five stages and the completeness of their structure have been demonstrated, while also comparing the theory and methods of self-development measurement by Luytenberg with those used in the moral development research.
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 thoughts 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.