Moral development is the way an individual’s moral sense changes from infancy to adulthood. The way an individual reasons during childhood is not the same as when he is an adult. According to Piaget, one’s moral sense develops by the encounters faced with the environment. As a whole, each experience one has with the outside world will shape their moral development. Moral judgment is focused on the stages of growth an individual goes through before they reach their ultimate moral sense.
Piaget’s research portrays younger children (ten and younger) to be less morally developed because their judgment primarily focuses on the action. Conversely, older children (ten and above) base their judgments on the intention behind the action. The younger children will pay more attention to the bad thing that was done even though it may have been for a good cause. Moral judgment breaks down an individual’s thought process into various stages by evaluating the responses that were given. This paper will discuss Kohlberg’s levels of moral development and summarize the results from the interview and assess how useful the interview was for measuring morality.
Kohlberg used Piaget’s research as a starting point but saw that it was unfinished and continued to interview more children until he came up with six stages of reasoning. Kohlberg looked up to Piaget and his research but found that more could be added. Piaget only had two stages, one for children younger than ten and another for children above ten years old. Kohlberg reasoned that children continue to grow intellectually at least until the age of sixteen so that must mean they continue to grow morally as well. With this idea in mind, he studied even younger children and older children and discovered more stages that could describe older children’s level of reasoning. The first stage involves children respecting power and punishment. They see rules and laws as fixed and never changing.
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They believe if a rule is broken then punishment must follow. Stage two involves children being more considered with their own personal gain. They base their judgment off of what they will get out of the situation. Stage three leans toward helping others and doing what is right to be considered a good boy/girl. Stage four focuses on the greater good for society as a whole. The emphasis is on everyone doing his or her part so that society can function. Stage five builds on stage four’s idea of society functioning as a whole but also notes that if a law is unfair it should be changed by popular vote or democracy. Individuals in stage six live by a philosophy and treat everyone/everything equally. They will stand up for their values even if it is different from the norms of society. Overall, any individual can be placed in one of these six categories of moral judgment.
To test this idea, a willing individual was asked to answer various questions about two different moral situations. Her responses were then analyzed and put into one of the six stages. The interviewee is an eighteen-year-old female who attends the University of Texas at Austin and is on the pre-Pharmacy track. The first moral dilemma presented to her was about a father wanting to borrow money from his son. The father promised his son he could go to camp only if he was able to earn the money on his own. The son came up with the money but at the last minute his father said he needed the money to go on a fishing trip with his friends.
Questions for this scenario included: Should the son refuse to give his father the money? Is the fact that the father promised the most important thing in the situation? The second scenario is about a woman who has an untreatable form of cancer. She begs her doctor to give her enough morphine that would cause her to overdose and die. She is delirious with pain and wants to be put out of her misery. The questions for this dilemma asked if the doctor should give her the drug and if the woman had the right to make the final decision. It also asks even though it is illegal for the doctor to aid in her suicide, does it make it morally wrong? These two dilemmas pose two different situations to see the interviewee’s range in judgment.
Based on the responses from the interview, the participant seems to be in stage three. When asked what the most important thing a son should be concerned about in his relationship to his father, she said “being respectful” was very important. This response falls in the third level of reasoning in that she believes the son should be a good boy and respect his father. She said it was the most important thing because “it is his father”. This follows the stage one pattern of respect for power and figures of authority. Her responses for the second dilemma also proved to be in stage three. She believed that the doctor should give the woman the drug since she asked for it. She reasoned that “if she is able to make rational decisions in her calm states” then the final decision should be hers.
This fits stage three in that she wants the doctor to be a “good boy” and please others instead of himself. Overall, this interview does not seem to capture one’s true moral sense and how he or she reasons. Different situations will cause different levels of reasoning. Most people probably do not fall into one specific category, as well. For example, in one dilemma he or she might be in stage three but in a completely different situation he or she might be in level five. Kohlberg’s levels of reasoning can give a rough estimate of where an individual usually falls but overall it varies from situation to situation.
In conclusion, moral development describes how individuals progress in their moral judgment and reasoning, as they grow older and wiser. Kohlberg used Piaget’s research and further expanded on it to come up with six stages of moral reasoning. The interview conducted show that the participant was mainly in stage three. Although Kohlberg’s stages can be used to categorize one’s level of reasoning; it is useful to keep in mind that different circumstances will call for different levels of reasoning.
