Lawrence Kohlberg

1. Lawrence Kohlberg

2. About Lawrence Kohlberg
Born
(1927-10-25)25 October 1927
Bronxville, New York
Died
19 January 1987(1987-01-19) (aged 59)
Winthrop, Massachusetts
Suicide
Nationality American
Alma mater
University of Chicago (earned bachelor's
degree in one year)
Known for
Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral
development

3. Early Life
Lawrence Kohlberg was born in Bronxville, New York. He was the youngest of four children of
Alfred Kohlberg, a Jewish man, and of his second wife, Charlotte Albrecht, a Protestant woman. His
parents separated when he was four years old and divorced finally when he was fourteen. Kohlberg
attended high school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and then served in the
Merchant Marine at the end of World War II. He worked for a time with the Haganah on a ship
smuggling Jewish refugees from Romania through the British Blockade, into Palestine.] Captured
by the British and held at an internment camp on Cyprus, Kohlberg escaped with fellow crew
members and returned to the U.S., enrolling in the College at the University of Chicago. At this
time at Chicago it was possible to gain credit for courses by examination, and Kohlberg earned his
bachelor's degree in one year, 1948. He then began study for his doctoral degree in psychology,
which he completed at Chicago in 1958. In those early years he read Piaget's work. Kohlberg found
a scholarly approach that gave a central place to the individual's reasoning in moral decision
making. At the time this contrasted with the current psychological approaches to morality which
down-played an individual's deliberate struggle and that explained the development of morals.

4. Death
• While doing cross-cultural research in Belize in 1971, Kohlberg contracted
a parasitic infection. Due to this, he suffered from extreme abdominal
pain. The long-term effects of the infection and the medications took their
toll, and Kohlberg's health declined as he also engaged in increasingly
demanding professional work, including "Just Community" prison and
school moral education programs. Kohlberg sometimes experienced
depression as well.
• On January 19, 1987, Kohlberg parked at the end of a dead end street in
Winthrop, Massachusetts, across from Boston's Logan Airport. He left his
wallet with identification on the front seat of his unlocked car and walked
into the icy Boston Harbor. His car and wallet were found within a couple
of weeks, and his body was recovered some time later, with the late
winter thaw, in a tidal marsh across the harbor near the end of a Logan
Airport runway.
• After Kohlberg's body was recovered and his death confirmed, former
students and colleagues published special issues of scholarly journals to
commemorate his contribution to developmental

5. Career
Kohlberg's first academic appointment was at Yale University, as an assistant
professor of psychology, 1958-1961. In 1955 while beginning his dissertation, he
had married Lucille Stigberg, and the couple had two sons, David and Steven.
Kohlberg spent a year at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral
Sciences, in Palo Alto, California, 1961-1962, and then joined the Psychology
Department of the University of Chicago as assistant, then associate professor
of psychology and human development, 1962-1967. He held a visiting
appointment at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1967–68, and then
was appointed Professor of Education and Social Psychology there, beginning
1968, where he remained until his death.

7. Stages of Moral Development
In his 1958 dissertation, Kohlberg wrote what are now known as Kohlberg's stages of moral development. These stages are planes of moral
adequacy conceived to explain the development of moral reasoning. Created while studying psychology at the University of Chicago, the
theory was inspired by the work of Jean Piaget and a fascination with children's reactions to moral dilemmas. Kohlberg proposed a form of
“Socratic” moral education and reaffirmed John Dewey’s idea that development should be the aim of education. He also outlined how
educators can influence moral development without indoctrination and how public school can be engaged in moral education consistent with
the Constitution.
Kohlberg's approach begins with the assumption that humans are intrinsically motivated to explore, and become competent at functioning in,
their environments. In social development, this leads us to imitate role models we perceive as competent and to look to them for validation.
Thus our earliest childhood references on the rightness of our and others' actions are adult role models with whom we are in regular contact.
Kohlberg also held that there are common patterns of social life, observed in universally occurring social institutions, such as families, peer
groups, structures and procedures for clan or society decision-making, and cooperative work for mutual defense and sustenance. Endeavoring
to become competent participants in such institutions, humans in all cultures exhibit similar patterns of action and thought concerning the
relations of self, others, and social world. Furthermore, the more one is prompted to imagine how others experience things and imaginatively
to take their roles, the more quickly one learns to function well in cooperative human interactions. The sequence of stages of moral
development thus corresponds to a sequence of progressively more inclusive social circles (family, peers, community, etc.), within which
humans seek to operate competently. When those groups function well, oriented by reciprocity and mutual care and respect, growing
humans adapt to larger and larger circles of justice, care, and respect. Each stage of moral cognitive development is the realization in
conscious thought of the relations of justice, care, and respect exhibited in a wider circle of social relations, including narrower circles within
the wider.
Kohlberg's theory holds that moral reasoning, which is the basis for ethical behavior, has six identifiable developmental constructive stages -
each more adequate at responding to moral dilemmas than the last. Lawrence Kohlberg suggested that the higher stages of moral
development provide the person with greater capacities/abilities in terms of decision making and so these stages allow people to handle more
complex dilemmas.In studying these, Kohlberg followed the development of moral judgment that is far beyond the ages originally studied
earlier by Piaget,who also claimed that logic and morality develop through constructive stages. Expanding considerably upon this
groundwork, it was determined that the process of moral development was principally concerned with justice and that its development
continued throughout the life span, even spawning dialogue of philosophical implications of such research. His model "is based on the
assumption of co-operative social organization on the basis of justice and fairness."
• Kohlberg studied moral reasoning by presenting subjects with moral dilemmas. He would then categorize and classify the reasoning used in
the responses, into one of six distinct stages, grouped into three levels: pre-conventional, conventional and post-conventional. Each level
contains two stages. These stages heavily influenced others and have been utilized by others like James Rest in making the Defining Issues
Test in 1979.

8. Quotes
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.