Piaget's theory of moral development posited two stages - heteronomous morality and autonomous morality. Kohlberg later expanded on this, identifying six stages across three levels of moral reasoning: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. Both theorists studied children's responses to moral dilemmas to understand their moral understanding. However, their theories have been criticized for being too focused on moral justifications rather than judgments. Naorem Binita Devi proposes additional moral dilemmas to further study moral development from different perspectives.

1. MORALITY AS SOCIAL
UNDERSTANDING:
By Naorem Binita Devi,From
Kakching,uploaded on 5th
Nov.2012,www.slideshare.net

2. Introduction
 According to the cognitive-
developmental perspective, cognitive
maturity and social experience lead to
advances in moral understanding, from
a superficial orientation to physical
power and external consequences
toward a more profound appreciation of
interpersonal relationships, societal
institutions, and lawmaking systems
(Gibbs,1995,2003).

3. PIAGET’S THEORY OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT:
 Piaget’s (1932/1965) early work on
children’s moral judgments was the original
inspiration for the cognitive-developmental
perspective. To study children’s ideas
about morality, Piaget relied on open-
ended clinical interviews. He questions 5
to 13 year old Swiss children about their
understanding of rules in the game of
marbles. In addition, he gave children
stories in which characters’ intentions to
engage in right or wrong action and the
consequences of their behaviour varied
.(Henry and John).

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 Piaget identified two broad stages of moral
understanding:
 HETERONOMOUS MORALITY (ABOUT 5 TO 10
YEARS)
 AUTONOMOUS MORALITY, OR THE MORALITY
OF COOPERATION (ABOUT 10 YEARS AND
OLDER):
 Heteronomous means under the authority of
another. As the term, Heteronomous morality
suggests, children in this 1st stage view rules as
handed down by authorities (God,Parents, and
Teachers) as having a permanent existence, as
unchangeable, and as requiring strict obedience.

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 According to Piaget, two factors limit children’s
moral understanding:
 The power of adults to insist that children comply,
which promotes unquestioning respect for rules and
those who enforce them; and
 Cognitive immaturity, especially children’s limited
capacity to image other perspectives.
 Their moral understanding is characterized by
REALISM---that is children regard rules as
external features of reality rather than as
cooperative principles that can be modified at
will.

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 Autonomous morality, in which they no longer
view rules as fixed but see them as flexible,
socially agreed on principles that can be revised
to suit the will of the majority.
 Children start to use a standard of fairness called
“RECIPROCITY” in which they express the same
concern for the welfare of others as they do for
themselves. Piaget found that at first, children’s
grasp of reciprocity is a crude, “tit-for-tat
understanding: “you scratch my back and I’ll
scratch yours.” This defines the beginning of the
morality of cooperation. An advanced
understanding of reciprocity as mutually of

7. PROBLEMS WITH PIAGET’S
MORAL DEVELOPMENT
 Piaget presented subjects with
a pair of vignettes involving
protagonists whose actions
varied in both their intentions
and in the consequences they
brought and asked children
which protagonist was
naughtier. On such story pair

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 “John was in his room when his mother
called him to dinner. John goes down
and opens the door to the dinning room.
But behind the door was a chair, and on
the chair was a tray with 15 cups on it.
John did not know the cups were behind
the door. He opens the door, the door
hits the tray, bang go the 15 cups and
they all get broken.

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 In contrast,
 One day Henry’s mother was out,
Henry tried to get some cookies out
of the cupboard. He climbed up on
a chair, but the cookies jar was still
too high, and he couldn’t reach. But
while he was trying to get the
cookie jar, he knocked over a cup,
the cup fell down and broke.

10. KOHLBERG EXTENSION OF
PIAGET’S THEORY
 Kohlberg used a more open-ended approach: He
presented people with hypothetical moral
dilemmas and asked what the main actor should
do and why.
 In Kohlberg’s moral judgment Interview, individuals
resolve dilemmas that present conflicts between
two moral values and justify their decisions. The
best known of these is the Heinz dilemma, which
pits the value of obeying the law (not stealing)
against the value of human life (saving a dying
person).
 Moral maturity is determined by the “way an
individual reasons about the dilemma, not the
content of the response (whether or not to steal).

11. KOHLBERG’S STAGES OF MORAL
UNDERSTANDING:
 Kohlberg (1958) extended the age range Piaget
studied, including participants who were well into
adolescence by administering the moral judgment
interview to 10,13,and 16 years old boys.
 Kohlberg drew on characteristics that Piaget used to
describe his cognitive stage sequence:
 Kohlberg regarded his moral stages as invariant and
universal---a sequence of steps that people everywhere
move through in a fixed order.
 He viewed each new stage as building on reasoning of
the preceding stage, resulting in a more logically,
consistent and morally adequate concept of justice.
 Kohlberg saw each stage as an organized whole—a
qualitatively distinct structure of moral thought that a
person applies across a wide range of situations (Colby
and Kohlberg,1987).

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 Kohlberg believed that moral understanding is
promoted by the same factors that Piaget
considered important for cognitive development.
 Disequilibrium, or actively grappling with moral
issues and noticing weaknesses in one’s current
thinking
 Gains in perspective taking, which permit
individuals to resolve moral conflicts in increasingly
complex and effective way.

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 Kohlberg organized six stages into 3 general levels.
 THE PRECONVENTIONAL LEVEL
 THE CONVENTIONAL LEVEL
 THE PSOT CONVENTIONAL OR PRINCIPLED LEVEL
 At the preconventional level, morality is externally
controlled.
 At the conventional level, individuals continue to
regard conformity to social rules as important, but not
for reasons of self interest.
 At the post-conventional level, Individuals move
beyond unquestioning support for the rules and laws
of their own society. They define morality in terms of
abstract principles and values that apply to all
situations and societies.

14. THE PRECONVENTIONAL
LEVEL
 Stage: 1: The punishment and obedience orientation:
 Stage:2: The instrumental purpose orientation.
 The punishment and obedience orientation:
Children at this stage find it difficult to consider two
points of view in a moral dilemma. As a result, they
ignore people’s intentions and instead focus on fear of
authority and avoidance of punishment as reasons for
behaving morally.
 The instrumental purpose orientation: Children
become aware that people can have different
perspectives in a moral dilemma, but at first this
understanding is very concrete. They view right action
as flowing from self-interest. Reciprocity is understood
as equal exchange of favors: “you do this for me and
I’ll do that for you.”

15. THE CONVENTIONAL LEVEL
 Stage:3 : The “good boy---good girl” orientation, or the
morality of interpersonal cooperation;
 Stage:4: The social-order maintaining orientation
 The “good-boy and good-girl orientation or the
morality of interpersonal cooperation: The desire to
obey rules because they promote social harmony first
appears in the context of close personalities. Stage 3
individuals want to maintain the affection and approval of
friends and relatives by being a good-person—trustworthy,
loyal, respectful, helpful and nice.
 The social order maintaining orientation: At this stage,
the individual takes into account a larger perspective—that
of societal laws. Moral choices no longer depend on close
ties to others. Instead, rules must be enforced in the same
even-handed fashion for everyone, and each member of
society has a personal duty to upheld them.

16. THE POST CONVENTIONAL OR
PRINCIPLED LEVEL
 Stage:5: The social-contract orientation;
 Stage:6: The Universal ethical principle orientation.
 The social contract orientation: At stage 5,
individuals regard laws and rules as flexible
instruments for furthering human purposes.
 The universal ethical principle orientation: At this
stage, right action is defined by self-chosen ethical
principles of consciences that are valid for all
humanity, regardless of law and social agreement.
These values are abstract, not concrete moral values
.Stage 6 individuals typically mention such principles
as equal consideration of the claims of all human
beings and respect for the worth and dignity of each
person.

17. Problems with Kohlberg’s work
 Like Piaget, Kohlberg has attempted to demonstrate a
Universal progression of moral development by
reporting the results of moral dilemma research.
 However, unlike Piaget, Kohlberg has focused on the
moral justifications offered by his subjects rather than
on their moral judgments. Moral justifications mean
the expectations or rationale that a subject offers to
justify his or her moral judgment or moral conduct in a
given situation, usually elicited by the question, why?
(Author).
 In Kohlberg’s research, moral justifications have been
observed most often through a moral judgment scale,
which presents nine interdependent situations, each
presenting a moral dilemma. Situation 3 is the most
famous:

18. HEINZ DILEMMA
 “ In Europe, a woman was near to 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 5 times what it cost him to make the drug. He
paid $400 for the radium and charged $ 2,000 for a
small dose of the drug. The sick woman’s husband
Hienz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money,
but he could only get together about $1000, 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
latter. But the druggist said, “No, I discovered the drug
and I’m going to make money from it,so I eon’t let you
have it unless you give me $ 2,000 now.” so Heinz got
desperate and broke into the man’s store to steal the
drug for his wife.”
 Q: should Heinz have done that? Why?

19. Naorem Binita Devi’s Dilemma Observation for
research studies:
 Dilemma observation: 1
"In an academic atmosphere, an error (based on
wrong imitation learning) was done and some persons
may come under vulnerable condition. Assume that
there was one person and the person can able to ban
such wrong things. The person did not do due to
some factors he observed from the atmosphere. but
the external factors (other people) influenced him to
inform to court and suspend such wrong things and
defame the persons involved in such case. If he does,
others lose their career (they are very poor and bread
earner of the family). If he did not do, he had to
tolerate all the criticism coming towards him from the
external factors. so, he got desperate and kept quite
all the time. should he has done that? why or why
not?"---naorem binita devi (nbd).23.10.2012.( use
gender in opposite direction)

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 Dilemma observation:2
The Person got job in another place through official
way. The person received two phone calls, one call
was related to come back and to take the post (in
dilemma observation 1) because the person was fully
qualified for thepost. another call was related not to
come back again to the post otherwise others (those
who are very poor and bread earner in the dilemma
observation 1) will lose their job and could n't able to
get job. The person again think over, if the person left
the job that the person got in another place, what
would happen? The person kept quite and observe
the situation very carefully. should the person has to
act out? why or why not? naorem binita devi (NBD).

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 Dilemma Observation:3
 when an idea was set (could not share the idea
over here), a group of persons have to implement
such idea towards one person, so they set goals
in terms of giving rewards,projects, promotions,
appointment what they want; to get such things,
they started using beautiful strategies (negative
meaning) to implement the idea but till now they
couldnot do it...now the person realized their hard
work strategies to implement the idea n felt
empathy for them...
 should the person allow that they had
implemented the idea? Why and why
not?...assume any idea but have to give some

22. Thank you