Story of Psychology - Morton Hunt [254]
Kohlberg’s original sample consisted of a cross-section of seventy-two Chicago-area males aged ten, thirteen, and sixteen, whom he tested every two to five years for the next three decades. After the initial testing, the differences in the answers given by the three age groups suggested to Kohlberg that the moral sense develops in distinct stages. Later, when his subjects were all older, he found them advancing through those stages much as he had expected them to. Here, in abbreviated form, and with a simplification of some of Kohlberg’s difficult wording, are the stages of the theory and typical responses at each stage both in favor of and against Heinz’s stealing the drug:
—Stage 1: Naïve moral realism; action is based on rules, motivation is the avoidance of punishment.
PRO: If you let your wife die, you will get in trouble.
CON: You shouldn’t steal the drug because you’ll be caught and sent to jail.
—Stage 2: Pragmatic morality; action is based on desire to maximize reward or benefit, minimize negative consequences to oneself.
PRO: If you do get caught, you could give the drug back and you wouldn’t get much of a sentence. It wouldn’t bother you much to serve a short jail term if you have your wife when you get out.
CON: If you steal the drug, your wife will probably die before you get out of jail, so it won’t do you much good.
—Stage 3: Socially shared perspectives; action is based on anticipated approval or disapproval of others and actual or imagined guilt feelings.
PRO: No one will think you’re bad if you steal the drug, but if you let your wife die, you’ll never be able to look anybody in the face again.
CON: Everyone will think you’re a criminal. After you steal it, you won’t be able to face anyone again.
—Stage 4: Social system morality; action is based on anticipation of formal dishonor (not just disapproval) and guilt over harm done to others.
PRO: If you have any sense of honor, you won’t let your wife die. You’ll always feel guilty that you caused her death if you don’t do your duty to her.
CON: You’re desperate and you may not know you’re doing wrong when you steal the drug. But you’ll know it when you’re sent to jail. You’ll always feel guilt for your dishonesty and lawbreaking.
—Stage 5: Human rights and social welfare morality; the perspective is that of a rational moral person considering the values and rights that ought to exist in a moral society; action is based on maintaining the respect of the community and one’s self-respect.
PRO: You’d lose other people’s respect if you don’t steal it. If you let your wife die, it would be out of fear, not reasoning it out. You’d lose self-respect, and probably the respect of others.
CON: You’d lose standing and respect in the community and violate the law. You’d lose respect for yourself if you’re carried away by emotion and forget the long-range point of view.
—Stage 6: Universal ethical principles; the perspective is the moral view all human beings should take toward one another and oneself; action is determined by equity, fairness, and concern about maintaining one’s own moral principles.
PRO: If you don’t steal the drug and let your wife die, you’d always condemn yourself for it afterward. You wouldn’t be blamed and you would have lived up to the law but not to your own standards of conscience.
CON: If you stole the drug, you wouldn’t be blamed by other people but you’d condemn yourself because you wouldn’t have lived up to your own conscience and standards of honesty.98
Kohlberg had many devoted followers and admirers, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, when his emphasis on justice and his elevation of Stage 6 decision making over the law made him a favorite with civil rights activists, Vietnam War protesters, and women’s liberationists. But his test and theory have been attacked by many developmentalists on a number of grounds. Some say there is evidence that development is not always upward and sequential (some individuals skip stages in their development, others regress). Some say that moral thinking doesn’t necessarily lead to moral