Talk:Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

This section entitled "Famous Individuals According to Stages" should be deleted immediately. It consists of undocumented contentions with no evidence offered. The only eamples here should be examples that Kohlberg gave in his work. --goethean ॐ 18:07, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

I think the hardest part about Kohlberg's work is applying it in ways people can understand. I think it is benifical to have that section there. If you would like to add any examples Kohlberg supplied it would be greatly appreciated. Really this whole article needs an overhaul, and I'm slowly trying to turn it from vauge and inaccessible to graspable and contextualized. I know these names aren't empirically proven, but until we batton down the hatches I'd rather have some hands on content before we get to the hard science.JoeSmack (talk) 18:14, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

I stand by my statement that the section should be deleted. It consists of speculation and unverifiable contention. --goethean ॐ 18:45, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Well as frustrating as it seems, the ego, the unconcious and projection are all speculative, unverifiable and contentious as well...yet have their own article. I also call upon the list of songs about heroin - all, of course, interpretive. For now, lets leave it in until there is more meat to the article and less wrong/copied works from other places. Things in wikipedia can be controversal, it's ok.

For the sake of arguement, would you propose that any of those people are a different stage than noted? I'd love to hear other perspectives. JoeSmack (talk) 19:06, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

That article begins:

In his theory of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud sought to explain how the unconscious mind operates by proposing that it has a particular structure. He proposed that the self was divided into three parts: the Ego, the Superego, and the Id.

In other words, the belief in the Id and Ego are attributed to a notable theorist. Your contentions, on the other hand, are not attributed or documented. They are presented as fact. Wikipedia cannot endorse undocumented contentions.

Now I have to be Freud in order to have accurate opinions? If you look up these people and look at what they've written it's pretty clear. And wikipedia endorses all kinds of undocumented contentions (not to say that mine isn't, kohlberg has many essays and books). I call upon

AIDS reappraisal

, which says that HIV is harmless. I think the foothold i'm making here is a lot less controversal than the type of incorrect shit that flies for articles sometimes. And again, controversal isn't 'bad' or 'wrong', it's just controversal.

I don't want to begin debating speific figures with you. That's just opening an irrelevant can of worms. But John Adams, Ayn Rand, Adam Smith, Socrates, Aristotle, Noam Chomsky and John Rawls all seem out of place. John Taylor and Frederick Taylor lead to a disambiguation page. John Stuart Mill is misspelled. Ricardo Semler? --goethean ॐ 19:24, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

They all seem out of place? Ayn Rand,

capitalist? Noam Chomsky, father of universal grammar model? Look at the definitions of the stages and it is black and white. Sorry about the disambigs and spelling, i've fixed those. And as for Ricardo Semler - he is a leading practitioner of industrial democracy

.

I don't think i'd be struggling so hard if you could show me why these are wrong. Do you feel that some of these people belong in different stages or something? I mean a lot of them, John Rawls you mentioned even, talk directly about this stuff.

“Moral learning is not so much a matter of supplying missing motives as one of the free development of our innate intellectual and emotional capacities according to their natural bent. Once the powers of understanding mature and persons come to recognize their place in society and are able to take up the standpoint of others, they appreciate the mutual benefits of establishing fair terms of cooperation. We have a natural sympathy with other personas and an innate susceptibility to the pleasures of fellow feeling and self-mastery” (Theory of Justice, 403)

i mean, that right there is some real stage 6 shit. really. JoeSmack (talk) 20:25, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

Your response is interesting but irrelevant. The list constitutes

Original research and will be deleted. If you want it to be included, you need to attribute the opinions (that x is in y stage for example) to notable authors. --goethean

ॐ 20:45, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

could it not be argued that i am not introducing anything new, but simply applying the theories of which Kohlberg pioneered? Think of it in this way: an actor is "a person who acts, or plays a role, in an artistic production". Now, I am using credible criteria to determine that Johnny Depp is in fact an actor, taken his recent role in charlie and the chocolate factory. Does that constitute original research on my part?

now, by the same token, a stage six thinker uses "moral reasoning based on the use of abstract reasoning using universal ethical principles". Now, if John Rawls said

"Once the powers of understanding mature and persons come to recognize their place in society and are able to take up the standpoint of others, they appreciate the mutual benefits of establishing fair terms of cooperation."

then does this not demonstrate stage six thinking? am i not simply using existing research to determine what stage he is at in moral development?JoeSmack (talk) 21:21, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

I, and I think most readers of Rawls' work, would identify him with the social contract stage. I don't want to get into protracted debates regarding each of these figures. (And I'm not sure why you do.) The point is that it is improper for you to insert your own opinions regarding who (you think) fits where according to Kohlberg's theory. Unless you are a published author in psychology, Wikipedia is not an appropriate repository for your opinions regarding Kohlberg's theory. And if you are, these opinions must be attributed to their author. Please read this policy:

WP:CITE. --goethean

ॐ 21:38, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Alright, the list has been up for a whole day and already this is getting out of hand, so I will take it down. I'll see what I can do to get up a list that better fits said policies for the sake of wikipedia's crediability...JoeSmack (talk) 23:03, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

But please, I implore you...we need more meat to this article. Help it out. JoeSmack (talk) 23:05, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

Can you clarify the sentence: "Later his model was revised and reduced to five stages given there was a lack of responses in studies owning to a clear boundary of the last stage of moral development." I changed "lack reponses" to "lack of responses" but wasn't sure whether "owning to a clear boundary" should be "showing a clear boundary" "clarifying a boundary" "defining a boundary".

That sentence was still not well written, but much more importantly it was not really correct. I deleted it yesterday and made other improvements in the article (that was the only sentence I deleted). -DoctorW 09:10, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to comment that I removed the link to the "stages of faith" section. I just don't think there's enough info there to justify someone's time to follow it over. Feel free to replace it if you disagree. I think that if an article or improved definition is given, then a link might be more justified. No strong reason other than that; just seemed a little out of place to me. --DanielCD 15:12, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

actually the only reason i added it was because Kohlberg himself likens Fowler's stages of Faith to his stages somewhat. Since there is no article behind it I guess we might as well leave it out for now. JoeSmack [[User talk:JoeSmack|(talk)]] 07:41, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I like the way it is mentioned lower in the article. If we can get a ref saying that Fowler actually used Kohlberg's ideas and felt his were an expansion on them, I think it would be very relevant and a bit expandable (though not meant to replace a separate article or other mention). I'm actually kind of intrigued to know more. --DanielCD 17:14, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I added a bit more flesh to each stage descriptor. JoeSmack ^Talk 23:50, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Ya, looking better and better. I'm glad I sparked a little fire here. Perhaps I'll try to contribute some more this evening. I need to print it out and read it though; I do better that way. --DanielCD 21:23, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Added an artical reference, The Claim to Moral Adequacy of a Highest Stage of Moral Judgment. Its one of the last summaries Kohlberg gave, and was intended for a non-psychology audience. --Escolastico 20:34, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I think this easily meets criteria for GA, give me the word that you are ready and I will happily nominate it. I have also given it "mid" importance, which is a partial personal cop out as the theory is so significant to me and my personal perception of psychology that I was very wary of over-rating it's importance to the rest of the world and played it safe. --Zeraeph 20:21, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

There is vandalism in the opening line of this article, and possibly elsewhere. Someone please revert it. 71.195.30.165 23:51, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I believe I reverted/edited out that vandalism a day or two ago. I can't find any vandalism anymore; could you point it out for me if it is still there? JoeSmack ^Talk 01:20, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

This is the revision I saw when I viewed the page linked from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality today:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kohlberg%27s_stages_of_moral_development&direction=prev&oldid=88358665

After I posted the item in the discussion page, I waited a few minutes and refreshed the page and it was gone. I figured someone had fixed it.

The exact text I saw was: "Kohlberg's robots took over teh world and killed everyone, u are in the matrix and everything is FAKE.stages of moral development"

71.195.30.165 03:18, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Ah good, glad it got fixed. Yes, I saw that (as well as some quite crude vandalism farther down) and nixed it. Thanks for digging up the dif for it an everything! :) JoeSmack ^Talk 08:18, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

This seems like a strong article, but I'm not sure about passing it as a good article yet. It seems to me that "Criticism" is a little sparse. If this theory is basically Piaget for morals, isn't it superseded in the same way that Piaget's theories have given way to better-researched ones? The article doesn't really touch on the theory's continuing relevance. which is a red flag to me, because that might be used to make an influential, but obsolete paradigm seem more important than it really is. I'm not a social psychologist, so if I'm totally wrong, just let me know. Twinxor t 03:20, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

it's kind of like he took a piaget book on childhood and made it into an academia on moral development throughout the lifespan. no one really studied morality in a psychological sense before kohlberg in such detail minus piaget. everyone has to start somewhere.

you concerns have actually just been voiced a day or two ago over at

Stages of faith development and Carol Gilligan's In_a_Different_Voice). trust me, no one forgot about Kohlberg after he died. his work was carried pretty far by his peers as well; that colby study reference there is a great example of thorough empiricism on his work post-mortem. give me a week or so to pile more detail into the Criticisms section and make a Continuing Relevance section. i need to go to the library. ;) JoeSmack ^Talk

06:35, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

This looks good, nice work. I've promoted this to a good article. Twinxor t 01:19, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Great! Check back in sometime soon too, I'm going to expand Criticisms and Continued Relevance even more over the upcoming couple of weeks! :) JoeSmack ^Talk 01:28, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh that has REALLY made my week. :o) --Zeraeph 03:57, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry for the delay; my

Graduate Record Examination is on the 27th and I am studying for it like a dog; more information will be added to this article following it's completion. JoeSmack ^Talk

16:49, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

If I'm blowing nonsense, please let me know. --DanielCD 05:08, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I'm sorry, I incorrectly thought I left a blurb in the edit description. Kohlberg wasn't very content with age being a deciding factor on what moved moral development. How moral development to him (and to me) progresses is when one finds their current stage of thinking inadequit. For the lowest stages this might happen earlier in life around childhood as they slowly enter society, but certainly not as a set-in-stone occurance, and certainly not as far as:

"Younger children looked at rules from a more authoritarian perspective, 
while the older ones took a more relativistic and cooperative view."

...which suggest young children advance from stage 4 to stage 5. Many people don't even reach stage 4, even in adulthood. JoeSmack ^Talk 17:25, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok, that makes sense. As per the custom userbox on my userpage, I get "confused" often. --DanielCD 17:30, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

No worries. And keep it up. I have so little time these days, and I want to see this article become great. Kohlberg and his work is so, so important and so little know about it. JoeSmack ^Talk 17:55, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Well I'll work, and you can double-check/peer-review me. And don't worry, I move slow. I'm also interested in investigating Fowler's Stages of Faith, so I might hit that too. --DanielCD 19:16, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the help JoeSmack. Sometimes my wording can be a little tacky (No! Really?? Imagine that...). I often catch my blips during later readings, but I'm thankful for the second set of eyes so we can catch stuff up front. --DanielCD 20:56, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

:) JoeSmack ^Talk 22:39, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I'll have to go through my old notes from development psych but one criticism was the younger children may be operating in a "higher" stage, but lack the vocabulary to express it. 216.49.214.3 (talk) 19:21, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I noticed that a french version version of this article is available, but there is no link, like there are for other languages. I dont know how to add one. Can somebody to this for me, please. This the URL :

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stades_de_d%C3%A9veloppement_moral#cite_ref-0

Thank you! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.159.136.57 (talk) 01:16, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I moved the following uncited material here to the Talk page from the article. Valuable content still needs to be cited; otherwise we don't know whether it's

Kohlberg's theory is not

meta-ethics. This includes for instance a view of human nature, and a certain understanding of the form and content of moral reasoning. It holds conceptions of the right and the scope of moral reasoning across societies. Furthermore it includes the relationship between morality and the world, between morality and logical

expression, and the role of reason in morality. Finally, it takes a view of the social and mental processes involved in moral reasoning.

You know, I think I might have been the foolish fellow who wrote this a couple of years ago. If I remember correctly, it was pulled from "Kohlberg, Lawrence; Charles Levine, Alexandra Hewer (1983). Moral stages : a current formulation and a response to critics. Basel, NY: Karger", from the back. It's a light green book with like a graph or something on the front. Anyone still have access to a university library? I'm interning off campus for a semester, otherwise I'd track it down.

While this paragraph needs sources, I think it needs to be made clear in the article somewhere that Kohlberg's theory is not value-neutral, it assumes that humans are good and want to do the right thing. JoeSmack ^Talk 19:13, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

We've just had

Ahhh, sorry, I've been really busy the last few - your question "Joe, can you provide some citations of Kohlberg's having mentioned it? I know Kohlberg and colleagues were generous in what they said about other researchers (including critics like Gilligan), but I actually hadn't run across anything that indicated Kohlberg had looked in detail at what Fowler had done and had a favorable opinion of it."...

I believe it was in Essays:Philosophy of moral development. Theres a part written by Fowler in there, right? I wish I had the volume with me, but thats a best guess for now. JoeSmack ^Talk 06:17, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

The golden rule is currently mentioned under 3.

Stage three reasoning may judge the morality of an action by evaluating its consequences in terms of a person's relationships, which now begin to include things like respect, gratitude and the "golden rule".

While this may be technically correct, it is also misleading, because the golden rule (like the categorical imperative) is, in its core, a more abstract rule of thinking and arguably would belong in a higher category. (Exactly where will depend on the intentions: With a raw, pragmatical, "I am nice to others so that they are nice to me" it could even be pushed down to 2. With a "Jesus told us to ..." it could be 4. Taken as an abstract rule, then, 6.) 188.100.195.187 (talk) 11:11, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

golden rule should not be equivocated. In its essence, the golden rule involves reciprocity and not principle, and thus fits squarely into stage 3. Kohlberg himself uses it frequently as an example. JoeSmack ^Talk

18:02, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

what is malhi doing —Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.116.202.1 (talk) 13:11, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

would (the Kantian) level 6 mean that the individual never acts against the content of their moral beliefs, or that they know that it's "morally" wrong to. without an answer to that i don't know how anyone can understand the theory or article, so any replies appreciated...—Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.134.54.18 (talk • contribs)

It is about what the individual believes to be reasonably just, and a stage 6 CANT act against their principles. JoeSmack ^Talk 19:31, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I think saying "cant" is perhaps overstating it. For analogy at stage 1, a stage 1 would not normally walk in front of a speeding truck, but if he did not know what a truck was or was distracted or blinded by a bright light or intoxicated so that he was not functioning as stage 1, then he might. JRSpriggs (talk) 21:30, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, two things. One, moral reasoning and moral action are not always congruent (action trails often), so there's that I suppose. Two, if someone is operating at stage 6 things are categorical so there is no other way to act. In fact as an example, I wish could track down this study again (like have access to university libraries), but once I think I found an article that said that stage 6's were ridiculously likely not to go through the Milgram experiment because of this. JoeSmack ^Talk 15:48, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

hey again. I would suggest that stages are higher because that' not what we mean by 'morality': it means acting against self interest and it means valuing something regardless of other people's contingent opinions. But it's not clear why 6 is higher than 5: if Kohlberg could not find many level 6s that suggests that it is as much about actions, yeah??

FOUND THIS "Kohlberg's scale has to do with moral thinking, not moral action. As everyone knows, people who can talk at a high moral level may not behave accordingly. Consequently, we would not expect perfect correlations between moral judgment and moral action" http://faculty.plts.edu/gpence/html/kohlberg.htm AND WILL EDIT ACCORDINGLY SOON! So level 6s are higher than 3s because a level 6 thinks that morals are completely binding [whether or not they actually go through with them themselves]. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.134.54.18 (talk) 08:40, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Be careful about

original research (e.g. defining morality). Kohlberg's stage system implies each is more adequate than the last (and incorporates each previous) - it is hierarchical (Kohlberg tried his best to avoid language like better or higher, and states as much). Moral action and moral reasoning (post hoc) are very different, indeed. I used to have a blurb in the article saying that people rarely operate at their stage all the time, but I guess it got removed, feel free to put something like that back. JoeSmack ^Talk

17:16, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Morality is not about acting against self-interest. See the

Objectivist ethics

. It is about acting in ways based upon a more sophisticated understanding of people and the world.

The higher stages are called higher because one cannot reach them without first passing through the lower stages. In other words, they are based on more thought.

Aping

the words of people at higher stages is not the same as being at a higher stage.

Stage 6 is higher than stage 5 because those at stage 5 do not yet fully appreciate the fact that contracts (whether personal or social) must be based on some (logically prior) legal or ethical foundation. Stage 6 is trying to build that foundation. JRSpriggs (talk) 09:02, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

My link was not original research, it was published in Theories of Development - a book by Prentice-Hall publishers. What the objectivist above me said certainly sounds like original research though. -- 86.134.11.167 (talk · contribs) 20:33, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi everyone. I've noticed this addition to the lead, wanted to discuss its detail:

"Kohlberg's scale is about how people justify behaviors and his stages are not a method of ranking how moral someone behaves: there should however be a a correlation between how someone scores on the scale and how they behave and the general hypothesis is that moral behaviour is more responsible, consistent and predictable from people at higher levels."

It is not explained in the lead directly that Kohlberg's stages are post hoc. The key here is his theory measures moral reasoning (aka moral judgment) not moral action - the theory categorizes people's analysis after something has happened or a situation has been described. This new addition I think is a little too specific, but I'm getting that it is alluding to the reasoning over action aspect. I'd love see this weaved into the lead a bit better though. The connection between moral reasoning and moral action is something I believe that is studied by others more in depth, and the focus of Kohlberg's carrier was not on examining this.

Also that behavior becomes more responsible (arguable, but this lends towards content not form, Kohlberg is all about form), consistent (also arguable, I bet a stage one is consistent as hell), and predictable (I thought his theory focused on POST hoc). The ref is a secondary source, and that last bit is sourced in Crain's work to a Kohlberg publication from 1975, and he does not cite more than that. I'd love it if someone could help dig deeper or give their own perspective on this.

His theory also focuses on form and not content, another aspect that is a little fuzzy on the lead. JoeSmack ^Talk 14:52, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

First, although I edited the new paragraph, I am not necessarily endorsing its content. I merely separated it from the paragraph to which it was unfortunately attached, and incorporated the reference which its author gave in his edit summary.

Second, I suspect (without any empirical evidence) that people who reason at higher moral stages also act more ethically. However, any suggestion that some people are morally superior to others is met with a buzz-saw of opposition from the left-liberal crowd who insist that all people (except those tainted by conservatism, I suppose) are and must be morally equivalent. Fear of this violent reaction by activists is probably the reason that no one has dared to try to study whether moral stages predict moral behavior. Of course, another reason is the impossibility of getting agreement on what constitutes moral behavior. JRSpriggs (talk) 15:17, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Gilligan appears to be a minor league player and her ideas at best of dubious relevance/value. Does anyone object to the removal or severe reduction in scope of the discussion of her criticism? 188.100.194.47 (talk) 08:48, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm weary of that. Not that I like Gilligan - in fact I think she's a stage five with a chip on her shoulder (that's neither here nor there for Wikipedia, we need to remain objective). Really the matter is in every text book, compendium on moral psych and even many of Kohlberg's own works, Gilligan is presented as an oppositional/differing take on moral development. Additionally I have two Intro to Psychology books from my college days - as it stands the three paragraphs they present on moral development, the last is Gilligan. They (annoyingly to me), go hand in hand in presentation.

When this had to pass as a good article, it needed a criticisms section and Gilligan is the top of the list by far for it, and that's why it's here. JoeSmack ^Talk 05:52, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback. If so, it is obviously not Wikipedia's place to decide to exclude her. (But I note that I too, in Germany, studied psychology a long time ago and that I have no recollection whatsoever of her presence. Kohlberg is a very different story and even critic-of-the-critic Hoff Summers rings a louder bell, even if not as a psychologist.)

On the other hand I am puzzled by GA requiring a criticism section. After all, these are usually seen as poor structure. See WP:NOCRIT and other opinions.88.77.148.185 (talk) 05:34, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

The Dreyfus brothers join Gilligan in criticizing the Kohlberg model but also criticize Gilligan for not being radical enough ^[1]

Also I took a look at Hoff Summers' criticism of Gilligan's criticism. It seems from ^[2] that she does not refer to ^[3] but to ^[4] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.104.45.174 (talk) 12:54, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I think she's full of shit, I am a woman and I fit in perfectly with this scale (around 5), hers is a gender essentialist set of assumptions that implies women are primarily mothers. I am not maternal, as I value my independence too much for motherhood and prefer to care for others on a wider scale (including paid work as the financial half of independence is important to me). -- 180.214.71.46 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) 03:33, 22 April 2014‎ (UTC)

References