view complemented by modern empirical research programs. The two
initial sections summarize what moral development is and why it is
important for ethics and human nature theory. The "Roots" section
notes historical versions of natural development in morality, touching
on Confucius, Aristotle, Rousseau and Rawls. The next four sections
assess current empirical research in moral psychology focusing on the
cognitive-developmental approach of Piaget and Kohlberg and its
philosophical theory. In the "Critical Specifics" section,
controversies are taken up in stage theories of moral development
focusing major rivalries in moral philosophy, critical and feminist
theory. "Caring's Different Voice" focuses on conflicts between
justice and benevolence ethics. The "Pedagogical Implications" of
moral cognition research are then summarized with a focus on classroom
practices. Finally, "Related Research" is surveyed on the roles of
moral perception, identity, empathy, convention/tradition, altruism
and egoism, along with new moral-automaticity notions in cognitive
science.
1. What it is
Human nature is naturally good. At least it leans decidedly toward an
awareness of the good, and a preference for it, over evil and
injustice. Despite appearances, human nature is inherently
self-realizing and self-perfecting, if in moral understanding and
aspiration more than practice. Morality grows in human beings
spontaneously alongside physical limbs, basic mental and social
capacities. Both individually and in social interaction the human
species evolves mature moral conscience and character despite the many
psychological and social impediments that slow or de-rail the process
for a time.
These are the basic tenets of moral development in its most vital, if
naive historical form–a dominant perspective in ancient ethics and
traditional religion. By painting human nature in this ultimately
elevated and dignified posture, moral development visions grounded an
ultimate hope in human progress. They forecast the flowering of our
species' most humane and admirable potentials, leaving behind its
troubled childhood.
Under critical scrutiny, moral development notions gradually
surrendered their identification of human psychology with virtue. But
for German idealism, however, their credibility continued to wane
reaching a low ebb in the mid twentieth century when the "naturalness"
of human morality seemed hardest to square with the stunning
inhumanity engulfing much of the world at war. Scientifically, a
continually strengthening fact-value distinction also placed "natural"
and "moral" on opposite sides of the fence causing the history of
moral development and perfectionist notions to seem mired in fallacy.
Only in the latter 19th century did moral development revive as a
lively research field in social science led by the
cognitive-developmental approach of Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg.
Newfound credibility for this effort was garnered by abandoning the
traditional geneticist position in moral development, which depicted
even sophisticated moral reasoning as a physiologically,
age-determined phenomenon. For cognitive-developmentalists, instead,
natural development involves complex combinations of trial-and-error
social interaction, guided only indirectly by certain implastic
similarities in human motivation and basic cross-cultural institutions
of social life. While these processes allow great variation in moral
and quasi-moral socialization, their interaction yields remarkably
similar patterns of coping. Only certain cognitive strategies seem
capable of navigating basic social interaction successfully. Research
suggests that the cognitive competences fueling them and their
ordering in a certain sequence are practically unavoidable for
functioning in human society. And these cognitive competences are
decidedly moral in key and holistic respects.
2. What it is for
In human nature theory (or axiology) moral development notions convey
a sense of ourselves as dynamic and progressive beings. It is normal
for us to be ever-evolving and aspiring beyond ourselves even beyond
the maturity of adulthood. Being potentially perfect or
self-realizing, we inherit an august natural legacy to fulfill in our
individual characters and through community, which reveals our hidden
but awesome inherent worth. On this view, we owe it to ourselves not
to sit still or languish in anything less than the full completion and
perfection of all our potentials and powers.
Morally speaking, making progress in this supremely elevated cause is
less daunting than its supreme end-point would suggest. We are
naturally prone toward it after all. What we are obliged to do is what
comes most natural to us deep down. The physical and psychological
laws that govern our fundamental nature are all pulling for us,
offering staunch and unremitting supporting for our journey toward
ideals. For ethical perfectionism, supporting by natural development,
the difficult "why be moral?" was airily brushed aside in the answer,
"Because it's who we are, because it's self-fulfilling, because it is
what we are meant to be."
But such answers raise powerful questions. If we are so ideal deep
down, why are we such disappointments everywhere else? Why do we fall
so characteristically short in our characters and communities, showing
all manner of vice and corruption, and making a cruel and violent mess
of our world?
The typical response to such telling observations comes packaged in
"alienation theory." Either the outside world corrupts us—a world we
can not well control. Or the inside world corrupts us. The human part
of our aspiration comes freighted with, and mired in, the lustful,
grasping, animal portion of our heritage, a portion not only difficult
to control but bent on running us morally out of control. Or most
ironic, we corrupt ourselves, conspiring unwittingly with these other
corrupting influences due to the imperfect state and function of our
all-too-slowly developing capacities. Our aspiring saint within is
dogged not only by demons without and within, but by the natural
imperfection of time needed. For most of its course development
provides us only formative tools for dealing with hostilities that
greet us full-formed from the start, always at the top of their game.
Our ongoing inadequacies entrench themselves as habits in personality
and as social institutions guiding socialization, making our already
thorny path thornier still by our own misguided hand.
The alienation gambit loses perfectionist ethics its edge over
competitors, sharing their disadvantages. Perfectionist principles
must engage in just as much pleading and haranguing to have us walk
the straight and narrow path against the stiff wind of temptation. Our
development task takes on dual roles in this struggle. Building
character requires clearing away the impediments to self-discipline
and social righteousness. We must fight mental distractions,
motivational lusts, prejudices, false ideologies, the myriad lures of
false appearance and materialist obsession. With these temptations
somewhat in hand, we must shine brightly forth from our natural core,
"polishing our mirrors" so that unfolding capacities rise to their
full level of flourishing. This pro-active urging of our spontaneous
development is natural as well. Faced with the prospect of such
awesome self-realization we can not just sit idly by, watching it take
its natural pace, but instead offer a boost.
3. Roots
In ancient philosophies, moral development was normally conceived
"teleologically." This means defining the inherent reality or essence
of a moral phenomenon by the valuable function or purpose it
ultimately serves. Teleology is a strong version of functionalism—x is
what x does (well).
Confucian traditions attributed "four beginnings" to human
personality, which naturally unfolded into defining human virtues.
These were reason (which becomes moral understanding) affiliation or
fellow-feeling (which transmutes into compassion), resentment (which
yields a sense of justice) and feelings of guilt and shame (which
become moral regret at having done wrong). Moving from initial inner
drives to polished virtues in such a direct way stretches
plausibility. It leaves mysterious how such socially subtle and adept
abilities spring forth from such psychologically isolated and internal
roots, despite all the other influences apparently at play. This
contrasts with the Confucian view of how ritual institutions in
society guide the careful crafting of artful behaviors.
Aristotle also focuses on habituation regarding ethical virtues. But
strands of natural growth and moral evolution are embedded throughout
his depiction of human flourishing. For him, ethical happiness or
flourishing is the fulfillment of our natural human function. The
"Aristotelean Principle" of cognitive motivation is one such strand,
moving us to prefer more complex to less complex activities. This
pulls us toward greater challenges and resulting cognitive growth in
dealing with them over time. The development of the intellectual
virtues is largely a process of natural growth toward natural
function. And some of these (logos and sophrosune especially) play
necessary roles in the proper expression of ethical virtues.
Aristotle's approach was more plausible because its natural growth
only provided tools and tendencies for able behavior. No assumption
need be made that human nature is distinctly moral. With these general
abilities and sensibilities in place, social experience could pick up
the developing story, shaping norm-compliant traits along and
behaviors. An apparent psychological principle toward moderation
leaned this process norm-compliance farther toward moral norms since
many distinctly moral virtues arise at the mean between and under- and
overflow of non-moral motivation.
In general, the more indirect and morally non-distinctive the view,
the more plausible it depicts moral development. Developmental views
of morality themselves make such an advance on earlier innatist
viewpoints that locate full-blown moral insight and virtue in our
souls from birth. Such views cannot explain the anomaly of moral
wisdom amidst the naiveté of all other childhood beliefs, nor the
failure of this wisdom to actually show itself. Likewise, direct moral
development views cannot explain evolution's highly distinctive
selection of such a complexly civilized and culturally mediated form
of social reasoning and cooperation. Nor can they explain why
peculiarly institutionalized social experience seems necessary to
attain full natural edification and character.
In general, also, the logic of moral development history tells us more
than its authorship, suggesting strategies for the philosophical
progress on the concept. Our "inherent goodness" is best viewed as
akin to genetic instructions for seeking social competence, and
competence in a general sense. The basic instruction is to unpack and
upgrade personality potencies as suits whichever environments will
welcome their designs. Some parts of the social environment will
welcome the combined expression of cognitive and social talents that
enable cooperation. Some combination will be practically geared, some
geared more to prudent reciprocity and mutual expectation in kind.
Those that are mutually beneficial across these dimensions will
progress, in a general sense of beneficial or valuable. Some will
function to produce norms, and institutionalize them—norms of various
sorts.
As social organization and practice moves toward beneficial divisions
of labor, some norms will engender bind with traditions, other
generate laws and legal systems, and some foster moral tenets of
mutual fairness and respect, mutual reliance and aid. Again, each norm
system endures primarily because of its respective benefits such as
sense of social continuity, belonging, meaning, or worth. Our
cognitive and social capacities will help shape these distinct
practices and tailor their functions to them. Those that take moral
shape thereby realize our inherent moral nature.
To the degree this process is unavoidable in the moral realm, and
progresses in an unavoidable manner, it is natural. Yet its
distinctive moral nature arises naturally, for the most part, as the
fruition of its basically non-moral or morally undifferentiated path.
On this indirect view, it is not that uprightness simply works in the
world, as our limbs do. It is that general competencies differentiate
and partner, adapting to and helping shape differentiated social
environments, some of which take a moral shape and demand moral
functions from them. This explains why moral tendencies would be
attractive to biological selection and evolution—why our "survivalist"
human psycho-biology would turn toward admirable sociality along a
progressive, age-appropriate time line.
The perfectionist legacy found in writers as diverse as Augustine and
Nietzche carried this indirect approach forward, more and less.
Perfectionist principles urged us to develop a range of non-moral
traits, serving certain individual needs and interpersonal
problem-solving functions. When practiced, polished, and performed
artfully together, within an artfully organized social system, these
rise to the level of virtues and find their moral niche.
With the decline of teleological metaphysics and axiology, the
"natural development" of morality assumed a more purely functionalist
form. (Development was not pulled by a potential telos or end-point;
rather it foreshadows that end-point by able handling the means to
it.) Arguable, this requires that moral development be reconceived as
a distributed property, crossing various domains. One might be a
perfectionist ethic, a second, the functional psychology on which it
rides, and, third, the adaptive needs each serves for the individual
and society (Puka 1980). In such combination, moral development
becomes a naturally motivated striving to fulfill those prescriptions
that bid us nurture and express certain virtues. These are the virtues
that, in turn, produce an effective personality and excellent overall
character while fostering a thriving, progressive society.
To avoid circularity, such naturalistic views strained historically to
distinguish between descriptively and normatively "natural"
psychological processes—between normal and adaptive, that is. They
strained further to distinguish "adaptive" from "morally apt or
desirable." And their perfectionist ethical component strained hardest
to represent the transitions from minimal moral ability to high moral
excellence as a smooth and homogeneous continuum. This is a stretch
because excellence by its admirable nature seems extraordinary, not
"natural;" it requires special efforts, not mere formative growth, to
attain.
Where such straining fails, the logic of moral development falls into
various fallacies, seeming to build moral norms into social and
psychological ones by fiat, then trying to pass the attempt off as
descriptive or factual. Efforts to avoid this outcome are worthwhile
because of the valuable function moral development serves in ethics.
Any morality faces so-called strains of commitment. At base, these are
strains on motivational rationality. The ultimate logical question,
"Why be moral" has real-world versions: why act as I am told I should
when it conflicts with what I want—with what motivates me? why
struggle toward a life of integrity, when the childhood propensity to
duck and weave promises an easier path to a fun-filled life? This
question raises the prospect that being intellectually moral is
motivationally unnatural or irrational, or even pathological. What
suits our reason likely doesn't suit our full range of motivations
(some stronger than reason) that reason, to be reasonable, should take
into account. As noted, the most powerful psychological answer is
this. "Because doing right is what is in fact most fulfilling overall:
w are spontaneously drawn to it at all levels of need, desire and
interest, the more so as we grow. Moral integrity produces greater
self-esteem and personal satisfaction than material acquisition and
social status. Thus morally we need follow our ever-increasing
propensities to do what we should, exerting that little extra to
bolster and stretch those propensities. The extra effort pays tenfold
in making us more of what we are at our best."
In these respects, moral development is to ethical perfectionism what
psychological egoism is to ethical egoism. It renders excellent
character and virtue natural, relatively easy to achieve, fulfilling,
and therefore motivationally rational. Immorality does not seem so
naturally desirable to us here that it must be forbidden. Instead, it
presents merely tepid attraction, notable debilitation, and therefore,
an undesirable cast overall. Natural development in morality, however,
can serve any type of ethic, perfectionist or otherwise, providing the
needed psychological resources for fulfilling whatever obligations and
pursuits it recommends. Unfortunately, neither ancient teleological
views of moral development nor their functionalist successors detailed
the presumed processes of psycho-moral evolution. Nor did they clarify
the relation of nature to nurture involved. This pointed to the need
for copious empirical investigation.
Recent philosophical history gave a rare nod to moral development
through Rawls's (1972) A Theory of Justice. Like Kant before him,
Rawls paid homage to Rousseau's vision of moral cooperation. Such
cooperation is nature's way of humanizing and civilizing the human
race, not merely of institutionalizing humanity's civilizing intent to
stabilize and protect it. But we see in Rawls's hands the degree to
which supporting ethical prescriptions with psychological proclivities
has retreated under threats from the naturalistic fallacy, and other
category mistakes. Rawls recognizes only the logical requirement that
just social institutions remain compatible with the facts of human
psychology and its development so that socializing each successive
generation in justice institutions will be a feasible enterprise,
assuring compliance. He does not turn to moral development for moral
support, grounding value prescriptions on its facts.
Rawls relied on a pre-scientific account of moral development
(Rousseau's Emile), when an entire field of social science provided an
empirically-based alternative. (This field was centered just a short
stroll from Rawls's Harvard office). We see here philosophy's
reluctance to rest enduring theory on the current state of empirical
research programs. (Quine paid the price of resting the epistemology
of Word and Object too heavily on the Skinnerian psychology of operant
conditioning.) But we also see the skepticism and controversy that
marks the research field of moral development and its guiding light,
Lawrence Kohlberg. Philosophy gratefully accepted the flattering role
of guide in the design of Kohlberg's research design and the
interpretation of data. But Kohlberg's presumptive preferences for one
rival philosophy over all others smacked of ideological partisanship.
It raised philosophical hackles as well when Kantianism was provided
empirical validation, while Utilitarianism, intuitionist virtue theory
and the like were disconfirmed. Had evolution really selected Kant's
categorical imperative as our racial destiny? The title of Kohlberg's
first ethics monograph did nothing to mollify philosophical ire: "From
Is to Ought: How To Commit the Naturalistic Fallacy in the Study of
Moral Development and Get Away With It."
4. Empirical Philosophy (Cognitive-Developmentalism)
In contemporary terms, "moral development" is a research specialty of
cognitive and developmental psychology, with associated research in
anthropology, cognitive science, social and political psychology, law
and education. A strong research partnership with moral theorists has
marked this field's development from the outset. Researchers trace
evolving systems of competence in interpreting, judging, and reasoning
out moral problems. These cognitive systems incorporate empathic and
social role-taking abilities that promote interpersonal negotiation,
relation, and community (Selman vol. 2, Hoffman vol. 5, 7)
[(References with volume numbers in the text refer to the series Moral
Development: A Compendium)].
But they do not cover as much of personality, sociality, or character
as the original teleological notions of human nature. Attempts to find
anything like natural development in such breadth of human psychology
and personality were empirically unsuccessful.
Empirical research that relies so heavily on leading philosophical
conceptions, distinctions and methods of analysis cannot help but
interest philosophers. Its results are highly relevant to
philosophical debates, suggesting important roles for philosophy in
scientific practice. The Piagetian definition of moral development's
domain distinguishes fruitfully between morality, morals, ethics (as
in professional codes), cultural ethos, and Ethics (as "worthy
living."). Normative reasoning and reflective meta-cognition is also
carefully distinguished within commonsense cognition itself. Research
focuses on phenomena that have enough internal stability and
cohesiveness to be said to develop–to undergo change while retaining
identity and to evolve inherent, of their own accord. (This contrasts
with being shaped externally, in ways that supplant an earlier version
with a somewhat similar successor over time.) Great care is taken as
well to demonstrate that the moral quality of observed phenomena are
improving, not simply the functional sophistication of the
psychological structure in which it is embedded (Kohlberg 1981).
Normative moral theory helps design the main research tools in moral
development (the posing of research dilemmas and interpretation of
findings). Moral-philosophical concepts are used to define empirical
coding (identification) and scoring (rating) categories by issue,
judgment, rationale or principle. The success of these categories
suggests that the structural adequacy of moral theory derives in part
from the functionality of its logic in common sense and practice. This
renders those theoretical accounts of ethics that rise from
"considered moral judgments" more than armchair credibility. It
suggests, moreover, that difficulties faced in applying moral
principles to socio-moral issues are worth the effort, and should turn
out surmountable with effort. Paths have been chartered from moral
judgment to theory that should be traversable in reverse direction.
Obviously, general moral principles and their logical prescriptivity
indicate little in themselves about the feasibility of an ethic. Thus
the philosopher must welcome any empirical account that renders
reasoning a motivating and practically effective force. Moral
developmentalists detail a variety of ways that conceptual competence
itself motivates principled choice and action, while also partnering
with moral emotions. Uncovering empirical evidence of a distinct
competence-motivation principle is a great boon to theories of
practical reason and intention generally, given how central
conceptualization is to human competence and adaptivity. Showing a
close affiliation between reasons and emotions, competence motivation
and interest principles (the pleasure principle, law of effect or
reinforcement) further bolsters the case.
But the philosophical bounty from moral development goes farther. A
zeal for distinguishing facts from value judgments had driven modern
psychology to explain morality away. Taking crudely reductionist
stands, behaviorists portrayed morality as outward conformity to the
prevailing ethos of one's social environment. Freudians, in turn,
depicted morality as a combination of irrational forces born of
biological drives, coupled with ego-defensive coping in the face of
social threats and presses. These portrayals not only create a
disjunct between moral philosophy and the psychology its views must
ride on in practice, but between moral theory and social science
generally.
Cognitive developmentalism restored the role of reason and
discriminating emotion in moral choice. It provided a central role for
self-determination and distinctly moral autonomy to boot. Cognitive
research traces the detailed psychological processes by which children
unconsciously, yet self-constructively recreate their own systems of
thought and self. In so doing they resist the coercion of inherited
and socialized influences enough to gain control over their
thinking—to in fact use these forces as raw materials for structuring
their thought. Tracing these processes provides empirical evidence of
the deep, two-level sort of self-determination on which even the most
rationalist and autonomy-focused philosophical ethics of Kantianism
can stand. Psychology's more realistic and blended notion of
"cognition" also suggests ways to overcome philosophy's own
pre-empirical divide between rationalism and emotivism or related
voluntarism and determinism.
Further research on meta-cognition indicates that even common sense
reasoning distinguishes between interested values, moral conventions,
and autonomous morality. It depicts the former as merely interested
and conventional, as morally arbitrary and relative, akin to tastes
and fads. The latter, by contrast, it requires to invoke reasoned
support and validating evidence (Turiel vol. 2, 4). Commonsense
reasoning goes further in attributing distinctly moral responsibility
to people for the self-determined choices and autonomous
self-expressions they make (Blasi 2004 ).
While ancient philosophical views placed our psyches in the driver's
seat of "natural development," they also provided the environment a
guiding role. On this adaptation model social environment not only
"watered" our inner growth, but provided the channels through which it
unfolded properly. Unless society and nature stayed within the
"normal," "civil," or even welcoming range, our personal growth and
character would become stunted. With a modern psychology divided into
environmentalists or geneticists on development, a cognitivist revival
of the social-interactionist, moral adaptivity perspective was a
crucial innovation.
5. Moral Stages of Reasoning
Jean Piaget (vol. 1) recognized the virtues of trying to reduce
development either to nature or nurture. This is a tried and true
theoretical research strategy in science and philosophy, reflecting
the virtues of explanatory parsimony. Piagetians credited the role of
socialization in developing moral ideologies and emotions. They saw
the importance of guilt, shame and pride in reinforcing prevailing
norms of right and wrong, also in developing ego-ideals and an
aversive conscience-system to avoid censure from social authorities.
But they recognized that even the most optimistic projections of such
behaviorist and Freudian potential falls far short of capturing
sophisticated moral deliberation and problem solving, not to mention
interpersonal negotiation and relationship
Piaget introduced a third factor, the cognitive schema or system, that
mediated the interplay of bio-psychology and socialization. He asked
children to describe their intention and behavior, their goals and
aspirations, and how they made sense of them. In this way, Piagetians
have produced decades of evidence that children co-construct their
moral reality much as they construct their physical reality and
epistemology—organizing concepts as practical tools for interacting
effectively with the world. The "tool" metaphor had special appeal
when observing the continuity between using our limbs and coordinating
our bodily movements in infancy, then using our conceptual
categorizations of reality and coordinating their use through
"logical" operations. Piagetians also demonstrated that continual
enhancements to these operating systems could be depicted
structurally, using the laws of propositional logic. This greatly
improved the practical outlook for what seemed abstracted and overly
general theory.
While tracing sequences of stages in the development of logical and
scientific reasoning, however, Piaget only uncovered two somewhat
cohesive systems of naturally-developing moral thought. The childhood
"heteronomous" phase conditioned right and responsibility on concrete
interests. It focused on conformity to approved social conventions as
means of fulfilling them. The adult "autonomous phase" showed greater
concern with doing the right thing per se within the framework of
mutual purposes. This phase arose as children became critical and
self-critical about their conventional moral beliefs and the social
institutions supporting them, also as they began comparing different
possible moral policies and practices with each other, intuiting the
sorts of social purposes they needed to serve. The ability to intuit
these purposes, even in the face of sparse and misleading information,
is one of our great naturally-developing achievements. It provides
intriguing support for those moral-political theorists who believe
that the social contract model of ethics and just government is
anything but the intellectual fiction that classical authors
considered it. Still, with Piaget, it is unclear that the ancient
philosophy of moral development and its inclusion within natural
development of human personality had been reclaimed.
Lawrence Kohlberg determined to investigate whether there was much
more detail and sophistication to the natural development of moral
reasoning. And he doggedly pursued this singular investigation until
his death, some thirty-five years later. In drawing hundreds of
colleagues into his empirical and educational mission, across the
globe, he virtually established moral development as a field.
Kohlberg's approach centers the field to this day, with no comparable
rival but skepticism. However, much research is performed using a
simpler device (DIT) developed by Rest and colleagues (2000) that also
yields findings on more components of moral judgment than Kohlberg's
MJI. The continuing program of Kohlbergians and neo-Kohlbergians is
best known for a moral judgment interview technique that led to a
particular six-stage theory of moral judgment,also for educational
programs designed to edify at-risk urban students and prison inmates,
and notably, for "being controversial." Philosophers have participated
actively in the moral development debate, making Kohlberg's work both
well-known and infamous in ethics. Perhaps it should be best known for
being poorly understood and critiqued.
The range of philosophical critiques that some believe discredit
Kohlberg suffer from two basic flaws. They do not consider the
likelihood that Kohlberg's key interpretive models and claims are
dispensable in his developmental theory. Nor do they try out the
alternative position they favor (the position Kohlberg's view is
allegedly biased against) to see if this makes an appreciable
difference for the findings involved. This violates normal
philosophical policy on apt analysis. These shortfalls suggest a
dismissive prejudgment of Kohlberg theory, based perhaps on prevailing
intellectual ideologies. Contemporary thinking is averse to the
apparent pigeon-holing of complex systems or inflexible
(hierarchically) ordering of complex processes. Kohlberg's
frustratingly casual use of philosophical methods and overblown use of
philosophical notions support such pre-judgment.
Even cursory observation suggests that Kohlberg's philosophical
self-depictions are dispensable indeed, leaving the empirically-based
core of his theory in tact, and that his assessment of findings can be
performed using a range of explanatory and meta-ethical standards
(Puka vol. 4, Colby, Kohlberg. et. al. 1987). Kohlberg need not claim
that observed development occurs in unified stages that are
hierarchically integrated and arise in invariant sequence, that they
culminate in a highest stage of a particular sort, or that stage
development and the morality it captures is "natural" or "universal"
in any cross-cultural sense. The leading theories of cognitive, ego,
and social development do not make claims of this extreme sort, and
yet are held adequate and valuable without them. Philosophers should
be able to distinguish a developmental theory derived from data from
further claims, derived theoretically, regarding the ethical
significance of certain findings.
Kohlberg's strongest and most criticized philosophical claim–that
justice and rights are the central concepts of morality–is the most
obviously dispensable. Kohlberg's perennial stage descriptions center
on different moral concept or theme in every stage such as prudence,
benevolence, or advancing social welfare. They are even titled in this
way. It was not until the fifteenth year of advancing the well-known
stage theory that Kohlberg even seriously tried to find "justice
operations" working in each of the stages (Colby and Kohlberg 1987).
Kohlberg's even more fundamental claim that moral development can only
be chartered where morality is non-relative seems dispensable. Moral
judgment can become relatively developed, as aesthetic and culinary
judgment does. There are clearly more and less developed palates and
tastes, which would hold for morality were it mainly a matter of
taste. Perhaps the most valuable service performed by Rest and
colleagues (2000) in summarizing their twenty-years of neo-Kohlbergian
research is to present the data without Kohlberg's bold claims,
showing that the stage sequence remains.
6. Philosophical Research Method
Drawing from the literature of moral philosophy, Kohlberg hypothesized
that justice-as-fairness was the central moral concept, also that
conflict resolution and fostering mutual cooperation were its chief
aims and marks of adequacy. Kohlberg thus presented experimental
subjects with moral conflicts and cooperation scenarios, recording
their strategies for resolving the dilemmas involved. ( In the
original longitudinal study, 52 subjects from a private Chicago boy's
school were interviewed every 3-4 years for 35 years (Colby and
Kohlberg 1987)). Interview probe questions also challenged these
strategies to uncover the subject's highest level of ability versus
present performance. Additional interview questions asked subjects to
address issues of fairness, right, rights, responsibility, equality,
guilt, law versus morality, values and ideals, promise-keeping and
loyalty, benevolence and love in family relations and friendships
(Kohlberg 1984). These dilemmas and questions provided respondents the
opportunity to couch their responses at different social perspectives
and within different social units, from primary and intimate relations
to social-institutional and international perspectives.
After coding recorded interview responses (in logical, social, moral
categories) Kohlberg and colleagues looked for patterns. They were
particularly interested in whether the template of Piagetian stages
could be put over the logical, social-perspectival, and moral aspects
of responding. The results showed a six-stage sequence of such stages
ranging from (a) a pre-conventional level in which children think
egoistically or instrumentally, using each other to get what they
want, through (b) a conventional level in which conformity to the
institutional practices of one's peer group and society are key toward
maintaining group solidarity and stability, to (c) a post-conventional
level at which morality is seen as a mutually created institution
serving certain shared and elevated purposes—some achieved, some still
being pursued. The post-conventional level shows commonsense
rationales resembling those of reciprocal respect-for-persons, rule-
utilitarianism, and libertarian rights.
Kohlberg's non-empirical theorizing offended philosophical
sensibilities by claiming that these findings on post-conventional
morality especially support the adequacy of leading moral theories. To
philosophers it seemed unlikely enough that natural selection equipped
us to reproduce Kant, Mill and Locke when trying to deal with each
other. Alternatively, it seemed unlikely that only these three
individuals discovered and portrayed our universal moral inheritance.
Claiming that the naturalistic fallacy had been overcome in this
way–through a few dozens clinical interviews with Chicago school
kids–also seemed a bit bold. Overlooked here is the obvious. Outside
the internal debates of moral philosophers, the advisability of
building general explanatory theories in a practical field like ethics
is not clear. Neither is it clear that such theories can provide
useful guides for choice and action. Thus hard evidence that theories
further refine and elaborate thinking that works effectively on
real-world moral problems should be welcome news.
Less known to philosophers are Kohlbergian observations on
developmental process and its uncanny resemblance to intellectual
theory building. These same observations may offer mutual support for
the common sense and intellectual search for "unified theories" or
understandings. The developmental process, left out of traditional
accounts, starts with trial and error inquiry and experimental
observation, then the differentiation of elements and observed
relations among them in one's observational field. Next these elements
and relations are integrated via overarching rationales or principles
designed to unify them and achieve a close correspondence between
cognitive and environmental structure. The correspondence achieved is
gauged functionally, by testing cognition's predictive validity in
practice. Such testing is part of general processing or assimilation
of information to the stage structure achieved. This expresses ongoing
competence levels until discrepant information is noticed
(differentiated). Such information is then assimilated
reductionistically to the structure until the discrepancies become too
great and numerous. Then the structure is partially loosened or
disassembled (disequilibrated) so that existing rationales can work in
more ad hoc fashion, piecing together novel responses where needed.
Additional ad hoc operating principles are added as well until a new
more unified and coherent operating structure can be formed. When it
does, we have completed stage-transition. Then the process of
differentiation, accommodation, integration, and assimilative
equilibrium begins once more.
While all these processes are self-constructional, they all occur
quite unconsciously. This says something remarkable about our
pre-intellectual capacities and routines, making the trained
philosophical intellect appear less effete.
7. Philosophical Interpretation of Findings
Armed with these observations on developmental stages and processes,
Kohlberg derived a range of overarching. They regarded their invariant
moral and psychological progression, their spontaneous (untutored) and
self-constructive quality, and their universality. In addition to
launching a program of cross-cultural research, Kohlberg again
consulted the philosophical literature for standards of logical,
normative and meta-ethical adequacy. Gauging century-old debates,
Kohlberg concluded that formal Kantian criteria as less problematic
than alternatives. And he installed them as measures of moral progress
in development, sketching how each stage more closely fulfilled them
(Kohlberg 1981).
A host of commentators later charged Kohlberg's methodology with
formalist, Kantian, and liberal-egalitarian bias. Such charges have a
point. Kohlberg, after all, had not experimented with using other
meta-criteria for gauging moral progress. He did not show the caution
of other social scientists who imported preferred theories from other
disciplines, utilizing them more hypothetically and tentatively.
Still, such criticism ignores the more powerful and generalizable
assessment Kohlberg offered: the stage-by-stage-comparisons in which
increasing completeness and inclusivity marked moral adequacy. Here
each new stage of reasoning, each operating system, was shown to add a
major type of principled operation that performed a vital
problem-solving function. At the same time, each retained the least
problematic structures and operations of all previous stages. A
largely bottom-up assessment is involved here, gauging progress away
from basic inadequacy and incompleteness in both psychological and
moral processing. Examples would include not considering the social or
interpersonal dimension of a problem, not considering the role of key
values, virtues, or responsibilities that any conceptual analysis
would consider relevant.
Applied to later-stage reasoning, such assessments invoke very basic
and shared adequacy criteria among competing ethical outlooks. As such
they match Piaget's approach to measuring mature logical reasoning.
Such "formal-operational" thought shows the competence to consider all
relevant causal possibilities, from the most relevant perspectives
required, to address a wide range of scientific problems.
It is worth noting that Kohlberg's stage sequence likely measures up
on rival meta-ethical measures, e.g., on rule-utilitarian criteria of
a quasi-teleological, quasi-intuitionist form. This is true, at least,
so long as the weighted utilities or rules involved stress justice and
rights, as in Mill, or in Bentham's "each is to count for one"
proviso. There is good reason for preferring such a utilitarian lean
as well; the perennial list of criticisms lodged against
utilitarianism call for it. Utilitarianism is unable to assure minimal
fairness and equality, to view such considerations and others as
morally inherent and untradable, to create moral disjuncts that set
upper limits on obligation and lower limits on decency, to accord
proper place and protection for individual autonomy, and the like.
While Kohlberg never attempted such an analysis, those criticizing the
lack of one never even suggested why it would be difficult to perform.
While Kohlberg originally claimed a sixth and highest stage of moral
development that put Kantian respect and individual rights first. But
his research program eventually recanted this finding. Ongoing
worldwide research, combined with the statistical reanalyzes of
existing data, de-legitimated the significance of many Stage 6
observations, leaving too little reliable data for Stage 6 claims.
This locates the highest empirical stage in Kohlberg's theory in the
same place that mainstream moral philosophy finds itself after two
centuries of debate—with two main competing sets of principles, one
fostering the advancement of social welfare and benevolent virtues,
the other a mutual respect for individual liberty. These are
accompanied by several intuitive rationales concerning goods of
community, interpersonal responsibility and loyalty, equal economic
opportunity and toleration, and various virtues of friendship. This
state of ethical affairs approaches quasi-intuitionist
rule-utilitarian criteria at least as well as it approaches Kantian,
deontological ones.
The presence of interpersonal and virtue rationales in later moral
development is often overlooked. Indeed, Kohlberg's own stage
descriptions downplay them by focusing on what is new and distinctive
in each later stage of development, not on what is inclusively
preserved from earlier stages. General ethical principles are the
innovation in later stages because they reflect a broadened social
perspective. This misleading emphasis in stage depictions was deemed
necessary by the history of stage scoring system in research, Scorers
constantly confounded similar moral rationales, expressed in adjacent
stage terms. Thus distinctive stage-qualities had to be emphasized at
each stage. Philosophical critics who do not immerse themselves within
the empirical research project and its requirements miss matters of
this sort completely, failing to credit ways in which an
empirically-based theory can not be altered simply to serve conceptual
goals such as neutrality or elegance.
8. Critical Specifics
Critics rightly fault the over-interpreted nature of Kohlberg's
initial research as well as the inflated nature of his claims relative
to reliable data. Qualitative research generally offers poor
safeguards against an author's peculiar interpretive preferences,
helping to shape the very content of observational "data." Recognizing
this, Kohlberg invited heretics and critics of his view into his
central research group over time. His conceptual interpretations were
radically reanalyzed in the 1980s seeking consensus among a dozen
ideologically conflicting coders and scorers, working contentiously
together.
Initially, Kohlberg was not careful to control either his qualitative
research method or his theory-building process for biases. Ideological
(liberal) and gender (male) biases proved hardest to tame. The
Kohlberg program cannot legitimately be faulted simply for having a
particular focus: it need not address the full diversity of relevant
topics in moral psychology. But it has clearly fallen short in
considering phenomena that strongly interact with those investigated,
changing their nature. Certain moral emotions should have been
researched that help set cognitive orientation, gather crucial
information (Blum 1980), or facilitate moral self-expression and
relation (Gilligan vol. 6). Empathy and compassion should have been
investigated alongside cognitive role-taking and perspective-taking
since, as moral competences, they are unlikely to function separately
(Hoffman vol. 7). The same can be said for the relation of moral
cognitive and meta-cognition at higher levels of development (Gibbs
vol.4, 5). Kohlberg followed Piaget in conceiving moral development
personally and psychologically, not seriously researching the
phenomenon as an interpersonal or relational process above all, or one
pertaining primarily to small communities. Such apparent shortfalls
top a virtual catalogue of charged deficiencies, some holding
particular philosophical interest.
Methodological: (1) Empirical researchers should seek their subjects'
own opinions on what morality encompasses and when it progresses or
sinks low. Moral relevance and adequacy should not be pre-defined by
"expert" theorists on theoretical grounds exclusively, intellectually
limiting the scope and determining the emphasis of research. (2) At
least one survey (Gilligan and Murphy vol. 4) indicates that subjects
spontaneously conceive morality as setting value priorities or
aspiring toward ideals when conceiving morality, as well as defining
the kind of person one is. Testing subjects' abilities to resolve
conflicts of interest doesn't get at these (teleological) moral
sensibilities. (3) The use of an all-male sample in Kohlberg's
original, central, and ongoing study of moral development is not only
unacceptable by present-day research standards. Instead, given the
accumulated data on gender differences, the results should be
radically reinterpreted as tracing male moral development primarily,
not natural or human development. (4) The stage-system model of moral
development does violence to data that shows a majority of subjects
scoring at two and sometimes even three adjacent "stages" (out of
five). This suggests that people remain distributed across the range
of their development for most of their lives in a loose confederation
of rationales and beliefs. (5) Asking research subjects to first
resolve a moral dilemma then give reasons for their choice does not
focus on moral reasoning or problem-solving competence, but on the
ability to explain or justify judgments. Such an approach can not even
distinguish justification from self-deceptive rationalization.
Conceptual: (1) Due to the many cultural and epochal influences on
cognition, conceptual safeguards should have been in place to assure
that American research on moral development did not unduly reflect
western ideology. This includes the "social contract" or "natural
rights" heritage of Anglo-American ideology (Sullivan vol. 4). (2)
Defining adequate moral judgments as the decisive resolution of
conflicting interests or duties fails to inquire into non-decisive,
non-contending moral competences and their adequacy. These might
include trying to avoid or skirt moral dilemmas due to harm done some
parties by resolving them, or trying to pre-empt moral dilemmas
through dialogue and negotiation aimed at altering the prior interests
of involved parties (Gilligan and Murphy vol. 6). (3) Interpreting
moral responses in exclusively structural or systemic terms, organized
by general principles, ignores intuitionist and pluralist ethical
considerations. It also ignores emotional sensibilities and
intelligences, thus grossly distorting the moral-development profile.
(4) Focusing moral development research on reasoning, not on traits
producing expressive behavior, misses what is adequacy about moral
development. The observed judgment-action gap allows a highest stage
reasoner to be a high-level hypocrite, self-deceiver, and cad
(Straughan vol. 4). (5) A great intermixing of moral and political
perspectives, as well as similar moral and political concepts seems to
occur in later developmental stages, as in some philosophical
theories. Do we interpret this as a natural developing competence or
incompetence? It fails in cognitive differentiation, yet seemingly
shares a tendency found in expert ethical theories.
Kohlbergians have often tested and accommodated the panoply of
criticisms leveled at them. Thus they have come to see the dialectic
of debate as the central natural developmental course of their
research program. Their absorption of many critics into their research
team adds credibility to this portrayal. Some critiques have not yet
been addressed however, and should be. As philosophers seem unaware,
however, later phases of the Kohlberg research program arguably have
evolved the most psychometrically sophisticated coding and scoring
system known to qualitative research (Colby and Kohlberg 1987). This
system offers the most sophisticated integration available of
conceptual and empirical assessments for interpreting data and drawing
conclusions from it, and arguably has generated the most impressive
results in of any research program in cognitive development or moral
psychology by far–winning over major opponents (Kurtines and Grief
vol. 4).
In addition, Kohlberg's original thirty-year study, begun with the
least sophisticated methodology and fewest bias controls recently
received a thorough empirical reanalysis by Edelstein and Keller (vol.
5) which surprisingly confirmed most original Kohlberg findings. As
noted, twenty-years of parallel studies using a completely different
research measure than Kohlberg's also confirmed main findings (Rest,
Narvaez et al 2000). Proponents of this neo-Kohlbrgian approach have
detailed the role of moral structure in perceiving and interpreting
moral issues, also the function of intermediate sized moral concepts
and rationales that bring stage logic closer to real-life cases than
universal principles do (Rest, Narvaez, Bebeau and Thoma 2000). Each
year several large-scale cross-cultural studies are reported testing
both Kohlbergian claims and the bias charges against them. The basic
moral development sequence is verified in each (see New Research in
Moral Development).
In light of such findings, philosophical critics must address a
question too long delayed. If Kohlbergian stage theory is misguided
and misconceived on major points, how do we explain the massive data
accumulated over a half-decade that continuingly and surprisingly
confirm its claims? After decades of methodological and conceptual
criticism, why hasn't the depiction of moral development come close to
being disconfirmed?
Critical theory can be tapped for an answer, viewing Kohlberg research
as parroting the socialized ideologies of western (individualistic,
male-dominated, industrialized-capitalist) societies, found in his
socially brain-washed subjects. But this speaks to conceptual
possibility. No competing account is offered. More, it suffers from
far more of the empirical shortfalls and conceptual leaps attributed
to Kohlberg by critics, condemning it by its own standards. Still,
Kohlberg often warned followers not to take "those stages" too
seriously. As a scientist he assumed that future research would change
current findings. The depiction of moral development would be altered
further when each domain of natural cognitive development was
eventually integrated into a general theory of cognitive
ego-development.
9. Caring's "Different Voice"
Of the more specific critiques coming from critical and cultural
theory, one feminist-friendly version garnered most notice, especially
outside research psychology. More noteworthy is the rare and rich
alternative perspective on moral development that accompanied it:
caring versus justice. Indeed, the caring theme offers an especially
promising portrait of what benevolence ethics looks like on the
practical level, in everyday life. As such it poses a far superior
champion for the benevolence tradition than outsized views such as
utilitarianism, or dated, intuitionist virtue theories. Feminism looks
to virtue theory at its peril since, among other things, traditional
trait theory has garnered very poor empirical backing. And the
conceptualization of traditional virtues pre-dates both research
psychology and the careful introspective or depth psychology that
preceded it. The caring theme is researched as a set of interpretive
skills and sensibilities, proclivities and habits, easily observed and
verified. Further, caring is not only more realistic than its main
virtue alternative, agape, but shows up such unconditional love as a
kind of kindness-machismo.
Carol Gilligan (1982) argued that Kohlberg research, like Piagetian
and Freudian research, reflected a male outlook on development. While
occurring at the theoretical level, it also greatly infected
Kohlbergian research methodology, making qualitative observations the
fulfillment of prior ideological prophecy. The view of moral thinking
and development that resulted—the "justice-and-rights orientation"–is
over-abstracted, overly general and essentialistic. It focuses on
foundational moral concepts only and on universal laws, not on a
morality of social practice and interaction that its research claims
to measure.. The moral orientation portrayed in Kohlbergian stages is
rigid, formulaic or calculative, and legalistic. In personal life it
is cold, aloof, and impersonal, if not manipulative and punitive. Its
individualism urges contentiousness with vague threat of violence.
These untoward qualities show in personal judgmentalism and blaming,
in both social censure and legal punishment. But they also show in the
demand-quality of rights-in-conflict, and in our restive resistance
toward burdensome duties. Here, obligations are straightforwardly
posed as moral burdens to be born, just as rights are cast as demands
and "claims against" comrades. Responsibility is seen as diminishing
free self expression when in care it is an opportunity for artful
relation and fulfilling mutuality.
These observations on the coercive aspects of justice must strike a
chord for ethicists, especially with Kantians who hold high the
liberation of self-imposed moral laws. Vigilance against moralism
within morality's midst is a constant for non-partisan ethics.
Critical-feminist ethicists can only welcome the picture of rights and
duties as clubs and shields in a battle of conflicting interests. What
better fits the military model of human relations glimpsed in the
masculinist "state of nature" and social contract myth underlying
western ideology? Need ethics be designed for remote cooperation
against mutually mistrustful and threatening strangers? Must it form
an artificial bridge of relation where natural relational bonds are
weak, and relational know how deficient? Or can it equally serve the
needs of enhancing primary relations and spreading their scope as the
expression of a natural "will-to-care?" (Noddings 1985).
Gilligan (and Noddings) argued for an unrecognized sub-theme in male
moral development and a preferred and comparably valid theme among
women, left out of Kohlberg's original research sample. This "care"
theme focuses morality on skills of relationship—on supporting,
nurturing, and being helpful, not on demanding, defending, requiring
and compelling. Mature caring shows great competence in attending to
others, in listening and responding sensitively to others through
dialogue aimed at consensus. The inherent powers of relationship are
rallied to address moral difficulties, not powers of individual
ingenuity in problem solving or deliberative argumentation. As a
goodness ethic, caring also emphasizes the sharing of aspirations,
joys, accomplishments, and each other.
Relative to the unique longevity of the Kohlbergian program, care
research remains in its infancy, as does its research methodology
(Lyons, Brown, Argyris et. al. vol. 6). But even as a conceptual posit
(a different voice hypothesis) care has proven extremely influential
in hosts of fields spanning literature, domestic violence, leadership
counseling and legal theory. It has garnered an array of serious
critics in research psychology and theory (Walker, Maccoby & Greeno,
Luria, Braebeck & Nunner-Winkler, Nichols, Tronto, Puka vol. 6), along
with loyal devotees and defenders (Baumrind, Brown, Lyons Attanucci
vol. 6). Care's very relevance to moral development remains unclear
since almost no significant longitudinal research under-wrote the view
originally, nor has much been added since. The three developmental
levels depicted exactly parallel what Gilligan herself portrays as
coping strategies—particular strategic responses to particular kinds
of personal crises (Gilligan 1982, ch 4). Such phenomena differ great
from general competence systems evolved for, and able at handling
moral issues generally. Gilligan also depicts care levels in the
format of Perryan meta-cognition, bearing more similarities to ethical
and interpersonal meta-cognition than Piagetian first-order moral
judgment. (Research does not show natural meta-cognitive development,
apparently, in any domain, e.g., epistemological, ontological,
scientific judgment, social, self-concept.). Gilligan also refers to
care levels as cognitive orientations, not competence systems, which
research also shows to be quite different cognitive phenomena (Perry
1968).
Indeed, care "levels" have been defended as wholly different phenomena
from Kohlbergian levels or stages, despite being depicted for two
decades as constituting a comparable and parallel developmental path
(Brown and Tappan vol. 6). Gilligan seemingly favors the "different
realities" portrayal from the outset, noting that care orientations
are likely some undetermined mixture of biology, socialization,
experience, reflection and cognitive construction. Indeed, they are an
admitted function of masculinist, sexist socialization in part
(Gilligan 1982, Intro, chs. 1 and 3). After their initial depiction,
moreover, the developmental levels of caring have rarely received
mention in the care literature.
To philosophers, however, placing the depictions of caring cognition
alongside Kohlbergian stages points to a progressive sequence that
such a benevolence ethic might take, naturally developing or not. As
such, it suggests an educational curriculum that would foster current
communitarian interest and cross-disciplinary feminism. The care ethic
is of exceptional utility in the classroom, proving much more
applicable for addressing real-world moral issues than any so-called
applied ethic derived from moral philosophy or stage structure.
Certainly mature care can be applied to moral issues more easily than
Kohlberg's depiction of post-conventional moral reasoning. Students
are struck by care's preference for suspending judgment or making
tentative and shaded judgments on moral difficulties that call out for
interpersonal struggle and negotiation over time. For many, ethics
seems too murky, and ethical problems too sparse on information to
allow decisive, disjunctive solutions of a right-wrong, just-unjust
variety.
10. Pedagogical Implications
Any developmental approach to education starts with this recognition:
teachers are presenting ways to think to students who already have
their own very competent ways to think. And students will use these
ways of thinking to process the teacher's input. Moreover, many of the
views being presented are intellectually refined versions of
viewpoints the student has developed herself in more rudimentary
forms. Thus classroom presentations must partner with a students'
current cognitive competence system. Their design must appeal to
student views even when attempting to enhance and challenge those
views, not aiming fill up empty space or reorganize badly filled space
with something new or better.
Teachers who serve up material that is not geared to each student's
acquired level of competence are "banging their head against a wall"
to some extent. Worse, their lessons are "bouncing off"—being rejected
as either incomprehensible or radically discordant with good sense. Or
they are being distorted and misconceived to fit the student's
operating system. Enhancing the student's ability to understand must
work the opposite effect, urging the student's terms of understanding
to accommodate to the material's structure, broadening its categories,
adding distinct categories and interrelating them. For cognitive-moral
developmentalists, this means presenting material that will unsettle
current terms of understanding, urging students to construct new ones.
Here the teacher can only get students to teach themselves and develop
their own skills, as both psychology and ethics prescribe.
The stage or unified-system notion shows its power and utility most in
this context. When philosophers present the range of post-conventional
ethical or political theories in class, many students are processing
them at a conventional level, thus systematically distorting them.
They are not misunderstanding these views in a "factual" sense, but
understanding them in different terms. This distortion is even greater
when a less educated portion of the American public encounters
teachings such as democratic toleration, equality before the law,
separation of church and state and other constitutional principles.
Because stage structures are tightly integrated and
encompassing–representing the basic meaning system of each
student–class discussion also will have many students talking past
each other in the same systematic sense. Arguments won by one party,
or consensus achieved by two, may not at all be what it seems. Mutual
miscommunication may be the rule here, not shared understanding. The
same applies to citizens or voters in public discussion. Those parts
of a discussion that end in greatest confusion, disagreement, and
mutual dissatisfaction may be most educationally productive. And this
is not simply because they provide food for reflective thought.
Rather, at a deeper level, they may help initiate or exacerbate
existing cognitive disequilibrium. And this will move a student toward
the "accommodative reintegration" of her ideas in a higher level of
understanding.
Likewise, a student whose paper is "a mess" of near-contradictory
lines of thought, ad hoc rationales, and the like, may be showing a
much greater degree of learning than one who presents a smooth and
consistent rendering of ideas. The former student will confess,
anxiously, that s/he got her or himself all mixed up, tied in knots,
going this way and that. "I'm to the point where I understood the
material far better when I first started." Most likely, s/he is quite
wrong. If teachers are not somehow urging and testing for such
confusion and anxiety—for disequilibrated rather than equilibrated
writing—they are likely falling short in enhancing fundamental student
understanding. The same is true if they are not demanding the
reconstruction of each student's original and ongoing ideas in the
face of challenges to them.
Many instructors likely will recognize the above phenomena in their
teaching, finding this picture of them part-illuminating,
part-affirming. Most ethics instructors are struck by their ability to
uncover commonsense Aristotles, John Stuart Mills, Kants, Humes and
Lockes in their classroom, merely by posing moral questions. Moral
development findings provide a deep and systematic partial explanation
of this phenomenon. Many instructors recognize that some students who
"get views correct" don't have a very reflective grasp of them. Other
who seem to get things wrong often are actually grappling at a much
deeper level with the views. And most instructors can tell when some
lectures or class discussions have no hope of getting anywhere. "The
students' minds just don't seem open to this way of thinking." Yes,
this is precisely what developmental theory and stage unity would
predict.
William Perry (1968) offers a quasi-developmental account of
meta-cognitive thinking in the college years, including ethical
reflection. Faculty find it useful for understanding special problems
that students face when confronted with opposing conceptions of fact
and value across the curriculum. For the philosopher, such
confrontations occur frequently within each course. Perry's approach
explicates the particular intellectual strategies students use when
coping with conflicting fundamental theories. But it also indicates
major shifts in student epistemic perspectives ranging from initial
absolutism through a kind of relativistic functionalism. Because the
account is as clinical as it is empirical in a research sense, it
offers a insightful speculations on the emotions, motivations, and
anxieties students experience in doing commonsense philosophy and
ethics on their educational experience.
Nel Noddings (1995) poses mature caring as a model for reorganizing
public schools. Students can be taught to care across the board—from
the growing of plants in the classroom, through a kind of dialogue and
coming to consensus with mathematical concepts, to the nurturing of
friendships in class. But more, students can learn these lessons by
being truly cared for by school personnel, not just respected or
graded fairly. As a hospital aims to be a care-taking institution, so
a school can conceive its overall mission that way, not simply
transmitting education or developing student skills and the like, but
supporting, nurturing, and partnering with students in every aspect of
school life. That many school personnel mistakenly believe they are
already doing this indicates how crucial it is to conceive care at
higher developmental levels, with many differentiations and
integrations, shadings and textures of adult caring given prominence.
Conventional and post-conventional caring are quite different matters.
Imagine what caring of this overall sort would look like in the
usually anonymous setting of a college ethics course.
11. Related Research
The Kohlbergian approach to moral development has yielded hosts of
cross-cultural studies bringing in the more developed cultural
research methods of social anthropologists and creating some
controversies regarding the issue of cultural relativism and
universality (Sweder vol. 4, 7, Colby and Kohlberg 1987). Research on
moral education, using Kohlberg research and theory, has taken several
forms. Some measures the effects of discussing pointed moral dilemmas
with students in the classroom, some measures the effect of creating
"just communities" in which students can restructure their
environment, making it more welcoming to morally sensitive reasoning.
The Kohlbergian approach also has spun of heretical research programs
focused on the apparent development of moral conventions and
traditions, independent of post-conventional reasoning development
(Turiel vol. 2, 5), moral reflectivity, that occurs within seeming
first-order moral judgment, not moving to the meta-cognitive level
(Gibbs vol. 2), moral and political ideology, that often mires and
masks moral reasoning within attitude schemes that bias its workings
(Emler 1983), faith development that surprisingly mirrors moral
cognition in its conceptualization of divinity and religious devotion
(Fowler 1981, Oser 1980), and moral perception, one of several skills
that enable the onset of moral deliberation, negotiation and reasoning
(Rest, Narvaez, Bebeau & Thoma, 2000).
The Rest group offers a "four-component" model of ethical judgment
that investigates many key components in true moral reasoning or
problem solving, not clearly distinguished or investigated in
Kohlbergian moral judgment. Narvaez has carried the moral perception
component of this research to the classroom, assessing strategies for
making students more sensitive to when morally-charged issues arise in
daily life. She also has led attempts to integrate moral-development
research with related cognitive science research on problem solving.
Important new emphasis is being placed on non-deliberative aspects of
moral judgment and "reasoning," that show an immediate or automatic
"rush to judgment." These processes mark the typical, habitual way we
handle routine moral decisions in daily life (Narvaez and Lapsley 2004
).
Much research attention has been paid to the age-old problem of
akrasia or weakness of will, termed the judgment-action gap by
cognitive psychologists. The most progress in this area has been made
by ego-developmentalists (Blasi 2004, Youniss & Damon vols. 2, 5).
They suspect that our self-definitions—whether we view our sense of
responsibility and character as central to who we are—most determine
whether we practice what we moral preach. But many other factors seem
involved, likely centered in moral emotions and attitudes, and the
automaticity phenomena just noted. The important areas of moral
motivation and emotion have proven the most difficult to get at
empirically.
While not part of developmental research or theory, other specialties
in psychology and philosophy frame moral-developmental concerns. Care
research and feminist analysis can be seen in this way, as can Perry's
meta-cognitive research above. Psychoanalysts have performed many
interesting clinical studies on moral emotions and their motivational
effects, focusing on superego functions (guilt, fear, shame, regret)
and the ego-ideal (pride, emulation, aspiration, internalization).
Enright (vol. 7) has conducted a remarkably enduring and progressive
research program on forgiveness and its effects. Hoffman, as noted,
has researched empathy most extensively.
For decades, social psychologists such as Adorno and Sherif have
looked at issues of cooperation and competition, authoritarianism and
democracy in various types of organizations and groups. They have
developed an entire area of research, Pro-Social Development, which
takes a basically amoral or non-moral look at all forms of socially
conforming and contributing behavior. A formative, but largely
abandoned research movement in this area investigated the conditions
under which onlookers will help or fail to help strangers, accepting
different costs or levels of risks for doing so (Bickman vol. 7). An
industrial branch of social psychology looks at fairness issues in the
workplace and the effects of greater and lesser employee control
there. Damon has conducted myriad studies of fairness judgments in
early childhood that point to many factors not taken covered by
cognitive competence systems of their development. Related areas of
personality psychology look into the motivations behind forms of moral
altruism especially, trying to understand the concept of
self-sacrifice and doing good for its own sake (Staub vol. 7). A very
interesting program of altruism research rises directly from
philosophical accounts of egoism, both psychological and ethical
(Batson vol. 7).
Some of the most inspiring research in moral development charts the
development and reflective motivations of everyday moral exemplars and
heroes. Lawrence Blum (1988) offered important distinctions among
types of extraordinarily moral individuals, which were incorporated
into interview research and theory by Colby and Damon in Some Do Care.
Lawrence Walker has begun a long-term research program in this area as
well, which likely will help tie cognitive-moral development in
education to the prominent character-education and moral-literacy
movement. Character education focuses intently on the nurturing of
admirable traits, attitudes, outlooks and value commitments. Without
more extensive psychological research to support its traditionalist
emphases on core American values, traditional virtues, and the
upholding of codes and creeds, this approach flirts with the
discredited approaches of early Anglo-American public school
education, rife with moralistic strictures and nationalistic
indoctrination.
12. References and Further Reading
The empirical research references above can be found in the seven volume series:
Moral Development: A Compendium. (1995). B. Puka (ed), Garland Press.
Classic research by Piaget and Kohlberg is contained in vols. 1 & 2
Defining Perspectives in Moral Development and Classic Research in
Moral Development. Cross-cultural and updated longitudinal research is
contained in vol. 5: New Research in Moral Development. Kohlberg
criticism is highlighted in vol. 4: The Great Justice Debate. Care
research by Gilligan and colleagues is highlighted in vol. 6: Caring
Voices and Women's Moral Frames. Research on altruism, bystander
intervention, egoism, and pro-social development is focused in vol. 7:
Reaching Out.
Additional References:
Blasi, A (2004). "Moral functioning: Moral understanding and
personality" In D. K. Lapsley and D. Narvaez (Eds.), Morality, Self,
and Identity Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Blum, L. (1988) "Moral exemplars: Reflections on Schindler, the
Trocmes and others". Midwestern studies in philosophy. XII.
Blum, L. (1980 ) Friendship, Altruism and Morality. Boston: Routledge
Kegan-Paul.
Colby, A., Kohlberg, L., Speicher-Dubin, B, Hewer, A., Candee, D.,
Gibbs, & Power, C. (1987) The Measurement of Moral Judgment.
Colby,A. & Damon, W. (1993) Some Do Care. NY: Free Press.
Confucius. (1979). The Analects. New York: Penguin Classics.
Emler, N., Resnick, S. & Malone, B. (1982). "The relationship between
moral rasoning and political orientation". Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 45 1073-1080.
Fowler, J. (1981). Stages of Faith. San Francisco: Harper and Row.
Gilligan, C. (1982). In a Different Voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Kohlberg, L. (1981). Essays in Moral Development: The Philosophy of
Moral Development. (1984). The Psychology of Moral Development. New
York: Harper and Row.
Narvaez, D. & Lapsley, D (2004, in press) S. Bend, Indiana: Notre Dame
University Press.
Noddings, N. (1985). Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral
Education. Los Angeles: University of California Press Press.
Noddings, N. (1995). The Challenge to Care in the Schools. Los
Angeles: University of California Press.
Oser, F. (1980). Stages if religious judgment. In J. Fowler and A.
Vergote (eds.) Toward Moral and Religious Maturity. Morristonw, NJ:
Silver Burdett.
Perry, W. (1968). Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development During
the College Years. New York: Rinehart & Winston.
Puka, B. (1980). Toward Moral Perfectionism. NY: Garland Press.
Rawls, J (1971). A Theory of Justice. Cambridge MA: Harvard University
Press. Rest. J. Narvaez, D., Thoma, S and Bebeau, M. Post-Conventional
Moral Reasoning: A Neo-Kohlbergian Approach (2000). Mahway, NJ:
Erlbaum Press..
Salovey, P. & Mayer, J.D. (1990). "Emotional intelligence,"
Imagination, Cognition, and Personality 9 185-211.
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