28 Part 1 Foundations of Human Development
Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development
Imagine that you really need a medication, but do not have enough money
to pay the pharmacy. Would you steal the medicine from the pharmacy? What
if having the medicine is a matter of life and death? Lawrence Kohlberg asked
a similar question to children, teens, and adults. How do people decide what is
right and what is wrong? In doing his research, Kohlberg identified three differ-
ent levels of thinking that people go through in making moral decisions (per-
sonal decisions that evaluate what is right and what is wrong).
In the first level, people make decisions based on whether or not they will be
punished or rewarded. All children are in this level. In the second level, people’s
moral decisions are motivated by laws and how they might be perceived. Some
older children and many youth are in this level. In the third level, some teens and
many adults make moral decisions based on principles such as justice.
Because Kohlberg observed men and boys to develop his theory, some
researchers believed that his findings did not include the way women and girls
make decisions. Carol Gilligan was one of these researchers. She believed that the
idea of justice was typical of males, but less typical of females. She believed that
many women used the idea of care for others as a motivating factor in making
moral decisions.
Checkpoint
1. Which theorist described the stages of cognitive development in four stages?
What are these stages?
2. According to cognitive theory, why do young children think differently from
teens?
3. Describe Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory.
4. What are moral decisions?
5. Describe Kohlberg’s three levels of thinking that people go through in
making moral decisions.
How Experiences Cause People to Behave
in Certain Ways
Researchers and scientists have long been interested in how people think and
learn. Early researchers and scientists believed that people were essentially blank
screens. Just like a computer, people are products of data entered. When data
is entered, an outcome will result. When talking about people, these results are
called observable behaviors (the things people do and say or the way they act).
Why does 8-year-old Tyler hit others on the playground? Does this behavior
occur because he was modeled aggressive behavior at home? Did an older
brother or sister hit him? Behaviorism is the belief that people’s behavior is
determined by forces in the environment that are beyond their control, 2-6. In
what is often described as the nature (what you were born with) versus nurture
(what you have been taught) debate, behaviorists believe that nurture wins.