Piaget’s And Kohlberg’s Theories Of Moral Development

Piaget’s Theory of Moral Development

The pattern of development of children in the first five years of life is critical to determine how childhood experiences shapes their personality during adulthood. Child development encompasses period of physical, cognitive and social growth in children starting from birth to early adulthood (Shute & Slee, 2015). Moral development is also one of the tenets of child development that is the development of proper attitudes and behavior in children. Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s theories of moral development give an insight into the manner in which children develop moral reasoning and behavior. The main purpose of this essay is to critically evaluate Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s theories of moral development and discuss how these theories have explained stages in the development of moral reasoning and behavior.

Piaget and Kohlberg have mainly focused on cognitive aspect of child development by their theories related to moral judgment and moral development respectively. Moral development is the comprehension and emergence of ideas of morality in children from infancy to adulthood (Malti & Ongley, 2014).  Piaget explained moral development in children by observing the emergence of intelligence from childhood to adulthood. Through his research on children’s judgment about moral behavior, Piaget emphasized that children tend to learn morality by observing figures of authority. Furthermore, as their intelligences develops, they start to frame their own principles of morality. He particularly differentiated between thinking pattern about very young children and older children related to moral thinking. Moral thinking in young children were shaped by outcome of certain actions, whereas older children were mostly found to look behind the motive of any action instead of its consequences. The thought process of children’s related to evaluation of action to decide morality of action is also consistent with the ideas presented by Krebs et al., (2014). Hence, from the review of Piaget’s theory, it can be said that Piaget mainly focused on evaluating how children’s thought and judgment related to morality change with time.

Piaget’s ideas related to moral development influenced the work of Lawrence Kolhberg. The strength of Kohlberg’s theory compared to Piaget’s theory of moral development is that he has provided detailed concepts related to children’s moral development by developing the six stage theory of moral development (Snarey & Samuelson, 2015).. He categorized these stages into three level of pre-conventional, conventional and post-conventional. The preconventional level was for infancy and preschool age children. Kohlberg explained that children at this stage focus on physical consequences of action. At stage 1, children have obedience and punishment orientation and stage 2 children’s interest shift to rewards. The conventional level is for school age children and at this stage, children begin to internalize moral values based on norms of adults. Their moral judgment is also determined by following the fixed rules of society. Hence, good interpersonal relationship and maintaining the social order is the norm at the conventional stage. The post-conventional stage of morality is for teenagers and adults and moral reasoning at this stage is based on individual right and justice. By this stage, people have their own moral guideline and they defend moral principles in the society too (Reysen, Perryman & Phipps, 2017). The review of Kohlberg’s theory implies that it is based on the notions of justice and morality. 

Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development

The comparison of Kohlberg’s and Piaget’s theory of moral development has revealed many similarities and differences between two theories. The theories can be regarded as similar because both are explaining ways to measure moral characteristic of children and determine moral judgment level in children of different age. Both the theory gave the idea that moral judgment and development in children changes with age, however Kohlberg focused on describing the characteristics of individual moral reasoning at different stages. Piaget’s theory mainly regarded relationship with others or interactions with groups as influential in changing people’s behavior, however Kohlberg’s theory paid too much emphasis on emotional reactions and norms of subject to realization of moral norms and behavior (Lapsley, 2016). Kohlberg’s theory has been more widely accepted compared to Piaget’s theory because of many limitations in Piaget’s theory. The strength of Kohlberg’s approach is that he has modified and refined several Piaget’s idea. He has shown that moral evolution in children is a slow and complex phenomenon which has been explained in-depth by the six stages of moral development. He explicitly explained moral development in children by studying situational and structural influences on moral judgment (Krebs et al., 2014). His theory found application in supporting children to reach to the next stage of moral development. The strength and weakness of both the theories in terms of evidence based research analysis is further examined in the next section. 

Piaget’s concept related to shift from outcome based moral evaluation to intent based moral evaluation is also supported by recent research evidence. For instance, Margoni and Surian, (2016) also supported Piaget’s idea related to differentiation between older children and young children in terms of action and intent. It is an evidence of development change in children from outcome to intent based moral judgment. The strength of this evidence is that it has given evidence regarding Piaget’s research on moral reasoning shift in children and also confirmed regarding the occurrence of outcome-to-intent shift in children by analyzing Piaget’s task related to how children evaluate two characters who are naughty and deserves to be punished. Two stories were presented to children. In the first story, well-intentioned character broke 15 cups whereas in other stories bad intentioned characters broke one cup. Younger children between 5-7 years regarded the character causing more damage to be punished whereas older children chose bad intentioned character. This confirmed Piaget’s view regarding shift from objective moral judgment to subjective moral judgment in children. However, recent evidence by Cushman, (2013) has opposed Piaget’s idea by presenting a framework for dual system theory in the moral domain. It has given characterized two systems within moral domain. The first system that assigned values to action whereas the other that assigns value to outcomes. Hence, outcome-to-intent shift can be explained by early socio-moral competence and immature executive functioning in infants. 

Comparison of Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s Theories

Just like Piaget’s theory, certain limitations have been found in Kohlberg’s theory too. Methodological limitation has been found. This can be said because Kohlberg’s focused in evaluating several situations that leads to dilemma and influence moral judgment of children. However, while doing research with children aged 10 to 16 years, he did not place them in any situation. Selection bias was also seen because Kohlberg’s research has all male samples and definition of morality may change in different gender. Males are most likely to take ethical decision based on principles of law and justice. However, females are more likely to prefer care perspective in moral judgment. Therefore, it can be said that Kohlberg’s theory missed female’s perspective on morality (You, Maeda & Bebeau, 2011).  This points out to the ambiguity in Kohlberg’s theory of moral development. Hence, it can be said that Gilligan was the major theorist who criticized Kohlberg’s theory. Gilligan defined that progress in moral development occurs from stage to stage. Firstly, children develop understanding about human relationship and then by balancing it with one’s own integrity (Skoe, 2010). Hence, the gender gap in Kohlberg’s work is addressed by Gilligan. 

Apart from certain methodological limitations in Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, the strength of Kohlberg’s theory is that many cross-cultural studies has proved that children from various cultural group proceed from pre-conventional level to conventional level. For instance, Mclaughlin, K. (2015) affirmed that Kohlberg’s theory is still the dominant framework in the domain of moral development. He has effectively conducted empirical research to identify individual differences in moral reasoning. His theory was applied to measure moral development in subsequent research. A standardized tool called the Defining Issues Test was developed that helped to collect self-reported data of moral development by providing hypothetical moral dilemmas to subject. By this approach, higher stage of moral development was mostly found in more advanced students. However, another criticism for Kohlberg was that very few participants represented stage five and stage six of moral development. In the context of moral judgment of young children, the stage six was found to be most obsolete (Giammarco, 2016). The key insight from the critical analysis of the Kohlberg’s model of morality is that morality centers around harm and justice and it also points out to the need for developing different assessment methods to evaluate differences in morality.

The essay summarized stages that children follow in the development of their reasoning and behavior by analysis of the core concepts provided by Piaget and Kohlberg. The Piaget’s theory mainly gave idea about outcome to intent shift in morality evaluation in children, whereas Kohlberg’s theory explained about six explicit stages leading to moral development in children. Piaget’s focused on moral judgment in children by interactions with group. Research evidence supported Piaget’s claim of outcome-intention shift, however several new research opposed the idea too. In contrast, several methodological limitation were found in Kohlberg’s theory thus pointing out to the need for further development in concepts related to moral development in psychological. The analysis proved that moral development is a complex phenomenon and more specific assessment tool based on cultural context and situation is necessary to evaluate moral development in children. 

Reference

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