Video:Overview of Lawrence Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development
with Dr. Robert ReinerLawrence Kohlberg had a number of theories regarding moral development, which he believed occurred in stages. Here's a video from About.com that explains Kohlberg's theory of moral development.See Transcript
Transcript:Overview of Lawrence Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development
My name is Dr. Robert Reiner from Behavioral Associates in New York City and I'm going to talk to you about Lawrence Kohlberg's theories on the development of morality.
First Stage of Moral Development
He talked about different stages of moral development. The entire backbone of the theory was based in the notion that it was really an assessment of somebody's level of cognitive maturity. The preliminary phases really had to do with simply: 'do I behave in a moral way because I'm afraid of what the consequences might be if I get caught.' So you can see how that's kind of a primitive stage of moral development.
Second Stage of Moral Development
The second stage of development, which is becoming a little bit more conventional, is based on an acquisition cognitively of an importance of the rules or keeping to the rules just for the sake of 'all societies have rules that people have to play by and we're part of this society, so we're going to play by these rules.'
Third Stage of Moral Development
Now the most advanced type, according to this theory of moral development, has to do with how a person reacts according to his or her own developed sense of morality. And the acid test for that is: would you do the same thing if there were people around as you would if you were alone and there was no chance of anybody every hearing about or seeing what you'd done.
This has been Dr. Robert Reiner from Behavioral Associates in New York and we were talking about Kohlberg's theory of moral development. If you have any more questions, go to About.com.