Lawrence Kohlberg

Main ideas

• Moral reasoning develops in stages — from an orientation to punishment and reward, through conformity and order, up to universal ethical principles.
• He used the famous Heinz dilemma (steal a drug for a dying wife?) for the very reason that there is no way to "answer it correctly" — he was interested only in the justification.
• Two people with the same answer can be reasoning on completely different levels; two people with opposite answers can be reasoning on the same one.

What we take

The basic turn of the whole project: the reason matters more than the answer. The six layers of Why We Decide follow his stages loosely, but they do not take over their order.

What we do differently

Kohlberg's stages are a developmental sequence: a person climbs them and does not go back. We read the layers differently, on purpose — as a repertoire. Everyone uses all of them, and the mix changes with the context. That is why the result never says "you are level 5". It shows a profile.

Recommended books

• The Philosophy of Moral Development (1981)
• The Psychology of Moral Development (1984)

Sources

• Kohlberg, L. (1958). The Development of Modes of Moral Thinking and Choice in the Years Ten to Sixteen. Dissertation, University of Chicago — the original longitudinal study.
• Kohlberg, L. (1981). Essays on Moral Development, Vol. 1: The Philosophy of Moral Development. Harper & Row.
• Kohlberg, L. (1984). Essays on Moral Development, Vol. 2: The Psychology of Moral Development. Harper & Row — the six stages, and the Heinz dilemma.