Kohlberg and Moral Development Questions and Answers

Answer: C

This belief belongs to the conventional level.

In Lawrence Kohlberg's theory, the conventional level includes stage 3, the 'good boy, good girl' orientation, in which people try to live up to what others expect and to be seen as good, and stage 4, the law-and-order orientation. Living up to society's expectations and behaving in 'good' ways is the hallmark of this level.

At the pre-conventional level, moral judgement is based on punishment and reward. 'Pre-operational' and 'post-operational' are not Kohlberg's levels at all: pre-operational is one of Piaget's cognitive stages.

Answer: B

Gilligan critiqued Kohlberg from a feminist perspective.

Carol Gilligan, in In a Different Voice (1982), argued that Kohlberg's stages were built on research with boys and men and rested on an ethic of justice and abstract rights. Women, she argued, often reason through an ethic of care, emphasising relationships and responsibility to others, and so were wrongly scored at lower stages.

Her critique was about gender bias in the theory, not about social-cognitive mechanisms, genetic factors or the use of case studies; Kohlberg in fact used moral dilemmas and interviews.

Answer: A

Carol Gilligan criticised Kohlberg for ignoring gender differences in moral reasoning.

Kohlberg built his stages largely from interviews with boys and scored moral reasoning by an ethic of justice and rights. In In a Different Voice (1982) Gilligan argued that this made women's typical reasoning, an ethic of care and responsibility in relationships, look less developed, and that the theory was therefore biased.

Kohlberg did present a stage theory, but that was not Gilligan's objection. Her critique was not about quantitative methods, and his data came from hypothetical dilemmas such as Heinz's, not real-life situations; Gilligan herself used real-life dilemmas.

Answer: C

Kohlberg argued that moral development occurs progressively in stages.

Using moral dilemmas such as the Heinz dilemma, Kohlberg described three levels of moral reasoning (pre-conventional, conventional and post-conventional), each with two stages. People move through them in a fixed sequence, each stage reflecting a more mature way of reasoning about right and wrong, though not everyone reaches the highest stages.

A continuous process is the opposite of his stage view. He claimed his stages were universal across cultures. The idea of gender differences in moral reasoning comes from Carol Gilligan's critique of Kohlberg, not from Kohlberg himself.

Answer: D

Concern with 'what do people think of me' marks the Conventional level.

At Kohlberg's conventional level, moral behaviour is guided by the expectations of others and of society. Stage 3, the 'good boy/good girl' orientation, is about winning approval and being seen as a good person; stage 4 is about maintaining law and order. Being concerned with how others see you is the defining feature of stage 3.

At the pre-conventional level, behaviour is driven by avoiding punishment and gaining rewards for oneself. At the post-conventional level, it is guided by social contracts and universal ethical principles, even against public opinion. 'Non-conventional' is not one of Kohlberg's levels.

Answer: D

The correct statement is that Kohlberg's theory presents conflicting situations to children.

Kohlberg studied moral reasoning by presenting moral dilemmas, such as Heinz stealing a drug to save his wife, and analysing the reasons children gave for their answers.

His theory was criticised precisely for neglecting culture and gender (Carol Gilligan's critique), it does specify a fixed sequence of three levels and six stages, and it was based on interviews about dilemmas rather than experiments.

Answer: A

The contribution is that his theory has supported an association between cognitive maturity and moral maturity.

Kohlberg built on Piaget, showing that moral reasoning advances through stages (pre-conventional, conventional, post-conventional) in step with cognitive development: more mature reasoning about right and wrong depends on more mature thinking.

The other options are not his contributions. His moral dilemma interviews are known for scoring difficulties rather than elaborate testing procedures, a major criticism is that moral reasoning does not reliably predict moral action, and the view of children as 'moral philosophers' is a description of his method rather than a contribution of the theory.

Answer: B

The Kohlberg stage is the social contract orientation.

Lawrence Kohlberg described three levels of moral reasoning, each with two stages. The social contract orientation is stage 5, at the post-conventional level, where laws are seen as agreements that can be changed for the greater good and for individual rights.

The other options belong to different theories. The latency stage is Freud's psychosexual stage, the concrete operational stage is Piaget's stage of cognitive development, and industry versus inferiority is Erikson's psychosocial stage of the school years.

Answer: B

It is the Pre-conventional level.

In Kohlberg's theory, children at the pre-conventional level judge right and wrong by consequences to themselves: an act is bad because it is punished (stage 1) or good because it brings a reward or a fair exchange (stage 2). They have not yet taken in the rules of family and society as their own, which is what the question describes.

At the conventional level people do understand and uphold social rules, to win approval or to maintain law and order. 'Pre-operational' and 'post-operational' are not Kohlberg's terms at all: pre-operational is a stage in Piaget's theory of cognitive development, and 'post-operational' is not a standard stage name.

Answer: C

A is true but R is false.

Assertion A describes Kohlberg's sequence correctly. At the preconventional level a child judges an act good or bad by its consequences (punishment or reward). By the postconventional level the person understands that rules and laws are social agreements that can be changed when they fail human welfare.

Reason R is false. Kohlberg's theory is a stage theory: moral reasoning develops through distinct, qualitatively different levels and stages in a fixed order, which makes it discontinuous rather than continuous. Since R is false, the options calling both true are wrong.