KOHLBERG’S STAGES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT

LEVEL I. Pre-Conventional Morality (Birth to 9 years)

People at this stage do not really understand the
conventions/ rules of a society.
Stage 1- Punishment- Obedience Orientation
• Consequences of acts determine whether they are good or bad.
Stage 2- Instrumental Relativist Orientation
• The ethics of “what’s in it for me?” Obeying rules and exchanging
favors are judged in terms of the benefit to the individual.
LEVEL II- Conventional (10-13 yrs. Old)
People at this stage conform to the conventions/ rules of a
society
Stage 3- Good Boy- Nice Girl Orientation
• Ethical decisions are based on concern for or the opinions of
others
Stage 4- Law and Order Orientation
• Right behavior consists in doing one’s duty, showing respect for
authority and maintaining the given social order for its own sake.
LEVEL III- Post-Conventional
Stage 5- Social Contract Orientation
• Rules and laws represent agreement among people about
behavior that benefits society. Rules can be changed when
they no longer meet society’s needs.
Stage 6- Universal Ethical Principle Orientation
• Right is defined by the decision of conscience in accord with
self-chosen ethical principles appealing to logical
comprehensiveness, universality and consistency.
Basic Cognitive Concepts
•Schema- the cognitive structure by which
individuals intellectually adapt to and organize
their environment
•Assimilation- the process of fitting new
experiences into an existing created schema
•Accomodation- process of creating new schema
•Equilibration- achieving proper balance between
assimilation and accommodation
PREOPERATIONAL STAGE (2 TO 7 YRS)
o Begins to use language
o Egocentric thinking; difficulty seeing things from other viewpoints
o Classified objects by single feature e.g color

Symbolic Function- ability to represent objects and events

Egocentrism- the tendency of a child to only see his point of view and
assume that everyone else also has his same point of view.
Centration- the tendency of the child to only focus on one thing or
event and exclude other aspects
Lack of Conservation- the inability to realize that some things remain
unchanged despite looking different
Irreversibility- pre-operational children still have the inability to reverse
their thinking
Animism- tendency of a child to attribute human like traits to inanimate
objects.
Realism- believing that psychological events such as dreams are real.
CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE (7 TO 11 YRS)
o characterized by ability of the child to think logically but only
in terms of concrete objects; covers the elementary school
years.
Decentering- ability of the child to perceive different features of
objects and situations
Reversibility- ability of the child to follow that certain operation
can be done in reverse.
Conservation- ability to know that certain properties of objects
like number, mass, volume or area do not change even if there is
a change in appearance
Seriation- ability to arrange things in a series based on one
dimension such as weight, volume, size, etc.
Classification- ability to group things based on one dimension
FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE (11 YEARS AND ABOVE)
o Thinking becomes more logical. They can now solve
abstract problems and can hypothesize
Hypothetical Reasoning- ability to come up with
different hypothesis about a problem and weighs data
to make judgement
Analogical Reasoning- ability to perceive the
relationship in one instance and use that relationship to
narrow down possible answers in similar problems
Deductive Reasoning- ability to think logically by
applying a general rule to a particular situation.
FREUD’S PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY
 A person goes through the sequence of these five stages and along the way
there are needs to be met.
Whether these needs are met or not, determines whether the person will
develop a healthy personality or not.
Sigmund Freud
Considered to be the most well- known psychologist because of his very
interesting theory about the unconscious and also about sexual development.
Freud’s Stages of Psychosexual Development
Oral Stage ( birth to 18 mos.)
Anal Stage ( 18 mos. to 3 yrs.)
Phallic Stage (3 to 6 years)
Latency Stage (6 to puberty)
Genital Stage (puberty onwards)
Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory
 Psycho- relating to mind, brain and personality
 Social- external relationships and environment

Epigenetic Principle
o Explains that we develop through a predetermined
unfolding of our personalities in eight stages
o Erikson’s theory delved into how personality was formed
and believed that the earlier stages served as a
foundation for later stages
o It highlighted the influence of one’s environment,
particularly on how earlier experiences gradually build
upon the next and result into one’s responsibility.
Psychosocial Crisis
o Each stage involves a psychosocial crisis of two opposing
emotional forces
o Each crisis stage relates to a corresponding life stage and
its inherent challenges.
 Syntonic- positive disposition (e.g. TRUST)
 Dystonic- negative disposition (e.g. MISTRUST)
If a stage is managed well, we carry away a certain VIRTUE or
PSYCHOSOCIAL STRENGTH
o Malignancy- involves too little of the positive and too
much of the negative aspect of the task
o Maladaptation- is not quite as bad; involves too much of
the positive and too little of the negative
Maladaptation / Malignancy