According to Piaget’s theory of moral development, all individuals construct their knowledge and understanding of moral issues with regard to their interactions with their environment and the society within which they function. Piaget asserted that children below the age of ten years perceive moral dilemmas differently from children older than them. for instance, when a child hear two situations of stealing; in the first, a boy broke 15 cups when trying to help his mother and in the second a boy broke 1 cup when trying to steal, the child would feel that the first boy is wrong since he broke more number of cups (Piaget, 1932, p. 137).
If a child of about 10 years encounters an ethical and moral dilemma to judge a man who has stolen jewelry, the child may assert that the action is wrong because “”It’s against the law,” or “It’s bad to steal,” or even because he feel that the person will “get punished” (Kohlberg, 1958).
If a similar dilemmas is presented to a teenager or and adolescent of age 13 or 14 years, they develop reasoning powers and believe that they should live up to the expectations of their families and societies within which they function. Thus, these children may ask why the man stole the jewelry and if the theft is for a moral cause, like for saving someone’s life, children at this stage may even term the man as “good”.
To a person who is much older and of about 16 to 20 years of age, this action may seem incorrect, since the individual by this stage is connected with “society as a whole” and there is much emphasis on obeying laws and respect for authority to maintain the social order (Colby and Kohlberg, 1983). Thus, at this stage and age individual would understand the motive behind the man’s actions but would not condone it since it’s immoral to steal.
According to Piaget, moral development of individuals occurs on the basis of their age and interactions with society. However, according to Kohlberg (1968, 1981), the stages of moral development are not due to the maturation processes of individuals and do not occur as a result of genetic structures. He asserts that the stages develop from the individual ability to think and reason about moral problems. He also debates that social experience does not promote the ability to think morally and that the stages of moral development occur due to the stimulation of individual’s mental processes (Kohlberg et al., 1975).
References
- Colby, A., Kohlberg, L., Gibbs, J. & Lieberman, M. (1983). A longitudinal study of moral judgment. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 200, 1-96.
- Kohlberg, Lawrence (1958). “The Development of Modes of Thinking and Choices in Years 10 to 16”. Ph. D. dissertation, University of Chicago.
- Kohlberg, L., Kauffman, M., Scharf, P., & Hickey, J. (1975). The just community approach to corrections: A theory. Journal of Moral Education, 4, 243-260.
- Piaget, J. (1932). The moral judgment of the child. New York: Free Press.