I
don't know if it makes any difference in the usefulness argument but, Kohlberg's
stages of moral reasoning are not designed to have any correlation with
moral behavior (however that might be operationally defined). In fact, when I
teach it I point out that, using any of the dilemmas, including the Heinz
dilemma (which I agree is absurd), Kohlberg was not interested in whether or not
a person would agree to steal the drug. He was only concerned with why they
said they did it. In fact, he believed people at each stage could make a
decision one way or the other for different reasons. Higher levels of moral
reasoning corresponded with the ability for formal operational thought. So
saying that Kohlberg's stages of moral reasoning do not correlate with moral
behavior is like saying operant conditioning doesn't explain cognitive
processes. That wasn't its intention.
It also might be tricky to get social scientists to
agree on an operational definition of moral behavior. Some would say that what
makes any behavior moral or immoral is at least partly determined by the actor's
intention and moral reasoning. Others would say there is a more absolute
standard for moral behavior (namely, theirs!). Take abortion, for example.
Different people might disagree about what a moral choice would be in that case
but using Kohlberg's stages of moral reasoning we would find people
making both choices for different reasons at each level of moral
reasoning. In order to use stage of moral reasoning to
predict behavior in this situation, you would first of all have to take
sides on which behavior will be considered moral and, even then, Kohlberg would
not predict that people at higher levels of moral reasoning would make
more moral decisions. He would only predict that those at higher
levels would make their decision for different reasons than those at
lower levels.
Rick
Dr. Richard L. Froman
Psychology Department
John Brown
University
Siloam Springs, AR 72761
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
phone and
voice mail: (479)524-7295
http://www.jbu.edu/sbs/rfroman.html
-----------Original Message-----Hello,
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, November 21, 2002 10:31 AM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences
Subject: Re: Kohlberg's Moral Development
I would like to interject a tangential (though not entirely unrelated) point.
I find Kohlberg, Gilligan etc. to be some of the least useful knowledge we impart in an introductory or developmental psychology class.
I say this because of the evidence (from Kagan and studies of those persons given a diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder) that knowing the difference between right and wrong and DOING right are not at all the same thing. Emotions govern moral behavior in most cases. The guys people who ran Enron surely knew the difference between right and what they actually did.
The Heinz dilemma is an absurd false dilemma. There are other possibilities besides "stealing the drug" and "letting the wife die."
Nancy Melucci
Long Beach City College ---
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