Download Lawrence Kohlberg`s Theory of Moral Development

• Topic: Moral
Development &
Cognitive Reasoning
• Aim: How do humans
develop a sense of right
and wrong?
• Do Now: You find a
wallet with $1000 dollars
cash - no one is around
but the person’s ID is in
the wallet with their
address - what do you
do and why?
1.
2.
3.
•
The ID: instinctual and biological urges that operates on the
“pleasure principle”
The EGO: the rational, thoughtful personality process that
operates on the “reality principle”
The SUPEREGO: serves to advocate what you should do,
operates on the “moral principal, or conscience”
According to Freud, certain personality traits & behaviors
can be determined by the correct or incorrect development
of the ID, EGO, and SUPEREGO
Freud’s Theory
of Personality
(and behavior)
Stages of Moral Development:
• Psychologist Lawrence
Kohlberg argued that
human morality develops
in 6 stages throughout life.
• Used surveys with ethnical
dilemmas (Heinz, e.g.)
• Rationalization for
responses, not the
responses themselves,
determines the level of
moral reasoning.
Heinz Dilemma (or ‘Heinz Steals the
Drug’)
A woman was near death from a special kind of cancer.
There was one drug that the doctors thought might save
her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same
town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to
make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug
cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and
charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick
woman’s husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to
borrow the money, but he could only get together about
$1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist
that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper to
let him pay later. But the druggist said, “No, I discovered
the drug and I’m going to make money from it.” Should
Heinz steal the drug?
‘Heinz’ - Survey Questions
1. Is it right or wrong for him to steal
the drug?
2. Does he have an obligation to steal
the drug?
3. Should he steal it if the person dying
was a stranger?
4. It is against the law to steal the drug.
Does that necessarily make it morally
wrong?
Lawrence Kohlberg’s Moral LadderCognitive Development
Postconventional
level
Morality of abstract
principles: to affirm
agreed-upon rights and
personal ethical principles
Conventional
level
Morality of law and
social rules: to gain
approval or avoid
disapproval
Preconventional
level
Morality of self-interest:
to avoid punishment
or gain concrete rewards
 Based on your own
personal ethics
 Based on how others
see you
 Based on rewards and
punishments
Problems with Kolhberg’s theory
Culturally
Biased- Only
urban countries seem
to progress to highest
level of reasoning.
Sampling-Only Stages- Need to
white middle class
boys interviewed. Not
a good basis for
universal concept.
progress without
skipping/ regressing.
Some evidence to
suggest we move up
and down at different
points in our lives?
Moral/Ethical Development Discussion:
1. Where does our sense of right and wrong
come from (Basically, what factors went into
your answering of the Do Now)?
2. How old are humans when they start to
really understand concepts of right and
wrong?
3. In your opinion, what makes an action the
‘right’ or the ‘wrong’ thing to do? Does
situation matter or not?
Incentives:
• “Morality, it could be argued,
represents the way that people would
like the world to work -whereas
economics represents how it actually
does work.”
• Incentives are things that motivate us
to act or not act a particular manner.
Can be social, moral, or economic.
• Why cheat (tests, taxes, or anything
really)?
• Why don’t we cheat more often?
Ethical & Moral Dilemmas:
• Situations in which there are two choices to be
made, neither of which resolves the situation in an
ethically acceptable fashion.
• Reasoning for decisions matter more than decision
itself
Who do you save and why? - Reading
“Justice - What’s the Right Thing to Do”
excerpt
Life Boat Morality Exercise:
• The ship is sinking and the seas are rough. All but one
lifeboat has been destroyed. The lifeboat holds a
maximum of 6 people. There are 8 people that want to
board the lifeboat. The four individuals who do not
board the boat will certainly die.
• Woman who is six weeks pregnant
• Lifeguard
• Two young adults who recently married
• Senior citizen who has fifteen grandchildren
• Elementary school teacher
• Thirteen year old twins
• Veteran nurse
• Captain of the ship
The Prisoner’s Dilemma (Poundstone, 1992):
• Two members of a criminal gang are arrested and
imprisoned. Each prisoner is in solitary confinement with
no means of speaking to or exchanging messages with the
other. The police admit they don't have enough evidence
to convict the pair on the principal charge. They plan to
sentence both to a year in prison on a lesser charge.
Simultaneously, the police offer each prisoner a bargain. If
he testifies against his partner, he will go free while the
partner will get three years in prison on the main charge.
Oh, yes, there is a catch ... If both prisoners testify against
each other, both will be sentenced to two years in jail.
When are the following actions
ethical or unethical?
•
•
•
•
Murder
Assault
Lying
Theft
Morality Discussion:
• Explain why you think capital punishment (the
death penalty) either is or is not an ethical
punishment for certain crimes.
What about…
• Adults vs.. Children?
• Certain Crimes?
• Mentally retarded criminals?
• 8th Amendment (cruel & unusual punishment)?
Kitty (Catherine) Genovese:
“Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder Didn’t
Call the Police” - NY Times, 1964
1. Why do you think the
residents of Kew
Gardens acted (or didn’t
act) the way they did?
2. Do you think most
people would act in the
same way?
3. Do you think that you
would act in the same
way? Why or why not?
Famous Case Studies: Milgram
experiment and Stanford Prison
experiment
The Milgram Experiment (1963):
• Social Experiment that
measured the willingness of
study participants to obey
an authority figure who
instructed them to perform
acts (electric shocks) that
conflicted with their
personal conscience.
Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular
hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive
process… they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with
fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the
resources needed to resist authority.”---Stanley Milgram
---Him Huy, head of guard detail at Tuol Sleng (S-21) death
camp where he personally oversaw the deaths of 14,000
individuals. Huy, now 50, lives in a small village in Cambodia
where he lives alongside former victims.
• “I’m not a bad person. I’m a good man. I never argue with anyone. I never fight with
anyone. I have good intentions as a human being…”
• “We were all prisoners, those who killed and those who were killed. We were victims
too. I had no choice. If I hadn’t killed them [Cambodian citizens], I would have been
killed myself.”
The Nuremberg Defense:
• Coined during the
Nazi war crimes trials
at Nuremberg after
World War II.
• Nazi war criminals who
were charged with
genocide, mass murder,
torture and other
atrocities used the
defense "I was only
following orders" so
frequently that the
argument became known
generically as "The
Nuremberg Defense".
Stanford Prison Experiment - 1971
•Psychological social experiment that intended to see what role authority
plays in moral behavior (if any)
•1/2 participants were ‘guards’, 1/2 were ‘prisoners’
•Study stopped after 2 weeks due to ethnical dilemmas of participants
behavior – guards acting cruelly towards ‘prisoners’
The use of ID numbers was a way to make prisoners feel
anonymous. Each prisoner had to be called only by his ID number
and could only refer to himself and the other prisoners by number
“…our
prisoners
expected some
harassment, to
have their
privacy and
some of their
other civil
rights violated
while they were
in prison”
• “Blindfolded and
in a state of mild
shock over their
surprise arrest by
the city police,
our prisoners
were put into a
car and driven
to…[jail]…”
• “Push-ups were a
common form of
physical punishment
imposed by the guards
to punish infractions of
the rules or displays of
improper attitudes
toward the guards or
institution…”
• “…they carried a whistle
around their neck and a
billy club borrowed from
the police. Guards also
wore special sun-glasses,
an idea I borrowed from
the movie Cool Hand
Luke. Mirror sunglasses
prevented anyone from
seeing their eyes or
reading their emotions”
Discussion Questions:
1. Why do you believe the “guards” and
“prisoners” at Stanford, along with the guards
at Abu Ghraib prison acted as they did?
2. What do you think the experiment says about
how people can change in different
situations?
3. Do you believe that, put in a similar situation,
you might have acted the same? Why or why
not?
• The Milgram Experiment Revisited (2007)