Lawrence Kohlberg’s research while affiliated with Harvard University and other places

A theory of legal development, derived from cognitive developmental theory, is explicated using U.S. kindergarten to college and cross-national preadolescent data. Paralleling evidence on universal moral levels, the development of individual orientations vis-à-vis legal or rule systems reveals consistent movement from a preconventional law-obeying, to a conventional law-maintaining, to a postconventional lawmaking perspective. In both the U.S. and cross-national samples, “law and order” conventional reasoning is modal reflecting that socialization experiences can accelerate, retard, or crystallize the growth of legal values and roles. Implications of the theory and findings are discussed for legal socialization.

Data from Haan, Smith, and Block's (1968) study of the relation of moral reasoning to sitting-in during the Free Speech Movement protest at the University of California in 1964 was reanalyzed using the current moral judgment scoring system. The original authors had found a bimodal pattern. In their study, more than half of the subjects who reasoned at both the lowest and highest levels of moral development sat in compared with 11% of the subjects reasoning at the middle level. Results of the current reanalysis show a monotonic pattern. At each higher stage of moral reasoning represented in the sample, a greater proportion of subjects sat in (i.e., Stage 3, 10%, Stage 3/4, 31%, Stage 4, 44%, Stage 4/5, 73%). Although moral stage was the most theoretically important correlate of sitting in, it was not the largest. Political identification, deontic choice, and moral type were even more strongly related to sitting in than was moral stage. An effect of sex on moral stage was found but there was no sex effect on sitting in or on the Stage × Sitting-In interaction. The data are discussed in terms of a more general model of moral reasoning and moral action. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

I thought I might take one minute to deal with the question Dr. Strotzka1 raised: While the history of Aquinas is of great interest and my own history is of none, I think sometimes it’s helpful to have a very short historical background to my own thinking. I left high school and went into the Navy and the merchant Marines at the end of World War II, and then I was involved in bringing displaced persons and Jewish refugees through the British blockade and through Palestine, what later became Israel, for a number of years. At that time I was quite convinced I was acting out of conscience, but I became more and more confused about the justice or rightness of what I was doing since as a side effect of these things people were being killed in combat, in connection with bringing these ships in. So, when I went back to start college at the University of Chicago, I was very interested in the question of justice and some cognitive approach to ethics which would go beyond my own confused intuitions. Chicago at the time was a very unusual place, of course dominated by Hutchins and the Great Books, but also by a very strong pragmatic tradition of Dewey and G. H. Mead.

This article reports a longitudinal assessment of the effectiveness of an Israeli kibbutz in facilitating social-moral development among kibbutz-born and nonkibbutz-born youth. The sample included 92 Israeli adolescents divided primarily into three sub-groups: (1.) kibbutz-born and kibbutz-educated youth; (2.) city-born and city-educated youth; and (3.) city-born, but kibbutz-educated youth. A pretest moral development interview was administered shortly after a cohort of Middle Eastern city-born youth had arrived on the kibbutz to continue their education. This was followed by one or more posttests after the city-born youth had been integrated with their kibbutz-born peers for varying periods, from 2 to 9 years. The findings indicated that, although city-born youth entered the kibbutz at a significantly lower moral stage than their kibbutz-born peers, 2 to 5 years later there were no significant developmental differences between the two groups. Comparison city-born youth, not placed on a kibbutz or placed on another kibbutz where they were not integrated into the community, did not show the same gains in moral development. Implications of kibbutz education for improving schools in the U.S. are considered.

Studied the development of social-moral judgments in 92 Israeli kibbutz adolescents (64 of whom were interviewed longitudinally over 2–9 yrs from ages 12 yrs to 24–25 yrs) from the perspective of L. Kohlberg's theory (1958, 1981) of moral judgment development. The study evaluated the validity of Kohlberg's model and moral judgment interview in a cross-cultural context. In addition, it assessed the cultural uniqueness of social-moral reasoning among kibbutzniks. Findings support the validity of Kohlberg's structural-developmental understanding of moral judgment. Stage change was found to be upward, gradual, and without significant regressions. Analyses showed internal consistency of the stages as operationally defined in the standardized scoring manual. The distribution of stage scores among Ss, overall, was unusually high when compared to the results of parallel studies in the US and Turkey. The most important cultural variation involved the use of Stages 4/5 and 5 (global stage and postconventional stage). While all the stages were present among Ss, not all elements of kibbutz postconventional reasoning were present in Kohlberg's model or scoring manual (e.g., the communal emphasis and collective moral principles). (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Surveys research on the predictability of adult adaptation and health based on childhood development with regard to the common belief that early life experiences determine the development of an individual for life. Previous research, however, suggests that this belief is generally a myth. The present review focuses on longitudinal studies in 3 areas: cognitive development and academic achievement, emotional and psychosexual development, and social behavior. Research does not support the continuity assumption (e.g., emotionally disturbed children are not necessarily prone to become mentally ill adults). Two major exceptions are noted: schizophrenia and sociopathic disorders, which are predictable from a compound of genetic factors, environmental factors, and childhood behavior. The nihilistic implication of reducing mental-health services for children is rejected, and constructive recommendations are presented for practitioners and researchers. (227 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Whether “psychometric” and “Piagetian” kinds of intelligence, as measured by instruments designed to measure these constructs, are the same or different is regarded as a question of whether they have the same or different courses of development with age. While factor analysis may not be fully adequate for investigation of this question, use of this technique with variables reflecting chronological age variation must involve elimination of the age effect in order to assess relations among the constructs measured. Humphreys and Parsons (1979) were justified in partialing out age in their reanalysis of a study by Stephens, McLaughlin, Miller, and Glass (1972), to show that the two constructs are highly correlated and possibly identical in the sample studied. Reanalyses of studies by DeVries and Kohlberg (1977) and by DeVries (1974) yield somewhat conflicting results on the identity between psychometric and Piagetian intelligences. The former study does not yield a convincing separation between them, whereas the latter suggests that they can be distinguished, though substantially correlated and both loaded with a general factor. Problems in further investigating the issue are discussed.

Ego development is emerging as one of the more important areas of research in developmental psychology. This paper presents a structural stage approach to ego development and distinguishes it from two other models of ego development, which are termed functional phases and cultural ages. Two subtypes are also delineated within the structural stage approach—a monodomain and a multisubdomain—and the latter is argued for. These concepts are then illustrated through an analysis of four prominent ego development theories—those of Robert Selman, Robert Kegan, Jane Loevinger, and Erik Erikson. The important similarities and critical differences of the theories are clarified, which enables the authors to present a summary integration.

In 1975, the first author became director of a group home for ten delinquent boys. Prior to this time, the home operated on a behaviour-modification philosophy. But during the first author's directorship, the home operated on the ‘just community’ philosophy stressing moral discussion and participatory democracy in making and enforcing rules and in resolving interpersonal conflicts. During this ‘just community’ period, residents moved up an average of one-third of a stage in their reasoning on the Kohlberg moral judgement interview. This advance in stage was comparable to that found in good developmental moral education programmes for nondelinquent high school youth. Comparison groups of offenders were studied in a secure behaviour modification programme and a secure transaction analysis programme. Insignificant increase in residents’ moral reasoning was found in these programmes. A moral atmosphere interview was also administered to residents in each of the programmes. The just community programme was perceived as highest on the following dimensions: 1. Amount of moral discussion and dialogue. 2. Amount of resident power and responsibility for rules and decisions. 3. Amount of concern about fairness of rules and policies. 4. Amount of self-perceived moral behaviour change. The transaction analysis programme was intermediate between the just community programme and the behaviour modification programme on these dimensions. Tentative conclusions are advanced with regard to policies for institutionalized youthful offenders.