Kohlberg

Lawrence Kohlberg is well-known theorist to modern psychology. Born in 1927 to a wealthy family, Lawrence Kohlberg lived a modest life, first as a sailor, and then helping to smuggle Jews into Palestine. He studied psychology at the University of Chicago in the late 1940s and 1950s, completing his dissertation in 1958. His dissertation outlined the theory that he is now quite well-known for: Kohlberg’s stages of moral development. He died in 1987 of a possible suicide. Lawrence Kohlberg was influenced by the work of Jean Piaget, a psychologist who developed a stage theory for the cognitive development of children. Like the stage theorists who came before them, Jean Piaget   and, as a result, Lawrence Kohlberg   believed that each stage of development must be completed before an individual could move on to the next. In other words, children can’t skip the cognitive lessons learned in toddlerhood or preschool; they need to pass through those stages before they can enter each successive cognitive state.
The stage theory developed by Lawrence Kohlberg was somewhat different than other theories, for a couple of reasons. First, Kohlberg did not assign specific age spans to each stage; in fact, he hypothesized that many people never reach the final stage, no matter how long they live. Second, Lawrence Kohlberg didn’t deal with psychological or cognitive development, as previous stage theorists had. Instead, Kohlberg focused his theory on the development of moral reasoning in children and adults. Lawrence Kohlberg believed that moral thinking progressed through a series of six stages, which could be grouped into three general stages. The first general stage is called pre-conventional. In this stage, moral reasoning starts out as being totally based on the notion of punishment and reward, and progresses toward a realization that acting according to the laws of punishment and reward benefits oneself. This stage of moral reasoning is found in young children.
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