Lawrence Kohlberg

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Lawrence Kohlberg bigraphy, stories - American psychologist

Lawrence Kohlberg : biography

October 25, 1927 – January 19, 1987

Lawrence Kohlberg (October 25, 1927 – January 19, 1987) was a psychologist best known for his theory of stages of moral development. He served as a professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Chicago and at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. Even though it was considered unusual in his era, he decided to study the topic of moral judgment, extending Jean Piaget’s account of children’s moral development from twenty-five years earlier. In fact, it took Kohlberg five years before he was able to publish an article based on his views. Kohlberg’s work reflected and extended not only Piaget’s findings but also the theories of philosophers G.H. Mead and James Mark Baldwin.See Kohlberg, L. (1982), "Moral development," in J.M. Broughton & D.J. Freeman-Moir (Eds.), The Cognitive Developmental Psychology of James Mark Baldwin: Current Theory and Research in Genetic Epistemology, Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corp. At the same time he was creating a new field within psychology: "moral development". Scholars such as Elliot Turiel and James Rest have responded to Kohlberg’s work with their own significant contributions. In an empirical study by Haggbloom et al. using six criteria, such as citations and recognition, Kohlberg was found to be the 30th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century.Haggbloom, S.J. et al. (2002). The 100 Most Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century. Review of General Psychology. Vol. 6, No. 2, 139–15. Haggbloom et al. combined three quantitative variables: citations in professional journals, citations in textbooks, and nominations in a survey given to members of the Association for Psychological Science, with three qualitative variables (converted to quantitative scores): National Academy of Science (NAS) membership, American Psychological Association (APA) President and/or recipient of the APA Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award, and surname used as an eponym. Then the list was rank ordered.

Career

Kohlberg’s first academic appointment was at Yale University, as an assistant professor of psychology, 1958-1961. In 1955 while beginning his dissertation, he had married Lucille Stigberg, and the couple had two sons, David and Steven. Kohlberg spent a year at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, in Palo Alto, California, 1961-1962, and then joined the Psychology Department of the University of Chicago as assistant, then associate professor of psychology and human development, 1962-1967. He held a visiting appointment at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1967–68, and then was appointed Professor of Education and Social Psychology there, beginning 1968, where he remained until his death.

Stages of Moral Development

In his 1958 dissertation, Kohlberg wrote what are now known as Kohlberg’s stages of moral development. These stages are planes of moral adequacy conceived to explain the development of moral reasoning. Created while studying psychology at the University of Chicago, the theory was inspired by the work of Jean Piaget and a fascination with children’s reactions to moral dilemmas. Kohlberg proposed a form of “Socratic” moral education and reaffirmed Dewey’s idea that development should be the aim of education. He also outlined how educators can influence moral development without indoctrination and how public school can be engaged in moral education consistent with the Constitution.

Kohlberg’s approach begins with the assumption that humans are intrinsically motivated to explore, and become competent at functioning in, their environments. In social development, this leads us to imitate role models we perceive as competent and to look to them for validation."Kohlberg, L. (1969), "Stage and sequence," Handbook of Socialization Theory and Research, McGraw Hill: New York. Thus our earliest childhood references on the rightness of our and others’ actions are adult role models with whom we are in regular contact. Kohlberg also held that there are common patterns of social life, observed in universally occurring social institutions, such as families, peer groups, structures and procedures for clan or society decision-making, and cooperative work for mutual defense and sustenance. Endeavoring to become competent participants in such institutions, humans in all cultures exhibit similar patterns of action and thought concerning the relations of self, others, and social world. Furthermore, the more one is prompted to imagine how others experience things and imaginatively to take their roles, the more quickly one learns to function well in cooperative human interactions.