2009/12/24 by Charles G. Levine, Lawrence Kohlberg, Alexandra Hewer · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Decision Sciences · Psychology · #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Ethics in Business and Education #Cultural Differences and Values #Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development #Normative #Epistemology #Action (physics) #Psychology #Stage theory #Moral development #Economic Justice #Ideology #Sociology #Moral psychology #Social psychology #Law #Politics #Developmental psychology #Philosophy #Political science
paper · doi:10.1159/000272945
openalex publication_date 2009/12/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This article is a synopsis of the monograph Moral Stages: A Current Formulation and a Response to Critics. Recent changes in the theory of moral stages are presented, including a broadening of theoretical and research concerns, differentiation of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ stages, clarification of the form-content distinction, revision of A and B substages, clarification of Stages 6 and 7, discussion of moral action, listing of nine metaethical assumptions made prior to research, etc. In response to critics of the theory, it is pointed out that the primary concern is with justice reasoning per se, and it is argued that there is no sexual, cross-cultural, or ideological bias to the theory in any strong sense of the term. Directions for future research include clarifying the conceptions of stage structure and transformation, the relationship between judgment and action, and the psychological and normative-ethical status of Stage 6.