Lawrence Kohlberg was one of the great thinkers regarding the moral development of children. Basing his work on Jean Piaget, Kohlberg performed studies that examined the development of children by presenting them with hypothetical moral dilemmas. After many years of study, Kohlberg developed three levels in which a person may fall concerning his moral development. These levels were as follows: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. Within these levels were stages that further explored the motives behind a person’s response to Kohlberg’s moral problems. These stages were: obedience and punishment orientation, individualism and exchange, good interpersonal relationships, maintaining social order, social contract and individual rights, and universal principles. If one were to examine these stages in depth, one could find the reasons behind the different moral thoughts of a person. Kohlberg stipulated that his stages, like Piaget’s, were hierarchical, universal, and have an invariant sequence, although it can be possible for each stage to be qualitatively different from person to person and stage to stage. Kohlberg is highly acclaimed for his contributions to the psychological field and for formulating a structural way of studying moral development.
One critic who seemed to disagree with Kohlberg’s work was his own student, Carol Gilligan. She argued that Kohlberg neglected a major part of his studies since he interviewed only males. Gilligan’s main argument against Kohlberg was that males and females have a different “orientation” or “perspective” about life, resulting in differing mentalities in moral decision-making. She identified boys as having an orientation toward justice and girls toward care. In the book, Mapping the Moral Domain, Gilligan defines a justice orientation as that which “draws attention to the problems of inequality and oppression and holds up an ideal of reciprocity and equal respect” (73). For Gilligan, this orientation is typical of men and is the basis for Kohlberg’s six-stage theory. Women, on the other hand, have a care orientation, which “draws attention to problems of detachment or abandonment and holds up an ideal of attention and response to need” (73). She felt that women gravitate toward the concepts of feelings, needs, and care. Gilligan stated, “two moral injunctions—not to treat others unfairly and not to turn away from someone in need—capture these two concerns”(73).
Gilligan would later take Kohlberg’s stages of moral development and rework them into a simpler, more generic form. Rather than having six stages as Kohlberg did, Gilligan assesses that there are merely three levels of development: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. These levels are slightly redefined and encompass the motives behind the different ethics of care and concern on which individuals base their moral reasoning. For Gilligan, “the logic underlying an ethic of care is a psychological logic of relationships, which contrasts with the formal logic of fairness that informs the justice approach” (Different Voice, 73).
As we read the works of Kohlberg and Gilligan, especially regarding Gilligan’s critiques of Kohlberg, we formulated a few questions that became the basis of our study. These questions were: When given moral dilemmas, do both groups of children, male and female, follow Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development; is there a difference in orientation in moral decision-making between the two genders, as Carol Gilligan suggests; and are females more inclined to choose care over justice and males justice over care? Our hypothesis in this study leaned toward Carol Gilligan’s theory in that we believed that girls were more inclined to make moral decisions based on ideas of care and relationships, whereas boys would base their decisions on justice.
In preparation for our research study, we selected three moral dilemmas that would be used with our subjects. As we struggled to choose our dilemmas, we agreed that both care and justice answers could be provided for each, thus giving a fair opportunity for possible Kohlberg and Gilligan responses. After much deliberation, we decided on using Kohlberg’s famous “Heinz dilemma”, what we called the “Dad dilemma”, and lastly, the “Theft dilemma”. Once the handouts for the children were made, we reviewed Kohlberg and Gilligan’s levels of moral development and tried to identify key words or phrases that might be given by the children in their respective stages (See Figures 1 and 2*). For example, if we were looking at Kohlberg, a child in stage one would focus on the “bad” or “wrong” of an action.
When we actually went out and gathered our data, we devoted about an hour one afternoon at Holy Family of Nazareth School. During this study, we interviewed 15 fifth graders (eight girls and seven boys) from one class, presenting them with a handout with three moral dilemmas, straight from Kohlberg’s own studies (See Figure 3). We thought it more beneficial to include both males and females in our experiment, so we could truly compare and contrast the different genders’ answers to the Kohlberg and Gilligan rubrics. When each child received a handout, we asked the students to read over each dilemma and answer the series of questions by writing their answers in the space provided.
We selected fifth grade because we felt more variation among the stages might be present at this age due to possible differences in levels of cognitive development; with Kohlberg’s foundation being Piaget, we felt this might make a difference. Also, we decided data would be most manageable in terms of clarity, both handwriting and expression of thoughts, with older children.
As we conducted our study, we observed some interesting behaviors which occurred among the students. For instance, there were examples of cheating, and other children looking on other students’ papers. Another was the internal conflict which could be seen in a handful of the children while they answered the questions. After we completed the study and were examining the children’s responses, we noticed answers that were scratched out and some that had been erased. Back in the classroom though, there were a lot of questions that the students had regarding the handouts: “What does obligation mean?” “What kind of drug is Heinz trying to steal?” We tried to walk around the classroom and answer the students’ questions to the best of our abilities without giving away any answers that would taint our results. When the children completed their handouts, we left Holy Family and began to evaluate and score our results.
As we read over the answers we received, we began to look for those key words or phrases that we had listed in our Kohlberg rubric to try and find where each answer would fall in relation to his stages. We scored each answer on a point system, allotting one point to an answer that would fall into Kohlberg’s stage one, two points for stage two, three to stage three, and so on. After the points had been allotted to each response, an average was taken and rounded to the nearest stage. With this average the corresponding level was designated to each response. Once we had established a stage and level for each individual response, we then found the average response of each child in every dilemma (See Figure 4). Finally, we averaged the stage of the children from the three dilemmas to see where every child was in their development overall (See Figure 5).
We followed the same steps to evaluate the data using the rubric created using Carol Gilligan’s theory. In this part of the data analysis, since Gilligan did not have numeric stages, we determined the level of each response rather than the stage then level. We then found the average level of development for every child (some fell between levels) on each of the dilemmas (See Figure 6). Finally, we found the average level for every child overall (See Figure 7).
Since our questions and hypothesis dealt with the difference in orientation between males and females, the next step in our treatment of data was to compare the overall stage of the children between the two theorists’ scales. We then created a table to compare them (See Figure 8). A few of the children were designated in Gilligan’s scale as “Preconventional/ Conventional.” These children were all at the preconventional level with Kohlberg as well, so we decided that those in stage one of Kohlberg’s theory slightly favored the care orientation and those in stage two of Kohlberg’s theory were equal in care and justice orientation (they were closer to reaching the conventional level). Our data indicates that all of the girls were equal in orientation according to both theories, and several of the boys slightly favored Gilligan/care to Kohlberg/justice.
As a result of our data analysis, we concluded that our hypothesis was incorrect. Initially siding with Gilligan, we now see that males and females, at least those involved with our study, do not differ much in orientation around the age of ten. However, there were many limitations with such a small group of children and such limited time to perform the study that our results may or may not have been hindered.
Looking back at our completed research study, some areas could have been improved. For example, although giving the children the chance to write their responses allowed us to see some of their uncertainty in certain questions through eraser marks or scratching out, verbal interviews may have been more useful. We would have been able to press them further in their responses, getting a fuller picture of their complete moral mentality if we conducted our study orally. Part of this related to limited research time to conduct our study. We had to make our data collection as direct and straight-forward as possible due to time and resource constraints, and consequently, we were introduced to yet another weakness in our research, found in the data itself. Some of the children had difficulty interpreting what exactly was being asked of them in a certain question, and it was this vagueness that led to very off-the-wall answers. For example, one girl, when asked if Heinz should steal the drug replied that he shouldn’t simply because, “[the drug] could cause a black hole in your lungs.” Many responses simply repeated the question, giving us nothing on which to base their level of development. When presented with the question about promises being the most important thing in the Dad dilemma, one child said, “Yes. Because he promised that he can.” These misinterpretations and vague answers could have been prevented if we had questioned the children orally, which is why we would have to agree that if we were to conduct this study again, this would be one of the areas we would improve.
When we began discussing possible candidates for our research study, we agreed that through interviewing fifth graders it would be more feasible to receive responses that were clearer and more diverse. Our results stand to show that quite the opposite was true. Although we did get some clear responses from the children, there were some that just had to be thrown out, which was a great disservice to our study. Not only were some of the responses difficult to analyze; many of the answers were too similar. Our data seemed to suggest that at this particular level of development, boys and girls seem to react in a similar fashion when presented with moral dilemmas. One way we could have avoided this shortcoming would have been to interview more than one group of children. In so doing, we may have been able to receive responses which were more diverse, and possibly better to analyze for later more educated conclusions. This would be a factor that could be changed if discussing future research. Gathering information from more than one age group of children would be much more informative and this broader group of children would actually help to make our research not only more credible, but more accurate as well.
This is not to say that our study was a complete failure—quite the contrary actually. By instructing the children to write their responses, we were able to cut down on a lot of possible distractions that we would have had if we had used, say, a video camera for oral responses. In these handouts, there was a direct experience between the paper and their minds. No one was watching them, or intimidating them. There was not fear of getting the wrong answer. Taking all this into account, the fact that we had the children handwrite their responses was quite beneficial. Also, through our research, we were able to evaluate the responses and really review a lot of what Carol Gilligan says about gender differences and the different ways males and females react to a certain situation.
Actually, regardless of our limitations and incorrect hypothesis, we learned that we cannot infer that Gilligan was completely wrong in her assumptions regarding females and the care orientation. One question which could indicate Gilligan is not wrong remains after our study: whether age plays a role in differing orientations. Would older subjects be more likely to differ among gender? If so, Gilligan may still be correct. Even regardless of this, the implications of our study are that Gilligan was right in the fact that two perspectives, or orientations, are present in moral decision making. Simply seeing responses that dealt with care showed that Kohlberg overlooked this mentality.
Kohlberg himself admitted that he may have erred in this respect in an article that responded to Gilligan’s assertions by describing the “validity of Gilligan’s ideas … [as] the discovery of an insight” (Ethics: A Reply,514). Basically, he felt that her concepts of care and responsibility were a new and possibly respectable way of looking at moral development. Nevertheless, he stated that “whether these differences in what I would call the content of sex-role norms and values actually give rise either to differences in the formal structure of moral reasoning competence or to a preferential orientation to moral judgment requires further study” (519). Our study seems to reveal just this – both perspectives are relevant and applicable to moral development, but in our small amount of research the care orientation made no difference in Kohlberg’s level of development.
Taking all this into consideration, Gilligan’s arguments are sound and perceptive, but they seem to make little difference in understanding the sequence in which people develop. Another issue that may affect moral development which we failed to consider prior to our study but wonder now is the impact of culture on development. Gilligan stated that Kohlberg implies that “only if women enter the traditional arena of male activity will they recognize the inadequacy of this moral perspective and progress like men toward higher stages [above stage three]” (Different Voice 18). Our culture today (as opposed to Kohlberg’s day) allows women to enter this realm of male activity and therefore progress beyond stage three. Would Kohlberg accept this cultural role of women as an influence in moral development? Kohlberg did perform cross-cultural studies and emphasized that “the common assumption of the cultural relativity of ethics, on which almost all contemporary social scientific theorizing about morality is based, is an error” (Essays, 105).
This is an issue that remains unresolved after our study, and it may never be answered in completion. However, thinking about the role of culture and gender in our moral development allows us to observe and study this development in an entirely different way. Kohlberg created a strong framework for understanding the way people reason and think about moral issues. However, Gilligan, even though our study apparently proved her theory wrong, takes our level of understanding development even deeper. The ability of a parent or teacher to evaluate their own mode of thinking as well as that of their children inherently allows them aid in the development of children. Kohlberg spoke of moral development as being an innate concept that is actualized through the help of the environment. Just so, struggling to understand the way in which people develop will allow adults to assist children in their natural development. Our study proved nothing spectacular, but it did open our eyes to the significance of looking at development in a deeper fashion as Gilligan did. Kohlberg and Gilligan were both right. Kohlberg paved the way for future thinkers like Gilligan to search for insight that could aid adults in looking at the complexities of cognitive and moral development, and essentially use them to guide the children in this development.
Bibliography
Crain, W. (2005). Theories of development: Concepts and applications (5th ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, pgs. 151-173.