Journal #5: Lawerence Kohlberg

Lawerence Kohlberg studied the different responses children would give due to their moral thinking over a length of time. There are 3 levels in his study. Each having 2 sub levels. The first level of development is the pre conventional level. This is the time in which children begin to develope a moral code for themself. The get their morals from the standards that are set for them and the consequences giving when not achieving certain goals. The first stage in this level is the obedience and punishment stage. This is when child4ren begin to realize that if they get punished, that means that they didnt obey. However if they obey, that means they wont get punished. The second stage is about indivisualism and change. This is when they learn that not everyone has the same morals and codes as they do. The second level in Kohlberg's study is the conventional stage. Here the person does not question the morals and social norms of their group. But go along with thier mind sets so that they dont go against the crowd. Stage 3 is when a person's main goals is to try and be accepted by everyone to gain good interpersonal relatiopnships. The person will no go against other social norms in order to be accepted. Because they know that if they do something unnormal that their crowd will find them weird and exclude them. However once you discover social norms and learn to follow them and maintain their rules, such as we learnin stage 4, we will learn that it is better not to queation the rules or society. But better to follow them in order to be accepted. The last level is the post- conventional level. Here we decide to make our own self chosen priniciples to follow. In stage 5 the social contract and indivisual rights stage, we learn that there are exceptions to rules. Kinda lik,e how Kohlberg deminstrates in his story about the man whose wife is dying and tries to decide wheather or not to steal the drug to save her life. We all know that stealing is wrong. Howver, we know that its also not right to let someone die if we could help that not happen. The last stage in Kohlberd's theory is the universal principles stage. In this study and indivisual will decide, if nessicary, to stand against an ebtire crowd that goes against thir morals. If they truly believe that their morals are rights. Just to prove how right they are. However, not everyone achieves all of these stages. It all depends on the way you grow up and your progress between the levels and sublevels.