Minimum of one page long response
Present Kohlberg's Heinz dilemma to several people. How did they respond to the dilemma? In their responses, could you see evidence of the three broad stages of Kohlberg's moral reasoning-preconventional, conventional, and postconventional?
[Our knowledge of the development of moral reasoning skills, at least in the United States, has been heavily influenced by the work of a psychologist named Lawrence Kohlberg.
His model of moral reasoning and judgment is based in large part on Piaget's model of cognitive development. Inspired by Piaget's theory suggesting that cognitive development proceeds in a predictable, invariant sequence, Kohlberg wondered if this was true of moral development as well.
To find out, he presented participants in his study with hypothetical dilemmas and asked them to respond to the dilemma. He was interested not only in the content of their response, but more importantly, the reasoning behind their responses. The most famous of Kohlberg's dilemmas is the story of Heinz: A woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her.
It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug.
The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife.
Should Heinz have broken into the store to steal the drug for his wife? Why or why not? Based on participant responses to dilemmas such as this one, he proposed a stage theory of moral development. Kohlberg's theory of moral development (1976, 1984) proposes three general stages of development of moral reasoning skills. (Kohlberg further divided each of these three general stages into two stages, for a total of six substages of moral development.)
1. Preconventional morality involves compliance with rules to avoid punishment and gain rewards. A person operating at this level of morality would condemn stealing as bad because the thief might get caught and be thrown in jail or otherwise punished. The focus of the justification is on the punishment (or reward) associated with the action.
2. Conventional morality involves conformity to rules that are defined by others' approval or society's rules. A person operating at this level of morality would judge stealing as wrong because it is against the law and others in society generally disapprove of it.
3. Postconventional morality involves moral reasoning on the basis of individual principles and conscience.
A person operating at this level of morality would judge stealing within the context either of societal or community needs or of his or her own personal moral beliefs and values, which supersede perceived societal and community needs. Gilligan (1982) has challenged Kohlberg's theory by suggesting that its stages are biased toward the particular way in which males as opposed to females view relationships.
She argues that male moral reasoning is based on abstract justice, whereas female moral reasoning is based on obligations and responsibilities. These two types of moral reasoning have been called "morality of justice" versus "morality of caring."
Despite the fervor of the debate, however, reviews of the research seem to indicate few gender differences in moral reasoning (Walker, 1984, 2006). It appears that variations between males and females in moral reasoning can be explained by other variables, such as education, occupation, or types of issues under consideration. Cross-cultural research may shed more light on this issue.]