Lawrence Kohlberg

Lawrence Kohlberg (October 25, 1927 – January 17, 1987) was an American 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 25 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 George Herbert Mead and James Mark Baldwin.

At the same time he was creating a new field within psychology: "moral development".

In an empirical study using six criteria, such as citations and recognition, Kohlberg was found to be the 30th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century.

Lawrence Kohlberg was born in Bronxville, New York.

He was the youngest of four children of Alfred Kohlberg, a Jewish German entrepreneur, and of his second wife, Charlotte Albrecht, a Christian German chemist.

His parents separated when he was four years old and divorced finally when he was 14.

From 1933 to 1938, Lawrence and his three siblings rotated between their mother and father for six months at a time.

This rotating custody of the Kohlberg children ended in 1938, when the children were allowed to choose the parent with whom they wanted to live.

Kohlberg attended high school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and served in the Merchant Marine at the end of World War II.

He worked for a time with the Haganah on a ship smuggling Jewish refugees from Romania into Palestine through the British Blockade.

Captured by the British and held at an internment camp on Cyprus, Kohlberg escaped with fellow crew members.

Kohlberg was in Palestine during the fighting in 1948 to establish the state of Israel, but refused to participate and focused on nonviolent forms of activism.

He also lived on a kibbutz during this time, until he was able to return to America in 1948.

In the same year, he enrolled at the University of Chicago.

At the time it was possible to gain credit for courses by examination, and Kohlberg earned his bachelor's degree in one year, 1948.

In 1955 while beginning his dissertation, he married Lucille Stigberg, and the couple had two sons, David and Steven.

In those early years he read Piaget's work.

Kohlberg found a scholarly approach that gave a central place to the individual's reasoning in moral decision making.

At the time this contrasted with the current psychological approaches of behaviorism and psychoanalysis that explained morality as simple internalization of external cultural or parental rules, through teaching using reinforcement and punishment or identification with a parental authority.

He then began study for his doctoral degree in psychology, which he completed at Chicago in 1958.

Kohlberg's first academic appointment was at Yale University, as an assistant professor of psychology, 1958–1961.

In his unpublished 1958 dissertation, Kohlberg described 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 John 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 United States 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.

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 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.

There he instituted the Child Psychology Training Program.

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.

In 1969 he accepted Rebecca Shribman-Katz's invitation of the Society for Justice-Ethics-Morals (JEM) and visited Israel to study the morality of young people in that country.

This was the beginning of the life-long cooperation between JEM and Kohlberg.

JEM published many books in Hebrew under his supervision, merging Kohlberg's morality theory and Jewish morality and putting it into practice, in teaching justice, ethics and morals to judges, lawyers, teachers, police officers, prisoners and the young generation of Israel.

In 1978, Kohlberg invited Katz to participate in the conference of Law in a Free Society, which led to the research published in 1980 "Moral Education and Law-Related Education".