Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s Theories of Moral Development

Running head: PSYCHOLOGY
Psychology
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1PSYCHOLOGY
The pattern of development of children in the first five years of life is critical to
determine how childhood experiences shapes their personality during adulthood. Child
development encompasses period of physical, cognitive and social growth in children starting
from birth to early adulthood (Shute & Slee, 2015). Moral development is also one of the tenets
of child development that is the development of proper attitudes and behavior in children.
Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s theories of moral development give an insight into the manner in which
children develop moral reasoning and behavior. The main purpose of this essay is to critically
evaluate Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s theories of moral development and discuss how these theories
have explained stages in the development of moral reasoning and behavior.
Piaget and Kohlberg have mainly focused on cognitive aspect of child development by
their theories related to moral judgment and moral development respectively. Moral development
is the comprehension and emergence of ideas of morality in children from infancy to adulthood
(Malti & Ongley, 2014). Piaget explained moral development in children by observing the
emergence of intelligence from childhood to adulthood. Through his research on children’s
judgment about moral behavior, Piaget emphasized that children tend to learn morality by
observing figures of authority. Furthermore, as their intelligences develops, they start to frame
their own principles of morality. He particularly differentiated between thinking pattern about
very young children and older children related to moral thinking. Moral thinking in young
children were shaped by outcome of certain actions, whereas older children were mostly found to
look behind the motive of any action instead of its consequences. The thought process of
children’s related to evaluation of action to decide morality of action is also consistent with the
ideas presented by Krebs et al., (2014). Hence, from the review of Piaget’s theory, it can be said

2PSYCHOLOGY
that Piaget mainly focused on evaluating how children’s thought and judgment related to
morality change with time.
Piaget’s ideas related to moral development influenced the work of Lawrence Kolhberg.
The strength of Kohlberg’s theory compared to Piaget’s theory of moral development is that he
has provided detailed concepts related to children’s moral development by developing the six
stage theory of moral development (Snarey & Samuelson, 2015).. He categorized these stages
into three level of pre-conventional, conventional and post-conventional. The preconventional
level was for infancy and preschool age children. Kohlberg explained that children at this stage
focus on physical consequences of action. At stage 1, children have obedience and punishment
orientation and stage 2 children’s interest shift to rewards. The conventional level is for school
age children and at this stage, children begin to internalize moral values based on norms of
adults. Their moral judgment is also determined by following the fixed rules of society. Hence,
good interpersonal relationship and maintaining the social order is the norm at the conventional
stage. The post-conventional stage of morality is for teenagers and adults and moral reasoning at
this stage is based on individual right and justice. By this stage, people have their own moral
guideline and they defend moral principles in the society too (Reysen, Perryman & Phipps,
2017). The review of Kohlberg’s theory implies that it is based on the notions of justice and
morality.
The comparison of Kohlberg’s and Piaget’s theory of moral development has revealed
many similarities and differences between two theories. The theories can be regarded as similar
because both are explaining ways to measure moral characteristic of children and determine
moral judgment level in children of different age. Both the theory gave the idea that moral
judgment and development in children changes with age, however Kohlberg focused on