Moral Development in the Professions

Psychology and Applied Ethics

James R. Rest, Darcia Narv ez

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 1994
• ISBN:
  9781135693640
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Every year in this country, some 10, 000 college and university courses are taught in applied ethics. And many professional organizations now have their own codes of ethics. Yet social science has had little impact upon applied ethics. This book promises to change that trend by illustrating how social science can make a contribution to applied ethics. The text reports psychological studies relevant to applied ethics for many professionals, including accountants, college students and teachers, counselors, dentists, doctors, journalists, nurses, school teachers, athletes, and veterinarians. Each chapter begins with the research base of the cognitive-developmental approach--especially linked to Kohlberg and Rest's Defining Issues Test. Finally, the book summarizes recent research on the following issues:
* moral judgment scores within and between professions,
* pre- and post-test evaluations of ethics education programs,
* moral judgment and moral behavior,
* models of professional ethics education, and
* models for developing new assessment tools. Researchers in different professional fields investigate different questions, develop different research strategies, and report different findings. Typically researchers of one professional field are not aware of research in other fields. An important aim of the present book is to bring this diverse research together so that cross-fertilization can occur and ideas from one field can transfer to another.

Chapter 1
Background: Theory and Research

James R.Rest
University of Minnesota

Lawrence Kohlberg is the starting point for this research. Much has been written about Kohlberg’s work, and Kohlberg himself was a prolific writer¹. Yet many recent interpretations are amazingly distorted and ignorant of the research. Consequently, this chapter presents a brief restatement of the cognitive-developmental approach begun by Kohlberg in the mid-1950s. It provides an updated version of research findings. It describes an expanded view of morality that acknowledges the limitations of moral judgment research as well as its contributions. This chapter is background for the theory and research of the following chapters. Readers already familiar with Kohlberg’s cognitive-developmental approach, Defining Issues Test, the research base in moral judgment, and the Four Component Model, may wish to skip this chapter and go directly to the next chapters.

Empirical evidence does not seem to have much to do with the popularity of psychological theories of morality. Indicators of popularity—citations in journals, coverage in introductory texts, number of presentations at conventions, availability of funds for grants—seem to be governed mostly by external social/political/ideological enthusiasms. The popularity of Lawrence Kohlberg’s ideas about morality began to rise with the student protests of the late 1960s, with opposition to the Vietnam War, and with the Civil Rights Movement. In Kohlberg, many people saw a kindred spirit and scientific defense of their own views on morality at the time. Kohlberg’s popularity peaked in the 1970s. In 1974, a scathing review of Kohlberg’s theory appeared that seriously challenged the robustness of its evidential base (Kurtines & Grief, 1974). The critique was well-taken. Like it or not, one had to admit that theorizing had greatly outstripped the evidence. But this discussion of evidence did not much affect Kohlberg’s popularity. Instead, the crucial factor was that public attention shifted from justice controversies to other concerns. And after the theoretical struggle between behavioral and cognitive approaches to American psychology had become resolved in favor of cognition (Kohlberg was one of the early advocates for cognition), cognition became the target of new challenges. Ironically, as the evidence for the Kohlbergian approach accumulated and strengthened, the popularity of the approach waned. In the 1980s, the rise of a particular brand of feminist ideology—denying similarities of men and women, and extolling differences—coincided with Gilligan’s (1982) challenge of Kohlberg. Nowadays it is common to hear the pronouncement that Gilligan completely disproved Kohlberg. But after 10 years, there is pitifully little empirical evidence for Gilligan’s theory. The Gilligan phenomenon underscores the view that popularity has little to do with evidence. Accordingly, there is reason to restate the theory and research.

THE SOCIALIZATION VIEW OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACH

Jean Piaget made a brief foray into morality research in the 1930s. Attention to moral thinking did not catch on in a big way in this country until Kohlberg’s work in the 1950s and 1960s. Behaviorism still dominated psychology in the 1950s, and it is difficult for us today to appreciate what this meant then. In the 1950s, the study of all cognition was suspect, much more the study of moral cognition. The dominant view of moral development at the time was the socialization view. Accordingly, moral development was a matter of learning the norms of one’s culture, of accepting them and internalizing them, and of behaving in conformity to them. Thus, if the norms of one’s culture say it is right to make noise while eating soup, then it is morally right to slurp while eating soup. If one’s culture has norms against extramarital sex, then sex is wrong outside marriage. If the social norms say to segregate the luncheon counters by race, then it is morally right to segregate them. In the 1950s, to be “adjusted” was psychology’s highest word of praise.

Kohlberg turned the socialization view upside down. Instead of starting with the assumption that society determines what is morally right and wrong, Kohlberg said it is the individual who determines right and wrong. The individual interprets situations, derives psychological and moral meaning from social events, and makes moral judgments. Sometimes, Kohlberg argued, conformity to social norms is morally wrong (e.g., in the case of Sheriff Bull Conor, protector of segregation laws; or Aldolf Eichmann, dutiful administrator of the Nazi concentration camps) and other times nonconformity is morally right (e.g., Martin Luther King defying legal authorities). In the late 1950s, this talk was quite different from the mainstream psychology or predominant American ideology of that time. Further, Kohlberg said that psychology should study how it is that individuals arrive at moral judgments—moral judgment being the most interesting process of moral development. Thus, Kohlberg’s emphasis on moral judgment drew attention away from the favorite constructs of the socialization view (such as identification with authority figures, guilt, delay of gratification, and perseverance under hardship).

Kohlberg enthusiastically embraced Piaget’s general approach. Piaget in the 1950s was quite new to American psychologists, and the cognitive revolution in psychology had not yet taken place. Kohlberg deliberately and self-consciously undertook to extend the Piagetian line of theory and research into the study of morality in the following ways:

1. Like Piaget, Kohlberg focused on cognition—the thinking process and the representations by which people construct reality and meaning.

2. Like Piaget, Kohlberg assumed that there would be stages in the organization of moral judgment. The primary task of the psychologist was to describe stages of moral judgment development and to devise a method for assessing a person’s stage. (The underlying metaphor of stages is the staircase—that the stages are like steps on the staircase and that people advance developmentally by going up the staircase one step at a time, without skipping any steps, and always in the same order.²)

3. Like Piaget, Kohlberg collected data by posing problems to subjects, asking subjects to solve the problem, then probing into how the subjects went about solving it. Kohlberg devised a series of moral dilemmas to give to subjects, asking for their justifications. The challenge to the moral psychologist—according to Kohlberg—was to understand how intuitions of fairness arise.

4. Like Piaget, Kohlberg favored studies that presented the moral dilemmas to children of different ages, looking for age differences in their basic problem-solving strategies. Kohlberg was interested in explaining how the problem-solving strategies of very young children differed from those of older children or adults (how 8-year-olds as a group are different from 18-year-olds, and how both are different from 48-year-olds).

Later, Kohlberg would use longitudinal data (administering the test to the same subjects several times repeatedly at 3-year intervals) to document that people do change in moral judgment and that they change in the ways postulated by theory.

A well-known moral dilemma that Kohlberg used is the Heinz dilemma. The basic story about Heinz (in case you have somehow escaped hearing about this dilemma) is that Heinz’s wife is dying of cancer and needs a drug that an enterprising druggist has invented. The druggist demands such a high price that Heinz cannot raise the money. Heinz’s dilemma, then, is whether or not to steal the drug to save his dying wife. This well-worn story has worked surprisingly well in engaging a vast array of subjects and in producing quite different and illuminating responses. Table 1.1 displays three types of responses.

Kohlberg would approach these responses by asking, “How are these three responses different? What basic problem-solving strategies underlie these three responses?”

Response A presents a rather uncomplicated approach to moral problems. One solves moral problems by identifying what the actor wants and what instrumentally it takes to achieve the actor’s interests; answer these questions and the moral problem is solved! Only the actor’s interests are explicitly mentioned.

Response B takes into account the relationship of Heinz with his wife—the bonds of affection create some special responsibilities. In addition to Heinz’s interests, those of his wife are included in consideration. Further, response B is concerned that Heinz’s actions be motivated by good intentions.

We might say that Response C is taking a society wide perspective into account. This is not an incident involving only Heinz, his wife, and the druggist. This specific act is seen within the context of maintaining order within the whole society. Law is the key in making moral decisions.

THE SIX STAGES

Responses to dilemmas such as appear in Table 1.1 provided the kind of data on which Kohlberg built his theory. His theory makes two very bold claims: (a) t...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Contributors
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Background: Theory and Research
• Chapter 2 College Teaching and Student Moral Development
• Chapter 3 Education for Ethical Nursing Practice
• Chapter 4 School Teachers’ Moral Reasoning
• Chapter 5 Counseling and Social Role Taking: Promoting Moral and Ego Development
• Chapter 6 Ethical Reasoning Research in the Accounting and Auditing Professions
• Chapter 7 Influencing the Moral Dimensions of Dental Practice
• Chapter 8 Moral Reasoning in Medicine
• Chapter 9 Moral Reasoning in Veterinary Medicine
• Chapter 10 Applied Ethics and Moral Reasoning in Sport
• Chapter 11 Tracking the Moral Development of Journalists: A Look at Them and Their Work
• Chapter 12 Moral Judgments and Moral Action
• Chapter 13 Summary: What’s Possible?
• Author Index
• Subject Index