Kohlberg's Developmental Stages

Improved Essays
In life a person proceeds through several changes to become the person they are today. These changes are called stages which change us physically and mentally. The first change that people go through is early childhood development. Childhood development is the growth of a human from birth to 17 years old. Several psychologists research the process of childhood and conclude their own ideas on the subject. Jean Piaget, Eric Erickson, and Lawrence Kohlberg are three psychologists who had similar and different views on children's advancement.
Jean Piaget was a psychologist who concluded that people developed by connecting to life with actions. He went into more detail about his theory by having steps. There are four steps to his theory which was
…show more content…
What Kohlberg focused on from Piaget's research was the idea of moral development. Moral development is a person's beliefs on right and wrong. Kohlberg did his own research by asking people of all ages questions that would explain a person's morality. This led to Kohlberg creating his own steps that mainly focused on moral development. These steps are Preconventional, Conventional, and Postconventional. There are only 4 steps in Kohlberg, but steps focus on the moral mindset of a person and not their actions. Kohlberg and Piaget have a similar idea of development which influenced other psychologists to study development.
Kohlberg and Piaget shared a similar idea of development, but there is someone else who saw development in a different way. This person is Eric Erickson. Eric Erickson was a theorist who believed, just like the two psychologist before, that people goes through development stages. However, the differences was that he focused on social development predominantly. Erickson believed each stage came with an assignment that needed to be solved. The assignments for young children would be based on struggles with trust, self-reliance, self-motivation, and more. The assignments range from children to

Related Documents

  • Great Essays

    Throughout this paper I will be writing about developmental psychology, which is the study of how and why humans develop over time. Humans develop both physically and cognitively over their lifespan from infancy, toddlerhood, teen, and to adulthood. At full length I will be explaining the stages and factors that play a role in developmental psychology. Maturation is the major key of growing from childhood to adulthood and it starts at infancy.…

    • 1383 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Kohlberg claimed children did have some sort of moral inclination according to his stages of moral development. However, both Bloom and Kohlberg differ in how children have a moral sense because in the first stage of development according to Kohlberg children would only do the right thing to avoid punishment. Another example is child psychologist Jean Piaget’s preoperational stage of cognitive development. Within this stage children can have some sort of reasoning and would think only about themselves which is termed egocentrism. Paul Bloom uses egocentrism to show that children can feel empathy for others because children will see a person in pain and feel that pain as well, which causes the child to soothe the person in pain (Bloom…

    • 755 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Development is a broad spontaneous process that results in the continual addition, modification and recognition of psychological structures. piagets(1936) was the first psychologists to make a systematic study of cognitive development . His contributions include a theory of cognitive child development, detailed observational studies of cognition in children , and a series of simple but ingenious tests to reveal different cognitive abilities. There are some basic components of piagets mental development theory. such as Adaptation: Adaptation is the individual’s adjustment to the environment.…

    • 630 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Kohlberg’s theory of moral development was created by a man named Lawrence Kohlberg. He was a professor at Harvard, as well as a psychology. Subsequently, he decided to move into the moral education field. He believed that there are three levels of moral development; each level is divided into two individual stages. His theory was influenced by the thinking of the Swiss psychologist, Piaget; American philosopher, John Dewey; and American philosopher/ psychologist, James Mark Baldwin.…

    • 2071 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Decent Essays

    To help support his theory Kohlberg would review people’s responses towards a specific situation and place them in different stages based on their response. Though Kohlberg also believed that our responses would differ according to our age. “According to Kohlberg, an individual progresses from the capacity for pre-conventional morality (before age…

    • 224 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Theories and Theorists From first steps, first words and more all children go through similar stages of development. Many theorists have studied these developmental milestones, and put them into broad stages of development, which many children go through during certain time frames. Jean Piaget, one of the most well known child development theorist, formed the Cognitive Development Theory which has helped educators to understand a child’s cognitive abilities from birth to early adolescence. Jean Piaget disagreed with behavioral theorists who believed that a child’s learning depended on reinforcers. He believed that a child’s learning is active, which was the foundation of his Cognitive Development Theory.…

    • 741 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Piaget 6 Stages Essay

    • 129 Words
    • 1 Pages

    Kohlberg believe that people actually go through six stage instead of Piaget’s two stages. These stages are separated into three levels: level one preconventional, level two convential, and then level three postconvential. The first level is when the rules are set by others, the second level people adapt to the rules, and the third level people are defining their own values by ethics that they are choosing to follow. Stage is similar to Piaget’s stage one by children following the rules that are given and to not get punished. Stage 3 of Piaget then falls in line with level two and when children work with each other.…

    • 129 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The nature vs nurture debate is a classic debate in psychology. It is one of the oldest arguments in the psychology community, and has in fact existed longer than the twenty-one years I 've been alive. Since first introduced by Francis Galton in 1869, it has evolved as an even more controversial topic. There are those who believe that nature has the biggest influence on one’s behavior, while others argue that nurture does.…

    • 828 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Chapter three starts off describing the modern evolutionary perspectives on human development. Piaget cognitive development theory was considered to be the “new look” during the 70’s (Shaffer, 2009). Since then new theories have emerged and even though some of those theories focus on the development of humans through biological or environmental repercussions all the theories support Piaget in two areas, and they are “developing persons are active rather than passive beings, and development results from a variety of complex transactions between the forces of nature and nurture” (Shaffer, 2009, p.68). Now ethology the “scientific study of the bio evolutionary bases of behavior and development” (Archer, 1992, p.68). has a large impact on human…

    • 329 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    According to Jean Piaget, a well-known psychologist, children grow through a chain of four serious stages of cognitive development. Through observations he made of children, Piaget established a theory of knowledgeable development that included four distinct stages: the sensorimotor stage, from birth to the age 2, the preoperational stage, from age 2 to about the age of 7 and the concrete operational stage, ranging from age 7 to 11. The last stage he established was the formal operational stage, which begins in adolescence and spans into adulthood (The 4 stages). Piaget said the most striking features of children 's behavior happen within the first 2 years of life. The child 's world cannot yet be signified mentally so in a very literal…

    • 1393 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Although each person has their own perspective and opinions on cognitive and emotional development, parallels can be drawn between differing theories. It is through both the individual theories standing alone and similarities between them that the world is able to understand the science of how and why humans develop over time. The works of Piaget, Freud, Erikson, and Kohlberg were important in that future developmentalists will be able to draw upon their ideas and craft new theories that will widen the world’s sphere of knowledge on…

    • 982 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    To begin, Kohlberg’s theory of moral development is separated into three levels: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. Preconventional is reasoning based on the self interest of individuals. For example, deciding not to cheat on a test because it might lead to you being suspended or removed from the campus. Conventional is reasoning based more on rules, ranging from laws to what is right and wrong based on what typically occurs. An example would be deciding not to commit murder because it is against the law.…

    • 532 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Child development refers to the process through which individuals regularly develop and develop from early stages through adulthood. Child development theories are used to describe a child’s change and growth over the course of their childhood (What are Some Theories of Child Development?). There have been many theories on how we develop throughout childhood. There is the biological perspective that looks…

    • 1266 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Erik Erikson and Jean Piaget’s theories contrast one another, however they both agree that humans go through different stages through our development. Jean Piaget’s theory, cognitive development, focuses on different stages of a child where they transition from one stage to the other, and they follow a sequence. His stages and key ideas can be looked at as building blocks meaning, a good foundation can build a sturdy tower that will not easily fall down, however if your foundation is not even or has holes as you stack blocks onto it it will become weaker and easily topple over. The first stage of Piaget’s theory is sensorimotor stage,between the ages of infancy to two years. This stage is when children are taught for example if they have…

    • 1435 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget, is generally attributed with the formalization of the theory of constructivism. Piaget articulated how individuals construct new knowledge based on their experiences. The theory evolved from the extensive study of cognitive development by Piaget and the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Constructivists believe that children learn through an active participation in experiences. Piaget believed that a mental process had to happen with new information. "…

    • 336 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays