Gender and Morality

Abstract

Discussions of moral development have centered on the question of whether or not male and females develop within different frameworks and hold different moral values. Carol Gilligan outlined her critique of Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral development in her book In a Different Voice. She argued that Kohlberg's work discounted women's views of morality and offered the theory that women tend to hold an ethics of care, rather than justice. Since publishing her book, Gilligan has received considerable criticism. Some scholars have pushed to broaden the field to study the roles religion, culture, and biology play in moral development.

Overview

Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development. Lawrence Kohlberg studied psychology at the University of Chicago and wrote his dissertation in 1958. He was intrigued by the work of fellow theorist Jean Piaget and sought to explore how children respond to moral issues (Crain, 1985). Piaget was a well-known psychologist who focused on human cognition, which is the manner in which people think and understand. Piaget was interested in studying what people know and how they use their knowledge to understand and operate in the world. His four stages of cognitive development describe how biological maturation and social experiences help shape a person's understanding of the world. Believing moral reasoning to be as important as moral development, Kohlberg elected to build on the foundation of Piaget's work and explore how the moral development process correlates with issues of morality and justice over a person's lifespan (Kohlberg, 1958).

Kohlberg's theory of moral development is based on his study of 72 boys who grew up in middle- and lower-class environments in the Chicago area. The boys were all either 10, 13, or 16 years of age. Kohlberg presented each boy with a series of moral dilemmas and asked him to state what the characters in each dilemma should do and why. Kohlberg (1963) provided an example of one of these scenarios:

Heinz Steals the Drug In Europe, 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 make. 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 am going to make money from it." So, having tried every legal means, Heinz gets desperate and considers breaking into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife. Should Heinz steal the drug? (p. 19)

Kohlberg was not interested in whether or not the children thought Heinz ought to steal the drug. Rather, he wanted to find out the reasoning the boys used to arrive at their decisions. From these studies, he identified six distinct stages of moral development, which he grouped according to the moral reasoning each employed. He later grouped these six stages into three levels.

Level 1 - Preconventional Morality. Stage 1: Obedience & Punishment Orientation: Kohlberg believed that this is the earliest stage of moral development. At this stage, the child views rules to be absolute, without room for compromise. A person can avoid punishment if he or she follows the rules that have been established. The child is not concerned with whether or not the decision is morally right or wrong, but rather with whether or not it will be punished.

Stage 2: Individualism & Exchange: Kohlberg believed that individuals are able to rationalize at this stage. The child considers his or her individual needs or best interests to determine what type of action to take. Interpersonal relationships at this stage are based on the needs that others can fulfill for the child. In essence, there is a mentality of "you do for me and I will do for you." Children at this stage have some notion of fairness, in the sense that one ought to return favors, but they see themselves as individuals rather than as members of a larger community or society.

Level 2 - Conventional Morality. Stage 3: Good Interpersonal Relationships: At this stage, emphasis is placed on what a person needs to do in order to live up to a group's standards. Children at this stage focus on meeting the expectations of their established roles in order to be seen as good and nice people. They feel a strong desire to fit in and make choices that will maintain good relationships. Behavior is based on intention. For example, a person can gain approval from the group for being nice and "meaning to do the right thing."

Stage 4: Maintaining the Social Order: Kohlberg believed that this is the stage in which people start to think about how their actions are viewed in society as a whole. People in this stage are concerned with staying within the boundaries of what is considered normal behavior and want to follow the law. Following the law can be defined as following the established rules, doing one's civic duty, and respecting authority. People at this stage focus on maintaining an orderly society.

Level 3 - Postconventional Morality. Stage 5: Social Contract & Individual Rights: At this stage, people look to the world outside of themselves and their immediate communities or societies to make moral decisions. They take into consideration that fact that other societies in the world have different values, opinions, and beliefs. However, people at this stage also believe that most just societies protect people's basic rights and allow them some power to govern themselves. In essence, law and order are maintained while also taking into account people's diversity.

Stage 6: Universal Principles: In the final stage, people reason similarly to those in the fifth stage: they, too, believe that societies ought to be democratic and protect people's basic rights. However, in this stage, people also recognize that there are universal principles of justice that can override the democratic process and the need for law and order. Martin Luther King and Gandhi are good examples of this type of moral reasoning, in that they challenged the laws of their societies in the name of universal principles of justice.

Further Insights

Gender & Moral Development. Much of the discussion surrounding morality and the development of moral reasoning and decision making has stemmed from Carol Gilligan's critique of Kohlberg's theory. According to Woods (1996), "virtually all of the literature on moral development is based on the argument between these two individuals" (p. 377). At the heart of the argument is the question of whether or not the concept of morality centers exclusively on justice. This question has been studied using both empirical (Ford and Lowery, 1986; Skoe and Diessner, 1994) and nonempirical methods (Alston, 1971; Mwamwenda, 1991; Peters, 1971).

Gilligan began her career in 1967 at Harvard University, where she taught alongside Kohlberg and Erik Erikson (Dim, 2001). While at Harvard, she began working as Kohlberg's research assistant, focusing her scholarship on girls' moral development. Although she was working with one of the best scholars in the field of moral development, Gilligan began to criticize her mentor's work. Most of the flaws she saw stemmed from the fact that when females participated in Kohlberg's studies, they tended to score lower than males: the majority tested at third stage of development, while men usually tested at the fourth and fifth stages. Gilligan concluded that there were two basic flaws in Kohlberg's work:

• By forming his moral development model on the basis of studies of primarily male subjects, Kohlberg had introduced a bias against females into his model.
• Because women are socialized to value interpersonal relationships rather than an impersonal conception of justice, Kohlberg's hierarchy was, again, biased against women, because it classified their moral values as inferior to those of men. (Prose, 1990)

Gilligan laid out her criticisms of Kohlberg's theory as well as her own theory of moral development in In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development. When the book was published in 1982, Gilligan became known as the pioneer of what was called "difference feminism" or "ethics of care" theory. Essentially, her theory argues that females tend to view morality in terms of caring and responsibility, whereas males generally perceived morality in terms of justice. Neither view is superior, Gilligan believed; they are simply different.

Viewpoints

Criticisms of Gilligan's Work. Many feminists did not support Gilligan's view that moral frameworks can be distinctly masculine or feminine. One of Gilligan's critics was Christina Hoff Sommers, whose book The War against Boys pointed out some flaws in Gilligan's work:

• Gilligan's research did not follow proper standard protocol.
• Gilligan's results were drawn from a small sample size.
• There was a lack of peer review surrounding Gilligan's work.
• Gilligan refused to allow other researchers to review her raw data.

As a result of the criticisms Sommers raised, Gilligan's work is viewed as invalid in some circles of the academic community. One professor at Tufts University, Zella Luria, suggested that while Gilligan's work was intriguing, it was not substantiated (Luria, 1986). Another feminist psychologist, Naomi Weisstein, also found significant flaws. She argued that Gilligan's work was nothing more than a version of the sexist essentialism that had typified psychological views of women during the 1960s.

Walker's (1989) study found no sex differences between boys and girls, though Skoe and Gooden (1993) countered that Walker's study may have lost crucial information on sex differences through the way that they grouped their research subjects. When Skoe and Gooden (1993) conducted their own study, they found that "girls tended to be more concerned with hurting others and maintaining friendships while boys worried more about leisure activities and avoiding trouble" (Skoe and Gooden, 1993, p. 154). Later research conducted in the 1990s and early 2000s found no significant evidence to substantiate sex-based differences in the development of moral reasoning (Waters, 2015).

Despite the lack of clear, solid proof for Gilligan's gender-based differences in morality, the concept of a separate, but equally valid, ethics-of-care orientation led to further research and critical theories in social scientific academia, law and politics, and traditional caring professions, such as education and health (Okano, 2016).

Conclusion

Although Gilligan's work remains controversial, some scholars believe that research on moral development ought not be guided by these two theorists alone and have argued that both theories have little bearing on the moral concerns that face modern society. They say that it is time to move on and focus on contemporary issues. Woods (1996) wrote that scholars should move away from "whether or not there are differences between the sexes and broaden the scope of the study by moving to the next level and integrating issues such as biological, religious and cultural differences" (p. 382).

Kahn (1991) made an effort to clarify the issue by identifying the four major foundational concerns that many scholars encounter when studying the topic of moral development. He believed that these four foundation points would assist scholars with understanding the field and setting parameters on discussion (Woods, 1996).

Kahn's (1991, as cited in Woods, 1996) four foundational points are:

• Moral Definition - According to Kahn, there are two types of moral definition: consequentialist and deontological. Individuals who seek to produce the best possible outcome in moral decision making are called conseqentialists, while individuals who believe that certain actions are always prohibited or compulsory no matter what outcomes they produce are called deontologists. An example of consequentialism would be a person who commits a mercy killing, believing that it is the best thing to do for a terminally ill person, despite the laws and taboos that condemn the action. An example of deontologicalism is a judge who, lacking sufficient evidence for a conviction, rules in favor of someone he or she believes is guilty because of his or her belief that one must never convict someone without sufficient evidence.
• Moral Ontogeny - Moral ontogeny is the moral development process. Kahn believed that psychologists could explain this development in four ways: endogenous examination, or "the development of morality through internal mechanisms"; exogenous explanation, or "external development such as those which might be stated by behaviorist theories"; interactionist explanations, or a combination of endogenous and exogenous explanations; and "structural interaction [that] occurs through the balancing of mental structures" (Woods, 1996, p. 376).
• Moral Variation - Moral variation describes the differences in moral thinking that one finds between people and groups. One of the main focuses of this point is understanding and accounting for these differences.
• Epistemology - Epistemology is the study of moral development in terms of how individuals acquire knowledge of morality.

Terms & Concepts

Cognitive Development: How the thought process is constructed during a person's life span, starting with childhood and going into adulthood.

Ethics of Care: Gilligan's contention that women have traditionally been taught a different kind of moral outlook, one that emphasizes community, caring, and relationships.

Justice: Universal principles of fairness.

Kohlberg, Lawrence: A development psychologist famous for his research on moral education, reasoning, and development. He identified six stages of moral development.

Moral Development: The process through which children are taught to display proper attitudes and behavior to other individuals in society, especially as they relate to social and cultural norms as well as rules and laws.

Moral Relativity: The idea that moral and ethical propositions are neither objective nor universal. Rather, morality is dependent upon factors such as social, cultural, historical, and personal context.

Piaget, Jean: Developmental psychologist known for his studies of children, his theory of cognitive development, and his epistemological view known as genetic epistemology.

Social Order: A system of "normal" behaviors that are maintained and enforced through social structures, institutions, and practices within a society.

Bibliography

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Carol Gilligan. (n.d.). Retrieved April 30, 2008, from http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/gilligan.html

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Dim, Joan M. (2001). Renowned psychologist Carol Gilligan joins NYU faculty. Retrieved April 30, 2008, from http://www.nyu.edu/publicaffairs/newsreleases/b%5Fgilligan.shtml

Driscoll, M. (1994). Psychology of learning for instruction. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Ford, M., & Lowery, C. (1986). Gender differences in moral reasoning: A comparison of the use of justice and care orientations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 777–783. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=16690191&site=ehost-live

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Mwamwenda, T. (1991). Graduate students' moral reasoning. Psychological Reports, 68, 1368–1370.

O'Dowd, O. (2012). Care and abstract principles. Hypatia, 27, 407–422. Retrieved November 11, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=74046872&site=ehost-live

Okano, Y. (2016). Why has the ethics of care become an issue of global concern?International Journal of Japanese Sociology, 25(1), 85–99. Retrieved October 19, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=114013805&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Peters, R. (1971). Moral development: A plea for pluralism. In T. Mischel (Ed.), Cognitive development and epistemology (pp. 237–2267). New York: Academic Press.

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Waters, K. R. (2015). Using Kohlberg’s model to find common ground with punishment-oriented adults. Journal of Human Services, 35(1), 102–106. Retrieved October 19, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=121364290&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Woods, C. (1996). Gender differences in moral development and acquisition: A review of Kohlberg's and Gilligan's model of justice and care. Social Behavior and Personality, 24, 375–384. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a2h&AN=8771798&site=ehost-live

Suggested Reading

Barnes, M., & Brannelly, T. (2015). Ethics of care: Critical advances in international perspective. Bristol, UK: Policy Press. Retrieved October 19, 2018 from eBook Collection (EBSCO). http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=1082779&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Bloom, M. (n.d.). Sex differences in ethical systems: A useful framework for interpreting communication research. Communication Quarterly, 38, 244–254. Retrieved March 21, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=fmh&AN=EWRI004063&site=ehost-live .

Gilligan, C. (1987). Moral orientation and moral development. In E. Feder & D. T. Meyers (Eds.). Women and moral theory. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield.

Johnston, K. (1988). Adolescents' solutions to dilemmas in fables: Two moral orientations--two problem solving strategies. In C. Gilligan, J. Ward, I. Taylor & B. Bardige (Eds.). Mapping the moral domain: A contribution of women's thinking to psychological theory and education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Shogun, D. (1988). Gender and moral agency. Atlantis, 13, 87-91.

Wood, L. J., & Hilto, A. A. (2013). Moral choices: Towards a conceptual model of black male moral development (BMMD). Western Journal of Black Studies, 37, 14-27. Retrieved November 11, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=87541206&site=ehost-live