Lawrence Kohlberg

Lawrence Kohlberg
Born(1927-10-25)October 25, 1927
Bronxville, New York, US
DiedJanuary 17, 1987(1987-01-17) (aged 59)
Winthrop, Massachusetts, US
Alma materUniversity of Chicago (BA, PhD)
Known forLawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development
Scientific career
FieldsPsychology
InstitutionsUniversity of Chicago
Harvard University

Lawrence Kohlberg (/ˈkoʊlbɜːrɡ/; 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.[1] In fact, it took Kohlberg five years before he was able to publish an article based on his views.[1] Kohlberg's work reflected and extended not only Piaget's findings but also the theories of philosophers George Herbert Mead and James Mark Baldwin.[2] 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.[3]

  1. ^ a b Rest, James; Clark Power; Mary Brabeck (May 1988). "Lawrence Kohlberg (1927–1987)". American Psychologist. 5. 43 (5): 399–400. doi:10.1037/h0091958.
  2. ^ See Kohlberg, L. (1982), "Moral development," in J.M. Broughton & D.J. Freeman-Moir (Eds.), The Cognitive Developmental Psychology of James Mark Baldwin: Current Theory and Research in Genetic Epistemology, Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corp.
  3. ^ Haggbloom, S.J. et al. (2002). The 100 Most Eminent Psychologists of the 20th Century. Review of General Psychology. Vol. 6, No. 2, 139–15. Haggbloom et al. combined three quantitative variables: citations in professional journals, citations in textbooks, and nominations in a survey given to members of the Association for Psychological Science, with three qualitative variables (converted to quantitative scores): National Academy of Sciences (NAS) membership, American Psychological Association (APA) President and/or recipient of the APA Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award, and surname used as an eponym. Then the list was rank ordered.