Moral Development

Building on Piaget's work, Kohlberg (1977) described three levels in the development of moral judgement: preconventional, conventional and postconventional. Adolescence marks the movement from the conventional level of moral judgement to postconventional (Neinstein, 2002). Early adolescents are typically in the conventional level of moral development. At this level, they are motivated by the need to meet expectations of external factors such as others' opinions and existing law (Feli & Maehr, 2000). These individuals hold simplistic conceptions of what is right. Postconventional orientation embraces more universal and abstract principles of justice, requiring formal operational thought. The focus moves from actions and motivations to please others, to autonomous moral principles that are based on the individual's own beliefs. The postconventional level of moral development begins in middle to late adolescence and is not achieved by all (Feli & Maehr, 2000). Males rely on thinking and deductive reasoning to reach the "autonomous moral self" (Wren, 1997). Kohlberg believes that the six-stage theory (each level subdivided into 2 stages) applies to both boys and girls; however, the theory is based on the study of boys.