ABSTRACT
Moral development theory attempts to answer a fundamental question. How do people decide what is right and wrong? A branch of the philosophical study of ethics, or metaethics, moral development theory argues that all people in all cultures pass sequentially, invariantly, and irreversibly from lower to higher stages of moral reasoning; moral judgment is defined according to how an individual reasons rather than according to what the individual thinks; and values and ethics are developed as a result of the interaction between the person and the environment.[1] In its most basic form, the theory rejects relativism and regards the affective domain as unimportant and irrelevant. However, the creator of the modern moral development paradigm, Lawrence Kohlberg (1927–1987), goes beyond the simple value-free framework and argues moral judgment is moral; it is not merely the application of cognitive skills or intelligence to moral questions or situations.
