ABSTRACT
In the late 1960s, a psychological study by L. Kohlberg and R. Kramer indicated that higher education may induce “moral regression” rather than moral growth in college students. Psychologists, Kohlbergians as well as anti-Kohlbergians, have continued to discuss the finding, which is clearly at odds with the assumption of stage-wise invariant cognitive-moral development. Two of the central assumptions of cognitive developmental theory are that there is an invariant sequence of moral development which does not allow for exceptions, and that there is a fundamental parallel between the cognitive and the affective aspects of moral judgment. Kramer and Kohlberg do not regard their cases of regression as contradicting cognitive-developmental theory, nor do they question the scoring method. The chapter discusses critically several interpretations of the regression phenomenon and report on an empirical cross-validation study of German students, which conducted using a new method of assessing moral development.
