ABSTRACT
Moral development consists of progressive individual concern about social norms and social values. The cognitive-developmental perspective on morality states that people progress along several successive stages, depending on more accurate cognitive competencies constructed through social experiences and individual adaptation. A dilemma always induces one to make a decision among some other possibilities. Moral assessment depends on the importance individuals assign to the issues because every significant issue corresponds to one of the various stages of moral judgment. Other issues allow to control the reliability of participants’ responses. Intra-individual variability leads to the more general question of the relationship between moral judgments and moral behavior. Family influences on adolescent moral maturity are not as easily validated as one may think.
