ABSTRACT
Kohlberg advances a rational model of moral judgment based on the assumption that people “ construct moral meaning” in terms of their “ current developmental stage,” and, therefore, that moral judgment is highly homogeneous, organized in structures of the whole. In this chapter we review past research on the structural consistency of moral judgment, and describe our own research on the issue-reviewing studies on moral judgment about AIDS, impaired driv ing, prosocial behavior, business transactions, prostitution, and actual moral dilemmas experienced by people in their everyday lives. The evidence indicates that moral judgment is sometimes homogeneous and sometimes hetero geneous. We argue that a more interactional model than Kohlberg’s constructivistic model is needed to explain the observed pattern of relationships. People possess a set of stage-structures that include their “ current stage” and all stages they have acquired in the past. Situations and dilemmas exert varying pulls for and resistances against the activation of these stage-structures. The structures that individuals invoke depend on the distribution of stages they possess, the strength of pull and resistance of the dilemmas they face, and contexts in which they make moral decisions. Kohlberg’s dilemmas tend to evoke the highest stages people have acquired; his test assesses moral competence. Al though people often fail to perform at their level of competence on less philo sophical dilemmas, those who score high on Kohlberg’s test are significantly less prone than those who score lower to invoke Stage 2 judgments about other issues.
