ABSTRACT
Kohlberg was influenced by the stage theory perspective of Piaget. In outline, Kohlberg held that moral judgments progress through a unvarying series of stages. Although it is interactions with peers that provides the impetus for this progression (rather than developments in the cognitive sphere), the progression is unidirectional and one that can genuinely be described as upward, in that each stage is more morally sophisticated and “ right” than the stage that precedes it. In earlier versions of the theory, one progressed through all of the stages; more recently, Kohlberg has concluded that not all people progress to the highest stages of moral development.
