Who identified the stages of moral development?

• A. Lawrence Kohlberg
• B. Jean Piaget
• C. Sigmund Freud
• D. Erik Erikson

Answer: (A)

Understanding how people reason about right and wrong matures through a series of levels and stages. Lawrence Kohlberg is known for outlining a theory of moral development that describes six stages arranged in three levels: pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional. He used moral dilemmas, like the Heinz dilemma, to analyze the reasoning behind decisions rather than just the outcomes, showing how people's justification for judgments becomes more abstract and principled with age and experience. This approach extended the ideas of Jean Piaget, who first suggested that children's moral thinking changes with development, but Kohlberg formalized the stage-based progression into a full theory with specific stages. Sigmund Freud's work centers on psychosexual development, not moral reasoning stages, and Erik Erikson's stages focus on psychosocial development across the lifespan, not moral reasoning stages.