Role-taking standpoint and adolescent usage of Kohlberg's conventional stages of moral reasoning

By taking into account a respondent's role-taking standpoint, this study proposes that moral judgments coded at Kohlberg's conventional stages can be expected to vary depending upon (a) the identity of the protagonist implicated in the moral dilemma and (b) the nature of the issues raised by the moral dilemmas used. Different groups of respondents were asked to answer three versions of Kohlberg's moral judgment questionnaire. One version implicated strangers in the dilemmas used (fictitious-other questionnaire), while the other two versions implicated respondents' best friends or mothers (primary-other questionnaires). A comparison of these questionnaire treatments indicates that Stage 3 response rate significantly increases and Stage 4 response rate significantly decreases when respondents answer primary-other questionnaires. It is suggested that this finding casts doubt on the adequacy of the displacement view of moral stage acquisition. The displacement perspective argues that as more cognitively complex structures are acquired, earlier acquired structures are displaced. In contrast, the present study proposes that a "nondisplacement" view of stage acquisition is required in order to explain variation observed at Stage 3 when it may be assumed that a Stage 4 reasoning capability has been acquired.