Moral Developmental Science Between Changing Paradigms

Abstract

This review encompasses a time-span of about 50 years of research on morality and moral development. It discusses Kohlberg's (1984) work as a milestone that constituted the cognitive developmental viewpoint of morality and that dominated research for about three decades. In this paradigm the role of reasoning and deliberation was emphasized as the basis for morality. Towards the end of the last century new paradigms of morality arose outside of developmental psychology, bridging from the social sciences and humanities to the natural sciences. These paradigms emphasize moral feelings and intuitions as the basis of morality. Basic aspects of these approaches are presented, also in light of moral developmental science.