Person of the Month: Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987)

Lawrence Kohlberg was born on October 25, 1927, Bronxville, New York. He was an American psychologist best known for his theory of stages of moral development. He served as a professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Chicago and at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. Even though it was considered unusual in his era, he decided to study the topic of moral judgment, extending Jean Piaget’s account of children’s moral development from twenty-five years earlier. Kohlberg’s revolutionary Theory of Stages of Moral Development helped establish his reputation as a brilliant thinker in the field of psychology. Studying the topic of moral development was certainly not a new pursuit as philosophers had been doing it for centuries. The subject had, for lack of a better description, had become an afterthought when Kohlberg resurrected it. In doing so, he breathed new life into the study of a very critical area of psychology.