Lawrence Kohlberg

Lawrence Kohlberg 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 Piagets account of childrens moral development from twentyfive years earlier. In fact, it took Kohlberg five years before he was able to publish an article based on his views. Kohlbergs work reflected and extended not only Piagets findings but also the theories of philosophers George Herbert Mead and James Mark Baldwin. At the same time he was creating a new field within psychology moral development. In an empirical study using six criteria, such as citations and recognition, Kohlberg was found to be the 30th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century.

Lawrence Kohlberg was born in Bronxville, New York. He was the youngest of four children of Alfred Kohlberg, a Jewish German entrepreneur, and of his second wife, Charlotte Albrecht, a Christian German chemist. His parents separated when he was four years old and divorced finally when he was fourteen. From 1933 to 1938, Laurence and his three other siblings rotated between their mother and father for six months at a time. In 1938 this rotating custody of the Kohlberg children was ended, allowing the children to choose the parent with whom they wanted to live. Kohlberg attended high school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, which was an elite preparatory school. Kohlberg served in the Merchant Marine at the end of World War II. He worked for a time with the Haganah on a ship smuggling Jewish refugees from Romania through the British Blockade, into Palestine. Captured by the British and held at an internment camp on Cyprus, Kohlberg escaped with fellow crew members. Kohlberg

Source: Wikipedia