In my Child Psychology class we discussed Lawrence Kohlberg's cognitive theory of moral development. I find the stages he outlines to be interesting and relevant to our experience as JWs, particularly stage 4.
From my textbook, Kohlberg's theory of moral development:
Level 1 preconventional morality:
Stage 1: Obedience and punishment orientation
To avoid punishment, the child defers to prestigious or powerful people, usually the parents. The morality of an act is defined by its physical consequences.
Stage 2: Naïve hedonistic and instrumental orientation
The child conforms to gain rewards. The child understands reciprocity and sharing, but this reciprocity is manipulative and self-serving rather than based on a true sense of justice, generosity, sympathy or compassion. It is a kind of bartering: "I'll lend you my bike if I can play with your wagon." "I'll do my homework no if I can watch the late night movie."
Level 2 Conventional Morality: conventional rules and conformity
Stage 3: Good boy morality
The child's good behavior is designed to maintain approval and good relations with others. Although the child is still basing judgments of right and wrong on others' responses, he is concerned with their approval and disapproval rather than their physical power. It is to maintain goodwill that he conforms to families social regulations and to judge the goodness or badness of behavior in terms of a person's intent to violate these rules.
Stage 4: Authority and morality that maintain the social order
The person blindly accepts social conventions and rules and believes that if society accepts these rules, they should be maintained to avoid censure. He now conforms not just to the other individuals' standards but to the social order. This is the epitome of "law and order" morality, involving unquestioning acceptance of social regulations. The person judges behavior as good according to whether it conforms to a rigid set of rules. According to Kohlberg, many people never go beyond this conventional level of morality.
Level 3 Postconventional Morality: self-accepted moral principles
Stage 5: Morality of contract, individual rights and democratically accepted law
People now have a flexibility of moral beliefs they lacked in earlier stages. Morality is based on an agreement among individuals to conform to norms that appear necessary to maintain the social order and the rights of others. However, because this is a social contract, it can be modified when people within a society rationally discuss alternatives that might be more advantageous to more members of the society.
Stage 6: Morality of individual principles and conscience
People conform to both social standards and to internalized ideals. Their intent is to avoid self-condemnation rather than criticism by others. People base their decisions on abstract principles involving justice compassion and equality. This is a morality based on a respect for others. People who have attained this level of development will have highly individualistic moral beliefs that may at times conflict with rules accepted by the majority of a society. According to Kohlberg, among the nonviolent, activist students who demonstrated in the mid to late 1960's against the Vietnam War, more had attained the postconventional level of morality than had nonactivist students.
Upon reading this you will probably agree that the JWs (among others) are generally at level 4.
It is easy to use such a reference to judge others. I wonder how easy it is to place oneself within this framework. Would level 4 people identify themselves as such? Would they find the description overly simplistic or inaccurate?
Honestly, as a JW, I believe I would have proudly identified as level 4, as long as "social regulations" could be defined by Jehovah's regulations (which I now believe are the WTBS's regulations). Now I would say that the description of level 6 adequately depicts my morality.
Do you see yourself in this chart? Do you think it is accurate? Do you fall somewhere outside these bounds?