Kohlberg might be standing alone, with his own isolated thoughts and his assurance that the Kohlbergian model applies to all cultures and all times. Like Immanuel Kant, Kohlberg seems to have grabbed hold of some eternal truth while pondering moral reasoning in an ivy-covered office building at Harvard University. Then along comes, Carol Gilligan, one of his doctoral students. It is Carol Gilligan who has had the greatest impact on the acceptance of Kohlberg’s work—yet Carol Gilligan had sustained a close relationship with her now-deceased mentor. In a recent retrospective narrative regarding her own work, Gilligan (2023, p.3) indicates that Kohlberg’s focus on morality and commitment to studying the way people acquire values was an “inspiration” for her. This was a relationship sustained midst profound differences.
Carol Gilligan: An Epistemological Revolution
The challenging of Kohlberg’s model all begins with the case studies used to determine level of moral development. It seems that men are more likely than women to exhibit higher levels of moral development. Gilligan (2023, p. 5) reports on Kohlberg’s findings:
“On Kohlberg’s six stage scale of moral development, women typically score at the third or interpersonal stage and are less likely than men to progress to the more abstract or principled stage of moral reasoning.”
She goes on to report that Kohlberg was not alone in his assessment. His findings were in aligned with Sigmund Freud’s belief that women have less sense of justice than me –and with the beliefs of Erik Erikson, another prominent psychologist (Gilligan, 2023, p. 5): “According to Erikson, women fuse or confuse identity with intimacy, and Piaget observed that, in contrast to boy, girls give priority to relationships over rules.”
What seems to be going on here? Primarily it is because many of the women being tested weren’t “going along” with the experiment as Kohlberg devised it. They didn’t buy into restrictions regarding the type of comments they could make about the presenting case studies. For example, take the widely used case study of Heinz, a man who came to a pharmacy on Sunday afternoon to obtain a medication that would keep his seriously ill wife alive. The “opportunistic” pharmacist charged a large amount for the medication knowing that other drug stores were not open, and that Heinz had no other choice than to purchase what he had to offer. The phone rings. The pharmacist leaves the counter to answer it. Does Heinz steal the drug and race out the door? This is the hypothetical moral dilemma that Kohlberg poses for his study subjects to address.
Many of the women (and some of the men) are unwilling to provide an answer without finding out more about Heinz, his marital relationship, the pharmacist’s state of mind or financial condition, etc. Why did Heinz wait until Sunday afternoon? Why was this drug store open? Did Heinz have a history of interacting with the pharmacist and what was the nature of this relationship? How did Heinz’s wife become ill in the first place? It seems that moral reasoning for these study subjects can’t take place in a vacuum. Abstract reasoning doesn’t make sense if we are considering the life and death of Heinz’ wife or the potential of Heinz spending time in prison (and thus unable to assist his wife).
