moral development

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the process through which individuals acquire moral reasoning, values, and behaviour across the lifespan; Jean Piaget identified an early stage of heteronomous morality in which children judge acts by their consequences and a later autonomous stage in which intentions matter; Lawrence Kohlberg extended this into a six-stage theory spanning preconventional, conventional, and postconventional levels; Carol Gilligan challenged Kohlberg's male-centred justice framework by proposing an ethic-of-care model; contemporary research integrates cognitive, emotional, neuroscientific, and cultural perspectives to understand how moral intuitions and reasoning develop in context