Moral Development and Carol Gilligan
Biography.Carol Gilligan is an American feminist and psychologist. She was born in New York on November 28th 1936 and attended Swarthmore College for her undergraduate degree in English literature. She graduated in 1958. Gilligan then went to pursue her Master’s Degree in clinical psychology at Radcliffe College and earned her MA in 1961. After transitioning to social psychology at Harvard, she began teaching alongside Erik Erikson. Gilligan states that he carried the most weight on her thinking. She also began as a work assistant for Lawrence Kohlberg. Despite her criticism of his work, she also states he was one of the most influential people on her way of thinking.
Theory/Research. While she was working for Kohlberg, she began to criticize his work. Later she wrote down her thoughts and opinions in her book called: “In A Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development” published in 1982.She felt that Kohlberg only studied “privileged, white men and boys." Gilligan said that this caused a “biased opinion against women”. She saw Kohlberg’s moral development stages reflected a male view of individual rights and rules and considered a higher stage than women’s point of view of development. Gilligan wanted to prove that women are not “moral migits” and would go against many psychological opinions. She noted differences between girls and boys in their feelings towards caring, relationships, and connections with other people.Thus, Gilligan hypothesized that as younger children girls are more inclined towards caring, and boys are more inclined towards justice (Lefton, 2000). Her theory is made up of three stages of moral development which starts from selfishness, to social/conventional morality, and then to post conventional/principle morality. In the pre-conventional stage, the person only cares about themselves in order to survive and most children are in this stage. There is a transitional phase in which the person’s attitude is considered selfish and the person begins to see the connection between themselves and others. The conventional stage shows how people can be responsible, and caring. Gilligan says that this is most evident in the mother and wife of a household. In the next transitional phase, the tension between the responsibility for others and caring for self are faced.
Finally, in the post-conventional stage, there is acceptance of care for self and others and most people almost never reach this level. She also has several more theories dealing with society, education, and the workplace.
Influence.Carol Gilligan is influential for many reasons. One being that her works on moral development influenced a lot of other psychologists who opted to work on moral development. This served as a positive outcome of her psychological works and observations on morality or moral development. She wanted to prove that women also had a role in moral development she saw that the original stages were mostly conducted for males. Her book transformed psychological theorist and feminist thinking. Her argument on howmen and women employ very different but equally valuable approaches to moral behavior and that these differences should be nourished rather than neglected. Gilligan’s research inspired quite a few people and organizations one of them being the Ms. Foundation popular annual campaign.
Application.Gilligan’s theory of moral development can be applied to the real world operations. She conducted a study in which she looked at the distinction between care and justice perspectives with men and women, primarily adolescence and adults when faced with real-life dilemmas. “One of the subjects was asked to consider a real-life pregnant woman considering an abortion,” (Gilligan & Attanucci, 1988). The study showed that: “A) concerns about justice and care are represented in people’s thinking about real-life moral dilemmas, but that people tend to focus on one or the other depending on gender, and b) there is an association between moral orientation and gender such that women focus on care dilemmas and men focus on justice dilemmas,” (Gilligan & Attanucci, 1988).
Interesting Info?In 1992 Gilligan, the recipient of numerous awards was given the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in Education. She was also named one of Time Magazine’s twenty-five most influential people in 1996. In 1997 she received the Heinz Award for knowledge of the human condition and for her challenges to previously held assumptions in the field of human development.
References
Belknap, R.A. (2000). One woman’s life viewed through the interpretive lens of Gilligan’s theory. Violence Against Women, 6, 586-605.
"Gilligan, Carol." International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. 2008. Retrieved April 22, 2015 from Encyclopedia.com:
Lefton, L. A. (2000). Child Development. In Psychology, (7thed.) pp. 350-351, Allyn & Bacon publishing.