Human Growth and Development / Unit 8 HGD 1075 review, 2 to 3 minutes
Kohlberg, Gilligan and Culture
The idea
Kohlberg's theory drew two lasting criticisms. The first came from Carol Gilligan, once his research assistant. Gilligan argued that Kohlberg's mostly male samples biased the theory against women, and she proposed an ethic of care: a morality centred on relationships and responsibility to others, set beside Kohlberg's ethic of justice, centred on rights and principles. The critique changed the questions the field asked. The evidence on sex differences, though, is modest. A meta-analysis by Jaffee and Hyde found only small differences: women somewhat more often used care reasoning and men somewhat more often justice reasoning, and the authors concluded that the findings do not strongly support the claim that care belongs mainly to women and justice mainly to men. The second criticism concerns culture: Kohlberg's stages are not universal across religions and cultures. Chinese children judged lying to promote group harmony more acceptable than Canadian children did, while Canadian children focused on help or harm to the individual.
In practice
Two eleven-year-olds discussing the Heinz dilemma: one arguing about what Heinz owes his wife and the people who depend on him, the other about rights and the law, each reasoning well in Gilligan's terms.
Where people slip
The misconception is that Gilligan showed women and men reason about morality in fundamentally different ways. She raised the possibility, and the meta-analytic evidence shows the differences are small. What survives is the broader point: moral reasoning includes care as well as justice, and both deserve study. The cultural findings make a parallel point: what counts as the better answer can depend on what a culture values, the harmony of the group or the rights of the individual. For the exam, know Kohlberg's three levels, Gilligan's ethic of care as the best-known critique, and the evidence that sex differences in moral orientation are small. A contested classic is taught with its critics.
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