Abstract
“Macromorality” concerns the formal structure of society, as defined by institutions, rules, and roles. “Micromorality” concerns the particular face-to-face relations that people have in everyday life. Kohlbergian theories are most useful for issues of macromorality. The Defining Issues Test (DIT) derives from Kohlberg's approach but makes several departures, including defining cognitive structures in terms of schemas instead of stages, reformulating the definition of postconventional moral thinking, and using different research strategies. The validity of the DIT is based on seven criteria (briefly discussed), and hundreds of studies have produced significant trends. Recent research derived from schema theory produces novel phenomena that link our theory of moral schemas more closely with information processing and decision making.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
Adelson, J. (1971). The political imagination of the young adolescent. Daedalus 100: 1013-1050.
Arnold, M. L. (1999). Stage, sequence, and sequels: Changing conceptions of morality, post-Kohlberg. Educ. Psychol. Rev. (in press).
Bargh, J. A. (1989). Conditional automaticity: Varieties of automatic influence on social perception and cognition. In Uleman, J. S., and Bargh, J. A. (eds.), Unintended Thought, Guilford Press, New York.
Bebeau, M. J., and Thoma, S. J. (1999). Intermediate concepts and the connection to moral education. Educ. Psychol. Rev. 11: 345-362.
Beauchamp, T. L., and Childress, J. F. (1994). Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 4th ed., Oxford University Press, New York.
Colby, A., Kohlberg, L., Gibbs, J., and Lieberman, M. (1983). A longitudinal study of moral judgment. Society for Research in Child Development: Monograph Series, 48, No. 4, Chicago.
Colby, A., Kohlberg, L., Speicher, B., Hewer, A., Candee, D., Gibbs, J., and Power, C. (1987). The Measurement of Moral Judgment, Vols. 1 and 2, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Dorfman, J., Shames, V. A., and Kihlstrom, J. F. (1996). Intuition, incubation, and insight: Implicit cognition in problem solving. In Underwood, G. (ed.), Implicit Cognition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 257-296.
D'Souza, D. (1991). Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus, Free Press, New York.
Emler, N., Palmer-Canton, and St. James (In press). Politics, moral reasoning and the Defining Issues Test: A reply to Barnett et al. (1995). Brit. J. Soc. Psychol. 37: 457-476.
Emler, N., Renwick, S., and Malone, B. (1983). The relationship between moral reasoning and political orientation. J. Person. Soc. Psychol. 45: 1073-1080.
Ericsson, K. A., and Smith, J. (1991). Toward a General Theory of Expertise, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Evens, J. (1995). Indexing Moral Judgment Using Multidimensional Scaling. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota.
Fiske, S. T., and Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social Cognition, 2nd ed., McGraw-Hill, New York.
Flavell, J. H. (1963). The Developmental Psychology of Jean Piaget, Van Nostrand, Princeton, NJ.
Gay, P. (1966). Age of Enlightenment, Time-Life Books, New York.
Gazzaniga, M. S., Ivry, R. B., and Mangun, G. R. (1998). Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind, Norton, New York.
Gilligan, C. (1982). In a Different Voice, Harvard, Cambridge, MA.
Gross, P. R., and Levitt, N. (1994). Higher Superstition, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, MD.
Guttmann, A., and Thompson, D. (1997). Democracy and Disagreement, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Hart, H. L. A. (1961). The Concept of Law, Oxford University Press, London.
Holmes, S. (1993). The Anatomy of Antiliberalism, Harvard, Cambridge, MA.
Holyoak, K. J. (1994). Symbolic connectionism: Toward third-generation theories of expertise. In Ericsson, K. A., and Smith, J. (eds.), Toward a General Theory of Expertise, Cambridge University Press, New York, pp. 301-336.
Hunter, J. D. (1991). Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, Basic Books, New York.
Kihlstrom, J. F., Shames, V. A., and Dorfman, J. (1996). Intimations of memory and thought. In Reder, L. (ed.), Implicit Memory and Metacognition, Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, pp. 1-23.
Killen, M., and Hart, D. (1995). Morality in Everyday Life, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Kohlberg, L. (1971). From is to ought: How to commit the naturalistic fallacy and get away with it in the study of moral development. In Mischel, T. (ed.), Cognitive Development and Epistemology, Academic Press, New York, pp. 151-236.
Kohlberg, L. (1976). Moral stages and moralization: The cognitive developmental approach. In Lickona, T. (ed.), Moral Development and Behavior, Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, New York, pp. 31-53.
Kohlberg, L. (1979). Foreword. In Rest, J. (ed.), Development in Judging Moral Issues, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp. vii-xvi.
Kohlberg, L. (1981). Essays on Moral Development, Vol. 1. The Philosophy of Moral Development, Harper & Row, New York.
Kohlberg, L. (1984). Essays on Moral Development: The nature and validity of moral stages, Vol. 2, Harper & Row, San Francisco.
Kohlberg, L., Boyd, D. R., and Levine, C. (1990). The return of Stage 6: Its principle and moral point of view. In Wren, T. (ed.), The Moral Domain: Essays in the Ongoing Discussion Between Philosophy and the Social Sciences, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 151-181.
Kunst-Wilson, W. R., and Zajonc, R. B. (1980). Affective discrimination of stimuli that cannot be recognized. Science 207: 557-558.
Lapsley, D. K. (1996). Moral Psychology, Westview Press, Boulder, CO.
Lewicki, P. (1986). Non-conscious Social Information Processing, Academic Press, New York.
Lind, G. (1995). The meaning and measurement of moral competence revisited. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco.
Locke, D. (1986). A psychologist among the philosophers: Philosophical aspects of Kohlberg's theories. In Modgil, S., and Modgil, C. (eds.), Lawrence Kohlberg: Consensus and Controversy, Falmer Press, Philadelphia, pp. 21-38.
Louren, O., and Machado, A. (1996). In defense of Piaget's theory: A reply to 10 common criticisms. Psychol. Rev. 103(1): 143-164.
Marty, M. E., and Appleby, R. S. (eds.) (1991). Fundamentalisms Observed, University of Chicago, Chicago.
Marty, M. E., and Appleby, R. S. (eds.) (1993). Fundamentalism and the State, University of Chicago, Chicago.
McClosky, H., and Brill, A. (1983). Dimensions of Tolerance: What Americans Believe About Civil Liberties, Russell Sage, New York.
Modgil, S., and Modgil, C. (eds.) (1986). Lawrence Kohlberg: Consensus and Controversy, Falmer Press, Philadelphia.
Narvaez, D. (1999). Using discourse processing methods to study moral thinking. Educ. Psychol. Rev. 11: 379-395.
Narvaez, D., Getz, I., Thoma, S. J., and Rest, J. (1999). Individual moral judgment and cultural ideology. Dev. Psychol. 35: 478-488.
Nietzsche, F. (1986/1968). Beyond Good and Evil (translation by W. Kaufman), The Portable Nietzsche, Viking Press, New York, pp. 443-447.
Nisbett, R. E., and Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychol. Rev. 84(3): 231-259.
Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Basic Books, New York.
Pritchard, M. S. (1999). What psychological research can contribute to educational programs for the moral development of professionals. Educ. Psychol. Rev. 11: 397-411.
Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice, Harvard Press, Cambridge, MA.
Reed, D. R. C. (1997). Following Kohlberg: Liberalism and the Practice of the Democratic Community, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, IN.
Rest, J. (1973). The hierarchical nature of stages of moral judgment. J. Person. 41: 86-109.
Rest, J. (1979). Development in Judging Moral Issues, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Rest, J., and Narvaez, D. (eds.) (1994). Moral Development in the Professions: Psychology and Applied Ethics, Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.
Rest, J., Thoma, S. J., and Edwards, L. (1997a). Designing and validating a measure of moral judgment: Stage preference and stage consistency approaches. J. Educ. Psychol. 89(1): 5-28.
Rest, J., Thoma, S. J., Narvaez, D., and Bebeau, M. J. (1997b). Alchemy and beyond: Indexing the Defining Issues Test. J. Educ. Psychol. 89(3): 498-507.
Rest, J., Mitchell, C., Narvaez, D., and Thoma, S. J. (1999a). How test length affects validity and reliability on the Defining Issues Test (submitted for publication).
Rest, J., Narvaez, D., Bebeau, M. J., and Thoma, S. J. (1999b). Postconventional Moral Thinking: A Neo-Kohlbergian Approach, Lawrence Erlbaum Press, Mahwah, NJ.
Rest, J., Narvaez, D., Bebeau, M. J., and Thoma, S. J. (1999c). DIT2: Devising and testing a revised instrument of moral judgment. Journal of Educational Psychol. (in press).
Rest, J. R., Narvaez, D., Mitchell, C., and Thoma, S. J. (1999). Exploring Moral Judgment: A Technical Manual for the Defining Issues Test. Minneapolis; Center for the Study of Ethical Development.
Rest, J., Thoma, S. J., and Narvaez, D. (1999d). Moral judgment and ideology (submitted for publication).
Rest, J., Thoma, S. J., and Narvaez, D. (1999e). Moral judgment: Stages and schemas (submitted for publication).
Rummelhart, D. E. (1980). Schemata: The building blocks of cognition. In Spiro, R., Bruce, B., and Brewer, W. (eds.), Theoretical Issues in Reading Comprehension, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, pp. 33-58.
Sandel, M. (1982). Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Schacter, D. L. (1996). Searching for Memory, Basic Books, New York.
Shweder, R. A. (1982). Review of Lawrence Kohlberg's Essays on moral development, Volume I: The philosophy of moral development. Contemp. Psychol. 421-424.
Siegler, R. S. (1997). Concepts and methods for studying cognitive change. In Amsel, E., and Renninger, K. A. (eds.), Change and Development: Issues of Theory, Method, and Application, Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, pp. 77-98.
Smetana, J. G. (1982). Concepts of Self and Morality: Women's Reasoning About Abortion, Praeger, New York.
Snarey, J. (1985). The cross-cultural universality of social-moral development. Psychol. Bull. 97(2): 202-232.
Stevenson, C. L. (1937). The emotive meaning of ethical terms. Mind XLVI: 14-31.
Taylor, S. E., and Crocker, J. (1981). Schematic bases of social information processing. In Higgins, E. T., Herman, C. P., and Zanna, M. P. (eds.), Social Cognition: The Ontario Symposium, Vol. 1, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, pp. 89-134.
Thoma, S. J. (1986). Estimating gender differences in the comprehension and preference of moral issues. Dev. Rev. 6: 165-180.
Thoma, S. J. (1994). Moral judgment and moral action. In Rest, J., and Narvaez, D. (eds.), Moral Development in the Professions: Psychology and Applied Ethics, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, pp. 199-211.
Thoma, S. J., and Rest, J. (1999). The relationship between decision-making and patterns of consolidation and transition in moral judgment development. Dev. Psychol. 35: 323-333.
Thoma, S. J., Rest, J., and Barnett, R. (1986). Moral judgment, behavior, decision making, and attitudes. In Rest, J. (ed.), Moral Development: Advances in Research and Theory, Praeger, New York, pp. 133-175.
Thoma, S., Narvaez, D., Rest, J., & Derryberry, P. (1999). The distinctiveness of moral judgment. Educ. Psychol. Rev. (in press).
Thornton, D., and Thornton, S. (1983). Structure, content, and the direction of development in Kohlberg's theory. In Weinreich-Haste, H., and Locke, D. (eds.), Morality in the Making: Thought, Action, and the Social Context, Wiley & Sons, New York, pp. 73-86.
Turiel, E. (1983). The Development of Social Knowledge: Morality and Convention, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Turiel, E. (1997). The development of morality. In Damon, W. (gen. ed.), Handbook of Child Psychology, Vol. 3, 5th ed. In Eisenberg, N. (vol. ed.), Social, Emotional, and Personality Development, Wiley, New York, Chap. 13.
Tulving, E., Schacter, D. L., and Stark, H. A. (1982). Priming effects in word-fragment completion are independent of recognition memory. J. Exp. Psychol. Learn. Memory Cognit. 8: 336-342.
Uleman, J. S., and Bargh, J. A. (1989). Unintended Thought, Guilford Press, New York.
Vine, I. (1986). Moral maturity in socio-cultural perspective: Are Kohlberg's stages universal? In Modgil, S., and Modgil, C. (eds.), Lawrence Kohlberg: Consensus and Controversy, Falmer Press, Philadelphia, pp. 431-450.
Walzer, M. (1983). Spheres of Justice, Basic Books, New York.
Wren, T. (ed.). (1990). The Moral Domain, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Weinreich-Haste, H., and Locke, D. (eds.) (1983). Morality in the Making: Thought, Action, and the Social Context, Wiley & Sons, New York.
Youniss, J., and Yates, M. (1999). Youth service and moral identity: A case for everyday morality. Educ. Psychol. Rev. 11: 363-378.
Zajonc, R. B. (1968). The attitudinal effects of mere exposure. J. Person. Soc. Psychol. Monogr. Suppl. 9(2; Pt. 2).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rest, J., Narvaez, D., Bebeau, M. et al. A Neo-Kohlbergian Approach: The DIT and Schema Theory. Educational Psychology Review 11, 291–324 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022053215271
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022053215271