Dr. C. George Boeree Traditionally, psychology has avoided
studying anything that is loaded with value judgements. There is
a degree of difficulty involved in trying to be unbiased about
things that involve terms like "good" and "bad!" So, one of the
most significant aspects of human life - morality - has had to
wait quite a while before anyone in psychology dared to touch
it! But Lawrence Kohlberg wanted to study morality, and did so
using a most interesting (if controversial) technique.
Basically, he would ask children and adults to try to solve
moral dilemmas contained in little stories, and to do so outloud
so he could follow their reasoning. It wasn't the specific
answers to the dilemmas that interested him, but rather how the
person got to his or her answer. One of the most famous of these
stories concerned a man named Heinz. His wife was dying of a
disease that could be cured if he could get a certain medicine.
When he asked the pharmacist, he was told that he could get the
medicine, but only at a very