Morality and ethics are two terms which are versatile in their ability to be used synonymously.  However, they can also be defined and distinguished separately based upon an individual and his or her belief systems. The debate of morality and ethics as ideals that guide actions taken by individuals, groups or societies is not at all tempered and not one which necessarily has right or wrong answers.  While morality is a term that can be used to define a set of ideas of the nature between good and evil for people with an established religious belief system, so it can also be used as a general lifestyle guideline. Ethics often is associated with a general form of procedural conduct, independent of specific events that trigger explicit reactions. With the variances in definitions of both these terms, determining how a person is influenced can be contingent on either taught or learned behaviors. How a person reacted to a meaningful event can be broken down through Kohlberg’s six stages of moral development and the Defining Issues Test (DIT). These help to understand the role that past experiences play when someone interprets a stimulus as a threat or challenge to their understanding of morality and ethics.

Every person has an extremely unique history of encounters and situations which may have challenged what they held to be ethically and morally true. In the United States, a lot of the development of a person’s moral framework is testing during his or her adolescent and teenage years. With the dynamics of attitudes changing between childhood and adulthood, a lot of taught and learned behaviors shape themselves specifically to the individual. In high schools and college across the country, peer pressure is a nationally acknowledged concept which either gives way to a shift in a person’s belief system or acts as solidification and verification of their preexisting beliefs.

For me, it was during my early college years that I was repeatedly confronted and also shaped by various situations in which I found myself as a result of my social environment. At the beginning of college, I saw the influence of alcohol and the lifestyle that pervaded the university dormitories.  While I was eager to partake in the social festivities that brought freshmen together in the camaraderie of finally being in college, I was also very conscientious of behaviors and consequences through taught and learned experience. Once of the most significant challenges that I experienced which truly tested the mettle of my own personal moral and ethical belief system was at a university party.  At the end of what was a very fun and socially invigorating night, I was offered a ride home from someone who was far more inebriated than I even knew was possible.

There is not an immediate reason I can necessarily list as to why I did and said what I did on that night. However, to help me find some answers, I can break down my inner turmoil and actions of that night through Kohlberg’s six stages of moral development. Lawrence Kohlberg was a psychologist and scholar who is renowned for the six stages of moral development that he asserted were a part of every person’s innate framework. Developed as a result of his study of Piaget’s previous assertion of two various stages of moral development, Kohlberg expounded upon these with further study of his own.  Kohlberg’s six stages are as follows: obedience and punishment orientation, individualism and exchange, good interpersonal relationships, maintaining the social order, social contract and individual rights, and universal principles.

Since Kohlberg’s assertion of there being six stages of moral development, another tool has been recognized which further promotes the study of the latter half of Kohlberg’s stages called the Defining Issues Test (DIT). The DIT measures the intuitive and unspoken aspects of moral development, usually on a more subconscious level resulting from experience as opposed to learning. This measurement of unconscious thought process in moral development counters consciously recalling taught lessons for help in determining suitable behaviors for various situations. Comparatively, another study devised to calculate moral development is called the Moral Judgment Interview. In this type of assessment, a person is required to recount in their own words their level of understanding in an attempt to discern their highest level of moral awareness. Throughout the study of the DIT and moral development, it has been argued to be a more accurate gauge than actually having a person clarify their morals verbally. The ability to measure the DIT is based on a concept of schemas, which are preexisting observances based upon an individual’s experience and the lessons he or she (unconsciously) learned from them. Taking these into consideration as well as Kohlberg’s stages of development can possibly help explain the rationale behind my behavior.