1. By: Rachel Fountain & Tara Polk
THE KOHLBERG SHOW
By: Rachel Fountain & Tara Polk

2. Lawrence Kohlberg
Born to a wealthy family in Bronxville, New York in 1927
Delayed admittance to college and instead went to Israel and did work as a sailor
attended the University of Chicago in 1948
first wanted to be a clinical psychologist
began to interview children and develop a theory on the moral development of children which he published in 1958
Started teaching at Harvard in 1968
Taught until his death in 1987
He attended noted, academically demanding schools in his youth
however he soon developed an interest in Piaget and his research which influenced him to divulge deeper into the study.
part of his doctoral dissertation

3. Kohlberg’s 3 Levels Level 1 (Pre-Conventional) Level 2 (Conventional)
Level 3 (Post-Conventional)

4. Kohlberg’s 6 Stages of Moral Reasoning!
Level 1: Pre-Conventional
1. Obedience and punishment orientation
2. Individualism & Exchange
Level 2: Conventional
3. Good Interpersonal Relationships
4. Maintaining the Social Order
Level 3: Post-Conventional
5. Social contract & Individual Rights
6. Universal principles
Stage 1: The person does the right thing to avoid punishment; egocentric
Stage 2: a person does what is right and follows the rules only; stage of concrete individualistic
Stage 3: “Good Boy/ Girl” person has to “live up to the expectations of others” ; wants to maintain friendships based on the values of “trust, loyalty, respect, and gratitiude
Stage 4: “law & order” person is concerned with society as a whole; differentiates societal point of view from interpersonal agreement or motives
Stage 5: person cares about society from the outside to determine the values that society upholds, person’s social perspective is prior to society
Stage 6: “principled conscience” people make their own principles which follows certain laws and social understandings pertaining to justice, human rights, human dignity

5. The Truman Show
Truman Burbank, an abandoned baby who was raised by a corporation and discovers that his life is actually a simulated television show revolving around him.
We were most interested in the moral development and position of adolescents in his stages as we felt that they were the best group to participate in our research studies and as we both want to be secondary teachers, we are more interested in adolescent development. Instead of reproducing Kohlberg’s research verbatim with the posing of the Heinz dilemma, we decided instead to reinvigorate the study and modernize it by creating our own dilemma that is more attuned to the 21st century and the tricky morality questions that plague the public today.

6. Our Questions
Will the group that are shown the full ending of the movie be more inclined to agree with Truman’s choice and fall into the category of the third stage or the fifth stage?
For those that we do not show the end of the movie, will be that they be more inclined to agree with the creator?

7. Participants A small, private Catholic college in Irving, Texas
college freshman, in their late teens (18-19yrs). 15 students
14 female participants
1 male participant
No student under the age of 18 were permitted to participate in the study.

8. Our Procedure
Researchers went to a freshman residence hall of a college
began by asking the participants to read and sign a consent form
The participants were shown a trailer for the film The Truman Show
the researchers then showed the participants a clip of the last last five minutes of the movie.
In each group, the researchers distributed either Questionnaire A or Questionnaire B
Trailer= in order to grasp an understanding of the film’s plot

9. Our Procedure (cont.)
Before the final moment where the main character makes a decision regarding the dilemma, the researchers stopped the video and handed out Questionnaire A to half of the participants
The researchers will then separate these half of the participants to another room
The other half of the participants received Questionnaire B watched the end of the movie clip

11. Hypothesis
The group that are shown the full ending of the movie will be more inclined to agree with Truman’s choice and will fall into the fifth stage by citing individual rights over the social contract that the show and the cast represents.
For those that are not shown the end of the movie, will be that they are more inclined to agree with the creator and fall into stage 4

12. Key for Analyzing Responses
Red — Effects/benefits for Truman
Green — Negative impact/difficulties on Truman’s life if he were to stay
Yellow — Effects on the creator of the show or its producers
Blue — Positive impacts on viewers
Gray — Negative impacts on viewers
Red & Green tends to convey Stage 5 which is focused on the the emphasis on student rights
yellow is maintaining the social order so Stage 4
Anything that focuses on relationships either on viewer or for Truman conveys the Stage 3: Good Interpersonal relationships

13. Should he stay or should he go?
The responses...
Questionnaire A
Female or Male?
Answer
Reason
Stage A1
Female
Leave
The right thing for Truman to do is leave the show because he is living in a false reality that does not contain true love or friendship. Truman will have to rediscover himself and what it means to love and be loved. The show and great lie will no longer exist without his participation in it. 3 A2
He should leave. The producers are not God. Truman deserves to have a chance to be a person in a world that does not revolve around him in order to become the best version of himself. The effects on the viewers will be as they always were; inspirational. The producers will be disappointed but who cares. The effects for him will be intense, but ultimately good. 5 A3
Stay
Although it’s creepy and not ok that he was being watched, Truman supposedly helped people by being “real” on this show, so he should continue being a part of it. But because he is aware of the show, he will act differently. So others may see the best side of him. The producers will be happy and inspired, but Truman may get sick of existing only for the purpose of being shown externally. 4 A4
He should leave so he can a real life un-orchestrated. It will end the show, but he’ll be happier, especially since he now knows the truth. The producers will ultimately have to live with it; they don’t own Truman.
His results show that the children in later stages wrestle with multiples issues (justice, etc.) in justifying their answer about the dilemma, which is different from the children of lower stages who only focus on one side of the dilemma.

14. The responses continued...
Questionnaire A
Female or Male?
Answer
Reason
Stage A5
Female
Leave
Truman should leave because his life has been a lie, he has never experienced anything close to the truth and he should go find that for himself. The show will be over, the producers will not have jobs, but Truman will experience real life for the first time. 5 A6
He should leave the simulation even though the show will be over, the producer will need to find more work, and he will have to re-learn everything about social life. It is not moral to be bound up in a fake reality by creators other than God himself. A7
Stay
The most moral decision would be for Truman to stay –it would require self-sacrifice in the name of making millions of people happy. The show and producers would continue to benefit from Truman’s presence on the show—it might even be more popular since he chose to stay over experiencing the real world. It could have a somewhat negative impact on Truman because he will never know what it’s like to be alone with his life choices in an environment that is not artificial joy from making so many people happy. 4 A8
Male
Truman should no longer participate in the show. Now that he understands that he is always being watched he will be unable to return to his former life. And while it is true that they can never put a camera in his head if he continues with the show he will always be making decisions with the spectators in mind. This, to some extent represents a limiting of his own free will and self-actualization. This decision will obviously end the show for the audience and for the producers but any loss to them should be disregarded by Truman since in the end they have no right to be entertained or profited off of him. Leaving will be the only way Truman can live a fulfilling life with an unhindered will.

15. Questionnaire B Female or Male? Answer Reason Stage B1 Female Leave
Truman should leave the show. His leaving the show will bring an end to a long TV show, and it will leave many of the viewers sad; however, his viewers were happy that he finally gained freedom to discover truth. The impact leaving the show will have on Truman is much more uncertain. His entire life he has been in a virtual reality in which he suffered no true consequences for his actions. By leaving he will experience truth and the harsh reality of reality. 2? B2
Leave. He has been lied to his entire life about his entire life—nobody deserves that. It will end the show entirely, resulting in thousands losing their jobs, and he will likely struggle without someone to watch him and help him adjust, but any other way will help those people who lied to him constantly and will make millions think it’s okay to do so. 5 B3
Truman did the right thing in leaving the show because it’s his life. Even though everything outside of it is unknown to him, he should have control of his own life not the company. The decision may end the show, but they shouldn’t have made a show out of someone’s life where he’s been lied to the entire time in the 1st place. This life will drastically change because everything in real life isn’t controlled anymore, but he can learn. B4
The moral thing Truman should do is exactly what he did, leave the show. He made the right choice because he needed to figure out who he really was/is in the real world. There will be no more Truman show and he will be better off because he can find himself in a not so orchestrated world.
B1 is stage 2 because her answer focuses on Truman’s self-interest and how his leaving is the right action for him to take for him

16. The responses continued...
Questionnaire B
Female or Male?
Answer
Reason
Stage B5
Female
Leave
Truman should leave the show because he realized that the world he lived in was full of deceit and focused solely on material gain. This may negatively impact the show producers, but since they were acting selfishly it is acceptable. This will ultimately have a positive effect on his life since he knows that it is only if he pursues truth that he will be truly fulfilled 2 B6
He was right to leave the show. Yes, the show will end and that will affect the viewers, but its his life. His life has essentially been taken away from him up until this point, so he made the right decision to leave. Who cares if it crushes the creator of the show. It was wrong of him to start the show. 5 B7
His decision to take charge of his life—to enter the real world and live his own life—inspired viewers to believe that they have control over their own life and that their own decisions were important too. Though his show may have brought joy and encouragement to many, the fact that Truman would choose to be free of another’s influence—that people don’t have to just be pawns—was most encouraging. So I believe entering the real world was the right thing to do—because it has the biggest (positive) impact on humanity.

18. Limitations Small, Polarized participant pool
Unequal responses from both genders
Those that had already seen the movie
Only one brief response was considered
“to determine a subject’s stage of moral development , the researcher must see how consistently the subject’s reasons across a range of moral issues”

19. Kohlberg on Tap Nature Nurture
The Nature v. Nurture line
Nature
Nurture
Kohlberg believed that his stages were “not the product of maturation;” they do not “unfold according to a genetic blueprint” (Page 166)
He neither believed that his stages were the “product of socializing agents (e.g., parents and teachers)” (pg 166)
Yet, he did believe to an extent that the stages grew out of personal experiences and relationships (page 165)

20. Our Findings
The group who did not see the ending of the movie were more likely to agree with the creator that Truman should stay than the second group who did see the final scene.
The majority of participants revealed stage five moral reasoning which demonstrated postconventional morality.
Only those who watched the end of the movie were more inclined to agree with Truman’s choice. Unexpectedly, however, some chose to emphasize the relationship between Truman and the creators which reflects the correlation between individualism and exchange outlined in Kohlberg’s second stage of preconventional morality.
So our hypothesis was kind of right, but as only two out of 8 responded to stay the data was not fully aligned
as Kohlberg did not necessarily work with young adults, he did not have a concrete idea, but we did think young adults would fall into this postconventional morality; in particular a capitalist, democracy that upholds the importance of individualism was more likely to expect this

21. Bibliography
Barger, R. (2000). A summary of lawrence kohlberg's stage of moral development. retrievedfrom
Crain, W. C. (1980). Theories of development: Concepts and applications. Englewood Cliffs,
Colby, A., & Kohlberg, L. (1987). The measurement of moral judgment. Cambridge: Cambridge university press.
Hersh, R. H., Paolitto, D. P., & Reimer, J. (1979). Promoting moral growth: From piaget to Kkohlberg. New York: Longman.
Thoma, S. (2014). Measuring moral thinking from a neo-kohlbergian perspective. Retrieved from