Right or Wrong - Kohlberg Moral Developmental Theory

What is acceptable and what is not acceptable behaviour? We all follow some moral standrards that we have developed over the years and try to follow it most of the times and also break the rules at times. There is an interesting theory about moral stages development proposed by Kohlberg. Before getting into this theory let me give you a few scenarios

Samrudhi- A 5 month toddler, does not bother what is right or wrong. She plays, laughs, cries. She has no sense of obligation to anybody and totally egocentric. At this infant stage she seeks only pleasure and avoids pain.

Vedha- A 5 year old kid, knows to some extent on what is right and what is wrong based on her family rules. She obeys her family rules in order to avoid punishment. If she is appreciated and not punished then it means that she did something right and if she is criticised and punished then she understands that she did something wrong.

Karthik- A 11 year old kid has more better understanding of the moral values and obeys certain rules for personal gain. Be a good student in the class to be recognized by teacher and friends. Scores good marks so that his dad will enroll him in cricket coaching academy etc...

Anu- A teenager who studies in college knows very well about things which are right and wrong...she finds her peer approval is more important than what society calls it right. She makes decisions which will make her felt included with her peers and also has grown to level where she can understand things from other perspective.

Ramesh - A software professional working in an MNC is motivated by the greatest good for the people and often trusts in consensus and contracts where there is mutual benefit. He also believes that rules can be changed but can be done only through a system.

John - A well settled middle aged person with family and kids. He believes in his own set of ethical principles that he has created over a period of time based on reading, past experiences, life incidents. He may also possess an altruistic view which will be difficult for others to comprehend. Like his parents, John tries to ensure his kids are following what is right and wrong according to him.

Now can we map all this above said 6 characters to the below chart developed by kohlberg

Samrudhi - Stage 0, Vedha - Stage 1, Karthik - Stage 2 & Stage 3, Anu - Stage 4, Ramesh - Stage 5, John - Stage 6

In fact we all have undergone all these stages, Dont we?

Cognitive Therapy for Stress Relief

In today’s world everybody is affected with stress and knowingly or unknowingly we accept that it is a norm.

There has been quite a lot of resources available in the internet regarding stress relief, however from psychological perspective this post will address some of cognitive aspect of handling stress.

After all it is how we think about a situation in life rather than the actual situation itself. In the corporate world, there may be two people who got the same performance rating for the same kind of work that they do but one person may crib because of high expectations whereas the other person may just feel satisfied with the rating.

Some people tend to see things in a more positive light, and others tend to view things more negatively, putting themselves at a disadvantage in life

I am going to break down this complex topic into three simpler units

Knowing the cognitive distortions
Analyzing the self talk
Reversing the cognitive distortions from negative to positive

#1 Cognitive Distortions – Even though this sounds like a hi-fi word, you will understand it much easier when I list them down… here are some common distortions we face every day in life.

All or Nothing Thinking –
I am always poor in mathematics”
“You are fit for nothing”

Generalization

This is again related to the previous one, where one incident is used to generalize that things will always go wrong….

Pessimistic View – Looking at the negatives when there were so many positives around. You may go to a wonderful dinner with a lovely ambience, tasty food but just might get upset because the waiter did not bother to hear you in the end and you had to wait for 10 minutes for the bill.

Blame Game – When there may be 10 different factors for a thing to go wrong, some people usually take the blame or put the blame on close ones and it brings out a huge amount of stress.

Should/ Have to – Some of us use a lot of “I should” , “I have to” in our self talk which needs to carefully re-examined whether the situation is really a “should” or “could”

#2 Self Talk – We all do self talk, but we are not consciously aware that we are doing a self talk and lot of things can improve if we start revisiting our self talk and if we can retune our self talk into more positive manner. After reading this post, I encourage all of you to just observe your self talk for some days and try to gather some patterns. You may be doing a lot of positive self talk and may be the events on that days will be associated with positive emotions and you will also notice that some of your bad days will be associated with lot of distortions that are listed above. If you can do this for the first weeks and become aware of the distortions popping up in your self talk that is when you can assure yourself that you are ready for the next stage.

#3 Reversing the cognitive distortions.

The below listed are some of the cognitive distortions…
All or Nothing Thinking
Generalization
Pessimistic View
Blame Game
Should/ Have to

While attempting to reverse the distortions, our thinking has to be totally in the opposite directions, for example instead of generalizing things we should start looking them as situation specific.

A practical example of getting stuck in traffic can be resolved by many alternatives

Revisiting the route to see if there are less crowded alternatives even though if its slightly lengthier than the crowded route
Finding the most optimal time to avoid peak traffic
Using public transportation so that the time spent in traffic could be used for reading books/ listening to music
Doing car pooling so that you get to go with friends and have nice chat and doesn’t have to drive every day at the same time save fuel and money.

So to conclude, each situation in life is how we see it and how we relate it. If we become consciously aware of the distortions in self talk and look at reversing the distortions in more positive manner, we are sure to get relief and will be in better position to avoid stress.