Quantifying the Moral Dimension. New steps in the implementation of Kohlberg’s method and theory

Rudimentary to this movement was W. Dilthey’s project of descriptive or structural psychology. The opposition of explanative and descriptive psychology correlates with the distinction he proposesbetween natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) and human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften). Freudianism and constructivism occur in this scheme on different sides, as long as the former hastens to give explanations for tacit dimensions of psychological life while the latter seeks to uncover these dimensions for observation and reflection. J.-P. Ricoeur called psychoanalysis an archaeology of the soul meaning not only its concern with the past as the cause of the present condition of the patient but also its habit to reproduce the whole from its fragments. Anamnesis comes in this case as a result of the particular combination of pieces fished out of the stream of information by means of an instrument tuned in advance to catch highly specific psychological structures. Other things are filtered out. Constructivism, on the contrary, motivates the researcher to collect and to include in analysis as many descriptions as possible in the mode of C. Gyrtz’s doctrine or that of literary criticism and to elaborate (or adjust) criteria for diagnostics afterwards on the basis of the collected data. The reproduction of a hidden pattern is achieved in this mode not through the application of a universal scheme to the particular case and the excogitation of missing pieces but through resorting and reshuffling numerous data until reaching the maximal likelihood.

So the aspiration to minimize the damage of reduction (that is the deliberate impoverishment and simplification of the rich whole, associating it with an abstract model, projecting onto it a chosen plan, neglecting details etc.) determines the main difference between constructivism and former empiric-analytical methods of studying hidden psychological processes. This feature brings constructivism close to the humanities. At the same time a characteristic for the former is the wider application of analytical procedures, quantitative methods and statistics than is usual for the latter. It even has sights on not just the disclosure but also the quantification or measurement of the dark side of psychic reality.

In this respect constructivism implies the principle of complementarity (N. Bohr). On the one hand the aspiration to observe intact the structure of its object means abstaining from its complete disassembly and employing instead the technique of drawing or sketching a portrait. At this holistic level of description constructivism operates as a rule with integral moulds or patterns of individual and collective psychic complexes. On the other hand, a construct is by definition something consisting of elements. Accordingly, it is hardly possible for constructivism to reject the use of analytical procedures, of modelling and programming constructs. As a result of the implementation of this atomistic approach the mould of psychic complexes emerges as a «digital’ image produced according to certain formulated rules from identifiable elements. This mosaic-style reconstruction of the psyche as a method corresponds perfectly to the mosaic nature of its referent – to the nature of a construct.

As a platform for the synthesis of humanities and empiric-analytical approaches constructivism incorporates a wide range of ideas and methods from structuralism (in a generally-scientific, not in a specifically psychological meaning) and hermeneutics. Structuralism is a pole of attraction for the harder branch of constructivism aiming at the maximal formalisation of description and preferring the abstraction, mathematical language and methods of exact sciences. Representatives of this branch are inclined to consider constructs as schemes, apt for mathematical representation. Not coincidentally Piaget used the term of cognitive schema for the basic concept of his structural theory of development. Constructivism of this sort has a strong nomothetic tendency toward the discovery of universal laws. The border between structuralism and constructivism at this pole is blurred yet the probable criterion for distinguishing between them may be the more dynamic vision of constructs assumed by constructivism.

The softer branch of constructivism tends toward the pole of the humanities. It borrows from the humanities-style idiographic set of ideas its focus on the concrete and unique, the idea of the hermeneutic circle, its contextual approach to the interpretation of data, its concern about the problem of the compliance of the researcher’s and respondent’s «horizons of interpretation’ and their belonging to one and the same «language game’. The construct in this version is regarded as a personal narrative rather than a scheme, and group patterns play the roles of «meta-narratives’ (Lyotard), shared within (sub) cultures and responsible for the formation of «narrative identities’ (Ricoeur). As the language of mathematics is not suitable here it is substituted with the language of narration, hence models are replaced by plots and the roles of formula are often played by metaphors. Yet general constructivist commitment to analysis stays alive and takes in the idiographic frame of reference, a form of preference for ipsative scales. The diversity and the uniqueness of personal narratives obstruct significantly the perspective of finding general regularities and orient the researcher toward the ideal of better understanding as promoted by the Dilthey’s project of structural psychology. At the same time a matured hermeneutical tradition with its notion of prejudices directs the researcher toward recognition of socio-cultural conditionality of psychic phenomena and makes constructivism more successful than structuralism in this respect.

For constructivism its position on the border between humanities and positive sciences is a stimulus for innovative activity in its methodology. Here it can build on the ideas of cybernetics and synergetics, of information theory and the theory of systems, of semantics and semiotics, of theoretical and applied linguistics, of non-parametrical statistics and of other new fields of study generated in the space of interdisciplinary integration. Of special interest here are the methods that allow the detection, identification and quantification of hidden factors and parameters as soon as they are the primary focus of constructivism itself. Activity and integrity are the first among the parameters that are a-priori ascribed to constructs. One of the first attempts in the pre-paradigm history of constructivism to try the constructivist idea of measuring psychic properties belongs to J.-F. Herbart. He has chosen the intensity of perceptions as the parameter for detection. He relied on activity, the first of the two basic characteristics of constructs Modern constructivism does not abandon this perspective. The rigidity/permeability of constructs (Kelly) that can be measured in the series of subsequent tests is but one example of such a dynamic characteristic. However, the mainstream of constructivism today has taken another direction connected to the measurement of another parameter – that of integrity. This turn was dictated by the revolution in computer facilities that provided an ordinary researcher with unprecedented and almost unbelievable opportunities for the statistical processing of data. These enabled the realisation of the above-mentioned strategy of data reshuffling and the reconstruction of the psyche in the form of «digital moulds’. Figuratively speaking, if a researcher of former times was given a million pieces to make one big image he would probably doubt whether his life would be long enough for completing this puzzle. Today the researcher has an opportunity to hand over this task to a machine that will resolve the task in a couple of minutes. Some of these new technologies, such as factor analysis, were imported by constructivism from other scientific schools. Some came out of its own workshops. Tests on moral capacities (the main topic of this book) belong mostly to the second category.

Constructivism bases its strategy on a humanities-style determination to overcome the toxic consequences of reductionism. But unlike other humanities movements it tries to achieve this aim not at the expense of achievements in computer techniques, mathematical statistics and analysis but through their more intensive usage. The binding pedantry of old science is overpowered by means of reconsidering the role and the potency of the methodological equipment of exact sciences. No more is it an idol on the pedestal of the infallibility of positive knowledge but an instrument in the palette of means for the researcher to use creatively..

Constructivist devotion to quantitative methods should be regarded neither as a result of compromise between the humanities and natural sciences nor as a return to ideals of positivism inspired by (really existing) dissatisfaction with the effectiveness of methodology of the humanities. Rather it should be regarded as a response to the challenges of the information era. The mass of information, the ongoing specialisation of scientific knowledge, the growing complexity of methods create a new form of esotericism, based on the impossibility for a mere mortal to understand the way of obtaining published data, or even more so to evaluate the reliability and consistency of their conclusions. The choice is either to capitulate to the power of scientific corporations and their sponsors or to improve abilities to resist manipulation through the methodological training of consumers of knowledge and developing institutions of independent expertise.

Constructivism occupies an active position in this respect. It is ready to struggle for scientific uprightness with mathematically formulated facts to hand, armed with the achievements of post-positivist epistemology and emancipated from the illusion of scientific impartiality, tempered with the skepticism of Popper’s fallibility and relativity. But in order to win in this way its methodological level of expertise must exceed that of scientific «scribes and Pharisees» who still insist that the researcher is for the method just as man is for the Sabbath and not vice versa. Contemporary scientific creativeness should confront the methodological narrowness of the former school not with voluntarism but with methodological sophistication that includes skills in different techniques and more adequate understanding of the role of personality in producing scientific knowledge. It seems as though constructivism more than any other scientific movement is able to show that the historically determined rise of the influence of the humanities in scientific knowledge does not necessarily mean the refusal of the positivists’ tool, but rather a more qualified usage of it. This may be the historical mission of constructivism.

So, the constructivist programmes of psychological and pedagogical diagnostics include the following principles:

– targeting the detection of hidden psychic structures (constructs) responsible for the interpretation of reality;

– acknowledgment of the dynamic nature and socio-cultural conditionality of constructs, emphasis on the social factors of their formation, including the narrative identity of the subject;

– interactive and flexible research strategies, improvising with the available set of methods and step by step correction of programmes in accordance with research results;

– contextual interpretation of phenomena under study, aspiration for semantic homogeneity of contents and means of expression;

– holistic devotion to the priority of the whole over the sum of parts, intention to represent the psyche in forms of integral patterns;

– «digital’, or combinative way of building and presenting patterns from discrete units which allows an analytical dismantling;

– wide application of psychometric technologies for quantifying selected parameters in universal and ipsative scales;

– using existent and developing new methods of multidimensional statistics and analysis for more effective operation with clusters and data sets;

– focus on the phenomena of coherency, coordination, hierarchical subordination and functional specialisation of psychic structures as a source of self-organisation and development of personality.

2. ONYX: A new moral judgment test

2.1. Historical background

ONYX is a transliteration of a Russian acronym. The full name of the test reads like «Assessment of moral discernment and coherence of judgment». The meaning would be more properly represented if the word «moral’ were relocated and placed before the word «judgment’, but this would make the abbreviation unpronounceable in Russian. What is more, the name of the stone would be lost in this case, and it would be a pity because onyx is a good symbol for the test. Like any stone our test is a solid cohesive thing but besides that it has a striped structure, just like onyx.

The idea of quantifying and measuring the moral qualities of a person cannot but cause an instinctive repulsion. Yet science has a history of breaking its way through the cordons of intuitive prejudices and instinctive protests. Anatomy is a good example showing how the once blasphemous practice of studying the human body gave new opportunities for healing. Is it impossible that results of the «anatomy of the soul» will bring forth good fruits in the future for pedagogical practice? Of course, the latter case is much more complicated not least because it is much more difficult to come to agreement about what is to be measured. A unifying theory is necessary in this case not only at the stage of the interpretation of data but at the very beginning while designing the approach. Differences of concepts about light or gravity were not obstacles to using scales or differentiating stars according to their luminosity because the ability to distinguish heavy from light and dark from bright lies in the commonality of sensual perception. Moral properties are not generally valid in the same sense.

Attempts to build a general theory of morality and establish common criteria of what it is to be moral have a long history. Of special interest in this respect is Socrates’ reasoning presented in Plato’s dialogue «Hippias Minor». In this dialogue Socrates asks his collocutor to think what is more immoral – to behave badly when you know what is right and what is wrong or to do it when you don’t know. Hippias, as the majority of us would, answers immediately:

– And how, Socrates, can those who intentionally err, and voluntarily and designedly commit iniquities, be better than those who err and do wrong involuntarily?

But this answer does not satisfy Socrates:

– And now I cannot agree in what you are saying, but I strongly disagree <….> and my opinion, Hippias, is the very contrary of what you are saying. For I maintain that those who hurt or injure mankind, and speak falsely and deceive, and err voluntarily, are better far than those who do wrong involuntarily.

Argumentation for this shocking conclusion is built on a sequence of analogies. Who is the better musician: the one who produces cacophony voluntarily or the one who can’t play properly? Who is the better athlete: the one who pretends that he has a pain in his knee and doesn’t want to run fast or the one who can’t run fast? Socrates does not find a reason why we should make an exception for moral actions in this sequence. And Hippias does not find contra-arguments except for a mere appeal to moral feeling:

– O, Socrates, it would be a monstrous thing to say that those who do wrong voluntarily are better than those who do wrong involuntarily!

– Socr.: And yet that appears to be the only inference.

Probably it could be regarded as a mere sophistic exercise, more so as Socrates confesses finally that he does not agree with himself in his conclusion. But in the history of pedagogy the nontrivial line of reasoning presented by Socrates in this dialogue appears from time to time among the thoughts of the most venerable scholars. Herbart in his «Textbook in Psychology» (Lehrbuch der Psychologie) claims that ethics attains its strength not in appeals for good behaviour addressed to human will but in the clarity and cohesion of moral vision or insight which constitutes a special competence. He called this competence moral judgment (or moral sense) and insisted time and again that this competence is not innate but is to be developed and trained by means of education. Being a variant of aesthetic judgment, this competence is more related to ideas of beautiful and ugly than to that of due and improper, and accordingly, the best means for its development are to be found not in logic and law but in the field of humanities. In his earlier work «The Science of Education and the Aesthetic Revelation of the World» he particularly focuses on this connection between ethics and aesthetics and on the role of humanities in moral education. The quality of moral judgment in complex situations depends on how rich, balanced, and comprehensive personal perceptions are. And humanities widening the horizon of a learner are able to prevent at the same time the one-sidedness of this judgment. Furthermore in Herbart’s system «the one-sided person approximates the egoist, even when he will not notice it himself, because he relates everything to the small circle of his own life and thought» (Meijer 2006). We have here a clear antecedent of Piaget’s theory that relates the moral development of a person to a process of successive decentration of ego and also a historical bridge from Socrates’ doubts about the morality of the morally ignorant to those modern scholars who base their evaluations of morality on concepts of moral competences.

According to Piaget, changes in mental abilities accompanying maturation are a key for all aspects of personal development. Processes of moral (and spiritual) development are paralleled in this approach with processes taking place in the cognitive domain. To become more moral means first of all to acquire more elaborated cognitive tools and to operate logical schemas of growing complexity that ensure more comprehensive awareness of the existence of another ego. While the substantial aspect of moral development is described as assimilation or interiorisation of external matter, its formal aspect appears as accommodation, that is, the transformation of cognitive structures (schemas in Piaget’s terms) under the influence of external matters for their better assimilation. Accommodation is generally directed toward decentration of ego, that is, toward successive unlocking of egocentric schemas.

Thus Piaget and later his disciple Lawrence Kohlberg reduce the development of moral consciousness to the progress in a subject’s ability for moral judgment. Certainly, it is a serious simplification, but it opens a door for using quantitative methods in diagnostics. Theoretically established a developmental vector constitutes a reference axis for the coordinated measurement and comparability of its results. However conventional it is, this coordination is better than nothing. In the situation of diverse axiological systems and pedagogical ideals it provides an opportunity to convert a highly nonproductive controversy about the priority or appropriateness of different systems of values into a more productive discussion about levels of consistency of empirically detected values with the conventional scale.

Using a mathematical analogy, evaluation of moral achievements on the personal way to excellence may be compared to the measurement of lengths of multidirectional vectors. As an ideal, to achieve a formal evaluation strictly abstracted from substantial aspects we need to supply each vector with units dividing it into a certain number of equal segments. In the situation of the multitude of directions we anticipate that the comparison of results will be a highly impracticable task. However, the powerful tools of statistics available today grant researchers courage that overcomes fears. Moreover, a number of procedures that proved their effectiveness, such as a factor analysis, function exactly via the projecting of multidirectional vectors to different axes. We can start at least with marking one chosen direction. And it is what Kohlberg did in 1964 when he offered a first quantified scale for comparison of moral abilities. The worth of the scale was to a large extent determined by a good choice of the vector direction, the joint merit of Kohlberg and Piaget.

L. Kohlberg’s structural model of moral development will be discussed later, in chapter 4. For the moment it is worth noticing that despite its heuristic significance it seems as though it is not the model itself that constitutes the main historical achievement of Kohlberg but rather the attached method that has proved the validity of his theory. This method widely known as moral dilemma method was the first to base evaluation of the level of moral consciousness not on self-assessments or declarations showing the awareness of the respondent about social demands but on the ability to understand moral situations. The idea was to reveal the motivation standing behind the moral decision of a respondent in a certain situation. It was expected to reflect the development of moral consciousness not at the level of theoretical knowledge about ethical norms and rules but at the level of their implementation. Moreover, the identification of higher stages of moral development with the ability for «post-conventional’ moral judgment meant the demand for the respondent to exhibit some signs of autonomy in order to show good results in the test.

Kohlberg’s methodological approach met extensive criticism. Besides the axiomatic objection against the reduction of morality to cognitive aspects, the main points of his critics may be presented as follows:

– The scheme of successive moral development embedded into the method groundlessly claims to be universal. It does not take into account the socio-cultural determinacy of morality.

– The method is time consuming and non-effective. As interpretation of interviews is a complicated procedure not apt for unification, the risk of impartiality and subjectivism of diagnoses is too high.

– Successful execution of the test depends a great deal on the linguistic and communicative abilities of a child. In fact, the method misses its target.

Despite its reasonableness the criticism did not discredit the dilemma method, but on the contrary stimulated attempts at its improvement and became a powerful factor that helped to spread quantitative approaches in the field of personal moral development studies. The conversion of the interview into the form of a written standardised test may be regarded as the most important result of the international movement for the rehabilitation of Kohlberg that started already in his lifetime. Among the most successful implementations of his idea one should point out the Moral Judgment Test (MJT), designed in 1975 by Georg Lind, a German researcher from the University of Constance, and the Defining Issues Test (DIT) designed in 1974 by a group of scholars from Minnesota University (USA) under the leadership of a Kohlberg’s disciple James Rest. Both tests are recommended by their authors as instruments for measuring the level of development of moral consciousness and for assessment of efficiency of educational institutions and programmes in moral education. Tests proved their validity on samples that included in total more than 800 000 respondents all over the world. Their results are published in dozens of papers. ONYX is a product of a deep modification of these two foreign analogues.

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Примечания

1

Козырев Ф. Н. Измерение субъективности: Конструктивизм в практике педагогического исследования. – СПб: РХГА, 2016