Kohlberg's theory of moral development is composed of three levels, each of which has two stages, which are more advanced forms of moral reasoning (Sigelman & Rider, 2021). These stages describe how people move from being self-absorbed to being principled in their reasoning.
The first level is preconventional morality, which is comprised of stages one and two. The first stage called the Punishment-and-Obedience Orientation, is distinguished by the fact that moral reasoning is based solely o...