Kohlberg, Lawrence (1927–1987)

Lawrence Kohlberg was an American psychologist best known for his account of six culturally universal stages of moral development. Kohlberg also led moral education interventions in a Connecticut prison and a Cambridge, Massachusetts, high school. The Cambridge Just Community School served as a model for similar schools on which he consulted in Brookline, Massachusetts, and Scarsdale and the Bronx, New York.

Kohlberg was born in Bronxville, New York. He was the youngest of four children born to Alfred Kohlberg and Charlotte Albrecht Kohlberg. Alfred was politically active during the younger Kohlberg's youth, in directing the United Jewish Appeal during the 1940s and in the 1950s in anti-Communist work related to China, where Alfred had many business contacts. Charlotte was a “kitchen chemist,” who discovered a polymer ...